Touch

We all need to be touched. It feels good to be touched. I remeber the hugs my grandpa used to give me. He would wrap his huge arms around my little body and pull me into his happy old man belly and squeeze until we were both lost for air. When the hug was over we would gulp in air with open mouths and smiles. I miss my grandfathers hugs.

Or those hardy handshakes from old friends that last for minutes with out stopping.

When i hug my grandma i bend way down and gently imbrace her, carefull not break her in half. then comes the kisses on the cheeks.

And dancing. Standing close...so close and rocking back and forth--together. Laying my head on top of hers, while her face is snug against my chest.

Or like tonight, in the cold of a winter night, with the moon shinning in the fog, after friends share a friendly moment and share a hoakie but heartfelt group hug.

Peting my cat.

Accidentally bumping into a girl you have been waiting so long to touch on purpose but never had the courage.

Wrestling with friends...

Turkey Day...er, Ham Day

I had a good time this Thanksgiving Holiday. The parental units came up wednesday night and took me down to Marysville. It felt really good to get out of Bellingham. Thier house was warm and comfortable and the best part is, i was able to hang out with my soul mate...my cat, Tiger. My dad and got on the subject of religion at 10pm wed. night and didn't make it to bed until 2am. I really want to take along walk thru the woods with the Lord and emerge from the trees into hospitable little town were we can drink warm chicken broth in a friendly fire lit pub and laugh the night away.

My parents make me happy. They are still so young. My Mom made a wonderful thanksgiving dinner which included, ham, mash potatoes, stuffing, peas, bread, salad, and so much other good stuff. We ate pumpkin pie until we were flushed with contentment.

Thankgiving night i went to Megans house, all my friends, that i never get to see ,were there. Garret is now a married man. We are grown ups. We had some drinks and some laughs and i caught a ride back to the parents house were i curled up on the futon.

Yesterday we went and saw a movie and then, like we did so much this week, we ate. After dinner we put up the christmas tree--the fake christmas tree. Nick and his girlfriend came by and sat on the couch, watching the barry family decorate the tree with 20 year old ornaments my brother and i made in sunday school when we were just little whipper snappers. i would have liked to drink coffee and pet tiger, while just staring at the tree for a while but nick looked uneasy, so we headed back up to bellingham were we ate a second dinner at red robin. We played pool in robbies gargage. We were all 5 pounds heavier from the holiday gorge fest. We compared white bellies in the driveway, under the flouresent garage light.

Tower of Babel

I came across a blog while mindlessly surfing the internet. In it, the author cursed the medium of web logs, arguing that to write on one or to read one is a bigger waste of time then smoking weed and watching adult swim cartoons. He ranted that blog writers are absolutely self absorbed, that by dumping their inner emotions out into cyberspace for everyone to read, they are causing real harm to society. I agree with him....Well maybe not about the destruction of society, but maybe about the dangers of self absorbtion. I must point out that he, as an antiblog blogger, is a hypocrite, like us all. So with that in mind I will very self consciously write the following...

The kids in my class are so damn smart. They use big words to showcase their big minds which are producing big ideas. They are at the top of a high intellectual tower. I am not on the top of the tower. In fact, I feel so low intellectually that if the world of intellect is circular, than i am so far under the the tower that i am in a dimensionless pocket next to the top of the tower. This position next to the tower, but not on it, puts me within earshot of the people chatting on the tower roof. Their voices are always coming out of their moving mouths. They puke out big words, out of their smart mouths. The words don't mean anything. The tower is covered in the sounds of their words--their empty words. I am hovering near the top of an alphabet tower--I am in an alphabet basement. They are building the tower with their words and I am in some weired subterranean cavern getting stoned.

Feng Shui

I need a quite place to paint. A private place, where my amateur paintings will be safe from critical visitors. A place where I can be creatively naked. My room seemed like a logical place. So yesterday, I rearranged my room, creating a three by three foot “studio”.

