Ben

Regina Spektor is a hottie

2009-09-28T02:54:38Z

Really good song: Dance Anthem of the 80s.

Really friggin' fun.

In other news, I'm reading Ender's Game, which happens to be sickeningly good. Like, so good, it makes me ill. He's very good at drawing me in. Card has a really good trick he plays. These kids are all geniuses, so he can have them all have complex adult characters capable of understanding to a T each of the other characters. That way, he only needs to do minor things in the way of characterization and his "geniuses" do the rest.

The other cool trick good sci-fi writers seem to have is to have action scenes that make very little sense because they're in space or on alien planets or something something, and yet make them compelling. Even though you have no idea what the hell is going on, you're riveted.

It's something that...whatever the guy's name is, the Neuromancer, couldn't do. He made up all these words and devices without actually giving any explanation whatsoever. The result was a completely incomprehensible mess. The proper balance, it seems, is between complete nonsense and detailed explanation. I think that's something I need work on, I tend to explain TOO much, and things get bogged down, when I should just be making some vague statements about what's going on and concentrate on making the shit go down.

I'm really enjoying writing the Xenotone. The new voice is much better, it allows me to break things up, make the Xenotone what it is to me now. It's over-the-top, the characters are kind of wacky and it's a kind of crazy space opera thing. Explosions and inexplicably sexy ladies and inexplicably powerful weaponry. I think when I was a kid I was writing slightly trashy action novels and now I've gotten old enough to understand how trashy they are and just run with that shit.

I ended both those paragraphs with a curse. I'm fucking on this.

It's an epidemic!

2009-09-09T02:59:07Z

Okay, so I never post on this, because it serves a specific purpose. I don't want people on Facebook, ie, people I see on a regular basis/family to read certain things. However, I do want people to read what I write because I have an inflated ego and think it somehow has some sort of merit.

That said.

Let me set the scene.

I'm sitting in my office, minding my own business, not thinking about anal sex. In walks this girl I work with, who is extraordinarily hot. I mean, ballin' hot. Like, she's newly married and I would totally be the other man with her. Like, three times.

But anyway, conversation begins as benignly as our conversations can be. She had, at one point, told me she could see me one day saying I liked men. This has become a subject of much discussion between us. So I bring it up again.

"Well, I mean," She says, demurely as can be, "Don't you, like, like stuff up there?"

"Uh," I don't really need to consider this, but sitting in my chair in the Veterans Hospital in my tie and dress shoes, the question gives reason for pause, "No, not really."

"Oh man, that's too bad."

If the conversation ended there, I would have been slightly confused (and partially aroused).

The girl then went on to explain how she enjoyed putting on a strap on and having sex with men.

At this I laughed for what seemed like about five full minutes.

During this bout of laughter, it became increasingly clear that the girl did not think it was at all strange and was, IN FACT, surprised that I thought it was strange AND was surprised I had never done it.

What's become increasingly clear discussing this with other people is that this is, in actuality, not strange. That there are a good number of women who enjoy slapping on a big ol' penis and sodomizing their partner.

After getting over how hilarious this concept is, it gives room for contemplation.

Is this normal?

I mean, in truth, having a penis is great. It's the kind of empowering that beating someone over the head with a baseball bat is, except you won't get arrested for it...well, most of the time. So I can totally see the appeal.

It's the man's position on this issue I can't understand (both literally and figuratively). I mean, there really seems no way around it, it's kinda gay. Now, of course, to each their own, but the statement "I like having a penis put in my butt", if true, to me indicates that the person saying it is at least partially gay.

But I guess the same goes for the woman, then.

I mean, disclaimer here, I think people should enjoy what they enjoy. But the idea of getting done up the butt by a lady strikes me as just the slightest bit odd.

But then again, I enjoy having sex on airplanes. So I might not be the best authority on the subject.

Nostalgia for the eggshell

2009-06-10T03:59:46Z

So I've come to some sort of realization, which I'd love to call an epiphany, but I think that's a melodramatic word and using it would just cheapen what I'm feeling.

I've realized there are bits of us that we cast off, the shell we hatch from that we toss behind us, totting forward to burn ourselves to bits in our future, bits that we need. Bits that we return to on one of our circuits around our everchanging, but always circular, life. We pass by the shell we discarded and we, most of the time, ignore it entirely. It's past. It's not what we are or who we are.

And even when we do take our little vacations into our muddled experience, we're missing the point. We're seeing ourselves as developing, evolving, always changing into something better, or at least more capable of handling a hard, hard, hard world. But the truth is, the truth we never see (the truth whose portent I cannot even begin to fathom) is that we're just shells after shells after shells. We're shedding our skin and producing one more calloused, darker, weathered.

But never do we look back at our shed selves, the trail of detritus, the ashes of our burning, burning life sprinkled like pixie dust as the weather of our memories and think, what have we lost? We've gained something, sure, in pursuit of our always receding horizon, but nothing is free.

One of those shells, some of those ashes, might have been essential. Might have been the blacktop for our potholes.

But what can we do? I mean, we can't just go rummaging through our own garbage. What could we do with what we find? Cobble together some our lost self and look deep into its eyes for fundamental truth? Nothing is so easy, nothing we create is so complete.

Honestly, I have no idea. I just know its worth stopping to examine the eggshell. It's worth thinking of what we once were, if only to get our bearings on the map. Stop, adjust, and move forward.

