Thought maybe you were in love with me.

shadows of a pretend mess. liter of dew, downed in the five-minute break in the middle of a long evening class. twitching, hearing music in my head, playing the keyboard on my notebook. forgetting everything only moments after remembering. flying home, into the wind, feet not touching the ground until the driveway. still jumpy. i have so many sentimental objects, it's ridiculous; this bracelet means this and that necklace means that. in my mind i am wildy affectionate and open and lively, but on tape i am flat and boring and remote. so i compensate with nail polish. fuck you, macho automotive aggressive angry frightened serious america. i laugh and turn away, keep walking.

this camouflage makes us feel less vulnerable, less displayed, less mainstream. the bright orange makes sure we don't get lost or wounded. emotional dressing is the catchphrase of the moment. 'lifted' is the bright eyes album of the moment. this morning it was 'letting off the happiness'.

children are people, too. don't fuck with them.

i am perfect in every way.

Kak of the Wak

I think I want to set up an online dating profile just so I can put down "Christopher Walken" as my only interest and then write the entire profile about Christopher Walken.

As I write this, I'm wearing the "I got a fever..." shirt.

DONE

One semester down, 9-12 to go.

staring into the void

so i took the bus over to my new apartment to pick up my keys and had the most insane driver ever. he sounded like he was maybe from a carribean island and though the loudspeaker was tinny and quiet, he would announce not just major stops, but every stop with a sing-song, "coming up neeext". i couldn't decide whether to be ecstatic over how fast he was getting me to my destination or to be terrified at his speed around corners. regardless, i was on one of the super-long "accordian" buses and i was very happy to not be in the way back, which felt like it was swinging wildly whenever we took a corner.

it was exhilirating.

and on the ride back, i had the same driver.

a bit

Its 1am, I'm writing this paper.

Snow is still on the ground, but is getting close to gone.

I can't decide if I like what I'm doing (grad school). Many hours spent feeling 'Fuck fuck fuck, run away away away.' Then there's times when I'm actually in action, and it feels good. Maybe just because I forget to think. The big picture is, we're all gonna die. Or something unhappy like that.

The emptiness of this building at night is creepy. In the IRCs, there were allways fellow combatants. Even when this building is full during the day, I don't feel any comradery, I'd imagine PSU is pretty similar. I'm hungry.

cold comfort and sex images

i want to be in an institution walk the grounds and wait for phone calls envision the future as a happy blur of freedom cry and roll around on the floor no one would bat an eye i wouldn't have to swallow back anything for appearances i could hug the attendants and stare out the window for hours and walk away when people started to talk to me any behavior would be accepted as properly ridiculous but right now all i can do is keep this wristband tight tight tight stare dumbly at the trash behind food-4-less try to do the crossword and wait for school to call me away.

being in this house for any length of time starts to feel like crazy trance time.

speaking of food-4-less, they now sell locally-made romanian bread. $3.50 a loaf, big thick slices.

(i sent an e-mail regarding a job as a mover, and now i feel flush with prospective cash. so i found a fixed-gear peugeot on craigslist to look at tomorrow. gotta keep the wheels turning.)

I put my hair up into 8 inch spikies today using elmer's glue, and played hockey, and bought a No FX cd, and another Sex Slaves, cuz I'm punk today.

dave's kids

all up on the junk of this computer desk. struggling to make this shadow of a headache decide whether or not to stay. watching epic movies makes ordinary life seem alien.

sometimes i want to jump off high places just to make everyone stop and think. except it would probably hurt. so i'll just watch 'jackass' and eat with chopsticks.

i'm almost always thirsty. especially when i don't have any sort of beverage right in front of me. and after eating a $6 tub of popcorn (don't look at me).

you know what's absolutely hilarious? people who talk a lot, and fast. it's fucking fantastic, really. i eat that shit up.

come quickly

Okay, that does it. FUCK everyone, I'm saying "naw son" and "ya bangin!'" like nobody's business.

