An Evening With A Friend and Learning What Depression Is

Sitting on a cup cushion chair and listening to.  Days later I understand that.  I understand better that my schizophrenia will run parallel to depression at points and expecting some sort of  bipolar snap to happen and coming back to them to poke them with a "what's wrong" is no way forward.  That's not how it works.  Not even close.  Shadow mimicry.

I have wondered the best way of going about describing the it that governs me.  Is this what you want?  Locked.  Tell me now!  I am afraid that if I do I will be interned again.  I feel small.  I feel frightened.  What is wrong with us?  I want to be bipolar.  I want to be depressed.  I want to be something else without lying about what I am.  Why can't it be that way?  I feel like garbage saying that, knowing the tolls of those pains from meeting them.  The pissing contest cesspool.  The grass is always greener.  Fukkoff.  Listening to each word and understanding dawning, the same loathing and disappointment and anger that froths inside me frothed and boils inside them too (in different ways); similar hiding places and outdoor faces are incorporated to further life.  The panic attacks are the same.

Whenever I talk about it, be the occasion among friends or sibs or to you, I immediately feel defective.  A waste of your time.  How is it you've navigated 32 years of life [28 of them with knowing enough junk to not get run over by a thing called a car out of pure ignorance (22 of them with knowing enough junk to not get run over by a thing called a car out of negligence)] and still fight with normality?  Well, if I knew, I'd put an end to it.

What we are does not need vivisection to be confirmed.  The most frustrating part is being forced to bridge gaps and justify my misgivings and "quirks."

Reality checks and tests.  I don't understand.  Negative!  Negative!  Negative!  Through study, I know how people are supposed to feel when things happen.  That's why I enjoy semaphore so much.  It helps me feel like I am a person too, regardless of what actually is.

Undamaged or compromised, I envy the feeling and find their company saturated and wonderful.  It is selfish.  It is not selfish.  Listening to a good friend helped me learn what actual depression is and what it costs each day.  Listening to a good friend helped me learn the gender multiplier and its complications and callousness.  Between light hearted turns of phrase and spikes of imagination, I grew to understand the true differences between us and I learned more than I ever thought I'd need to know about what that prison is like.  I hope I expressed what the view from inside my bars looks like too.

I am so glad I have the chance to compose this.  I'll try and encapsulate it in a more condensed form:

I try to only project positive.  No I don't LOL.  Can shoot that down in a heartbeat.  I must laugh out loud.  I cannot set the world on fire.  I certainly, however, do not try to project only positive.  The dives are there for the asking.  I do not suffer in silence.  My physical pain tolerance has not kept pace with my mental pain tolerance and that's okay.  I enjoy listening.  It helps me feel more safe and more sane.

I am running.

I am afraid.

The dissimilarities are glaring now.  Punishing heft of ocean swell.  A fair mistake to make?  In speaking with her, traveling the star systems made wonderful sense.  Collapsing interpersonal nonsense into two dimensions, we existed and could map one another in three.  It's kind of weird, bare with me.  Here we go:

For some time, several months, I'd convinced myself I was predominantly bipolar.  Cycling on and off and on and off in stints.  If I could just figure out the timing, I could use it to approach "normal".  Ride with it.  Go with it.  Do not fight it.  Above all, do not try to force the head spaces function and be aware of its gear before you interact with anyone.  I charted up many conversations about mania and engaged in shared tales of its absence in attempts to better understand its dimensions and myself and the loved ones I was engaging with.

Along those veins it became clearer and clearer that I did not know what I thought I knew about them.  What I thought I knew about her.   What I thought I knew about him.  Some beliefs stood pat, many were restructured.  Some were reinforced.  I am susceptible to a high and low line, but the thread that flows through all points on the chart is my schizophrenia.  The simplest and most base way to gauge who I am underneath the layer of my consciousness and awareness is that.  My "it." For her, it is depression.  The hard coded piece of yourself that can not be changed.  That I enjoyed the most about speaking with her is laughing about everyday bullshit.  Seeing the ledge and taking casual portraits for one-another at the edge of the world.  I've known highs and I've known lows, but I've never had to know the tar ocean depression.  I've been and am manic, I've been and am depressed, truth be tolled, I am just schizophrenic. The fabulous shock of the reminder that you are just as much and deserving to be part of the human race as the "normals" is a spark.

I am glad that our worlds have collided.  I will attempt to boil this down later.  I don't have to do this alone.

We are.

We still don't know what our conversion rate is.  We still have no explanation for why we burn so violently and brilliantly and sleeplessly and the only consolation is watching the sun cross the horizon line and light up the atmosphere like a pool of gasoline and scream and sing and howl to it from the highest ground we can find, should we be caught outdoors.  I don't know why.

We are.