We've burned everything we've ever loved as fuel and we are propelled, inescapably, forward. We either let the force drive us into the dirt or we try our best to steer.

But we are not cars, we are not hatched chicks, we are something a lot more complicated. Our fuel we cannot so easily refill, it drains US. And its worth giving thanks, like our ancestors used to, to what sustains us and what moves us forward.

I've slaughtered a thousand of me. And I'll kill again. And maybe the ends won't justify the means, but I have to keep going. If only because what I've lost was so, so precious.

And I've run out of metaphor.

I think I've just hit a new low in life.

2009-06-02T03:39:28Z

I just accidentally listened to the song Dozo by Puscifer and there's this moaning mixed into the background at some points.

I think I actually know what porn that's from.

This is the saddest day of my adult life.

And so on and so on and so on

2009-05-26T03:49:13Z

So this is the last fifteen minutes of my birthday and it's time for semi-sober resolutions:

1. I resolve to be nicer. Unless someone is a dick, has a stupid face or has a funny hat.

2. I resolve to not care what people think. Except if their opinion involves the way that I dress. Or behave.

3. I resolve to post occasionally on livejournal. Except for several months from now, where I'll lose my motivation and spend this time playing video games and watching asian porn.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Life is good.

Hi.

2009-05-25T03:21:19Z

Wow. I mean, I never forgot this thing existed. To be fair. I just haven't even looked at it in a long long while. I keep forgetting how much of my stupid life is on this thing. In the old days, they had time capsules where you could see what toys you liked as a kid. Nowadays the whole fucking development is splayed open like some post-mortem patient, garrish and bleeding all over the table.

I'm resisting the urge to look back. I really am. I think people have an internal timer that goes off once a year that makes them look back at what has happened since the last time the timer went off. And it happens to be exactly when you're born. Maybe there's something in the circuitry of your brain that hardwires the memory of your brutal birth into a cruel and cold world full of consequences and progressively emptier of dreams. And so, every year, at the same time, you trigger off the reaction where you scan back all the past traumas in flash-vision trying to find something that made that first trauma actually worth something.

Trauma on timer. Annual trauma.

I'm not going to be reflective. Well, too much. I mean, I am, but I'm not going to call it reflective. Refractive, how about?

So my life is pretty good. Some things are working out, a lot of things are not, but I've come to a slow understanding with my peaks and my troughs. Once I get one thing, I immediately shift to another thing to acquire and the first thing loses value so fast, it's almost astonishing. But I think, over time, I've begun to acquire a sense that I need to live according to what's right for me, not what I feel like doing at the time.

Let me back up, because that sounds like "I've learned how to settle! Hooray!"

I've learned how to see through my impulse feelings. Because, as much as I deny it, I'm somewhat impulsive. I've come to a more stable baseline with myself where I feel I, mentally and physically, am robust enough that I can handle just about anything (with enough sick days and fatty foods), so I do not keep needing to grab for the river bank as it passes. I can just sit in the water and be comfortable there. I've figured out, at least, that life is nothing if not incapable of being predicted. NJ weathermen have enough trouble forecasting whether it's gonna fucking rain, why would weather conditions of life be any easier to predict.

And I don't have a degree in it. Yet.

Not that a meteorology degree means anything. Honestly, these weather people just fucking take a stab at it. If they're wrong "Whoops, act of God!" They're like priests, only they don't molest little children...that I know of.

Anyway.

Happy birthday to me.

Fuck.

Ben likey anime

2008-06-06T03:57:28Z

Okay.

So I've been watching Code Geas R2, which is the second season of Code Geas, which is still just amazing, but I have to say one thing to the big evil empire in the anime:

STOP HAVING YOUR FINAL SHOWDOWNS ON EASILY-RELEASABLE FLOOR-DROP MECHANISMS.

Every single conflict so far has been handled by making some sort of floor drop in some sort of way to make all the bad guys die. It was quaint in the last season. Now Zero's only strategy seems to be dropping floors.

It's like:

Black Knights: "Oh no! How are we going to win this impossible battle!?"
Zero: "Is there a floor?"
Black Knights: "Well, yes."
Zero: "I'll handle it."

Still.

Fucking good.

Lulz

2008-04-09T04:25:57Z

A pretty hilarious article

I have a soft spot for the psychopaths that perpetrate the senseless and usually flagrantly racist attacks on such winner groups like Scientology, Furries and anyone who takes themselves too seriously on the internet.

They're making a point, while at the same time, not making a point. Their movement, if you can call it that, is entirely destructive without giving anything back. They're out to make other people miserable, to destroy other people's hard work and to, generally, prove that the internet is serious business. In that, it isn't. It isn't serious business at all. Anyone who parades their sexy little digital selves around like they're not, in actuality, a fat, Southern mother of two bending over their Dell eating bon-bons deserves a rain of penises.

For example:

This is a video of an interview of Anshe Chung within the game Second Life. Anshe Chung is some smug little snot who's being paraded around for making modest amounts of money on the stupid little game. If you want to know what she looks like, watch that video to the end. The asian girl holding the giant penis is her.

I can't help but crack up when I hear about these assholes. They are unabashedly destructive. They're not trying to make a point, and they don't pretend they are. They're just out to muck up your day. That kind of honesty in evil is somehow incredibly interesting to me, as well as outright hilarious.

