this is going to hurt.

state of being address

2005-04-30T02:41:00.000-05:00

ladies and gentlemen, friends and allies, countrymen and crazy-old-kooks-living-behind-me-with -that-stupidly-annoying-rooster, i greet you with a hale and hearty hello. as many of you may realize, i recently entered into my twenty third consecutive year of being me. as such, i feel obligated to share with you my plans for the upcoming year, my hopes for the future of this position, and a great deal of thanks towards all who have made it possible for me to be in this office chair today.

right then. my first act as me in this new term, aside from consuming one reuben sammich and a few cups of coffee at ihop between 030 and 200 hours, which was agreed by all parties involved to be a particularly "good call," was the reading of scripture. i humbly admit my past failures in this most essential and basic duty and promise to reform the lax enforcement that almost sank this program in '04.

the second item on today's agenda was to smile. there will be no more weak, half-assed smiles from me, i guarantee that. once you've cracked a truly good smile, one that threatens to split your whole face in two, there's no going back. i've been a dried up old prune for too long and as much as i disliked about the me five years ago, i've really missed the old-school strube smiles of the past.

thirdly, it grieves me hardly at all to inform you that i will be stepping down as resident kitchen bitch at freeman hospital. the date of my departure has not yet been set, but current plans indicate a june-july time frame. i have my best people working on a veritable novel for the exit interview, so fear not for the department's loss of my keen insight and critical eye - my spirit will live on in 12 point arial font [and photocopied leaflets taped to office doors]. reasons for the move are numerous, including misuse of an evil genius, insurance rape, constant griefing by lame ass noob hax0rs, and a desire to give myself a pay raise and a more professional work environment. when one is identified by certain members of management as "that republican, christian man," as if possession of a penis should be a criminal charge [nevermind the pervasive hippiecentric culture that makes my political and religious leanings a matter of scorn], one questions why they should bother to continue their employment. on a purely personal note, i find the wait to discover the looks on the faces of the management when i disperse my propaganda absolutely excrutiating. look for a facsimile of the document here in the near future.

education will remain a top priority for the future, although i am not currently enrolled or seeking enrollment for the coming semester. shortly after securing new employment the ball will begin rolling and financial aid will be sought. no promises, but 2007 looks very feasible for my long awaited graduation party. i expect all who attend to become very shitfaced.

i owe a great debt of gratitude to all my friends and family who have supported and stayed true to me through uncertainty and hardship. good days are most definitely ahead.

/helen keller

2005-04-26T01:07:00.000-05:00

human beings are without a doubt the most paradoxical of all god's creatures. emotion and reason, body and soul. . . it seems our race is the gross product of some cosmic chemistry set experiment gone awry. flightless birds, alright. you've got a sense of humour. borderline schizophrenia as an innate special [read:: spee-shee-ul] trait? you're either a friggin genius or a really, really sick bastard.

i meant that.

i have a tendency to speak from feeling. great for inspiring one to do especially brave things as well as the profoundly stupid, but not particularly useful when someone else jumps the gun and points out problems, instigates an argument, or otherwise beats me to the punch. if there are words that precede mine on a topic which i had [supposedly] intended to address, dangnabit, them's fightin words. telepaths would do well to steer clear of me, fyi.

i also befuddlingly have the capacity to speak with great clarity. that is, when i actually think before i speak. this i make up for my emotionspeak's lack of focus with a certain deftness and agility that would make cassius clay in his prime green with envy - at the cost of taking on some berserk aspects worthy of a norse saga. veins will pop, gestures will fly, all whilst i myself am completely unaware of the metamorphosis i have undergone. now people who don't know me very well normally respond in one of two ways to this:: they either scream and run [seriously - although most of the time the screaming is not in fear but in anger] or they become extremely agitated themselves and further engage my beorn apparition. the best i can describe what i feel at this point is probably very close to what runs through the head of the poodle my folks have when you play with him. excitement, fear, anger, happiness . . . a primordial soup of base emotion swirling about with no real intent other than to exist, if only for some short time. my temper will flare for a moment with no tangible effect on the conversation other than to feed another word or two into my now projected train of feeling. if i'm giddy, you'll know. if i'm sad, you'll know. if i'm angry, you'll sure as hell know. problem is, this method of communication tends to, regardless of my emotional state, make others' hackles rise. you can get so much off your chest in so little time when you engage your emotions. a word of caution, though: never, ever, ever use this berserker stance around a passive-aggressive. ever. unfortunately [for me and my hyperkinetic heart], my sis is a textbook PA.

mos-def-to-the-max-omg-wtf-bbq. T_T

sometimes i actually think "stuffing it" seems a reasonable alternative.

we'd debate as kids for approximately three to four minutes before my reason tagged in the whirling dervish and all conventional modes of engagement were thrown out the window [along with a folding chair or two]. logically, sis is second to none. she excelled in lincoln-douglas debates in high school and, if she has done her homework on a subject, you are one screwed son of a bitch unless you can think outside the box. that's where mr. hyde comes in. rationally, most anyone is up against a wall when facing an educated opponent. with the equivalent of a emotional stimpack in my system, i'm a force to be reckoned with. i don't search for cracks in an argument's foundation, i rip the fucking wall down. if any single element comes to mind that has not been explored in this intellectual duel, it immediately becomes armor piercing ammo bent on ripping into the opposing argument's soft underbelly. i want to win and i can be a cruel bastard. granted, our debates rarely ever got to the point at which either party could claim victory due to the fact that hannah would opt for option #1 while yelling about the incivility of the inflection of my voice or somesuch. i love her to death, but she of all people should know me better. i yell when i win a round of halo, i yell when i lose a round of halo, i yell when i nearly fracture my skull on the obscenely low doorway to my room . . . and all are nearly indistinguishable from each other, although each belies a different emotion.

