Where The Time Went

I haven't been lost.  I've been sitting beside a home made transceiver trying to reach a ship in the vicinity.  I've been on board it a few times with no signs of life.  Each time I return to my junker it goes off and I race to the comms deck to respond.  Each time I do- static.

Each time I board it there are freshly opened meals, a coffee sack still warm, a cigarette drifting with flecks of ash still floating and clouds of smoke swaying in the recycled air.  A saucer and chipped cup and different music playing in the background over the public address.  Breathable 65 degree air.  A few playing cards that weren't there before.  A display still picking up signals from Sol from 1989 when they aren't playing static.  A ghost ship.  I turn off the distress beacon and return to my junker to figure out what to do with it.

I can't turn it over to the scrappers just yet.  Not with people aboard.  Their machines will shred it with no regard for souls.  If someone is on that ship, I can't forgive myself.  If someone is on that ship, I hope to make contact soon.  The trade hub orbiting Europa is still four days journey from our position in the Oort.  Remember how lovely the grass was down on Terra?  If I can bring this thing back in one piece, there'll be a fortune and a vacation waiting for us.

Someone is on that ship.  I will find them.

Captain Jexel Hobbes of the Noway Accel- 10201800278

Time has flown by.  I've missed so many deadlines I wanted to hit.  When was the last time we spoke?

RAM is going to take a serious investment.  I know that the mother board can handle it and I've tried a half dozen times different combinations of chips to blow it to the 16 gigabytes that it can do.  I've allowed the bottleneck to become a road block on producing art.  I fell in love back in March.  Sacrificing and sacrificing over and over to try to bring another person into my world, but most efforts have failed.

I've asked her dozens, but not yet hundreds of times to meet me half way.  She continues to do the same things she does, not because she doesn't love me as much as I love her, but because it is all she knows and has known since she was small.  I do think that it's possible to change, I know it is.  Everyone deserves a chance.  There is a spark in her.  If I can help, I will.  I didn't get to where I am in life without help.  How can a person conscious of this turn away another and another who actually kind of sort of understands you?

I am beginning to wonder if she actually does or if she is a part of my life because I am so different from everything she once knew and cares more about being truly loved as a person than.......  she does love fairly unconditionally.  Maybe that's a part of the problem.  She can't tell the difference between someone who actually cares for her and someone who is using her.  It's a possibility.  It can be solved.

How do you speak to someone who is jammed with ultimatums and unwilling to discern?  How do you speak to someone who cannot see the consequences of their actions beyond a week, beyond a month, beyond 12 hours?  How do you reach an addict?  I am one.  She's not on another level.  She hasn't allowed herself into the terrors of introspection.

She flies away from the heat.  She creates reason mazes.  Responsibility mazes.  Agency dead falls.  I understand the fear.  How can you explain that fear in your own life to someone who hasn't acknowledged it within their own space?  I suppose that goes back to the old adage: how can you love someone, if you cannot love yourself.  I don't know what to do when I see her setting herself up for apologies.  It's how she's gotten by.  The other adage: don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.

I never thought that I would fall in love again.  I knew I would.  I did not believe, however, that it would be more than a passing fancy.  Survival is paramount.  Survival comes with its costs.  One of the costs is you do not get to enjoy stable long term relationships because you must survive.  If two survivors meet, there's a match and a stable long term relationship can grow there because there is no dependence.  There is only a mutual companionship.  Do not tell me you would die for me.  Live with me.

I am afraid this will not work and I may have to eject her through an escape pod into the vacuum of space with a few months survival kit, a beacon, and a radio.

The largest red flag wasn't history, or family composition, or addiction.  The largest red flag remains a dearth of creative thought.  A nagging inability to see what's possible instead of what's here.

One year.  One year.  I will gift her one year of my life.  I was given less to reach further and, for some of it, I destructed because I didn't know what and who I was and a heavy portion was out of my control from the outset.  Everyone deserves a chance to grow.  Everyone!  I know she can do it.  We have so much in common and beautifully so.  I do love her after believing that I did not have the capacity to love again after everything my circuits have been sheared through.  I am a part of my ship, incorporated, built, and breathing, designed, redesigned, scrapped, prototyped, burned, and rebuilt anew.

