The Lonely Opera

My weekend has been unusual.

Recently the situation with James and Adair has become more complicated. Or rather, a previously existing complication has refused to stay sublimated. Adair does not like that I visit so incessantly. She wants her time with James. We get along very well, but she began to develop a dislike for me despite herself. The solution to this situation would seem very simple. I just give them a weekend off every once in a while. But it was complicated by the fact that James insisted on my visiting as frequently as I please. He did not and does not want his relationship with Adair to interfere with my visits. Unfortunately, that is an unrealistic desire. He's bought a ring and intends to propose when circumstances allow. I let him know as much, in a delightfully homosexual metaphor, the comedic nature of which made it easier for him to take. Up the butt.

Because tensions between myself and Adair had begun to build during my last visit, due in part to my misidentification of the subject of one of her portraits as a man, when it was in fact herself, I wanted to allow the situation to settle down without delay, and opted to not visit this weekend.

On Friday I purchased a season pass to this city's premiere institution of the arts, which includes a museum, a theatre, and a symphony hall with accompanying orchestra. I walked there up the core street of the city, through Midtown, a total of seven blocks. I walked past a lot of places. A house museum, a branch of the federal reserve, apartments with an entrance flanked by granite fountains and shaded patios, and a business-executive restaurant where a film was being shot. I picked up my pass and got a ticket to Janacek's Glagolitic Mass.

I went to visit my parents. It was nice enough. We talked and went places. I gathered up all of my parents' Halloween decorations, since they won't be using them this year (My father will be in Hawaii and my mother doesn't care to set it all up herself), as well as some firewood and a portable fire pit. More on that later. Or not.

At one o-clock this morning, I noticed that the moon was shining extremely brightly, and the stars as well. It was so bright that it left an afterimage on the eye like the sun. I later learned it was a full moon, the harvest moon. It was cold outside and the air carried sound well. I could hear the planes at the airport five miles away. I went for a walk through my neighborhood barefoot. It was so quiet that I heard a cat walking. I can't tell you what it sounded like, because it was such a small noise that it had no quality or dimension to it, except that it was brief and soft. I turned to look and saw the cat, sitting there in a driveway. I crouched and held out a hand for a minute or two, making the little vague motions that we always seem to think will attract cats, and when I gave in and stood up it ran off. Further up the hill a dog in his yard noticed me and took offense at my late-night walk. He began to bark and did not stop for the remainder of the time I was outside. I know because I could hear him no matter how far away I got.

I got back in town an hour before the show. I had planned to take the trolley to the Xth Street rail station and take the train one stop up to the (X+7)th Street station next to the arts center. I was delayed by Marie telling me about hr typical party-filled weekend and then waited for the trolley before remembering it doesn't run on the weekends. I walked to the station and payed two dollars for two trips. A dollar for seven blocks. Not economical, but in this city it is not the best idea to walk those seven blocks alone at night. At the station a little mouse ran beneath my bench and sniffed at my shoe. When I moved my head to see it better it panicked and ran off. The opera was not an opera; it was a concert with a choir and four solo singers. There was also a pipe organ. It was, as the title indicated, a mass. The music did not move me. It held no meaning to me. It was decent music, to be sure, and at times moving, but it was like a different language to me. I did not understand.

On the way back I waited alone on the platform for the train to come, rode one stop, and then walked once more through the dark and very nearly empty streets back to my dormitory. It is hard for me to tell what it is like for me to walk alone at night. It is the perfect example and expression of my feeling that I am placeless, a particle set loose to drift loosely on my various paths. It was dark and quiet and lonely. It was depressing in the extreme.

When I got in my roommates were all sitting around in the dark just finishing a movie. How happy they were in their friendship. I drank a glass of tea and retired to my box to write a depressing and needlessly pseudonymous journal entry.

Depression is the worst drug.

A Windy Day

Today I got the test back; an 82 on a class average of 77. I was a little disappointed, but on the whole it is an excellent grade. The curve at this institution is steep, you see. Class was cut short and I went outside to sit and eat my lunch apple. The wind was blowing strongly, mussing my otherwise meticulous hair. On the walk back to work little flowers blew off a tree and into my face. I saw a devil dancing in the leaves.

If it must be said, as it often is, that I am the earth, then let this be known:
I do not love those whose passions burn intemperately, who allow themselves to be consumed;
Nor do I love those who fall to earth and run ever downward to sulk in pools and rage in seas;
Those whose spirits soar freely, refusing all bonds, dancing like the wind, sampling of all the offerings of life: Them I love.

Reaffirmation

It is the nature of the school I attend that we are frequently invited to bring equation sheets to tests. They are generally one or two notebook pages, and we are allowed to fill them with whatever content we wish, obviously excluding the answers to the tests. Most students obsess over their sheets, packing them with small print from margin to margin, abbreviating, outlining, and compacting to no end. My sheets generally consist of a few spaced lines of equations taking up one quarter of the page, which if similarly compacted would scarcely occupy a tenth of the sheet. It was so equipped that I approached a test today.

It is a frequent complaint of my classmates of every major that our school demands of us unusually heavy studying. Not so for I. This last weekend I spent high virtually every day. The test I spared no mind whatsoever as I enjoyed some films by Miyazaki and others. My preparations were only to create my cheat sheet and to skim tests from previous semesters, both of which I did entirely in the hour immediately preceding the test itself. I believe I also consulted one page of my notes. On the way to the test I ate an apple; lunch. Lately I have replaced lunch with a fruit. It takes less time to prepare and doesn't bog me down during the day. It appeals to my sense of traveling light and of culinary asceticism.

Allow me to tell you at length about how I take tests. This may be of interest to those of you who are not so skilled at this art, as I consider myself a master of it, and I have numerous scores to agree with me. It is in large part my fortune to be born into a society that ranks us by tests that is responsible for my intelligence. Just as you can only be told so many times that you are stupid before you begin to believe it, from a young age I heard constantly of my amazing intelligence, and while this bred in me great arrogance, it also ensured that I would never, in those early years, doubt myself. That was to come later.

The greatest flaw of a test is that it must be written by a person with an understanding of the material, and the very material about which it questions, which it must therefore reveal to some degree. The most obvious of these flaws are inexcusable. For example: #21) Which of the following did Politician X establish during his career?, followed by #47) The most notable effect of the passage of the Placeholder Act of 314 under Politician X was _____. Anyone with a short-term memory and the patience to review their work can capitalize on these giveaways. But this is so crude that it hardly conveys my meaning. There are more subtle hints that accrue across a test. Internal consistency is a powerful tool. One answer often leads naturally to another. This is only more true in engineering. What I do is so much more than the recitation of tired facts or the brute application of equations. I build castles in the sky. Begrudgingly given stones I stack until I scrape the clouds. I derive, friends! I derived very nearly the entirety of the material, because memorization is for chumps. These sciences are so shallow and clear.

Let me take it down a notch. I am full of triumph and find it difficult to express myself calmly. In short, I found the lectures and notes to be of little help and conquered the subject using only the information given in the problems, a scrap of notes and my own intelligence. It was deliberate and methodical and resulted in a test which I am confident I scored well on. The exhilaration of success lies in knowing that these hoops through which I am asked to jump are nothing to me.

What confidence I once had has faded with the years. To have it again is a good feeling.

PS

I have a suspicion that I must create.