Da

So, I never cease to supprise myself at how much I can freak out, try to run from simple tasks, make mountains of mole hills, get myself to the point of wanting to run run run away from everything. I mean seriously, why can't I just slap together a presentation and come home and chill? No no no, must freak out all day to sprint all evening.

On a lighter note:
http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/cats.htm

Also, what is this google taking over blogger? Are we going to "upgrade" to the google thing?

better off close to broken

so DILATE by ani difranco is the best album i've ever heard. curled up on the floor as my arm goes numb, slipping further and further into the sound. listening to other people means i don't have to grab my own thoughts and force them into some sort of shape, send them out into the world. the snow-dampened world, silent and bright, swallowing up all the smoke and laughter i can muster. ani difranco sat in a room and said these things and now i'm sitting in a room, listening to them, feeling larger and more whole than i have ever felt. there doesn't need to be anything more than this. standing on the front steps, letting the cold bring focus, letting the shivers take over and occupy my restless body. good god, this is day five of a six-day weekend. i don't know what love is. i'm thinking it has something to do with bagels, though. that's where i'm putting my money.

because i want to

i want a keychain that would make it so i wouldn't have to pee. these sentences get on my NERVES. i'm sorry.

snow day, no school, j-wary movie ('crank').

happy people in their thirties saying 'be careful!' to us crazy snow bikers. does something magically happen at some point to turn us into them? a period of 'dating' or whatever, followed by co-habitation, bended knee, uncooked rice lobbed through the air? fuck it, i'd rather cook the rice now and add some budget hot dog. remain 'us' and just smile and nod at 'them'.

i think the most important part of 'punch-drunk love' is when barry says he's not sure if he has a problem because he doesn't know what other people are like. similarly, the end of 'rules of attraction' when everyone's all 'you will never know me' really strikes a chord. everyone's showing exactly what they want to show.

(this wasn't supposed to sound dark or anything. just, you know, contemplative. today's actually been a HAPPY day. a Charlie FM kind of day. fuck yeah.)

oh so casual chic

the seahawks lost. i'm sad about that. but hey, at least they're better than the steelers.

hahahaha.

my advisor is out with a malady so my labmates (by labmates i mean the post-doc and i since we're the only ones who come in to this damn office anymore) and i were thinking of getting him some flowers. but flowers are lame (unless you are a boy buying them for your girl) and expensive. so we thought a care package with food might be good, until we thought about his malady and how he might not be able to eat very much. then we thought books. then i tried to think of an appropriate book to give my advisor that he wouldn't already have. i eventually decided on "me talk pretty one day" because he's going to be teaching this fall in france and he'll have to give his lectures in french, so i thought it might be a funny inspiration. i also got kurt vonnegut's "player piano" in case i have second thoughts about the david sedaris. either way, i get to keep a good book.

my apartment is being shown and i really don't want to be there.

last night was a high point in the relationship with my upstairs neighbors. they had some guys over and while it wasn't that late, i was trying to get some of the 80 pages of reading i have to do for my ta'ship done and i didn't feel like going to a library or my office, so there i was, listening to them yelling excitedly at one another. it was unbelievably loud. so i did what i considered to be rational. they've already told me they're going to be as loud as they want. i figure if i'm going to have to listen to some loud shit anyway, i might as well listen to loud shit i WANT to hear. so i put in ben kweller and turned it up until i couldn't hear the neighbors. between songs, i was able to tell they had responded by turning up THEIR music really loud. and they were still yelling. thank god my music rocks more than theirs does. they were listening to some crappy ethnic shit. which they kept listening to after my album ended. if they had continued screaming after 10, i was fully prepared to call the cops. not that they would've come, but they might have.

the neighbors shut up at 9:50.

maybe next time.