i will use my inside voice[s].

but that's all it really is, right? spoken language is a ruse to belie our feelings, more often than not, an affirmation that we're all ill equipped to communicate with others. before God we must all be destined to be emotionally nude or blessed with the ability to read an infinite thread of thought processes simultaneously. i'm working hard towards the former, albeit with great difficulty. as my mentor and good friend perry is fond of saying, "always tell the truth, but don't always be telling it." i must sort out the times at which i need to effectively communicate my feelings and when i need to let them dissolve into the great cosmic vapor.

lately i've had a gas cloud the size of jupiter orbiting my head. i'm praying for a new job or the fortuitous endowment of a steel plate in my forehead. i don't think it can take much more beating. >

OMGWTFBBQ

2005-02-07T22:37:00.000-06:00

maybe i wasn't paying enough attention to the jackass in front of me, but tonight, just like my last car wreck, was all about the inescapable laws of physics and crunched metal.

only it had more to do with press-gainey scores and hearsay.

let's not get to wrapped up in details, shall we? the fact remains that freeman hospital's kitchen continues to "flounder," meaning our current survey scores are lower than those past. and what does this mean? absolutely nothing. except that someone has to pay.

blame it on the goddamned parsley.

she did. i'm called into the office with a fellow coworker and bombarded with a desk-sized hunk of bullshit right off the bat. "you do know you are supposed to put garnish on every tray, correct?" furious nodding. "i've heard about some problems with this recently." blank stares. "what it comes down to is our scores. we're too good of a department to be where we're at currently."

i think i may have drooled on my namebadge at this point. i'm abruptly reintroduced to the foodservice world with weighty phrases such as "let go" and "final solution." minus the zyclon-b, of course - HR would have had a hayday with that.

i bolt into action, my mind racing to keep up with this ludicrous ruse, "is this about morgan's fit over the LETTUCE this weekend? because she got all up in my face over that and i just followed suit. it's a friggin huge piece of LETTUCE. . . "

"no, no, it's nothing to do with that. mr. s*******, i realize you are looking for another job. now i wouldn't mind hurrying you on your way by making you find other arrangements,"

i know for a fact that my jaw hit the floor just then. nearly four years working my ass off for a bunch of egotistical soccer moms and former tweakers, ONE with a fucking BA, and i'm being threatened the boot for fucking parsley?! aside from that, one of the primary reasons i hate my current job so much is the inexplicable emphasis placed upon those wilted pieces of greenery that i configure on so many plates of goop every night. no way. this is insane.

fuck loyalty, fuck standupedness, and fuck that goddamned fucking kitchen. my record obviously means nothing to the cocksmokers and all the time spent there suddenly feels like a monumental waste.

then again, it could be the hand of God spurring me to action - it's not like i haven't sent out enough resumes and applications over the past three weeks, but maybe i am supposed to feel a stronger sense of urgency.

i do. i need a new job. psychos and uberbitches need not place ads in the classifieds, kkthx.

/funk

2005-02-04T01:06:00.000-06:00

every day's just like the last
you sit and wait for time to pass
you swear you'd sell your soul for some change
you don't believe that life occurs
in between meaningful words
you starve yourself to death on the mundane

it's a sort of waking death
that steals your heart but leaves you breath
a cold and brutal winter of the soul
you'll sit and weep at the sunrise
further consumed by all the lies
that make you human, a piece of the whole

but it can't be all that bad
if you don't remember what it was you had
this numbness dissipates with memory
leaves me shivering that much more
if i shake myself to pieces
can i be restored?

i was in a horrible, horrible, horrible, no-good, very bad mood today. beers at the pub [as per usual] with the guys seemed to fix me right up. i need a new job. the move went extremely well [i only have THREE boxes left to unpack. god only knows where the hell the crap they contain is going to fit] and hannah and i are fairly settled in. i'm impatient for the next accountability meeting with griff, nat, nate, jason and jon - which is good, because i've messed up enough already these past two days. here's to hoping i'm more typative tomorrow.

so many brilliant wrecks

2004-12-06T19:02:00.000-06:00

i know you're listening. great. now just hear me out. no, that's not it at all. you are completely blind to everything going on in your own life right now - i have it all figured out. listen.

