January 2003 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Book III, Chapter I, Verse I OMFGLOL !!! A DIFFERENT FONT THAN COURIER !!! BIG FUCKING DEAL !!! WHAT PRETENTIOUS QUASI-BIBLICAL DATE SCHEME ??? SIGN ME UP !!! HOLY GOD THESE ARYANS ARE RAPING MY ASS AND NUTS Welcome to the new year, gentle reader. Verse II: Resolutions Which Have Come To Pass Better work, better money. Verse III: Resolutions Which Were Half-Assed In Execution Visited Devo once Broke even on the weight thing Get into an IRL RPG Verse IV: Resolutions for 2003 Go to New Jersey Fix my car Get $3000 by 2004 Verse V: Unexpected Events of 2002 Spot's arrival Makonan Being pulled over without insurance after all these years Verse VI So I went through some of my older entries and I wondered, "Who the fuck is this?" I do not know how I saw beauty in the world way back in the ice ages of New Jersey. The feeling I have now of defeat, anger, frustration and melancholy seems all encompassing as if it always has, ever was and forever shall be my outlook on life. Part of me wants to mourn because I lost something fairly nice and I guess something that actually made folks want to read my site. Verse VII: Rules Brian had something very funny to say about The Two Towers: The first rule of the Precious is you don't talk about the Precious Smeagol knows this because Gollum knows this. VERSO SEP Speaking of the rest of the year, and happily enough this gets mentioned in verse seven, I hope to write my journal entirely in Esperanto for July. My only fear is the translation will be Shatneresque, reminiscent of Inkubo, completely butchering this artificial language but some may find humor in the project. If I did an entire month of entries in Klingon that would be very gh3y. Plus I'd probably get sued for infringing on Paramount's intellectual property. nuqDaq 'oH puchpa' 'e'? Jeez with all the capital and lowercase letters used in anglicized Klingon one would think they were visiting some pinay raver chick's web site. Verse VIII: Tard Blog Read about retards! A wonderful blog that I discovered today that covers the antics of retarded children and their fucked up parents. I doubt Kinja still reads this because she thinks retards are the funniest thing. She'd always say "Just watch, I'll give birth to a retard after all this (joking about retards)." I reckon Jaybird will enjoy that site. Verse IX Yes, I went all fucknuts on the verses here and the rest of this month is not going to be like this. At least it won't have this many sub-entries. Verse X: The Prophet Dreams Well, the dream was fairly short. I was in a school-like building after hours feeling dread at my situation. What affirmed this mood was a gray, soot-covered, ghost cheerleader who ran through the halls screaming at me at the top of her lungs making eye contact then running away. The most fucked up shit that I can think of happening in dreams is someone making eye contact with me. In fact when I was a wee spivak I was terribly frightened of looking in a mirror at night for fear the reflection on the other side would look into my eyes then kill me. TOO BAD IT DIDNT HAPPEN HAHAHA I stalked around the halls, rattling the combination locks on the lockers, cringing whenever I got near a corner because I knew that chick could jump out at me. Rationally I understood how fucking stupid her actions were but I could not overcome the animalistic fear that swelled deep down inside me everytime the anticipation built up. Eventually there was a feeling of disassociation where my rational mind was controlling the flesh like a mecha pilot. Verse XI: I'm a Schmuck No, I'm not a schmuck for chasing rainbows and women who are out of his league... for once. He's a schmuck because he never plugs in the phone and checks his voicemail on a regular basis. I finally checked my voicemail after a week and there were seven messages from my father who just called up to say hello and all that kind of fatherly stuff. wednesday 6:10 dad wednesday 7:25 dad friday 4:31 dad saturday 12:29 dad saturday 3:16 dad sunday 6:51 dad monday 4:30 dad All times are mountain standard and in the evening. Book III, Chapter II, Verse I Recently I saw something that I would have never seen in New Jersey. Mexican license plates. Jesus, they drive all that way from Mexico to come up here to Colorado Springs? I'd hope they have family or something important that'd make them want to drive that far to this southwestern burg. I trimmed my beard tonight and it was a long time coming since my mustache had grown long and made eating an irritating pursuit. Since it's winter I trimmed it so the chin is full while the sides are neatly trimmed and shaped to avoid monkeyface. Speaking of cleaning things up, my apartment is about due and I used Window Washer on my computer which cleared out at least a hundred megs from Internet Explorer which I've used very infrequently. Verse II: A Definition Monkeyface is when a beard encroaches above the beardline towards the eyes. Some people experience this to the point that it stops mere millimeters beneath the lower eyelids giving them an affectation of a monkey. Verse III: Even Numbered Trek Films Rule, Odd Numbered Years Suck This little epiphany came to me when I was upstairs with the Birds for a wee bit on Wednesday night. I was unsure if they were going to have visitors or anything so I wasn't going to impose on them. maribou emailed me and said everything was on so I waddled on upstairs. I got to talking with maribou about how I felt 2002 wasn't my best year, something Devo mentioned last night as well, and maribou asked if the year before was any better. Hell yes. I slept in late on a regular basis, the only trouble in my life was dealing with my mother, I met Devo in person, I was making good money doing web design, I left New Jersey for Colorado and made it for five months out here by myself. What about 2002? I survived 2002, found a marginally better job, I found Spot and that's pretty much it. 2000, an even numbered year, wasn't that great since I told Malyss about Kinja followed by breaking it off with Kinja because I had my fill with her always arguing with me about our relationship and now I'm Kinja to Devo and I do most sincerely apologize to Devo. Most times, Dee, I really think the best thing is to just never talk to you again since what comes out of me is mostly poison or burdensome and you've made it more than clear that you just aren't interested in me in that way. If it's painful for me, big deal, I can handle pain. My entire existence deals with taking the pain off others and assuming that burden so they can be happier and move on with their lives. Excuse my arrogance but I am the only one who can truly withstand the blackest sufferings and it breaks my heart when I see someone unhappy. Wanna know how much? A few months ago when I was still taking calls instead of processing there was this one woman who called in about how she wasn't going to have the money for her rent due to whatever troubles and taking out one of our usurious loans. I wasn't entirely a prick like I usually am and I thought, "Well shit, I have the money and I have better rates." No winky emoticon implied. The other night I was thinking about sending money down to Dee so she could take Gaki to the vet and have her checked out just like how I wanted to send her money so Moose could get the dick operation and no longer have stones in his urethra that made him incompetent. When Jaybird was telling me about the cutbacks at his job and hinting he was afraid he could be hit even though he is on track for management. I'd just have to buy pizza instead of Jaybird buying pizza and take them places so they could do fun things while he looked for work. Whee, self aggrandizement. Someone has to do it and I might as well since no one else mentions me in any regard in their diaries. Malyss does and she mentioned me by my real name but I don't give a fuck. Yes, self aggrandizement is cheap and essentially meaningless because it means no one else recognizes any virtue in the individual and the individual cries so hard and shrilly to get some god damned attention. I have said my peace. Book III, Chapter III, Verse I In yesterday's entry I referred to Devo as Dee because writing Devo felt way too abstract and distanced rather than just writing in the familiar of Dee. Sure it just breaks down into the first letter of her name but that's what she goes by in normal life (or so I've been told). Yeah, I've messed up before by writing in Kinja's first name but I was drunk and afterwards I really didn't mind and the karma debt was repaid with Malyss using my name on her site. Mind you, Malyss most likely wasn't drunk when she wrote that entry. So since I've started this new format I've been wondering why the links are coming out smaller rather than being the same size as the rest of the text. I mean the <A> tag has the same properties as the other tags and when I use that particular tag to do an anchor rather than a link the text size remains consistent with the body. I wonder if it's something funny with Opera. Oh my lord I just opened up this page in Netscape and the text is enormous! Plus it increases the further down you scroll. The stylesheet validates! The HTML validates! Dear Netscape, What were you thinking when you released this steaming pile of shit? I'm not even using anything that's particularly new to the 4.7x browsers. Just 4.01 HTML transitional and CSS1. No xHTML. No XML. Nor any CSS2. The only funky thing in Opera are the links which I just mentioned and the fact that the first two rows of the ASCII logo are offset by a space or two. Verse II: All Prophets Have Beards, Some Trim Them Now and Again This morning I was reminded that I trimmed my beard while walking into work. My hood was up but it didn't cover my cheeks and I was greeted by a kiss from winter on my cheek that reminded me that I had trimmed the night before and I was feeling a touch more civilized than usual. I wondered about all the poor saps who shave every morning either out of vanity or because they're pussywhipped because "THAT SCRATCHES AND ITS GROSS!!!!!!! HOLDING BACK THE TAINT!!!!!!" First they drag metal on their face and then they have to do it again that night. Combine that with all the creams and aftershaves it makes me wonder why they just don't put on lipstick and eyeshadow so they're so pretty the next day :) :) :) Verse III: The (Near) Future I spent lunch reading and writing. I read a cool story that would be a great Zerg story called Swarm by Bruce Sterling and I finished up The Return of the Kangaroo Rex by Janet Kagan. I liked the story because it included one of my favorite animals, the thylacine. Plus it included a pretty keen idea of combining two forms of DNA to transport the genetic sequence of two animals in one. One of the examples given is every ten generations or so an alligator is born from a turtle egg. I wrote about my ideas for the site for the rest of 2003 and I have something else set up for February and March beyond changing the font. Mostly because I want to do something different even if it is just superficial or it might be considered pretentious by some people. Hello, I'm doing an online journal here. Isn't this pretentious enough??? Mohammed farms pigs in hell. Book III, Chapter IV, Verse I I don't know how I'm going to bear working a full week once more. If today was any measure of the days to come now that the big season has passed then it should be fairly quiet. Dragon Warrior VII is taking up my time. I broke 70 hours tonight which is what kept me from updating around midnight eastern time and ten mountain time so I apologize to those mythical individuals who loom like vultures over their browser pecking at the shift+reload combination in hopes of being the first to read the new entry. Sleep is a really good idea right about now, I tell you what boy. To sleep percha... Verse II: The Prophet Dreams My ponytail was pink. The kind of pink one would expect on some anime character. Most times I found myself spraying it so it'd remain pink because it seemed cool yet whenever I caught my image in a mirror there was a feeling of shame that part of my hair was such a color. The scene was in my father's business during a blackout. Funny thing about most dreams about my father's shop is the fact they always seem to be set at night or during the day with all the lights turned off. I was working the register, taking calls from potential customers. Someone called in saying they wanted an appointment but I told them the next open slot would be on the thirty first. He remarked, "That's the seventy second on my calendar" I furrowed my brow and wondered if the guy was from Mars. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a blue Dodge Dart parked outside and at the wheel was one of my father's former employees named Alfredo. Alfredo was old, had an Italian accent and always asked me "Hows-a your girlafriend?" He died suddenly a couple of Novembers ago, I think a year before my grandpa died. I did my best to keep any sight of Alfredo in his car to just a glance or out of the corner of my eye because something terrible could happen if I looked at him head on and saw everything about him. My sister came in and we went into the back to talk. Looking towards the front of the shop I saw the car driving past the glass front door and I covered my face telling my sister not to look because it was Alfredo and he's dead. She looked and continued looking out at him. My father was busy with a customer and was oblivious to the fact that the specter of a former employee was meandering around outside his business. Verse III: Samuel Pepys So there's a guy out there who's copying and pasting Samuel Pepys's diary into a weblog. One would think, "Hey, keeping a shitty journal may be my key to immortality!" Sadly, gentle reader, I sincerely doubt that since Mr. Pepys is considered the father of the modern navy in addition to rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi of jolly old England. Far from being a nobody even though most folks in 2003 never heard of him until that blog became newsworthy. Even if I ended up maintaining this site well into my fifth decade there wouldn't be much interest. Considering the fact that one of the events Mr. Pepys chronicled and is remarked upon is the Great Fire of London in 1666. Maybe I would've had a chance if I was in New York City on September 11th, downtown, witnessing those events and chronicling them for you, gentle reader. And the ages. Verse IV Lately I've been feeling down which is why I've been opening the kitchen window to let the bitterly cold air into my apartment. I want Spot's company, to feel her warmth on my leggs, her rocking motion while she cleans herself completely unself-conscious and unaware someone may be paying attention to her antics. I love kitty. Book III, Chapter V, Verse I My apartment is graced with a multitude of bizarre noises and the majority are courtesy of Olympics guy. In the early hours of Saturday morning one can hear what I assume to be snoring through the ceiling. I only venture that this is snoring because it is so regular and I know that snoring can be awful loud. If it's completely dark in here I imagine that I'm in the heart of a living ship listening to its engines and life support systems working deep within the body. During the day one can hear a periodic "toonk" noise that seems to eminate directly over my bed. Best description besides that onomatopoeia is dropping a large, hollow, hard plastic ball on the floor. There are other noises down here that I can control. Every now and again the glass plate attached to the overhead light in my bedroom will vibrate steadily causing a high pitched whine or buzz that one will not notice during the day but at three a.m. it's the loudest sound in the universe and it is infuriating. Thankfully I realized the source and I just tap the glass plate to end the noise. Actually it's 10:02 p.m. and I can hear the strange snoring sound right over my head beyond the ceiling. I think Olympics guy is awake because I thought I heard a cough or some other odd sound. I wonder if the Birds hear this stuff or if I'm just hallucinating. Verse II I've hit a stopping point in Dragon Warrior VII because it seems my characters are severely outmatched by the beasts which dwell in the sunken city. The monsters are dealing out brutal hits and causing significant damage much to my consternation. Now I must level up, either levelling up classes to have a greater arsenal of skills and spells from various classes or fighting monsters to reach a higher level. Let me explain to the uninitiated. When one starts Dragon Warrior VII, characters do not belong to classes and simply level up with increases to hit points, attributes and an odd skill or spell every four levels. They aren't specialized as fighters, mages, etc.. Once one reaches Dharma Temple then the whole gameplay aspect changes where one can choose from a variety of classes that increase in skill by the numbers of battles you fight with them, not the experience award from defeating monsters. One battle with slimes is equal to one battle with a rock golem when considering increasing skill in a particular class. People can change classes at any time but I like getting the characters to master each class before changing classes. Right now I'm hoping to make the main character into a Godhand or Hero, Gabo the wolfboy into some warrior class and Maribel into a TeenIdol or something. What makes Dragon Warrior VII a stand-out game is the minimal use of full motion video and it reminds me a whole lot of Pokemon. If Pokemon Advance comes out for the Gamecube and it has a similar interface as Dragon Warrior VII where you walk around and your pokemon follow you, kinda like Pokemon Yellow except instead of just pikachu you see all six waddling after you like so many baby ducks, while exploring whatever new country opened up in Ruby and Sapphire then I'd be tempted to buy that system and the accompanying games. Seems the only game worth playing on the Gamecube at the moment is Metroid Prime. Verse III Right now I'm just worried that Spot is getting enough to eat. Every day around four she gets a bowl of wet food and a fistful of dry food. Lately when she's been coming up to me for pets she just seems thinner, like her skin is hanging tighter against her frame. If I had a scale I could weigh her and find out if she is getting enough. I think she was weighed when she went to visit the veterinarian a couple months ago but I can't say for sure. The closest to discussing Spot's weight was when I noticed a fatness silhouette scale ranging from one to five and I asked the vet where Spot stood and she said about a three or a four. I want Spot to be happy, healthy and comfortable. I don't want her to get so very fat nor do I want Spot to get very thin. I want her to be just right with a wee bit of extra meat on her bones. Book III, Chapter VI, Verse I Jaybird and maribou had found a house to buy and were moving out of their apartment. Thing about the house setup in this dream was the fact that we all lived in the same apartment. They had four rooms, a bedroom and a library and a study and a kitchen, and I had two rooms, a bedroom and a study. maribou told me that since they were moving out that they were leaving this apartment to me in their will. Now I had six rooms and a basement all to myself. I have no furniture. Nor did I have any money for furniture. When I went to address maribou she was gone and I was left in an unlit apartment lacking any furnishings. So I started singing The Most Offensive Song in a Mister Hankey voice. Verse II I have to buy Spot a gravity feeder for her dry food. At least then she'd have food on tap rather than waiting for me to come home and feed her after work. Mind you she will have to wait until I return to have some of that lovely, lovely wet food. Monday afternoon is gonna have a lot of shopping since I didn't do any food shopping over the weekend. Speaking of Spot, she's too damned cute. I was playing this flash file for her Verse III Wrestling was fine. The only good talents are Hurricane, Bubba Dudley and Ric Flair. The rest were lackluster. What was fun is Jaybird, maribou, their friend and I were shouting "You screwed Bret" to Earl Hebner when he came in to ref the final match. I didn't see it but Jaybird says that Earl put his head down and flipped us the bird. YOU SWORE ON YOUR CHILDREN EARL. Haha. Sadly the Kane match was long and almost excruciating. Why the hell did they put Kane against a plodding wannabe like Rosie of Three Minute Warning? And where was Jamal, the other half of that tag team, probably stuffing his face in the locker room. Booing Triple H for being Triple H, getting a push because he's screwing the boss's daughter and Vince McMahon has a hardon for Triple H because Triple H finished that match with a serious quad injury. Now if only Triple H would learn how to job to people who aren't his best friend. Book III, Chapter VII, Verse I What is it with jazz? Right now KRCC's playing one of their jazz shows and the first thing that comes to mind is that the music is exactly the same as the music used in Sim City. It all sounds the same. I can not even appreciate the music without thinking, "Shit, I better check on my city's aura, land value and how many eggs the sims have thrown at my mansion!" Of course I'm probably a slope browed philistine compared to jazz enthusiasts who will say that if I knew more about the genre I'd be able to see the difference of every piece. Christ, it's like I'm an old man hearing rock music thinking it all sounds the same. GET OUT OF MY POTATOES RIGHT NOW YOU PUNK KIDS!!! THAT TEARS IT I'M CALLING THE COPS ON YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS WHY IN MY DAY!!! Sniff, kids ain't got no respect no more. Verse II: The Prophet Dreams Yet again I had another dream about a shopping mall and it seemed to take place in the same landscape as a previous dream. Shit, I don't know if I shared it here or if the memory was so foggy that there wasn't much to share with you gentle reader. The landscape was hilly, red rocks and mountains like the Garden of the Gods with a really long road that leads to the mall. The mall is definitely in Colorado Springs but it doesn't remind me of the Citadel nor Chapel Hills. I think there's another mall out here but I haven't been inclined to patronize it because I have no idea where it is and malls are boring. So are my dreams. Anyway this mall is enormous and I know I wrote about this mall recently when I got lost in a part of the mall with Jaybird trying to find a payphone. I'm too lazy to get the link and share it with you gentle reader. I beg your forgiveness and abase myself for your tender mercies. Last night the mall was showing off its enormity by showing me how one half of the mall could remain closed because it was in nighttime and the opposite end would be bustling with shoppers. The middle portion was in the midst of opening up for the day. I found myself sitting in the dark brown night of the closed end of the building, watching the light at the end of the tunnel come closer to my location. What was interesting about the closed part of the mall was the fact that the displays and windows were devoid of merchandise and advertising as if closing down for the night meant vacating the premises entirely and repopulating them when the doors open or the sun passes the correct point. I just remember lots of brown in the nighttime, closed areas which is reminiscent of the old Livingston Mall back in the seventies. When I was a wee spivak I'd always call the mall the cave because it was so dark and everything was that special color brown that was bafflingly popular back in the day of disco, polyester and gold chains. Last time I was at that mall it was well lit, they got rid of these enormous metal sculptures that always made me think of whales or the wishbone of a brachiosaurus (THE BIGGEST DINOSAUR THAT I EVER HEARD ABOUT WHEN I WAS FIVE THANK GOODNESS IT ONLY EATS PLANTS) which could be found at each end of the mall, and there were glass ceilings letting in the horrible, blistering sunshine. There have been other dreams that take place at malls and it seems that I haven't mentioned this one. Please let me know if I have shared this one before. Seriously. Verse III: The Prophet Dreamt Back in college I had a dream that stayed with me through most of my waking day. It all started when I was walking into the old style Livingston Mall "into the cave" as I referenced in the previous dream. Ahead of me was a cute, pixie-ish (pixin?) (pixish?) vampire who sadly resembled Death from Sandman except that this vampire didn't try as hard as Death to be visually trendy. She beckoned to me and I followed into the darkness, down the mall until the mall stopped being a row of overpriced stores and became a rocky cavern. The woman stood at the side of the new cavern, smiled in my direction then walked through the wall. I ran over to where she stood and felt the wall to see if I could pass the barrier. My hand felt nothing but cool air for a moment until I was drawn into the wall. Not forcefuly, not yanked, I just went through the wall against my will for lack of a thesaurus. All around me was a magenta mist that was cool and filled my vision until I found myself standing in a comic convention. This was no ordinary comic convention, it was a convention to end all conventions where the dealers were wall to wall and the tables made a labryinth. I ended up seeing what books they had to offer while making my way through the maze. Every now and again I'd spot her, far ahead of me and moving away from my location at a steady pace. Feeling desperate like somehow she would solve all my troubles by simply telling me that she loved me I started pacing her, stalking her through the closely packed tables, squeezing past three hundred pound geeks who live in their mother's basement buying shit with the money they swiped from their sleeping and fatter fathers wallets. Before me, at the end of the path, was a black opening. Her head and arms floated in the darkness since she wore black that melted into her surroundings. I remember her smiling before taking a few steps back into the darkness and vanishing from sight. No cartoonish eyes or smile standing out. Just gone. Anyway I went to my classes with a turtle headache and found myself frequently nodding off especially in English class where there was this one cute chick that I'd watch out of the corner of my eye. Once my eyes closed and I succumbed to my temporary narcolepsy the dream just started up again right where it ended. There was more to the dream in those brief spurts but it didn't register in my memory. The vampire chick was nearby and I was somewhere between the darkness and the comic book convention. Verse IV: Obligatory Spot Reference I worry about Spot, yet again. She's been restless and I don't want her to get cabin fever. Lately I haven't been the best poppa to her what with all the Dragon Warrior VII especially when I'm roaming around the same damned area in hopes of racking up fights and boosting my class level to get keen new abilities for my characters. Whenever I get the chance I pick her up, nuzzle her belly and talk babytalk to her. Sometimes I think it's a good thing that the apartment is a mess because she'll be able to find stuff and go on little adventures seeing what she finds under the boxes and styrofoam peanuts and other times I get all pissed off that this place is a mess and the next weekend I really should pick up around the apartment but then again there's Dragon Warrior VII and holy shit I need one more shard so I can get to the next area from the fane. Damn, those Japs can make a good game. Book III, Chapter VIII, Verse I A definition. Homo Seat: A seat between two heterosexual men at the movies that affirms their heterosexuality to each other and nosy audience members who may wonder why two men are going to the movies. Verse II: The Entry I spoiled Spot yesterday giving her three containers of wet food in twenty four hours because she's felt bony to me or my paranoia has said Spot has gotten thinner. Right now she's a little lawnmower with her purring and headbutting my hands so I am unable to type effectively. Book III, Chapter IX, Verse I Did you hear about the pig that meditated while standing on his head? He wanted tricky gnosis Thank you! I'll be here all week. Tell your friends. Come by for the ten p.m. show but leave the kids at home because it gets a little blue. Don't forget to tip your waitress and you internet people make the best audiences in the world! And now, the end is near and so I face the final curtain. Good night! Verse II: Genealogy The name Studebaker is a very uncommon name. Tonight I was searching the web for genealogy sites that may have information about others around the country or the world. Just got a list of useless sites that are just a collection of names put in alphabetical order with no data behind them. I remember a few years ago I decided to search the web for my surname through The Ultimates and I found quite a few around the country. In fact I found someone who had my father's name living somewhere in Colorado on a Mormon website. Of course I've mentioned that there's another me somewhere in Pennsylvania who plays college soccer. Man, that link is already five years old. Either he attended Northampton Lehigh or Notre Dame of East Stroudsburg. I