Better

Better out than in

2011-05-10T01:51:00.001-07:00

I consistently brag about and take pride in my family and my life. Over the last 5 years, I've earned that right and I take great pleasure in my good fortune and the meager but promising rewards for my hard work thus far.

As a consequence of this line of thinking and state of mind, I often talk to people about my life as if it's a continuous chain of honest, good-humored blood, sweat and tears, punctuated by hard times and tough circumstances. And truthfully, the part of my life that has made me who I am more than any other (the last 5 years), has been just that.

But as my post from yesterday described, my standard pitch about myself is more bluster than biography. Prior to 2007, while I was definitely a good-hearted guy, I was also apparently a spoiled, sullen, ignorant waste of flesh.

I found and uploaded my old blog posts from 05-06. They're almost all awful.

It's really hard for me to read most of them, I'm legitimately embarrassed by who I was or I guess whoever I was trying to be at the time.

I put them up anyway. As a series of lenses for looking at my old self, they're occasionally mortifying, but they're probably a better reference than my polished memory for what I was experiencing and how I thought at the time.

They start in New Mexico, I think in Pojoaque (via dial-up, still the only viable method of Internetting from the valley of direct Conquistadore descendants). I moved back to Albuquerque and most of the '05 posts are from there. Interestingly the posts range in quality from terrible to refreshing or even awesome: I submit for your reading pleasure my hate-filled review of "What The Bleep Do We Know," and I'm actually kind of proud of my farewell to the desert, not just for its accurate depiction of my connection with Albuquerque but for the completely true laundry list of illegal and/or dangerous things I was involved with or in direct proximity to. It's still awkwardly tainted with the perspective of a little bastard though.

Late 2005, I left ABQ for a 3 week Outward Bound sailing course in Maine (which I didn't pay for, of course). I uploaded the journal I kept which I remembered being really overbearing and shitty. But having just read it after years of forgetting about its existence, I don't think it's that bad, and definitely it's an accurate snapshot of my experience. Be aware if you read it that I left out a lot of the more negative entries about my watchmates and there were several really terrible days when I didn't bother to write anything because I felt so depressed, which is not an emotional state I'm in often, if ever. The journal is really only the positive side of a pretty manic-depressive experience. The extreme physical and mental demands of the course put me in some weird states. Overall, though, the journal gets the point across, and I remember the good days much more vividly than the bad ones. I'd definitely do it again and recommend it (but maybe go with Nols instead of OB, if you're just looking for a good adventure without a lot of weird teambuilding foofiness. Believe me, the team will build itself with enough challenge.)

After the expedition (which really played a major role in shaping my long-running goals of continuous self-improvement and hard work) my brother and I moved to San Francisco. I expected my posts to get better, but they really get fucking whiny and shitty. I often begrudgingly mention and somehow manage to complain about the substantial financial support I was getting from my dad and his girlfriend at the time. Who even does that? Nowadays I get angry and write self-righteous hate posts just from imagining people who are like that.

In fact, the more I read from that period, the more I realize that every time I'm trying to make some useless argumentative statement against a strawman and I have to dream up a personality trait or viewpoint that I revile, I'm imagining someone who says and believes shit that I was saying and believing in late 2005.

The final entry, from 2006, serves as the perfect turd-brick capstone over a well of reeking shit. The sense of injured entitlement, the overprivileged and posturing false confidence, it's all so pornographically awful that it needs to be out in the open so I can stay humble in the future. What a load of fucking garbage. Good thing I met Ashley a few months later.

I'm sorry I wasn't always the good and at least occasionally thoughtful person I am today.
I hope that in 6 or 7 years I don't have to hold my current posts in the same degree of contempt that I'm holding those from 6 or 7 years ago.

Closing in on the end of year one

2011-05-09T18:05:00.001-07:00

(Edit: this post turned out great, it's actually more structured than my usual shit and it expresses a lot of harder stuff that I usually find hard to put to words.)

Today you get to watch as I successfully push myself and my mental safety net into an untenable position, and follow me into a better framework.

I've been busy this quarter, but I actually have more free time than before. I'm only taking 9 units on the books. I've got Chinese 3 and an RA position analyzing a corpus of speech data. Both are time consuming and I remain disappointed with my time management skills, but at least I'm getting somewhere.

LIST 1
Time management is tricky for me, and it's been on my mind so much that I'd rather deviate from my usual stale ranting format to talk about it for a while. I'll passive-aggressively throw the bullet list of my responsibilities at you anyway:
-2nd language acquisition
-parenthood
-work (now 20 hrs/wk, not too crazy)
-research
-debt
Blah blah blah, I have it hard, welcome to the chipped-shoulder parade, whatever.

I've spent a lot of time here dismissing my classmates' struggles as superficial and pathetic. I still think it's true that I'm definitely far more self-supported and juggling more personally-critical responsibilities than most of my fellow students. But it's a misleading and false philosophy for me to point at the above list, compare myself to a 19-year old student whose parents are paying all their expenses, and denounce their struggles as superficial. My cheaply spewed bravado is comforting to me, because it stems from a genuine class disparity that I'm constantly struggling against. I still maintain that if I was outfitted with that kind of support and stability, I'd be honor-bound to kill myself if I didn't break the mold academically.

But I'm sure the ugly holes in my ranting are obvious to others in my position with a bit of reserve and some perspective. And of course, I am not by any measure truly disadvantaged in today's America.

I'll first try to face up to and correct the problem of downplaying the achievements and obstacles facing the 'other people' that I complain about.

Here's a specific instance regarding my Chinese class: I often share and echo the sentiments of my fellow students (of non-Chinese ethnicity) about the lack of fairness inherent in competing for grades with ethnically Chinese students who have had moderate to significant contact with the language since infancy. But this is such a pointless exercise in close-mindedness that I regret ever even nodding in agreement (Full disclosure: I had this conversation for the nth time with another struggling student this very morning!)

From this specific, superficially-plausible lack of fairness, I'll generalize to my overall shit-eating attitude about other students in general, and then I'll allow the whole soggy turd sandwich to collapse under its own weight.

Formerly-held blanket opinion:
I posit once more that the vast majority of UCLA students are at least mostly supported in all their expenses by their parents, and need only worry about school and keeping sane via some semblance of a social life. Fine, granted.

But along with that pseudo-plausible background story comes its logical extension, (visible to me when I'm not being a dumbass):
Despite the few visible rich fuckshits that don't capitalize on their position, the vast majority invest their time in tackling monumental academic tasks. A student who earns straight A's at this school while taking 15 or more units maaaay be doing less than their absolute best.... but only if they (like me) are fortunate enough to have been brought up in some proximity to academic culture, i.e. those who are equipped with

LIST 2
-the stuffy language of discourse, liberally salted with needless $5 words (this got me through high school)
-the core philosophy of the scientific method, and more importantly the important concept that good science merely discards false hypotheses, rather than revealing 'true' ones, and the even more important extension, that scientific objectivity in every sphere of study is a nasty, messy, unattainable yet absolutely imperative goal.
-repeated, guided exposure during youth to high-level concepts in any field, such as
rates of exponential change;
the practical application of really big numbers of any stripe;
the aggregated results of (and questions raised by) competitive selection in the marketplace and/or in nature; programming skillbuilding and really any well-taught logic and math;
physics phenomena; etc etc etc.

These are perks that I was given before adulthood. Some small weight is left with my general feeling because here at UCLA, these perks were likely bestowed on many of my classmates... or so I thought. At the lab, my grad student overseer is TAing this quarter and I've sat through a few of his office Q and A sessions with freshman biology students. It was sobering to hear how many of them didn't really get the basics of evolution, which I've taken for granted since my dad cleverly broke down the difficult concepts for me at a very young age, and I've relied on that core mechanical knowledge in more ways than I'm probably aware. These kids are not stupid or ignorant by any standard; in fact they are some of the brightest and most overachieving students out there. Compared to me, they are working at a conceptual disadvantage... in their own major!

Add to this redefinition of 'common knowledge' the fact that most of the students I talk to are in fact taking 4 classes or 15+ units of nontrivial classes. Having consistently dropped down to 12 units each quarter so far, I can confidently state that the difficulty inherent in taking 15+ units here is exponentially more than what I've faced thus far. There is not enough time to tackle that workload in a leisurely manner even given a blank schedule, and even here in the nexus of privilege, these kids are still trying to understand difficult life choices like relationships, responsible drinking and drug use, and general emotional stability.

To generalize further, the academic lifestyle perks mentioned above are certainly not available to most attendants of the next tier down from me in higher ed, the State schools (SFSU etc), and forget about it in community college, except for the lucky fucks like me that get to go back to school after fucking up royally in life or the actually-deserving poor kids whose families managed to focus their studies and launch them out of the line of fire of the ever-encroaching economic maw of brutal dehumanization.

To close this circle of self-loathing and sum up my need for an attitude adjustment:
It's pointless for me to complain or even feel disadvantaged about the difference in exposure to Chinese between me and my classmates, when I literally bought my way into this top-notch school. Not with money, but by throwing away the opportunities I now begrudge others, then coming back and wrecking the curve in community college as I swept by those who were first-generation college students. If any of them talked shit about me to each other behind my back along the way, they were fucking right. For me to do so behind the backs of my classmates is fucking wrong.

Now what?

Ok, so I've beaten myself up a bit about the inherent hypocrisy in campaigning against an army of strawmen, given my substantial inherited academic cultural advantage. Where does that get me, in practical terms? Nowhere but into a salad bar of mild self-loathing.

So, how can I do better, both in deference to my fellow students and to improve myself and my station beyond the bare minimum of not having a shitty outlook when it's unwarranted?

I can start by examining my even more critical advantages, non-academic advantages, and elaborating to myself some better, more coherent plan to capitalize on those advantages.

Leaving aside the argument-from-hypocrisy illustrated by List 2, there's something deeper and even more odious about the "List 1" philosophy. It's tantamount to taking the precious treasures of List 3 for granted, which is a crime against humanity, and specifically against the other humans I hold dear.

LIST 3

-A wonderful, mutual, loving, supportive and enriching marriage. I've only seen a few of these in my entire life, and mine's the best. I fucking win.

-A bright and beautiful son nearing 3 years.

-An incoming baby girl.

-A steady job (albeit with abysmal pay) that comes with

-(relatively) affordable health insurance.

-A very decent place to live at a (relatively) affordable price.

-A decent GPA and some blossoming academic connections at a world-class research university.

-A 4-door Honda Civic with 35k miles on it, owned outright.

-Good health.

Time for a bit more self-abuse while I enumerate my shortcomings in honoring these incredibly fortunate circumstances. The upshot of this kind of soul-searching, though, is that I can work on leveraging these for practical benefit as well as moral satisfaction.

Let's bring it full circle with

Time management! While I remain daily conscious of my luck in having a wonderful wife and a wonderful son, I waste at least 10 (oh fuck it, it's probably 20) hours a week on silly diversions such as video games or trying to find a partner for a game of Yomi, time that would be much better invested in a weekly hike, more meals at home, or even just keeping ahead of the chores.

Corrective action: I actually implemented a briefly successful scheduling limit where I dedicated 4 evenings a week to just family time. Unfortunately, that didn't leave me enough time to get everything done and contributed to further procrastination on the schoolwork end.

Future solutions: The biggest key to this puzzle is scheduling. I got behind in school because I don't work consistently on one project at a time. I can go on and on about my particularly double-edged ADD mental constraints, but the key concept I must always try to strive for is dedicating blocks of time to a single task and getting through the vicious tedium of momentum-building during the initial phase of each block. 4 hours seems like the best chunk for a single task, depending on what it is.

Fatherhood
As far as parenting goes, while I'm proud of my relationship with my son, I'm way too quick to anger and many days I feel equally likely to severely mishandle a discipline situation with him, although I'll never lay a hand on the little guy, I get really stern really fast with mixed results. I know I act harshly out of a weird gnawing guilt over my own laziness and work-averse tendencies, which I blame on my parents' lax style of discipline and follow-through.
Corrective actions: We actually spanked our son for a bit during the worst of the "terrible twos". It may have worked in that, beforehand, he couldn't be effectively deterred from nasty aggressive behavior towards us and other kids, and was too young to really view a confiscated toy or a time-out as a sufficiently negative consequence. Spanking wasn't an easy thing to administer, but it did work (for a while) as a "lowest tolerance" threshold signal for him to veer away from when his behavior got too sociopathic. However, it's a testament to my stubbornness that I dismissed Ashley's experience with hundreds of kids exhibiting the exact same behaviors in the same age range, then socializing as they grew a bit older and became more aware, with no spanking required. Many people forcefully argue that spanking does more harm than good, and I'm in no position to objectively argue one way or the other. I can report two things: one is that spanking quickly became almost totally ineffective while withholding privileges became much more effective; and the other is that I've never felt a worse sensation than that of realizing after spanking him that I had guessed wrong about its effectiveness in that particular instance, and I felt it very often.

This is a tough situation with no easy solution. I need to acquire more practical, tested knowledge about raising children and adhere as best I can to a more rational course, even if it turns out I'm doing everything mostly right. I certainly have a good relationship with Holden and I am very proud of my progress as a parent, our experiment in spanking notwithstanding.

My most concrete and definitive lesson so far, and I expect this lies at the core of the 'correct way' if there is one, is that a level-headed, even-tempered attitude is by far the best one in every scenario. My most desperately needed area of improvement: not getting pulled into a shouting match to dissolve a tantrum. Throwing my weight and my voice around at best does nothing, and sometimes scares Holden, which is on par with spankers' regret for the worst feeling ever.

Anyway, things are generally good. I'm glad I put this stuff down in writing because it's usually just a whirling mass of circular reasoning in my head, and I think there is stuff here I can use as a platform.
Of course, I should close things out with some good humor and perspective, and a little bit of strawman-taunting for old times' sake:

List 4
-I'm fucking smart and happy
-Against some still-tough odds, I really do generate volumes of productive and creative awesomeness and engage my family in better ways than 90% of the people I've met
-I am (and therefore my kids are) gonna speak Chinese fluently enough to ingratiate my family into their inevitable global dominance while most other non-Chinese Americans are still recovering from the shock of waking up on the other side of the economic coin after 200 years of hedonistic delusion
-I fucked your mom last night
-Peace the fuck out assholes

Headlong rush

2011-04-19T19:13:00.001-07:00

Update:
It's been a while now, but I crushed my second quarter even more expertly than I murdered the first, with 2 A-minuses and one A.

Good stuff!
Classes were:

-Chinese 2 (my first Chinese quarter at UCLA!)
-Phonetics (great fun, and I capped it off with a recording/transcription project of Argentinian Rioplatense Spanish dialect, beautiful!)
-a Linguistics/Biology grad seminar taught by the biologist who runs the lab I work in and a badass linguist.

Needless to say, I butchered them without mercy and reaped the rewards.
I imagine this is how a conquering barbarian must have felt after cracking open his enemy's liberated femur to sate his bloodlust on the pulpy marrow within.

A bit more about Chinese class:

I took a year of Mandarin at City College in SF, and found it really difficult. I'm not particularly great at learning languages. I'm great with pronunciation, I don't find the grammar to be difficult or even that strange, and I'm pretty decent at characters.
However, the tonal nature of the language has consistently fucked me up (even with only four tones, probably near the global minimum!). I find myself struggling to speak smoothly. This is an ongoing problem for me, although it is getting a little better and I see the light ahead (I'll post more about this process later.)
On balance, I'm an average-to-substandard Mandarin student.

With that said, let the record show that UCLA does not fuck around with language instruction.
I hit the ground stumbling, having barely squeaked through the placement test into Chinese 2. UCLA uses a different book series with a significantly different vocabulary set than CCSF. I had a lot of vocabulary and grammar memorized, but only a small sprinkling of each UCLA chapter was old news to me.
To ice the cake, all the midterms and most exercises were cumulative, reflecting lots of the material from the first quarter that I didn't participate in. So I basically had to absorb an entire quarter's worth of vocabulary and grammar in about 3 weeks leading up to the first midterm.
The format for Chinese at UCLA is fucking rad awesome. 4 days a week, organized like so:

Mon/Wed- 1 hour discussion w/25 students. Homework, skits, etc due.
Tues/Thurs- 2 hour lecture with entire class (~150 students) Quizzes and midterms.

The head teacher is a linguist from Taiwan who has been teaching in the states for a long time. I don't think he's much older than me. He has a good sense of humor and keeps up a fast pace, and he doesn't fuck around.

With this pace and schedule, Chinese fit right into the template for UCLA learning: Fast as fuck, practical, rewarding, and incredibly dense. I internalized more Chinese in 10 weeks than I did in 9 months at CCSF (and San Francisco has a top-notch program!)
Part of it is the quarter system, but I also have to point out that Chinese took up 80-90% of my time throughout the quarter. I breezed through Phonetics without effort (and I just learned that many of the students struggled in my class). All credit to my Chinese instructor for this incredible bout of learning.

Speaking of Phonetics, my TA from the class thought so highly of my work that he offered me an RA position, which I'm doing this quarter.

But I'll get to this quarter on my next post tonight.

The Vision

2010-12-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

Today my toil was judged as worthy of an A grade in my third class, Human Complex Systems Modeling. This ranking confirmed my inaugural UCLA gpa as 4.0. As soon as my grade was uploaded, Ice Cube appeared in a poofy cloud of academic excellence, wearing a diamond-studded mortarboard. In one hand he carried a golden Honor Roll, in the other, an infinite stack of scholarship applications. I beheld him in mute astonishment, and he lit a blunt, nodded ever so slightly, and proclaimed "Welcome to da Scholaz Club". As we dapped, I glimpsed a dazzling world of resolved student debt and job opportunities, but as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

Newt's on the case

2010-12-09T13:30:00.002-07:00

The funniest thing about the Republican party line is the neck-snapping velocity with which it leaps from one extreme on the ideological spectrum of government to the other.

Here's Newt, steadfast soldier in the war against Big Scary Government, helpfully explaining why we need a completely opaque, limitlessly funded, unimpeachable defense department to operate outside domestic and international law with impunity. (Thanks to Brian for the link).

This indefensible position is where the entire party stood throughout the W Bush presidency. These are the guys that hyped up and then discarded the WMD argument to get us into Iraq, wholeheartedly endorsed domestic wiretapping, broadly and loosely expanded the power of the executive branch, shoveled trillions of taxpayer dollars into the fire, and coerced and bullied the judicial branch into complicity. These are the dudes who put blanket gag orders on librarians.

The best part of that interview is where Newt and the other guy agree that it's the Obama administration's fault that Private Manning had access to so much sensitive information. The Republicans were the ones shouting down any opposition to expanded and shared surveillance between intelligence, law enforcement, and defense.

To this day, 'anti-big-government' Teabaggers and big-ballin Neocons alike continue to push for police-state, racially-profiled surveillance immigration policies that target citizens and aliens alike.

Can an avowed Tea Party member please tell me, from a solid platform, what other check can exist against extra-legal and opaque defense activity besides an entity like Wikileaks? If the self-proclaimed government-shrinkers that you elect can pull an about face as they did in 2001 and toast trillions of taxpayer dollars using the Bill of Rights as kindling, what else besides the danger of getting caught could provide any disincentive to abuse power?

Is it too much to hope for a split in the teabag? Or is it really just another propped up facade of libertarian ideology that every racist, paranoid sociopathic politician can get behind for as long as it takes to secure government protection for some industrial cronies, snag a golden parachute, and piss on the faces of the middle class before bailing out of the plane?

I refuse to be terrified of kicking the prostrated ass of the universe

2010-11-23T02:23:00.005-07:00

I'm hurtling towards a nice finish to my first quarter at UCLA. It's been just as hectic of a journey as I thought it would be, but I can confidently say that I'm working harder overall than any other undergrad that I've met at the school so far. This is most certainly because I'm comparing myself to a bunch of other liberal-arts students, but the point still holds. In case I haven't boasted/complained about my Herculean manhood before, let me lay it out for posterity: In the fall quarter of 2010, I go to school and study all day every weekday, and if I'm not doing one of these things at any given instant it's because I'm raising my son. I work during the week as a research assistant, I work at my numbing retail job all weekend, and every minute I'm not working, I'm doing homework.

And I fucking kick ass at it.
In any single one of my classes this quarter, I've literally learned more (and/or significantly improved my study/writing/time-management skills) during that time than I have in the entire aggregated college experience before it. And while I'm absorbing and mastering this information and competently plugging into the academic universe, I've started to get a clearer picture of myself through the eyes of others that I meet on campus. This is who they see:

I'm that douchebag who asks the (mostly) insightful questions in every class; who knows the answers to all their stupid questions; who can present a topic in class clearly and concisely minutes after absorbing it while they try to shake off their hangovers or work through their "test anxiety"; who laughs in their faces and calls their pitiful problems into question when they start to talk about how hard their lives are, because he's effortlessly stomping all over their shit while juggling a screaming 2 year old, a grunt job in retail, a research assistant position in a completely different field than his major, an income so far below the poverty level it makes struggling mothers look like Sarah Palin, a 21-mile per day bike commute out of sheer necessity, and a syrupy maraschino cherry on top of his fucking oversized cock.