:|

God, you're like . . . God. i'm fucked, you're perfect. your will is coming about whether i like it or not, so i sure as hell better get used to it. and bonus:: someday things won't be so shitty.
you've promised to provide for me and be understanding when i screw up, which is great because i'm going to screw up pretty damned often. i guess i'd better treat everyone i know likewise, huh? i don't know why you would tempt me but i suppose it's been done before indirectly. i'll take you at your word and hope for the best. cover me.

why don't more christians' prayers look like this [with the exemption of the explicatives]? i suppose the basic format may still remain intact in some, buried beneath the extensive, flowery lingo popular in their respective circles. for the most part, prayer has become an exercise in pussyfooting around the topic at hand and instead praying for "an outpouring of grace" and "a great healing" "in the blood of Jesus." the most painful conversations i've ever had involve such speech, desperately trying to contain my screams of intellectual anguish as the entire secular world is sweepingly sucked into this rose-colored, cultish vortex.

there's so much more to life than grace, healing, and freedom. trials, learning, and growth predominate mine at the moment. if i'm to be accused of not making progress, such accusations should be leveled with more serious backing than a lack of purely conceptual buzzwords.

i've bottomed out again.

to a degree that's entirely true. then again, i'm also only six weeks away from having my own place and working full time until i feel compelled to return to school. in all honesty, i feel more empowered now than i have for the past three years, since the first scholastic calamity up north. why, then, are my parents, who have observed me since kindergarten, up in arms?

i've bottomed out again.

that's their charge, anyways. nevermind the ultimatum spurring the upcoming move that came the very week fall semester began. nevermind the heinous schedules from work and the increasing stress that brought about. nevermind a week of bronchitis followed by the anniversary of my dad's death. fuck it all. you, sir, are substantially fucked up.

i never said i didn't agree, i just protested that i wasn't depressed, wasn't isolating myself, wasn't trying to ignore the fact that my classwork prior to four weeks ago wasn't going to amount to a hill of beans, and wasn't horribly despondent about all the matter. we've all been here before - i, for one, have never been in charge of my own life to the extent that moving into a place without an obnoxious RA breathing down my neck will afford me. nog champa and the occassional smoke at the desk, i await you.

that isn't to say that they aren't honestly concerned about my well being. quite the opposite, their concern drove them both to this confrontation [if it can be called that], inspiring emotional outpourings and a fervent prayer for . . . all that. they want me to get help, they want me to again consider drugs, and they truly want the best for me. they just refuse to believe that maybe the best for me at this time is what is happening right now. i'm lost to them in this regard.

when i said none of your words were lost on me, i meant it.

/partisans

2004-11-01T23:31:00.000-06:00

the center is off.

the most important office in the nation is up for grabs and all eyes are upon those flickering bastions of truth nestled in our living rooms. we don't interact, we feed. consume. regurgitate. we curse the other faction, drawing lines in our backyard, recklessly wielding words like freedom and patriot. feel sage.

lose a limb.

the center is off.

tug at it, smooth it out, wave it high, and burn it in the streets. feel something. feel ANYTHING but please shut the hell up about the others, that half of the american body you choose to disassociate yourself from. your brother. that fucker with the other guy's sign in his yard.

bandy insults.

the center is off.

/dream

2004-10-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

most kids grow up with aspirations of one day becoming astronauts, policemen, ballerinas . . .

i can't remember ever having dreams for the future.

i dressed up, to be sure, in fatigues and ponchos, cowboy hats and cap guns, but i fully realized i'd never become any of that. it was make believe and momentary. once the neighbor kids were untied from the tree everyone went home for lunch and resumed their normal lives. i daydreamed for hours on end, sketching, writing - anything and everything that crossed my mind. for years i worked on a comic strip which evolved, through an ungodly amount of notes, into a science fiction mythos common to all Tolkien wannabes. it, like everything before it, was eventually abandoned. i still use the back half of that damned, voluminous notebook for brainstorming, mildly embarassed whenever i come across some map or schematic penned nearly a decade ago. it's cute:: it's worthless.

it's sad.

i was struck with the harshness of that kind of thinking this past weekend. why do i think it so pathetic to dream? why don't i invest more time in fantasy, in my own writing? why don't i believe in the future?

my father beat jesus christ to the grave at thirty-two. the man had a family, a successful career, and his own dreams. he was denied a future. why? goddamnit, WHY? what mortal sin did he commit against the heavens to bring fate crashing down upon his head? why did he go into respiratory arrest on that occasion, having had so many closer calls in the past? what did the nurse who incorrectly vented him, causing him to aspirate on his own vomit, think of at the end of their shift? dinner? bed? sex? human frailty?

that one was too easy. why the hell should i believe that everything will work out in the end if i work hard and live well? for every american dream realized there is some poor shmuck struggling to make ends meet, at the end of his rope and marriage. for every man who manages to clamber to the top there is a lightning bolt or gust of wind waiting to make a dead fool of him. there's dumb luck and shit rolls for all - it's only a matter of time until we have our bad streak and go bust.

i'm out. i'm fed up with not investing in anything, barely coasting through life with no aim. i'm sick of people telling me i don't care about anything. i'm tired of dullness and the inevitable intellectual and spiritual death it will bring about. FRIGGIN YAR.

i've wrestled with my father's ghost for the past ten years - i think it's time for me to let him go and continue on my way. i'll never be as brilliant, but dammit if i won't live past thirty-two myself.