The larger mission is still to build a map for the sojourners after I am long gone and someone else is stumbling upon my space station and docked junker broadcasting songs no one has heard in decades and curious what the hell a space station is doing 15 light years away from Sol in dead space.

I have compassion.  I know that I am a pretty tough ticket 300 out of 365 days, but I can feel and I can be and am conscious of my bipolar schizophrenia.   Occasionally it gets away from me, but not nearly as often as it once did.  I can protect her and my friends from it (it's impossible to protect one's self).

One year from the day we met in March.

Synchronize watches.




///Way Out West - "Northern Lights"   radiata

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

We Were Looking for Highspeed

spent some time in the foundry.  It was important to do.  Part of the importance was simply getting the shakes out.  Along the path of life I managed to convince myself that it was too hard to use my drawing pad to make drawings instead of doing them on paper but what I realized, after weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of procrastination, was that I was putting it off to do paper because I knew I would never really try to pick up paper the same way I can pick up the convenience of a drawing pad.  Partly because I don't have the pens or pencils I like in my house and at arms reach when I want them, and partly because I don't have scrolls of paper big enough to do what I want to do when I want to do it, and partly because both of those things allow me the saving grace to not have to burden myself with the torture of stepping outside my own skull, and that last one is the big one.

I love living by dreamlight still.  It's a wonderful thing.  Not without it's own limitations, but when you live in there you never have to worry about showing someone else what it was that you saw while you were there.  You never have to do the work.  On top of that you never have to slug your way through misinterpretation when you do try to translate dream code into real code and the circuits short out half way and you get flustered and start sweating because you know they know it didn't really happen but it did I swear if I can just show you how it all went down.  You're never burdened with that.  But it's the same principle as the principle of the fact of the matter and on and on being that you can't get in trouble if you're not conscious.  Which is true.  

How you got to being unconscious is the tricky part, but once you get there you are literally unable to fuck anything up.  There's something to be said for that.  The being comatose. The being asleep.  Part of why I prize it like I do.  The best way to do no wrong is to be unable to do no wrong.  So I spent some time though and made a picture that I like and also do not enjoy looking at because it did not turn out the way I wanted to or the way I saw it in my head and more over it is now subject to other opinions that I can or may not listen to, but it's not like I'm making a career so I care and then I don't off and on and more importantly if I simply went to bed instead of drawing the entire issue would be moot.  That's me.  Butters.

I'm glad I went back inside it though.  I had to.  I couldn't not do it.  Things were gestating for months and needed out.  It was time not spent unwell, and there's something to be said for that and I'm saying it now.  Or at least trying to.  I care because you do.  You care because I do.  We care because the infinite point of no one does not care?  Trying to balance out the word game.  It's funny.  She's funny.  But if you're going to be a recluse, at least try not to be reckless is all I'm saying.  If you're house is going to burn down, at least take good pictures.

Twas' fun though.  

I don't know what it all means with regard to the original mission.  I don't know if I'm gaining or losing ground or if it matters.  I'm still trying to lay down the blueprint, not so much to prevent me from recurring farther along down the line of history, and not so much to cut off what created me, and not so much to bring about some sort of internal change, but just to lay down track so someone like me can at least know what may or may not be ahead of them (but more than likely is).  That's really part of what I do live for.  Delusional or not.  I enjoy going to sleep and laying my head on a pillow knowing that maybe, on down the line, I helped someone not completely self destruct.  Or at least postpone it a day or two.

If what I do and have done tells one boy that it's not necessarily over when it should have been, but it's also written once it's written and the best you can do is operate within that frame and engage and rejoin society to the best you can do and the rest is garbage time and uncontrollable and largely unpleasant, but unavoidable, then I did something right.  Sometimes you get bad gear from the get and that will be how it is.  A perpetual game of catch up if you let yourself be consumed by it.  Personally, I'm still hoping for the off chance of a nuclear apocalypse.  And that's a long, long, long, bet these days.  I also thought, though, with my luck, I'd be the first one to die in an Earth purging event.  The first person shot in the face by some ultimate virus cleansing crew because I happened to develop a bad cough the day before shit hit the fan.  Ha! that would be my luck though.  

Just know, you're not alone.  I tell and believe the same within myself..  We'll meet again some day, sweetheart, and when we do we will tear this planet down to it's foundations by any means available.  And it will be classy as hell.