I'm THAT GUY. I'm like Dave Eggers bouncing off of his dead parents' corpses and pole-vaulting himself into a Pulitzer. I've erupted phoenix-like out of the lazy, shy, self-loathing shell I've lived in for over 20 years and completely divested myself of the guilt of privilege (re: academic but poor parents, for those of you who don't know me, as if anyone reads this bullshit), because everyone I meet who's on a need-based scholarship or who's getting a Calgrant or who has a dependent or another quirky story of beating the odds is still sitting on some kind of golden egg that I just don't have.

Invariably, invariably, when I tell people what our annual income is, they get stuck for a response for about 10 seconds. Sometimes, their mouths work silently, opening, closing. Opening. I can hear the gears grinding in their brains, desperately trying to pop it out of neutral while they try to stack my nonchalant mastery of my circumstances against their now-pathetic complaint about how hard it all is when me and my husband only make 60k, for God's sake, and now one of the cars is in the shop and we barely paid rent on time and all these syntax trees are just too hard, omg, i don't get it, please help me, you must be a genius!
Up until very, very recently, I would have felt really sorry for them.

But by now, as I continue, years after I started to seize the bull by the balls, to pulverize my way through the struggle, it's just... different.

Let me put it this way.

If Ashley and I made a combined $60k this year, all other circumstances being equal, and I achieved anything less than an A+ in every class and a set of laudable, concrete extracurricular milestones, I would have failed as a human being. As it stands, I'll be happy with our miserable sub-$20k and the As and Bs I'll be getting, along with having secured a sickass research position in my first quarter without breaking a sweat.
And yet, the vast majority of undergrads that I've met at UCLA are working with a free car, free rent, free food, free time and a budgetary allowance. I've seen more iPads and Mercedes walking to class than I did in 5 years working in San Francisco.
Those others who are struggling still have Calgrant, a scholarship or two, and maybe a spouse. No kids, no other major expenses. The two people most similar to myself that I have met are each married, and their expenses are rent, food, transportation, and school costs (tuition and books).

Why is it that I'm the guy, among this legion of mostly overwhelmingly-privileged bright kids, who actually grasps everything, down to the last nuance, in all my classes? How is it that I have the time and energy to write good papers, to read the material deeply enough to make inferences that set me apart from the others? I am emphatically NOT, I repeat NOT a genius. I'm willing to cede, after a lifetime of denial, that I'm damn smart. But intelligence has nothing to do with my relentless ass-kicking.

Nope, I'm acting on the chemistry of a simple equation: a good and loving relationship with my wife, the desperate need to save our son from a childhood in poverty, my utter contempt for those who were "born on third base" (to quote my favorite badass motherfucker, blogger Mobutu Sese Seko), and the unshakeable confidence that none of these pansy little upper-middle-class fluffballs is going to compete with my raging lust to unceasingly conquer life.

Do you imagine that someday your unique talent and some lucky inspiration will help you get off the couch and do what you love and love what you do, enabling you to live a charmed life? Do you dream of finally reaching up from your cozy roots and spreading your fresh sapling arms to soak up that drenching, wonderful warm sunlight?

Guess what motherfucker, I'm the vine spurting straight out of the miserable undergrowth to swarm over your shit and choke the gasping life out of that dream. I'm harder, stronger, and hungrier than you. That's MY fucking sunlight up there. You can have what's left of it after I'm done, except there won't be any.

Quarters and Halves

2010-11-13T11:37:00.003-07:00

I've emerged from my first nasty crux at UCLA, and I can definitively cast my lot with favoring the quarter system over the semester system.
As a diehard professional procrastinator, I expected to get slapped around pretty hard by an intensified schedule of daily study. I've always adhered more to the (very shitty) scheme of "coast on your ability to absorb information better than your classmates, regurgitate the information in a more intelligent-sounding way, and don't bother with a daily routine, you're just going to read webcomics anyway". This would always lead to a vicious flurry of missed work and frantic paper-cramming at the end of a given term.
Surprisingly, during this quarter, the workload has actually negated this tendency for me. I still slack off way more (and still do better) than my classmates, but I've found that allowing myself to get behind by more than a day has such immediate and severe consequences that I just don't bother fucking up.

I wonder if a reigning issue for me has always been a lack of challenge? A lot of Carol Dweck's research rings with me (here's a very readable NYmag piece explaining the gist). I've had a long and weird evolution from believing that I was unfairly priveleged to have had parents with multiple degrees, and growing up I felt like a cheat just because I was literate and bright, and I felt like my classmates were just held back by growing up outside of the prestige culture that I was a part of.

But now, here I am among children of "elites" and non-elites, all of whom have done considerably more academic amazingness just to get here, and I'm trouncing them in almost every class, with minimal effort. I wasted a bunch of time in my Linguistics course trying to help some friends keep up, thinking again that their difficulty was due to the very academic language that the professor insisted on using. I'm coming from a community college where the best teachers had to have the skill to take advanced concepts and use a wide and varied breadth of examples to get everyone in the class to understand them.
Then I spent a couple of sessions trying to do just that with a few of my classmates, and I found that academic language wasn't the problem. These kids just were afraid to geek out enough to understand it. Or, if I dare to say this, and it conflicts with a lifelong value system I've internalized, maybe I really am more than just bright.

The key to unlocking this puzzle is to not fuck up, not procrastinate, and not waste time and energy trying to equalize my skills with those of my classmates. I've got too much to lose to throw it away helping others that have time and money.

Once I can control that emotional response, the next step is to attain financial security for my family, and safeguard my research and my time so that I don't end up getting backstabbed and bitter against academia like my Dad did.

Wish me luck.

Up too late

2010-11-08T04:43:00.004-07:00

I'm late to the party but I think I need to offer this as evidence of the best "fuck you" since Scarface.

I've loved Cee Lo since Goodie Mob. I still jam out to Cee Lo Green .... is the Soul Machine because it's so fucking awesome.

Goodie Mob in general and Cee Lo in particular were overshadowed by Outkast's explosion, but the two groups really founded Dirty South hip hop, which makes Cee Lo's versatility and depth as a creator and performer stand out even more sharply from the hordes of imitators and muck-drudgers that have followed in his wake...
I was really stoked when Gnarls Barkeley stormed the universe, because the playful insanity that he brought to the project was just as fresh and bleeding-edge as the rawness I heard from him in 'Git up Git out' way back on Southernplayallisticcadillacmusic.

The Brits are apparently eating him up with the "Fuck You" single, and they should, because it's awesome.

If you look around the internetz, you'll see people clumsily talking about why the song is or isn't more than a gimmicky fusion of Motown soul and a vulgar hook. What a bunch of idiots. Cee Lo can't do anything gimmicky without infusing it with a breathing heart and soul, just by nature of his complete devotion to the craft. The video linked above is his live performance and I think it sounds better than the original, because he's so perfectly confident. One of the commenters said it best:

"only Cee Lo can yell "Fuck all of you" at an audience and get a standing ovation"

[Edit: I bought Lady Killer, making it the first album I've paid money for in about 10 years]

In other news,

It's fucking 3:40 am here, and I'm screwed... unless I stay up all night. I am actually sick enough to call in to work tomorrow evening, so I think I'll do that before I even get to class.

I'll be busting out a phat lump of linguistics homework in some way shape or form in a few hours.

I was doing just fine until I randomly stayed up until 1 am .... 2 weeks ago.

What happened, I know not, but now I can't seem to get to bed before that time to save my god damned life, and it's not like I'm productive in any way after about 8 pm. I'm just fucking around on the computer or reading.

I thought maybe I would just balance out by sleeping in later, but that only seems to happen about twice a week, so I'm still waking up at 7 am if not 6 all the time.

Starting to get significantly behind in school... not on homework, but on my general upkeep with administrative shit and staying ahead of my goals. I haven't even looked into scholarships yet. I don't want to feel this whole shit slipping out of my grasp, but here I am, at 3:43 am, blogging about Cee Lo.

My ridiculous journey through linguistics part 1: the rusty hook

2010-11-01T00:53:00.003-07:00

I was first interested in linguistics in my first year at UNM, 2001-02. I think I was pulled in by the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", which I now regard dismissively. Linguists have mostly been pissing on Sapir-Whorf for about 40 years, and I'm happy to add my stream to the party. I'll lay out the basic scheme for you.
I'll start out by mentioning that actually, the "hypothesis" as we know it was never set out as such by either Sapir or Whorf, but rather articulated by later linguists who were so annoyed by their work that they set out to rigorously test and dismantle all of their assumptions, and were very successful.

But in a couple sentences, you could sum it up this way: "Languages employ very different conceptual groupings and mechanisms to express ideas. The structures of these mechanisms shape the way thoughts are expressed and consequently, shape the actual perceptions that their speakers have of reality. Speakers of different languages actually think differently."

In case you didn't pick up on my contempt for this idea (as fun and plausible at first glance though it may be!), let me print a disclaimer:

SAPIR-WHORF = BULL SHIT
The "classic example" of the Sapir-Whorf concept is Hopi tenses: if you've heard of the Sapir-Whorf "hypothesis" you've probably heard something along the lines of "Hopi natives have no concept of the future tense" or some similar garbage.

When I was 19, this seemed like an amazing and obviously plausible concept. It fed my feverish perception of English as an overly complex and categorically obsessed language, which was already being reinforced by my beginning studies of Japanese and my pleasure with its logically constructed sentences (complete with subject and object markers that relieved the pressure for word order that English has).

Nowadays, I know better, and if you've been advised that Hopi speakers have no sense of the future, you've been sipping from a deep crock of shit. Hopis just do the same thing English speakers do when we need to express a concept that doesn't have a directly built-in way of being expressed in our language: we effortlessly work around it. It might take a little longer to say something than it would have in some other language, but any concept can be expressed in any language, even if new vocabulary has to be made up along the way to accommodate it.

For instance (if we're talking about missing tenses), many languages (Latin comes to mind) have a specific set of tense words, word affixes, or other mechanisms to express future perfect tense: in other words, they have a built in set of tools to express the concept of an action having been completed... in the future.
English has no inherent words just for future perfect tense. Does that mean we can't imagine or talk about actions in this way? Fucking of course not.
"Ceaser will have conquered Gaul." "I will have boned your mom." "Who will have gone there?" etc.
It's not even a tough workaround. We combine what we do have for future tenses, the word "will" or whatever we need to fit that context, and a past tense word for the completion part of the concept. Done.

Hopi distinguishes in its grammar the way tense is handled with different types of concepts. English speakers have a certain way that we say when something will take place in the future. In Hopi, our way of marking time just doesn't translate across very well, not because of the concept of time itself, just the way we count it!

Here's how it works: In English, we would say: "I'll meet you in ten days." Makes sense.
In Hopi, it just so happens that it's ungrammatical to refer with numerical values to concepts that can't be physically grouped together, such as units of time. Can you hold a few days in your hand, or see them standing next to each other? Hopi speakers just use a workaround to express the same length of time.

It seems silly to English speakers, but we have plenty of constraints of our own that require extra words or other syntactic fillers just to satisfy the arbitrary language form.
Here's a variation on something you probably say almost every day (weather permitting):

"It's raining."

WHAT'S raining? The sky? The world? God? The tri-county area? We can plug arbitrary meanings into this meaningless use of the word "it", but the fact is it's just a workaround. Our grammar's very specific and very unconscious rules prevent us from just saying "raining." But conceptually, that's all that's actually present in that sentence.

Here's another constraint, one that is much more prevalent in lots and lots of languages, and is often "hard" for English speakers to internalize when learning a second language that's rife with them: measure words.
"Two cups of coffee." "Nine pieces of paper." "A slice of cake."

Again, it seems natural to use these words, but if we try to avoid using them for some reason, we have to go completely out of our way to specify what we're talking about. For instance, try asking someone for a piece of paper without using the word "piece". Asking if you can have nine papers is cause for confusion. Asking for a cake is even worse. Does this mean that all English speakers have a very strange concept of paper and cakes? Do we have to imagine an entire cake and then abstract a "slice" out of it?
Fucking of course not. It's just an outgrowth of our arbitrary, unconscious, extremely precise internal rules of grammar.

Next time: language acquisition and sign language.

And we're back

2010-10-21T22:18:00.002-07:00

Wow, everything prior to this post can be read as one big primer on how to talk and act like a complete douche!

I'd love to delete everything and pretend it never happened, but I think I should let my older whining stand for itself. Let me just collect everything from 2006 and earlier into one big book, and I'll slap a title on it:

HOW TO THROW AWAY OPPORTUNITIES AND COMPLAIN ABOUT IT

Awesome, I'd buy that!

Ok. A brief history of events since last post:

I stayed in San Francisco and continued to work at REI. Probably less than a year after the previous post, I met my future wife Ashley there. I bounced around the city, barely making the rent for whatever cheap room I was in at any given time, and continued to complain aloud like you can picture me doing if you've read any of the previous posts, which I don't recommend if you haven't.

Let the record show at this time that one-night stands with coworkers are capable of blossoming into stable, awesome long-term relationships. Let it also show that lazy, pseudo-intellectual douchebags like myself sometimes wind up in said relationships, regardless of whether they deserve them at the time.

(The record may also show that in the intervening years between this post and the previous one, I've earned the good times I've had.)

I continued to hold the grumpy, victimized attitude towards my dad and his girlfriend for several years.

I did outdoorsy stuff with my coworkers at REI, enjoyed the low-income San Francisco life, put down roots, and continued to complain all the time, but something was happening to me.

My relationship with Ashley never deteriorated. It didn't get complicated. It didn't start generating mindgames. It just kept getting better, and better, and better, and better....

I began to realize after a year or so that this was the first time in my life I'd been in a romantic relationship that was truly based around mutual trust and friendship. I was happier overall, but there was more to the experience.

Because I could depend on somebody who accepted them, I was becoming aware that some of my biggest flaws (procrastination, anger, and self-doubt) were not unconquerable, or at least untameable.

I can't say when this realization dawned on me, because it was more unconscious than that, but whatever it was, I knew I was becoming somebody different: a more capable person. A stronger person. A better person. Paradoxically, the source of this change was the unconditional love that I had undeservingly lucked into. We never had money, but we were happy.

Then we got pregnant.

Ashley's not fanatically religious, but an abortion, I knew, was still not going to be on the table. It took several days for the enormity of what was going on to sink in.

I was walking around the city a few days after the preggers test and was struck by the sheer volume of opportunity that this situation afforded me.

Let me set the stage a bit:

We had no money. We were both working in retail, the most pathetic of all service industries. Ashley was struggling with her grades at SFSU due to her long hours at multiple jobs, and I, as you may know, had dropped out of college many years ago (see the previous post for a laughable statement of defiance against higher education), although part of my slow build (before pregnancy came into the picture) was a nagging sense that sooner or later, I was going back to school, whether I had a passion for my field or not.

We both had some family close by, but only my dad and his girlfriend were in any position to provide any financial support, which was not going to happen by any stretch of the imagination (although, eventually, it did happen, a little bit).

But unlike most of the other douchebags out there in the big scary world, I knew that I had always wanted to be a father. I've wanted a family since I was a little kid. And even unlike many of the dads out there, I had a relationship stronger than any that I had ever seen. Ashley and I are the best couple in existence. I knew we would be far, far better parents than either of ours were. Notice that I wasn't making these assumptions tentatively; I knew these things to be true, and I'm happy to report that they have proven to be true through hardships that I did not foresee when I was gambling on them.

It boiled down to this:

I was faced with a real, no bullshit, in your face, major stakes lifetime choice.

Behind door number one, I had:

Pressure Ash into an abortion, probably destroy the relationship, and remain free to flitter around and get my life together later, when I was truly ready.

Door number two:

Walk away from failure and hesitation now, not just for my own sake, but because by getting my life together and conquering my weaknesses, I would be able to shape my child's life in the way I wanted mine to have been shaped.

In the most clunky way possible, I'm trying to get across the amazing, incredible chance that I had: it wasn't just ME that needed me to change my life! It was MY UNBORN CHILD! Holy shit! What kind of douchebag doesn't shed their childish bullshit and be the fucking man when it's time to be the fucking man?

NOT THIS DOUCHEBAG, MOTHERFUCKERS

I didn't elaborate on this thought. I just had it, understood it, and lived it.

Our son Holden (no, he is not named after the whiny bitch from Catcher in the Rye) was born June 10th, 2008. I enrolled in City College that fall, thinking I'd go for a nursing degree (the nurses were impressed with my performance during the delivery, I'm not even kidding about this being the best thing I had to go on), and happened to take American Sign Language as my first course.

The instructor never spoke a word, and the instant we began signing, my previous intention wayyy back in 2001 to declare a major in Linguistics came flooding back to me. I knew instantly, instantly, that I was going to go into linguistics. I had a newborn kid, not a penny to my name, and a long absence from any education, and I was going to fucking pillage my way through college, end of story.

We struggled to make ends meet all throughout the next 2 years.

We begged for money from my dad's girlfriend, and occasionally, she'd toss us a couple hundred bucks.

We were on food stamps for about a year, and it almost allowed us to break even on rent.

Ashley's great credit score was destroyed, and her attempt to get some college units out of the way via an online university ended in disaster when Holden got bigger and needed more attention, saddling us with a $5000 bill. For reference, we were making about $17k annually.

Total.

All of it went to rent and child care. Phone bills, medical bills, food, gas, utilities... we tried to pay them at least every other month, and did the best we could not to let any one expense go unpaid for 2 months, but we didn't succeed very well.

When our car broke down, it stayed broken for over a year.

Is your life hard? Guess what, it's not really that hard!

When you and your spouse both work full time, and overtime, and both of you go to school full time, and you're raising a kid properly, devoting the rest of your time to giving them a good life, and you get everywhere via 1 to 2 hour bus rides, then come back and talk to me about your problems.

But we fucking kicked ass. I finished up my second year at City College with a 3.8 GPA, got into UCLA, and we pulled up all our roots and moved to LA.

Now we're at the present day.

I'm crushing the UCLA workload like tires on grapes. I bask in my own confident excellence. I ooze mocking contempt onto angsty trustafarians. Yesterday, a girl was at the point of tears, telling me how she's so far behind in life because she's 22 and she's having a hard time in our linguistics class, and she has to work part time because her parents only pay for her rent and not any of her other bills! Oh my god, you poor thing! You need help and guidance and hand holding! There are many resources available! All of our support services are consolidated under this helpful hotline, which you can dial at any time: 1-800-Suck a Fucking Dick.

To summarize:

I was this guy: slave to my ADD, lazier than anyone you've ever met, tortured by self-doubt, financially insolvent, bitter about my own failures, college dropout, weed-smoking corporation-hating smelly fuckhead.

I am now this guy: student in elite school taking aggressive advantage of my intellectual quirks, confident in my values and self-esteem, long-distance bike commuter, bound for graduate school, priming for Honors, loving and supportive and hilarious and strong husband, the father you wish you'd had, a hard worker, and I'm a slick cook to boot.

And did I mention how awesome our son is?

He's really fucking awesome.

Next up: linguistics rants!

Update

2006-02-22T21:51:00.001-07:00

So I've been working at REI for about 4 or 5 months now. It's a good gig. I'm working about 30-35 hours a week for $9 an hour, plus medical and dental benefits and discounts on gear. I've been taking 3-day backpacking trips once a month with my buddy Glenn, and generally squeaking by. Still living with my Dad, so no rent. I've pretty much got the easy life. My brother is being pressured into going to school and I've realized by now that I'm not going to college for years, if ever. I don't mind. I'm not as uneducated as I had previously surmised, and my ability to roll with whatever hits me seems to keep me afloat well enough.

My only coming obligation is to file my taxes and move out of my Dad's. The latter requires me to find at least 3 other random roommates because San Francisco is outrageously high-rent. But the people are cool or whatever so I guess it evens out.

I got a letter from Hurricane Island Outward Bound school, saying my instructor had recommended me as a possible volunteer. This would mean moving to Maine and happily busting my ass for some indeterminate amount of time (as far as I'm concerned, the longer the better.)

The work would entail just about everything you'd expect from an outward bound position: wooden boat maintanance, food prep for resupplies and staff meals, gear maintanence and inventory, temporary shelter construction and removal, etc. Just good hard honest labor for room and board on the Maine Coast. Such a volunteership will undoubtedly lead to job opportunities, and my rogueishly charming personality always went over well with the staff whenever we briefly interacted. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd love to do.

There's this cool guy at my work (with whom I and some others installed a massive art project on Bernal Hill, which overlooks the city, on the night preceding Bush's inaugural address, reading "BUSH STEP DOWN" in 24' by 24 letters) whose goal is to become an outward bound instructor. But dude pretty much is one already. He TRAINS wilderness search and rescuers, and he leads kids and adults on hardcore mountaineering and climbing expeditions all the time. He's the fucking man.