My room is now arranged exactly like it was the day I moved into this old house. My bed is scrunched into the corner, like vegetables pushed to the edge of a child’s dinner plate. On one side of my bed is a wall dominated by two large windows. Through those windows, I gaze at the moon and the stars…or the clouds tinted orange by the city lights, as i drift off to sleep. On the other side of the bed, is a metallic filing cabinet, filled with journals and trinkets. On top of the cabinet is a lonely wooden touch lamp. Underneath the lamp, my clock radio glows, and sings me to sleep. My books are a small tower: Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Azar Nafisi’s, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and God’s, The Bible. At the foot of my bed sits a wooden chair with faded moss green upholstery. On it's lap rest my backpack. One of my bright yellow paintings hangs at the head of my bed. My carpet is a twisted jungle of green and gold shag.

I have rearranged my room before. I arranged it for Her, for Us. My bed was in the middle of the room so that we would both have an escape route for late night trips to the bathroom. That old kitchen chair was my night stand. It held books written by Herman Heese, Jack Keroauac, William Burroughs, Richard Braughtigan. Her night stand, was the silver cabinet. It was always littered with hair pins--and a tall glass of water. Periodically I will find one of those hair pins in a dark corner of the appartment. On the wall i had tacked up a chinese tapestry she had given me. It depicted a two headed god dancing between bamboo shoots. The carpet was always covered by our disguarded clothes. Her night bag was somewhere in that pile of clothes. Above us, the moon light would rush through the window. I remember Her as a silhouette in the cold winter moon light…whispering. We would stay up into the early morning talking about saving the world. At the foot of the bed was the bedroom door. In the mornings we would do everything possible to avoid walking through that door. We savored the warmth of the blankets, the warmth of each other.

Last night I was unexpectedly flooded by the memories of Her.
Those memories felt old, ancient, as if they were somebody else’s. Laying in my bed, now pressed against the wall, surrounded by the warm glow of my bedside lamp, I felt new, fresh, like I did when I moved in--like i was ready to start walking through life's doors.

The American Dream

I should have listened to my favorite classical music program on the radio while working today. Instead, I turned on the TV. Maybe tomorrow I will work in silence. Naw, then the ghost would get me.

The sheet was flat on the bed, I was busy stuffing pillows into their cases before I put the comforter over the sheets. A television commercial grabbed my attention...

"Hello we are Kenneth and Cynthia Johnstone", Ken and Cindy are wearing their Sunday sweaters while hugging each other in front of a crackling fireplace. The coziness of the fire is blurring all the imperfections out of their skin. Ken and Cindy are happy, content, people. "We don't have a job, we have a career. Here at Wallmart, we have a career that offers us the opportunity to realize our dreams...." Now, Ken and Cindy are wearing blue vest and smiling with other blurry happy people in blue vest, in a Walmart. "Our son also has a career at Wallmart as a pharmacist. Together we are living the American Dream." Cindy, Ken, and Preston, the man-child pharmacist, are cheek to cheek, slobbering on each other. They are a happy family.

Immediatly after the commercial I started cussing. How fucked up is that commercial?! Wallmart was being sued just last year for working their employees to the bone for less than minimum wage! No offense to the employees of Walmart.... But the people that work there do not look like Ken and Cindy. They barely look human. And they never look happy...Well not, sitting-by-a-fire-drinking-eggnog, happy. So it has come to this. The new version of the American Dream is a family working 60 hours a week for minimum wage at Wallmart. Is this disturbing to anyone else?

Fountains

Where are all the public water fountains? Last night i went on a very long walk. I had some errends to run, dinner to eat, thinking to do. At one point, I became very thirsty. I was miles from home and drying up. I kept imagining that I was a wanderer in the middle of the Saharah. The song "People are strange" by the doors was going through my head. I searched every street corner for a water fountain. I passed the church--no water. The school--no water. Near the courthouse there was the refreshing glow of a Pepsi machine. I became horrified and anxious. It seems unreal that a walker would have to spend a buck fifty on chemically enhanced sugar water, while not having the option to drink freely from a public fountain. I had no money so i staggered on, to the place were we all end up, in the end. The ATM machine.