Don't get me wrong, the swastikas and various corruptions of the n-word make me cringe. But it seems, a lot of the time, these people are mocking the very racism they're guilty of. That doesn't avail them of guilt, but it makes it a bit easier to forget it and focus on how many people they're pissing off.

At least they're getting the job done.

Not many movements can say that :)

Wow.

2008-03-30T06:53:45Z

This sucks.

What if...

2008-03-28T04:32:48Z

So today was fairly uneventful. I woke up feeling about the same as the sky looked, which is not so big a deal. I've been going through some ups and downs and it just seems I've tumbled into one of the downs again. I've started to learn not to let it...well, get me down. Not to preoccupy myself with it, just realize that I need a weekend of fuck-all to sort of recharge, get back on track and convince myself that my life hasn't really fallen into places I didn't want it to.

So.

Something that's been scaring me is how hard it is to meet people without being in school. The only people I talk with at work are at least ten years older than me. They're great people and fun to talk to, but it sort of limits opportunities to make new friends, the kinds of friends you can go out to bars with and do some such silly thing. Hanging out with thirty-somethings is not exactly what I'd like to be doing on a friday night, thank you very much.

What's scary is that I'm starting to wonder if the happy times in college are dead and gone. If the happiest, most exciting years of my life are now behind me and all that I'm facing now is year after year of work. Just work. Work work work and mix in a social gathering here and there, a few desperate ploys for friends/relationships/attention, and then back to work.

It's an idea I hate. More than hate. It's despicable to me. But is that why so many people get trapped into these college modes, where they don't want to leave and find themselves surrounded by people almost a decade younger than them, feeling and acting no more mature than any of them? Are they really not that weird? Maybe they're just trying to squeeze the last drops of enjoyment out of the best years of their life before moving on (if they move on) to the real world?

It's scary.

Really scary.

I know I can live fine. I have no worries about getting into grad school, getting a good job and living a good life. I just don't know if that good life is something I want to lead. I don't know if the opportunities are worth following.

I think I could use some real problems.

Anyone have any?

Oh no! The Japanese are finally doing it!

2008-03-25T01:21:30Z

Shit! They figured out how to do Jazz!

We're done for!

Where Obama plays the race deck

2008-03-20T20:19:42Z

Okay. I know the title may sound contrary, but I really like this speech. This man is a phenomenal speaker. It would be great to have a man like this in the White House if for NO OTHER REASON than to make up for the bumbling jaunts of idiocy that are everything that stutters out of that creep Bush's sullen pisk.

Honestly, that's how bad it's gotten. So bad that I just want someone COHERENT representing our nation by doing things like NOT slapping the Queen of England on the back. (Not that I give a shit about that little totem of monarchy that the Brits seem to cling to harder than the image of their government as anything besides an American pet. I just think that if you are the sole inhabitant of the Executive Branch of our United States, you should probably have a twinge more respect for the respected, however wrongly respected.)

Now. Obama, I think, is a good candidate. I will vote for him. Though he's not just playing the race card in this video, he's playing the race DECK, he has done something that's almost, dare I say it, politically strategic. That's right, in the era of Youtube debates and "double-Guantanamos", Mr. Obama has performed an act of sheer political brilliance.

He has taken a situation that could have seriously hurt him by feeding Clinton's little gremlins and turned it into huge push for his campaign. He says it, that he will NOT disown his pastor because he believes in the good things in the man, and does not focus on the bad and will not run from the issues. He, very admirably, faces the crisis and makes an unequivocal statement that he will not play safety politics and ditch anyone who says that apple pie isn't American. He focuses on the good and not on the bad. Something that even the actual liberals I admire would do well to attempt.

BUT.

And here's the big but.

I do not disagree with his pastor. His pastor is absolutely right, why the hell should we be shocked at 9/11 or at the general fury of people at our actions if our way of acting on our interests is cock-slapping any nation that gets within the 400-billion-dollar reach of our throbbing member?

God DAMN America for doing what it has done. For letting these crooks get away with their vicious, deranged agendas and acting like "Oh, those silly Republicans". NO. NO Lil' Bush here, just a fucking criminal who just happens to be holding the HIGHEST OFFICE in the country. God DAMN America. And I include myself in that damning. We all bear the blame for what our country is doing. You didn't vote for him, TOUGH SHIT. Someone else did and it's OUR job to show how much of a mistake that was!

*huff*

So what Obama did took guts and a good political mind. He has scored points in my book, and that puts him far above the land of negatives in which Clinton currently toils. I may not agree with his politics entirely, but if there were a candidate whose politics I wholly accepted who had a snowball's chance in hell of being elected...

That'd make things too easy.

So. In conclusion: Go Obama. You da man.

Yo tengo BRAWL-O

2008-03-09T15:18:24Z

I have Brawl.

Did my heart love 'til now? Foreswear its sight! For I never saw true beauty 'til last night.

Let the loss of my carefully cultivated life commence :)

Remember the good old days?

2008-02-23T23:42:46Z

When politics wasn't quite as hilarious?

When we were only having vaginal intercourse with the middle east? (Meaning it was a lot more comfortable for all concerned)

When playing video games was still outrageously uncool?

When the Simpsons was funny?

Oh my god. The Simpsons doesn't even try anymore. I'm wondering if people actually watch the show or read the script prior to the shit being shown. It's just BAD. There are some parts that just don't make sense, much less are they any funny at all. Like, if I met someone with that sense of humor...I don't know what I'd do. Weep. For humanity.