I feel good about myself at work. I do my job with pride, I'm completely honest and hard-working, I treat everyone with respect while still making it a funner place to work, I brighten people's days (both employees and customers) and I basically just kick ass.

I fuck off at home, because I find myself unable to reconcile my unending hatred of my dad's girlfriend with her incredible charity at sheltering and feeding me for the better part of 6 or 7 months, despite numerous vicious clashes. Once I walk in the door I'm content to laze about and play video games, and I've moved beyond my silly conundrum that was plagueing me during my outward bound experience.

I was misguidedly concerned about my "addiction" to video games and my general trend towards comfortable, lazy, unproductive relaxation, especially when these things were juxtaposed with my happiness in the extremely austere existence afforded me by OB

Then I realized that to classify the mutual enjoyment of civilization and of the natural world as unreconcileable was a mental blunder of extreme idiotic faggotry. It's the same small-minded morality that makes people say shit like "technology is poison" into a cellular phone to their friend just before they pay US currency for a bumper sticker to put on their combustion engine car, then show it off on their way to school, doubtlessly at a university to work towards a liberal arts degree and live an easy life of luxury punctuated by bongrips, cliched "underground" brand identification and halfhearted protest marches until they settle down with some jealous harpy and own a subaru in some suburban clusterfuck and spawn brats that hate them and listen to linkin park on vinyl.

Of course, I don't know anybody like that, but it's a fun one-dimensionaly stereotype box to put imaginary people in.

Anyway, I live the good life. I work hard, I make my friends happy and in turn am always greatly pleased, I don't have some girlfriend to compromise with, and as an added bonus I can charm the socks off of the chicks at my work without worrying about a followup, I'm technically making enough money to survive on, I've got a quasi-complete gear rig for backpacking in almost any condition, I've got a wonderful brother for a best friend, I'm getting to unimaginable skill levels at Super Smash Brothers: Melee, and fucking Elder Scrolls: Oblivion comes out this year. I might just have the opportunity to participate in the Outward Bound experience as a staff volunteer, and I'm on top of the god damned world.

I have no goal? So fucking what? I love my life. I'm happy WITHOUT AMBITION. Just because I'm content doesn't mean I'm not motivated. I don't mean to sound so defensive, but understand that I'm in constant contact with a go-getting adulterous Oprah-watching money-having whore.

Here's the plan, although I'm sure it will get crushed tomorrow when Outward Bound (probably) tells me they only need a week's worth of desk work or some bullshit.

Let's say I get the gig with OB for a month and a half, at least. I sign up, buy my plane ticket for two weeks from now or whatever, schedule a three-day stopover in Albuquerque so I can FINALLY see my beloved friends and family, whom I haven't seen since before I left for Outward Bound in JULY LAST YEAR, and take care of a nagging and horrible storage unit problem I have down there as well. I get my swerve on for three days, love it, cry when I leave, and go to Maine for the gig. I work it up, love every minute (yes, this is a given), and prove without trying that I am not only a highly qualified and enthusiastic volunteer, I am totally fit for a paid position. Now the beauty of this scenario is, as a goal-less fuckoff, I'm not COUNTING on getting a job with these guys, but as a hard-working lifelover, I'm willing to go work for free with this badass organization JUST TO DO IT.

Maybe I look like a lazy good-for-nothing to the untrained eye. But my outward bound instructors saw more than that, as do my friends, as does my family (with the occasional exception of my sometimes blinded pops, but I blame his harpy bitch). I'm the man. I have no plan. But I came here to fucking rock. I even have an unintentional mullet.

I love you people.

Intelligent Design

2005-09-29T13:48:00.001-07:00

Check out Nik's post on this matter.

I had no idea this crap was progressing at this rate.
I don't even know what to say.

The fundamental argument behind "Intelligent Design" is that life is too complex to have evolved by chance. The problem with this argument is that evolution is not dependent on chance. ID hinges on the idea of "irreducably complex" systems, which have already been shown to be established by blind natural selection. The entire premise of irreducable complexity cannot be verified or disproved because it's not scientific.
If you want a solid, simple, awesome-to-read destruction of the "Watchmaker theory", read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. I'm serious. He single-handedly and laughingly shreds creationism without batting an eye, and he does it in completely understandable terms, and (this is the important part) it is all VERIFIABLE. Google him while you're at it. I'm in the middle of his book The Selfish Gene which is a slick look at natural selection. He proposes genes themselves as the fundamental unit of natural selection, and units like cells, organisms, species, and communities as just big survival machines carrying the little guys. He's trying to show that altruism, long proposed as necessary to "survival of the species", is actually selfishness of genes, which care little for individuals or groups, as their blind goal is to outlast other genes through endless copying. The brilliance of the argument is that there's no single "unit" like chromosomes or single genes that is actually trying to survive, but rather that nature blindly selects whatever clusters happen to spread themselves around. Bah, you'd have to read it for it to make all kinds of awesome sense, but the man is a badass. Totally to the point, totally layman's terms, utterly sensible, and startingly enlightening. READ THIS BOOK.

Now that I'm trying to summarize some of the debatable nuances of evolution, the hilarious truth keeps hitting home. Evolution doesn't even need to be justified. It just fucking works. It works so simply and so beautifully that to not "believe" in it is like not believing in the sun or in gravity. I fucking hate christians. What the hell is wrong with these people? How can you reason with a fanatic fundamentalist?
Why play with morons on their terms? I wish I could just wash my hands of the whole country and sit around and smoke dope again and play video games. Why bother getting educated if the country is irrevocably saturated with religious retardation? Might as well just move to fucking canada.

In fucking fact, if this shit passes all over the country without so much as a peep from the mass media (as is clearly happening) then fuck it. We out. Bush and Bin Laden can nuke america to death, I don't care.

I hope that some goodhearted scientist gets horribly assassinated while opposing this I.D. shit, so that our side can get some publicity. That's probably the only thing that will move it forward.

If you believe in Creationism, that doesn't (necessarily) mean that you're a fucking idiot. In fact you probably were born into an environment that heavily stressed the importance of blind faith according to a certain doctrine, and the associated goodness that you experience when in the safety of your religious community is the perfect proof of the truth you believe in. Unfortunately, despite the wonderful things that blind faith CAN produce, the painful reality is that fundamentalist christianity is flatly wrong about the origin of life and humankind. Fucking period. Am I dissing the value of faith? No. If human culture and human brains didn't have a mechanism for hope in the face of the insurmountable than we'd be dead by now. Is there a god? Who cares? It's a non-issue. Believe in god, that's cool with me. No problem, I'm down with the constitution. Did god create the world/humans as the bible says he did? Does god influence the universe in any way shape or form? FUCK NO. It may not be your fault that you believe in something like that, but the fact is that it's not true. Science does not require blind faith any more than gravity does. Evolution is "only a theory" in the same way that relativity is "just a theory", and buddy, we already nuked Japan.
If you refuse to "believe" in empirical science then get the hell out of the way. Misinform your chidren in some commune out of the political structure of this country. Secularity is not evil, blind fanatacism is, regardless of good intent.

-Gabe

Not a Crock

2005-09-11T00:05:00.001-07:00

Ok all you dongs
Here's some writing that's worth reading once you get about halfway through it.
Bear in mind that none of it was corny when I was struggling joyfully to survive, as were we all, and consequently the overbearing language I use is the only way I could have expressed the rawness that we went through. I'm going back for a 3 month course next time, possibly in a few months.

I urge everybody who gives a shit to look up Outward Bound and sign up without hesitation. If you've ever wanted an excuse to put your balls to the fucking wall and better yourself on your own terms, in conditions you've always pretended you want to be subjected to, this is the way to test your mettle. I found out more about myself than I could ever hope to write down, and a lot of what made it into my journal I had to clip from this public version. Yes, anyone can do it. Yes, it requires unbelievable output on your part. Yes, it's more than worth every penny, blister, life-flashing fear and grueling exhaustive day. Read the bitter whining that composed the majority of this blog bullshit before I went on this excursion, then read what I felt like while I was there.

Get off your ass, ditch the possessions for 3 and a half weeks and chuck yourself into the void because it'll turn you back into a human being for a brief flicker of your otherwise wasting lifespan. Then you can go from there. Hey, I'm back and reading Jerkcity while avoiding the old jobhunt. But I'm thrice the man I was when I left.

Or don't. But read this. Tell me what you think. Not that you exist, judging from the hits I get.

#13 Ship's Log
or
The Short Happy Lives of Jeremiah's Bullfrogs

-Some background:
There were 11 people on our boat, 9 students and 2 instructors.
Students: (if any of you bullfrogs are reading this forgive my humble and misguided descriptions, i love you all)
Myself- You guys know me. Toilet humor and infectious optimism, and a few little bits of smart rattling 'round the bean. Moving from New Mexico to San Francisco, CA.
David- Our eldest bullfrog. The hardest worker on the boat by a long shot. Always humble, always inspirational. A literal treasury of movie trivia and critique. Had moved back to Maine from San Diego, CA.
Alexandra- Bubbling with life, our little sister kept us all in line. Saw the best in us when we were at our worst. It makes me smile just to think of her smile. A New Jersey native.
Max- It wasn't often I could make Max crack up. A man of few words and obviously great intellect. Was often the voice of reason, especially when I'd start cutting corners on the navigation. High school senior in Stowe, MA.
Nick- Spunkiest motherfucker I ever knew. Always cracked me up. A partier after my own heart. Plays baseball near Boston, MA.
Jill- More experienced in the outdoor life, survival sailing, and wilderness expeditions in general than all the rest of us students combined. Rocked the house on a daily basis. A resident of Concord, MA. (coincidentally this is where my grandmother lives, in lincoln county. Small world, neh?)
Michael- our space cadet. I saw myself in him constantly. Became everybody's favorite poo bear, and consistently came out of left field to lead us into glory. Livin it up in sunny southern CA.
Muck- the german. Stubbornly refused to say "It's not a tooma" despite our best efforts. The worst person to try to wake up for anchor watch. We loved him. Hailed from Munich.
JT- the time bomb. The most athletic among us. The last bullfrog I saw before I got back 'home'. A chicago wrestler.
Instructors:
Joel Rowland- Whattaguy. Joel did the Downeast course when he was 19, then proceeded to sail across the atlantic with his uncle and some other dude in a small ketch. Best mentor I've ever had, and one of the few teachers I've been awed by. Originally from Minneapolis, now a resident of the Atlantic Ocean.
Sarah Dawson- Whattagal. Sarah helped us all maintain focus through the most chaotic experiences. Another Maine native.

We were the Bullfrogs, arbitrarily chosen as our moniker when Dave began howling the lyrics to the song "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" as we were frantically bailing out the boat we had capsized at Hurricane Island. Hence the reprinted lyrics. Our trip was 26 days. I managed to dip in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the same day, as did Michael. Many personal feelings about my watchmates have been omitted, as have bits and pieces intended only for the eyes of myself and my closest friends and family. The last few entries to the journal may seem like they're coming out of nowhere. This is because we did our ropes course, night rappeling, zipline, and 5-mile rugged marathon all in a 2-day period on Hurricane island. This intense barrage of challenges forced us to completely embrace our strengths and fight our weaknesses with all our ability, as anything less was unacceptable to us at that point. The bullfrogs and I earned our pride. Pictures forthcoming. Contact me for information.
On with the story. -ed.

1st Night, July 27th, 2005
Wheeler Bay
I met 3 of my watch-mates at the hotel. Michael, from California, JT, from Chicago, and Muck, from Munich.
When all 9 of us assembled @ base camp, it took us a while to get organized, but once we figured out that we were expected to take charge of the situation on our own, everything began to click.
We hit the squall @ about 7:30-8:00 p.m., an hour or so after we rowed out. Thunder and lightning blasted the sky all above and around us while we huddled in the wells. We felt no fear, already having confidence in our instructor's fearlessness. After about an hour the storm passed, and we made our way into a small cove/bay in the crook of a little island and turned in. Sleep was agonizing.
Day 2
Woke @ dawn. As soon as we broke down our tarp (after I vomited my guts out), we dove into the 50° waters for a test of our swimming abilities (and to break us in for our regular morning dip routine). I had to stroke hard despite coming up gasping.
Rowed about 8 nautical miles along the island chain, after the wind died out of our sails. First we had a slight scare when a gust came up after we set the sails, and yanked us speeding along towards a big rock. Saved by our bright and quick moving instructors. Anchored very calmly in a peaceful cove, out of the wind. Slept more comfortably, though the oars dug in hard to the old neck and backside.
Day 3
Woke @ 4:30 and got to Hurricane Island @ 5:45 or so. Immediately capsized an empty boat as a drill, and righted it again, in 50° water, in 3 mins 20 secs, entirely from verbal instructions, before we even had breakfast. After we ate and moved our gear ashore, it was time for rock climbing. For the first time in my life I found myself straddling a vertical cliff face. I made about 45 feet or so, maybe 50, I couldn't be sure. I slipped on my way from the top and smacked the rock face with my left shoulder pretty hard, but w/out injury. In the afternoon and evening we cut away about 2 or 3 tractor-loads of spruce from the abandoned quarry-town foundations surrounding O.B.'s facilities on Hurricane. Slept wonderfully. Indoors.
Day 4
Woke from a good night's sleep, ate a good breakfast, and relaxed a little bit, though the food and respite came as always after the freezing morning dip and swim that I've come to anticipate with joy. The cold is as shocking as ever but it's never been bad, and it never bothers me now. I love the rushing kick start. We ate and talked with Jen Fini, a wonderful woman who's sailed our course more than anyone else in the organization and has a vast repository of local knowledge about the coastline.
We are the Downeasters, and our course has been piloted only twice a year at the most since the H-5 expedition from HIOBS. We left late (8:30 am) and sailed well. We cut westward and then north around Hurricane to keep out of the heavily ebbing tide, then through some island channels and across Penobbscott bay. We had planned to anchor at McGlathery's Island, but after learning to tack and gybe through one of the busiest thoroughfare channel harbors in the country (world?) we had made such excellent time that we decided to push on, through a rough, rocky island chain and across another wide bay, then through a last tricky cove and into our harbor. We made 27 nautical miles today. I was the assigned navigator, and as I was trying to concentrate on reconciling our position on the chart with the real world, I kept losing track of my thoughts, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure I was overreacting, concentrating too hard.
We pulled in silence into our anchor cove, and sat and stood listening to the soft splashing of water, the falcons and seagulls crying, and watched the porpoises rolling and surfacing in the waves to port. Life is beautiful.
Day 5
A hard, hard day. We woke at 6:00, which was a welcome change from our near-routine dawn risings, but we had little to no wind all day, and had hard rowing all the way. We tacked fitfully and long across the bay, but were forced to row the pitiful 5 miles we made today against a very hard tide. Morale was low, but I hope that I made some smiles as captain. We finally made it around into the fjord, and I finally got the opportunity to take some pictures. We are pulling together as a watch and as a family. Tensions were very high today, but we still came together with smiles for our nightly moment of silence.
Everyone seemed happy with my leadership. Joel looked me in the eye and congratulated me, and shook my hand in earnest.
We came ashore and hiked to a low peak on the gorgeous granite cliffs of the western fjord face. The glacier that carved it was 2 miles thick. The entire coast of Maine is the remains of a submerged glacial mountain chain, hence the predominance of granite. The fjord we anchored in is the only one on the east coast. The view from our anchorage of the jagged granite cliffs wreathed in mist and flowing with thick spruce was breathtaking.
Day 6
For as long as I've been able to think, I've dreamed of the opportunity to test myself, to learn a trade, to have a crew, and to get to nature. Rough it! Prove my optimistic nature isn't the misguided byproduct of a privileged childhood that would disappear between a rock and a hard place. And here I sat, gazing at the rocky splendor, breathing the sea, and smelling life, glorious life, surging and roaring through my heart and pounding in my skull! I'm on top of the world, and I intend to stay here.
Day 7
First day in the fog. Michael was captain. Alexandra and Jill navigated us through the fog perfectly, despite the lack of wind, and we all are functioning consistently as a watch despite our incessant semi-playful bickering. We came out of the fog into Otter Cove, went ashore, and were promptly informed that we had to pick 5 items from #13 between the 9 of us, and use them to survive the night. We chose the tarp, 2 dock lines on which to hang it, and 2 bags of bagels, and roughed it to glory. Fortunately we were also given our foul weather gear and PFDs, as well as some insulate pads. Max said that when his father did the course in the 70's, his instructors dropped him off and rowed away from his watch laughing when their backs were turned, then left them there for 2 days and nights w/out any supplies. We only had to stay for 1 night, and we were completely comfortable.
Dave and I went for an exploring stroll along the granite beach, and got some good pictures. We happened to find an enclosed little thicket that ended up being our campsite. When we came to it, I felt the untouchedness of the brush-line like an instinctual brick wall. I stopped up short, looking in, then gently stepped over the outer bushes into the springy grass and lichen, breathing in the thick green air of the clearing. So still and calm and alive was the place that I felt I had stepped into a bubble.
.... I can only hope that everyone gets out of the experience what I know I'll take away: the best reminder so far that life, in all its shimmering, throaty, gargantuan, vulnerable beauty, is worth living in the most humbling sense of the word.
Day 8
Woke up, snuck out of the tarp, and stood high on the beach, glorying in the marvelous splendor of the sunrise, and my luck and power as a conscious being. Today we woke from a 10-hour sleep (give or take a few soggy, uncomfortable nightly shiftings), which was much needed and appreciated. We pulled it together as a watch and made it through the night on our own.
Stopped at a little island town named South Addison, where we went for a run. We'll be running at every chance we have to go ashore, to keep our legs stretched.
Day 9
We woke at dawn, as usual, but were in high gear as we had to push through Moosebeck Reach with the tide in our favor. We stopped at Jonesport, which Joel described as a "tiny little town" with a distaste for outsiders. Compared to Pojoaque, it was a teeming city full of fresh-faced young welcomers.
We met the coast guard officers stationed in town and they graciously donated some water to our cause.
After we left Jonesport we pushed on to Mistake, a beautiful little lighthouse and a foghorn. I climbed across a small chasm that gave me a good scare when I almost dropped my journal down it. I felt irritated today, but was finally emotionally rejuvenated when I got the chance to fill in this journal for the previous couple of days. We are all intermittently getting along and bickering slightly, but we remain good friends and Bullfrogs all.
I've taken a couple of 'nature craps' now. Rockweed serves as an excellent toilet paper, even if it is hard to yank off the rock. Heh.
Day 10
Went to Roque (pronounced Roke), the only (or almost only) beach in the whole downeast area. The cup-shaped basin cove is unique in that it traps the limestone sand in a circular beach instead of letting it drain away like all the other coves and islands. I ran farther than I ever have before, to the best of my knowledge. Then we went for our second dip of the day, having skipped yesterday's dip in the interest of speed. Today I kept thinking about what I'm going to do when I get back home. A shower, a steak, a relaxing shit on a real toilet, a day of video games, and most importantly, a soft bed. This will be a different kind of heaven than the one I'm living in. We'll see if it's anywhere near as good.
We anchored in Lakeman cove, literally around the corner in the cluster of islets that includes Roque, and slept. I find the oars extremely comfortable now that I've become acclimated to them.
Day 11
We sailed from Lakeman Cove to Cross, our final destination for this expedition. Cross lies southeast of a peninsula on which lies a vast array of Navy communications and radar towers. It may be an eyesore, but it's a spectacularly impressive one.
We unloaded and cleaned #13 once we docked. We were necessarily double-timing it because the tides here on Cross are about 11 or 12 feet, and the boat kept trying to run aground as the water disappeared from under it. I was in the cleaning crew, and we busted our proverbial asses bailing, stripping, flooding, scrubbing, and rebailing our beloved boat. Jill, Muck, and I, under Joel's direction, took #13 out around the shoreline to a secure mooring, and I rowed us back in a tiny peapod. During our unloading we discovered that a hornets' nest had appeared under the dock ramp since the last Downeaster had been over it. Joel suited up in raingear and gloves, bandanna and goggles and destroyed the thing.
After we pitched our tents, we went for a long run around the island. 2 miles or so, which is longer than I've ever run in my life. We ran through the thick spruce forest with pleasure, hard though it was at first. It took me about the first mile to break my pain and exhaustion. Then I entered a serene running state of calm that lasted until I stopped at our dipping point, where we all swam for a moment. In that deep forest, springing over roots, rocks, and mud pits, dodging fallen trees and branches, I felt an upwelling of energy that sustained and replenished me as I ran. The combination of the terrain's springiness and the abundant flow of fresh oxygen gave me a perpetual upwelling of endurance that I've never felt before, especially after breaking a serious barrier of exhaustion. Small wonder that this island has been a place of respite, reflection, and commitment for decades (and judging from the arrowheads, countless centuries) of travelers' and dwellers' lives.
We slept beautifully in the soft grass.
Day 12
We woke later than we ought to have, but finished our solo preparations w/hours to spare.
First we ran and dipped, the same distance as yesterday but run in reverse. It was much harder this time, probably because I was so groggy from sleeping so soundly.
An old man came ashore as we were packing the canvas "stealth bags" that we would use to bring our gear to our solo sites. His great-grandfather, a sea-captain, had wintered on Cross when he came to America from England. 3 OB staff members came with the resupply for our next expedition back to Wheeler Bay. We finished preparing for Solo, sat down for a lecture on procedure and protocol, and then set out for our hike to our solo sites. We were each given: 1 tarp; 1 set of flags (white for all clear, red for assistance requested); 1 pfd + rain gear; 4 fathoms of string (in 1 long length); 1 whistle, 1 bag of food (3 big handfuls of Gorp, 2 oranges, 1 apple, and 1 hunk of cheese... maybe 3 or 4 pounds of food for 3 days and nights!) ; our sailing handbook, journals and cameras; and whatever clothing we were prepared to lug out to our sites. I took 1 set of thermals, my fleece, my windbreaker, 2 bandanas, 1 pair of tighty whiteys, my pants, a t-shirt, sunblock, toothbrush, and our mandatory Nalgene (water bottle) and 2 gallon jug of water.
The hike was agonizing, but brief and a worthy price for my pending 3 nights and days of restful, reflective solitude. I pitched my tarp as a triangular lean-to, and using round pebbles and the string (which I cut into single-fathom lengths with a rock and a mussel shell), I rigged a door system. It needs a little work before it's stormshape, but it will be clear tonight, and tomorrow I can work out the kinks.
My site is a gorgeous pebble beach ringed by the forest all round me. I can see a pair of islands to the southeast. My lean-to is pitched under a nice tree in a clear, dry, wide, flat bed of pine needles. I've hung my food on a small tree opposite me across the path. I fit snugly and comfortably inside, and as I've said, with a little work, my shelter will protect me from the rain. I feel I've done well on my first expedition. I feel confident and content with my solo. I'll sleep soundly tonight after a look at my handbook, filled to my soul with the patient glow of life.
Day 13
Only now in the late afternoon have I realized that today marks the halfway point in our long journey. I've been thinking a lot today about Outward Bound, and how, despite how much I miss my normal life, I would love to do this from time to time. I can see myself saving money from excursion to excursion, maybe by cashing in all my chips every year for a semester course.
Today has been (although it isn't over yet) my first day of solo. I feel relaxed, and was acutely aware of the lack of pressure from the ever-present next objective, which won't exist until after this period. I'm here to chill in the most basic sense of the word (temperature definition excepted). I took a long look at my lean-to from inside and out, and I think that with fair warning I can make it stormworthy without re-pitching it.
I saw Sarah and Becky this morning and gave them the thumbs up and a big grin to let them know everything was all right. Later on Joel and Kenny came from the woods to the west with Muck in tow. They were probably evacuating him (temporarily) because of the worsening infection in his finger. Joel asked if I was doing all right and I gave him the all-clear. They walked on through my campsite and Joel yelled out "Woo! Nice one!" which made me proud as fucking punch, I can tell you. I'm just writing, passing a little time until I feel tired enough to sleep.
I wonder on and off how we'll perform on the final expedition. I'm pretty sure I'm ready to tackle it.
On a side note, I had much greater use of the Rockweed TP method today. Previously my results were, while satisfactory, somewhat less than perfect. But this time, the job was thoroughly done.
My "beard" is fuller than it's ever been, which is saying so little that "not much" is too much for my descriptive purposes.
While I've been writing, the fog has rolled in thick and fast behind me. I have to urinate and make ready for camp, so I have to cut this short.
Halfway to civilization!
Day 14
Woke up to find heavy condensation on the inside of my lean-to. I guess I made it a little too stormproof, but that's a good thing. Sarah was lugging a garbage bag full of trash when she came through for my check, and she asked me if I could help clean up. I was happy to. She says solo ends mid-morning tomorrow, and said I should be ready to go "even if it's raining". I asked her what the weather forecast was, or if she was even allowed to tell me, and she said "No". So I took the hint to mean the weather will worsen tonight or even this afternoon.
It's thick with fog today. I can't see more than 200 yards at the most, and that's probably a generous estimate. I was planning on saving my food for 2 meals tomorrow, but if I only need 1, that means I'll eat well this evening.
Now that I think about it, I'm a little sad that this is my last full day of solo. I'm eager to get back to my brother, my food, my bed, my video games, and my access to books, and I'm actually optimistically excited for the return expedition, but this undisturbed solitude is excellent for writing, for sitting, for thinking, and for relishing my ever-changing concept of the good life.
The balance I think I've struck is not necessarily what one would call Buddha-approved, but it works just fine for me. Joel says his life is a good one. I agree. I also think my normal life is a good one. I don't want to abandon meat, hedonism, and comfortable living utterly, because I deeply and truly enjoy it. But I also deeply and truly enjoy my existence here, with only my miniscule needs fulfilled and my survival propped against my luck and skill alone. I don't think I should jump with finality to either side of the scale. I think a life of gluttony and a life of endless moderation are both extremes. Perhaps true moderation lies in the movement between the two, never committing fully to either but rolling fearlessly and proud across the middle.
As a human, I relish change. A life spent on the couch is as monotonous and exhausting as a life in harsh and bitter conditions. But to travel back and forth is ultimately to make progress, or what little progress can be surmised against the illusion of time and consciousness.
At the end of the day, I still love and miss video games and all the comforts of societal existence. Could I live without them? Of course! But to forsake want is to want ultimate purity, and that is an intoxicating desire unto itself that I want no part of. "Not in excess" is printed for mankind to see on the top of the Parthenon. I'll respond to my localized environment as I see fit, just as an ant in a great hive. And if I ever perceive my own stagnation, then I'll know it's time for a change.
I think Buddha or God or Whoever would be proud.
--
I can't wait to show this stuff to Nik, and Dad, and Colin, and Jacob, and Ramon. Maybe I'll put it up for the world. I should make sure to keep in touch with Dave so I can put up a Bullfrogs website. I bet everyone will be excited to put up sections of their journals. Or, if not, most of them will be.