Why I must change careers

The core activity which enables the art of engineering is the reduction of complex systems to those which fall more neatly into the monolith which we have designed for understanding and predicting the world. Assumptions are made, cautiously and with great regard, to be sure, but still we shave little slivers off until we have carved a perfect square, and into the slot it goes. And when we apply this science to science itself, what do we find at the core? Heisenberg and Godel, laughing at our arrogance, trying to remind us that we are playing a great game.

Models, frameworks, equations. All abstractions, perspectives chosen carefully to align with one another. I will not spend my life circumscribed by the assumption that those who have gone before me know better; I will not unquestioningly offer the sweat of my brow to the idol of Science.

What it is that I will do instead, I still don't know. I want to wrestle with the world in its most raw and unshaped form. I want a holistic perspective of things. I want to let loose the uncultured intelligence we call intuition and arrive at my own unique understanding of the things that surround me. I know for certain at least one thing I will do; as it is not presently a career option in any place I know of, I will do it for free, but know that if it were a career I would attack it with ferocity and dedication; such is my passion. I am going to get seriously stoned out of my mind as often as I can find the time, and furthermore I will ingest all the LSD and shrooms I can locate and afford, until one or the other world begins to make sense. If this means I must take a sabbatical, or postpone my career, or offend my family, so be it. This is my decision.

Cogitus Rex

WHAM!

WHAM! is an iconic 80's band that produced music that epitomized 80's pop, including such popular tracks as "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," "Club Tropicana," and "Everything She Wants." The music is derivative, cheap, peppy, pseudo-homosexual, and generally speaking some of the worst pop-garbage filth ever to heave its glistening bulk out of the stinking sewage drain of 80's music.

And I love it so much.

Please kill me.

We must try again

I must tell you!
Somehow I must say:
The way the days and nights linger.
The darkness outside and inside.
The shadows on my bedroom wall.
The blue light that stares me in the eye.
And how my feet carry me without my asking or thinking,
How the road races beneath me and my eye flies away,
How the silence is always waiting just outside,
And if the noises bother me, it weighs, but I can tell one Devil from another.

The world is not a place anymore.
It is a series of images cast on my eyes,
Sounds that assault the ears,
There is only me and where I go.
Wherever you go, there you are,
And here I am, everywhere I go.
To go where you are not,
You must be who you are not.
This I know how to do, and I seek it,
And the waiting weighs too.

I remember a time when the mists hid things,
When beyond every wall there stretched a cavernous expanse,
When the glass and steel cathedrals of my dreams hung majestically about me, just out of sight.
But now every wall is a wall,
And beyond the wall, nothing.
Philosophers ask: What is there at the edge of the world?
A sheet of drywall and two coats of eggshell.

And I remember the first wall, and the terror.
Atop a hill, with the air hot and dry, the trees dead, the branches bare,
I looked up.
No clouds, no sun, no birds, no roof.
No shelter.
Blue and blank.
I saw the wall and the nothing beyond.
My heart stopped,
My youth died.
For a while I held on.
I thought of the damp, dim places,
The mists, the vines, the echoing tunnel.
And on an overcast day I can still believe.
But a second day came, when the wall found me again.
This one is inside and outside and all around.
It is the wall that is not a wall.
It is everything.

Some live in a world made of persons,
And some in a world of places.
I live in a world made of walls,
The emptiness behind them,
And the emptiness between.

A paragraph that is trying very hard to be a poem

I remember how the words used to come.
Tight, sharp, with all the iambs in a row, and a rhyme on every line.
Now they meander. The semicolon abounds.
An overabundance of words fills in for the things I can't say or feel.
Rhyming seems so quaint now, so trite.
Rhythm, meter, anyone can do it. Why bother?
Children's songs is all they are.
Increasingly I suspect that the only valid form is the haiku.
Say what you mean, and leave it be.

Youth, bright, sharp, clean, straight.
Pain, fear, worry, withdrawal.
Dull, long, cheap, dry, dead.

Dead Week

Recently I was listening again to Dr. Feel Good. I heard the line "Got a cushy little job through the Mexican mob / Packaged as a candy cane." I realized that they mean he is posing as a candy-striper; a nursing intern, and that he is stealing drugs from the hospital to sell on the street. This is a small thing which nobody cares about. It was significant to me.

James has a habit of taking my ideas and running with them headlong, even the ones I was only contemplating. It is surreal and disorienting, particularly because of the amazing progress that he makes in so short a time. It seems as if I need only speak it and the next day it is before me. I don't quite understand why he does it. Maybe he genuinely likes my ideas. It's the only thing I can think of.

I made a leek and potato soup tonight for dinner. It took a long time because I had to chop everything by hand and I had no potato masher with which to mash the potatoes. Consequently, it came out chunky. Nonetheless it is nice. It is not cold but I am shivering. I am very lonely. I wonder if Marie is calling? I should check. She has not called.

I need to decide on an organization to join for the fall semester. A failure to have social interaction outside of work and weekends will have a poor effect on my mood. I understand this despite my general aversion to people, particularly those organized in groups. I may attend meeting of the campus Republicans and Democrats. It would be good to become more educated about the upcoming election and politics in general. I may begin attending meetings of the so-called Freethinkers again, despite their small-mindedness. I may attend some anti-Scientology protests. Have I mentioned that the Church of Scientology is the single thing that I hate the most? It is.

Where has all my wit gone? My hateful youth gave way to a smoldering bitterness in adolescence which seems to have since gone out entirely. Is there a bed of coals beneath these ashes, or am I as cold as I feel?

So much work is being undone right now. I am shaken.
It's no good at all.

On the way back in tonight I passed a couple. They were suspicious because of the lateness of the hour. There was a storm far off on the horizon, but the air was so hot and thick that I could feel the pines embrace me as I passed beneath them and smell their sweetness like a fog. The clouds were bright in the sky, lit from below by the city and above by the moon. The homing beacon was out; it was a night of many shadows.

So high

Well, to be fair, nowhere near as high as last time. Nonetheless, I derive such pleasure from being high that I do fear I may become a pothead. I have a strict policy of only abusing substances on the weekends, but here it is a Tuesday and I am pleasantly high. It would be so easy to make myself a batch of brownies and have one every evening when I get home from work or class. It wouldn't interfere with anything; I waste time all evening anyways. It would help me get to sleep, make things less cold, make my dinner taste better, make my music sound nicer. There's the inconvenience of it being illegal, but it isn't even expensive. $30 is enough for a batch of 32; at one a day that's less expensive than a subscription to World of Warcraft. We will see, but I think, thankfully, that restricted supply and paranoia will conspire to keep me relatively clean.

Even high it is so cold in here!

Mundanity constipation

This morning I had what may have been the worst dream ever. In retrospect, it appears to be a dream about schizophrenia, which makes it interesting.