///Amon Tobin + "Rosies"  so where do you wanna go?

What Makes You Laugh

I was just thinking about unfortunate super powers and I laughed a little bit because of a dream I had.  Not a dream, but a day dream while I was riding.  I was burning down Center Avenue on my bicycle next to a tanker truck that had the high polished aluminum finish that was so glassed I could see my face and helmet and glasses in it when I glanced to my right.  I was going fast enough to pass it, but the light was red so I cruised next to it while we rolled up to the intersection together.

I could of waited, but I was about to pull a right turn at the next light after the stretch of  200 feet, once the next light came up, so I figured (correctly) I would be out of the gate fast enough to beat him there by enough of a long shot and why suck truck exhaust and obstruction when you know what the score already is.  Plus, sometimes it's just fun to flirt with disaster when you know the whale couldn't give two blinks for what you want to do, you being so small and flit a fish.  They know you know if you knew what was good for you, you'll stay away from their fins and wheels, and I for the most part do.  Sometimes I am a reckless jackass, but most of the times, this being one of those times, we both know I'm operating at my own risk and out not to cause trouble and enjoy the sights and speed.  At least that's what I think.

It occurred to me, in day dreaming about it, how awesome it would be to see the tanker explode in slow motion, but not have to actually be there physically, yet have my point of view so close and so slowed down to see it happen.  And then I wondered if, in real time, I would be able to see the flash or if my eyes would be disintegrated and turned to mist before my brain could know what was going on.

The whole thing made me think, in the few seconds before the light turned green, what an awful super power that would be.  The power to make flammable things explode as long as you were close enough to be exploded too.  You wouldn't die, but the one drawback, because super powers with no actual drawback besides responsibility makes you a comic book caricature, would be that you always experience the pain of death even though you are immediately reconstituted and the pain stays fresh.  Furthermore you experience the compounded pain of everyone else who dies in the blast, directly and indirectly, so that even the people that don't immediately die still channel and communicate their living, burn ward, debilitated, living pain for as long as they live directly into your brain beneath the layers upon which drugs can intervene.  So you have to really think about who and what you blow up and when and where, but not necessarily why.

Unfortunate super powers.  Like the power to make yourself drunk.  Like you can think about a specific BAC and put yourself there instantaneously.  Instantaneously.  However, you still get to deal with the health repercussions and you still have to figure out ways around hangovers and you still have to live your life.  But, you get to be as drunk as you feel like, whenever you feel like, because you can call upon a secret power within yourself to generate alcohol directly into your blood stream from your bones.  So, if, for instance, you have painted yourself into a corner and you know you are about to get the ass beating of a lifetime, you can instantly push yourself up to .2 BAC and not feel a thing and then meter yourself when you wake up at a solid .05 and continue to not feel a thing, but still be functional enough to ride a bus to work and do your job and go home.  You could, potentially, never be hung over again, but will likely poop out your foam sponge liver by the time you're 40.  I don't know, man.  Every boring movie would suddenly be interesting.  Every bad hookup would be forgettable, because you could have the power to black out instantaneously.    It would be one hell of an unfortunate super power.

Speaking of explosions, I got an exploding pound today at the gas station.  It was pretty absurd, because it came out of the blue.  From a man who was clearly in his sixties.  I don't know what that means.  I wish I knew why I was attractive to older people.   I have no idea.  And why, of all things, the explosion pound?  Is that what they think we're up to?  Because I have no idea what the kids are up to today being the age that I am, I guess I probably would have no idea what the people my age are up to when I will be his age so I guess I will probably fire shots in the dark after the same fashion when I meet people my age when I am his age so I will probably go for some antiquated (but what I consider timeless) dap and talk about long resolved issues and the merits of industrial music, dub step, and the last relevant artist I knew or maybe go on a good fifteen minute rant about Goldie and underground hip hop by people that sold out decades before.

I have no idea why they love me, but I have no misgivings about loving them back.  I think we ended up talking for a solid five minutes in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes.  When I was walking home I couldn't help snickering a little bit.  Still though, it was nice to connect briefly.  I've been taking some talking point notes in working this up, mostly because I couldn't sleep, still can't, and didn't want to have to comb through my voice recordings to find the parts I wanted to expound upon.