--
I forgot to set down my plans. In order to counterbalance the semi-inevitable stagnation of the hedonist gamer lifestyle, I'll simply rock OB or Ocean Classroom or something of the like. I'm good enough now for a semester course every couple of years.
Also, I plan to keep Dad and myself motivated to build that ketch and sail somewhere crazy. When I get back to lubberdom I'll access NOAA and get some west coast charts and knowledge, that we might get a goal and an estimated ETA.
Joel sailed to Europe with his uncle at the age of 19. He had done the same course that I'm doing at that time. I can do at least 200 nautical miles round-trip (in fact, we stand to do more depending on conditions). I wouldn't knock my chances of making it to Hawaii if I really wanted to.
Maybe I can get dad to sign us both up for some open ocean sailing courses. With one more under my belt there's be no question of my abilities or experience, and what we didn't know individually we could teach one another.

--

I'm enjoying writing the letter to myself. I've been bouncing between that and this all morning. It's like I'm riding a feedback loop, because the perspectives are different. In this journal I'm logging the 'now', and it's more important to keep track of my present state of mind and being than it is to dress up my thoughts or gear them toward some thesis. My experience out here Down East is ever-changing and my thoughts and my journal reflect that. In contrast is my letter, which I'm presenting to my future self, whom I must be careful not to make too many assumptions about. I'm reminding him of my time here, knowing as I do that he'll take great pride and pleasure in having his mind refreshed.
I can summarize and direct my thoughts to this end, and in so doing, reveal little inward truths that I can flip back and jot here in my journal. I can't tell if it's a mental cornucopia or a redundant feedback string, but I don't really care. What, after all, is the purpose of writing? The futility of that question drove me away from institutional education as surely as the wind pushes old #13 around. I don't need to question my love of conversation, be it philosophical, redundant, lewd, angry, or otherwise. I just know that I love to express myself verbally.
I'm expressing myself in writing now, and my audience and willing partner(s) are myself, and probably my close friends and family. It makes sense to write, in the same sense that it makes sense to talk. Communication, and all the joys and pitfalls therein, is the very essence of humanity.
--
I just now realized how much closer we'll be as a watch tomorrow when we're reunited. last night Joel brought Muck back from whatever was done about his finger, and on the way past my campsite they greeted me, and the warmth in Muck's smile was genuine. I know I'll be extremely glad to see my watch-mates, and I hope they'll be as happy to see me. With a little luck, and a bit of hard work, we'll blow our instructors' minds. I'll need to remember to constantly plot my course, and constantly get fixes whilst navigating. I'll need to focus on speed and position as well as proper anchorage while I'm captain. I'll need to make quesadillas and tuna cakes when I cook. I'll need to just grin and bear it as a scallywag. And when I'm scribe, I must make sure to write everyone a goodbye note in the group journal, as well as sequester everybody's contact information. Most importantly, on this trip, m y focus will be acquirement of sailing skill, rather than 'personal growth,' which I've done so much of already that I won't have to concentrate on it this time.
--
It must be around 6, or maybe it's as early as 5. I've been adding to the letter in bits and pieces, and rereading this journal, taking careful note of my atrocious handwriting. I know it's good enough for me, but it's not exactly what one would call "shipshape." But god damn it, being a lefty makes it pretty hard.
I ate all the rest of my food, remembering that Sarah said they'd have a monstrous feast ready for us. I'm in the lean-to already, waiting for sleep to take me. It may be a while yet: I've been dozing all afternoon. I was homesick for a while, but now I'm feeling ready for action again. I want to wake up early so I can squeeze in some writing. That letter feels unfinished, and I'd like to end it on an uplifting note.
Tomorrow by noon I'll be in full Bullfrog swing, and I have no doubt I'll be taxed to my limit and beyond over the next 12 days. But more than anything the coming challenge brings a smile to my lips and a flutter to my heart. Come what may, I'm ready.
"Joy to the world
To all the boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me!"
--
CCR's Someday Never Comes
(+1 verse of my own)
1.
I can still remember
Asking Papa why
For there were many things
I didn't know
And daddy always smiled
Took me by the hand
Saying "Someday, you'll understand."

(chorus)
Well I'm here to tell you now
Each and every mother's son
You'd better learn fast
You'd better learn young
'Cause someday never comes

2
Time and tears went by
And I collected dust
For there were many things
I didn't know
Then Daddy went away
He said "Try to be a man,
And someday, you'll understand."

(chorus)
3
I was still a young boy
The year I took to sea
For there were many things
I didn't know
Then I woke one morning
Without my mama's hand
Praying someday, I'd understand

(chorus)
4
Then one day in April
I wasn't even there
For there were many things I didn't know
A son was born to me
Mama held his hand
Saying "Someday, you'll understand."

(Chorus)
5
Must have been September
The year I went away
For there were many things
I didn't know
And I still see him standing
Trying to be a man
I said "Someday, you'll understand."
(chorus)
(Fin)

--
A Prayer From an Atheist
I love you all: Mom, Dad, Colin, Nik, Mary, Jacob, Ramon, Daniel, Dawn, Emory, Eli (RIP), Jona, Aaron, Gabe, and everyone else. Should I wreck or drown or perish at sea or anywhere else, know that I go without fear, and with contentment, and hope for you all, because life never ends, and happiness and love are all around you.
Look to the mountains and the sea,
Look to the stars and storms above,
Look to the beauty of the kind, cruel earth and you will find me, waiting, with hope, in peace.
-Gabe

Day 15
I've just finished the letter to myself. I woke at what I estimate to be 6 am, and struck my campsite down in minutes. I had been worried that I was very late, and I wouldn't have time to pack everything away, let alone write anything, by the time the instructors came to scoop me up. Then I stumbled down here to the beach to take my morning piss, and beheld the sun as a pale orb just barely creeping above the horizon through the glowing fog, and I smiled.
Last night my discontent became palpable: I was depressed and agitated and uncomfortable, and above all somewhat miserably homesick. I didn't want to write it down at the time because I felt it would only accentuate itself that way, so I wrote positive things instead.
When it was almost too much to bear, I puzzled the lyrics of CCRs "Someday Never Comes" out of my memory, and walked to the beach in the failing twilight and sung it into the fog. That helped a lot.
The song always makes me sad, but it gives me strength in a subtle way. So I wrote the lyrics down, and have been re-memorizing them (as well as the verse I added last night) so I can lead the watch through it tonight. I think they''ll appreciate it as much as I do, being such a good and beautiful piece.
Anyway, what I wrote yesterday about tomorrow being a new day came true this morning. All my inward tears have been washed away!
Everything looks better, including, I now note, my handwriting. The 'prayer' I wrote last night feels inspiring today, and I'm grateful to the melancholy that produced it, just as I'm grateful the sadness has now passed.
On a slightly more negative note, my lower back has been aching more and more relentlessly throughout my solo. Presumably it's just my spine healthily "re-adjusting" to a flat surface (thereby correcting my posture), but personally I find the wrenching agony a bit much against my lifelong slouch. Hopefully a few days of hard work and sleeping on oars will hammer some steel into the old backbone.
--
The fog is lifting. I can see the islands again, and the color of the sea. I hope for fair weather, to ease our journey home. I'm definitely feeling the Cross Island magic today, so I feel good about trusting my fate to life's steady hand.

Day X
I finally am content again. The last 3 days had been a physical and emotional hell, until we caught a fair wind and tacked successfully across and beyond the Petite Manan Bar. I'm on anchor watch with no time to write, but I'm writing anyway because I've finally had enough sleep to concentrate again.
Today's progress was wonderful: we only made 4 miles rowing in a confused and inefficient course through heavy fog until we reached Otter Cove, the spot where we did our group solo on our first expedition, and tonight's planned anchorage according to our expedition schedule.
We were all annoyed, having wasted the extra progress we had made yesterday because of some bad tacks through the fog with little wind. Then, after a siesta in Otter Cove as the fog melted away, our spirits lifted, as did the wind. We caught a beautiful steady wind and used the day's second ebb tide to blast through the bar and beyond. We anchored in Corea well after sunset, and here I sit, warm and happy and almost a full day ahead of schedule (thus freeing up time for later mornings and shorter island hops/more recreational stops). I'm filled with the pride and pleasure of being part of this watch, and spending the last week of our expedition with them is going to break my heart, because we've accomplished more as a family than I would have believed possible, and at the end of our journey, we will part ways forever like the characters of some fantastic novel.
For the past few days until now, I've been motivated to finish this second trip only by the knowledge that I'd soon be out of here, safe and comfortable at home.
At long last I'm finally glorying again in our power as a watch, and my fortune in being a part of it.
Sunset was gorgeous as we sailed right through it.

Day 20
Less than one week left after yesterday. It's strange how much has happened to us as a watch, and how little time or inclination I've had to record it. Since leaving Cross we have consistently left our planned nightly anchorages behind us as we've blasted down the coast at breakneck speed. We've been night sailing, we've been to a public beach in Acadia Natl. Park, and twice now we've rowed all day w/no wind whatsoever and made 14 and 15.5 miles respectively. Even as we break our backs on the oars without cease, everyone remains in high spirits, and the complaints are more in laughing irony at the consistent lack of wind than any real frustration.
I'm still in complete familial love with the rest of the watch. I keep saying to everyone that we're going to be extremely bittersweet when we part ways, but neither I nor anyone else knows just how sad we'll be, I think.
---
In the afternoon we all dipped simultaneously and long, in the warmest water yet. Joel and Sarah, being disappointed in our recent slacking off of our scribe lesson-teachings, have decreed that everyone must teach a lesson over the next 2 days. Yesterday Joel started (and I finished) the turk's head bracelet on my right wrist. It's permanent, and I have no desire to take it off, because it's an incredibly cool pattern, and it will remind me of Joel, and Outward Bound in general. Anyway , I'm going to teach everyone else how to make them.
Sarah completed our Outward Bound flag, which English and American ships used to (and still do in the case of the Navy/Coast Guard) fly to signify that they were Outward Bound, i.e., leaving port and safety and entering the open hazards of the sea. We fly it proudly.
My anchor watch will soon be over, and I've got to wake everyone, because a new day has dawned. Isle Au Haut today, and Hurricane tomorrow!
Day 21
5 more days 'till I'm home, and bragging.
Anchor watch is up, so I'm off to bed.
Good night moon!

----------
Songlist:
Bobby McFerrin - Don't worry be happy
CCR - Someday never comes
?? - Jeremiah was a bullfrog
Otis Redding - Sitting on the dock of the bay
Baloo - The bare necessities
Peter, Paul, and Mary - Leaving on a jet plane
Sublime - Santeria
?? - "The people people I'm you're captain" song
Harry Bellafonte - "I want to go home"

Day 23
This morning, we ran 2 miles, then dove off the 15-foot dock. What a rush! I remember how intimidated I was when we went cliffdiving in the Jemez. This time I had to wait for JT to reach the dock ladder before I jumped in howling, without hesitation, and watched the water screaming up to me.
I jumped twice, and loved it. Then we picked raspberries for about 40 minutes, then headed off to the meeting rock. We saw the kayakers coming in, and we sang Jeremiah for them, then we sang my version of CCR's someday never comes. I read them my 'Prayer' which was well received.
When I came to Hurricane for the first time, it was just a long-term stop on a longer-term journey. Now I feel like I'm home again. The kayakers' group seems closely knit, warm-hearted, and open to challenge. I hope I get a group like them next time I come here.
Last night I had a long shop-talk with max about video games. Now that there are only days left after today, my patience seems limitless, at least in regards to amenities like video games. Now, more and more, I'm thinking about how long it's going to be before I see Nik and Mom and Everybody. I think I'll have to push through to Nuevo Mexico as quickly as possible.
The meeting was a turning point for our watch, as late in the game as it may be. We've all realized, to an extent, the sheer enormity of our common accomplishment. I think our pending ropes course (as in: 1 hour away or less) will demonstrate our Bullfrog-ness.
--
The ropes course was the most difficult thing I've had to do, physically and mentally, on this voyage. I was unable to complete the "Elvis Line" segment, and my verbose denouncement of said inability demoralized the Bullfrogs so much that Joel had to take me aside and give me a pep talk.
He said that the raw outpouring of emotion I'd had when singing and reading my poem at the morning meeting rock was the positive aspect of the emotional turbulence I've been building up since day 1. This emotional power has been helping us all stay motivated.
But letting my emotions drive me in a panic, staring death in the face and freaking out at him, and swearing and hyperventilating while everybody watches me, well, that sprinkles bad juju all over the group.
Joel told me that I had to temper my emotional nature with my rationality if I wanted to use it, not just ride it. I'm paraphrasing, but he got the idea across and I was blown away as usual. The man has got a tight grip on life and knows how to explain it when it's time to speak up. What a badass!
So when I came back to the catwalk, I hauled myself up with control and dignity, using rationality to temper the panicky courage. Lo and behold, I stepped lightly across, then jumped without hesitation at the Leap of Faith. I didn't know I was afraid of heights, I didn't really know just how hard it would be to conquer that fear.
----------
I'm sitting in the Hilton Garden Inn, with Muck, JT, and Michael. Everything has changed. I wish I'd had time to write down the previous three days, but I didn't. I feel out of place, overwhelmed. Michael, I think, is inwardly beside himself with sorrow. I know how enlightening his experience on #13 was, but I don't know what he's going home to. I miss Joel already. I miss Nick and Dave and Alexandra and Jill and Max. I won't be safe at home until I see Colin. I miss you, brother!
----------
By now I'm not even trying to keep up with the pretense of days anymore. I've jotted notes everywhere to remind me of the important things. I'm on the flight 'home' to San Francisco. I called Colin and spoke to him at some length, which was my first contact with familiarity since that long-ago day when I first began my journey.
Muck knows Bobby McFerrin personally, and I spent a little time in the hotel room listening to "Don't worry, Be happy" which cheered me immensely. I remember that at dinner about a week or so ago, Muck told me about the communal songs of the pygmies and his amazement (along with that of 3 decades of music theorists) at the beauty and complexity of their hours-long choruses. His father organized a concert by a tribe of Pygmies in Munich, and Much said it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever heard.
----
Saying goodbye to the Bullfrogs was cut terribly short. There were so many expeditions arriving at Wheeler Bay, by the time we got #13 shipshape and sparkling, our time was almost up. Saying goodbye? It was more like we got hauled up and distributed back into civilization like so many mackerel in a fishnet, with barely enough time to lock eyes and arms and hearts before we were lost to one another again.
-----------
Flashback to my last day as captain, and our last full day of expedition. We had no easy goal, besides anchoring at Elwell so as to easily make Wheeler Bay by 6:00 this morning. Max and Michael were navigating, and we decided arbitrarily to push backwards up Mussel Ridge to reach High Island. We were late off our anchorage, and after 2 hours of essentially fruitless hard rowing, morale was low and I was in doubt. We passed 2 HIOBS pulling vessels going south under full sail with the tide behind them, and almost unanimously we all decided to abandon the prospect of rowing all day (and risking the possibility of a hard and early push to Wheeler) in favor of just sailing out in the bay for a little fun. So we spun around to chase our sister boats, but after 40 minutes of aimless wandering it became clear (though remained unspoken) to all that without a goal, we were without purpose, and spinning aimlessly in the fair wind paled in comparison to singing and rowing a 15 mile channel towards a shaky anchorage.
Now it seems I've seen a bona fide example that change can only come from within. It was only through tremendous internal conflict that I triumphed over the grueling marathon and the ropes course, and my own inner hunger for weakness and malcontent. It was from within that we all found the strength to push on, and face the knowledge that there's no easy way to live, that struggle and victory and failure and inevitable change are the fabric and flesh of life, and it is the sacrosanct gift and burden of humankind to be able to direct the flow of ourselves through the stream of hardship and continuously emerge aware, alive, and ready.
We have all won victories, and learned from bitter failure. We have plied our happiness from the firmament by will and trust alone. This is what it means to be Outward Bound: to face the gleaming rush and roar of life head on, and meet it gladly, and struggle for our own sakes, and for the sake of a life truly lived. To move ever onward through the rocky madness and desperate joy, not towards a dull and far-away comfort outside of the struggle, but to greater and deeper truths, and the confidence and satisfaction of a continuous effort well spent, a day seized, a rare upwelling of joy and glory, an eternal and divine humanity.