Public Schooling

Read this article please.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm

Inspired

I feel creative for the first time in months. I think blue times are a blessing... people that are always happy and laughing thier heads off terrify me. Anyway i feel inspired. I went and checked out some student films tonight up on campus and they really inspired me. They were good--but i know i can do better. That is the great thing about compitition... that is one positive aspect of capitalism that so often gets overlooked. Students make good movies and then other students try and make better movies. A free enterprize of ideas with out limit. Before you know it Bellingham will have a vibrant community of film makers.

Greetings

At the top of the Sehome arboretum, in the wood tower, I enjoyed a moment by myself. Mount Baker was hovering in the sky. I said hello.

I left the tower and said goodbye to the mountain. Walking down the muddy path, I realized that i was wearing camouflage. Grey shoes, brown pants, a forest green sweater, and a black stocking cap. I am growing my winter beard. It is the color of dead leaves in the evening sun light.

The sound of muffled voices approached me. My ears are a better defense against preditors then my other senses. My eyes scaned the forest, trying to put image to sound. The reflection of two strangers slowy getting bigger filled my eyes. Fifty feet. Twenty five feet. The two men were seven point six three feet away. One finger away...

****

"Standard greetings."

We pass each other and the measurements now have a negative sign in front of them.

"Slightly subversive greeting to you, and an inquiry concerning your well being."

"Standard response to your inquiry--my well being registars in the positive." The inside of my mouth is warm and vibrating. The outside of my mouth is a crew of muscles constructing a smile.

Automobile Pornography

Tonight I have to write a paper on the movie Crash by David Cronenberg. My fingers are so very cold. I am having trouble typing. My brain is also cold. I am going to defrost both my hands and my mind by writing on my blog.

After viewing Crash, I am reminded of a short story written by the illustrious science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a fictitious character invented by Kurt Vonnegut. In his story, which was mostly published in sleazy dime porno mags during the 1960’s, a crew of human astronauts visit a far away planet on which a race of war torn people introduce the space adventurers to the hardest porno in the galaxy. The aliens of this distance world have ravaged their planet, killing all of the plants and animals. They are forced to eat petroleum products for sustenance. But they do have a thriving entertainment industry centered around the cinema. The aliens brag about how filthy and hardcore their pornography is, but the astronauts are skeptical--these aliens have not seen the raunchy porn of Earth. The aliens bet that their porn is far more intense, and invite the astronauts to the theater to see for themselves.
In the theater, the lights dim. The screen is dark but the speakers spill the sound of erotic moaning and groaning. The audience becomes fidgety in their seats. There is the sound of moist lips smacking, of heavy breathing, and biting. An image begins to slowly fade in on the screen. A family of four sit at a dinner table feasting on ripe vegetables and plump, crisp fruit. The father slowly carves the steaming turkey which dominates the center of the table. A close up shot, frames the juices of the turkey oozing out of the meat as the knife slices through flesh. The crowd moans. The family dog jumps up on the table and joins the orgy, lapping up saucers of milk and pumpkin pies. A quick cut to the man’s Adam’s apple shows it bobbing--up and down--up and down. The aliens are reduced to squirmy groaning bodies in a debilitating ecstasy. After the show the proud aliens inquire of the astronauts: that was the hardest pornography in the galaxy, was it not?

I love that story!

I imagine Crash to be a porno for cyborgs. Machines have become so intertwined with man that the line where man starts and and machines start is blurred, examining that blurry line can be sexually pleasurable. In my home town of Marysville, as I am sure is true with so many towns across the country, kids cruise the main street in their cars as a mating ritual. The sexier the car the sexier the driver. Girls in pink escorts, boys in lifted pick up trucks. The cars themselves are a sex symbol.

Somewhere, on a fantastical planet in my imagination, the cartoon cars from the Cheveron commercials, are all lined up at a drive in theater watching a maochistic porno of cars being demolished in a wrecking yard.