Which brings to the point that people that fire their cum must have a hard time jerking off on short notice.  Not super short notice, but I mean like you just rubbed one out and someone rang your doorbell, but you didn't go get toilet paper because you are almost broke and you're down to your last bit of lotion anyway, and who rings a doorbell at 1 P.M. on Saturday anyway and you're already downstairs opening the door before you realized you spooged four feet away from your computer and your chair is angled in such a way as to avoid spraying your monitor, but is pointed directly into the swatch of sunlight where your cum landed and when your guest comes upstairs to shoot the shit with you it'll be there sparkling like pixie dust on a Pan's head if a Pan's head were floor boards and pixie dust were cum?  Did that turn into a question half way through?  The next time you feel like less of a man for not having rocket cum, just remember it's a two edged talent.  And everything will be okay.

Which is more than I can say about late night commercials.  It seems every commercial after ten at night is about talking to people while jerking off, jerking off better, having sex with strangers, having sex with strangers better, buying cars, buying food that is somehow more expensive than it was last year even though it is in principle the same fucking thing it was the year before, buying cars, buying cars that cost the same for less money somehow and letting strangers jerk you off over the phone if you sit on your hand long enough and download the latest application that lets you download the latest application for getting strangers wet in the pants or making you feel less inadequate in your powers to make strangers wet in the pants.  That and sleep aids that are non-addictive, and what fun is a drug without the blown relationship of all out love?  An excuse, is what that is.  Is what that is?  Nyeh.  Television outside of the hours of ten P.M. and 5 A.M. is garbage anyway, unless it's football.  Plus, we all know commercials are lies.  Sexy, colorful, somewhat intriguing lies.

Kinda sort of brings me to comics.  Comedians.  You like to think that maybe if you met them you'd be good friends, but they actually hate you.  In real life.  Which is in itself a little bit hilarious.  They can't stand you.  But they're so accessible, aren't they?  The trip up is that you get excited and thrilled about the small, obscure, things they don't give two shits about.  Where the common ground lies, they find very little joy because the joy in them is in the spaces where differences are most acute.  I'm kidding.  I'm sure they're nice people in real life if you are a part of the things they don't like.  But they don't like so many things.  Do they do that on purpose?  I suppose this is a bad venue for dissecting comedy.  The dissection simply reminds me of when you tell someone that you're going home, and sometimes suffix that comment with "to jerk off" or "to play some video games and then jerk off" and the person you are talking to comes back with some absurd bullshit like "well, I'm going yachting tomorrow so I should probably turn in."

What the fuck is that?  Number one: I did not ask you what you were doing tomorrow.  Did you decide to throw that in to make me feel worse about what I'm doing for the rest of tonight?  That's kind of fucked up.  It's not like I'm thrilled to say "yeah, my big plans are pretty much encapsulated in two hours of shame followed by sleeping into Saturday until the NCAA games start and then I'll get up and jerk off some more while half watching them and then go back to bed until the bars open and I can thinly veil a little afternoon sousing in catching late afternoon games."  Did you want me to feel bad about myself for not having plans as grand?  Because if you wanted me to feel included in your adventures you could have invited yourself over for the yankfest, but that would have been understandably awkward, but at least give me the chance to say so and decline instead of feeling left out of your life altogether, if that's where we're going.  Because I mean, I only broached the topic of plans so you would know that I know my plans are not as great as yours, but at least you know that I know I'm not leaving the party because I don't want to be there, it's just because I can't over stay my fucking welcome.

I didn't ask you what you were going to go do, and you didn't ask me either, but I'm rolling over.  It's a complement to your party.  Why can't you take a complement?  And that's why comics will never be your friends.  Because you get excited about dumb, irrelevant, shit that is basically the frills and lace on the sides of granny panties to life.  Granted, I'm not going to break into your house, duct tape your wrists together behind your back, drive you out to New England in the middle of the night until dawn, haul you out of the trunk in the middle of nowhere, and shove your face into the leaves by the side of a one lane road and scream "this is Fall!!!  This is what autumn tastes like!!!"  That's just not me.  Plus, who has the time to do that these days?  I don't.  But forgive me if I don't give a !@#$ about the latest tech or music or who's hot on what coast and is performing half price and where.  I'm never going to be in that sphere and the people that are also are not particularly fond of folks like me anyway.