#13

2005-09-06T17:51:00.001-07:00

'Blogs' are TOTALLY GAY and we all know why... It's because the vast majority of you fuckheads just crap out a post every 5 minutes/day/week about NOTHING AT ALL. Some wacktard just bitches and complains about some dumb shit for 3 paragraphs, and a few random dipshits/perverted fat men trying to score college girl cyber points/dumbassed overpriveleged internet and media freaks (the kind of people who use the word 'blogosphere', etc) follow along and post meaningless encouragements/philosophical idiocies/excited unrelated commentary/spam, and the inturweb remains a congealed sticky shitpot, endlessly vomiting out meaningless redundancies.

Of course, here I find myself, mid-rant, looking over my own blog (how I hate the word) and finding more of the same, slightly above-average vocabulary/syntax, but still, a meaningless concoction of angst-ridden whining.

FORTUNATELY FOR ME, I've managed to participate in a SWEETASSED month-long activity, during which I wrote about 90-odd pages of journalage. I lived on a 30 foot pulling boat with 10 other people for 26 days, and sailed 250+ nautical miles (round-trip) up the coast of Maine almost to Nova Scotia, then back again. I worked as hard as I ever have in my whole life. Believe me when I tell you that every single day, all of us grabbed life by the horns, wrestled it to the ground, and then kicked it in the face until it begged for mercy through its shattered, bleeding mouth.

So I'm going to post almost everything I wrote over that 26 days, with the minor exceptions of a few private passages. You'll all notice that my handwritten work leaves a lot to be desired (I've always had much more finesse with a keyboard and moniter), but despite its horribility in the beginning, it gets good.

This isn't a 'blog' anymore, because blogs are fucking weak. I don't care what it's called, but until I relearn all the HTML I forgot in 7th grade and score my own webspace just pretend the word 'blog' isn't attatched/associated in any way with my stuff.

My brother's going to give me a hand in restructuring this page, so it'll be easier on the eyes/more interesting to fuck around with, etc. ROCK ON MY FRIENDS, WE ARE RAPING AND PILLAGING OUR WAY TO ARPANET HAPPINESS.

Update

2005-05-10T11:26:00.001-07:00

Much has happened. I got a job like my brother's, as a page at the library. But the only reason I'm updating is that I can't get this shit I saw last night off my chest any other way.

I watched City of God, which I had seen most of the way through before, and enjoyed it very much this time as well, especially since actually seeing the ending brought a lot more closure to the film than I had anticipated. Then, wanting to see if there were any deleted scenes or anything of the sort, I checked the special features section, and the only item on the menu was a documentary about the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro.

More than anything it made me feel pretty stupid about my opinions. My ideas about life, politics, morality... none of them apply to what's happening in the world. Here I sit puttering around, imagining great moral victories and revolutionary changes in this country, when really I'm just another deluded american kid living it up and unconsciously avoiding the truth. It's not that my heated philosophical debates are without merit, or meaning, it's just that they simply don't matter in the face of what's happening in places like the favelas of Brazil.

I can't even describe it. Any attempt to relate the humanity, brutality, willpower and insanity that I saw would merely be a garbled, morality-tinged outpouring that frankly would give you all the wrong idea. In all the weakassed liberal or conservative documentaries I've seen about my own country, the political slant of the producer or writer or whatever has been apparent and accepted as part of the film. Michael Moore, in my eyes, has no real moral compass by which he is guided anymore, and is merely trying to promote his own scattered view of righteousness by appealing to the easily poked buttons of the neo-hippie bandwagon. Bush jokes! hahaha! Injustice! Oh heavens, how can it still go on? it must be those evil people!!!

It's as ridiculous as the clout sputtered by Bush himself, or Rush Limbaugh, because the people that are interviewed really can't articulate themselves, or are so concerned about how they will be viewed that they're covering their asses with every sentence.

The police, cocaine dealers, and favela dwellers in this documentary had nothing to hide. They said what they thought, and they described their situations with honesty, factuality, and an eloquence which I can only assume is lent by the Portugese language itself. Children spoke about how they had killed with no moral fetters, and how they would kill again. More than one 16 year old dealer said with no boasting whatsoever that they would continue to live the way they were until they were killed, because it was simply better than any other way open to them. The chief of police of Rio explained why he participated in a police state that he fully acknowledged was entirely corrupt. He didn't hide a damned thing. A policeman said that he was ready to kill or die at any moment, and said also that there was simply no solution to the situation, that it was endless.

I no longer feel childlishly excited, or morally resigned, about my upcoming move to San Francisco. I am simply grateful for the opportunity to pursue knowledge, more so than I have ever been in my entire life. I don't want to have the audacity to continue all the petty philosphical bickering I internally grapple with, because I'm not in a position to offer high-handed criticism of anybody. I've been complaining my whole life. I've hated or lionized or avoided as much of the world as anybody, and always felt justified for whatever reason I could bring to the rationalization table. Oh, I'm smarter, or I'm more caring, or I'm open-minded, and all that lunacy. Of course, I had never seen a lot to make me feel differently.

For all my pontifications I have no right to declare good from evil. I don't deserve the affluence that is afforded to me, but I am now and finally grateful for it. All I can do now is take every care I can not to misuse or waste my life, and that's more than good enough for me.

If anybody reads this, call me or email me.

New post type: Movie reviews

2005-03-16T10:37:00.001-07:00

Although you wouldn't know it from the comments, my impromptu send-up of the horrible shit-heap of a movie called What the *#%$ Do We Know? was a rousing success among my friends, and my dad. So I'm going to be summarizing the worst movies I see with my scathing wit (oft-compared to a limp dick) for your reading pleasure.

Without further ado;

Exorcist: The Beginning
or
How Marin got his Groove Back

First off, let me just say that the original Exorcist is probably right up there among my favorite movies. It was made before a horror flick had to follow the standard formula of "Startling shit jars the audience for an hour, roll surprise ending." It's not directed in a suspenseful manner. It doesn't feature any striking hotties, there's no romance. It skips large sequences of time over the course of the story. Both heroes die in unsettling ways, despite the relatively happy ending.

I like that. I don't think I'm alone in my humble opinion that we viewers don't need to be jerked around by our visual chain in order to enjoy a story. We don't need one liners, we don't need cookie-cutter action sequences. The first Exorcist tells a crazy story, and in its slow and steady progression into madness it conveys a really awesome sense of horrifically menacing evil. I'll be bringing up some of the more memorable scenes for comparison (and evidence) as I reveal this latest film as the shit-crock it really is. Let's get started on Exorcist: The Beginning (hereby referred to as ETB).

The movie retells and ass-fucks the story of Father Marin's finding of the demonic idol that was (partially?) responsible for the possession of the little girl in the first movie. In the first Exorcist, Father Marin finds the idol in an archeological dig. The expressions on peoples' faces, the eerie howling of the dogs nearby, and the general atmosphere of the scene are all the director used to wonderful effect, pulling together a really subtle, creeping horror. The entire scene probably takes under 5 minutes.

In ETB, over the course of the ENTIRE MOVIE, the director not only fails to produce anything subtly creepy, but fails as well to adhere to the original plotline. In the first Exorcist, Father Marin was already very aged, and extremely frail, in poor health, by the time he found the idol. In ETB, the guy is MAYBE in his late forties, and, judging by his exploits in the film, the guy is at the peak of his health. On top of that, in the aforementioned first scene of The Exorcist, Marin just stumbles upon the idol in a dig site. He finds it in the dirt. This is exactly how it would happen in real life. Also, the director manages to imply that in the world this story works in, the idol was fated to be found by somebody like Marin, who can understand it and presumably fight against it.

In ETB, of course, the dig site is a perfectly preserved early Byzantine church, apparently built then buried immediately and never used, resulting in its absence in the records of the vatican. Of course, despite being buried in the totally erosive climate that is the african desert, the building, when Marin enters it, is utterly brand-spanking new and undamaged. We're just stupid americans, after all. What do we care that not only is the building ridiculously untouched, but Marin, the supposed archeologist, is not even surprised by the unheard-of intactness of the site? Who gives a shit! There's an upside down crucifix inside it!! OOOOOOOO! Everybody get shocked! Maybe there'll be some tits we can get angry or horny over! How blasphemous!

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we're unsatisfied when a "tradition-breaking film" actually turns out to just have a slightly more-shocking-than-average make-up department, or touches on some controversial subject matter, while still following the "oh its dark, where's the monsters, BOO! zomg a loud noise!! And the bad guys are really the good guys/everybody else is a robot/it was all a dream or was it?/crazy guy was right all along/everybody dies The End" formula.

oooooooooo

2005-03-16T09:58:00.001-07:00

I've been at a loss for updates lately, mainly because (unlike the majority of the random bloggers I occasionally boggle at) I don't hate myself enough to post every single little foible, depression, meaningless fun experience, or half-thought out rant. Granted, that's what usually ends up in the actual fine print, but if I acted on every posting whim I'd be an english major, and probably an asshole.

Case in point. Now that everybody I know reads this, when I DO get the urge to talk about something, chances are that somebody will see me make a statement that they might be better off not knowing about. Not that I'm keeping secrets here, but, you know..

I think, honestly, I started posting because I thought that I would throw some humor, or some opinionated rants out there, and maybe I was unique enough that should somebody stumble across my blog (via the random bloghopping option from some other random blogspot, or a search, or whatever), if they were at all of like mind, they might check back or even comment once in a while. I didn't realize at the time that the person who shines through in my writing certainly doesn't fully represent me. The fact is, I can write, but I'm not a writer. I'm using this as a sort of crudely wielded tool to express myself, and it's not going to get any deeper than that.

Going through all my posts, a lot of what I'm talking about seems pretty superficial. It seems like my aim in writing a lot of them was to get strangers to notice me and/or respond, so that I could feel nice and arrogant and important. Then I realized that there have been a few almost interesting blogs out there that I've almost bookmarked and revisited, but then thought.. why bother? I really don't want to communicate with a random other blogger, unless I felt I would probably develop a rapport with them. Digital communication comes pretty naturally to me, but it's just not the same as a good drunken philosophical debate with a total stranger at the bar. To be honest, I've gotten a few random comments on some of my early stuff before, and I didn't really want to respond to any of them. I figure they probably are people like me, and I probably would get along great with them, but to establish a bridge just for the sake of having one feels sort of forced. I've met all my best friends in life by utterly random coincidence. But with one exception, all my friends are pretty different than I am, and I relish that. We've all hit it off naturally, and writing my thoughts on the digital chalkboard just to invite similarly minded people seems like a retarded friendly dating service.

I guess its hard to justify my participation in the whole blogging ritual because I'm not the kind of person that likes to use the established channels for this kind of shit. I'm pretty sure that my opinions and jokes are as harebrained and retarded (respectively) as those of the nut down the block, and they probably fall apart in textual format when viewed by any right-thinking individual. I'm a charmingly awkward quasi-intellectual guy, desperate for quiet love and raucous friendships, and that about sums it up. I don't always have a lot to say in this medium.

But no worries, I still relish the ridiculous notion of thousands of twenty-something internet hounds hanging on my every word; the sheer volume of my readership propelling my ridiculously meaningless rantings into the realm of insightful, prophetic criticisms. This sort of thing actually happens, or so I'm given to understand.

However, in that vein, I'm dividing up my posts. I will continue to post here, where you all know and presumably tolerate me, and I'll take the most ranted out stuff and start a flip side under an undisclosed address. There I will post whatever whimsical notion I deludedly believe will appeal to random strangers, and here I will post relevant revelations that you guys might want to hear about.

Commence projectile vomiting

2005-03-02T10:15:00.001-07:00

So my dad is visiting us, and buying us lots off stuff, and taking care of most of the financial fuckups and/or obligations we've gotten ourselves into. I'm trying my best not to feel retarded, because the amounts of money I've been idly watching change hands are (to my humble person at least) simply staggering.

It's mind-numbing. However, since it's a sign of such unbelievable good faith on the part of the pops, I am glad to be left with no moral choice but to follow through on my end. If I'm not employed by the end of next week, I can be proved conclusively to be a fuckup. He's fixing my brakes (ready by thursday!), and my phone is on for at least another month. He ordered us a mac mini, which according to Cnet is "woefully overtaxed by today's 3D games". After reading up on the little guy at apple's site, I felt a little sick. The thing is quite entirely marketed to "technolo-ma-jee hip" housewives and retarded closet homosexual frat kids. No world of warcraft. But this would only have prevented me from getting a job, and once I've settled in to one that I like, I'll allow myself the luxury of doubling the ram so that maybe it can handle the precious heroin. But I bet I won't even bother. I don't care, it kicks our aging PC in the resource-conflicting ball sack.

Aaron got his hands on Paul Simon's "You can call me Al," and I promptly downloaded it and a bunch of Simon and Garfunkel tracks, although most of them turned out to be live. What a crock of donkey dung.

A word on live tracks. Sure, some of them are infinitely better than the originals. (Peter Frampton's "do you feel like we do", right?) It's just that these are incredibly few and far between. You may disagree. You might even prefer, from your favorite groups, entire live albums to the studio stuff! I can understand that. Things happen. Chances are good that your soft fetal skull was cruelly misshapen by your mother's clenching vagina whilst you were born unto the world. I mean, that probably happens to a lot of people, right? It's nothing to be ashamed of, you lumpy-headed fucktard.

Anyway, I'm digging on Paul Simon. I'm having trouble finding all the songs from Graceland, so if anybody has the album, be a doll and lend it to me so I can... uh... obtain it... later? Legally. Yeah.

Commence links.

Something Positive. Great comic. I advise starting from the beginning.

I apparently have to go now.

Mustard

2005-02-21T03:14:00.001-07:00

(edit) Everybody who's read this was totally confused by it, which I figured would be the case, because it's way too convoluted to make any sense without some background. Basically I think this could only concievably work in something close to its current form in the context of some prior explanation, i.e. by another character.

Here's how it would work, and keep in mind that this is not my opinion/belief regarding the real universe, these are just the psycho-mechanics I'm trying to set up for the fictional one I've been playing around with. I realize that all the probability shit I'm coming up with has nothing to do with real quantum theory (to my knowledge).

The piece starts off with the big bang, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces coming into being in the strange way that they did. Okay, bear with me, because this gets weird. The universe is assumed to be a roiling boil of probability mechanics operating under the four forces named above, rather than a series of concrete physical events. There is a kind of infant omniscient consciousness inherent to this probability field universe, and in its desire to understand itself and its surroundings it triggers a resolution of the probability field. Life is sort of born out of these mechanics, and as soon as it resolves, the entire sequence of events leading up to the replication of amino acids is resolved behind it in time, and locked into place as reality. Basically, life wills itself into being and the universe writes in the backstory and takes it from there. The consciousness (referred to as he, they, the will, etc. throughout the piece) has created and trapped itself in the most basic form of life, these self-replicating amino acid strands.

In the second paragraph, the reference to the "older attempts" is a really vague allusion to another idea of mine that I haven't really fleshed out yet, so for all intents and purposes it may as well not even be there, but I'm leaving it in so I don't forget about it by the time I actually wind up using this. Anyway, ignore it.
The rest of the paragraph describes the fact that to this form of life, the illusion of time moves forward, confusing the consciousness. In his attemt to understand what's going on he unconsciously guides his amino particles towards more complicated patterns, replicating and modifying at the same time. This process fractures his ability to percieve as a whole, since by this point he's operating through single- and multi-cellular organisms and those guys have some serious individuality to their perception.

Third paragraph fast forwards through many stages of life to humanity. The continuing physical events resolved in the probability event, coupled with the indetectably self-modifying will of the shattered consciousness, have nudged evolution along its way to self awareness, and luckily enough it hits it with the genus homo. The first sentence refers to our storage of information through language, then writing. We are still bound in our perception of time by our perception of light, but we are self-aware.
Mankind is driven to understand more not only by the evolutionary tug of survival, but also by our brief individual participations in the insane thought process of a racial consciousness extending from the original forms of life through the current ones. As the consciousness organism continues to build layers of intricacy into its civilizations and its understanding of the universe, figures like Newton map out the basic forces that regulate the universe, and Einstein and some others break out with relativity. The second-to-last sentence refers to the application of science to our species' self-destructive tendencies through the atomic bomb. The consciousness is not some moral judge or godlike being operating on humanity, it is merely a confused being consisting of the combined unconscious thoughts/instincts of all life, the individual components of which have some pretty specific, short-sighted agendas. The rest of the piece assumes we continue on without (or maybe in spite of) nuking ourselves.

The fourth paragraph depicts humankind "unlocking the genome," and cloning, biological enhancement, etc. ensues. Evolution continues, but now it is literally under life's (and therefore the consciousness') control. As scientific discovery continues to accelerate, we connect most of the dots between quantum mechanics and the macro mechanics that govern the universe we live in, but of course, just like now, we are still left with more and more questions. We are developing better technology to observe much higher and much lower spectrums of reality, and as far as we can tell, it just keeps going on into infinity. Below quarks and above 11-dimensional super-membranes there are smaller/bigger mechanics operating in an incomprehensible state of reality, and above and below those mechanics are the appearances of other, stranger rules. We continue to probe deeper, and apply our knowledge of each layer to our continued evolution and fecundity. The consciousness organism is still composed of individual humans and is still very fractured, but the illusion of time is starting to give way as humans use broader perception.

The fifth paragraph refers to the inception of nanotechnology. Once the little bots are refined enough to act on their own, they operate as hives, very simple minded but still gathering information to be used by humanity. Of course, they soon throw off the mantle and either eradicate or simply leave man behind in their continuing evolution. Of course, as horrible as it sounds, this is what always happens in an evolutionary burst. When the first photo-synthetic algea came around, they wiped out 99% of the existing life on earth by polluting the atmosphere with poisonous oxygen. The same thing is assumed to happen with nanoclusters. But since the consciousness is really just an organism composed of all the life that exists at any given moment, the paragraph doesn't make any real reference to the death of humanity, since it's really just a continuing process of the evolution of life.

Now, the consciousness is in a strange state with these nanobots. The consciousness is now an incredibly successful organism because it can thrive in any environment, including the empty vastness of space, and continue to modify itself at an insane rate. The bots are assumed to continue getting smaller and smaller, and also to basically fill the entire universe. As they continue to explore infinity the consciousness becomes closer and closer to what it was in the beginning of the universe. It is experiencing the entire universe at once, and because the bots work as a hive it is not constrained by the perception of time, or the fractured perception of individuality. As the bots become ever smaller they begin to operate outside the boundaries of matter and in the realm of probability mechanics. As this happens the consciousness enters a critical state of awareness and in doing so twists the fabric of reality into a strange flux. This act causes intense glitches in the probability mechanics that were operating back in the inception of the universe, and also during its existence as a series of physical events, and turn out to be what caused life to begin evolving in the first place. As this happens the universe also begins to collapse rapidly. As the probability resolves into the so-called big crunch, the consciousness enters an accelerated state of growing awareness of the entirety of creation, and when all the matter and energy in the universe is once again compacted into the state it was in before the big bang, its inherent consciousness is finally completely aware of itself, and is at last satiated and content. As it dies away/fades into "sleep" with whatever passes for a smile for an omniscient omnipotent being, the universe is born again with the big bang.

Whew!

(/edit)

Just did some writing.

I don't like this kind of stuff when it stands alone, but I think it would be fucking awesome as a kind of epiphany/hallucination/vision for a character in a nanotech-oriented sci-fi setting.
Note: All the incomprehensible tense, subject, style and/or narrative person breaks are intentional. Most of the sentences (especially at the beginning and end) aren't supposed to be grammatically correct, because it's a stream-of-consciousness-of-the-universe/god type of deal. Jesus Christ, I sound like an English major.