I want to heal.  I want to burn. I am understanding depression with greater accuracy than I ever have before.  I am understanding a new kind of helplessness that I've never sensed before in its entirety.  Seeing more of its true scope is deafening and tuning at once.




///there is no replacement for spending time and sharing experience.   The world will never be ready for the damaged.  Us damaged don't have to fight world war prime alone, though.   You do not have to either.  You don't have to either.  Don't understand; do listen.

///El-P & Killer Mike - "Legend Has It"

The Changed Landscape of Warfare, Want, and The Spacefarer's Bible

I won't say I will not continue to try to make myself happy.  That's foolish and, honestly, a little bit petty and a lot of bit lie no matter whose mouth it comes out of.  I do and will (most of the time).  Sometimes I completely screw it up and ruin everything for all of us.  Life is about that sometimes.  Let's begin and find our ending and hopefully put a bow on it so we can assault the next stronghold.

We're a consumer organism.  Advancement, the byproduct.  That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid.  "We don't make stuff anymore!"  "We export everything!"  "We import everything!" And on and on and on.  It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?

A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations?  Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space  if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own?  Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?

If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one.  Not because what they're saying is true or false.  Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner.  Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.

Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool.  Okay, that's not that outlandish.  Bad example.  Are you laughing yet?  Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as  two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second.  Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output.  Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as  200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice.  The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.

We're not a consumer organism.  Advancement is the byproduct.   Want does make excellent bedfellows, though.  Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with.   Yeah there are a lot of consumers.  It gets me down.  Who doesn't it get down?  Silly question.  Programs and users.  It get's depressing.  On this little operating system.  It does.  I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know.  Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.

Where you going to put it?  What's your percentage of consumer to user?  Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%.  The thirty percent gets all the play though.  Eventually the 70% become dull eyed.  The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.

The other best two words in the English language?  You guessed it: "I'm cumming."  And no, that's still not three words.  Niggler.  I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.

I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light.  Every garage had a car parked outside of it.  Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it.  Parked outside each was a fit human being.  Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal.  Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant.  Parked between them was a fine manhole cover.  All of it a strange display.

All of it begging to be wanted.  Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal.  All of it horribly unreal.  All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least.  Who want's to live in a gift shop?  Do you really want to know those people?  Do you really want perfect?  Do you really want to consume that violently?  By all means, take care.  Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple.  Kipple only breeds more kipple.  It's disconcerting.

Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits.  That, I do not mind.  When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy.  It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it.  If you'd still be you.  Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh!  -tatious.   Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.

My own hang up.  I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators.  Why are the consumers the most flagrant?

I feel bad taking money sometimes.  Earned money.  I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours.  That doesn't count as stealing.  Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them.   It's aggravating.  I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better.  I would like to think.  I dunno if that would work out.  I don't believe so.  I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago.  Allow me to relate it briefly.  It's a very short, kind of funny story.

One day someone asked me to help them move furniture.  After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services.  The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space.  It was fantastic.  It was downright fantastic.  The second time was the same.  The second, too.  The third, as well.  The four, you guessed it, the same.

A sensation began to creep in.  A very woeful sensation.  As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.

One of the great equalizers is college.  University.  Call it what you will.  We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family.  The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.

I was doing too many favors.  Far too many favors.  Far far too many favors.  My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore.  Not nearly as close as they were.  When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder.  When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all.  When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear.  When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same.  We're on entirely different fronts altogether.  Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers.  We're not all infantry anymore.

What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies.  Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still.  An extra half apple means the world to me.  To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case.  An extra magazine is the world to me.  To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be.  The war has changed for many and damn near all of them.  Not for me, though.  Not yet.  When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.

So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore.  It's mercenary work.  I hope it doesn't distance them.  I hope they understand.  If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it.  Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.

We're not nearly as close as we used to be.  I miss those days.  I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them.  It's pay for play now.  On the big stuff.  The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you.  May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.

Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair.  A fucking chair!?  Are you kidding me?  Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months.  Just saying, mickey.

A clean ship is a very happy ship.  Returning to kipple.  It really does breed.  Kipple makes it difficult to wake up.  More difficult even to think once you are awake.  It breeds violence too.  They never spoke about that part of it.  Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms.  The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals.  Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity.  It is very important to keep a clean ship.

More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly.  The margin for error is thin.  Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together.  The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion.  It gets hairy sometimes.

Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix.  Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.

Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves.  There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol.  We just don't get along.  I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system.  It was pretty fun sometimes.  It was pretty hell too.  There's a disconnect.  I understand that.  I'm not going to stage a war against it.  The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible.  Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide.  It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship.  It's taking some precedence.  Should I even be talking about it here?  I don't know how that shit works.  Let's stop cussing so fucking much.  How about that?