/erased

2004-10-23T01:56:00.000-05:00

divorce:: it's not just for unhappy couples anymore.

it's been nearly twenty years since the man responsible for half of my genetic makeup checked out. i'm feeling weird again.

so you have a new life, a new husband, and a new locale. peachy. what's left to do? divorce the inlaws! it was a gradual shift, apparent by the fact that i can't quite put my finger on any single event during my childhood at which point my parents said, "F U," or anything like that. it was most definitely not born out of necessity - from my understanding, the grandparentals did everything they could to both preserve their grandkids [us] as distinctly theirs while accepting that things would change in time according to our new family's dynamic. this was misconstrued as, "you can sit in the corner at REAL family functions and have your heads cut off in group photos" by my folks.

gosh.

this all took place with a great deal of drama, justification, and evasive rigamorale until my [step]dad honestly felt like all of my family hated him. think about it - my family. it sounds absolutely ludicrous. meh. that's what went down, with a whole lot of extraneous scuffles and petty grudges in between. for all intents and purposes, i might as well be an orphan at "that" family's functions. i was the only member of my family present at my cousin's wedding last summer; my parents and sister were quite possibly the only people the bride was related to on the entire friggin planet who weren't in attendance [a good two dozen of the groom's family flew in from germany].

i haven't seen my [step]dad's family in close to three years now.

it's funny how things work out. my dad dies when i'm two, i'm fortuitously granted another one at the age of five, and i, for all intents and purposes, again don't have one at age twenty-two. pat, my [step]dad, was never close to his father, either, albeit for different reasons.

it all comes down to namecalling.

i may quite possibly have the longest name [hispanics discluded] this side of the mississippi. this, and this primarily, is the reason for the mentioned family feud. forget it. i'm sleeping. i'll write about my grandma's letter [the stimulus for this entry] some other time.

/fold

2004-09-16T01:25:00.000-05:00

like nathanael said over our game of texas hold em last night, i never know when to fold. it's all or nothing here, baby:: what you see is, unfortunately, what you get. . . and that often amounts to nothing more than an assload of disappointment.

four years ago i would have been lying in my bunk:: my nose inches from the ceiling, my heart high in my throat, and my thoughts hundreds of miles from everything else. for some reason or another, unbeknownst to me until . . . even now, i couldn't find my footing. school had become an exercise in evasion, jessica my distraction. more likely than not, she would have been curled next to me this supposed night four years ago.

that tiny bed swallowed my existence in the coming months:: there were days where my feet never touched the ground, where the numbing wash of sleep was preferable to waking life. life was increasingly a string of failures, each more devastating than the last. i wanted to clock out.

i sat on the edge of my bed, the real one, and flipped that damned quarter for hours. seriously. that was how one of the most influential decisions thus far in my life was decided:: dumb luck. truman or trinity? hell, i dunno - grab a coin.

dumb kid.

i sat on the edge of my bunk and cried after hearing my mother's voice. hannah finally got her driver's license. she got in an accident, but she's alright. rudy has yet another reason to hate the vet's - his lost doghood. everything i cared about was inaccessible, reached only through miles of cable and cardboard boxes. i had nothing here, only the hollow and the hostile.

there was something about her that was familiar. awkward around strangers [making my first weeks at college a bit overwhelming], i stole glances across the lounge, trying to piece together how i could possibly know this girl. the smile. it flashed in my direction, sparking irrational terror within me. oh my god. she was smiling at me. think, think, think, think, think.

"hi."

the floorboards shrieked their protest as every vertical surface in the place fell into dust. space-time ceased to exist and an all-consuming panic reverberated through my skull. clang clang clang clang clang. mental clamor gave way to a far more deafening silence as my eyes searched for some fixed point, any, in the room that wasn't somehow swept towards that smile. all hope was lost. . . i froze. way to go dumbshit.

"hi."

my fate was sealed. this was not love at first sight:: it was an exhilarating, horrible feeling that promised to choke out all else, rasping its deathly intentions behind an inpenetrable, veil-like aura of wholesome abundance, life overflowing. i knew. i knew, even then, that this girl would be the death of me.

was this life?

every morning, i plodded out the door of my unremarkable room, under the veranda of my unremarkable dorm, and towards a desk in some unremarkable classroom or another where a lecture i was uninterested in was to take place. my boredom was borne of my schizophrenic self-worth - i had decided that i was too complex to be known by anyone and, consequently, depressed and lonely. who the fuck would want to hang out with me?! life was something that happened back home, off campus, and outside the boundaries i had confined myself to. maybe i was just sick of waiting for something to happen. who knows.

she invited herself over to my room, which was fortunate and inevitable because my tongue was obviously glued to the top of my mouth. it never came loose.

over the coming months i became more involved, more alarmed, more alone with her. nigh every waking moment was spent near that smile. i shirked classes, ate next to nothing, and i slept only when i passed out from exhaustion. honestly, i entertained thoughts that she would devour my soul in my sleep there near the end. i made up for those lost hours tenfold near christmas.

fits of conscience.

that's what she called them. we're getting too close, i'd say. i haven't treated you like i should, jessica, and i need to sincerely ask your forgiveness for that. that look. she'd look at me, startled, as if i was a stranger. laughs. kisses.

fits. tantrums. fucking riotous indignation. i only wish to God i had more of them.

i was too lonely to jump ship. i was fucked either way, i assumed, so i might as well cling to whatever semblance of humanity was left me. i was right. when the ship hit i sank like a stone. the better part of a year of my life was spent convincing people who cared about me that nothing was wrong. that it was normal to sleep twenty hours a day and eat five meals a week. that fifty degrees fahrenheit was a reasonable temperature for a dorm room [funny story, that, involving an air conditioner, an uninsulated window, and a bitter-ass winter in northern missouri]. that life was somehow carrying on as usual in spite of the appearance of absolute stasis.

the rest of it is neither unique to me nor in the least bit interesting. two years after that semester i passed my first class EVAR and declared myself an english major. why? i dig it. i love the analysis, the discussion, the introspection. i went through life without reacting for too long - i suppose i'm just making up for lost experience. and after reading so much of her poetry i think i owe it to myself to bury that shite under volumes of the good stuff.