You see little hints of the old Simpsons peeking through, as if there's one writer left from the old days who's just shouted down by people who think by dumbing down the characters to random expletives they can produce humor. He's like, "Hey, instead of having Homer catch on fire and run around screaming as if that's why the Simpsons was entertaining in the first place, why don't we have him say something clever, yet entirely nonsensical."

Homer wasn't really STUPID in the old Simpsons, he just said things that were a kind of pastiche of stupid American culture. As pretentious as that sounds...

Like, when he's supposed to be cleaning the basement he's like "Aw, what's with all this cleaning? Are we so vain!?!"

Not exactly stupid. Just ridiculous.

It's just such a shame that the Simpsons has not only jumped the shark, but it has walked up to the shark, yanked its jaws open, stuck its head inside those jaws and clamped them down repeatedly until it turned into a pile of bloody, chewed remains of what it was before. And no show has really stepped up to take its place. Family Guy was never Simpsons funny, and now even it is turning stupid. South Park was never Simpsons funny and now it's gotten a little in love with its own philosophy.

They need to bring the Critic back. That show was fucking hilarious.

On another note, I need to get a life.

Wikipedia answers the unanswerable

2008-02-14T04:53:31Z

So I was huddled over my sink cleaning jello from a mixing bowl (tell me that doesn't sound like some horrible euphemism) and I was thinking about how silly it was that the Lindbergh kidnapping turned kidnapping into a capital offense.

Then I was like "Gee, I wonder, is it STILL a capital offense?"

And a number of years ago, that would be the end of it, I'd be like "Good question, I'm gonna go masturbate", but NO. Thanks to the miracle that is Wikipedia, I now can answer all the inane questions by spending time that would otherwise be put to something infinitely more productive.

And now I will share my search with you.

The Wiki skinny

Quick summary: Basically, guy flies plane across the Atlantic, gets real famous, big-time American hero because he has that kind of jawline and that kind of hair cut, and marries a rather mundane short little women. They have a baby, they and their cute little American home are every American's cup o' tea. Then, America's cup o' tea baby gets stolen and all of a sudden it becomes the biggest thing since...uh...World War I.

Tons of people get involved, including a 75-year-old teacher from the Bronx who apparently at one point, in pursuit of a suspect, dressed up like a woman, with his collar pulled up to hide his handlebar mustache.

I'll repeat that.

A 75-year old schoolteacher from the Bronx dresses up like a woman and pulls his collar up to hide his HANDLEBAR MUSTACHE.

I tell you, you don't get super-sleuths like that nowadays.

Anyway, the ransom is given for the baby, the baby is no where to be found, except by a trucker who stumbles upon a baby corpse.

So eventually they track down the guy who took the ransom, find out that he was most likely the kidnapper and sentence him to death.

But Congress, in its infinite wisdom (I think it was Republican at that time...or Federalist or some shit), being so moved by the media-perfect drama of the case, decided to make a law called the Federal Kidnapping Act, which allowed federal authorities to step into kidnapping cases when they crossed state lines.

Fine. Whatever.

Problem is, a number of states decided to take it a step further and make kidnapping a capital offense. Because, you know, capital punishment is a deterrent.

Man. It's like if, in response to Britney Spears stumbling her fat ass around to the tune of Gimme More, Congress passed a resolution banning Mallomars.

Get real.

But yes. The Supreme Court overturned the capital offense part of kidnapping in the 1970s, so it is no longer a capital offense.

But the FBI just LOVES IT.

Apparently kidnapping cases are high points in a lot of these guy's careers. Which says something about the FBI.

And now that I've cited kidnapping, capital punishment and Britney Spears in the same journal entry, I'm ready to get back to that masturbating.

God bless Wikipedia.

Right on, xkcd

2008-02-04T23:07:06Z

I'm sorry, I know very few poems, songs, anything that capture coping like this so perfectly.

Someone once told me that I reminded them of the xkcd guy.

I wish :)

(Plus, it seems like this guy gets laid about as often as sappy political drivel is converted into youtube video. Which is upsettingly often.)

Dear World

2008-01-29T21:51:16Z

I have decided to pick up a MD AS WELL AS a PhD.

For your own safety,

I advise taking care of your brain.

That is all.

Cloverfield - The movie that has nothing to do with clover, nor fields

2008-01-23T01:16:44Z

Excellent.

A+.

There.

I said it.

Now go see it.

...

Okay, now that I've filtered through the mindless masses that obey my command without question, because I know there are so many, I'll talk to you, of more discriminating taste.

Cloverfield is good. Way good. I thought at first it was just gonna be another monster action movie with special effects and destruction, which is all well and good, but not anything worth mentioning. But, I'm sure this won't be spoiling anything, it's all shot from an amateur-styled camera, someone's holding the camera and walking with the group. So you get it from the perspective of the fleeing masses. Which is extremely interesting.

Not only is it an innovative idea, it's played very well. The timing is perfect, the camera holds steady for the scenes it needs to and flops around and shakes enough to make it clear that someone's running or has fallen or something. It's realistic, the fear the actors show. And even the plot is realistic. It does the romance plot without coming out as too corny or too LOVE CONQUERS ALL-y.

It had me gripped the entire movie, hoping the main characters would get through, laughing at the comic relief's stupid inserts. The wrecked New York setting is excellent and doesn't rely too heavily on CG, though, you can't avoid it when you're making a giant monster movie.

Also, the love story made me feel sappy. There. I'll admit it.