Listening to the radio is like life. You don't get a choice (request, sometimes) and either you like what is played for you or not. I had a dream that jonathan and I got a boat and were spending years on it sailing around southeast alaska. It was more like heaven. I also had a dream I had to pee. that was real. Haha!

Party Time

We broke a lightbulb in the living room on the way out of the house tonight. The lamp is cheap and old, and the top is loose/not-attached. So, switching it off, the top fell, broken bulb everywhere. Fuckit, we're moving. Na, but dealing with it later.

Driving around, "Adult Bookstore," Saturday Night Asshattery.

Back to this house, General focking off. Time for Paul to go, "night paul..." Door won't open. Shit, well, its the only door to the house, and we're on the second floor... Shit. Lotsa rattleing, hair- (or rather door knob) drying (or rather, warming), screw driver work and banging. Door nob's in pieces, the door opens now, it's after midnight, still glass everywhere.... Fuckit. Deal with it later.

nothing left to burn

where's the soda? where's the fucking candy? i need a pick-me-up.

cinematic in scope, slightly blurred around the edges. if we can hold out for a little while longer, darkness will fall, and we can start pacing. the royal we.

don't look down, the ice will throw you.

you know what's GREAT? m u s i c & c l o t h e s

you know what's FUN? g e t t i n g l o s t i n m o v i e s

i'm an open book.

christ faggot

i want to hit the drums hard enough to shut everyone the fuck up, smoke enough cigarettes to drive everyone away, ride my bike recklessly enough to piss everyone off. use all the profanity in the world, make everyone cover their ears. i want to hold hands with this cashier named JOHN at safeway, make the fat christians sick. i want to lie down everywhere, take off my glasses, close my eyes, forget/remember everything.

i want to stop acting for the benefit of other people. stop trying to impress people, stop trying to make people like me, stop trying to seem cool and mysterious. stop proudly displaying my exaggerated flaws. stop putting my eggs in baskets. stop these nothing-to-do-today diatribes.

listen to more hilary duff.

everywhere is walking distance if you've got time

i'm going to go down to the "atrium" in half an hour and get in on the eats and drinks provided by my deparment for this seminar-series thing, even though i am not in the seminar.

i just ended an extremely frustrating phone call with my dad. he tries to convince me i should only live in the u-district and anytime i tell him i'm looking for a house in one of the neighboring neighborhoods that are nicer to live in because they don't contain shittons of filthy undergrads he says, "well that's kind of far away." that's the point. undergrads are greatly deterred by things like mass transit, but i am not. my dad argues that the grad students who live outside the u-district probably have cars. my dad knows shit. i know other grad students. they don't have cars. they do crazy things like take the bus or ride a bike.

disaffected elegance

it snowed this morning! it stuck to everything and looked beautiful. and then it was sunny. spectacular.

i'm glad you're all alive.

laugh 'till it hurst and fuck the motherfucker

so i was walking towards my office and waiting at a stoplight. i was waiting for the left-turner to pass before crossing the street. honestly, i started while the left turn light was still YELLOW (which every pedestrian who is half-way familiar with that intersection does) and the bitch who wanted to make a right before i crossed (almost pulled into me, because of course she didn't look where she was turning until she started to turn) honked at me, then put her window down to say, "i could've turned, you crossed early, sob, sob, sob, i'm more important than you because i have a CAR."

it is interesting to note that by the time she honked, i had the honest-to-god-right-of-way.

so i reacted the only way a logical person could.

i yelled FUCK YOU.

she yelled some more. jesus christ, the bitch was serious about wanting to turn right on a red light, when she technically didn't have any more of a right-of-way than i did (since pedestrians ALWAYS have the right-of-way).

so i kindly pointed out to her that she could not have completed said turn before i had the right-of-way, which is something car-driving motherfuckers frequently forget.

she kept yelling.

i feel invigorated.

i'm going to submit a little note to her through the strangers "i, anonymous" and tell her about all the times cars didn't stop when i had the right-of-way and almost killed me.

it's time overbearing right-turners got some back.

score one for the non-car people.