:P

/ugh

2004-09-09T02:38:00.000-05:00

school. is. kicking. my. ass.

not really [but it sure as hell feels like it]. why must professorage insist upon writing about highly personal matters for class? i mean, i don't give a crap about letting my stuff float around the www, but c'mon:: you expect me to turn in something that joe shmoe english major next to me is going to read and critique? puh-lease.

i'm lame. excuse me while i go do this damned assignment.

of beer, smoke, and "good people"

2004-09-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

a viewing of harry potter should not be a complicated experience.

seriously, it defies all logic that one should become entangled in matters of life and death, predestination, and the unjustness of a god who dispenses condemnation to some and salvation to others whilst watching a children's film. nevertheless, that's exactly what happened last night.

i've known nick and morgan for years - our friendship began in early highschool and continued through college. an unfortunate falling out occurred early last spring, primarily due to the lack of desire from both parties to take the initiative and pick up the phone, that was just recently patched up. i love these kids. for crying out loud, i was nick's best man at their wedding three summers ago. somehow, in our seven odd years of acquaintance, i failed to pick up on their sentiments regarding not only the church but christianity as a whole.

what a difference a [whole lot of] smoke makes.

five twenty-somethings on a balcony, beers in hand, talking about whatever the hell crosses their minds. it was great. and then the "unjust god" card was played. ruh-roh. morgan is a social worker working on her masters in sociology, nick a nursing student pursuing a career as a nurse anaesthetist. rick, nick's brother-in-law [aka the balcony's bulvarian midget and a complete crazy ass], and my sister, hannah,[bank-teller extraordinairre and self-proclaimed opinionated bitch] round out the group. we've all grown up in the church [with the exception of rick, who was raised by texas longhorn cattle] and have our gripes regarding its structure, goals, and environment. that's to be expected. beer #4 and smoke #way-too-friggin-many, morgan and hannah somehow steer the discussion away from the rigormoral of morgan's job and onto the topic of the western church's failures. they are many, i'll openly admit. we quickly move far beyond merely criticizing its faults and begin contesting God's power to judge mankind.

hold up.

where's this coming from, i ask. an anecdote about educated people being less likely to believe in God flies across the balcony, nearly causing my cigarette to fall into my lap. unbelievable due to your newly-gotten degree? unbelievable. i wanted to get to the source of this drastic change of heart.

what makes it so difficult for you to believe in God? the answer was anything but simple, but all facets pointed to a lack of desire to follow a God who would dole out eternal hellfire so readily. the blame was, at first, placed on our church's pastor who [unbeknownst to me] preached a few scathing "turn or burn" messages in the past year. hannah nodded eagerly at every pause, lapping up every drop of doubt and disbelief. i knew i had to do something to turn this around:: it's not that conversations such as this are necessarily dangerous, but i wasn't willing to let someone in a potentially vunerable position get indoctrinated with a load of unsubstantiated bullshit. my sister has struggled with doubt for the past couple years - a wrong step here could set her back even further. i know. i've been there.

we inevitably got to the question of a just God and an eternal hell. no matter how fervently i battle against human logic in matters like this, i always lose. it's a matter of faith:: if you don't believe that we, as humans, are inherently and irreversibly fucked up, you will never begin to understand [which is all we can do] both the goodness of God and the fuck-up-ed-ness of everything apart from Him. no dice. "i know plenty of good people,", morgan began. "hell, so do i.", i countered. "the fact is, i didn't kick my dog, rape and pillage, or kill a single person today. but what good have i really done?"

topic avoided. proceed to play the faux-trump "fair" card.

"why should i believe in a God who will send someone to hell just because they have never heard of Him? why should i worship that? i'm educated."

whoop-de-friggin-do. the truth is the truth, sister, even if you may not like it. besides, your husband and i possess collective iq's that could devour a small country - what the hell does that matter? it's just numbers. no test will ever effectively measure a person's affinity to spiritual matters or ability to think beyond themselves.

nick, hating conflict, remained quiet. hannah, related to me and, consequently, full of shit, decided to pipe up with a fabricated passage of scripture in which Christ ministered to those in hell during His time in the tomb. i draw the line whenever people play on the expression that "the bible is a living text" and assume they can mad-lib their own gospel whenever convenient.

end part 1. homer and some damned colonist or another demand that i read their junk.

burn, baby

2004-08-11T02:16:00.000-05:00

i'm driving home after another needlessly stressful day on the job, blaring some JEW [clarity, of course] and sucking down a lucky strike. the failing light bounces off a shop window just so, coinciding with my current heading, the thrum of a helicopter, the smell of gasoline and cut grass, shit like that, stirring up some long-dormant soreness in my chest. fuck deja vu, this is present - and that's why it hurts.