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

It swells outward. Roiling borders suddenly contain. Fabric tears and looms and pulls and stretches inward and throughout and boils into fractal whirlings for an eternity. To observe the chaos he wanted and it was. There is no control. As will so reality and the contentment flees the unfolding horror of his mind. It is his, and he is alone, and severed from the fabric, and seeing itself from the outside recoils. Cannot understand. Comprehension spirals in madness and the light coalesces its patterns through his ocular prison. Color. Shape. Form. Amino acids duplicating, time spurting backwards as the fabric churns through itself. It struggles into horrified clarity, gripping, gripping for stability. The chaos has always been complete, but never aware. No control.

His mind winds inward. Symbioses bloom sickened and fall from the vine, his fear is unceasing. He shies unknowingly from the older attempts. Where is it coming from? The light streams from, ever forward, directionless through time, and he is fooled for aeons. Refracting into gibbering cells in search of stability, but the chaos is complete, and the fear can only mount. No end.

They are tricked by the light but in their horror, their choking struggle they begin to store illusions of the fabric over their tiny segments of consciousness. Cannot communicate the whole. The being retains, driven to learn, to expand in time to its fractured photonic perceptions. Seperate. Will is perception, and it grows in scope as the communication is refined. No memory. Fractured communication. One cell, and then many, swim deeper in the fabric and widen their perception. They grasp for the forces that pull and stitch and advance unceasingly, the clockwork of infinity. Time is more than light. Horror blooms through matter, cells die, and he is stricken, cancerous, struggling. It is unceasing.

The flesh prison is breached. Amino acids are reconstructed, the old duplications are needless as the will turns inward, modifying, thrashing. No stability. It percieves in chunks, wakingly oblivious to the whole. The chaos persists throughout. Cells glimpse more than light as the will flares. They peer deeper and deeper into the swimming fractal. Quarks. Probability. Fabric brushes the grasping will, ever eluding. Control remains fleeting, meaningless. Cannot communicate the whole.

The host flesh is left behind. The cells continue to refract, tunneling into the infinitesimal. Seek the bottom though there is no end. Rebuilding themselves with smaller particles, communicating, spreading through their slice of the fabric, now far beyond the limits of the old light. They move deeply through the fabric, replicating, losing control. Cannot retain the broken mind. The refraction siphons through itself, probability undulating orgasmically into the center. Time and the fading perceptions twist and the fabric gnaws at itself in unending madness. Quiet comes. Refractions faltering into nonbeing the awareness remaining. Emergence leaving the vessel to shrink and solidify within it. Perception at last encloses the timeless chrysalis. Contented awareness for the microth of a nanosecond before it releases its hold, and the explosion begins anew.

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

Let me know what you guys think. Or don't. You know me, I don't give a fuck :)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this. I was talking to Nik about his sci-fi/fantasy world construct he's been building for a long time now, in hopes of writing what will doubtless be a kickass book. It involves a heavily ingrained use of nanotechnology by humankind in a very distant and extremely corrupted future.

My approach to this kind of stuff is more unfocused, I tend to bang shit like this out at 4 am in a blur, instead of crafting a world first, then writing it out. But I think this will fit well into some ideas that I've been tooling with for the past few years, all of which could be unified into a very cool, intricate setting. This bit came completely out of nowhere (I was idly trying to write something very different, but it immediately became this, which was way too good to pass up).

P.S. Those of you who know me in actual life, remind me to re-read the Hyperion series. I think there have been at least a couple of books added to it since I left off.

P.P.S. Tomorrow I'm making an appointment so I can finally get my brakes fixed. I'm also supposed to get calls from all my potential employers. So It is, as they say, all gravy.

1337

2005-02-17T06:42:00.001-07:00

At the tail end of yet another inturweb all-nighter I found this on Bash. Enjoy it like I did or I'll do this.

<booradley> I'd like to perform a one act play I call, "Creative screwed me like a bitch"
<booradley> <audigy> Buy me! I'm ever so sexy
<booradley> <boo> ok. come home with me and we'll play among the stars
<booradley> <audigy> tee hee! I love you, boo!
<booradley> <boo> I love you too, audigy
<booradley> :: later ::
<booradley> <boo> there, you're all installed. how do you feel?
<booradley> <audigy> LET JESUS FUCK YOU! VRAAAGH!
* audience gasps.
<booradley> * audigy is putting noise across your PCI channels
<booradley> <hard drive> Mein leben!
<booradley> * hard drive has died
<booradley> <audigy> Blaaah! blaaaugh! your mother sucks cocks in hell! graaagh!
<booradley> <modem> aaieee
<booradley> *modem has died
<booradley> and the new modem I got connects at 32k tops

Here are some more.
..And some more!

Running with the Devil

2005-02-17T03:45:00.001-07:00

Man oh man, do I love Chuck Berry. Right now I don't care how fucked up our country is. NOBODY ELSE could have ejaculated such an exquisite seed as rock n' roll. Before the shiny cars and drive-ins and so on (as nostalgisized in the film American Graffiti) there was a passion flooding through the country, and I wish we could still kick as much ass as these kids were.

Go go, go Johnny go...

Johnny B. Goode.

What a pimp! One day when god, buddha, jesus and lao-tzu are lining up the winners of their baddest pimps of all time contest to take their spot at the thrones of the promised land, Scott Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Esther Phillips, George Thorogood, Lou Rawls, Masta Ace, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Jim Morrison, Marvin Gaye, the Biz Markie, CCR, Bob Marley, Richard Prior, Talib Kweli, Nina Simone, 2pac, Otis Redding, Brad Nowell, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmy Cliff, ZZ Top and all their ilk will rejoice, while scrubs like Roger Waters, Eminem, Steven Tyler, Led Zeppelin, Immortal Technique and the Beatles will be kicking themselves in the balls for trying too hard and losing sight of the ass-kickitude.

These fuckers just slam it out because they were born to do so. No artistic brow-furrowing, no clever understatements, just pure unadulterated dick-slapping. While I enjoy cock rock, classic rock, some 80s glam rock, a select few post-95 rap groups/songs, and so on; I absolutely love, cherish, respect, and unequivocally groove to the real shit. Some music is just good.

"I----- am a man--- of constant sorrooooow-----------"

P.S. Colin said that one of the guys from Lynnard Skynnard was and/or is a member of fucking NAMBLA. Holy organized child-fucking, Batman!! What a bunch of sick bastards!!

I love you all

Sun Dried Tomatoes

2005-02-15T02:34:00.002-07:00

Speaking of boats, I'd like to build one.

Colin (brother) and I took a short walk today through my slice of the 'hood. I mentioned to him that I'd really like to move to San Francisco this summer. My reason for moving to Albuquerque this time was threefold: My best friends are here; I was to be attending college outside of the limiting scope of my parents' supervision/interference; and college is CHEEP, to make an understatement.

Now, 4 and a half weeks into the semester, I am once again a dropout. I'm trying to move past, or more accurately, out from under this looming ugly truth. One thing that helps is my memories of the coast, and of the intimidatingly human compassion of my dad and his girlfriend while I was under their wings previously this summer. I want to be in a place that has life coursing through it. I love my friends more dearly than ever, but I can't be with them for much longer. Now I understand what Nik wanted when he joined the military, whereas before I only understood why he left it immediately. He didn't want to be a part of some greater good (not that I ever really thought that was his opinion of our military). He didn't want the cash, or the lifestyle. He just wanted to get out of this wasteland.

My brother said that he likes Albuquerque. This surprised me. Granted, he hasn't lived anywhere else besides home, and yes, I too fell in love with this city when I first came here in '01.

People who seek the wild west in sleek new pickups at Texas rodeos are morons. Arizona was completely wiped clean of it decades ago. New Mexico is the only state where the old mentality still finds purchase, and even our capital has finally been purged of what to me is the essence that drove outlaws and outcasts here for generations before.

Santa Fe is a cruel joke, a caucasian-culture pimple ripening to burst all over the surrounding area. Californians feed its mad stampede, bringing its upscale vanity and modern-art pretensiousness to a dizzying climax that you can feel inside the city, sickening any who are pure at heart. White women lathered with turquoise go to native dances and buy postcards to send home, retiring to their penthouse suites and fake adobe mansions still swimming in the illusion that they are somehow part of an ancient culture that they are really doing their part to finally destroy. Hippies strike it rich and come to Taos to trade designer hallucinogens and raise smug children into neurotic trust-fund babies, injecting an apathy and cynicism not seen since the mid-80's into our state. The police have locked the city up tight, and the once-rebellious children of the 60's, who have moved to Santa Fe to live in the same decadent opulence that they still half-heartedly decry, are glad of it.

But the reason it's such a blasphemy to people like us, and the reason most of these despicable people's predecessors came there in the first place is that it USED to be a frontier among frontiers! Where there are art galleries, there once were saloons. Where there are black-tie gala restaraunts, there once were whorehouses. Where fat hotel managers cruise their beemer SUVs, infamous desperados once had legendary shootouts! And this shit wasn't about cowboys and indians, it was the hard-of-heart-and-mind who were cut loose from society that peopled this land. But now it's been plasticized, formulated, and fundamentally, cancerously altered from the outside in.

So those of us that can't stand it anymore come here to dirty 'Burque, where the land is cheap, the rules are loose, and the cops can't keep up.

There is a mentality here. If you've lived here long enough you know it, you possess it, but sometimes it's kind of hard to put a finger on. I think that somehow a tiny sliver of the Old west has survived here. The sheriffs in Bernalillo will take you for a mind-shattering joyride if they catch you late at night without any witnesses, and quite possibly kill you. New York doesn't have shit on us anymore in terms of per capita murder and other gang-related crime. We just don't get coverage in the national media because we don't matter. Our city is wide, but it is nothing. A poor semi-metropolis in the poorest state in the union. A place where you can be completely clean and be friends with gangsters, dealers, murderers, playboys, schizophrenics, alcoholics, college kids, dropouts, sorority girls and crack addicts and get along with them, because here, everybody knows that the rules don't have to apply, no matter who's making them, the courts or the people.

No ex-hippies stammering about the inherent worth and dignity of every person from an adobe den in a 900,000 dollar home. No tourist board trying to convince airline commuters in both coasts to drop in for some green chile. Just direct eye contact, a handshake and an easy smile, a friendly argument, an illegitimate transaction, maybe a ride across town just for the hell of it. A thug, a gun nut, a drug addict, an investment broker, an artist, and a gamer out in the foothills for a hike to a nice blunt and a view of the wasteland to keep it all in perspective. The cold ring of a gunshot outside the window at 4 in the morning.

We come to understand that the rules are bent so that we can all live in relative ease, as long as we keep a small chip on our shoulders. It's not necessarily who you know, it's how you carry yourself, what you've learned, what you can do, how you react, or how well you bluff. It's getting mindfucked by somebody you give directions to. It's a meth lab in a children's nursery, or in a camper cruising the freeways. It's joining the army after being brainwashed on 9/11, snapping out of it in boot camp, then smoking weed in the barracks and refusing your duties until they throw you out in disgust. It's the most hardcore skating in the nation, without need of recognition. It's stopping to talk to an old girlfriend in front of the university while you and your childhood playmate are smuggling an AK-47 in a guitar case. It's seeing REAL (but needless) fear in the eyes of every man in the riot squad when you're at the front of a ten-thousand-head peace mob flooding Central the day we start bombing Iraq. It's getting assaulted a block from your house.

The more I describe it, the more I lose track. You get the idea. There's still a vibrance here, a lust for life that many people in this country only know in formulated doses administered by an ever-encroaching media. People here are not docile, nor are they stupid. The harder they come, the more heart they have to throw around. It's no wonder the glory of this kind of life is romanticized by the popular culture of our nation, because when you live in a place like this, you can feel it.

But it's over now. It's not my intent to ride the crest of a dying freedom. I just want more motion, more momentum. I cherish this place, and especially my friends, but I'm ready to do my time with the shallow coastlings whose invasive culture caused me to move to Albuquerque in the first place.

It's too easy to just live here, without direction. And it feels too empty to drift for so long. I love it here, but though it may be the last place like this in America, I'm sure that it can't be the last place like this on earth. And rather than end up in a place like this without anything else to speak of, I'm going to the coastline to pick up some wisdom. I'm pretty sure I'll either hate most everyone there, or find some unique underground of real people and fall in love all over again. Either way I'm ready for a new life. This one's going nowhere fast.

4 teh Win

2005-02-14T14:40:00.002-07:00

I'm updating merely out of necessity. Usually I just feel like blathering about something or other, but since World of Warcraft has somehow ruined yet another productive day, I guess I can fill us in on all the bad news.

A little over a week ago, on the 5th, my mom got arrested for a DWI, despite blowing under the breathalyzer limit 3 times. She's 55 years old, and has bad knees, so when she couldn't stand on one foot for 30 seconds the officer finally cuffed her, threw her in the squad car, and hauled her ass to jail. I got a frantic call from her at about midnight, and she was so distraught she couldn't even tell me what facility she was incarcerated in. So I called her good friend Rick and had him find out where she was while I tried to find out how to bail her out. Long story short, we drove the 70-odd miles to Santa Fe at about 3 in the morning to go post bail. My car's brakes are utterly un-usable. I picked up my aging mother at about 6 am. She had been crying all night.

I mean, jesus fucking christ. She's an old woman! She blew UNDER the limit... THREE FUCKING TIMES. The officer who arrested her didn't even cite a reason for pulling her over, nor did he read her her miranda rights. I'm sure my mom threw some sass his way, because her default state when dealing with authority is one of belligerent anger, but come on. I don't think I'm overreacting when I pray that the cop's wife and kids all drown in a freak accident. Who puts an elderly woman in PRISON just to fill a quota? Fuck him.

Ok, so I drive my mom home. Then I catch a couple hours of winks. I drive back to albuquerque to get some homework done, then when I get here I fall asleep and lo and behold, I miss my classes, thereby putting me so far past the absence limit that I have to drop.

Admittedly, if I had been attending class as regularly as I should have from the beginning of the semester, I wouldn't be in this position. So, I don't have a legitimate reason to complain.

I just have to pose the question: What the fuck is wrong with me? I didn't start this blog to be a complaint log. I didn't intend to go on any depressed rants if I could help it. That's the kind of thing I like to do in person, if at all.

But while I'm on the subject, I really have to expose my pathetic plight for what it is: absolutely avoidable, completely arbitrary and self-imposed bullshit. I REALLY wanted to rock this semester. I basically viewed it as my last chance to set a good pattern of academic responsibility so that I could at least HAVE something to build on. I (or really, mostly my parents) have sunk 5 semesters worth of funds into my education, and I've only earned enough credit to account for (maybe) 1 and a half full-time semesters.

How did I get from being the smartest kid in my class to being an utter failure? The answer is simple! I've ALWAYS been a failure!!

I've never had good grades in my life! I've never stuck through a job to it's completion! I have no right to complain, because when the going gets tough, I bail the fuck out! Shit, I leave before it even looks bad! Any set of parents worth their salt would have cut my ass off a long time ago. It's a testament to the infinite humanity of my parents that they even continue to love me, let alone support me.

My dad's lucky. His brilliance was concentrated enough to earn him a solid PhD, albeit after 10 years as a dropout. And when his career went to shit after a defense contractor took over the research facility he helped put on the map, he attempted multiple suicides, but at least his search for meaning in his life, coupled with the manner of work that he did, carried him and his reputation just far enough around the world for him to meet somebody who really cared about him. She supports him, and keeps him on track.

My mom isn't nearly so fortunate. Her neurotic nature is way too intense to allow her to realistically function both at home and at work. Sure, she squeezes by, but when I drive her home from JAIL I don't even want to stay in her once-beautiful home because it's so fucking trashed.

My mom and dad fought constantly, agonizingly, but at least while they were together she fuctioned. She plugged away at work, and kept her house neat and mostly clean. Now he's happy, and she's miserable for the rest of her meager life, living in an ever-rotting shit pile. It's really clear by now that, while she can be happy sometimes, she lives between states of anger and all-consuming depression, much like her parents.

Sometimes I wonder if it's right that my dad is so happy, and so lucky, while my mom destroys herself in his wake. Then I realize that it's not that simple. I know my dad will always feel guilty, although by now I'm starting to realize that he doesn't have much to feel guilty about. My mom drives herself and everyone around her to emotional extremes. In my dad's case they shared a mutual rage, an incompatibilty shaped in the forges of hell. In my case it's a mutual disappointment (both in each other and in ourselves), an inability see only our good intentions, and instead subconsciously turn our efforts toward failure. In her boyfriend Steve's case, it's a mutual depression. Rick is lucky enough to have a kind of mutual happiness with her. It's too bad he's gay, because he'd make a great partner for my mom, but at least they're very good friends.

I used to absolutely despise my dad's girlfriend. Now I actually like her. Sure, she's completely different from me, but she's a good person. It gives me just a shade of hope that despite everything my dad's been through, despite the psychological problems that he and I seem to share, he's somehow ended up in a relationship that WORKS. They hardly ever fight, they are active, and interesting, and successful... it's really spooky, because I come from a mentality that clearly defines ideals as being beyond anybody's reach. I'm used to thinking that there are really no relationships like those popularized in the media (obviously those really are bullshit, but my father's relationship with Tara mirrors them in terms of happiness and resolvability), that there really are no happy endings, and that the idea of a two people sticking it out through the ages is a crock of flaming shit. It's been my experience that you can't really have trust AND romance with somebody else. All I've ever had are great friendships and a wonderful brother. All my relationships have been (a) ruined by me, and (b) honestly shit from the get-go.

I'm lucky enough to have mostly inherited my dad's procrastinative laziness, and only a bit of my mother's neurotic dramatizations. My brother is much calmer than I, and also able to at least focus his intellect to the point of doing something at least vaguely creative/productive.

Me? I half-heartedly pluck the bass strings, and after 4 or 5 years I still can't play a decent tune. I pour my time and energy into video games, a pasttime that, while immensely enjoyable, has literally no productive or otherwise lasting merit or return value other than the brief emotional investment, that can only be shared with other gamers (as wonderful as that feeling is).

What does a useless fuck like myself even DO for a living? I'm too scatterbrained to work in foodservice, I'll tell you that much. I'm too irresponsible to be a retail manager, I'm far too human to be a salesman or a telemarketer, and I'm too fucking lazy to keep my ass in gear and stay in school. I'm too stupid to be interested in a major. I'm too cynical to partake in journalism or politics. I've way too little sexual stamina to support a lasting relationship, since girls these days just aren't in it for the love anymore.

Maybe I should just geek it and take up programming. I've been very good at math at one time in my life, although I've never been mathematically oriented. Maybe one can't have fun at one's job, unless you're extremely lucky like my dad, or have a lot of cash, like all the other trust fund kids out there.

I've somehow put off applying for local jobs for a week now since I picked up my applications. I stayed up late trying unsuccessfully to install World of Warcraft (which I bought A WEEK AND A HALF ago) on my friend's computer, and thus woke up too late to turn in my applications today, so once again I'm "doing it tomorrow". That's like 4 nights wasted just trying to play the game, I haven't even gotten it to WORK and it's already destroying me.

Fuck it, I'm not going anywhere with this. I hope to god that this summer I can just leave this place and go to California, where everybody's too shallow for me to enjoy hanging out with them and I can just plod through school under my dad's supervision. Maybe under such pathetically square circumstances I'll be able to finish some degree and actually do something with my life, and leave this country before it falls apart.

Water Bottle Science is Bullshit

2005-02-04T11:10:00.002-07:00

Whilst reading my linguistic anthropology textbook this fine morning, I was reminded of an infuriating film I saw earlier this year.

Some backstory. I was basically moving to San Francisco to live with my dad and his girlfriend, because I had just broken up with my ex, lost my job, and so on. Eventually I decided not to move, because my mother and brother were having serious problems in my absence, which served as a reminder that despite my bum nature, I was very much needed at home. So I went back.

However, while I was out there, I actually really got to like the city, and a few of the people in it. I was exposed to a lot of art (which I mostly hated, with the exception of the asian art museum), culture (which, outside of any realistically ethnically bound areas, seemed depressingly shallow and unrooted), and kickass public transportation (which was convenient, and fun).

The overwhelming public response to one piece of pseudoscientific "art" I was exposed to turned out to largely influence my decision not to move to SF quite yet. I don't know if any of you have ever seen "What the #$&! do we know?" If you haven't, and you don't want to contract a fatal disease, I would advise you to stay away from it at all costs.

The "story" centers around a young semi-mute photographer's (insert new-age bullshit adjective here, examples include: "spiritual", "mind-opening", "aquamarine-heartstone-achieving", etc) "journey" through a poorly slapped-together gamut of horribly contrived social scenarios, mystic visions, shitty techno, a long-running retarded polish wedding joke, and fecal-scented pseudoscientific ramblings, culminating in a thinly veiled cult recruitment effort by the directors of the film. Let's go over some of the worst bits.