just tried to find that link with my father's name with a mention of Colorado but it's no longer available and the only mention is some woman's funeral. She enjoyed making quilts, so sayeth the obituary. The only thing of note is our family owns an ice cream store or a pastry shop in southern Italy. Verse III: One night later... Tonight I was hanging out with Jaybird and while he was having a smoke I was telling him that I could essentially save three hundred bucks a month and have three thousand dollars in three quarters of a year if I stuck to the plan or a year if I was laxadasical about my pursuit. I already have eleven hundred dollars put aside. He segued into my trip around the world and asking if I would be able to just stop over in Sicily, go up to a random person with my same surname and say "Hey, I'm a distant American relative!" and be forced to stay for a while instead of hanging out at some hostel. Of course he was self-conscious about broaching the subject thinking he was being stereotypical of Italians while I took it as an assumption that Europeans as a whole tend to be more amenable to family members, no matter how distant, unlike Americans. He told me about how he went to Scotland to have lunch with a distant fifth cousin who insisted that Jaybird stay for a few days at their house instead of a hostel. I wonder if he was backpedalling or he was just being oversensitive about maybe making me upset with stereotypes. Yeah, that's going to happen with a guy who uses "nigger" in common parlance. Well, common around friends. Of course I don't think there is anything wrong with the word and I feel that white people are more offended by other white people using the term nigger in fear of being painted with the same brush as the one who utters that word. Still, Jaybird planted a seed of a plan to contact seventh cousins and such overseas before travelling around the world for mooching and not being completely adrift like a ronin. Of course my fear is they'd end up being very European and project negative American stereotypes on me rather than simply considering me on par with the idea of a rude Canadian. Anyway I figure once I'm past the middle of Russia and once I pass Istanbul I'll be relatively safe. I want to avoid Asian Muslims, Chechnyans and terrorists and my stereotype for that area is being chock full of terrorist cells who'd give their left nut for allah, may his herd of pigs prosper in heaven, because when they die their left nut will be waiting for them to void scummy sand nigger seed into the sublime houris that can be either boys or girls. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I mean what can be more macho than taking it up the ass and squealing like a little girl. I hear it's practically a sacrament in the koran. Book III, Chapter X, Verse I Spot watches TV. Spot loves watching me play games on the PS2. Spot also gets angry when I'm not paying attention to her which is sadly the case recently because I'm very absorbed in myself. Verse II: TNX YES I WOULD LIKE TO SAY "THANKS" TO TOIL IN #JERKCITY FOR MAKING MY DAY. Verse III: Temperance I spoke with Dee on Wednesday and I was somewhat happy about it. That emotion was quickly tempered and left me on a moderate path of emotion after reviewing everything that has occurred and not occurred or has occurred without being mentioned and that pleased me. My feelings are mostly suppressed out of fear of being judged as being a show of low self esteem and a need for validation. Part of this stems from being a pissy kid of feeling like I'm not loved with passion so I will not give passion in return especially when I feel that it is not welcome or makes life awkward. The remaining portion simply wants to be less of an animal with a human form and more of a human in control of his emotions.

Book III, Chapter XI, Verse I: I Forsake You Dear People in New Jersey, You are probably right. I did abandon you. Forsaking you. Having the potential for socialization. I've done the same sin towards you that I've done towards someone that I claim is very important in my life. I take being ignored personally. Being ignored is an active and vindictive act on the part of all people. When someone talks about going out with someone else they're saying it to spite me, to engender my hairtrigger jealousy, to simply remind me how unimportant I am in the greater scheme of things or in the small world of my own design populated with friends that I do not deserve in the first place. Sometimes things are better as a memory, no longer colored by the browns, dun grays and sallow greens of real life relegated to the realm of nostalgia where flaws are smoothed and faults forgiven by the passage of time and physical distance. Life only becomes beautiful when it is remembered. The catch is that memories are painful. Good times that you will never have again. People who will never laugh with or at you again. Love that dies. What is worse is the fact that they always come out of those shadowed galleries when one least expects it and least wants them. When one is most vulnerable. Regards, spivak Verse II: Exile Dear spivak, You are in exile. You are a petulant and petty child hoping to get someone's goat by not being around but stamping furiously when another is not around. You have created a whole new world where you give yourself a tangible reason to feel lonely, to feel abandoned and the only person you have to blame is yourself. You could have easily moved to Union instead of crossing half a country but you would still have the potential of having a social life but seething in your bitterness that everyone is out with other folks. That everyone would rather have the company of someone less self-absorbed, who knows when to shut the fuck up, who doesn't get moody at the drop of a hat over things that wash off a rational person's back like water from a duck's back. Perhaps when you visit New Jersey you will realize your exile has a purpose. Perhaps when you visit New Jersey you will realize that's where you belong after all. Perhaps you will never visit so you have more content for your site, always talking but never doing. Thing is that you eventually follow through and when you do, your life changes. Regards, spivak Verse III: An Application of Spivak's Razor If the world was created, fashioned by some unknowable hand, then the concept of skeletons would be proof that the creator is vain and desired to leave a mark upon the face of its creation with the remains of its additions. Soft bodied animals leave no lasting legacy. Perhaps that's why molluscs and insects have lived so long in the fact they can not write their legends in the stone and simply surviving and living is their way of passing along their story. Book III, Chapter XII, Verse I So I've been miffed that I missed a special on Animal Planet about possible future animals and changes on the earth in the eons to come. Sure I'm put off by the theories that molluscs will rule the earth while mammals die out in the next five million years. Flying fishes, eight ton squids lumbering through forests and the like seem like strange for the sake of strange. Another tack that comes to mind is the predominance of cephalopods is some veiled Cthulhu reference. Of course this special is probably based on After Man by Dougal Dixon and I believe this plagiarist's name was mentioned as being a consultant or contributing something to the special. He's a plagiarist since he ripped off Wayne Barlowe's drawings for Man After Man. What I find disappointing is the scienticians involved did not think of creating an entirely new class of animal but simply expanded existing classes. Plus the plants seem to be exactly the same as modern plants except bigger. Yes, plants evolve at a slower pace but I'm certain after two hundred million years there would be a new variety. The saddest part of The Future is Wild and After Man is the demise of canines and felines. The earth surely would be a sadder and lonelier place without those four legged souls. Whatever walks the face of the earth in those lacking millennia will feel melancholy knowing they are missing something but just can't put their finger, tentacle or claw upon it. Verse II: Various Dates Relevant to the Prophet I was dicking around today and acquired the following information regarding my birth date. Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 54th, yC 3136 Star Day, Dismembur 12th, 943GUE Kislev 14th, AM 5731 Nov 29th, 1970 (JDN 2,440,933) 12.17.17.6.10 or 7 Oc, 3 Mac In case you were wondering, today is: Boomtime, Chaos 12th, yC 3169 Sand Day, Estuary 12th 976GUE Shevat 9th, AM 5763 December 30th, 2002 (JDN 2,452,652) 12.19.9.16.9 or 13 Maluc, 2 Muan or good old January 12th, 2003 Seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel here for content, boys and girls. All I can say is that I have seven dating conventions for the upcoming months until August when I revert to normal for one month. Verse III: The Prophet Dreams Spot was in my arms while I was walking through a subway. Jaybird and maribou came up behind me and started smiling at me. Why? Maybe they were happy to have caught up with me or they were hoping I would smile back, either way the smiles seemed relatively eerie and I just turned around with them in tow like baby ducks. I made my way topside through a bar that was closed for the season. The inside was a deep brown verging on black. I kept having this thought that the bar was haunted but there wasn't any evidence to prove this assumption. The outside was someplace down the shore. The ground was covered in waist-high shore grass that was plant death yellow. Above me was a roof that doubled as a bridge which connected two buildings, one of which I had just exited. Running beneath that artiface was a brown river that turned green as it flowed further away from the structure. Turns out the structure is a party bar where people hang out, play and drink pulling wild and crazy stunts. While I sat with Spot in the crook of my arm I watched someone being towed on a hang glider by a boat through the passage between the two buildings. "Hey, I dreamt something like that a while ago" I remarked to the bar's owner sitting across from me who immediately got up and started shouting at the daredevils because the wing surely would clip the side of one of the buildings and tear out a wall. It did. Exactly what happened when I dreamt it in my dream. A dream dreamt within a dream and remembered within a dream. I climbed up to the second deck to check out the damage with the rest of the crowd when Spot wriggled free from my arms and leapt down to the pier below, missing it by a couple feet. She was swept up in the current and started running atop the water in the direction of the river's flow but soon she began to lose faith in herself like the biblical Peter and began sinking into the water. Her motions went from running to swimming to sinking deep below the surface. People began running after her as I began hollering for someone to fish her out so she'd be safe and sound. I couldn't make my way back downstairs because of the crush of the crowd. Further downstream someone had fished her out of the waters and began performing mouth to mouth on Spot. Eventually I squeezed past the people and made my way towards the scene to find Spot spitting water from her wee kitty mouth like a garden hose. The dream ended, leaving me unsure if Spot was going to live or if the rescue attempt had been in vain. Book III, Chapter XIII, Verse I There was a dream last night and I shall endeavor to remember it in its entirety but I can not make a guarantee. There is a little girl who has lovely white fur and black spots that is jumping on the bed, walking to me, jumping off the bed, making that little "brrrrdd" noise with meows then she continues the cycle all over again only to stand in front of the laptop as if I had forgotten she existed in this world. Jesus Christ, I can't half of the dream at this point. A state run institution was under the threat of invasion. I had an AK-47 but only a fistful of bullets. Most of my time was spent in preparation, fussing over the weapon wondering how to turn on the single shot mode and looking for vents that I could crawl through in order to get the jump on people. The hallways were full of people who were meandering leisurely or running in panic towards some destination that I could not fathom. Within a dream hour the hallways had cleared and once everything became silent I realized that all my preparations were for naught because the invaders had come, killed and gone home for dinner. Outside the locked glass doors was a woman standing quietly wanting to come inside. As I approached the door she wafted through the glass. "I couldn't come in until there was a nearby person to magnet me in" she smiled. She continued about how her girlfriend was killed and her girlfriend's ghost was lurking in an auditorium. I escorted her to the auditorium where they embraced and told me they continued to manifest because they wanted revenge on the party that killed them. They pointed me towards an SUV parked inside the auditorium and told me I could use that to get around quicker rather than on foot. Around this point my recollection becomes foggy. Lots of driving around, rolling the vehicle and seeing the ghosts as glowing points on the radar. Also coming across someone who wasn't too happy about my possession of a firearm and how I tried to hide it behind me by clenching my buttcheeks and holding out my hands to prove that I was unarmed. Verse II: Game Headache Yes, I have a headache from playing Dragon Warrior VII. I spent the better part of Sunday trying to find this one shard which would enable me to continue with the game instead of wandering around, beating monsters and levelling up characters in their chosen profession. Spot kept meowing at me, sometimes sitting beside me and watching the screen, and eventually got her way through being stubborn and needy or needy and stubborn. What made me stop was this one island I opened up that was always destroyed every time I returned to my timeline. I felt nothing but frustration that it wasn't complete the first few times. Plus my head began to throb so I decided to write this down for you and posterity, gentle reader. Verse III: Phone Calls I seriously don't want to have any phone calls nor do I want to make any telephone calls. All day at work I'm following up to see if customers are lying, checking jobs for employment, making courtesy calls so folks can refinance their loans without ending up in collections and out of my hands and making even more calls. Jesus Christ does it not stop? I remember being told that January through March are the slower months but things have yet to die