I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison.  I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones.  I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one,  n'at, n'at, n'at!!!!  I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it.  I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost.  Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely.  Then, yes.  Camo theory.  The double fake.  The triple fake?  Off grid: suspicious.  On grid: innocuous.  Off grid:  hello.  On grid:  hello.  Who has the discipline for that?

Do not forget to look up.  Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me.  It's hot.  It's bright.  It's humid.  The days are long.  The nights are too short.  The world is busy.  Kids run everywhere screaming.  Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know.  And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning.  Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.

I know I'm not a write off or disposable.  Scratch that, I am disposable.  That I do know.  I'm okay with that.  The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches.  Making yourself available.  Laying out the factory floor.  Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed.  Because we've changed.  "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar.  I work for you.  Don't you remember me?  I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose.  You don't remember me?

Save things for a good time.  Save nothing for a perfect time.




///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm"    sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots

Hanging Up the Suit

It's an unfortunate, necessary, and beautiful time.  The time is the one to hang up the space suit.  The time to hang orbits closer than circumstance demands.  It's okay.  It's just Spring.  We'll get through it and to the dead and live wires of Summer.  It will be pleasant.

People will travel far and wide and countries will entertain them and landscapes you may never see will splatter across pages and it will be pleasant because they went there for themselves, but they cared enough to go there for you too and that's a neat thing.

Don't say proxy.  It isn't.  Don't get down on yourself for traveling that way though.  There is no shame in approximations.  Never forget that.  You'll have your chance for wanderlust, be it given or taken.  Wait, but in the middle times allow yourself to enjoy.

Laugh as often as possible.  Regardless of what you perceive, it is important.  Do not hesitate.  Explain later.  You'll thank me some day.  Or never.  Regardless, don't waste your time taking things too seriously.  Don't be a naysayer.  Be a slight naysayer.  Half of what is suggested is worth pursuing logically.  Half of that is worth pursuing purely rationally.  Half of that is worth pursuit in dreams and half of that is worth pursuing at the edges of plausible.  Half of that is worth pursuing in extrema and half of that is worth pursuing light out.  What's left is worth an idle thought, and half of that is worth creating in dreamland.

Dreamland is another story.  100% of dreamland is worth dreamland's pursuits, but what manifests inside dreamland,trickled down from perception is worth all dreamland can give.

I guess part of what I'm finding hard to believe is that I am able to be loved.  I am able to love, but I am not familiar with being able to be loved and am distanced enough from the lack of rationale to understand that there may be no actual actionable item or series of actions or stockade behind the signal.  No response found. None adequate to the task.

Formed structures of understanding maybe.  On top of that is the implied threat of compromising integrity.  How far am I, are we, supposed to go into the contract without a full understanding of implied risks?  I dunno.  I have no idea.  Can I be faulted for extreme reluctance, knowing possible outcomes?  It's not like jumping out of a window or spitting into the wind or pissing in an alleyway between two homes I have no part of.  Those variables are known.

It's tremendously difficult to hang up the suit.  I could've watched the last real snow fall for days instead of hours.  It ended.  So many questions.  So many tirades.  So much unrealized fuel and no where to burn it safely.

Are you really happy?

"Happier than I've ever been."

God fucking damnit, just tell me straight.

I still have the kill list (the capable list) for when I've gone as far as I can and I know that I can go no farther, freedom wise.  I look forward to its execution.  I look forward to my own progress too.  As far as it can be taken too.  I am sure, though not limitless, that's foolish, it is farther than I know now.



///Unkle - "The Answer"   days without headache.  I am trying very hard to make up and down of junk experience and important existence and meaningful relationships rendered dead outside of my hands for reasons I don't fucking know and do know and all the time all I really want is to leap from the tallest cliff I could find myself on some run and live to tell you about what it was like to hit the ground and survive.  We're hanging up the space suit for a while.  Not happy about it.  At all.

Stand Up Act 9 (dialogues)

Stand Up Act 8


I don't want to go fishing today.

Why not, I was just putting on pants after you called?!

I changed my mind.

Why?

It's gross out.

Seriously?  A little rain??  It's got damn Pittsburgh in Autumn.  It's a perfect day.

Nope, its not.

You're from Pittsburgh!  What the hell is wrong with you?

You're being unreasonable!

It's beautiful outside!

You're being unreasonable!!

Am I?

Yeah.

Okay.............when are you free next?  I'm looking at the ten day forecast right now.




Throwing a rager tonight?

Yeah.

What time?

Sixish.

Nine?

Sixish.

Sixish?

Yes, sixish.

Have you thought about nine?

No.  Well, I did.  For a while.  Then I remembered I had shit to do.  Before.   After I remembered.