And  that's what's made me laugh these days.

Busy Signal and Dedication

I was just a person you would love to love, but then. I went through a week of pretty wild depression. Like depression uncharted. I want this to be up beat and I will try to make it as much so as I can, but sometimes things are unexpectedly gory. So I will make light whenever possible.

I've been in face time mode for a bit. Partly because happiness is contagious and sadness is, well, sadness. Not for any particular reason. Well, for particular reasons, but none of the reasons are valid. I have been experiencing very acute separation anxiety. And it's hard to describe. It's not like losing a mother or father or losing a method to madness and being left with only madness. How can I describe it? Asking myself. Separation anxiety for life? Not a fear of death, but a maddening anxiety for losing life? And then not even that so much as, by turning days, a separation anxiety that has echoed down the years back to my ears for my ex. But that's dead and gone right? Yet it comes swimming back against the current to the bridge and treads water long enough for me to notice, as I'm pitching rocks and counting the skips, to drown again like it was yesterday. Like it was five minutes ago. Panicking. Panicking as though I let myself go to the wave tops, even though I didn't. I made the right call, but the right call is calling me back and leaving messages and I am wishing there was a way to send things not to voicemail, but to nonexistence, and I am knowing that there is a way, but that particular way, in all of it's means, turns the good call into a terrible one.

I was talking to someone about suicide. Indirectly. Talking about the reasons people choose to make their lives matter. The biggest one is always religion. The second biggest one is narcissism. The third is family. And so on. But there is another reason that is a little harder to get at and more valuable than all three. If we accept that there is no god, and there isn't, and that math and science can, given an infinite timeline (or at least from the perspective of human life times, infinite), come to grasp and describe all, and that life is essentially just another system, of which we all are a part, it is clear that there is little actual wiggle room for agency. Not that there is none. The actual sphere of impact is simply a lot smaller for the vast majority of human beings than we are lead to believe. It's not all predetermined, but the actual outcome of my life, your life, is smaller than the bill of warrants would have you believe.

Killing yourself might hurt some people. Those people compose a micro fraction of the total people you could possibly hurt by not killing yourself and killing them instead. More importantly, unless you are part of a very small fraction of the populace, your death will have the chances of winning the local lottery, assassinating a head of a state, and getting struck by lightning later that day when the forecast for rain was less than 1% the hour before, of impacting the future outcomes of the rest of the worlds occupants, let alone the rest of the country's or even the state's outcomes. Probably even the locality's.

The thing that can keep you alive though is knowing that for the local set of outcomes there are a few very much intertwined equations. These equations, known or not, make up your value and you can assign whatever figure you want to your variable. Your variable on the long scheme of the interactions makes up very little of the master equation. The sun will still die. Mankind will still continue to implode and explode by turns until that happens. Science will still advance. Math will continue to prove and disprove itself. Life spans will still extend at increasing marginal cost for every five years gained. People will still be happy and miserable and happy because other people are forced into misery and miserable because other people will have done nothing to be happy except be born into it. You, however, do mean nothing to those final outcomes.

People will be sad for a time. They will be entertained, repelled, satisfied, and disappointed with what you do, or not. Ultimately though, you may never be forgotten but they will be entertained, repelled, satisfied, antagonized, placated, contented, and disappointed by someone else after you. And they will remember them too. The inherent value of you, just you, is your local, temporal, impact. The master calculation will still end up the same, the only thing you do is change how it gets to that final conclusion. Therein lies the value in life. Every time two plus two adds up to three billion and you and those connected to you can see it and laugh and cry about it for a while and forget that the 3 billion will be adjusted for down the road.

What we read as anamolous or some kind of discrepancy is all accounted for ultimately. In the moment, however, it's why you're here. You're here to contribute to the math of life. Not destroy it, not change it necessarily, but just to leave some chalk on the board. And once you are happy to swipe the eraser, and draw faces with a spit soaked fingertip, and scrawl away, you can be happy. That was the conclusion I tried to draw through the conversation. And I hope it came across alright.