down enough where people are sent home. Okay, this is a Good Thing (tm) because it means having a full paycheck and there is no chance of layoffs in the spring. I just want some time off. I want some time to myself. Right now I feel like how Howard Stern used to describe his personal life once he left work, locking himself up in his basement and doing nothing, avoiding the rest of the world. I haven't called my father or returned his calls in quite some time. When Brian was out here I felt rushed, mostly because he ended up arriving in Colorado Springs later than expected or scheduled so I sat around with nothing to do when I had shit already set up. If and when my father comes out here I have no idea how I'm going to act since I really don't want to interact with people right now. Maybe I'm just used to not having a life out here and I lost the capacity to deal with folks. No, that's bullshit. Most of the time when I was gaming I was joyously unemployed. Still when I was working I'd blow off steam at the games but I'd always have to leave a half hour early so I could get enough sleep. I really shouldn't think right now. It is not helping my head. Verse IV: The Prophet's Prophecy The following are my ideas for the season ender for Enterprise. The audience discovers that they've been watching the beginning of the Mirror-Mirror universe all along. Captain Archer and Merriweather make sweet love. Tripp and Malcolm succumb to their unspoken desires. Smooth forehead Klingons are explained and introduced. Archer runs into an ugly and particularly rude Vulcan. Later on down the line it's discovered that "Vulcan" was a Romulan. Something with Orion Pirates and green skinned booty. T'Pol decides it would be logical to show the rest of the crew where else she is pointy. The Temporal Cold War is resolved off camera, explained briefly and that shameful episode is never referred to again. A story arc where Enterprise runs into the Tholians and become bitches for the Tholians for a few episodes. A story arc where Enterprise gets involved with the Bajorans and the Cardassians and get their asses handed to them with the Vulcans saying "I told you so." A story arc where the Romulans decide to reunite their world and Vulcan like North Korean wants to reunite South Korea. The Vulcans really need Earth's help but Earth, still smarting after the previous incident, declines and keeps their distance. Chef ends up being Chef from South Park. "Hows mah little crackas today?" Actual battles that cause casualties on the ship. A mine detonates, taking a bite out of the ship like its a chocolate chip cookie and the triage scene resembles something from summer camp with skinned knees? Actual fist fights or wrestling matches that are life threatening and will end in someone's death. Fights that do not end with "I am better than violence, I will not allow violence to get the better of me" or some other limp wristed pacifist cocksuckery. Merriweather finds himself in a T'Pol/Hoshi sandwich with hilarious results. The Scarrans kidnap Archer for his wormhole technology. Hoshi discovers she has acquired an extraordinarily high midi-chlorian count after accidentally eating Dr. Phlox's toenails. The only cure is for engineering to have their guild steersman fold space so the Shadows are unable to conquer the colonies on Mars. Finally Earth recognizes Merriweather as their one, true savior and declares him Galactic President for Life with all the trimmings. Finally Malcolm chokes on his babelfish and it is revealed he was a Vorlon all along. Book III, Chapter XIV, Verse I All Monday I felt like I was in a dream. I moved slowly but deliberately through my day. At work I was afraid one of the managers would confront me thinking I came to work stoned off my ass but that didn't happen thank goodness. What woke me up was when the assistant manager opened the blinds for a wee bit letting in the sunshine, that certainly helped my spirits and my brain work on a higher level than automatic. I am a good drone. Verse II: The Prophet Dreams My parents were acquainted with Anton LaVey and they had invited him over for dinner. For those playing along at home and who wish to envision this dream, the setting was back in New Jersey. Once the dinner had ended, Mr. La Vey got up and took his wife by the arm. Anton La Vey had a thing for blondes but in this dream his wife was a striking brunette with a line tattoo over her ass. Gotta wonder how those will look in the nursing home but I digress, gentle reader. In the crook of her arm was a curly haired, redheaded kid that was their son. They walked arm in arm out of the house, my parents following after them saying goodbye and see you soons, into their black sportscar. I was peeking outside through the blinds in the bathroom at the scene. The La Veys pulled out of the driveway and were headed towards the stop light when Mr. La Vey thrust himself violently forward in the grip of a heart attack. His eyes were fat and white like boiled eggs and his face lost the creases of age making him appear far younger in his agony than he did previously when relaxed and comfortable. The car came to a screeching halt and the windows went black. I ran to the den for the cordless phone and dialled 911. I heard a familiar chime followed by "McLeod USA" followed by some faint female voice identifying herself and asking how I could help her. Like all operators who work for that telecom she was hard of hearing and a complete imbecile. I went from speaking slowly and clearly, knowing my audience, to e.nun.ci.a.ting every word I said until she hung up on me in a fit of pique. The cops and an ambulance finally showed up because someone else had access to a legitimate phone company but they took their time once they discovered the victim's identity. That surprised me since I felt Anton La Vey was relatively obscure nowadays. In the aftermath of the dream I spent my time wanting to cut school even though I was actually cutting work. Over and over I kept rationalizing that I could afford to miss an hour here and an hour there. My in-dream pacing had me at my elementary school where I ran into my old gym teacher who later taught science much to the amusement of my peers since we considered gym teachers to be the dumbest of all teachers. Fortunately he didn't fit that stereotype. He didn't recognize me but he humored me nonetheless while I told him about driving cross-country and living in Colorado Springs for a few years. Once the awkwardness of the situation caught up with me I decided to leave him alone. I was sitting at the counter at La Vey's curbsite cafe. The storefront was brown and white, the counter was sea green and a woman who resembled his wife sat next to me but paid me no mind. While I sat there staring at the menu and watching food cook on the grill behind the counter the girl's friend came up and spoke with her. Damn, she was wearing a maroon towel that clung to the front of her body through sheer willpower and left nearly nothing to the imagination. I was privy to full dorsal nudity with buttcheeks and everything. The cook stood up on a red plastic milk carton and gave a short eulogy for the departed owner. I know he said something that might be absurd or purely dreamlike but memory fails me. Verse III: The Prophet Notes Something Early Monday morning I got up, grabbed the notebook at the head of my bed and one of my stolen pens from work and scrawled down the major points of the dream. Later at work I started jotting down other things which boiled up like the spirit of the stairwell but I forgot those notes on my desk. And to think I spent the latter half of my workday reminding myself to put the notes in my pocket so I wouldn't forget them because I would forget them. One thing that I hate is going back to work once I left for the day. I don't make eye contact anymore and I feel very awkward thinking about going out to social establishments. Of course these are few and far between here in downtown (and uptown [and crosstown {and around town}]) especially when it comes to being around people who are on my wavelength. Damn, that sounds so terrible but that's the best way I can convey the idea at the moment. Bah, I'm sure if I did go out I'd feel guilty about leaving Spot at home going cuckoo from cabin fever and no one to scratch her throat and rub her wee apple head. Book III, Chapter XV, Verse I Early morning was strange because after my alarm went off I discovered nothing but dead air in KRCC's place on the dial. Eventually the BBC world service kicked in which forced me to get up rather than sleeping in and waiting for "It is now twenty nine minutes past the hour" or if I'm feeling ballsy "It is now thirty nine minutes past the hour". Today was a day. Book III, Chapter XVI, Verse I: Dirty Habits I have a schedule that I live by and when things diverge from expectations, implied or implicit, I feel all fucked up in the head. Like waking up and there's no NPR Morning Edition. A few nights before I was completely disoriented because my mail client didn't play Curly from the Three Stooges going "nyuk nyuk nyuk BONK oof" even though it was past ten o'clock at night. My Lambda script sends me an email after it runs and that's the notification noise. I checked Lambda and wondered if there was a problem with heptapod.org's host but the problem was simply being an hour ahead on all my clocks. Do not ask me why I set all my clocks one hour ahead because I do not understand why nor do I remember why I did such a thing. Verse II: Depressive This morning was slow, sleepy and ass-dragging much to my chagrin. Five minutes after my morning break one of the assistant managers approached me that I had a telephone call. I was very surprised wondering why I'd receive a call at work since no one has my work number. Okay, this one garage that was going to replace my door had my work number but I wrote "DO NOT CALL" next to it and I haven't heard from them in a month. When I knew I was alone I decided to try the 800# and it turned out being some financial company for American Express. I don't have credit cards. I don't even have a checking account. Fear, loathing and dread colored the next ninety minutes wondering why this company would go so far as to get my work number to contact me. Sales? I'd raise holy hell. A collections department? Shit, if they have legit shit on me then I will know it's Emile trying to fuck me after I stopped doing web design for him. To make matters worse the department manager came over to me and said she smelled something and I should take care of it. Jesus Christ not this again. Verse III: Manic Once I got home and called that number immediately, identifying myself and asked the guy how I could help him. He told me that there was an issue with my American Express card. "I don't have any credit cards. Hell, I don't even have a checking account. That got closed after I left Jersey for Colorado." I told him the last four of my SSN after he asked if I was born in 1967. No. I was born in 1970. The last four of the SSN didn't match and I went my merry way. Fucking hell. Now I'm paranoid about opening a checking account. If they got my work number that no one knows about then I'm sure they'll eventually find whatever checking account that I open and start drafting cash out of it for some schmuck's bad debt. That's going to be my nest egg for my dreams and aspirations. I kept the note with the case number, rep that I spoke with and the number to contact regarding this individual who just so happens to be named Haakon Studebaker. I do wonder if it's the same Haakon Studebaker that I read about who played soccer for some school in eastern Pennsylvania. The elation made the rest of the day fly by and that pleased me greatly so much so that I stayed for the entire episode of The Daily Show on Wednesday instead of going downstairs after the first segment ended. Verse IV Lately I've been reading the script to a certain New Jersey film in hopes of finding some sort of direction, parallel or answer to life and constantly contradicting myself and what I have perceived in my life. The only thing I'm pondering at the moment is if being exposed to Catholicism may have altered my life. No, I'm not getting all teenaged male angry at the system and what the church stands for but just rolling over ideas in my head. God, as I was taught, is the most important thing. I believe I am the most important thing. I project myself as being God. Very pedestrian and uninspired perceptions but the thesis sits at the back of my head. Thou shalt have no others before me for I am an angry, vengeful and jealous God. Of course that doesn't say much about God because one who is truly powerful does not need to showcase that kind of power. Christ, that sounds like a bad quote from The Rock. Those who are truly brave never know fear or some such cocksuckery. Stay in Hollywood and don't come back Maivia. Verse V: Happiness I'm going to tell you what pleases me. When I search images.google.com for heptapod.org I always get one picture. That makes me smile. Book III, Chapter XVII, Verse I Someone wants to know about my great-grandfather. From what little I remember about him he wasn't a nice guy because he made my grandfather get rid of a bunch of puppies or kittens that my grandfather had rescued because he was a hard-assed old country Italian. My grandfather loved animals very much just like my grandmother. Anyway I discovered the fact that someone wanted to learn about my great-grandfather, even if tangentially, when I was bored and searched the web to see if Crowley's Abbey of Thelema was still standing wherever it was located. I learned that the Abbey is located in Cefalu, Sicily which rung a bell. I believe that my family hails from that area so I searched the web for my surname and Cefalu, Sicily and discovered someone looking for any information about my great-grandfather. Well I emailed the guy and I'm hoping that I wasn't too curt or brief asking him "Why do you want to know about my great-grandfather?" My other memories regarding this patriarch was the fact he was very old and didn't speaka da English so very well hanh? Plus I doubt he would've known me from any other kid he would've come across in his extreme old age. I don't recall if he hit triple digits or not but something tells me that he was one of the few. Maybe I should ask my father. This brings to mind an awkward moment in my young life where I went to his funeral with my parents. I wasn't too happy about being dragged around on a Sunday in crappy formal clothes when I could've stayed at home being a slob, being bored and dreading the upcoming Monday. Of course my father's side of the family is big and he can remember everyone's name and who they know and what they do while I can barely remember some of the more distant relatives. I believe I was introduced to his widow and I honestly didn't know who she was and I was of the mindset that "Oh, they're family but they're still strangers to me." Of course I get along famously with strangers. My mother chewed me out on the side for being callous and rude. That fucked me up because I didn't think I was being rude. And that is my little story. Well while I was writing this entry I heard back from that individual who said that my great-grandfather married his great-grandmother. Or her great-grandmother. See the person's name is Rob but they said something about "my husband". Okay, are you a fruit or just a woman with an androgynous name? Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's a perfectly valid lifestyle choice just like breathing methane or deriving nutrition from consuming fiberglas. Sophonts from around the galaxy do it every day so why shouldn't we? Please start playing the mp3 of a horde of Nazis chanting "Seig Heil" in the background while I ramble on aimlessly hoping to troll you, gentle reader. Verse II It seems that everyone is getting sick and they are getting laid out for a couple of weeks instead of a day or two with a sniffling, sneezing, coughing, runny nose so you can't suck a dick kind of flu. Even the folks at work are out sick but I soldier on going in groggy, waking up, being surly then getting manic for no particular reason. You do know what this means. In three months everyone will be dead, I will have a dream either about some hippy biker or some old black lady. The upshot of all this is the fact that I am relatively close to Boulder and Las Vegas. Unfortunately from what I've learned is in Stephen King's universe where The Stand took place tjere were no people who decided to not get involved with that conflict. Verse III: The Promised Land Heptapodia is flourishing. I shall share. Libertarian Police State Civil Rights Superb Economy Good Political Freedoms Few Location: the Pacific The Free Republic of Heptapodia is a large, socially progressive nation, remarkable for its strong anti-business politics. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 36 million are proud of their wide-ranging civil freedoms, and those who aren't tend to be dragged off the streets by men in dark suits and hustled into cars with tinted windows. The large government juggles the competing demands of Education, Law & Order, and Social Equality. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 19%. Private enterprise is illegal, but for those in the know there is a slick and highly efficient black market in Pizza Delivery. The tenet of free speech is held dear, euthanasia is legal, a large-scale revitalization of the education system is underway, and all recreational drugs are legal. Crime is a problem. Heptapodia's national animal is the heptapod and its currency is the hepta. Book III, Chapter XVIII, Verse I Something is terribly wrong and it is frightening me. I'm having some trouble trying to remember things that I've read, ideas just boil up to the surface of my consciousness only to evaporate if I do not write them down immediately for the sake of posterity, my writing has been far more banal than it has been in the three and a half years since I started this site. My first inkling that there might be something wrong was trying to remember a simple word like "convention" when I was trying to write "I'm looking for different ways of writing dates on my site". What the hell is wrong with me? Could this have something to do with working on automatic at work and having minimal human contact? I really think I should take some sort of class so there's a break in my monotony and spare my brain from further atrophy. Right now I'm very self conscious about my failing and what makes this feel more egregious than it may be is the simple fact that I seem to be using fifty cent words when a dime would do the trick. Of course I wrote that sentence to prove my point. Of course sometimes I feel like I'm an inferior intellect when maribou makes a comment at me about a lack of intelligence but I wonder if she's making an empirical observation or simply trying to poke fun at me out of love. It would be easier to blame the altitude and lack of oxygen but for the first year I figured I was doing quite nicely, thank you very much. My other hypotenuse am be dem dere speekin parts of de brain done wore down and ahs done best spress mahsef wit' my hands. INSERT WINKY EMOTICON HERE PEOPLE No. Seriously. Maybe that area on the left side of my brain has decided it's better to communicate entirely by the written word and has slowly started depreciating any software it has for vocalization. Instead of flapping meat while passing air over those surfaces it's far easier to express myself digitally. Pun intended. There is a bright side and the Birds discovered this last night. I can remember nearly all the words to The Most Offensive Song Ever. On the depressing side, I think I have been repeating myself far too often lately because I have been lacking original ideas. Verse II: Conflict It seems that I am fighting with Spot because she's been jumping on my bed, walking over the computer, jumping down, running around, meowing again at me in an angry kitty voice followed by jumping on my bed. I got up and she bounded out of my bedroom so I shut my door and haven't opened it for two hours. I just opened it up, gave her water and another handful of kibble. Hopefully I've understood her gist and she is now a content kitty once more. I'm a terrible poppa to Spot. Verse III: Invisible Light I remember reading somewhere that if the human eye were sensitive enough to see into the gamma radiation spectrum the world would be constantly lit up by intense flashes from deep space. Of course as a species we would most likely become blind or have evolved quite differently from our current form. With the proper application of spivak's razor I dare to venture that those flashes are not the remnants of dying stars or flashing neutron stars but the ignition sequence of alien fleets achieving superluminal speeds with their technology. Earth stands at the edge of a vast highway like a forgotten town that the state did not connect to the interstate with an exit. Maybe Earth's not that interesting. Maybe Earth is already experiencing alien contact but the humans are being ignored and "lesser" species are considered far more sapient than the primate hive builders and fire burners. Perhaps the aliens are terrified of us since we may be the most violent species in the galaxy. We could stand at the top of our hill overlooking the highway watching the red lights recede into the distance while the white lights flow towards and past us becoming red and fading in the opposite distance. Verse IV: Digression Of course I must digress from this analogy, which I feel is very apt, and rail against one of the dumber things in the astronomical sciences nowadays. Mind you this is based on belief, not fact, so get your salt tablets. There are always stories about how the universe is bigger than measured or imagined by scientific observation. My belief is the universe is infinite, it has always existed and it shall always exist without beginning or end but whatever exists shall remain mortal until the heat death and everything becomes iron. When astronomers decide that their calculations were incorrect I assume they base this on their observations and the measurements derived from this data. The weak link is their observing devices. Telescopes, I'm using a generic term here, can see farther and farther out into the heavens with each successive generation. The universe is infinite therefore there is no concept of farther or furthest since one would be able to simply see or travel in one direction without ever getting to the other side, meeting itself again or passing a familiar landmark. It's akin to someone standing in the middle of Route 70 in Kansas and remarking "Wow, this must stretch for hundreds of miles!" and walking in a single direction to find out where it ends. As one progresses along this road one will discover that the further you go in one direction you continue to have the illusion that it goes for hundreds of miles in each direction yet one rationalizes that the highway is simply longer than originally estimated by the observer. Just because something new is perceived does not mean that is a new limit to the universe when it is simply a limit to one's observational capacities. Yeah there was a quasar discovered with a greater redshift than any other quasar discovered so far. Six point four for those playing along at home. Wonderful. Scientists have not discovered stars out that far. So they theorize that they are gazing upon the distant past of the universe, the crucible from which all of creation sprung like Athena from Zeus's head when quasars could simply be distant anomalies and beyond their borders are whole other superstructures of galactic clusters bearing their own milky ways that host suns which warm tiny infested rocks. I understand my fallacy of using something finite to describe the infinite. I'm sure there are other fallacies which are worse with these kinds of assumptions and hypotheses but I shall stand by my beliefs until they are proven true by Raelians or science. Verse V: Finally I am all tuckered out and before I finally lay myself to rest I shall send pictures over to the Birds since I've been a TERRIBLE neighbor who has been procrastinating for a few days by not downloading pictures from my digital camera. Now if you will excuse me, gentle reader. deer igor u will not beleev what im sending u t... Whoops. Wrong screen. Book III, Chapter XIX, Verse I: The Prophet's Friend Mister Vanity here doesn't like this picture for some reason. You can see the picture he likes over at the Corridor of Despots or whatever it is called because I like being derisive. Take note, this is how I normally see Jaybird except when he is outside having a smoke. Unfortunately I was not able to immortalize him sitting on the couch with a PS2 controller in his hands. Verse II: The Prophet's Friend When I came home from work on Friday Spot came over to me and sat on my chest. I scratched her behind the ears, instead of playing Baby Kitten Being Born, and started scratching her neck and chest. Well as this progressed she began to lean on me as I scritched her lovely fur to the point that she leaned too hard against my right hand, lost purchase and toppled off me. What makes Spot so precious is the fact that she didn't give me one of those feline "I meant to do that" faces but just went "You were scratching me here. Go." Spot is very unself-conscious. Verse π: A Simple Question Why are there no lower case numbers? Oh wait, a quick search of Google has revealed that there are lowercase numbers. They appear in typography. Still wondering about the other instances where there may be lowercase numbers. Have I mentioned that the ham I made on Thursday tasted spikey? Verse IV: Trickster Birds I can not stand the concept of ghetto birds. I can hear them all the way down in my sanctum. I should count my blessings since I do not live in the ghetto parallel to Platte because their din would be unbearable. Back in New Jersey (oh dear lord there he goes again) there weren't these helicopters hovering most Orwellian over the populace at night nor at any other time of day. Heck, I don't remember seeing or hearing them in Newark or New York. Most helicopters out there are reserved for traffic. Anyway I can not wait for the day when one of those ghetto birds flies over the backyard while I'm standing there and give those police fuckers the finger for prying into private areas. As far as I know I think ghetto birds become more prominent the further west one goes across this great continent due to urban sprawl. I have a strong dislike and distrust of police. This stems from how the police act when one of their own is killed or wounded while doing their job. All of a sudden they draw together and become assholes who are out for justice. When Joe Blow is murdered or wounded living their own private life the answer is usually "We'll catch them... soon" or tepid reassurances of "We're on the case". The number of cop killers caught most likely outweigh the number of regular murderers. I'm talking percentages not numbers here. Of course if a cop gets his dick stuck in a wringer they do their best to help their brother finagle their way out and avoid going to jail. If such actions are to maintain public support and show that police are law abiding citizens, moreso than regular law abiding citizens, it just does not work. When it comes on down to regular people they heap enough citations or push for an arrest so strongly to make that individual seem like the worst kind of rapist. Of course I haven't had any incidents with the police since last May when I was pulled over and caught without car insurance. I do my best to avoid interaction with police nor would I befriend a cop. There's no consistency in law enforcement or in the enforcement officals. I'd sooner trust a thief because I know the thief is eventually going to rob me blind but as for a police officer I have no idea if they're going to get their fratboy jock jollies out beating me up and denying it in court or if they're going to cite me for every minor broken law or if they will just shrug and go away to harass someone else under the auspices of maintaining the public peace. Verse V: Baby Kitten Being Born What is Baby Kitten Being Born? You need a patient cat who likes to rub against things. Put your hands together like you were going to pray (or you just clapped your hands for the more secular gentle readers in the audience) while the kitty is sitting on your chest. Kitty will hopefully push her face against the part of your hands facing her. Open up your hands and push your palms along the sides of kitty's face until kitty's face pops out the other end just like when she was being born. Of coures you have to say "Baby Kitten Being Born" in a strange baby voice a second or two before kitty's ears come out and pop up. Hilarity ensues. I must let you know cats grow tired of this game after a while and will sometimes avoid playing this game. Verso Ses: La Profeto Learnanto La Internacia Lingvo Esperanto estas simpla sed mi skribanto estas artikolacxo. Post la tago de esploranto cxi malskribas. Fikas vin! Verse ∞: The Prophet Likes Unicode Yes, I like unicode because it allows me to use strange characters. Of course when I get around to the July 2003 entries I'm going to be using the x convention for esperanto rather than ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ ŭ because I reckon I would end up