Whatever, you know where I live.  Hit me up and we'll combine parties at nine.

Ninish?





We're going to ramble on, because we can, and also why not.  The longest set ever.

Cats have short memories.  They have learned behaviors, but I think it's fair to say they have short memories.  They're beings of routines.  That can make you functional.  If you have a short memory, but a solid routine, you can definitely get by alright.  No harm no foul.  What you have to keep in mind is what really defines getting by.  Do you want to get by as well as a human being does or as well as a cat does?  Granted, cats have it pretty good.

Defining work aside, not to say that it's easy to be a cat.  Can you imagine having to sleep so much?  Yeah, I need to eat lunch, but first I have to take this three hour siesta in this sun beam because it's really god damn warm right here.  Yes, I know your car died on the shoulder of interstate 376 and you cancelled your triple A because there was an order of 30 pounds of catnip you had to get in so that you could ensconce yourself in plant matter on demand for the year, but this sun beam is really really warm and if I get into my car right now I will fall asleep immediately if traffic stops for longer than five minutes and I'm not trying to get stopped by the police with my inspection sticker out of date.  I'll see you in a few hours.  Yes, I'm in the shower right now.  I just ate.  I'll be done when I'm done.  Whether or not I'll be jerking off for the next hour before I take this nap is frankly none of your business.  If you keep talking like an asshole we are definitely brawling when I get there.  What's it to you anyway?  We're not family.  If I could live without a housemate I would!  Well, I didn't touch your snack stash, I just ate all of the food you left after you took off after breakfast.  Yes, including the things you set aside for lunch.  No, I didn't touch your stash or your green.  If I did, I would be too busy not answering the damn phone.

It's a little bit alarming though when you look up from repairing a broken laptop or keeping up with email nonsense and see your cat dangling from the side of the fish tank you specifically perched on top of bookshelf because, the last time you checked, cats couldn't climb bookshelves.

From a purely physics standpoint, it shouldn't work.  There's a reason cat trees are covered with carpeting instead of smooth faced fake wood.  On top of that you've seen them try to climb it before close to forty times.  They jump in three shelves up, the earliest possible landing point and watched them look at and sniff at the fourth shelf like a hardcore dungeon crawling RPG player trying to find the secret entrance to the glitch cave.  As though, if they looked hard enough and poked around long enough, somehow the bookshelf programming would split apart and instantly teleport them to the next level up if they jabbed the right pixel with their nose.

Yet, there he is.  Climbing on top of the fish tank with no lid.  I'm scrambling to find my camera and trying to keep one eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall in, because the only thing worse than a cat soaked to the bone in fish poop filled water is washing that cat.  And somehow he figures out how to step from edge to edge and not fall in AND terrorize the fish dumb enough to come near the surface with a thing twenty times their size looming overhead and thrusting enormous claws through the surface of the water with the only thing in mind being poking one of those two foot long (by scale if fish were people) talons through their itty bitty eye holes.

How the hell did he get up there?  I took him down and watched him attempt it again and again for a good day and a half and he never managed to pull it off again.  Which was kind of disappointing.  It reminded me of how shitty my own memory was.  Not to harp on passwords, but I have made passwords and forgotten them not more than a handful of days later.  The security question is what was the make and model of your first car.  Two days removed, I'm asking myself "the make and model of the first car I ever drove or the first car I ever crashed?"  "The make and model of the first car I can remember riding in or the first car I ever drove myself."  "The make and model of the first car I fell in love with or the make and model of the first car I knew I wanted in my dream garage."  Ending with "your account is locked, please call customer service at 1-800-555" five five, five five.  How are achievements so forgettable?

I want to sit the cat down with translator boxes strapped to our throats so we can understand each other the way it happens in science fiction and go over what exactly went on.  Because maybe he just needs some coaching?  Maybe he did it once and it was a wild success and he got so caught up in the success that he forgot to make mental notes of how he actually got there and now he's broke and sitting on the floor, looking up at the fish tank angrier than ever, and clueless with how to actually deal with it.

I at least wish he had opposable thumbs and manners enough to ask me to pass him the sugar dish so we could sit down at the kitchen table and talk about our short comings.  Or at least sip tea and nod instead of stalking around the apartment in circles mad at things we can't discuss and counter mad at each other for being mad about things we can't talk about and madder that the atmosphere is so hostile when we both have nowhere else to be and nothing else to look at besides our counter counter madness.

So treat yourself.  Nothing cures unhappiness like a good nosh on something yummy.  It makes the world go pretty swell, when at the end of the day you go over the steps that got you to where you were the month before only to find utter soul crushing DMV line wait times to find you never filled out form H-09 and you can't forge the notary stamp in the bathroom anyway so there's no need to explain that you have explosive diarrhea from the fast food joint you never went to and will be back in a moment.