I dreamed that I took a blow to the head that caused me to forget everything that happened afterwards at a specific point in time, essentially teleporting me into my own body at a future date. That date was the day of my wedding. I was marrying Marie. It was an unusual wedding; we both stood on a stage and had speakers come up to say nice things about us, including a quirky lesbian pal who shocked everyone with her raciness. I remember that after some time I recognized one of the servers shuttling food around; it was me from before I hit my head. We were friendly with one another and he congratulated me on my marriage, though he admitted to not really understanding it himself. At one point we took an intermission, so I went to look for a bathroom. The sign pointed up a very small tube that ended in a glass polyhedron with a small opening onto a parking lot. The opening was too small for me, and I broke the pane of glass. I panicked and collected all the shards, then broke into a nearby car and ran it into another car's taillight and scattered the glass all around to make it look like they had done it. I was moving the car to another part of the lot when I heard a narrator in my head saying that this seemingly harmless incident would lead to me hitting a pedestrian and skinning them alive to try to conceal the evidence. I was horrified, parked the car right where it was and ran back inside. I saw that everyone had left and knew I had been away too long and that they thought I had gotten cold feet. I became very depressed and took a hit of meth. I ran around the giant mall that is the setting for many of my dreams until I took an elevator to a secret floor where a narrow passage led to a room where stoned people were packed on the floor watching a grainy original cut of Star Wars that flickered on the wall. They were very angry at all the noise I was making, so I left. It was around this time that I knew Marie must have found out that I'd done meth and would never take me back. I spent the brief remainder of the dream running through the mall in a daze looking for her and knowing that I would never find her.

Now let me tell you why it was the worst dream ever. It was semi-lucid; I knew I was dreaming. Standing up on the stage with me, Marie was so beautiful in her dress, and I could see in her look that we were genuinely in love. I didn't know what had happened between the time I hit my head and the wedding, but all the doubt and insecurity were gone. I knew it was a dream. I was hurt by the love that I knew was a sick fantasy and I was disgusted with myself for having such a pathetic dream, and despite that I didn't want to wake up. The morning was unreal. When I put too much weight on the soap holder in the shower and pulled it off the wall, I was so reminded of breaking that window that I nearly vomited. I still need to put in a maintenance request for that.

In lighter news, I recently acquired the soundtrack to the film Everything is Illuminated, which contains what is undoubtedly my favorite music. There is a song in it called Prologue/Babushka. If I had to choose one song to represent me, as if it were a family crest or my Facebook page, that would be the song. My only reservation is that it is so beautiful I don't feel I deserve it.

Jesus, I'm being creepy today. What do normal people talk about? I just ate an orange? I'm sweaty from walking? What a load of bullshit.

OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE THIS CAMEMBERT AWAY

How has it been?

After thinking very hard about my direction I came briefly to the conclusion that the need for direction is impeding me. I need not have an objective. I have my investments to keep me financially secure and I know I am capable of keeping myself fed and housed. I no longer care for a career or for accolades. They would be nice, of course. A lot of things would be nice. I just really don't care about a lot of things. I am ambivalent.

There is something that I want to do, but because I really want to do it, I won't be writing it down here. That may seem backwards from how it works for most people, but it is forwards for me. I have thought about joining the military. Tomorrow morning is a Wednesday morning, which I have off. I think I should go and do something tomorrow. I should go and get supplies for this or the other or I should do some laundry (Well, if I'm going to do laundry I should do it now) or I should go to the recruiter's office with my negotiating face.

I got a third goal to my life the other day. They now number three:

1. Locate and acquire my Special Person

2. Drop acid

3. Eat absurdly expensive fancy food, presumably by being rich

For posterity, let me tell you about my chess game with Wallsnake. I took black and spread my pieces thin, only one layer of retaliation if that, and a very dispersed sort of pressure. She turtled about her king and lined her rook up behind her queen to punch through my thin lines and make my king dance. She took her time about it, getting everything lined up just right, and finally went in. I castled. It took my king out of check and put her queen in danger. She panicked and started disassembling her offensive in the wrong order, leaving things unprotected, and I got three big pieces in the next three moves. I got a rook behind her, pushed my pawns up in the king's face, slid my queen to the side and came out with a surprise bishop for checkmate a few moves later. If dating were remotely like chess I would be such a player. As it is, she seemed nonplussed by my victory, going to bed very quickly. This is in contrast to the numerous positive signs I have been receiving from her lately: enthusiastic hugs, sharing an umbrella, and slipping a flyer into my back pocket. The situation puzzles me, and it probably puzzles her as well. I can be inscrutable.

I've just remembered: I need to Facebook stalk that young woman from my lab class. She's mild in the face but a good size and an excellent dresser. Today she wore a black-and-purple striped button-down shirt with short sleeves terminating in buttoned cuffs. She also wore earrings; it's unusual for people to dress so well for class, but she seems to do so often. Maybe she goes to the Engineers Without Borders meeting right after. But these are the sorts of questions that need not go unanswered, thanks to Facebook.

Ugh. Wallsnake is so bourgeoisie. I worry that my pretensions will cause conflict. I shouldn't worry. I should let it go.

Maybe I will exercise tomorrow morning. Ha! That's the sort of threat that will get me out running an errand. I wish I hadn't stopped writing. I feel so insecure about it now because I wrote about silly things. I still write about silly things, I suppose, but I do it in a very serious way. I so want to trip. I want to see whether Logic Man will keep his grip when it all begins to float away. His grip is iron, I know from the mushrooms. Even when the walls began gently to ripple he imposed an impeccable politeness. We walked, we talked, we gave an informative and concise critique of two samples of potato salad. We waited until asked and we kept our remarks to one sentence in length. We were most excellently composed. Logic Man, [my name] and the little ones do so need more time apart. We all enjoyed it; even Logic Man, though he can hardly be said to enjoy anything, exulted in his ability to maintain control in the face of psychedelics. And I hadn't known about the little ones before. They are harmless and very amusing. But enough of that. The shipment is overdue and I anticipate its arrival very much.

I have considered becoming a drug dealer; not just a dealer, but a lord. I am a very intelligent person; it would be the sort of challenge of which I consider myself worthy. Often criminals are uneducated, stupid men who can do no other work. I would be a mind to make the FBI run in circles. I would so enjoy playing with them; I know that it is a game that I could never win, but there are some games that are played for the thrill of playing.

I love camembert so much. I have made myself very slightly ill on it; a fullness which is only the slightest bit past contentment. I got a loaf of rye first, but the bitterness of it annihilated the cheese's flavor; the italian does much better. My first attempt at my own alfredo sauce did not go well; I used powdered Parmesan instead of of grated, and it kept its gritty texture rather than melting. We learn.

I do so miss my special person. And I do so want to trip. And when I am no longer ill I will so want that delicious food. Three is, I think, an excellent number for prime objectives. There is no need to be excessively complex. I am a very small thing. I may be a very simple thing, though I do not presume to say.

I have gone and made myself melancholy. And angry. I must decide what I will do tomorrow. Leaf or tree or leather or water? Or even darkness? Or dimness? When the time comes I will shun it all; that is why I must resolve now to go out and meet it.

I know what I will do! And I will do it now! It is a thing I have wanted to do and now I will do it.

Who am I even writing for anymore?

The curry had an off taste and the rice was flavored with shrimp. I had planned to walk to the grocery store, but I'll end up driving. Everything that seemed so nice in my head loses momentum before it begins. My cowardice keeps me from new friends and my arrogance offends the old ones, until all I am left with is Longhorn and Fallen Ear; the assertive few whose advances I am too lazy to rebuff and whose friendships are worth my time only because my time is worth so little. I am intimidated by the empty time stretched out before me like a desert, but each time I mount a dune I refuse to take the time to find my direction.

Well, that's stupid.

I'm going to the store.

Still not walking, though.

But who is the monster?