spending more time editing characters than actually writing and it may take me long enough to write an entry that's understandable despite Esperanto's ease of use and all that hype. What I will be doing in June is putting esperanto words in my entries so people can see the words in context and maybe eventually follow along. I got this idea from Jaybird who told me about an Esperanto newspaper that has the articles in Esperanto with the English translation right next door. Plus the Esperanto articles have Esperanto words peppered throughout to help with learning. There's something else to keep in mind, gentle readers who continue to use Netscape 4.7* will not be able to see the special characters like ĝ (soft G like garage and massage) since that particular browser renders all those characters as question marks (?). Libro III, Cxapitro XX, Verso I My head feels dull at the moment. I wrote five or six things in Esperanto yesterday and they took a lot of effort, mostly because I lack a good vortaro and have to rely on translation sites and one patient person in #jerkcity. What I did learn was malmangxi doesn't mean shit so I know a certain site is terrible for reference or learning but the other sites I have been using seem to be on the ball. For those playing along at home the word for shit en la internacia lingvo is feko. It's learning, done on my own time and at my own leisure, so I can't complain too much about the experience. On the down side, I learned that most of the people in Esperanto groups and rooms are tiresome, liberal hippies. I have learned that when I do learn something that I do my best to prepare myself before starting the first course so I don't seem entirely stupid the first day. Yes, everyone else is going to be stulta on the first day but I am better than being that way. The downshot is thinking I am better than everyone and my way is best so I will not deviate from the patterns I have made no matter how incorrect they may be in practice. I just need to master the accusative in Esperanto since I've been told that when I write in Esperanto it reads like something Tarzan would type. Verso II: La Profeto Songas The setting was an institution where I was walking through the halls and up stairs towards a lab. When I arrived at the lab the whole scenario reminded me of the scene in the book Solaris where Kelvin comes upon Snow's lab which is locked and Snow refuses to come out. Behold, I stand at the door and knock! A young scientist in street clothes opens the door and begins telling me how they are involved in research regarding a new parasite that can only be destroyed by the intravenous application of a particular acid compound. The parasite, from what I learned, is not particularly malign in nature or behavior yet there is something unwholesome about experiencing it as a host. We conversed about the subject and I learned there was a shortage of the solution and the parasites were converging in the building as we spoke. That is when I discovered I was in the church from New Jersey. The church from New Jersey being the place where I parked my car and received my first communion. A mad dash for the exit ensued and once we were across the street we watched the building collapse in slow motion. It collapsed quite neatly, much like the twin towers appeared to collapse, starting with the fake bell tower in the rear then the main building slash school crumbling down and the debris flooding into the voluminous parking lot. Later in the dream I found myself inside a nineteenth century fort, the kind you'd see on F-Troop. People were running around in circles about the log structure in the middle and I found myself to be winning all the time. After so many laps a participant had the opportunity to make a break for the stairs to climb up and win. I came in first and then I came in second but when it came time for me to come in third it was a dead heat with someone else to acquire that position. Luckily, I made it by a cunthair. The rest of the dream was spent on the roof of that log building. There was a great view of the sunset which encompassed the entire horizon in all directions. Sort of like the entire world was on fire in the distance. I paced around, kicking lawn furniture and distractedly talking at the other people who were on the roof. Verse III: Those Crazy Jews Those Jews are crazy. I gotta tell you. At the supermarket I found out there are kosher bacon bits (faux, of course). Jews can not eat pork as you may already know, gentle reader. Think of them as muslims who understand a free market economy, don't engage in suicide bombing and don't cover up their shiksas so the whole world can see! Actually the latter is pretty insidious considering that Jewishness is passed along from the mother and not the father. Some goy sees a pretty shiksa with big tits, marries her, boffs her (of course) and has little kids who are Jewish in the eyes of God. Look at that, they just filled out their ranks a little bit more. Anyway, back to the (faux) bacon bits. So Hiram loves his fake bacon bits on his salad but one day he thinks that they are just not enough because he's gotten used to the taste and the vicarious thrill of sin since he's eating something that tastes like pork (or so the goyim tell him) but it isn't pork. Wanting someting more intense, he'll start down the road towards mayzid. Fake bacon bits are a gateway meat! Plus the whole idea of fake bacon bits are proof that Jews make excellent lawyers. "But My Adonai, they tasted like pork but they did not have any pork in them! As you heard from my witness Rabbi Lipschitz he was present at the Happy Porker Fake Bacon Bits facility for the creation of the aforementioned foodstuff and they were completely kosher! Plus Chad Taylor over here certifies that fake bacon bits really do taste like bacon!" God sits back, "Well, you've got a point. C'mon in! The only reason I told you not to eat pork down there is because it's so much better up here! Let the goyim eat their bad pork and buy retail!" Verse IV: Lights, please? Thank you for coming, one and all. You may think that I have forgotten what today is but there is nothing closer to my thoughts and my heart than the workds of Dr. Alexander Luthor. This brave soul engendered acceptance and taught us all to accept metahumans of any stripe. Without Doctor Luthor's speeches, which touched us all, the Mutant Registration Act would still be enforced in our great country. Whether alien, mutant, mutate or mad scientist they are also people like us who breathe the same air as we do (kind of) and they also bleed like we do (takes more effort) and laugh like we do (as civilization burns around them under their death ray). Doctor Luthor, we salute you on this day. God bless you, Lex Luthor. And thank you for giving most of us a day off, or an easier day if one does have to work. Those of us who do work will strive to be role models of hardworking humans who will gladly toil in the various sugar mines around the country until our last breath is expelled under the energy whips of your minions. Verse V: Wrestling! The Royal Rumble was quite good tonight. No titles changed hands but the matches were very close. Triple H kept trying to get himself disqualified from Scott Steiner but surprisingly Earl "I Screwed Bret" Hebner seemed to have a change of heart and would not put up with those shenanigans. Perhaps after the Raw house show earlier this month Earl "I Swear on My Children I Didn't Screw Bret Hart" Hebner he had a change of heart hearing four doughty audience members chanting the truth at him. As always, Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit had a great match which was clean. No run-ins, cheating with STEEL CHAIRS nor any other nonsense. Chris Jericho stayed in the rumble, the final match, for a good amount of time teasing the audience by going over the top rope and his feet almost hitting the floor. Of course one is out of the running if the performer goes over the top rope and two feet touch the ground. The ending was predictable with Brock Lesnar winning the match but everyone knows this ogrish upstart deserves Wrestlemania. Thank you Jaybird for having me upstairs to watch this with you and maribou. Thank you maribou for constantly reacting to my off-color comments. Good golly I hope that tomorrow is slow and they send me home because I'm feeling a wee bit of burnout.

Volume III, Issue XXI, Section I Imagine a world where wrestling is the primary pastime, a gentler extention of Roman gladiatoral exhibitions, and has tremendous influence over the populace as a whole. Everyone knows that the fights are real, the enmity is real and the stories are real. Masked identities are never revealed even after death. Months were once marked by the waxing and waning of the moon that used to herald new shows until the schedule of mortal events outstripped the importance of the movement of heavenly bodies. High holidays akin to The Feast of Hogan and Wrestlemania being the grandest spectacle which puts the most wild mardi gras and saturnalia to shame making those latter institutions appear to be church bake sales. What if the ultimate kayfabe was broken, even by something minor that most would overlook and heal over naturally in the popular mindset? For those playing along at home, kayfabe means staying in character. Maintaining the lie that one character hates the other character and outside of the ring that enmity still burns just as brightly between the two individuals. Its derivation is from a sideways spelling of "fake" filtered through pig latin. An old carny term carried over to the grand spectacle of sports entertainment. Verse II: The Prophet is Not Perfect I am annoyed with myself at the moment because I've been feeling like I'm on a fool's errand. Right now my expenses seem a bit tight but I will most assuredly get through but my little nest egg won't be growing anytime soon much to my dismay. I still need to acquire gifts for last Christmas, bastard that I am, in addition to socking a token away to pay for another year's hosting for heptapod.org at Verve Hosting. Plus I have my Big Plan once I get 3k saved and on top of that I have my Even Bigger Plan that I've discussed ad infinitum in recent months but it seems ever so far away right now. I need Patience with a capital P. Patience is a virtue. Need to find out what else are considered virtues. Yes, I have made a choice in my life to wait and see if Dee will ever come out to see me of her own free will where ever I may be in this world. Shit like that. Verse III: Meaningful Non-Sequitor I needlessly worry about Spot. Verse IV I purchased a book on Sunday. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. I am really liking this book right now. I started reading it at lunch and was drawn in by the first chapter and as soon as noon rolled around I wondered about playing hooky from work just so I could finish the story. That feeling has only happened to me a few times in my life when it comes to books. Verse V: Damned Macho Shit Part of my job description requires me to verify that phone numbers, work and home, are in good working order so the company can get their money back from deadbeats. What happened today was stereotypical of reactions I have had in the past. This woman applied for a loan and I was checking her work number, where I left a voicemail, and then her home telephone number. Some guy answered, took the message and asked why I was calling and asking for this woman. I have to abide by some privacy act that Congress passed in 1998 which means I can't even say this is regarding an application so I apologized and said that I was unable to reveal that information. He started getting all macho and defensive like I was some schmuck trying to backpedal after the wrong person answered the phone and the jig may be up about our secret meetings at the motel out on Highway 70. Fuck you, I don't have to tell you shit and shove your macho insecurity up your ass where your dad's dick spurted when you were nine years old. The woman returned my voicemail, I told her what I needed and we were done. Or so I thought. Ten minutes later she called back with "OMG did you call my home number?". Yeah, I called there because I have to verify each telephone number and I was not going to hang up on someone. She sounded really shaken and whispered, "Don't do that again, please." How fucking sad. Of course I called that number several more times during the day, hanging up each time I heard someone pick up the line. kidding. Verse VI: Tangent to the Previous Verse I thought the whole idea behind being a man was knowing that "your woman" isn't going to stray or not caring if she has male friends, acquaintances or does work with other guys. Of course in my situation Dee is not "my woman", has expressed that more than enough times that she can never be that way. Not that I want that. Most times I do not know what I want and I'm unable to express it since experience has always proven indecision to be a killer. When given a choice, folks choose someone else other than me. I refuse to accept this and still think that Dee still likes me in the way that I thought she liked me back in September of 2000 or when she invited herself along to share my cross-country experience. Things all seem so different now. Stuff being hid out of concern for my feelings which seem to clash with her own feelings. Oh well, I guess I deserve that after what I did to Malyss. Bah, it's fucking useless like my dick. But there it is, out there for the universe just like Kinja used to say. Book III, Chapter XXII, Verse I I do hope that I have been consistent when creating link anchors and using the correct date of 03 instead of 02 because now and again I catch myself screwing up but I always correct it. Shit does get through and I don't notice the fuckup until months later or something. Came home early on Tuesday because I forgot I had two hours off on Friday and only took advantage of one when my manager asked why I was still there. I thought my two hours were this week rather than that Friday. Spot's running around, making purry growls and walking on the god damned keyboard. I haven't played any videogames lately. I am really enjoying The Stars My Destination and I'm almost finished. It only lasted two lunches. After work I'm going to see if maribou's store has The Demolished Man. I avoided Bester after coming across one short story of his that was printed in an anthology, which I believe I own, whose plot dealt with typography or it was oddly typeset which turned me off since it reminded me of House of Leaves. House of Leaves is a good read but at times I felt some college kid was having a kick ass time discovering the joys of Quark Xpress. I still haven't read the