Get out the cat treats and their having pork sauteed with salmon juices and beans and rice so they poop good, and you have bleu cheese buffalo wing flavored butter crackers with nothing but mayonaise to dip them in (if you want to go so far as to dip them in to something).

There are some things, some foods, that have no business here on this green earth.  I don't know how they get passed beyond their developmental stages or who fell asleep at the wheel, but they do enter the realm of otherwise useful, palatable, strange and uncommonly tasty besides the fact, sometimes unassuming, palette expanding digestables.  If it's not broke, don't fix it holds true for most foods.  Sure, stick a turbo charger on there.  Put some bigger rims on there.  Maybe some slicker tires.  Change the paint scheme and put some tint on the windows.  Lower the suspension.  Make that vehicle of flavor crystals sexier to my tongue and I won't complain.

Maybe though, it would be a good idea to take the concept sketchers out of the room when you get down to the nitty gritty of actually putting together the deliverable?  Maybe, instead of a massive grille with chrome highlights, go with a slight variation and make it a few inches bigger instead of a foot and a half bigger with ten inch wings sticking out of the sides?  Consider the Ruffle potato chip.  Let's make the ridges bigger, but just by a few millimeters.  Sure: instantly better.  Let's take the barbecue flavor and make it a little more peppery and a little more salty and a little more savory.  Sure: instantly better.  Let's take the barbecue flavor and make it a million times sweeter and a thousand times more sour and paint it orange!  No.

Part of what makes these x-foods so ridiculously awful is the half commitment.  Case in point: parmesan garlic bread flavored anything.  That never works out.  In every essence lab there's probably some guy or team of people working on distilling the essence of a food that is an experience unto itself.  You will never be able to distill the experience of chomping into a piece of properly toasted, well seasoned, garlic bread.  Ain't gonna happen.  God bless you for trying, and enjoy the pay check in the meantime, but you are trying to get through a brick wall by poking it with a finger tip.  Chicken and waffle potato chips?  Nope.  Gimme the chicken and the waffle and some hot syrup please.  In a bag.  On a shelf.  That I can buy, take home, pull a tab and trigger an exothermic reaction that heats it all up, and then pour it out on a plate with a knife and fork and a little plastic baggie of syrup and a packet of salted butter to bust open on top of it.  I'll pay the extra ten dollars for rehydrated deep fried meat, science, and happiness instead of a $3.50 bag of sadness.

It's tiring.  I keep falling for it and it's tiring.  I imagine the woman at the gas station where these unspeakable abominations of food stuffs keep showing up (am I shopping at one of the test kitchens?  I DON'T KNOW, but I wish I did) sees me stumble in at five in the morning looking for something, nay anything, besides what is already in my pantry or my fridge and watches me walk up and down the aisles and sees my eyes light up at the latest new riff on an old classic and waits for my shoulders to fall.  Waits for the long sigh of defeat because she knows I'll try anything once because we had a long conversation three days after the first time I tried heroin and she eventually came up to me and asked me if she could help me with something and it scared the living daylights out of me to the point where I literally jumped backward from her because I was convinced I was there alone somehow at the time and my brain was still maladjusted to person to person contact in ways far worse than they are now.

I imagine her watching that long breath and knowing I'm going to come to the counter with some Island of Dr. Moreaux shit to put in my gut and she'll check me out and wish me the best of luck again and she knows I could just ask, because she's tried it before, but she knows I won't listen.  "You could've just called."  Instead of waiting to get hammered until two in the morning expecting people to show up and packing an entire evening of inebriation into the three hours before the sun comes up and having to deal with them already completely soused and begging you to slow down because they're already ready for sleep and you're just getting started and they are in no mood to field your thirteen text messages about the things you normally talk about when you party and collaborate and get drunk at the same pace together.

But that's when you know you can die happy.  Assuming your death isn't brought about by being fed feet first into a wood chipper while you're still conscious, you can definitely pass quietly and quite happy into death knowing you did call who you were supposed to, when you were supposed to, and remembered the things you were supposed to remember how to do along the way, and didn't fall for things like a taco shell made of doritos that tasted like hot vagina cheese vomit on the way down and nothing like an electro statically cheese powdered tortilla chip casing taco fixings at all, and everything you did or at least some of what you did was what you were supposed to do.

"Hell, I'm two days and six hours late for work" is never a good feeling.  When you get that sensation that what you're on to is something you can fade out doing and never wake up from, you know it's something good.  Sure, you can get that feeling artificially (see Patton and the suicide drug), but when you've earned your way on to that path toward what you do better than anything else, don't get comfortably confused with doing best because there is very little comfortable about writing or art or whatever keeps the motor spinning when you'd rather have it idle or, better yet, shut down completely, you know you're on to something worth while and pursuing.  Perhaps in vain, but like I said before (not really) vanity is a poor man's occupation.