Winter Blues

The Northwest winter is hard to explain. I can feel the presence of an old dark magic. The short summers are rich and warm, like turkish delight. But the last remaining colors of summer are all but gone, what is left are naked rain soaked branches that creek in the wind. The sky presses down, low and cold-- a haunting fog that never burns off. Everything turns brown and grey, everything is moldy. The cold drizzle outside makes me think twice about getting out of bed. Lonely street lights reflected in black puddles at 4pm, make me want to go home and cook hot fragrant dinners. I shun my summer hiding places--the cement slab downtown will be frosty soon, and the dusty porch which is so inviting in the summer, is muddy and lonesome in the winter. Blackberries, apples, pears, cherries are replaced by slimy mushrooms that taste of a spiceless earth. But even the mushrooms won't be around much longer. On the streets, the familiar curves and lines of the human figure are replaced by the clumsy bulk of sweaters and overcoats. Human faces are veiled by hoods. And people tend to look down so not to get rain in their eyes. I can smell the scent of wet human, as people clammer into the cafe from off the street, shedding their rain soaked jackets and wiping wet hair out of their eyes. Wet hair is a strange and fascinating sight.

I have this theory that spirits are regional. The spirit that awakens in a Northwest winter is a great solitary spirit. Both beautiful and plain. And extremely melancholy.

Walrus

The Eskimos at one time depended completely on seals, or maybe it was walrus, to sustain them. The Eskimos literally were made of Walrus. Their bodies converted the walrus meat into energy which allowed for cell regeneration and much more--I am not a biologist, the point is that the Eskimo's entire way of life centered around the walrus. They used bones and all to keep warm and make tools. Walking through the mall last night, (I was there to pick up Xbox live so that I can now be plugged into the wider cyber world of halo 2) I asked myself--what are Americans made of. The answer is obvious, we are made out of the Mall. The people at the mall wear mall clothes. Many of the articles of clothing advertise the place they were bought: Old Navy, Abercrombie, Holster. People in the food court eat mall food, building their bodies out of Mongolia noodles and Ivars clam chowder. The movies that play in the mall rewrite neural pathways, becoming part of the thought processes of mall goers. Art, entertainment, food, clothing, shelter, mating rituals... It is all happening at the mall. The people at the mall look and smell like the mall, the way old people and their dogs look alike. The modern super mall is very much like a giant walrus.

Halo 2

Halo 2 came out in the wee hours of this foggy November morning. Behold, it now lays on my television. I had put the game on reserve months ago... I am not really sure why, maybe to feel the rush of being a part of something. After pressing the play button on my answering machine yesterday, a woman's voice began to seductively beckon me from the speaker. "Hello this is Veronica from the Bellingham Game Stop, I am wearing silk stalkings and a Masterchief helmet. I find you so sexy, i find men that play video games so sexy. Come down to the Gamestop and pick up your special edition Halo 2 tonight at midnight. See you there you sexy sexy man." then she gave the gamestop phone number in the same sexy voice but in a robot-giving-out-a-phone-number, disjointed kind of way:"ONE,TwO, nine-----sIX,THREE, ONE, seVen"... Oh the fantasys of video game playing nerds.

I went down to pick the game up at 11:30 in my brothers car. The line to get into the store literally was one hundred yards long. I started cracking up, wishing i could share this amazing scene with someone. No way was i going to stand in that line, even though it might have been fun. I headed over to the Fairhaven Pub to meet Justin and Andy. Justin was going to play for open mic night, so he was busy working up courage to get in front of people, while Andy was silly drunk. He finally played his set at midnight. I thought it was great. But I am no musician. When he got off the stage he looked suicidal. He then tore himself down the rest of the night. What a curse; To be so talented and have such a low self esteem.

A few more drinks and it was now 2Am. Lets go get Halo 2! So we drove back to the gamestop to pick up the most hyped up game in history. The hordes of people were gone and we walked right into the store. Another group of guys our age walked in at the same time. The nerdy clerks greeted us like brothers and laughed about a second rush. I want to make this observation real quick--intellectual hippy librals always march down this street with flowers in thier hair singing songs of peace, yet, disagree with one and they turn into the most violent people on earth. You will never find that with a gamer. I have never met a gaming geek that had a mean bone in his/her body. World Peace...you won't find it in San Fransisco, you will most definitely find it in Redmond Washinton.