The depression was manifold. Part sexual crush on guys I knew I would never actually gain access to. Part anxiety. Part screwed up brain chemistry. Part longing for things I have no right to long for. Part wanting to just fucking be someone, anyone, else. Some months you would trade your skin for anyone else's. But all you can do is wake up and be you again. Part of the sadness was not making time to do this. To talk. To talk with psychiatrists. Part of the sadness was the pain and not being able to express it. I still can't. All I want some days, in terms of expression, is to make someone else hurt as much as I do sometimes so I can know that I am not alone. But I am.

Not in terms of a unique pain, but in terms of identity. No one can hurt the same way you do. It's quantum mechanically impossible. Sure, you can hold up Rorschach tests and see similarities, but no one hurts like you do. No one loves like you do. No one's been there before. No one will go there when you're gone. All I wanted was a day off to mourn for ghosts. How do you request a day off to do that? How do you request a day off to rest your teeth? I don't need them removed. I just need a day off to rest my mouth. How do I express that? I need a day off to not move my body. I need a day off to get back in touch with my heart. I need a day off to talk to my hands and coach them to be better than what they're giving me. How do you express these things and get a valid response? How do you talk to your superiors and tell them that they need to forget the book for a minute, forget the guidelines, forget the established, and understand me for a minute as a human being before opening their mouth to deny me the things that keep me alive? Where do you begin to describe to them that the things essential to them are vestigial to me and things essential to me come across as figments of imagination, but bleed me as real as a brick to a forehead? There are no doctor notes for "love sick". There are no doctor notes for being stalked by your schizophrenic counter parts. There are no doctor notes for being chased by the animals of your dreams that have bled into reality. There are no doctor notes for the things that stop me cold like an engine run so hot it melted into a solid block of steel in seconds.

I'm sorry for giving you the busy signal. I just don't know what else to do. I am trying, though. Trying to get back here and get back to functional. Trying to gather up the caucus. Trying to find the kid, and the chief financial officer. Trying to get the engineer and the interface specialist in the same room, but when I can get them talking over pizza the kid runs out. When I can get the weapons specialist to stop for a minute, the toxicologist starts up again. It's just been absolute chaos on the shop floor and I can't get any of them to work together, let alone spend significant time together and it's a public relations nightmare. Circuits are breaking and many of them are new and unlabeled with poor documentation. Addresses point to places that don't exist. Thing that do exist point to breakers that don't cut power. Switches turn things on that shouldn't exist, things I thought were dismantled or were never actually built, but were. Things change over and I find myself in places I didn't know I was with people I already met, but are new again and I have to reintroduce myself.

Across the bridge everything is in tumult. I'm trying to figure it out as fast as it is happening and when it finally does click it's gone and it's time to wake up again. I just need a week to explore and find out what and who is there and who I am seeing. Who is sneaking in and who is lingering. But I have not had time so things are dangerous again in a way that they have not been since 2004. Not for you, but dangerous for me. I am so scared sometimes. It's a terror with which I am not familiar at all, because it's been so long and I forgot. How do I explain that to people? There are things over here that have no name that do what they please and should not exist, but do. They wait and they follow and they chase and they stalk and they talk and it's all I can do some days to pretend none of it is happening and I took the exceptionally long route to work today because I felt like taking a walk. It's fucking terrifying.

Ultimately though, the busy signal rings loudest. I have to undo that. I think the more I at least talk as an outlet the better off I will be. It's not a key, but it is a hammer to a single bar of the cage that I might find at least a way to get the hell out a little more. And to make that happen I am going to get a dedicated internet line. I am dedicated to you. I am dedicated to your math and your variables and your short lived value. Because it's all I have. Without being a religious nut case. It's not settling. It's understanding. And to make that easier and, in steps, by jumps, help myself I am dumping mobile broadband because rolling the dice every five minutes is nerve racking too and when I finish something, or start something, conversate, image trawl, explore, and in short live, I need to be able to know that I can complete thought. So I consider it less a luxury and more of a necessity. Maybe even a necessary exchange for the grossly inflated cost of medication. A monthly stay of execution. Of sorts. A re dedication and affirmation that I am doing everything I can to not completely self destruct. I want to be with my friends. I want to stay connected. I haven't left you, I promise.


///Unkle - "Heaven" dedicated to being alive until it's time to go.