When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers

Sometimes I think I only went to Princeton so I could ironically laugh at everyone that goes here.

lucy was pretty, sam slept in the street

tori amos, post office, nerves. monday as usual. i want a crappy 1988 dodge minivan. embrace the decidedly uncool.

what if we all laughed today because we realized how FUNNY everything is? that would be splendid. whatever non-direction there may be, whatever misgivings, it's still hilarious. i mean, come on! listen to the oldies station, watch the birds flying, stare people in the eyes. mirth is the new is the new.

i'm going to go eat me some oats.

move me

i got a new pair of shoes last night and school starts on monday and i am on top of the world today. it's noon and i'm up and the radio is on and i have bagels and it's saturday. untouchable. wal-mart? i think so. the crowning touch.

(i was gonna write something here about food/music, but then i remembered i already WROTE it over on my tritespace page. so consider this a plug from j lo genderhead, the web-savvy post-adolescent.)

i'm not afraid anymore!

why, it's a new day

Peace to all and to all a good night. I work and I play and then I work some more and read lovely lovely books. I spent all my christmas money on books I don't regret it. I have the urge to pontificate and list all the books I am in love with. i haven't bloodied anyone recently, but I have prevented numerous suicides and CHANGED LIVES dammit. I am invincible, a diamond in the rough. Fuck the rough, I am a shining jewel of sanity in this dark dark world and I blind those to reason. Fuck reason, I love love. Take a chance, change a mind, spin til you puke and bike til you die.

don't you fucking TOUCH my candy. it's MINE

holy motherfuck, you assholes have been busy!

i am back at school, bright-eyed and bushy-fucking-tailed at 8:30 this morning for the first day of my fucking linear-regression stats class.

wooohoooo, party time!

i've spent the rest of this day ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKING. all day long. i shit you not. and let me tell you one thing, motherfuckers, the day is fucking long when you wake up at 6:45. i kept expecting it to get dark. it took forever. i also kept waiting for the a-holes i share this hellpot with to leave for the day so i could come here and mentally jill off. also took fucking forever, as i am used to coming in at the dawn of noon or so.

This message was left on me an January's phone. I don't know what the F. The guy's voice is really hilljack drawled out. I will try to find a way to share the audio file, but here's the transcript.


hey man dee in town this is grandpa harper callin
sorry i missed you, just wanted to call you a happy new year, and to thank you for those uh delicious coupons that you sent us, we're usin em, they're, uh, commin in handy

thanks a lot, and have a happy new year

love you both, byebye

[shuffle shuffle scratch scratch]

if i knew you'd hear me, i'd start screaming.

that song by she wants revenge is on the radio. the original. now 'everlong' is on. the hit parade.

i've spent the day pacing and jumping up and down and thrashing around and trying in vain to compose myself. struggling to write some lists on the backs of those dilbert calendar pages, attempting to be rational and get my ducks in a row. but it's easier to throw myself around the house and take fast walks in the cold gray outside. i can't read and i can't sleep and i can't think without going back to the same old shit. i see your face when i close my eyes or stare off into space.

i hate the fucking beastie boys.

i'm searching for reasons to leave you out of my head, but it's hard.

there are huge black letters scrawled down the length of my left arm. 'awake and happy,' they read. if you will it...

I don't owe anyone a fucking explanation

I managed to threaten to kill my best friend's girlfriend if she broke his heart and then accidently bloodied her tonight by somehow shattering glass. Damn. I am not amused with myself. I was voted the skechiest-cool guy in my department in an informal poll, but this is not sketchy-cool.

In the spirit of New Years, there is alot of things I should come clean about. But I won't. Refer to the Title.

Addendum: I was drunk when I wrote this, obviously, but it's pretty great when you have to write emails the next morning which say something to the effect: "...I'm sorry I bloodied up your girlfriend and then threatened to kill her..."