I can't wait to operate out of ego.  Vanity is sport.  Ego is conquest.The definition of poor being not within the scope of ... being too tired to masturbate.

You really do have to reevaluate your life if you reach a point where you are literally too tired to masturbate.  When you cross that line where the prospect of masturbation puts the same look on your face as when you want a nip of a candy bar, but can't decide which brand or make or model or if it should have ground effects on it, or if the candy bar just has speed holes punched in it or a new paint job, but it'll let you down in the end and even the piss amount of money you spent on it will lead to days of regret later when you are one dollar and 33 cents short of getting the one thing you actually needed later on in the month, you know it's time to make some changes.

No one should ever have to suffer being too tired to masturbate.  It's natures gift to the animal kingdom and as the king of the kingdom you should be and are entitled to, by the mandate of science and creation itself, masturbate.  That's one thing I will never understand about relationships.  The person that gets upset about your masturbating is so clearly in the wrong, it's practically insane.  In terms of pure practicality, absolutely insane.

I'm not cheating on you.  You're not having sex with me.  I need to feel sexually fulfilled nightly so I don't kill you and then all of our children and then my coworkers tomorrow morning and then myself.  What's the big deal?  You're happy, because I did not sexually assault you during the night when my dick got hard and I couldn't sleep for the third night in a row.  You're happy because I wake up in a good mood and feel rested and you feel rested and don't have to wash cum off of your ass and out of your cooter or off your dick and thighs.  I feel fulfilled because I slept well beside you and you feel good because I slept well beside you and enjoyed breathing in your sleep smells.  You feel good because you're not obligated to fuck me and I feel good because you feel good about that.  Who cares what I'm actually thinking about?  Brain space is brain space.  It's no ones property.  It's no man's land.  So it's okay to think about baseball and dismantling an engine block and nun's elbow fat to keep myself from cumming while we fuck, but it's not okay to think about fucking if we're not fucking?  Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?  Can you see why this might not work for me?

If you're too stressed to masturbate you need to reevaluate your life choices.

I do think I am becoming a bit asexual.  It's getting close to the point where it is impossible to meet a good shag without the baggage.  I don't want to know your life story.  I'll listen.  I'll talk.  I won't ask, but if you ask I'll tell.  I think it comes with moving up the age bracket and getting to that point where everyone begins pairing off and eggs start to get few and far between and people either start to go more and more insane or more and more stable and there is less and less gray area between the extremes because it really does take a good portion of your life just to figure out who and what you are and what the hell you are projecting and how the hell it's actually being perceived.

That moment in middle school at the graduation dance when the dance floor cleared out and the chaperons were busy talking about futures and "oh my gawd, my son..." and "I know, my daughter..."s  and other bullshit parents talk about to stay sane around other parents and not sound weird or give any indication that their little bastards backwards tendencies have anything to do with what goes on after he/she gets home from school, and everyone is in a circle talking to someone or listening to someone and you realize you're looking up at the lights in the ceiling and listening to everyone listening and talking to each other and you're happy there,  happens all over again when you get older.  Except this time around you're fully aware of it.

And that's when you realize you should stop suggesting things to do with other people because they're flat not interested, no matter how enthusiastic about it you try to come across.  Maybe there was an inkling of interest when the topic first came up, but by the fourth phone call and the tenth text message over the course of a month with no success it's time to face facts: they don't want to hang out with you the same way you want to hang out with them and it's only going to get more pronounced as they continue to grow and you continue to grow and you're not growing apart, by no means.  You're just not roll dogs the way you used to be.

Eventually it's going to get creepy and they're going to cut you off entirely so simmer down.  That's hard to do though.  Especially when you get pity-vited to hang out.  That's always the worst.  A pity-vite followed by endless pursuit leads to call off after call off after call off, because, let's be honest, they're trying to let you down easy and if you think about it a little bit, had you met them outside of the circumstances in which you actually met, you never would have known they existed in the first place.  Your blip is over.  The good thing is though, if you do relax the pursuit a little bit, you might get to have a fun pop in/pop up later when you've had enough time away to have something interesting to relay to them and that's nothing to sneeze at.  Unless you sneeze when someone turns on the light.  Then it is something to sneeze at.  Something to sneeze at and explain while you run for some toilet paper and your clothes because finding people that fuck with the lights on is almost as hard as not forcing the issue.