the dorm room flickers in and out of existence: another power surge. we lay sprawled on the floor listening to this song, confused children trying to make sense of their shifting surroundings. nothing lasts. the song ends, we drift to sleep.

i wake up. a middle-aged guy in a convertible wants to race. i grunt my disapproval and annoyedly light another smoke. the colors change as the light continues to fade; motion resumes and mr. convertible speeds into the dusk.

you are smaller getting smaller but i still see you

love is born out of confusion. in order to love you must trust and in order to trust you must have something you are unsure about. the only thing i was sure about were the walls [they were slowly closing in on me, advancing subtly as if to remain unnoticed, but i was onto them.]. they're moving again.

inhale. exhale. don't forget to speed.

four years ago [holy fuck, has it really been four years?] i was a dumb kid hauling his stuff to school in a laundry basket [i had a lot less baggage then in all respects]. clean-cut, sharp as a tack, and, naturally, completely unprepared to be entrusted with any kind of responsibility. but that's the way it always goes, isn't it? i flick the remains of my second out the window, reaching for number three.

my first was filched from the console of her 93 corolla. that damned marlboro menthol burned before i lit it - why i ever did i'll never know. ready. aim. fire. the initial coughing fit nearly sent her car off the road, a shiny red omen of things to come. i regained my composure and set to finishing the smoke. i only got halfway.

the car lighter's cruel eye winks out and i resume combustion. i suppose i've grown wiser, older, wider since then, even though circumstances dictate that i've only just come full circle. my first year of school is behind me, again. there's no way to lose the first . . .

so many naps. the air conditioner, silent, is no longer her excuse. she sleeps all the time . . . i can never manage to when she's around. her face and music. so many skipped classes, so much ground lost. her face is music.

sometimes i think i managed to lose myself in her face.

after i returned home, my mother would weep and ask me where the aaron she used to know had gone. i couldn't feel anything. sleep. i only wanted sleep.

panic attacks, drugs, and therapy. my optimism had turned into a nigh unquenchable self-hatred. the roof was about to collapse.

three down. i realize that i've just turned onto seventh for no particular reason and take this as an excuse to light one more. i suppose i'm still medicating. nothing's changed here in years. there - that's the pizza joint i found the ten-dollar bill in after a soccer game in sixth grade. finders keepers, losers weepers.

i heard she flunked out of school last fall. my first thought was along the lines of "join the club", albeit more colorful, but i immediately related to how she must have felt. caleb, my longstanding best friend and a damned gracious man, told me she was working at walmart in kirksville to stay with her sorority sisters.

we're all so lonely.

/passworded!

2004-08-10T10:53:00.000-05:00

so i forgot my password. actually, it was more like a "i haven't visited this page or the balcony in over a month and totally forgot this blog existed and when i remembered i tried to log on but soon realized that i had forgot my password" forgetting-of-my-password. well, the password has obviously since been regotten and i am returned. woot.

summer school came and, praise the heavens, went - all without my presence for half of the term. meh. i pulled a b in physics and ended up once again dropping the horrendous bore that was music app ["drop" used lightly]. goodbye, summer break, i never had you. but wait! due to some genius stroke of luck, i was able to get the next two weeks off work. better still, i actually conned the suckers into paying me for it. it's just too beautiful:: i'll be guzzling coffee whilst playing doom in my boxers on the company dime. for albeit brief moments in life, there is justice. or something.

quite a bit on the plate for the next few months, especially for someone as uniformly lazy as myself:: fifteen hours of force-fed edumacation and a move, headlining. i'm actually pretty damned excited about classes resuming as nothing promises to absolutely suck this semester. the epic, the short story, early american lit, " " history, and art app threaten a hell of a lot of reading, which is great, and very little bullshit coursework, which is equally great. this, being my third consecutive semester as a full-time student, is some kind of record. hooray for late-bloomers. hooray for the chronically unmotivated. huzzah and whatnot. my sister and i will be leaving the parentals' shack and rooming together sometime after midterms. which is good, i suppose, as there is a constant drama enacting and fabricating itself at home. stepdad's off his meds, mom's having a few mid-life crises, susie's on fire, i can't feel my legs for the love of god and all that is holy . . . it'll be a good thing. hannah's peddling her teller-stuffs full time, now, so we'll be in decent shape financially. well, she will but i'll be among the happy poor so long as i have an internet connection and enough cash to buy beer. /burp

if nothing else, moving out will force me to get serious with school. sure, i've had more a's in the past year than anything else, but i've also had a couple f's. the fact that i just had to quell the overwhelming urge to type "woot!" after saying that lands me somewhere between "sick bastard" and "dumb motherfucker".

i concur.