BUT ALSO, THE EXPLOSIONS AND DESTRUCTION AND VIOLENCE WERE SUPER AWESOME.

Whew. Recovered some of my masculinity.

Either way. See it. It's worth seeing in the theatres. Trust me.

Missing Mississippi (Best I could come up with)

2008-01-15T22:47:45Z

Well.

I'm back.

And let me tell you. What a thrill this week has been. An endless rollercoaster that reached dizzying heights of enjoyment, so much so that every morning when I woke up I had a little orgasm just THINKING about what the day had in store for me.

Now, replace everything in that last paragraph with its complete negative opposite and you have something close to

We land in New Orleans on Friday and have an okay time. I made the mistake of ordering a catfish sandwich, thinking it would be something light and easy to travel on. Wait, not a sandwich. A Po' Boy. I dunno about you, but I've never tasted anyone living below the poverty level. And I'd imagine, if I did, that they wouldn't taste much like breaded catfish filet. But. I forgot what region of the country I was in and ended up with a massive sub filled with two heavy breaded catfish filets, lettuce, tomato and pickles. Of course, I went at it, undaunted, dousing it in hot sauce and gulping down sweet iced tea. Delicious, of course. But I paid for it the rest of the night. I think my stomach hates me. But that's okay. Cause I hate it too.

We also took a trip down Bourbon street, which, let me just tell you, if you ever ran into God and he was like "I'm looking for a reason to start another flood, but I just can't find enough sin concentrated in one place. Can you help me out?" Take him to Bourbon Street. It's like Mardi Gras every day, except in the off-season, it's less sexy girls taking off their tops and more fat women or old women or some luscious combination of the two. Which is significantly less enjoyable, if you could imagine.

So then we goto Hattiesburg, which is about two hours north. I expect a podunk little town, but it actually resembled a small NJ town. However. You have to keep in mind that Hattiesburg is a BIG Mississippi town. Just to keep it in perspective.

So far, the trip has been all right. But then again, we hadn't started working. We wake up the next morning, SATURDAY at FIVE AM, and travel to Camp Shelby, which has about as much security at the gate as a fancy Arby's (There's a fancy Arby's in New Orleans. It's got a parquet. Any fast food place with a parquet is obviously very, very confused.)

The place that we work is a teeny little trailer with no internet, no tv and nothing resembling entertainment. It has a main work/file area in the center and two rooms on either side for the experiments.

The project is called the HEROES project, which stands for something, but i don't care to look it up. It's actually really interesting, though. It's studying unexplained illness in soldiers, and how stress works into it. Basically, if a soldier can't deal with stress, does that increase their risk of coming back all kinds of fucked up. Of course, the answer is yes, but a lot of science, I've learned, is validating what common sense tells you enough so people will give you money to fix the problem. When it comes to money, people have very little common sense. See later in this entry, my trip to Harrah's.

So anyway. Let's do this rundown style. Oh gosh. I remember rundowns. Does anyone remember rundowns? Anyone of the two people that read my journal and the ONE of those people who used to read my opendiary. Anyway.

Saturday: Ran around to groups of soldiers trying desperately to explain the entire project in few enough words not to lose their interest, but enough words not to completely mislead them about the project. We end up with like 2 soldiers total for the entire day. And I am exhausted. In the evening, we went to a place called the Thirsty Hippo, which sounded about as cool as it was. Which is not sarcastic, it actually was pretty hip. HOWEVER. It was in the middle of nowhere, MS, and it seemed to think that it could charge 5 dollars at the door. I mean, we paid it, but at the time there were like total five people in the bar and the band hadn’t even set up. Buh. But it was fun. I ordered a Purple Haze. And was disappointed. It’s just beer. It’s good, though, it tastes more like berries than beer.

Sunday: Again. Up at like 5am. Difference this time was I had to give a little brief. Oh, it was nothing special. Just me standing in front of 600+ soldiers talking about a project I had only recently gained any understanding of. Yeah, how about that? It’s so strange. I have such anxiety talking to people one-on-one or two-on-one or whatever, but there’s a certain point where people become an audience. And an audience isn’t near as scary as an individual. I figured it to be like, it’s easy to talk to a huge group of people because they’re all just waiting for you to speak, but when you mess up on something, it’s compounded by the number of people, and makes you that much more like “uhhhhh…what was I saying?” But yes. How about that.

Monday: TWO briefs. Each group about the same size, like 600 or so. And now we find out that whatever incentive we had to bring soldiers into the study is effectively gone. What we were trying to do was get them off the medical examination line and tell them if they participate, we can get them to the front of the line. So it works for them. HOWEVER, now one of the higher ups tells us that we can’t do that and all we can do is stand at the building at the end of the medical examination and talk to soldiers one by one as they pass us by, wanting nothing more than to get to the next step so they can get some fucking sleep. So now the trip turns into soliciting soldiers. Hooray.

Tuesday: More briefs. At this point, I can practically recite the presentations of the people going before me. We’re getting 4 soldiers a day, which is half of what we wanted. This night, however, very fun. We go to a place called Leatha’s BBQ. What we were looking for was some good BBQ in the area. What we found was this site. Needless to say, as soon as I saw that it was owned and operated by a group of immensely fat women, I was all for it. So we go, it’s a place behind a trailer sales shop, in the middle of like forest. It’s a little shack with a sign on the front that says “Stand Up For Jesus”. And if Jesus could come down for a minute and taste this BBQ, he’d die again. Because it’s SINFULLY delicious. Was that a well crafted joke? I think so.