It's kind of like coveralls.  You either understand their value or you don't.  There's a large age divide in understanding the coverall.  There's a large age divide and a large occupation divide too.  When it comes to occupations the idea of the coverall is pretty obvious.  You either have to stay really really clean or you have to get really really dirty.  Either way, any sort of regular clothing is not going to cut it, but whatever job you are doing at either end of the spectrum is absolutely essential to the furthering of civilization.  You're either working at the very top end of technology and physiology or you're working at the machine level where the rubber meets the road.  Either way, if you show up in regular clothes or a suit and tie someone is going to say "what the fuck were you thinking" and/or "go home and change or don't come back at all."

The other area is a little more finicky.  The other area is weather related.  If it's just that damn cold outside it makes sense to wear coveralls.  Plain and simple.  The children in snow suits will nod and nearly high five you up until you hit the tweens and teens and young adults.  That's when you run into the girl still wearing heels in an inch of snow and the guy in all leather skinny jeans and bubble jacket vest with the flat brimmed sports hat that still has its sticker on it.  That's when you have to share the sidewalk with the guy with the vintage belt buckle and man purse shivering at a bus stop and the mom in enormous sunglasses faux studded with diamonds with a stroller.  That is, however, also when you run into the gal in her early thirties who stops you and asks you where you bought those coveralls because waiting at the bus stop at 7 A.M. with a windchill of -5 has had the presence of mind to understand a skirt and leggings with knee high leather boots was a bad idea.

The logic gap from age 13 to 23 is a strange one.  Everything is very obvious after, I dunno, say 26.  After 26 it's just a matter of execution and can do, will do, won't do, can't do, on the books and ready to go, or still thinking it over indefinitely postponed.  It does make me laugh sometimes walking home from work in nice thick coveralls perfectly fine, the wind breaking in front of me and not feeling a thing knowing that I score a 0 on style points and 100% on no regrets or thoughts about "if I lived here, I'd be home already" because I know in coveralls I can walk for days.  Hell, I could curl up and take a nap, but we know how that usually ends (flashlights in the face and "where do you live"s and "this is a public park, you can't sleep here"s, but those days are behind us).

Growing up is a shame but necessary.  I got my first gray hair a few weeks ago.  Right in the middle of my chin.  A friend of mine said "you're going to be one of those creepy 40 year olds with gray hair all over," I told him it's not true.  The preferred term is silver fox.  It's a badge of honor.  I honestly didn't think I'd live long enough to see a gray hair on my head so it's actually a badge I am happy to wear.  I can run with it.  Chicks dig salt and pepper fellas right?  Even though I don't particularly dig chicks.  It's still nice to be prized a little bit.  Let's you know you're not a complete dumpster fire.  If you're not a shock jock, I'm pretty sure not being branded a dumpster fire is a good thing.

Unlike most people, I've been waiting for gray hair for a very long time.  It's welcome.  My hair will finally start catching up to the miles I've put on my brain.  If someone took me home they'd be calling up lawyers about lemon laws and scam artists even though there is still a heart beating 10 years old inside of me.  Flipping through channels you'd be well advised to skip cartoon network because I will start jumping up and down and shouting that we have to stop to watch All Dogs Go to Heaven and Up coming on right after and we can't miss Courage the Cowardly Dog marathon after; Law and Order and the NBA game be damned!

With the kid does come soap dodging.  I still don't shower enough.  Then again, as you get older, the value of washing tends to increase.  Aside from my own OCD showering because...  well... because!  If you shower six times in one day you've either done way too much coke, done something really bad, are absolutely breaking down mentally and can't stop touching your own skin to save your life (if someone pointed a gun at you and sad the next time you rub your forearm I am going to put a bullet inside your fucking brain and you actually had to think long and hard about whether or not that itch right at the crook of your elbow was worth investigating because technically it's not your forearm and besides you really really have gone way too long without checking to make sure you were still inside the skin wrapped around your muscles, veins, arteries, and bones), or you just really like showering.

If I could live in my shower I probably would, Seinfeld style.  It breaks my heart sometimes, making references to things kids have never seen.  By kids, I mean early 20 somethings.  I can live with it.  It still grates my nerves though.

I did realize I was soap dodging the other day.  After I realized my shower fetish was getting out of control I decided to shower as little as possible and went to visit a friend.  I sat down right beside their fan boosted space heater.  Terrible idea, I know, but there was nowhere else to sit.  Let's just say, I got comfortable sitting on the floor beside it and spread my legs a little bit to sit cross legged.  The temperature wasn't particularly high or particularly low, but the fan was boosting airflow continuously and, yeah, it felt great blowing through my paints and airing out my junk because I'd been at work all day and it's nice to get a breeze going when your sack is stuck to your thigh.

I thought I smelled alright.  Ten minutes in, the girl sitting next to me asks me if I want to turn the heater off.  The heater is in passive mode so my answer is no.  The temperature is fine.  Ten minutes later she asks me again and this time we make eye contact and her eyes have that "something is not going well" slit to them.  So I put two and two together and made four.  Whatever funk I thought was contained has been let loose like the dogs of war all up on her face.  It was the nicest way anyone has told me I reeked in a long time.