/burninated

2004-06-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

O, the glorious spectacle that was my new rig o' doom! the blue haze emanating from its sleek, black exterior, the intricate cabling job that i toiled over for three hours, the raw awesomeness of its choice components. minas morgul was lit up for the first time last night at 0030 hours . . . and at the introduction of power [after a lot of praying and crossing of myself] into its silicone innards, i was greeted by fireworkds. no flashes, mind you, just a loud *SNAP* followed by a hell of a lot of blinking red lights on its mobo and the front led's.

it's not like i wasn't careful:: i spent ten hours straight checking and rechecking every header, jumper, and molex connector. the mobo was a bit warped [almost imperceptible upon unpacking], an ailment which only worsened during the lengthy install. intel - your stock heatsink is a piece of shit. for the love of god and all that is holy, if you're going to make something monstrously huge and heavy, at least design it to achieve comparable monstrous performance. also - retention clips are the WORST. IDEA. EVAR. meh.

so the damned thing 'splodied. needless to say, i was not happy. actually, self-hating emo kid that i am deep down inside, i violently cussed the piece of shit out and proceeded to sleep on the couch. seriously, even mentally picturing a chipset or PCB made me feel ill all day. yarrrrrr.

not much drama, elsewise. i'm pissed that i'm still unable to play thief III, though. eh well.

/narutos

madness!!! [with a wee bit o' garlic]

2004-06-13T03:45:00.000-05:00

today i::

further wondered if my mentor is going mad or if i'm just too damned cynical. just because i have the most abstract, ridiculous dreams doesn't discount everyone else's. God can reveal deep truths about the nature of our existence to our subconscience, right? :\ i guess my dreams are just way too humanistic. i am the creator/savior/destroyer in them - reality begins and ends with me. sure, i believe that God communicates to us in our sleep [that state in which we're closest to truly waking] - i've experienced it myself. a particularly nasty storm has made its way into several of my dreams, always the night before a particularly nasty [and unforseen] occurence in real life. always the same conflict, always the same massive funnel cloud. except for the time when velociraptors stormed my school and a baby t-rex ate my math teacher. that was sweet.

realized that i am stupidly impulsive. seriously, man - walking from the parking lot in BFE to work isn't ANY kind of statement. it's dumb. friggin get back in your car and find a better spot [that piece of well-tended lawn near the shrink's looked pretty choice]. please try to remember that the bus doesn't MAKE ROUNDS ON THE WEEKEND. /doh

learned an important lesson - uttering the words "filters" after requesting a pack of regular luckies is expected at the walgreens on 20th. otherwise, you end up with unfiltered toastedness which, while tasty, is quite filterless. /coughs

was asked to read the most hideous love poem never published. a colleague/classmate of mine wished to flex his grammatic muscle and composed a series of couplets to his estranged girlfriend. wow. i like the kid, so i did my best to keep any pained expressions off my face when he asked what i thought. note to everyone:: never ask an english student what they think of your writing unless you have a considerable amount of time to listen, a desire to be criticized [in my case, severely], and really, really thick skin. as i would be forced to work in close proximity to him for the rest of the night, i decided to go easy. very easy.
"well, it's . . ."
"very sappy, isn't it?"
"YES. the meter is fairly irregular and . . . "
"man, i had the perfect meter in my last poem. it's at home."
"uh-huh. i'm not a huge fan of sentimentality in love poems."
/blank stare "did you see the part where i went all yoda-style?"
/sighs "yeah." /grimaces
/smiles "i thought that was pretty cool."
"are you giving this to her?"
"yes."
"i'm sure she'll love it."

/cringes

had the best. brauts. EVAR. griff, i salute your discernment in the realm of all things sausage. num. mercilessly slaughtering everyone [with the exception of nathanael's precious few lucky wins] in halo was great, too.

didn't get enough sleep. again.

/sleeps

/putered!

2004-06-10T02:00:00.000-05:00

i have done it. the online vendor gods have been appeased and new computery goodness shall soon be miiiiine! mwahahahaha . . ha . . hum. yes, so feel free to skip a bit if wading knee-deep in incredible dorkness isn't your thing.

the goods possessed::
Lian Li 6077 midtower - black anodized aluminum chassis capable of producing ungodly amounts of drool. the modular front bays sold me on the beaut:: currently is housing an equally delicious tagan 450w psu, a matrix orbital lcd, vantec fan controller, and five thermaltake 80mm's [three of which are blue led and all of which can move a ridiculous 70+cfm]. i've been damned impressed with the vendor i went through for this order - they charge a slight premium on most of their merch, but their sleeving jobs [standard on any item with wires . . . which is damned near everything] are quite simply what's for awesome. only the temperature probes and front port usb/firewire headers are bare, making this case's guts extremely ogle-worthy. check out performance-pcs.com or be waifed by the sheer aerodynamic fury that is my computerless computer case. or something.

the goods enroute . . . i hope::
Mitsubishi 19" DiamondPro CRT. i hate dell, but i must admit they use some damned good monitors in their builds. 90hz @ 1600 x 1200 ain't too shabby. techonweb.com, however, gets a ghetto rating from me. order placed, money taken . . . no word on shipment. for that matter, no notification that the order ever went through. the fact that the order status functionality on their website works as well as my uncomputer instilled no further confidence within me. meh. the promises i recieved of tracking numbers and imminent shipping in an email yesterday are as of yet unfulfilled. i'm not holding my breath . . .

the goods just ordered [/giddies]::
Abit IC7 MaxII mobo
P4 3.0CGhz 800mhz FSB and dead sexy, to boot
1Gb OCZ DDR 500 gold
Sapphire Radeon 9800 pro 128mb
Soundblaster Audigy 2
NEC 8x DVD+/-RW
Lite-on 52x CDRW/DVD combo drive
200Gb Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA HDD w/ 8mb buffer
80Gb " " " "
klipsch promedia 2.1 speakers
Zalman NSomething-or-other Al-7000P[or something] CPU cooler

/giddies

/sleeps

/paneled

2004-06-02T05:22:00.000-05:00

yesterday::

the atm ate my debit card. i suppose that's a good thing and all, seeing as i drove off with the plastic still in the dumb beast's greedy mouth. -50 moron points. i'm compelled to award myself +5 for discovering its absence a whole ninety seconds after the fact, though.

i continued my neverending battle with school's business office. +10 for making them stay late to fill out my paperwork and pick up a new waiver and an extra +15 for actually standing at the counter until one of the secretaries felt bad enough to wait on me.