I tried so long to draw a feeling from the empty eyes, and failed.
I suspect an act; an excuse; a justification; maybe just confusion and an unwillingness to change course.
I thought so long about declining like a gentleman, but I know you have no respect for self-sacrifice. You respect  conquerers and thieves.
And maybe I shouldn't have, for my own peace.
And maybe I shouldn't have for yours.
But if it was a mistake, it was the best mistake I ever made;
Any emptiness I may feel
(What else is new?)
Is worth it for the long moments of comfort and peace,
For the racing heart that has answered only hills for so long,
For the instant of forgetting like a white sleep,
For the hazy high that nothing else has given me or could.
So for all my doubts and internal arguments,
For all that I debated what qualifies for coercion
(And let's be honest, offering choice of clothing is hardly a sign of reluctance),
I am unable to generate regret.
Fortunately for me, I doubt it will be necessary.
You would probably consider it a weakness.

Down

The metaphors for depression are many; for myself I find the visual ones are best: A veil drawn across the eyes, casting shadow on the world; everything made of paper, so thin and empty and delicate; like drawing back deep into a cave, until the light of day is nothing but a wavering pinprick like the last star in the sky. See that? Stacked metaphors. Y'all can't touch this.

I loathe my reflex to be absurd. It's supposed to be a sort of humility, or at least seem that way; it's a way to disguise my arrogance by pretending it is a parody. I'm sure it can be linked to my intellectual insecurity, the one that comes bundled with my intellect. I remember my old counselor telling me I had all my eggs in one basket. That may have been so, and probably still is, but this particular basket was my best shot; I think I made the right choice. I suppose some investment into general likability wouldn't have hurt.

It has been suggested that my viewpoints, political and otherwise, are held in order to excuse or extol my personal weaknesses and strengths, respectively. This is a theory which deserves very careful and prolonged consideration. Thank goodness I haven't the time. It is more likely by far that I will apply it to others and their actions, continuing my "habit of over-intellectualizing." It is, in retrospect, a very obvious theory; but it nags me. It is what a professor of mine refers to repeatedly as "a splinter in your mind."

I ate far too much today. I may have an eating problem. For most of my week I eat a moderately healthy vegetarian diet; that is not the problem. The problem is snacks and free food. When someone has candy or some other distributable snack, I will either a) not know them particularly well and so ignore it, or b) know them well enough to half-jokingly make an obvious attempt at stealing it, thereafter abashedly accepting their extended offer. There is no middle ground; I can't bring myself to ask. It may be my pride; it may be that I am ashamed to covet food so much. I frequently swipe food from an unguarded snack cart at work. Whenever there is free food by the elevators, I take too much. It is a bad situation and it works against my otherwise successful attempts at a healthy lifestyle. It's embarrassing, too. I suppose there is a method I could use to learn to strengthen my resolve; I could purchase some of my favorite candy and then give it away to people, keeping none for myself. Come to think of it, that would probably make me some friends, too, and maybe make up a bit for my gluttony.

I feel a bit better.

I am not sure you understand how difficult and painful it can be.

     You are accustomed to men who, when they have found what they want, seek it unhesitatingly. I like to consider myself intellectual, refined, and self-controlled; so I resist. You have scorn for those who pursue you openly. I sympathize with them. I know how hard it can be to be "adult." When it is necessary to pull away, I do it. When a piece of silliness is suddenly off-key, I cut the cord. It hurts to finish them, and I am ashamed that they ever happened. You should not blame the men who are only men, and you should not underestimate how devoutly I wish to be a stone.

Black Eyed Peas and Sauerkraut

I live in a dormitory. I use iTunes to listen to my music. I have family sharing turned on. This means that periodically, I can see other peoples' music libraries and even listen to their music. Their libraries are named for them; "John Smith's library." This evening I saw a library up and I had an unusual idea. At my college, email addresses are generated based on a person's full name. So I went through the songs until I found a particularly embarrassing one; Fergalicious. It had been rated five stars. I used my spam email account to send the individual an email. Subject: Fergalicious. Message: Five stars? Really?

Evil? Perhaps. The library disappeared minutes later. It's probably a coincidence.

Later I got very hungry and had the only non-breakfast foodstuff in my refrigerator; seven-month-old sauerkraut. It doesn't satiate, exactly; it's more of a hunger annihilation. As in, after eating a few forkfuls of aged sauerkraut I lose all desire to eat food ever again. I worry that it may be dissolving its plastic container. Oh well.

April 7, 2010 stream-of-consciousness

so here we go now night three i am listening to gogol bordello the sng is called harem in tuscany i just watched the first third of an interview of al sharpton by stephen colbert lets just say this al sharpton seems to be a bit of a douchebag i mean im sure he does nice things for people but hes very stiff and was rude to colbert today i was walking and a had a black thought one of those thoughts that make my gut clench and my heart race only this time it didnt i think im getting better at letting it go its called cognitive closure it means i am a human and i will die and i know that after that is when i will have to deal with these things if ever since there wont really be an i then i;; be all apart i thought of it like this would you be afraid of being split into two people would you be afraid of being split into three for five how many until it isnt you any more how more until you are dead well we die all the time im not the same person i used to be that person is dead many many times over it doesnt bother me so the thought of a more abrupt change shouldnt either and in any case theres nothing ican do about it so there no point in worrying today i wore a new shirt its a very light color i dont normally wear colors so light i worried all day about whther the color contrast between it and my jeans was too great and whether it was making my jeans look too blue and whether i looked professional enough for work i know its silly and vain to think like that especially all day but i ahave always been very self-conscious about my appearance even though i like to act like im not and recently i have gotten even more sensitive about it because  am trying to attract women i have run out of things to say and tecnholoicx by daft punk is annoying me no irritiating no distracting yes thats what its doing i dont like this song a lot and i would change it but i cant stop typing at a very dfast reat until thes page is full i have to keep typing what a silly experiment i dont know why im still doing it nothing has come of it yet but then maybe someone else would disagree maybe they would look at this and say wow this means a lot maybe in the future i will read this and it will be like a note from a person who is dead because in the duute future i will be dead but i want my future me to know who i was this is a message to him i will haunt him as i am haunted by the ghosts of every me i have ever been they are all daed and thaey hang about my head in a swarm and sometimes i hear their sad memories and sometimes they grip me when i go to do a thing and sometimes i feel the feelings they used to feel but they are not me who i am now i have changed a lot and even if i had only changed a little it would still be this way cliffs ocean i remember the poem i wrote for you marie it was a poem about the sea i was only curious i remember i the poem it was nothing too serious it was nothing too big it was not a big deal just a passing thing i hope in time that can be true it is too much to me now it is too much i want it to be less i want anothr i want a person to have and to hold and to know me and iw ill know her and we will be together i know i type about this a lot it makes sense i think about it a lot it is my number one riority but i lack the skills and th courage i complain constantly and thn get nothing done i know it must irritate those around me who watch me do it james says i am doing much better but he walways says things like that he walways tries ot be friendly and encouraging like that what does he know marie would diasagree i am sure i am sure i am not sur ei don tknow i hate this song oh its over now its walk of life i like this song much more i thought of playing dwarf fortress the other day but i think i will not i did no work whatsoever today at work but i was thee for seven hours then i cahrged for eight because i needed to hit twenty hours amm i guilty sometimes yes a litle but not nearly eough melanie gave me elftover easter candy and christina didnt want any so i took it back to my desk and ate most of it i ate it and i didnt shareany of it i will get fat i know i wont because i dnt eat a lot now i wish id shared it but its to late wll its not oto late for tomorrow i have four kisses left i will give them to the people in the lab but i still had most of them i didnt make my donation to the food bank for my last two paycheck i feel bad about that too but feeling bad isnt going to feed the homeless why are they homeless anyways it isnt my probelm these ants thereyre everywhee theres one on my desk now i cant kill them because all of a sudden i love animals a lot like not that i am enthusiastic about them its just that when i go to kill an animal i think that they have feelings, they have qualia, i am sure that for ants especially they are nowhere near as complex as mine i am sure they dont hae lives or even emotions but still they have something and i cant just take that wayay life is awesome and i cant do decreasing it for no good reason so i tolerate them now times up