Wednesday: Oh my, what a day. Oh, not the first two thirds of it. That was just work. It was, as usual, horrible. A combination of soliciting soldiers with the intermittent briefing and not having a lunch break, basically not eating until 6pm, can take its toll on a man. BUT. After dinner this time we went to a country bar called Roper’s for Karaoke night. How country is this bar? Well, suffice to say its parking lot is filled with pickup trucks and the bar’s outside itself is covered in cowprint. So. Yeh. So Karaoke starts and no one’s going up. So me and the team, two other guys, go up and belt out such great hits as Bohemian Rhapsody and I believe in a thing called love. This doesn’t mesh well with the crowd there and we receive more than one confused look. But it’s awesome. Even better, this shot girl who looks to be sixteen comes up to us and is trying to bilk us for as much money as possible. Eventually, she decides it would be a good idea to try and sell the entire tray to us.

So, this one guy with us, his name’s Adam, and he wants to be in the FBI and he is the biggest wad of tightass I have ever met, is all into her. So me and Conway, the other guy, go up to sing. And we rock that house. When we come back, we see that the shot girl is gone, and Adam is sitting there. And as we round the corner, we see that there’s a full tray of shots in front of Adam.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in a long time.

He played it off well, though, he went around the bar handing out free drinks. Which was fun.

Thursday: Now, throw into the work mix that I’m slightly hungover and there’s no more briefs, which means nothing to save me from hours of soliciting soldiers. EXCEPT for the fact that I suddenly became a recruiting master and got every one of the 4 soldiers we tested that day. Mainly because I’m amazing. And I pretend the experiment isn’t as boring as it actually is.

Friday: Probably one of the worst days. Simply because it’s the last one and I’m thinking about nothing but it ending. It doesn’t help that Adam decides to take an HOUR AND A HALF cleaning up at the end, as if just TRYING to get on my nerves. We have a minor altercation that leads to him lecturing me on how I don’t care about my duties and how I need to pay more attention to which I smile and just think about how this guy is 30 years old and has the same job title and little more salary than I do. Which makes everything better.

So finally we get the fuck OUT of Mississippi and end up, after a few hours of getting lost, in New Orleans. Determined to make the most of it, we go out into the city. We goto Harrah’s, which is this big, fancy casino designed in every way to take your money. I lost 65 dollars in less than an hour. I don’t think I’ve ever lost that much money that fast. Well, first, I spent someone else’s money. We went to a buffet that was thirty bucks, but…well, not exactly worth it, because that’s ridiculous for a buffet in any world, but it was definitely one of the best buffets ever ever. The food was actually GOOD, almost restaurant quality. They had Dungeoness Crab, which actually tasted good instead of like rolled up salt covered in fish sauce. Their desserts were actually behind a glass window and were all fucking delicious. It was silly, though, you had to ask the girl at the counter for a dessert, even though you could just be like “I’ll have that. And that. And that. And that.” Which is what I did. Their pecan praline thing was to die for. And I don’t die for many treats.

But anyway, full of crab, sweet tea and hubris, I stepped up to the slot machines. They were actually fun and at one point, without realizing it, I won fifty dollars, but promptly gambled that away. But they ate money fast.

I had also resolved to play blackjack. I found a table with an incredibly hot dealer, so I figured, this can’t be scammy, why not? I asked her what the minimum bet was and she said $25 without even looking up. I was taken aback, but though, what the hell, I can risk it. So I put down my 25, got a single chip, put that chip in, got two cards, got a 14 (which is one of those numbers in blackjack that basically laughs at you and is like “you’re boned”) And I took a hit and busted. And there went my 25 dollars. Which all happened in the course of about ten seconds.

I promptly went up to the bar and washed my defeat down with a 6 dollar shot of JD. I know how to handle loss.

So we take a stroll down Bourbon street one last time and bid farewell to the south.

I think I learned a lot.

Well, at least I learned one thing.

I don’t want to do it again :)

Goodbye East Brunswick

2007-12-29T08:43:43Z

There's a lot of things I'd like to say. I mean, I always feel like I need to commemorate a transition. But I guess it'll suffice to say that I will always remember you as the backdrop to a lot of times in my life.

High school was a load of bullshit day after day, not feeling like I belonged and feeling like I really REALLY had to. But high school was also fun and interesting and educational for me. I came back to a town I hadn't seen since I was younger, very very different. It was the rekindling of old times, I thought. But I realized, that young, that what's lost can never really be regained. I think it was when I realized this that I started to change for the better. That I started to cut a new path rather than try and trace my steps back and back.

Between years at Demarest, you were an annoyance, a transition, something I glided over. Something I wanted to end and oh my god, never soon enough. It was a reduction back to the stock I was in high school and I felt like too much time would leave me regressing to something I wanted college to completely break me of. But, you know, it works different this way, too. You can never retrieve what was lost and you can never fully lose what's been gained. I learned this lesson later. Still, this phase of my time in EB is just a blur of escaping whenever possible. Maybe someday it'll mean something. Right now it's just blah blah blah, school again.

And now.

Ha.

I returned home miserable. I NEVER wanted to be back. I was terrified. I came back without a job, with all my possibilities floating tantalizing just beyond my reach and my talents all called to question. I, bit by bit, lost everything that made me happy during this past summer. The closeness to my friends, a job I (KINDA) enjoyed, and a girl that really did make me happy. All this WRECKED me. DESTROYED me. I was a mess here.