2:30AM Halo 2 docks with the Xbox. The game and the computer make sweet love and suddenly i am as lost in fantasy as Veronica hoped i would be. What a beautiful game. We interwined in ectacsy until 4am.

Job Interview

"Ok this is going to be fun, I want you to think about this senario: you are out in the middle of the desert. Nobody else is around and you are going to starve. In front of you is a great chasm, one thousand miles deep, one thousand miles wide, and one thousand miles across. On the other side of this divide is an oasis full of food and water. If you can cross the chasm you will live, if not you will surely die. The only resourse you have to traverse this obsticle are 4 planks of wood and an infinite length of rope. How would you use these items to cross this ditch and save your life?"

"uhhhhhh......."

"Ok ok, Matt, let's put that question aside for the moment, continue to think about it and feel free to cut in and share your solution at any time, but let's continue the interview. Tell me about your personal strengths, and also tell me about some areas of your personality that you feel could be strengthened and what steps you are taking to better yourself."

"uhhhhhhhh......"

"right, ok these are standard Hollywood Video questions. Let me move on but that question is important so we will definitly come back to it. Tell me about a time when you felt proud of your leadership ability, when you led a group of people to a successfull outcome.

"uhhhhhhh...."

"Matt, don't worry about it. Ok, um let me see. Let's do some role playing. I am a guest and you are a service representative trying to sell me a promotional package...GO."

"uhhhhhh...."

"Fine, Fine... tell me your favorite three movies."

"uhhhhh...."

"Wow, um, ok so, without looking , can you tell me what color the wall behind you is."

"uhhhhh.... purple."

"No no, it is not purple, but good gues good guess. Ok, good, well do you have any questions that you want to throw my way?"

"uhhhhh..."

"Matt I will call you tonight to let you know either way, there is a second panal interview tomorrow afternoon. Three of our area supervisors will be administering the interview. So I will give you a call."

"Ok thank you."

"And Matt the chasm... fill it with your infinite length of rope and walk across it."

"uhhhhhhh...."

***

There is a distopia novel here somewhere.

Incredible

Another weekend spent at the hotel. I don't dislike my job by any means, I sometimes feel it is unimportant, which it probably is, but it feeds me and pays my bills which I am thankful for. I have a job interview today at a video store. So maybe I will have two jobs. Free videos is a major plus, I hope I get this job.

Friday afternoon I picked up my paycheck and was pleasantly surprised at how much moula I had made--months with 31 days rock! I figured with the little bit of extra money I would indulged myself at the mall. I walked to the mall which is about 4 miles away. It is a nice walk--I have to take the side streets though, the alley ways are the best, or otherwise I have to breath exhaust. I am not knocking cars, cars are one of the cooler inventions in the history of the world, but I would suggest that people get off their fat asses and walk once in a while. You can be much more intimate with the city on foot. I don't think people in cars notice the exhaust that is spewing out of their cars either. Safely sealed in their computer generated atmospheres with Dave Mathews or bone thugs and harmony blasting on the CD player, they never have to actually breath real air or listen to birds. Oh well... So I walked to the mall.

I like going to the mall. It ranks up there with art galleries and bowling alleys as a great spot to people watch. My feet really hurt so I looked down and really noticed my van tennis shoes--they are so worn out, they have lost their ability to support me as a mobile unit. So I bought a new pair of walking shoes.I can't wait to walk to the video store in a few minutes in my new shoes. It is weird but my shoes start to mean something to me after a while. I only have one pair, and I wear them everywhere. Looking at them, I start to remember my journeys and even though metaphysically speaking, they are not alive, I can't help but feel that those vans have traveled with me as companions...through the Grand Canyon even. I stared at them for a long while in the food court as I put them away in the new shoe box.

With my new shoes on I decided to see a matinee--The Incredibles. What an amazing movie. The animation blew me away. And the message was awesome to... I am reading Anne Rand so this one part really struck me-- I almost started chanting USA, USA... Anyway... The mother complains to the father that he isn't spending enough time with the children, that he should go to their sons graduation. The father says something like, what graduation, 4th grade? Why do we celebrate mediocrity? a damn good question Mr. Incredible-- a fine question indeed.