April 7, 2010 dream

I dreamed that my family were all visiting a new store in town run by demons and/or Satan. At this store you could improve any aspect of your life, but you would have to trade for other bad things; the cashier would input your desires, a computer database would return the payment, and you could review them before accepting or rejecting. My father went there and purchased a number of wishes, the biggest and only of which I can remember being to get my sister and her family a new home, as in the dream they were living in a shack. The terms included the fact that one of my parents' cars would be totaled, a recoverable injury resulting in not more than six months' hospital stay, and an uneven amount of money a little less than six dollars. My father accepted. On our way back home, we were riding in our old chevy Blazer with the windows down. It had a molded plastic piece between the front seats where you could set rows of change, presumably for paying tolls. In the dream it had a loose assortment of coins sitting in it. As we were going over a bridge it more or less disintegrated beneath us, and our car began to plummet to the bottom of the canyon below. I remember watching the coins drift lazily out the window before I woke up.

April 6, 2010 stream-of-consciousness

here i am again embarking on another of these writey things where i write without stopping until either i fill this page of my ginfgers cramp so badly i cant keep going tonight i went out with the biomed group no thats not it what is it the llc the living learning community what is it human alteration thats it we went to where we went to johns we went to jimmys where is it where was it it was somehwere it was a deli i go ts soup with broccoli and cheese there were free cornbreah muffins and free gingerbread muffisn and free ice cream my typing is getting worse all of a sudeen then we went to see repo men oh yeah they had these crackers they were cheddar and punmpkin whole grain crackers they had green pumpkin seeds in them they were very good i stole four i kept them in my pocket and tried to give one to [Catherine] who i like but she saw that they had schaedder which okay that was awful cheddar cheddar cheddar which i saw before too but forgot and of coure since shes a vegan she cant have cheddar because it is cheese and cheese is from milk and milk is from cows and laws no we cant be enslaving teh coews that one was intentional not the cows it should have been coews the taht that was no the teh thats it i wouldnt do that accidentally unless i did i suppose i might anyways i wanted to be nice and kit on her not hit on her no no im doing it all wrong this is so stupid that i cant go back and fix them i was trying to hit on her to hit on her because i think she is pretty nice but it failed but nonethless she asked oh did you save them just for me which seemed encouraging to me it seemed good that she would think that she seemed to apreciate it the other day [Marie] was telling me how is huosld okay fuck shit i hate this she was telling me how i should hit on her and i pictured it taking place in an elevator and then just the next morning we were in an elevator together but hs ewas in a fokaksidi i hate this i really do the next morning she and i were in the elevator together but she was in a very bad mood and did not seem to know i was there she did not say hello to me when i said hello to her so i gave up she has a muffin top anyways so boo to you there [Catherine] you are not a pretty person i do not need you i will find someone better and prettier and less like a lesbian like [Parker] except [Blondie] has [Parker] and [Marie] wont date me and who was it [James] he geot got togo gog ooo he got to [Adair] first that makes me mad sometimes i want her and sometimes ic an cnnnn i can let it go sometimes and just let them be together i am no t sure i an am am am i am not sure i am doing this right i thinki may may may i think i may be doing this wrong i think maybe it is okay to slow down just  alittle and fix my typings but maybe that is not the point maybe i am goind no totototo maybe i am doing it right maybe this is right i am not sure but i do know that my arms are statarting i do know that my arms are starting to get tired i am starting to repeat myself there is no poitn in this if i am communicating nothing but at the same time i am typing faster an d faster and i feel a sort of a hypnosis slipping over me where i care elss about wha ti ama typing and only that i keep typing i guess this is when the psychobalbllbe shit is supposed ot happen and i let out al  my repressed memories of being molested and that shit how do you believe that shit [Marie] frued was such a hack i mean he haelped the people he helped the people by trweating them like people and he treated psychology like a science that was great but he only ever studied fucked uip people so he got fucked up theories so his claims they are not valid they have been disporven mayn thimes they were primitive they cannot be used for treatment hey are no good the crackers though they were so goo doso about repo men it sucked it was afwul fthe the i the thehhhh the ending was good though it was okay he got hit on the head nad hen for the last aprt of the movie it was all crazy action and i thought it was just the climax and the deveopers had unabashedly cast aside what little reamained th of the of the realism of the film but it turned out he was hallucinating and stuff so it was okayer i felt like they were saying the fact that you dolts bought this as the real ending is demonstrative of hwo fucking shitte dmessed up the films are today they are pulp absolute pulp fuck you you know what fuck you i hate this fuckign thing i dont know why im still going going ogin i can think of nothing more to say it is just becoming repetetive there are no teat truths there are no revelatiois i do not recall being molested there are no secret phantom words there is only shit i know already and the grammar is fucking awful and i curse more because i cant think of bette r words to say and ai t rthe am i done yet i am close to done one more line i think will do it fuck you fuck all of you and gfuck this tshtittyy this shitty psychoballble shit