footnotes to that story and I still have a certain postcard as a bookmark since I can not bear to throw the postcard out. Why? That is for me to know and you to find out. Spot is having one of her moods where she's bouncing off the walls, talking out loud and walking in front of the computer screen. Today I'm very forgiving of her behavior. I scooped her up in my arms and took her for a walk around outside so she could feel the cool air, watch the people in the big metal boxes, watch the birds and things zoom by very loudly in the street. Last night she kept waking me up but in a nice way. One time I woke to feeling her wee apple head nudging my hand and wrist while another time she got on my chest then fell asleep between my legs. Pungenday, Chaos 23rd yC 3169 Was re: Book III, Chapter XXIII, Verse I No, I'm not going to explain but I reckon that someone may have a clue. I dreamt quite vividly the other night, two hours before auxroro I woke up and kept reciting the dream over and over in my head and mumbling in my sleep until I fell back to sleep. Alarm horlogo buzzes and I had forgotten the night's shenanigans. God damn it. What made the experience even more disturbing was the fact that I woke up wearing only one sock. I know that I did not remove it and I was not wearing loose socks that could've been easily kicked off while thrashing around in my sleep. Plus I have no idea where the fucking sock went. Verse II: The Continuing Adventures of Spot Spot, once again, was having cabin fever. Taking her outside in the frigid air to watch the skies and see what all the silly other houseapes were doing was not enough for her psyche. So Spot and I went to visit Uncle Jaybird and Miss Chumky. Well we were lucky and we were able to come inside their place. Jaybird scooped up Chumky in his arms and we stood next to each other, cats cradled in our arms like babies, putting their faces close to each other wondering what would happen in the next moment. Chumky made annoyed French Canadian cat noises, the kind she makes when Jaybird is drunk and he wants kitty, but she was relatively peaceable. Spot licked Chumky's ear and was rapt with attention in the presence of another kitty. "Christ, this is how first time mothers act" I thought as I looked outside myself and saw us standing next to each other with our swaddling babes. Verse III Stop being patient with me. Book III, Chapter XXIV, Verse I: The Prophet Dreams Before I went to sleep I read a story from an anthology of tales regarding the planet Mars. This one was a spoof on Burroughs's John Carter of Mars tales where the Martians ended up being quite peaceful and licentious in nature than originally imagined by Burroughs. It influenced my dreaming. I stopped in at a darkened, ramshackle beach house. I was drawn there since I heard laughter and saw silhouettes in the greasy windows. Inside there were a bunch of young people lounging around on the floor, lying against each other and generally being langorous in their company. After they noticed me the people got up, gathered their things and quickly evacuated with an attitude that they didn't want my company because I was going to be a wet blanket or they didn't want to deal with my particular baggage. Not knowing any better I started after them, trying to catch up with them before they were lost over the horizon. I really should know when I'm not welcome. A long run until sunset later I found myself walking onto a beach towards the same group of people huddled around in a circle as night began to fall. This time they remained where they were upon my approach as if the great outdoors diluted whatever depressing aura eminating from me or they were just too tired to give a shit about me. I kept my distance from them but saw they were now in various stages of undress, lying together or sitting against each other on the sand acting very unself-conscious. Now and again I could hear them talking amongst each other but I couldn't make out what they were saying since it was slurred and in a lower register muffled by the wind coming in from the shore out to the sea. What made this dream noteworthy, not that any dream deserves to go unrecorded, was the reappearance of this woman who appeared in a previous dream. Note the picture. This individual does not resemble the Mexico Way delivery girl mentioned in previous posts. She wasn't part of the group but she was completely nude and kept pacing around the circle of bodies. I could only see her when she got to a gap in the circle because at any other time she was simply a silhouette. Verse II Late Wednesday night Colorado Springs was in the grip of icy fog and this morning I saw how everything had a white coating. Thankfully my car's windows did not need any scraping since I was late enough as it is. Lunchtime rolled around and I saw that the frost had remained on the trees as far as I could see towards the mountains. That's pretty damned cool. I figure back in New Jersey that frost would've melted away instead of lingering on like that. An hour later there was still frost but it had melted away significantly that the horizon was brown instead of a delicate, fairy white. Verse III Marijuana. The Big Four-Two-Oh. Not only does it force fat teenagers to aim guns, badly, and talk about hot sisters but it has a more sinister effect. I'm sure most of you gentle readers have seen Groundhog Day. The protagonist relives the same day over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and goes insane before achieving a kind of enlightenment. Marijuana has the same effect on humans. Especially negro humans which is especially troubling since they are of a hardier stock and take readily to the yoke. For example, I saw these four young negro gentlemen who were undecided regarding their afternoon's repast when I observed them pulling up to the drive through speaker again. "Gracious and Me Oh My whatever is going on here?" is what I asked myself when I bore witness to this blasphemous raping of the continuum. It happened again. Little black kid riding her bike. Pasty white woman walking behind the kid. In fact the scene happened so many times that it appeared the vehicle's coolant system had failed and was filling the car with noxious fumes! Every time I had half a mind to rush across the street to save those dark friends I found myself back where I started and here we go 'round again. Back where we started, come on and do it again, do it again, do it again. Eventually the brake cable gave way, the car lurched forward into the street and wrapped itself about a nearby utility pole. Back at my secret laboratory I discovered that this particular strain of cannabis indica was grown in soil imported from Chernobyl where there have been denied reports of temporal anomalies and high concentrations of toxic tachyons. Good lord. Choke. This was no ordinary weed. This was H.G. Weed. Now if you'll excuse me, I want to get some rest after I toke some of this primo shit. Book III, Chapter XXV, Verse I: We are the Mischief Makers, the Dreamers of Dreams This is not entirely true because I failed at my shenanigans today. Also I do not recall if I dreamt during the previous night. It's still a catchy title, no? I work in a three story building that has a very slow elevator. Most people use it and some depend on it, like the recently expectant mothers who are ready to drop at any moment. Before my two p.m. break I was feeling burnt out after a week that was slow but not slow enough for my tastes, I took the elevator back upstairs but hit the button for the second floor instead of the third floor. Whoops, not really. I got out and realized, "Shit those pregnant white trash are probably going to take the elevator today!" Their break is only five minutes ahead of mine. On the second floor, where no one goes, I looked around for something heavy to block the door and found a package of phone books! Glorious joy! Unfortunately they're packed like bricks which means that I'd have to break the plastic then pry it out fr... oh holy shit someone actually works on this floor. Doo de doo doo going into the elevator back to the first floor. When the elevator doors parted I saw the Breeding Trio waiting for their ride back upstairs. Oh sweet Jesus it would have been so perfect. Hell, I could imagine them waiting for the elevator wondering what the fuck was going on the second floor, being late coming back from break while complaining about having to walk thirty eight steps UPHILL, BOTH WAYS, IN THE SNOW. I sulked for most of my break. Verse II: WARNING: GOATSE CONTENT I have no idea what caused this but today my urine had a particularly strong smell. It was markedly strong to the point that I was forced to turn on the light in my bathroom in order to ensure there was no blood mingled with the urea. Of course if I were a bit more mean spirited this would've been the perfect urine to use to prank some deserving asshole's home. To be more correct, if I knew more people in Colorado Springs... Verse III Sorry to get all junior high on you but I really miss the way Spot would always bother me at the computer and eventually settle down lying next to me or in the crook of my leg, if I was not lying on the bed, while I scratched her with one hand and typed with the other hand. I also miss Spot giving me rugburn with her tongue. Verse IV: Not Much Fun At All My blood pressure skyrockets when I am around a lot of people. What gets me are parties. "Fuck, it's too loud in here. Let me do something inappropriate and try to hold down a meaningful conversation." "Holy shit, the police are due at any minute." "Fucking assholes. I hate you too. You and your fun." Sigh. And when I do feel comfortable, I make one unwitting blunder which unravels the entire event for me. I'D LIKE TO COME BACK HERE. People are way too complex and I hate my parents for stuffing me into a rocket, firing me across two quadrants only to crash in the Pine Barrens to be found by a young couple. This local, yellow star only serves to infuriate me and suppress my innate powers. Book III, Chapter XXVI, Verse I: The Accounting WHAM WHAM WHAM SIR IN THE STALL NEXT TO MY OWN, I'm trying to count here. Thank you. I've procrastinated long enough and it is still January. The accounting of my site beginning with dreams. It seems that I have not missed updating this site one single day for the entire year of 2002. In fact it seems that I wrote one more entry than I was obliged to, by my own code of honor (of course), in August of 2002. Holy shit, I really did update every day of 2002. As of the end of 2002 there are 1133 entries. The 223rd day of 2002, August 11th, is the 1000th entry. Like most things this event passed by without note or celebration because I was distracted or I didn't want to count just in case I happened to miss a few days between January 1st, 2002 and whatever date the 1000th entry would be later on down the line. The biggest archive is still January 2001 weighing in at 145k followed closely by July 2002 and November 2002 which are in a dead heat for second and October 2002 sitting in a very respectable third place. April 2000 remains the single smallest month of entries in the archives. April 2002 beat out January 2001 as the month with the most dreams. Achieving twenty dreams in a single month still remains elusive to me, gentle reader, but who knows what 2003 may hold in store for this site. September 2002 did nip at the heels of January 2001 being the proud bearer of 15 dreams earning the ninth month third place. Speaking of dreams, I doubt that you noticed but it appears I screwed up numbering the dreams in March 2002 and I had to go through the HTML to ensure everything was correctly linked which meant renumbering the great list to compensate for an extra dream. It was not as tedious as one would think, gentle reader. Seriously. Honestly. There has yet to be a month that has a sex dream, a nightmare and an old dream alongside the regular dreams but so far there are months which harbor the combination of sex dream and nightmare & nightmare and old dream. Lastly I'm not going to pay any attention to the fact that five of the dreams listed are contributed by gentle readers like you. They count as much as my own dreams. Dreams and Nightmares 1999, a.k.a. Book ∞ Sep'99 - 0 Oct'99 - 0 Nov'99 - 0 Dec'99 - 1 Total: 1 dream 2000, a.k.a. Book 0 Jan'00 - 1 1 old dream Feb'00 - 0 Mar'00 - 1 Apr'00 - 0 May'00 - 3 1 nightmare Jun'00 - 4 Jul'00 - 3 1 sex dream Aug'00 - 3 1 sex dream Sep'00 - 3 Oct'00 - 5 1 nightmare Nov'00 - 2 1 old dream Dec'00 - 7 1 old dream Total: 30 dreams, 2 nightmares, 2 sex dreams, 3 old dreams 2001, a.k.a. Book I Jan'01 - 16 2 nightmares 1 sex dream Feb'01 - 4 Mar'01 - 6 Apr'01 - 6 4 nightmares May'01 - 7 2 nightmares Jun'01 - 4 1 old dream Jul'01 - 4 2 nightmares 1 sex dream Aug'01 - 7 1 old dream Sep'01 - 9 1 sex dream Oct'01 - 5 Nov'01 - 8 1 sex dream Dec'01 - 8 3 nightmares Total: 84 dreams, 13 nightmares, 4 sex dreams, 2 old dreams 2002, a.k.a. Book II Jan'02 - 4 Feb'02 - 11 Mar'02 - 8 Apr'02 - 18 May'02 - 8 1 nightmare 1 sex dream Jun'02 - 6 1 sex dream Jul'02 - 4 2 sex dreams Aug'02 - 10 1 sex dream Sep'02 - 15 1 nightmare 4 old dreams Oct'02 - 10 1 nightmare 1 sex dream Nov'02 - 9 2 sex dreams Dec'02 - 7 1 nightmare Total: 110 dreams, 4 nightmares, 8 sex dreams, 4 old dreams Grand Total: 227 dreams, 19 nightmares, 5 contributed dreams, 14 sex dreams and 9 old dreams. Now I have to resist posting percentages. What percent of all my entries are dreams? What percentage of all dreams are nightmares? Sex dreams? Old dreams? Have the dreams remained proportional or has there been a marked increase compared to the previous years? Blah, I'm tuckered out from editing this site so I'll get down to the entries and let it be. Verse II I forgot to mention in yesterday's entry that on Friday I had unwittingly contacted the customer who has the insecure boyfriend. Oy, it was very sad. She called me back directly after I left her a voicemail saying with a quiver in her voice "Never call the home number again. I'm in serious trouble." Whoa there kitten. I have half a mind to call some battered woman shelter but it seems like you're actually enjoying this kind of attention you sick bitch. Anyway I removed her home number and that was the end. What gets me is that her boyfriend is always home during the day. You're going for an unemployed loser who has nothing better to do than stay at home all day and screen every phone call? Hopefully when he breaks up with her she won't drive her minivan into his house hoping he'll come back to her after experiencing severe property damage. Gweeds :( Verse III: MOO I want to acquire Masters of Orion I or II but I can not find a decent copy anywhere on the internet. There's one copy that