The movie theater was pack to the brim full of little snotty children. They were really cute though. they have no inhibitions--they just speak loudly, "mommy look at the horsey!" it made me smile.

I walked home from the mall in my new shoes.

Pillow Talk with Umma Thurman

Last night i dreamt that my life was this: sleeping in with Umma Thurman.

Reality: I am a male house keeper.

The Matrix

I finished the book Straw Dogs that I had mentioned a couple days ago. It started out as a critique of humanism and progress--interesting...But the closing chapter blew me away. The economy started making sense to me. Language is such a hard thing to use to illustrate an epiphany-- dancing around a fire painted in root powders is probably better, but how would I show that on a blog.

Ok economies. Hunter gatherer societies were around 15 thousand years ago, then these new guys called farmers drove these primitives to the edges of the world and well that is pretty much how things went up until about 200 years ago. A couple centuries ago people started making better machines. The machines were expensive and only the rich guys owned them. For the poor people to find work, they had to move to the city so they could work in the factories were all these machines were. Now we live in a consumer economy, blah blah.... But what John Gray is pointing out is that machines are taking over. People in the near future are not going to need to work. The machines will do almost all the work... But more importantly he asks, what will people do to occupy themselves in this new leisure culture? And this is the part that blew me away, its been there in my face all along. They will entertain each other! And my oh my how we entertain each other today. So he says we create jobs that only function to shield us from boredom. We invented a butt load of these jobs last century, including psychiatry, and we increased the volume of older jobs such as bureaucrats, actors, etc. Don't forget the popularity of DVD's, and video games--teams of people are working on this stuff.

I always kind of wondered what the hell I was going to school for and now I have discovered it. I am an aspiring entertainer. Any cultural study is entertainment. Ever wonder why porn is so rampant? Gray would say it is there to keep us entertained, to keep us unbored. He predicts that when sex looses its ability to keep us unbored we will seek out entertainment else where, maybe in monasteries. This was all much more profound in the context of the whole book, but I had this moment of clarity in which I saw graphic designers, writers, movie stars, astrologers, Oprah, all bumping into each other while laughing and crying and thinking they were important.... Life can be really simple sometimes, I need to never forget that.

Hobbiton

I slept in like a totally lazy bum this morning. Warmly under my bed covers, i listened to Kerry's concession speech and Bush's accaptance speech. The sun is shining outside and it is a beautiful day. It is hard to be too unhappy with the election. I am glad that somebody won by a large margine and the American public can get on with life and not have to watch lawyers on CNN for the next 3 months. I made a decision this morning to not get so wrapped up in politics and partisanship. I think when 9/11 happen I, along with probably most Americans, became addicted to cable news. It is such a waste of life. I have a groovy life independent of the libral, conservative debate. So I am officially over yelling at tvs, and argueing with friends and family. It just doesn't seem healthy. I wish America was more like the Shire. The president is only one man but our nieghbors and friends, we can live a hobbit like existance if we try.

America...Fuck yeah

Ok, I went to the parents house. That was a mistake, all I did was argue with my dad about politics. He believes that George Bush and Jesus are the same thing. "You can't be a Christian and vote for Kerry Matt." I am so sick of hearing that.

When I got home my neighbors were on the porch... Totally shit faced and sad. Mike was praying to a crucifix. He told me he had been praying all night that Kerry would win. "How are we going to face the next four years?" Nicole chimed in, trying to stay optimistic, "We are going to protest tomorrow." Big deal.

My dad is praying for Bush, Mike is praying for Kerry... Poor God. Rob called me, "Bush won!". He sounded like he was trying to convince himself that everything was great, "God has a plan for our nation."

Mike told me he was scared: "I am scared Matt."

For some strange reason the people on the porch, my friends, my family, they looked like black and white photographs of sad American Indians at the turn of last century... A defeated people. With so many references to god tonight, I couldn't help but feel that he was noticeably absent this night.