April 5, 2010 stream-of-consciousness

Today I will be beginning an experiment in stream-of-consciousness writing. I read about it online on a blog I read called gizmodo no wait what was it I can't remember Lifehacker that's it. They had an app for Facbook not an app really more of a what would you call it searching for the word a widget maybe that encouraged you to write seven hundred and fifty words a day; then it would run a stastistical analysis of your words to tell you what you were writing about but I took a pass on it because it required a Facebook account ot register and  wasn't keen on tying it to something with my actual name and information on it. So here I am writing and having explained all that I am beginning to run out of ideas I have had the thought of my personal information and I am afraid that what I will think of will be my name and so on but I suppose I can always edit that out later. I don't know how long I'm going to keep this up. I figure until the screen begins to scroll down is fine. I came to a resolution with my existential problems. I read about it on Wikipedia; it is called cognitive closure. I have realized that none of what I am worrying about is my probelm because I am a human and will only be around for so long. It is beyond me. I cannot. I can't it's just pintless there is no reason you can call it surrender but I call it peace I was so worried all the time and now I am doing better. I feel better. Spring has had a lot to do with it The weather made me feel better. I think I may be becoing ready to live my little human life. It all still worries me sometimes but that warm has made it easier to put out of my mind. Empitness I can think of nothing to say I will have to repeat nothingness for a while blue is my favorite color I have lost my sentence structure my arms are beginning to hurt .I am listening to a song; I think it is by Tom Waits; an early Tom Waits with a voice that is not so rough. It is too slow and like a pinao ballad. It is too peaceful. I think I would give it two stars but I can't stop until I've typed all ,my words. I wonder how many words I have typed. I am coming to no big new realizations about myself like you are supposed yo. I have heard this is a writing exercise too to make yourself write instead of being insecure and putting down nothing. This song is a Gorillaz song. It is very post-industrial and sort of grungey. I don't know if that is a proper word. It is far too late I should have gone to bed about an hour ago. This is in Spanish; why. Why why why? Must find something new to talk about. Today I went to work; I did very little work. This is normal. Should I abandon the capitalization and punctuation? That is how I am accustomed to typing but I think it is slowing me down. It makes my sthoughs more organized. And should I stop correcting my minor spelling error? I suppose that is breaking the flow too okay i will stop capitalizing i will stop punctuating i may even being to disregard grammar i do not know how i feel about this i do not like it very much it makes me type to fast i think when i think i thinkwith grammar and punctuation and correct spelling this is making it all feel much weirder and this spanish music is not helping no it is not helping at all maybe i will adapt by becoing more poetic maybe i will learn to speerate my phrases by the cadence and the words and not twith the artificially imposed thingies that are punctuation they are there just to seperate our thoughts but shouldnt each though be seperate without them you can almost consider them a crutch i ahave run out again but i must keep going i must keep going why am i doing this i want to write again i am bored i have spare time i hope maybe it will teach me something it is supposed to give revelations it is a tool for seeing like fasting or getting high it is a vision sort of thing it is a look into yourself i would like to have a look into myself i am unsure of myself i do not know where i am going to go or what i am going to do all i know is that ia ma vvery lonely and i want a woman my ex introduced me to a girl she seemed enthusiastic that i was interested but i am not so very interested she only seems nice now i am worried that i have gotten her hopes too far up i dont want to duisappoint her i don t want to offend my ex she is my friend and i never like to offend people anyways it was just a passing sort of thing well not really i brought it up deliberately i suppose it wouldnt hurt to gfive it a try but in any case anyways sh has a boyfriend well maybe not a boyfriend but she is seeing someone right not so it is not a problem right now this is metallica now is it no it is from early in their career the lead singer is very hih pitched he sound inexpert not the same at all as alter when he is deeper and more operatic and they are too fast and thier lyrics anre incomprehensible and their guitar work is not as good as later  do not know if i really know this much about metallica i am sure there are people who hey look i think i am done

Flowers

Today I walked down a boulevard lined with dogwoods. They were shedding their pink petals profusely. The petals were lying in drifts against the curb like snowbanks. I stopped for a moment to take a handful. A man came jogging by in the other direction, so I threw a cloud of pink petals into his path. His response was a startled, over-the-shoulder "Sorry." Way to kill the magic, random jogger. Here I arrange for your life to be a Disney movie for one brief moment and all you can do is be surprised and reflexively apologetic. That's the last time I orchestrate an unexpected shower of flower petals for a random stranger. Ingrates.

I woke early this morning to the smell of her facial cream.
The sun glared irritatingly up at me.
I failed to brush my teeth or shower.
I walked with squishy footprints down a winding yellow stair.
A small man with a rock on his head assailed me.
I kept walking.

Sleep

For the third night in a row now I will be getting only four hours of sleep. I intend to make it up tomorrow. Monday night I stayed up until four reading Microsoft Paint Adventures. I recommend it, to say the least. Last night I was up until two working on a paper. Tonight I'll be waking up early to work on that same paper before it's due at 9:30. I tried to do it tonight, really I did, but the computer lab was closed for cleaning. On my way back to the dorm my friend from Shanghai rolled by in his car and invited me out to dim sum with his friends. I didn't have the time or the money and I'd already eaten dinner; I agreed. It was interesting. One of his friends is the boyfriend of a girl I work with. The other is merely Indian. I'm glad I chose to do something different. Sleep now.

An Interesting Day

 Today I was inspired by a man who undertakes, every January, to write a comic every hour that he is awake. I decided to write a brief Haiku for every hour that I am awake. I got to two haikus. I stopped because they were too short and I couldn't convey everything I wanted in them. I had no less than three haiku-worthy things happen to be in the first hour, after I'd already written that hour's haiku, and then the next hour I was stuck in a boring class. So I decided instead to just write about them.

In the dining hall they were serving shrimp and grits, but I am what I call a "mostly-tarian." That is, I'm mostly vegetarian. I try not to choose meat if it's my choice, and I don't buy it at the store, but if someone makes it for me or if it's free I'll generally go for it. And I almost always go for seafood. But I've had a pretty clean record lately of eating no meat, so I took a pass on the shrimp and grits, which looked delicious, and then got depressed over how much my lunch of rice, edamame, zucchini and an apple sucked.

At the bus stop some asshole had peeled an orange and thrown the peels into a flowerbed. Yes, I know it's biodegradable, but this is an urban campus, not the backwoods of Vermont; it's still litter! So I picked up the orange peels and threw them away. This may not sound like much to you, but I did it in front of a bus-stop crowd and I was proud of it!

Once I got to the building where my class is, it had begun to rain lightly. Outside of the recessed front door there are two benches, and a book was sitting on one of them. It was getting rained on. I picked it up, knocked the water off of it, and leaned it against the wall under the archway, only a few feet away, so it would stay dry. I did it all without breaking stride, and I felt good about this too! When I came back out it was gone. You're welcome, stranger.

The remainder of my afternoon was the sort of monotony you'd expect, and it was this that inspired the surrender of my little project. There's only so many haikus you can write about entering item numbers onto a spreadsheet. I would have needed four.

In other news, I wrote my will and living will. Hooray preparedness.

The Worst Day of My Life

     The official worst day of my life was around the time I wrote the entry "Existential Problems." There was extensive derealization and everything became flat and shallow. I fought with it the entire day. I've just recently had a few more of the worst days of my life, though I admit they were marginally less bad. It was visiting my family that did it. I've done it two weekends in a row now. The first was because James and his girlfriend Adair, who, let me tell you, is a Gertrude so attractive I've considered being Claudius, were out of town. The visit was moderately boring but otherwise unremarkable. This most recent weekend was the bad one. I was already having a little trouble Friday, and then arriving at my house to having nothing at all to do and a sticky leather couch to try and sleep on in between my infant nephew's crying jags was just what my spark of anxiety needed to flare into some serious depression.

     Have you ever been depressed, reader? Hush, that was rhetorical. This is my blog. I'm going to wax poetic here and try to describe it to you. It's as if all hope and beauty has gone out of the world. Everything is short, sharp, and brutal. Happiness is an illusion that you were a fool to believe could exist. Nothing can ever be good, there is only pain and horror and badness. That's severe depression, anyways. When it isn't so bad I'm merely incapable of experiencing significant amount of happiness or joy. The best I can hope for is to temporarily content myself with a mindless game, sleep, or alcohol.

     The thoughts which drive me to depression are like a live thing that I wrestle with. It's a demon that squats on my shoulder and yells into my ear, and the effort required to keep my mind away is very much like trying to focus your eyes on a blurry object. The harder you try, the more tired you become, and the more things slip away. I realized last night that I walk extremely quickly (and I am already a fast walker) when I am in these moods. I can tell myself that my heart is racing because I am exerting myself, and not because I am terrified. The constant fleeing is tiring. I suspect it may be having negative effects on my health. I begin to question my mental stability. How much stress can a person take before they begin to act significantly differently? I am giving serious consideration to going on medication, even though I object to it in principle.