But I don't regret it. I wouldn't change these few months, really, except to give myself a reality check a bit sooner. I have grown more in these few months than I have in several years of college. I crawled my way out of a panic-fueled misery and gathered what remained of myself into something similar but altogether different. I had to use a few new pieces. I had to make a few new connections. But I have a job now. I have a house. I have friends that care about me. And I don't care if it sounds self-congratulating, I've done good.

So, EB. Though you've never been a particularly happy place for me, you will always be a PLACE for me. And if what they say about tragedy being more memorable than happiness, you'll outlast a few other places I can think of.

This is new. I'm going off on my own, folks. I'm becoming a real adult. I wouldn't trade the events of these past few months for the world. Because of them, I'm ready. And I'm more excited than I can ever put to words (No matter how many I use :))

At the risk of sounding horribly (horribly horribly) cliche:

Look out world.

I'm back.

ratsmack @ 2007-12-12T22:26:00

2007-12-13T03:36:01Z

I have to give it up to the Christian Church.

Take the epitome of what you what your man and woman to be
Have a being that is the epitome of blinding good
And have it appear to this man
And tell him eternal truths
And then disappear
Leaving this epitome of good men to his own ends
But his own ends, remember
Are entirely pure.
What this man says must be truth
Because it came from the epitome of good
And since his flesh is blessed
The children that spring from it are also blessed
And ALSO speaking truth.

HOWEVER
This leads to disaster
Having a being that cannot be touched, definitively
And whom proving the presence of is purely heretical
Means you get Joe average
Of the working class
Saying he, too, has seen this being
And thus he, too, speaks truth

So how do you reconcile this?

You create another being
Of very general evil (As evil has to be general, because good is VERY specific)
Who can appear just as the being of good
And those who see him are cursed
And speak only deception

Then, all the dissenting truths become heresies
And all the dissenter heretics.

The church is the political party of God.
Just like the Democrats are the political party of Democracy.
And just like Democrats undermine Democracy
So the church undermines God.

Observations for today

2007-12-05T23:56:09Z

When I left work today it was romantic. I will now attempt to capture that in hurried prose:

The night was crystalline. It was exactly how you'd expect a diamond to feel against your skin, to smell, to taste. The sort of perfect crystal-blue they place on rings on commercials. It made everything shimmer down to the most worn down tire, the most rusted sewer grate. Everything transformed. It was like looking at a world within a snow globe, only everything swims with detail. You can picture the feel of each shape, each edge, each little crack in the pavement. And then all of a sudden you realize that this is the world. This is the world you hurry past on cloudy days. This is the world that you hide from in air conditioned rooms. This is the world that you blot out like commercials that break into your TV daze. And if you stop for a second, stop and watch your busy ghost go shivering towards the heated car, stop and watch the dazzling spectacle that can never be replicated, can only be imitated in hyperbole, like a mime expressing emotion, if you stop. Stop. And watch that eternal spectacle. Something starts making sense. You don't know the question, but you start to get the answer.

Also, ideas:

1. I want to make a radio station that plays the best music ever all commercial free, but broadcasts JUST staticy enough to not be enjoyable. I'd cause murder.

2. I want to rig up a CB radio so that at random times I can blare out over everyone's radio "DON'T STOP BELIEVING!".

3. I want to hook up a machine that transmits a small electric shock to every DJ on the air. And everyone would have a button they could push to cause this small electric shock. And eventually, EVENTUALLY...they'd learn to shut the fuck up. It works for dogs, it's not a huge leap of intelligence to DJs.

4. I want to breathe smoke.

Whoever gets the reference in #4 wins a million dollars.

Offer void in America. And every other country. Ever.

A theory

2007-12-04T03:33:06Z

So. I was thinking. Maybe all smart people are neurotic.

Now hear me out. The older I get, the older my friends get, who I GUESS are smart, the more neurotic everyone seems to be becoming. It seems like everyone talented or smart is incredibly neurotic. Meaning, they see such little value, such little purpose in everything they do that everything becomes increasingly directionless as one's potential sort of, increases.

Immediate humbling disclaimer: Not saying I'm talented, smart or have any sort of potential. But I am neurotic. So maybe I am and maybe I do :)

The idea that I'm going to be this much of a mess of a man even after I get my education is kinda hilarious to me. I mean, working with people at the VA, I see all these frantic little doctors running around or hunched over their computers or being awkward and it makes me wonder. I mean, the managers of ABP and the newscasters on TV and the celebrities in real life all seem to have that sort of outward togetherness and a slight slickness that intimidated me to some extent.

But then I look at all these DOCTORS, real, educated people doing things I really want to do and realize I might just fit right in. Just how I am. As much of a mess, as lazy and disorganized, as indecisive and ridiculous, I think those may all be prerequisites to becoming something, I don't know, that I want to be. Useful. In it's own little way.

This will sound stupid.

But I mean. It seems inventive people have to be a little crazy. It's like, how can you formulate any kind of imaginative idea if you're not constantly battling against yourself? Reasoning your way out of everything is fucking hard if you're smart. Cause outwitting other people is easy. Outwitting yourself takes a little something special.

Me? I distract myself with TV. And video games. And alcohol. :)

TAKE THAT, brain cells.

This is not about love

2007-11-26T23:19:30Z

Hey, Fiona Apple is kinda good.