Election Night

Here we go... this is supposed to be the night that determines the fate of the United States. It doesn't feel all that huge now that it is here, but i will be glued to the tv set none the less. I would like to see bush get the boot... but if he doesn't i'm not sure that i will even notice. If i can get a ride to my parents house, i am going to spend the evening watching the news with my dad, watching him bark at the blue states. if i can't get a ride, i will go to the bar and watch drunken kids cheer the blue states.

....it's all happening.

A Hippy Parade In The November Rain

I think i might be addicted to my blog. My school writing is suffering becuase of it. The paper i wrote tonight reads in no way like an academic paper. Instead of a tecniqual critique of a certain directors feminist film, i wrote what looks like a drug induced flashback. Included in my paper is: an account of my visitation from the directors spirit, an embellished recollection of an exerience i had watching the film in which everything became a cubist painting, and last but not least, a memory of drawing a nude in a life drawing class. My God! I better wake up early to edit this. Oh well, this has been a busy weekend-- a halloween kegger, house cleaning at the hotel, preparing for an American civil war starting tommorrow--i am sure the almighty professor will understand.

I thought there might have been a freagin drum beating hippy parade marching down the street to protest election day, but it turns out the noise i heard was just rain water spewing out of the gutter.

Super Size Me

Last night i watched the movie Super Size Me. Boy did it ever make me feel guilty for eating that onion ring bbq burger from Red Robin for dinner. Afterward I pledged a 40 day fast to cleanse my body of toxins. Well that was like 12 hours ago. Now it is breakfast time and i have eggs on the stove a cup of black coffee in front of me. I am never going to reach spiritual enlightenment.

I have so much crap to do today that I am having thoughts about not doing a damn thing. Wouldn't that be nice?

"well, i'll go to college and i'll learn some big words
and i'll talk real loud goddamn right i'll be heard
you'll remember the guy that said all those big words
he must've learned in college."
--modest mouse

Halloween

I always have the worst costume on Halloween. Probably because the idea of dressing up in costumes seems so very strange, and yet--I do it every day. I wear three costumes each day. I go to school dressed as a college student: Jeans. a hooded sweatshirt, and a pack on my back. At work my costume is that of the corporate slave: black slacks and a colorless button up shirt, and absolutely no facial hair. And finally my bed-time costume: baggy flannel cotton pants and a t-shirt. I guess form follows function. But there is no real reason why I should wear jeans to school and my professor a corduroy sports coat with leather patchs on the elbows. Humans function best in groups. Groups form indivuduals, and indivuduals have an amazing drive to get drunk and form groups.

Like I said, "I always have the worst costume on Halloween." Last night I dressed as a partial birth abortion. Everyone else had such nice costumes. Real works of art. I threw mine together 5 minutes before the party. I wore my sweatshirt on my legs and my pants on my chest. A straw was glued to my head. Just like the year I went dressed as an electron, nobody understood my costume last night either. Quick observation about last night--every girl was dressed like a slut. The one girl that wasn't, I wanted to marry. I asked each one of them, "what are you supposed to be?" "A slut". "And you?" "Slut." "You?" "Slut" (Hmmm... Say that word a couple times. I wonder what its origins are). I wish people would be honest about thier costumes during the other 364 days a year. Most people answer, "I am a unique individual", or something identical but fancier sounding, even though the guy wearing the black hooded sweat shirt looks exactly like me, and so to, all the people wearing old navy cotton billboards on thier breast look alike. Costumes.

But all observations and cynisism aside. I had fun last night drinking keg beer at my neigbors house, which was also dressed in costume--a haunted house costume. It was pretty psychadelic. Some DJ's even showed up but they communicated only with music and i didn't see either one utter a word.

After the party I happily stumbled home and climbed into bed. I had one of those dreams that makes one wonder what is more real, waking life or dream life. In the dream, I told my friend that I dug her and we ended up getting together and living out our lives in bliss. When i woke up at 4 AM, my life of happiness swimming in fountains sculpted of bronze with my lover, had dissolved completely. It took me a couple seconds to remeber who i was. When i got up to walk to the bathroom i discovered that i was drunk and had lost control of most of my motor skills. I pissed like a race horse and got back into bed. I tried my damnedest to get back into the dream that i had been so violently ripped out of by the needs of my body, but i couldn't.