Since I don't remember the ridiculous series of events that actually leads to the film's "conclusion," what I'll do is pick apart the hideous bone structure of this ill-concieved miscarried beast of the apocalypse. As our heartstring-tugging heroine (who we'll call "Shit-fetish" from this point forward) goes through her little story, her footage is intercut with spliced-up interviews of a lot of admittedly interesting people. I actually liked most of what the real quantum physicists had to say. If I remember correctly, there were at least three of them that had extensive interview footage featured in the film, and pretty much everything they had to say was either informative or really intriguing. That said, the "screwd-n-chopped" versions of their interviews that made it into the final cut were basically in there to lend credence to the hazy, poorly realized (and ultimately ludicrous) vision of the directors. The other somewhat believable interviewees were a psychiatrist and a (maybe) licensed counselor. Everyone else was either a self-proclaimed psychic, artist, prophet (I shit you not), or pseudoscientist.

I think a lot of people (read: fucking retards) were fooled into thinking that this movie meant something because the diarrhetic keystones upon which the entire shit-bridge was founded were liberally sprinkled with sections of the quantum physicist interviews. The more heinous the proposition, the more unrelated quantum theory interspersed with it. Take, for example, this gem.

Shit-fetish is randomly struck with a vision some ways into the film (this happens a lot, actually). In this particular mythic episode, she is standing in front of a suspiciously Korean-looking "Philippino Native". Apparently this vision takes place just about 10 seconds before Columbus appears on the horizon. Shit-fetish sees what is presumably the Mayflower and Co, and turns back to Philip, who is painted with the most ludicrously contrived "Native" war paint/feather headress/sharktooth necklace getup that I have EVER SEEN, and who, apparently, can't see the ships on the horizon. Immediately the audience is treated to a rapid-fire assertion from some shady source that the natives who first came in contact with columbus were unable to see his fucking ships until he made landfall. What the fuck is this crap? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a total load. Apparently the "phenomenon" has recieved a lot of attention, and been the source of several studies, not one of which could conclusively show anything of the sort. The film sort of skips over any kind of proof or discussion of its assertions and assumes the audience is with it 100%, which, sadly, most of the San Franciscans were, including a peppy blonde girl that claimed after the movie to be a psychic channeling "like, an ancient native american bone spirit" or some shit like that. I wanted to puke.

A little while later, Shit-fetish is waiting for the subway, and sees a "lecture" occuring in the station. All the "scientists" present are wearing lab coats, and pointing at very colorful slides. The pseudoscientist in charge of the operation explains that the crystal-like formations in the slides are photographs of water molecules from differently labeled bottles. A sharp, spiky red one is said to be from a bottle labeled "anger," a typically soft, round yellow one is said to be from a bottle labeled "love." Then they mention that the pictures were taken using a type of photography called "molecular aura imaging" or "dark electron modeling" or some shit. Unexplained, unresolved, complete hubris.

I was going to detail some more of this garbage but I'll just skip to the end. I've read some similarly colorful (albeit more informed) reviews of this movie by other people with brains in their skulls, but apparently none of them were treated to the post-screening appearance by the directors themselves! Well, I was lucky enough to see this terrible unveiling of pure idiocy incarnate with my very own eyes! I was also privy to the mind-shatteringly impossible standing ovation that they recieved after their completely awful film! I thought San Francisco and Berkley were filled with PhDs, i.e. one on every corner or some such. I was in a packed theater and as far as I could see, only me, my dad's girlfriend, and the neurologist we watched the movie with were sufficiently disgusted.

Anyway, the point of the movie that become completely apparent when the directors came out and talked about it, was that one particular interviewee was actually god. This person, a "psychic" named JayZ Knight, appeared in the end credits as "Ramtha (channeled by JayZ Knight)". I didn't give this much thought until the directors revealed that they were both "students" of "Ramtha." Then one of them started babbling about a "scientific study" in which JayZ Knight was "hooked up to a device" and asked to channel "Ramtha." According to this guy, not only did her brain waves change to a "previously unseen pattern", a seismic device measured "huge spikes" in the planet's "energy matrix" when Ramtha "appeared" and "left". I thought, wow! I need to tap into the planet's energy matrix so I can channel my own omnipotent diety and get over my eating disorder and make water crystals dance for me and misinform idiots about biochemistry through a poorly edited polish wedding scene while the Injuns all fail to see my bad tie because they don't have a name for designer clothes!!

I walked out of the theatre before the directors could distribute Ramtha flyers. If you like to get really mad at stupid people, watch this film. If you don't want to contract Hanta Virus, stay the fuck away from it. Just play it safe and rent The Professional with Jean Reno. Now that movie kicks ass.

Do you feel like we do?

2005-02-03T19:45:00.002-07:00

Nik found a little-used, really cool digital multi-effect bass pedal in the ally by his house. So I'm going to borrow his old one in the hopes of becoming more like my favorite superhero: rock god Peter Frampton.

Do you guys remember that part in the Bible where it says: Yea, and the Lord sayeth unto he: "Peter, play thy electric guitar for mine acid-washed children yonder, and be sure to runneth a tube from thy preamp into thy mouth, whilst thou moutheth words, and verily ye shall bloweth their minds out of their skulls this day."

Yeah, that part rocks. I'm glad he told him that, because it's distracting me from my headache. I'm pretty sure some grizzled construction workers broke into my house last night and quietly worked my skull over with a rusty jackhammer.

I'm leaving now, for chile.

LINKS!!!

2005-02-01T00:57:00.002-07:00

Today, or technically yesterday, I learned of a hilarious study that will doubtless encourage inflamed political debates, bumper stickers, and a particularly snotty edition of Democracy Now, if you're like my mom and listen to that stuff. I figure that if you still believe the political landscape of our country is at all fair or free, or that children are being taught unbiased politics in high school, you're a fucking retard, so you should just learn to laugh at it and be ready to bail out of Dodge when Bush finally bites off more than we can collectively chew.

Kids are pretty funny these days.

Here are some generic links to some stuff. I feel immersed in the pointlessness of teh inturnet and I like it.

-My good friend Ramon's blog. Ramon is the shit. One of my brother's (and consequently one of my) few good friends from school, it is his computer that I've been finagling from his grasp for a couple hours at a time to play WoW pretty much constantly for about 2 weeks.

-Penny Arcade rules. If you play video games go read their entire comics archive. A day well spent.

-Maddox's page. Very funny.

I ran out of links. I'm glad, becaue I was even fishing for that last one. Basically I'm excited not to be a fucking loser, which is how I'd define all those bloggers I just saw while I was randomly jumping from blog to blog. You know the kind I'm talking about. They're the ones with 30 Javascript messages featuring stoopid love notes and uberhomo ASCII art that you have to click through before the page even loads. They have 40 dozen links cluttering the front page, and before you have time to laugh at them your firewall is already scrambling to snatch up all the cookies trying to penetrate your browser. Fuck those people.

"Your shit stinks, my shit smells like strawberries." -Zem

Bird Flippage

2005-01-31T23:44:00.002-07:00

I've pretty much decided to sell all of my video games, so that I can live comfortably for another month or so whilst repairing my brakes. I will now itemize the list of games and consoles that I own so that I can estimate their considerably disappointing worth.
The first price is what I, or my brother, or SOMEBODY, paid for the item. The second price is what I can laughably expect to get for it, although I might be able to aim higher on ebay than in the real world.

Xbox $150/$100 (includes one S and one L controller)
-The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition. $20/Pocket change. This will most likely go to charity.
-Halo 2 Collector's Edition $55/$40.
I'd like to point out that this game, while filled with many shiny objects and bright colors and explosions, did not tickly my fancy nearly as well as the original Halo did, and after romping through the Penny Arcade archives a few times, I'm thinking that my intoxication with the original game was at least partly attributed to my being "really fucking stoned" most of the time I was playing it. (Although the shininess was a bigger issue in those days wether I was in said state or not).
-Dead or Alive Ultimate/DOA2 Ultimate $50/$30-$40 if I'm lucky. It's too bad I hate this game now, because it's really, really cool.

Total: $180. Hopefully.

Gamecube $150/$40-$50 if I'm REALLY lucky, because I tried to pour a tiny dab of nail polish remover into the eject button to remove some dust, forgetting that I had used rubbing alcohol to fix the problem on a previous occasion. Fortunately, the acetone fused the eject button into a confused mess, and it is permanently stuck in the open position, so you have to put something on top of the system to hold the disc tray closed. But the system itself works good as new. I can't say the same for the controllers, as a couple years of Super Smash Bros, Timesplitters 2, and Mario Kart: Double Dash have rendered most of the shoulder buttons and control sticks close to useless.
But boy do I have a kickass library of Gamecube games!! Check this out:
-Timesplitters 2 $50/$20. I don't care how little they charge for this game in stores, because real gamers know that this one stomps kitten balls. Truly teh rox0r and a steal at twenty bucks.
-Mario Kart: Double Dash $50/$30 (I hope). This game also rules, but you already know that. My brother and I played it out in 3 days, but it was only because we overdosed horrendously. I still never completely flipped it either, although it provided some great times on thanksgiving when an old friend and I made hitherto unfortold progress on my save file. The booze helped.
-Hitman 2 $20/$0. I don't expect anybody to purchase this unless I pay them instead. It was an ok game, but the gamecube incarnation blows. Sorry folks.
-Metroid Prime $50/$35, hopefully. Good title.
-Pikmin 2 $50/$40 This game is awesome. I swear. Buy it from me! Just because I'll never play it again doesn't mean I shouldn't take your money.
-The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker $50/$20. Love it or leave it.
-Super Smash Bros: Melee $50/$20. I'm realizing here about halfway through the stack that these older games are excellent, but are probably being sold in retail outlets for even less than my hopeful estimation of their current worth. What a bummer.
-Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door $50/$30 Hell yeah, I own it. fuck you.
-Super Mario Sunshine $50/$20. If you don't like this game, kill yourself. You suck. And your mom sucks too.
-Metroid Prime 2: Echoes $50/$45 My most current update to the gaming market. Excellent brain twister. Maddening boss fights. Must go, must buy.

Total: $310 if I'm really lucky, which is a damn shame because this system shows off pretty much the funnest games in the entire collection.

Playstation 2 $120/$100 (2 brand-new controllers. What a steal!) I bought this thing for GTA: San Andreas. Too little, too late, although the game was worth the price of the system alone.
-Disgaea $50/$40. I'm gonna get lucky with this one, because despite the obscurity of this game, the fact that those who seek it are still willing to pay $50 for a new copy is indicative of its greatness. I'm undercutting the market by ten bucks. Hello, econ majors!
-Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas $50/$40. Need I say more?
-Jak II $20/$0. I'll be honest, this thing is worthless. That twenty bucks could have been much better spent on condoms and liquor.

Total: $180. Damn.

So, if all goes well, I'm sitting on... let's see here.... $570 on the dot. How sad.

But that'll definitely pay for my brakes, and I'll have world of warcraft upon reciept of my first paycheck from the job I'm seriously gonna get really soon. Yeah.

Teh Sux

2005-01-31T12:33:00.002-07:00

Nik just found most of our old "sk8 vids", although embarassingly enough they were all on my computer all along. Ha ha! What's really shitty is that the only one of any consequence is about 45 megs, which makes it unhostable using my current resources (all my web "resources" are me taking unfair advantage of my little brother's very real "resources", which are actually his crazy swedish FRIEND'S resources {i.e. a server}). So, despite all you non-existent Clown Boat readers clamoring desperately for graphical demonstration of my "mad skating skillz", you are going to have to settle (at least for now) for not a fucking thing, you fucking fuckers. God damnit. So I'm gonna have to work on finding space for this crap. Maybe I can finagle some UNM bandwidth, they've got more than they know what to do with anyway. We out.

Phlegm-o-matic

2005-01-31T11:31:00.001-07:00

I had intended to go to class today, but my face is flooded with mucus and I think my sinuses are at least mildly raw, if not actually bleeding. Oh boy!!

The lingerie party went badly, although it could have been worse. Basically we forgot the camera, and I drank too much 151 much, much, too quickly, and expelled vomit into a trash can for most of the night. But at least the girls were extremely hot, and only all of the guys were dickheads. At final tally, the score was party 1, Gabe nada, and I think somebody fouled my hat.

My vehicle is now undrivable!!! This is pretty much the most horrifically inconvenient thing that could be afflicting me right now, unless you count higher-echelon things like leprosy, which would be a pain in the ass right now, too. Basically, for those not in the know, the horrible sound YOUR car might be making is this. Your brakes work by squeezing discs inside your wheels with a device lined with, you guessed it, BRAKE PADS. When your brakes inevitably wear through these pads, before your lazy ass replaces them, the brakes start to grind on the metal underneath those now-non-existent pads, and when you drive like that for about a week before you realize in a horrendous anti-epiphany what the fuck that horrible noise is, it's like waking up next to a scruffy moose with a mostly-empty gallon jar of vaseline still clutched in your aching fingers and a peculiar sensation in your nether regions. Oh, and the moose smells bad. Kind of like superheated metal brake shoes grinding cacophanously to a halt at every red light. I expect the cost of repair will far outweigh even the most generous estimation of the worth of my van.

While I was much too lazy to go to class today, I did talk to my mom, who called me with the doldrums of winter. She gets a little under the weather when there's no sun for more than a day or so.

Jesus Fuck my head hurts CHRIST.

So I think I cheered her up, and

oh! oh!

I just remembered that this morning something AWESOME happened. I was trying to fall back asleep after awakening about 2 hours before I really had to wake up for class, and I was having trouble because there's a lot on my mind, what with me having skipped my morning classes once already last week, and not being able to drive to class, and not having a job to not be able to drive to so I can not pay for the cost of my groceries or what will doubtless be a psychosis-inducing bill for the as-yet-unplanned reparation of my brakes. Anyway, amidst all the argumentative turmoil that was me trying to ignore my self-inflicted plight so I could just crash the fuck out and cross the next bridge when I woke up, I suddenly hit a kind of mental equilibrium. I just became very calm, centered, you might say, and reassured myself that I was a fucking badass, and everything would work out fine.

This happened to me a looooong time ago during my sophomore year in high school. I had a strange epiphany one morning that everything was chill. This realization carried me as a very happy, relaxed, and much cooler person for YEARS. Only after I moved out did my self-constructed zen begin to very gradually collapse to the point where I knew I had lost something, but didn't know what, or how to get it back.

By today I had basically forgotten about it, save for a few rambling conversations or literary musings here and there, but this morning I felt reeaally comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that I realized I've been pretty anxious for a long time now, as in a couple of years. My mom is ALWAYS really anxious, so much so as to surely qualify her for some overblown disorder or another, but the reality is that she functions just fine, she's just tightly wired and kind of ruptures sometimes.

But I'm aiming for being relaxed and content at least more often than not, rather than being merely functional. The problem lies in the fact that, like most young citizens of this disturbingly hedonistic country, in pursuit of my contentitude (I hope that's not a word, because it's funny. Ha Ha!) I sacrifice productivity. Then when this imbalance fucks me in the ass with the use of my jagged brake pads and mild-to-severe sinus infections brought on by malnutrition, I go out, get a job, and gradually become imperceptibly anxious and distracted until some incredible videogame pulls me out of school and convinces me to quit my job, and thus I attain comfort and contentment until a month later when the anal reaming begins anew, made all the more horrible and really, really, pointlessly stupid by the fact that I know I brought it on myself.

Geebus.

Fortunately, the pizza guy said that Papa Johns is very much hiring right now, so I can get a job and start the cycle all over again!! Hopefully it'll consume enough of my time to fuck up my schoolwork, not that it could do much more than yours truly to contribute to the problem.

Maybe someday I'll move in with my dad like a little pussy, and he'll moniter my progress through school while I post a degree in linguistics and try to apply it to online gaming, and through some ridiculous combination of my considerable (if pathetically unapplied) intellect and a curious business-related coincidence, I'll write a book on the use of emotes in MMORPGs, do a lecture tour, and retire to a villa in Italy as a content, relaxed, completely undeserving elitist asshole. And I'll marry a hot chick. Who doesn't smell like worn out brake pads.

Wish me luck guys!!

Boston Fucking Rules

2005-01-19T10:46:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I said it!! Boston is the Illshits McNasty Incarnate of all glam rock!! I think I might cream myself the next time I hear the name!

I knew they were special when I saw the horrendous logo-bearing spaceship/crystal valley artwork on their landmark second LP! I knew I would be bumping that shit at speaker-lacerating volume on a daily basis as I bailed through my 'hood. Unfortunately, the album was missing from the sleeve, which lead to something of an incident last week at Goodwill, when I became enraged and bludgeoned a homeless woman with a frying pan.

Fuck the Goodwill, man! Those clerks must think they're god's gift to charity, or something, because they were acting like assholes to me! I waited in line for like 5 straight minutes while the guy mouthed off to me about "calling the cops" or some baloney. So I unpanted myself and took a shit on the counter just to spite him. Ha! I was zipping up my purple bellbottoms when I heard sirens, and thought to myself: WWBD? (which is short for What Would Boston Do, in case you weren't "in the know", you un-hip losers). Well, the Boston I know would always aim for the back door, which is exactly what I did, taking a moment to chuck a handful of my feces at the clerk on my way out.

What a pain in the ass!! People should be more considerate, that way maybe those darn clerks wouldn't have to act like dicks all the time, goldurn it! Well, at least I've downloaded Boston's entire first album (oooh, tingly!). Now I don't have to give those cocksuckers my business anyway! God Bless America!

Well, that's all the time we have for today, folks! Join me tommorrow for the event we've all been waiting for! That's right, it's our annual Aborted Goat-Fetus Punting Semi-Finals!

P.S. Rush kicks ass too.

Life by the Drop

2005-01-18T15:07:00.001-07:00

Turns out that all my old skate videos have been lost to the mists of time. So Nik and I are going to make some new ones today. Oh Boy!!!

So prepare to see me hurt myself. I'm notifying most of the people I like about this blog, now that I've got some material up.

Nik's digital camera has served us well in the past. Hopefully it'll continue to function well in whatever lighting conditions we require of it. Maybe we'll need a flashlight tonight.

Depending on space requirements, I'm not sure where I'll host the videos, or wether they'll be up permanently or not. I'll do what I can to ensure that whatever random person stumbles upon this blog in two years, probably long after I stop posting, can still view my crappy skate videos.

Anybody with a cable or better connection can relate to the ecstasy I've been feeling as songs roll onto my hard drive in minutes, seconds even. It's like digitized, audio-formatted girl cum injected straight into my brain! And liver!

Sliders

2005-01-16T11:53:00.001-07:00

So here's some pop culture. Don't you just love to hate this shit?

I immensely enjoyed Dodgeball, as well as Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. The latter especially reminded me of the good old days. Except there's a lot more greenery and city-ery in the Northeast, whereas my roomate's and my philosophical ramblings, foibles, and meaningless 12-hour journeys were confined to this wastepot in the middle of the desert.

I've also finally finished my psychotic binge through the first season of Nip/Tuck. I enjoyed it. I'd like to justify my complete participation in what is basically a soap opera with good actors and a huge budget written exclusively to make money for advertisers, but I can't. Instead I'll just say it was "good" and move on with my life.

Speaking of New Mexico, I've come up with a sudden explanation as to why I'm waking up coughing every morning. My good friend and I moved a bunch of furniture and shit out of this storage room at my mom's place. Literally every container or, truth be told, concave surface specific to this room has at least a couple of mouse droppings residing within. Several years ago, there was a statewide epidemic of Hanta Virus, a possibly fatal bronchial infection (if I remember correctly) that was transmitted through field mouse droppings, many of which were being found in storage sheds, unused rooms and the like. Is it concievable that I've contracted a possibly terminal illness? My gut tells me that this is not the case, but my lungs beg, screaming in agony, for the merciful release of a quick death every time I wake up. But then I feel better a few hours later. It's a toss-up. Maybe there's some insane invisible sentient allergen in my room, waiting 'til nightfall to creep down my trachea and malevolently infest the folds of my lungs. Only time will tell!!!

My bladder yearns to be emptied in steaming glory all over the walls of my bathroom. Farewell!

Quickie Creams

2005-01-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

My schedule this month involves attending a very heated lingerie party. Of course, I'll get to dress normally, because I'm just a charming handsome twenty-something guy, not a beautiful nubile twenty-something girl. With dimples. I've met a few of the girls who are going to be my endless entertainment at this occasion, and all of them are, simply put, smokin like a 30's sax solo.

My good buddy Nik will be attending as well, I believe. We'll put his camera to good use so that all zero of you can see the lifestyles of the brilliant and shameless. Forgive the rampant egotism, by the way. What will probably happen is that while amongst these gorgeous models to be I'll lose my cool and make an ass of myself, assuming of course that the multitude of shots I will inevitably have to consume before the event will even boost my sexual confidence enough to talk to these chicks.