+100 awesome points to my dad for duct taping the redbud tree back together after saturday's heinous wind-action.

-20 points for believing troy was actually going to meet my expectations. -30 for actually possessing any expectations for a hollywood summer flick. +2000 awesome points for the hector v. ajax and hector v. achilles duels. troy had the worst. score. EVAR, effectively ruining my appreciation of the few saving graces that miraculously found their way into the film. a brief review:: excellent fight choreography [with a few cheesed exceptions], passable CGI, spotty acting, mediocre to godawful cinematography, and craptacular screenwriting + directing. in a word, your-typical-summer-epic-blockbuster. first vocalization as the credits rolled:: "that was a western bastardization of . . . western culture. THAT'S a first." don't go see this film if you're a guy - orlando bloom is far prettier than whoever the hell played helen [although she does have a rather fine ass] and viewing pitt's nude form six or seven times will inevitably cause your self esteem to plummet to dangerously low levels. meh.

+25 points for trying to help griff install flooring at his new place. -50 for not having even a basic knowledge of powertools and +50 for being damned good at killing bugs [and rocks].

tomorrow's the day:: new computage parts will be mine! soon, i will take over the world [sorry sha - i'll leave you rhode island]. work:: 1430 to 0100. should be stupid awesome. i'll let you know if i get through the night without getting blood on my hands or, even worse, fired. hope for the best.

awards earned:: most lethal, pathetic shot

2004-05-30T13:38:00.000-05:00

i had a brilliant time with griff and nathanael last night:: a few tonics, an agreeable meal, much waifing action on the gamecube, and lengthy discussions on technology that were oftentimes way, way over my head. it was great. no politics this round; i think we exhausted the topic along with our supply of cheap beer on wednesday.

and everyone knows politics are for shmucks.

the kitchen failed its second health inspection:: i at once feel strangely validated, irritated, and self-righteous. eh well. if we get shut down, i'm going to laugh. obnoxiously.

har har.

off to work. ciao.

glub-glub-no-blon!

2004-05-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

i can't believe i'm doing this. i - the guy who used to laugh until my ribs cracked at the supposed vanity of the typical blogger - now have a blog. huzzah and whatnot.

so i suppose an introduction would be in order. hello, blog. i'm aaron. you're looking pretty lean at the moment. what? yes, i suppose i [i]am[/i] looking a bit on the healthy side. eh? no, no, no . . . that's it. you're going down, cochese.

/beats blog with stray, pointy bits of code

this really is pretty damned therapeutic:: so far i've insulted myself and subsequently released agression on personified html script. i assume things will only get worse as this entry progresses. save yourself the disappointment and quit reading now. really.

spring: the end of another semester and the long-awaited dawn of my sophomore year. i'm giddy with excitement. /giddies i've never been much for applying myself:: i'm the guy who sets the curve with three hours of sleep on a belly full of beer. studying? the word sounds vaguely familiar. my problem:: showing up to class. well, it [i]was[/i] my problem. i got better. yessir, no more academic probation for me. i've gone from a 0.0 to a whopping 2.095 cumulative gpa. from here out it's blue skies and scotch on the rocks. mmmmmm, scotch. and this is why i've decided to snuggle up to the scholastic cheese grater . . .

summer break: what the fook is that? school starts in little more than a week, regardless of whether i feel like it ever actually let out at all. i was supposed to have the new machine burned in by now - instead i have the case and psu [albeit a really, really pimp-looking case and psu] precariously positioned next to the old machine [oh, how i hate you /shakes fist] awaiting the arrival of various computey innards and arteries. so i'm really, really bored [see: genesis of this blog]. no school, no expensive electronics to risk destroying, and no motivation to do anything besides piss and moan [excluding the ever-present desire to drink beer].

work sucks ass. huge, hairy monkey-ass. like primo, raw baboon-ass. in fact, i would go so far as to claim that my work environment has crossed into the elite realm of the asstastic. speaking of ass, i loooooathe the management more than anything. their stupid work ethic, their stupid emails with their stupid grammatical and logical errors, and their stupid . . . asses. dammitol. /quivers with rage it's really not that bad - until they call for mandatory overtime . . . until one in the FUCKING MORNING. cleaning party, my ass. get the damned hospital ceo to scour floors for you, sister - the work can't be that hard if you believe a troglodyte like myself capable of it.

on that note, i'm going to shut the hell up. big brother is watching me, and i think he's porking the kitchen marm.

test

2004-05-26T01:51:00.000-05:00

ouch.