is in .rar format but that entails downloading some obscure unzipping program which I have done once in the past and have been unimpressed and then finding out how to bypass the copy protection scheme for install or how to emulate having more than one disk instead of having everything shoved onto one file or disk. If I do buy Masters of Orion III, I'll feel silly not having tried the original two games. Humph, while writing that I have acquired Masters of Orion. Whee. I started playing it earlier today and put it aside because it started to get very involved which means that my time would be quickly burned up. If you want to play then get it. I have no idea where you could download it. I'm sure that it's available somewhere. Verse IV: The Prophet Dreams Various vignettes. Perhaps this is not so much as a vignette. I went into the basement of the basement to feed my pets. There was a small red-backed toad, an iguana and a small turtle who was very hungry. Under a shelf near the washing machine was their food and when I picked up a fistful I saw "06-C Virus" in red across my field of vision. First I fed Mister Turtle since his shell seemed to be hanging off his bones. The iguana was swimming merrily around his tank, when I approached the tank to feed him he started rubbing his body against the side of the glass as if he was a kitty rubbing up against my leg. The turtle was running away from the food I plopped into his terrarium. That's when I noticed that the iguana had died. I pondered feeding the toad but the sheer terror experssed by the turtle made think otherwise. Time for work. My job was taking calls in a small office next door to a restaurant called the Long Horn. One of the calls I received was about the virus, how it killed animals but there was a cure which must be initiated in a small timeframe otherwise all hope was lost. The person on the other end of the line was a veterinarian from Colorado Springs who talked with me about the pathogen's effects. Hours later I hung up and decided to call him back since I had forgotten to ask a pertinent question but halfway through dialling I realized that I had jeopardized my job talking so long with someoen who was local. Local calls are not allowed. Another small dream was about white glowing globes but before anything could become a story I was awakened by a certain young lady with a predeliction for biting mustache hairs and tugging them. Book III, Chapter XXVII, Verse I Fuck. I hate it when I am observing something and all of a sudden reality seems entirely real to me. Most times my perceptions are a movie viewed through my eyes. Hands are doing what they are doing without any connection to me. Going out to drive or while at work I'm oblivious to the world around me. Not the empirical world but everything else that makes up the world, reduces how black and white things are to my mind. While reading a story from the Wild Cards anthology maribou got me for Christmas I went to turn the page and all of a sudden I could sense everything at once and it was overwhelming. I could feel my fingers turning the page. I could see the light play over the page rather than simply being a representation of a page that could be paper but really is not paper since it does not exist in the first place. My perscipacity fails me trying to convey the singular moment where everything suddenly becomes real. perspicacity Verse II: The Prophet Dies No, not really. Still I woke up Sunday morning with a feeling of dread that precipitated the thought of the vent in my bedroom suddenly pumping out carbon dioxide and quietly suffocating me in my sleep. What is more troubling are the knocks on the door which go unanswered and folks walk away until days later there's an idea that something is wrong. I comfort myself in the fact that if my door went unanswered and this site was not updated then certainly that would be a clue. I worry most about Spot. She's my little girl. Verse III: Site News Well I worked on February's site all day on Sunday and came up with something that I think is cute. I spent a good ten minutes figuring out how to make the borders work together and display properly in a browser. The presentation is nigh-perfect and that is good enough for me. What pleases me is the fact that February is only a couple days away so I won't be filled with that "Oh boy, I can't wait to upload this and show off" feeling for very long. The main page seems to be lighter in HTML, the new stylesheet just for February is lighter and the content is a bit more balanced than it currently is on this page what with the big empty column over to the left. Goodness, doing all this HTML today takes me back to when I was working for the Kean College Independent as the Arts & Graphics editor. Sure I've been doing layout on this site but the format has been fairly static despite a few minor changes but that kind of creative effort takes me back to when I was doing desktop publishing. I keep editing the page, tiny bits at a time, to make it as polished as I would like it to be polished. Right now I'm thinking I should write a script that plops random quotes, like the Slashdot fortune cookie, on the page. I wonder if I should find another color for "site news" or just leave it green since green and black are this site's trademark. I wonder if I'm just trying to mask the fact that the content here is not really that good by using different themes like alternate dating conventions, using different fonts, different layouts or writing in another language. Bah, I really want to show off my site but I must learn patience. A good magician knows to will, to dare and to keep silent. What I shall reveal to you, gentle reader, is that March will be completely lacking in the color green. Book III, Chapter XXVIII, Verse I So February is only a handful of days away and I am pleased that I will not have to do something silly like "Book III, Chapter XXXII, Verse I" which is January 32nd, 2003 because I was running behind from procrastination, lack of talent and being distracted by less important things. Maybe on Monday or Tuesday I'll think of something else to do for February to really polish off what I have done for this site. That is the nice thing of doing a site by hand rather than some cgi/php module with templates. I can rip everything apart and redo it without much muss or fuss. Sure I could do that if I used something like Moveable Type but then I wouldn't get the dirt on my hands doing the work. "If something isn't hard, it is not worth doing" said the Prophet. At least I feel creative and productive despite the fact this project doesn't affect anyone but me. Perhaps someday I can use this site on a resume, content notwithstanding, to show that I've been working with desktop publishing or web design for the past four years on a daily basis. What is surprising is the fact that I didn't make this site on a computer named after a fruit and it has come out quite nicely thankyouverymuch. Verse II: The Prophet Dreams A snowstorm was going full force one night in my dream. I was walking through a deep streambed that was as high as my shoulder at each bank. The snow was coming down heavy in tiny flakes that lowered visibility to a couple yards and everything beyond that was swallowed in purplish darkness. Once I reached the end of the streambed I climbed out and started walking across a great field surrounded by trees. Up ahead was a bridge across yet another streambed. This bridge was not so much a bridge but a piece of concrete sewer pipe laid in the streambed then covered over with dirt. I kicked the snow off and saw grass had already begun to grow on it. I crossed more of this field until I saw the silhouettes of buildings looming out of the darkness, their purple-blue floodlights making hard beams in the snowfall as I drew closer to them. Once I was among that complex I saw that there was one brick building with large, plate glass windows which revealed a school library on the inside and soon a large white horse with ghost gray spots on his rump. As I watched him walk around the inside of that building a couple of shadows came to a nearby window to touch the glass to offer some comfort and company to the horse. A large, dark horse came out of a nearby alley, nuzzled me with his nose and walked off into the snow leaving me with a melancholy feeling. Bursting out from the alleyway that the dark horse came from was a large white wolf who sprinted down the path and out into the field only to turn around and sprint back in my direction once he reached the area where he would've been enveloped in the snowy darkness. His name was Twenty Three. When Twenty Three came back towards me I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and we walked out into the darkness together. The snowfall started to lighten up and brown patches of ground became visible. I knew that the snow was unabated, falling at its original pace, but being in Twenty Three's company gave me a different outlook on the storm. Verse III There's one thing that I dislike at work. Forced, polite laughter. I don't know what's up with most people, they're mostly in collections, forcing their laughs and that kind of shit. It always sounds like someone is nervous rather than actually trying to convey amusement. One person has a laugh that is very annoying like a goat is dying in their throat. Sure it's nice to keep the workplace a happy one but forcing it is just damned creepy. Book III, Chapter XXIX, Verse I: Redux i hurt: in my right arm near the elbow i love: my website i hate: liars i cry: rarely i fear: losing spot i hope: i will have love that is not one sided i sadden: not as frequently as before i feel alone: right now i kill: nothing i talk: dreams, my life and stupid stuff i listen: to idiots all day i break: my balls i see: money spent before i have it i smell: orange soda i taste: orange soda i work: so i can do things for myself i remember: everything i hold: no one i hide: in my apartment i pray: i never pray i walk: less than i have in the past i drive: to work and the supermarket i read: science fiction Verse II: The Prophet's Friend I spent Monday night thinking about Brian, mostly while listening to the Akira soundtrack. Verse III: blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah I'm sure all my gentle readers out there recall this particular Far Side cartoon where a man is berating his doggy for being naughty and the only thing that the dog understands is her name. I feel this way when I'm speaking to customers but most times they seem to understand what some of the blahs mean but in order to maintain their interest I continually mention their name. Now Mr. Jackson, they're all named after presidents, I need your bank statement and Mr. Jackson I need to verify your employment. And so the conversation will go when I'm talking to the customer. Yes there are a few people who lack ADD or are in a room where the television isn't turned up ALL THE FUCKING WAY. Seriously, are folks of the negro persuasion deaf because whenever I contact one at home the television is cranked. Sure, whatever, I'm racist but the people I deal with all day are really dense and really fucking uppity. Especially when they ask why I need to see a bank statement. I need to see that you can balance a checkbook so we can get our fucking money back. I don't care if you were buying shit at Victoria's Secret or buying dildoes from SlutStore.com or that you receive social security for your kids. I just want to count those overdrafts, insufficient charges, returned items and make sure you don't begin or end in a negative. Some people have the nerve to apply when they're hundreds of dollars in the red but they get denied outright, no calls to tell them or any other contact. Cover sheet, staple and tossed in the bin. One good thing is the fact that I've been learning to control the contempt in my voice when I get an especially dense customer. What is seriously depressing are the super dense customers who need someone to talk for them because they're barely functional beyond whatever tricks they were taught. One time some woman applied and when I spoke to her the first time she seemed to be completely baffled even though I was using small words and speaking slowly but not to be condescending. Ten minutes later someone who is a bit more erudite will call back, claim to be the customer and I'll repeat it to them. When they're that stupid I want to get the job done and get them out the door. There are the ones who'll go "Talk to my spouse" who will get on and start talking to me when I'll tell them I can only speak with the customer and the game of passing the phone around begins in earnest. What's sadder is when I'm talking with a customer who is parroting what their spouse is saying in the background and I can hear the spouse's voice. Of course I say if this continues then I will have to disconnect the call. I've only done this twice. I really need a new job because the kinds of people that I interact with all day just prove every stereotype. I do have some sort of validation from hhsb. hhsb told me that while she was visiting New Jersey for work that she was at a diner where there was a very loud black family and she found herself thinking spivak-think along the lines of "will those idiots shut the fuck up". Of course there are folks who stand out like Paul Robeson but those are rarer than hen's teeth. Okay I'll give equal time. There are stupid white people, and I can hear you Mrs. Maribou Bird going "aha!" in the back of the class, but these are much more rare but spectacularly egregious. First strike against them is being amazingly dim. Second strike is the fact that they tend to be the people making five thousand and more a month. Second and a half strike is their appallingly bad penmanship. YOU HAVE A JOB THAT PAYS THAT MUCH MONEY AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SPELL OR WRITE WITHOUT MAKING IT LOOK LIKE YOU SHOVED A PEN UP YOUR ASS AND SCRATCHED AROUND ON THE PAPER??? The third strike is the fact that they lie and they lie very poorly. They are smart in one sense, once they sense that I'm on to their shenanigans they immediately withdraw the loan and hang up unlike other people who will persist in their lie and get sent to the investigation department. Today I was able to do my little prank. I was pleased with the outcome and played along to cover my tracks. Hurp a durp durp a durp. I have nothing but contempt for people who are functionally illiterate. Especially the ones who are able to hold down a job which enables them to earn a living because their situation only serves to demean the accomplishments of people who completed college or say on their resume that they completed college. MOOD: NEUTRAL EVIL READING: DUNGEO