I respected that, switched to a kneeling pose to pin down the crotch sweat dragon, and turned off the blower.  It's one of those simple things you can do to help other people feel more comfortable without other people being too shame faced.  It's kind of like masturbating in that way.  If you ever masturbate to a particular person, they don't want to hear about so don't say anything about it.  The sentiment will be appreciated, but there's no reason to go as far as treading on graces and enjoying company.  Be easy, be tactful, and they'll respect you for it.  The thing is you won't know they respect you because you'll never bring it up, but understand that given the alternative to not knowing... yeah, they'll respect you for it and take the complement.  Play it out in your head.  Run the dialogues and the dialog trees and superimpose their characteristics on those dialogs to guide the decision forks and you'll always end up at the same conclusion: take more showers, take more time, die happy, and in the meantime don't eat shitty food and keep memories in tow better than a cat can.

life snobs

for a while i was afraid that what education ive pieced together over the years has made me a snob. like a life snob. the kind of person who turns their nose up at everything because of things encapsulated in the following phrases:

"the book was better"

"the original from (insert obscure year) was better"

"i wouldnt buy that if i were you"

"i researched X Y and Z and this is my informed opinion"

"i heard on npr the other day..."

"i read on bbc.co.uk the other day..."

"thats just history repeating itself if you look back to (insert obscure date and event)"

"that was actually a sample from (insert less known band)"

"if you weight the pros and cons of it..."

"i think you are definitely mistaken..."

"well if you think about it, thats what they want you to think..."

"thats how the system works..."

and so on. any one of the above phrases can be exchanged for simpler cruder and more direct and colloquial phrases like "you dumb shit"... and "that is some nigga shit right there" and on and on so the point is.... the point is that normally i would be extremely self conscious about these kinds of things and go home and worry that people think that i must think im some kind of poindexter life snob who knows more than he should about anything and tries to lord it over his peers cuz he has no friends and sleeps with a teddy bear and a dictionary under his pillow.



but the fact of the matter is... haha what an ugly phrase... how about the simpler answer to this conundrum is that all this percieved snobbery is a machination of being American. Simple as that. America encourages simple, muddy, plain as dirt thinking for the masses. Sure schools don't (usually) but the other school, the tv, does and continually. whats more is that any show of discernment, of critical consideration, automatically punts you up to the ugly "elite" class... those people that are too smart for their own good that fuck up the country for everyone, regardless of what your actual income is. im broke as hell most of the time, but im 99% certain that my parents think im some uppity smart ass who doesnt understand the value of a dollar. whatever the fuck that means

so i guess what im trying to say is that the french aint so bad. or the brits. what passes for snobbery now used to just be critical thinking skills and the ability to turn down cheap and instant for slightly more costly and much longer lasting. the desire to turn max profit out of everything has essentially made anything less into snobbery, when in fact most profits should not be measured in dollars despite the thousand dollar bills the tv smacks us with continually. but thats snobbery. dont be a snob. dont make your own sandwiches because they taste better. just shove some mcdonalds in your throat. its cheaper too so you get to put more money in your pocket. no brainer.

everyone has become so obsessed with no brainers when the honest to god truth is the people that keep the brains in their skulls and turned on have a hard time passing in the world of the no brainers. so many things happen and we have to say to ourselves ... wait what the fuck just happened there... but what have to say it internally because if we said it out loud we would sound crazy. if we said half of the things we actually thought about we would probably be called crazy.

i dunno.... maybe the problem here is that my thirst for knowledge has vastly outpaced my station in life. that could be seen as the problem. if i was a lot dumber. like a lot fucking dumber.... i would be happy as a skunk doing whatever it is skunks do the 23 hours and 55 minutes i dont see them walking across my parents back yard. i would be happy to be at home doing nothing. happy to eat food and wash dishes and mow the lawn and happy to listen to my mom talk about her bleeding fucking toes and my dad talk about how he has to beat the sluts off of his fat disgusting body all day while he works as a phone technician. christ... the root of this entire existential crisis is my education.

at least thats what a no brainer might say. and you know what... in the current setting... in this state of the union... they'd be right. fuck them. my brain is strapped on at all times and it might be the death of me, but god damn it, if thats the case then im ready to die.

///four tet - "Untitled [SAW2 CD1 Track1] (Four Tet remix)" this song has brought me nothing but joy. i came across the four tet remix album in the second lowest pit of my life. it wasnt a shovel. it wasnt water in the desert. it was meaning and reason and design written across the formless mass and black and blue of life's crush. and thats why i still like it. and thats why i still love it.