     I have arrived at another solution, of a sort. It is at least a thought which can keep the others at bay for a while: I, being a human, am so limited in my faculties and so inherently biased in my judgement that I cannot possibly begin to understand the nature of our universe, time,God, etc. Therefore, it is entirely pointless of me to worry about it. I should concern myself with my existence in my present form, because that is the only form over which I have any control. I know the potency of this thought may fade. Maybe, though, my future self will have forgotten this thought and it will reassure him once again.

     I miss James and Adair so much. They're my best friends, and I only see them on the weekends. I intend to see them this weekend. I think it will make me feel much better.

Sometimes Life is Poetic on its Own

     This morning I was too lazy to go to Publix and buy myself fresh fruits for breakfast, so I went without. Consequently, this evening on my way to visit Marie I stopped by Publix to buy fresh fruits. Marie called and asked if I could pick up some Yoo-hoo, for which she possessed an unholy lust. When I agreed, she said, "Thanks, I adore you." I replied,"No problem," hesitated, and then added, "And please don't say 'I adore you.' I'm sorry." But she had already hung up.

     I bought one pear, one plum, and two bananas. I will eat the pear first, because I do not know how quickly they ripen. I will eat the plum on Friday, because if I left a banana until then it would be too ripe. The bananas I will eat in-between. I also bought three mini-cannoli; one each for myself, Marie, and Chef. They did not have any Yoo-hoo, so I went to the corner gas station to get a bottle. I gave the cashier a five, and it was not until I was almost back to my car that I realized he had given me change as if I'd given him a ten. I went back and stood in line to give him back five dollars. I don't think he understood my broken, mumbled hesitation. Explanation. I left the five on the counter and got out.

One Thousand is Probably not an Exaggeration

     Every morning I make myself breakfast: One banana, a bowl of whole-grain cheerios in soy milk, a glass of orange juice, and a scrambled egg with salt, black pepper and basil, folded into a wedge shape and soft in the middle. It's pretty good, if I may say so myself. In the process of preparing and consuming my breakfast, I produce one eggshell and one banana peel every morning, both of which I throw in the short, uncovered trash can that resides in our kitchen. I hadn't changed the trash in over a week when I came home one evening to find several things had changed:

1) The trash had been taken out.
2) The bag of oranges that I keep on the counter had disappeared.
3) In its place, there was one trash bag and a sticky note, reading: "A gift from a non-trash-producing roommate. One thousand fruit flies cry out and are suddenly silenced."

     I suspect my next-door roommate Work, who is nerdy enough to pull a reference like that. In any case, I responded with a sticky note of my own, stuck on the counter next to the original, which read: "Did you take my oranges? If so, I admit I deserved to have my oranges stolen and I hope you enjoy them. --Trashman."

     Guess I should take my trash out more regularly. Or buy more oranges.

Goings-on

     Tonight I went with the Transhumanists to Taco Mac. Had a nice time, though I wound up sitting across from S, the aforementioned frigid woman, and so had a good ninety degrees of my field of view forbidden to me. Last night I visited Marie and her roommate Chef in their dorm up the street. They go to an art school. I smoked a cigarette and a cigar, and afterwards worried about my lungs.

     I've run out of eggs and fruit. I need to go to the grocery store soon. Until then I'l be eating nothing for breakfast but multi-grain cheerios in soy milk with a glass of orange juice. That is not a balanced breakfast.

     Last week my parents received an anonymous t-shirt in the mail concerning zombies. It was right after my best friend and cousin James's birthday and I hadn't gotten him anything, so I brought him the t-shirt and gave it to him as a present. Now my aunt on my father's side is asking if I got a t-shirt in the mail. I'm hoping it's a present from her and not them looking for a misplaced package. That would be an awkward situation indeed.

     I think this post may have been premature. Too many inanities.

An Inexplicable Attraction to Women Who Inevitably Turn Out to be Bitches

     We share a remarkable consistency of routine, and this pleases me. On Friday I noticed her immediately. She wore a brown plaid jacket that tucks at the waist, flares at the hips and falls to mid-thigh over jeans. She walks very quickly. I can't explain to you how compelling it is to me when a woman walks quickly. It represents direction, ambition, and disdain. She wears the slightly irritated expression of one who is confident of meeting no-one tolerable in the near future. I was coming up Ferst; she from the Biotech plaza. We fell into line as she crossed the street and I made the turn onto Atlantic. I had to speed up to stay near her. Her hair is a light brown, long and wavy. She disrespected a hedgerow and a steep slope to walk across the lawn of the Civil Engineering building, and I lost sight of her.

     The aforementioned consistency was seen this morning, when at exactly the same time we came from the same directions and fell into line at the same distance as previously. Again I followed at a distance and again she walked at a breathtaking speed through the hedges, up the hill and out of sight. She resembles Marie more than a little, and I have to ask myself, as I often do, whether it is nostalgia or merely preference. A pointless exercise.

     It brings to mind distinctly my last adventure with an angry-looking woman with whom I shared a schedule; this one every day for a month, for several hours. Even the mildest advance was treated with the scorn I could see in every bit of body language. I shouldn't have expected otherwise. She lives down the hall now, and despite being in the same club and attending the same discussion groups, outings, parties, and even casual evening card games, relations have not improved. We ignore each other with a fierce deliberation.

     For this reason, and because I am introspective in the extreme, I find it highly unlikely that I will ever speak to this person. But there is always hope.

Existential problems

     An existential crisis is when you doubt whether your existence has any purpose or reason. Existential nihilism is the philosophy that the universe is devoid of meaning or context. There is no God, no good or evil, no beginning or end, no motive force; only what there is here, alone, empty. It is perhaps the most depressing of all philosophies.

     A panic attack is a physiological condition that occurs when the same bodily processes initiated by the release of adrenaline are overstimulated due to some chemical imbalance. Symptoms include increased heart rate, nausea, panic, derealization (the perception that nothing is real), and a feeling that something awful is going to happen. People who suffer from panic attacks often describe them as the single most unpleasant thing they have ever experienced by far.

     What I have, then, is best described as existential anxiety attacks. I will begin to speculate, despite knowing I should not, about the nature of reality. I will begin to flirt with thoughts of existential nihilism, and it will so horrify me that I will begin to have an anxiety attack; much like a panic attack, but with milder symptoms and a short duration. It leaves me feeling ill, exhausted and depressed. The only way I can escape is by ignoring it and thinking forcibly of something else. Sometimes I consider the possibility that there may be a God. This helps somewhat, although the same arguments and lines of logic that disturbed me in the first place may still overwhelm this. Also, I find the probability that there is a God very low based on the evidence I have gathered.

     It's a very tiring thing to wrestle with and generally uncool. I've signed up for counseling. I hope it helps.

     Also, if you're my future self and you've managed to forget about this problem: sorry for reminding you. Good luck.

The deficit

     In Obama's recently announced fiscal plan, it is projected that the annual budget deficit will fall to 3% by 2015. While a lower deficit is certainly nice, it struck me that we as a nation are so accustomed to the mounting debt that we are satisfied to know we are merely accumulating our debt more slowly, rather than actually having a balanced budget. Reinstating legislation to require all projected expenditures to come bundled with their revenue (I forget what it's called) will help us to prevent the deficit from growing, but won't address the deficit we already have. I have a plan for that. A diabolical plan.

     Let the deficit as it currently stands be expressed as a dollar amount. Let that amount be divided into two parts. One part will be tackled by increasing taxes, and the other half by cutting spending. But here's the delicious twist. A Democratic committee assigns the taxes, and a Republican committee makes the cuts.