Has a good song that sort of describes the vague way I've been feeling.

I miss that stupid ache.

Dear Black Friday,

2007-11-24T04:54:31Z

I fucking hate you.

Yes, you, Black Friday, and everyone contained within your formless, money-draining, consumerist, coal-black mass of cheap fucking electronics and pricetags that STILL will never beat online shopping, ever, ever. It's futile, really, the only thing, the ONLY THING these fucking stores have over their online counterparts is ease. People are fucking lazy, and that's it. If there were some way to friggin' drop broken or defective shit in a box and have it somehow wind up at Amazon HQ, you'd all be out of a fucking job.

Like how I used friggin' even though I used fucking several times? I like to mix it up. That's me. Mr. Variety.

But GOD DAMMIT.

Okay. So Thursday, on my way to my mom's, I see at Best Buy a LINE OF FUCKING TENTS with fat assholes in fat asshole baseball caps (people wearing those kinds of baseball caps are either fat assholes or bros, and bros tend to turn into fat assholes later in life.) sitting around smirking like they haven't chosen shitty electronics over their families. How fucking idiotic is our culture that THAT is considered normal. They should send out a tard-cart and haul all these fuckers off to AT LEAST a mental institution. A better choice, in my opinion, would be a slaughterhouse. Just dress it up to look like a Best Buy and say you'll get a free iPod and people will be breaking down the doors.

And I GUARANTEE we'll be better off. Less Republicans in office. Less Republicans in life. Good christ.

Come on. THANKSGIVING. And you're parked out front of a Best Buy. I want to go back in time, find these people's parents, probably screaming their brains out during War of the Worlds on the radio, and just punch them. Men, in the face. Women, in the ovaries. Really hard. Baby-breaking hard. Like, what the fuck were they teaching their kids that THAT is acceptable as human behavior. Herding towards a Best Buy like the cashiers are giving out blowjobs, COME ON, PEOPLE.

On a side note, even if the cashiers WERE giving out blowjobs, it wouldn't be worth it. I'd just wait a week when it'll be marked down.

Okay, but, what really got my knickers in a twist was that I go to Curcuit City at 9 FUCKING PM and there's STILL a line longer than, I dunno, there's ever been for any sort of disaster/poverty relief EVER. No big deal. I wasn't buying anything, I just wanted to get a sort of condescending merriment by walking past these people all worried about what's the best thing to buy FOR THEIR GODDAMNED ENTERTAINMENT and maybe, just maybe, share in the "Oh, what piddling piece of shit shall I dispense the payment for parcels of my life on" consumer bloodlust.

So I stop by the Xbox360 station and start playing with this game just because it's imprinted in my brain to play any video game demo that crosses my path. I'm playing for no more than a few minutes before this Indian woman and her horde of little brats comes swarming around me. And obviously, the little kids want to play. Now, all I want to do is play it for a few minutes and then just mosey on.

But THEN this woman goes, obviously prompted by her kids "I know, what can I do?" referring to how in the lord's name she could EVER get this mean older kid off the display so that her poor, starving children can spend just a few scant moments of their pitiful little lives in 3.2 Ghz of bliss. Additionally, she says everything ELSE to these children in Hindi or whatever, besides that pitiful little remark.

So I'm fuming, but still playing, because I just want to toy with a few more things. So the kids are like circling the fucking display and the littlest is like reaching for the 2nd player controller, which does nothing, and his mom's like "Oh...wait...no" in this pitiful little way. And I'm thinking to myself, if my kids were behaving like that, I'd crack them upside the head and take them out of the store. OR AT LEAST AWAY FROM THE FUCKING DISPLAY FOR A SECOND.

But no. Again she says "What can I do?" And AGAIN. And finally, I throw my hands up and I'm like "Fine, go ahead." and walk away resisting the urge to start cursing at the pack of them.

Okay. I know. It sounds like I'm overreacting, but I HATE that shit. Instead of just walking away and coming back in five minutes, she STANDS THERE with her kids. She HAS to get what she wants, even if she makes EVERYONE uncomfortable. It's that kind of lack of consideration that characterizes all the greedy little faces on Black Friday. Hurting one another for a fucking TOY, get real. It's like a distillation of everything that's wrong with the world ever. That people think their piddling shiny little pieces of electronic BULLSHIT is worth any sort of loss of goodwill to the rest of humanity.

And this is about to get really bigoted really fast, but there's a ton of Indian people that act that way. Not that white people don't, don't get me wrong, but something about Indian culture causes an almost total disregard for the rest of humanity. They seem to forget that other people have desires and feelings that, guess what, are JUST as important and strong as theirs. Yes, sometimes this aspect of their culture can be kind of cute, a sort of agreeable self-importance, but NOT when it combines with the general negative vibe of Black Friday.

Christ.

I hate Black Friday.

One word and an internet suffix for every fucker out there who spent any amount of time in line today:

Amazon.com

Gimmicks like FREE this and FREE that mean absolute bunk because all they're gonna give away, logically, is the shit that they could NEVER sell. Shitty computers and shitty bonuses. Stuff like that you can get WHOLESALE in boxes of 50 for the price they quote you it's worth. Goto ibuypower, goto newegg, goto fucking EBAY and you can find everything you want, no line, no Black Friday vicious greedy little shiteaters, and CHEAPER and BETTER.

Cut it out, people. We, as a society, have to move beyond this.