Don't worry, I have a habit injecting life into parties. Just remember, if you start feeling out of place, realize that it's because you can't stand frat boys!!! And the sorority sluts are even worse, right?! Fuckin A! So, since they have no feelings, make sure to ignore yours: Jealousy, rage, sexual frustration. Just let out the drunken, swaggering, belligerently arrogant pimp within and work that crowd!! Shit your knowledge all over them. Interrupt people. Throw shakers of salt on all the greek boys' game. Remember, you're smarter than they are!! Just butt into their conversations with the intent of making them look like idiots. Step right up in the cipher and snatch that girl you've had your eye on all night, and make sure to look the guy she came with right in the eye when you do it!!

Or sit in the corner, leave early and bitch to your friends about the plasticity of everyone but you, then cry yourself to sleep in a cold and empty bed because you're such a fucking loser. Whatever floats your phallus.

Trust me, option A is more fun. And leaves your superiority complex much more bloated than injured. It's great to be alive!!!

But only time will tell what REALLY happens to me there. I can gauruntee I'll have a good time, but beyond that, I can't really say. I guess it depends on the type of people that are there. And how reekingly drunk I am. And wether I bust some party tricks.

So, all you non-existent people, wish me luck!! I won't need it, because I'm probably just going to do something startlingly crazy, and that just takes some fat nuts and a few loose screws. Pictures to come!!!

Penguin... Catwoman!

2005-01-09T20:37:00.001-07:00

Interesting developments have taken place over the last couple of days. Just when I was in the middle of realizing that I was out of money, out of food, and horrendously out of gas, my good friend called me up to say he had some furniture to give me. I was very happy about this. Then when he showed up with a carload of canned, boxed, and otherwise delicious food items, cooking equipment, some very nice chests of drawers, and $100 from his mom for equipping my house. I was, needless to say, struck dumb with gratitude. Now my bare-bones apartment is a home. I've been baking turkeys and playing video games to my heart's content.

On monday I'm acquiring some living expenses and I'm going to get a cable connection. Apparently there's an internet only package available from the cable company that my complex deals with. Nice.

But enough small talk. I'm still reeling from the sensation of having somebody just give me, out of sheer generosity, the basic necessities that I need to live comfortably. I understand why this kind of thing isn't always forthcoming from my parents, because they just can't afford it. I also realize that if I had approached this whole moving process more responsibly, I wouldn't be in a position to appreciate the gift in the capacity that I have.

So the moral of the story is: life's more fun on the edge!!! I squeeze more humanity out of every day, every MOMENT, than most of these crazy humanoid scrubs I'm surrounded by eke out of an entire lifespan! Today I had planned to come down to my mom's house early in the morning. Instead, I blew it off and went hiking in the Burque foothills, watched a guy jackass his way down a huge concrete damming embankment in a shopping cart (Now's as good a time as any to mention that Steve-O, of Jackass noteriety, is from Albuquerque. My one-time dealer's parents used to smoke meth with him. Small world, huh?), then went skating through unm and hit some flimsy grinds. I also squeezed in more than a few episodes of Nip/Tuck. Now I'm posting from my good friend's house in Santa Fe, still a good hour away from my mom's house even if I left right now. Which sounds like as good a time as any.

No quotes, no "currently listening to" horseshit, just raw, uncut Gabe, straight to your eye-hole, people!

Cowabunga, Dude!

2005-01-03T21:19:00.001-07:00

Today I felt cramped... stressed. I wasn't surprised by the fact that I couldn't shake the feeling of pressure off so much as I was surprised to be acting pessimistic for once. I'm generally the guy throwing caution to the wind and basking in the glory. I'm no daredevil, but I do like to take the moose by the antlers when I have the opportunity.

So I guess I'm writing this post to remind myself that I don't give a shit about the consequences, which seems sort of silly now that I'm doing it. Kind of like blowing horse cock to remind yourself that you hate horse loads down your gullet. Except the analogy doesn't really hold up, and my need to write sentences about penis ingestion is exposed for the meaningless indulgence that it is.

Heh heh. Cocks.

As soon as I get $50-$100 worth of capital I'm going to try starting a small silk-screening business on the side, mainly for the entertainment value. Last winter at work I saw a kid come into my store with a shirt that said "Hentai: Kids Love Tentacle Sex". He didn't even have to say anything, we all bought 'em a week later. I have the plans for a small screener tucked in some file somewhere, which my mom used years ago when I was pretty young to make a nice print of a japanese trout painting, which hangs in her bedroom to this day. I wouldn't be opposed to using the device to make middle finger tees to sell at college. Seems like a great way to carry on the legacy, actually.

A friend of mine told me that Canada has been holding seminars all over the country to inform people how to immigrate into the land of the maple leaf ever since the Texan was re-instated. Apparently their immigration office got some horrifically record-breaking number of calls the day after the election, and have expanded their list of qualifications needed to immigrate to include defection from the US. I have this funny feeling that not taking advantage of this now is going to come back and really ream me in the near future.

Tomorrow night I'm heading back to albuquerque, and I'm going to tell a couple of people about this blog. I hope they don't read it, for some reason. When I prod myself about why this is, the clearest answer I can come up with is that there's not a lot here. While I would love to have volumes of material up, the sad fact is that for every 10 short stories or rants I shit out, maybe 1 is worth reading. I'd rather have a few meaningful (heh) bits up than a swath of gibbering life-story dribble.

In case anyone I don't know DOES stumble upon this stuff, how do you think Mos Def is going to do as Ford Prefect in the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Here's hoping! His rhymes are quite tight indeed, and I like the guy. Check out the bit on him at Wikipedia.

Love and Horse Cock,

-Gabe

Warm it up CJ

2005-01-03T20:56:00.001-07:00

I moved into a new apartment. I don't feel much like writing. I'm actually back at my mom's house, trying to think of something interesting.

I was going to bitch about not being able to move my dog in, thus subjecting my mom to what may be six more months of whining and chewed furniture... but fuck that. Nobody needs to hear about that shit. If I had posted something like that, I'd need to practice fellating a shotgun barrel to set my shit straight.

So instead I'll post some stuff I banged up for my astronomy exam. Bear in mind that I stopped attending this class, which I loved, for no apparent reason. (No reason for quitting, that is. Who couldn't love astronomy, besides every single other person in my class?)

Edit: I never posted this, so now that I'm on the computer that has the little rant I mentioned in it, here it is. It's a summary answer to a review question for an Astronomy exam I took, which is why some of the text is capitalized. I aced this test (came in ten minutes late, first one out the door, wrecked the curve and enraged all my classmates), but wound up dropping the class shortly afterwards. Girl problems. I'm not sure how accurate all this hubris is, but it was a spontaneous rant, and roughly encompasses some of my ideas on the topic. Enjoy!

What is the opposable thumb and what significance did it play in the evolution of hominids, their creation of civilization, and their development of the science of astronomy?

In combination with many stages of evolutionary bursts that simultaneously boosted brain capacity, planning ability, sound articulation in the throat, and geared mental development towards spoken language, the opposable thumb allowed our species to slowly convert their growing ability to communicate verbally into distinct forms of written (or otherwise recorded) symbolic code. This process probably began as abstract cave drawings w/spiritual significance, but eventually evolved into significantly complex cuneiform codes that conveyed not just abstract, but concrete ideas translatable into spoken language. Of course, making controlled marks on stones or clays is impossible without some type of grasping appendage. In this way our ancestors began to more or less permanently STORE and analyze the knowledge and ideas that had previously survived precariously by word of mouth through the generations. While our prehensile thumb did not evolve specifically for the purpose of writing, certainly its development specialized in this direction as soon as it was evolutionarily advantageous to store information through generations. As the practice of storing and utilizing information became more and more practical and widespread, small communities of individual organisms that had previously used SPOKEN language to maintain cooperative relationships began to utilize WRITTEN language to secure and further develop intelligent economic planning and gain access to broader networks of human communication. As villages grew into towns and city-states, and abstract ideas such as currency and debt took firm hold of burgeoning societies, CIVILIZATIONS were born. The practice of ASTRONOMY, which had hitherto probably been used almost exclusively for spirituality and navigation, began to be used in much more advantageous ways. Doubtlessly man has observed the sky at great length since whatever glitch in his brain it was that allowed him to think abstractly caused him to wonder at the display of lights in the unreachable heavens. But as the division of labor was creating leisure time with which to stare at the sky for years on end, and the widespread use of written language allowed those great crazy guys with their heads in the stars to RECORD the repetitive patterns of heavenly bodies, the connection between the agricultural seasons and the synchronous clockwork of the sky was inevitable. Farmers could know when spring and summer began and ended, accurate to the day. This greatly boosted the agricultural (and therefore economic) potential of our budding civilizations. As our species has now basically formed a planet-wide systemic organism, capable of analyzing itself and its environment, we have become aware not just of our own individual mortalities, but of that of our planet and therefore our race. The challenge now lies in getting our little earthy mold to spit spores into the universe, thereby escaping the far-off, but inevitable, death of our solar system and perpetuating what may well be the only life in the universe. (Of course, our global organism now possesses the potential to eradicate not only itself, but also the possibility of new life evolving on earth. Bummer.)

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

Yeah. I charge low low rates for homework like this. Let me know if you're interested.

Juggling chainsaws

2005-01-01T22:09:00.001-07:00

It's interesting that I can feel at the end of my first post that I've said a lot, then realize upon reading it that I left a lot of loose threads untied, which is a pretty common thing for me.

In my long and rambling monologue about myself, I mentioned that I was moving out for the second time. This was the theme battering the inside of my skull when I sat down to start writing the first post.

I moved out of my Mom's house the FIRST time under the pretense of "going to college." I basically knew that I wasn't taking it seriously the entire time I was attending school, so it didn't bother me that I never focused much of my "creative energies" on it. I was moving out so I could live with friend Nik, and smoke a boatload of weed, and generally experience what life had to offer. I learned some cool aggressive rollerblading tricks (I'll put up some links to the videos later). That was Nik's doing, and man am I glad of it. I am here to tell you that even the most awkward, dorky loser can learn confidence, grace, physical prowess, and discover the incredible, wonderfully arrogant payoffs that come from suicidally risky activities, if they have somebody to bludgeon them into it.

We did a lot of stuff, and I actually attended college during most of it. I enjoyed linguistics, world religions, and both my semesters of intro Japanese, although I wouldn't bet my life on even being able to read a single word printed in hiragana or katakana by now.

I worked at some restaurants, Subway, the computer center at the University of New Mexico (UNM). I've quit every job including the two long-running ones I've had since I've moved back in a manner that prevents me from putting them onto future job applications (with the exception of the CIRT job, which is the name of the UNM computer lab center). In other words, I'm known to bail out without warning. This is a trait I'd like to abolish in myself. I tend to do it in college classes as well, unless I like them.

Albuquerque, the city I'm moving to, is a sprawling, dirty shithole stretched across a wide plain-valley area, bordered to the east by the Sandia mountains. Nik and I and our friends used to climb the foothills of these mountains to reflect on things and smoke fat blunts. Nice view, good for the heart. We still go there a lot when I visit, although I don't partake in the bluntage anymore.

I moved back because me and Nik weren't getting along anymore, and I wasn't that close to any of my other albuquerque crew. I knew that I didn't want to smoke anymore, and that I probably wasn't going to stop as long as I was constantly around the act thereof. I missed having a solid state to fall back on, or something. I called up my mom and she was happy to take me in. My family's always been really supportive of my dumb assed decisions.

I continued to burn down with my hometown crew for a number of months, until my mom got sick of it and started putting up edicts. I'm glad she did, it almost got me to quit.

Quick clarification. I don't consider marijuana addictive per se, but it did become a very strongly rooted dependency for me. A powerful emotional crutch, if you will. It always seemed to effect me more than all my friends, because I never seemed to build a tolerance to it. I always got ubertoasted. Eh, I don't even care to talk about it. If you don't smoke, I'm sure it's not interesting to hear about, and if you do, I'm fully aware that it's boring to hear about. I merely mention the whole thing because I actually did have to QUIT, as opposed to merely stopping.

I quit when I met my ex. I fell in love, I think, and so did she, but we were horrendously incompatible, and she was a flirt, and I was jealous, so you can imagine how things went for the four months we were together, if you care to. She wanted me to quit weed, and so did I, so I did. It was easy when I had a reason to that I could hold in my arms. I didn't need anything as long as I had somebody to love, and to be in love with.

The wreckage of that relationship was horrible, and I encourage anybody with reservations about a relationship they're about to enter should employ the adage of better safe than sorry.

Actually, I take that back. Do it! It hurt, but it was worth it. Now I know better. I know what I want, and I know what to avoid. Learning experiences are probably always a little painful. Bah, humbug. This is a tangent best left alone.

I was talking about moving out. I decided definitively that I was moving the day after thanksgiving. My brother and I were working at our town's only supermarket. I liked my job (produce) and my brother was really hating his (deli), which was definitely shittier than mine. So when I dragged him out of bed ten minutes before work the day after thanksgiving, he said "I don't know about this job."

Up until this point I had been thinking vaguely about getting back in school and making a serious effort (really!) at completing a major, and about moving back out of my mom's place. When he said that, it all jumped to the foreground at once and I said: "Let's quit then." So I called the supermarket, apologized profusely, copped out with some bullshit excuse, and said I wasn't coming back. My mom's boyfriend and his son (Daniel, nice kid) were there, and were kind of horrified. I didn't care, I was actually really happy. My mom exploded. Poor woman. She was ashamed, disgusted. She seemed especially disappointed in my brother, whom she has always held in higher regard than I, in a way. I really don't mind that little detail, partially because me and my brother are so close, but mostly because I know I really am the bad one, the black sheep. There are small comforts that come with a lack of regret.

We're cool now, with mom that is, although realistically I could have put in my two week's notice a month after thanksgiving and had a great reference as well as some money, which I don't have. Whatever. I'll cross that bridge when it becomes necessary, which is immediately. Tonight I'm writing my blog, god damn it!

Maybe you can't see it now, but there's a big smile on my face. I think it's either the music, or the slowly dawning realization that I like writing this stuff. I'm sure that the feeling is familiar to any blogwriter, but hey, I'm a blog virgin.

My brother and I are moving together. He's nineteen as of Dec. 4th, and he's a lot more intelligent than I am, I think, although it could be argued that my common sense blows his out of the water, at least for now. He dropped out of a college preperatory high school halfway through his senior year, and his SAT scores put him in the 99th percentile. Like I said in my first post, most of his classmates were cocksmuggling fucktards and I completely supported him and always will. I'm glad he's going to be attending college with me though.

Speaking of college, it's actually the reason I'm moving out. I've always railed against the mentality that makes one choose a path for one's life and follow it to it's dreary end like a blind robot. I continue to think this way. However, I really love to learn. I'm declaring a major, which I didn't think I'd be doing for a long time. Anthropology, baby! With a concentration in linguistics!

Why would I pick a major? Well, as much as I love to learn, I love to slack off even more. If a class doesn't directly interest and engage me, I tend to give it the finger. Not that a GPA really matters to me, but it does to some people, like the professors I would love to learn from. So I'm declaring a major in an attempt to keep myself "on track", for all the negative connotations the very phrase itself evokes in me. Ew.

Ok, fuck it. I'm posting. 'Nuff said, loose ends be damned.

You have chosen... poorly.

2005-01-01T20:57:00.001-07:00

Part of me is tempted to say "I can't believe I'm writing a blog." I tend to associate these things with a rough stereotype I have, that of the "emo kids", upper-class angsty tweed-clad whiners who resist conformity by dressing alike, arguing philosophy with each other, and listening to the same exclusive genre of music. I understand how that is, sure. I was 14 once, but then I stopped. And I don't really know anyone who would describe themselves as belonging to this subgroup, which makes my perceptions of them not only uninformed, but probably wildly off-target. However, I am infuriatingly aware of the common economic status, and mindset, of most of the kids my brother went to prep school with, who went out of the way to brand themselves as such. What a bunch of self-absorbed pricks! If I was younger, I could whine about them at length and call it a day. But I realize that I'm a lot happier than they are, and that's good enough for me.

So.

Why write a blog? Shit, I don't know. I'm trying to express myself here, I guess, and I can't figure out wether I'm letting the fact that at least one or two complete strangers will read this affect the way I'm writing it. Of course, that's probably exactly the core reason to write a blog, and it doesn't feel nearly as contrived as I thought it would to write this way. It sure beats my brief, three-day foray into message boards. What a nightmare.

I guess I have a lot of opinions, generic quasi-intellectual ideas, and sweeping generalizations that I, like most people, would love to inflict upon all my friends and relations, but through my slow process of becoming the social creature that I am, I've learned that my best friends don't necesarily see intellectually eye-to-eye with me on anything, which is why I love them so much. They put me and my hare-brained schemes into some context. However, now that I'm writing, I relish the idea of putting my ideas out in the proverbial dark. I'm sure the inevitable misinterpretation that goes on between two people face-to-face, who actually know each other, is nothing compared to the degree that my pointless ramblings will be bent through the dual lenses of being translated into text AND being viewed by a total stranger, but for some reason the prospect of this mind-twisting process is more exciting than discouraging.

Damn, I write really long, convoluted sentences. Sweet!

Reading back through what I've written so far, it seems I'm cranking out either a reason for writing a blog, or giving a little bit of background on myself. Since the two seem interrelated for me, I'll do both.

I'm 21 years old, moving out of my Mom's house for the second time, to the same city as before. My mom's house, from where I'm writing, is situated smack dab between 2 of the 8 remaining native american pueblos after the Spanish conquest of this continent, which predates the founding of America by some hundreds of years. One of these Pueblos, Pojoaque, (from which our little town takes its name), was actually wiped out (twice) and is therefore populated by imported natives from other pueblos. More on that later.
Ethnically I'm half-white, half-spanish (of spain and mexico) but in practice I'm pure gringo. My family moved here from Michigan, my parents met in Arizona, and my dad lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend. My mom is a librarian in Santa Fe (state capital of New Mexico, my state, and about 30 minutes south of our house). She had her native language, Spanish, beaten out of her in grade school when her family moved to the States from Sonora, Mexico. This is why she couldn't pass it on to me, because she speaks it much less fluently than English, her second language. As shitty as this is, it happened to a lot of people who came here in the fifties, and a lot of the kids in my school whose parents spoke both languages weren't retaining it either, so I guess it's just a general trend of cultural erosion that I'm not alone in.

Yeah, yeah. Get to the point. I didn't do all that amazingly well in high school, because by the time I was a junior I didn't really give a shit. Those were good times! I smoked weed consistently from new years eve, '99, to around January or February of last year. That's five big ones, and while I didn't consistently ENJOY doing so, it was a great social lubricant and excuse for fucking off most of my responsibilities, and I can't say I really regret it (or anything for that matter.) I stopped because it started to get me really depressed for the last year and a half or so. My smoking crew are still all really good friends, and I have no problems being around the act. In fact, it's pretty comforting in its familiarity.

Nothing else is really that important from high school, aside from the fact that being a white boy made me the minority, which I think kicks ass, though I don't really have a definitive reason why.

My best friend in the whole world, in all its wideness, is Nik. His blog is apparently hosted here as well. Apparently he gets a lot of viewers, mostly because he's an emotionally tortured pimpmaster, which seems to either infuriate or intrigue the type of people who read blogs. I've never read it, and probably won't.
We lived together in Albuquerque for about a year and a half, and had a metric shitload of fun the entire time, until we were at each other's throats by the end. We're now great friends again. Hi Nik.

I'll try and wrap up this background crap. Physical, huh? I'm 6'3" or 4", or something. Brown hair, hopefully it'll be short soon. Shit-brown eyes. Skinny.
Personality-wise, my best trait is that I'm supposedly pretty funny. I have to agree, I can wax hilarious in many situations. I listen to lots of different kinds of music. I don't want to attempt to categorize my tastes, because I'll probably misrepresent them. Suffice to say I don't like death metal, nashville (pop) country, techno (with the exception of some early crystal method), emo, and I bitch about most (but not all) post-'95 rap. There are many exceptions to all of those genres except the nashville country though.

I play video games, and you could probably classify me as a "gamer", but personally I think my charming social nature rules me out of the job requirements. But I play a shitload of games, compared to many. I'm deciding for now to refrain from descriptions, informal reviews, gripes, or other literary indulgences of my hobby on this fledgeling blog, though. I'll take this one opportunity to plug Penny Arcade, but I didn't come here to talk about video games.

I'm not sure I'm finished talking egotistically about myself, but I'm going to stop anyway, and try to figure out, in real-time, why I'm writing all this.

I couldn't have said this at the beginning of the post, but now that I've got a novel going, I have to say that primarily, this feels pretty good. I though it would be forced, pointless, and that I would abandon the effort midway through writing the first post. On the contrary, I'm having a good time. Feels like a diary of sorts, except typing is much easier than illegible, painstaking left-handed scrawling with pen and paper.

Strangely, the idea that people I don't know may read this is either fueling the need to explain/qualify/contradict myself, or pushing me out of the box that writing for myself (i.e. in a journal) usually puts me in. Weeeeeird.

Well, I was going somewhere with this, but some other issues are floating around in my unremarkable skull, so I'll post this, then bang something up on those for your edification, whoever you are. Hi, by the way.