     Can you imagine? I can.

  

A bit of technical stuff

     Digital Signals Processing was boring today, but I did have an interesting idea. I am going to write  piece of MATLAB code designed to decompose an audio signal into component sinusoids by approximation. I understand that a Fourier Transform would be easier, but I'm not sure how to implement that with digital data.

     I'll start with an exact input sinusoid. The function will first read the max amplitude and then create a low-res 3-d table of various sinusoids by sweeping amplitude, frequency and phase across a predefined range, probably somewhere in the human speech range, then calculate an error function for each generated sinusoid as compared to the input, and lastly select the function for which error is a minimum.

     Once an approximation is settled on, the function will "jiggle" the signal in three dimensions, again selecting for the lowest error function, in increasingly small scale, hopefully arriving at an approximation that is indistinguishable from the input signal.

     Matching a single sinusoid will likely be easy. The next step will be to input a sum of two sinusoids and direct the function to try the same thing, but approximating two signals. The initial step will be very computationally intensive, as a thorough sampling would involve calculating an error function for every possible combination of two sinusoids in the three-dimensional predefined range, which may itself be rather large. The jiggling will be difficult for the same reason; it will occur in six dimensions instead of three. The alternative is to sequentially jiggle first one and then the other signal. I wonder what effects this would have on accuracy.

     Ultimately, I hope to be able to pare the code down to something computationally feasible and have it approximate signals that are the sum of many sinusoids. Theoretically, I should then be able to input a voice recording, decompose it, and resynthesize it. The final product will probably be little more than a "Your voice as a robot" widget that consumes enough power to light the city of Chicago for two days, but hey. Why not?

Flowers

     I recently watched the made-for-TV movie version of Flowers for Algernon. It does not deserve to be spoken about. Instead, I will discuss the inspiration it gave me for a sort of spin-off.

     In this alternative scenario, instead of getting intelligent, leveling off, and becoming less intelligent again, the protagonist's intelligence never stops increasing. Past genius, past humanity, into a seeming insanity. At first he becomes disillusioned with society, much like in Flowers for Algernon, as people become predictable, like thin paper dolls. He stops bothering to interact with them because he knows what they'll do and say well ahead of time. His intelligence becomes a prescience that extends further and further into the future, and he understands causality in a way that is beyond us. He begins to take actions with no discernible significance to us to alter the course of the future. Eventually he begins to consider philosophical issues, goes through an existential crisis, and then either commits suicide or attains some sort of nirvana which leads him, hopefully in a fashion not too contrived, to revert to his previous personality as a mentally handicapped person.

     Apologies to Dave, with whom I have discussed this concept and who helped to develop it.

     Alright, I'm satisfied. Maybe someone with a bit of computer savvy can get my email out of this and trace it to my name from there, but it's not screamingly obvious, and that's good enough. So, ranting time.

     Ate out with my ex Marie last night. Been separated eight months now. She bitched about her boyfriend almost the entire time. It's getting old. I don't know why I still talk to her; all she ever talks about is her and her new boyfriend and how shitty or wonderful their relationship is. It's because I don't have anyone to talk to. For that matter, that's why I went to dinner with her last night; I had a gift certificate for a meal for two, and I didn't have anyone else to take. I can't tell if the situation is as sad as it sounds or not.

     Let's have a little background here, just to get you acquainted.

     I was born and raised in northwestern Georgia with my parents and one older sister. I was a child prodigy. Around the time I skipped second grade, I started losing friends and gaining enemies. For middle school I hated everyone in general and girls in particular. I had a real hang-up about sexuality, and as you can tell, maybe I still do. As an atheist and a liberal I don't technically see anything wrong with it, but it still disturbs me on a gut level. It may be a reaction left over from aforementioned life period. Come high school I began to get over it. I was in the Boy Scouts, and having a leadership position and some guys who were nice to me more often than they were assholes helped. I chilled out and opened up, especially during my senior year. This is relatively speaking, of course. Hooked up with Marie just in time for senior prom.

     The relationship was tenuous from the beginning. I was convinced to pick her over another girl because she scored well on an online IQ test. Intelligence is important to me, you see. I thought at the time, "I've got a prom date, which is good, and for anything else we'll see where it goes." Well, it went. We got along well enough, even if her conservative Christian family took a little working on. I tried to break up with her before I went off to college, but she convinced me to stay. We argued a lot. We'd talk online, but then she'd want to talk on the phone, so I'd leave my room full of partying freshmen to go sit in the cold stairwell and try not to echo too much. I'd tell her I didn't want to get married and she'd ask where our relationship is going. We had plenty of good times, I think. I'm not sure anymore. I've reconsidered it all so many times I can't remember clearly anymore. Cutting to the chase, she left me for her manager last May, which is how she became The Ex.

     I'm intelligent.

     It's a declaration that deserves its own paragraph. My old counselor would go batshit over this, but the fact remains: I can't think of any statement more integral to my personality, or which describes so much of me so quickly. I've always prided myself o my intelligence. In middle school I began and today I continue to favor logic over emotion. I don't do it deliberately now like I did then, but I got into the habit of being dull.

     Number two is a more debated spot. There are a few contenders, chief among them arrogance and stability, and various synonyms thereof. But the arrogance comes with the intelligence. There were always so many people ready to put me down; I had to learn how to keep myself up. The end result is this: I've only met one person whom I honestly consider to be more intelligent than me. It's my freshman roommate Jin, the commie bastard, and I'm glad to be shed of him, even if the damage he did to my perspective can't be repaired. He was a cool guy.

     Stability, though. Long-term and short-term. I get the disappointing feeling that I've hardly changed in all these years. Maybe this is common, maybe it's a perception bias. In the short-term, my emotional reactions are often notably muted. Things that make people laugh, I don't laugh at. I don't get angry, sad, or happy as easily as other people. Especially happy. It may just be depression. It may be time for me to go on meds. I get along alright without them, though, and I'm iffy about drugs. The idea of altering my mood chemically is disturbing. I am the way I am for a variety of reasons, many of which I can no longer recall; they are valid reasons nonetheless.

     What a truly pathetic string of characters. It's the lonely bachelor's song, the same one being sung through half the ethernet ports in this city. There is some probability that someone will notice, and even a probability that someone will care, but ultimately it makes no difference. I don't know who I'm writing for anymore; for myself, or for you. Shit's gotten too deep. Bailing.

Unsurprising

     The level of sexual inundation I see around me has momentarily escalated my constant irritation to the high mountains of pissed off. It seems like every advertisement that flashes across my window is a pair of breasts and a smile, and I'm lucky if I get the smile. I understand that this is what we're programmed to do, biologically speaking, but we're "programmed" to do a lot of shit that we've largely cut out by now. Haven't we?

     Saw an add for something or other on Grooveshark the other day. Was some MMO with grandiose claims of millions of players and "be the master of the realm." The image was just a close-up of some computer-simulated woman's breasts. What's really disappointing about this situation is that advertisers would not be doing it unless studies had shown it to be effective. That's what really pisses me off about it; I know it works. It never fails to catch my eye. I spent years working through my middle-school sexual repression and now sidebar ads are going to undo all my hard work.

     I'm up too late again. I slept too late today. I don't have much to get up for. I'm not going to sleep very well once I go to bed anyways.

     I hope there are some anonymity settings on this thing. Might have to scrap it if not.