The sinking of the Titanic is an unthinkable joy

11:36PM

Ok. So so far I've flossed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, popped some pimples, and washed my face. After this I'll shave, shower, and clean out the car, and maybe read. I have a 7-day beard right now. I haven't had a beard this big since I started working. I've come to the conclusion that I am happy I shave often. Having an unkempt beard leaves a person feeling dirty uncomfortable and a little insane.

I went to a bookstore for the first time in a really long time since writing the book. It was a really solemn affair. Browsing old books and hearing the kids around you who are still in college talk about books feels so much more exciting. It makes you feel like some sort of king. It also makes you feel like you all of a sudden belong in a bookstore. As if you are not so much studying the works of Gods on a pedestal, but instead you are studying the works of peers and people who did the same thing you have done. A humanizing effect.

I still haven't looked for publishing houses for a couple of months. I was using this directory of publishers and agents that they sold at Barnes and Noble but the more I've applied places the more I've realized that in order for me to really get a good chance of getting The Invectives looked at by someone who might do something with it I need to get back to networking and shit like that, talking to people in academia or those who work closely with academia, or older people who've grown stronger and longer strings than I have. This whole thing would have run a lot more smoothly, I think, if I had written the book while in school, surrounded by writers and people who were given money to do things "intellectual," even though my book is not an intelligent book in the Philip Roth or Rushdie sense of the word, because it's not about boring middle-aged academic men.

But, like those dudes, like all good writers, I think through The Invectives I have developed something although not a very concrete style, something that has always been sort of expressed in my short stories, but never really with one set leader. Stylistically, I'd say my Triumvirate story is the closest thing to expressing my desired style in a short story, but I think the actual story is flimsy in realism, not that most of my writing isn't flimsy in realism -- it tends to not care about place or background of a character -- just that the Triumvirate is unrealistic in its sense of the environment. Oh jeez. Here come the intangibles.

When I mean the environment of the story, I mean that everything within that world obeys a set of rules, and these rules cannot be bent by me, because that's where bullshit festers, and that can be picked out. Triumvirate bends rules. So while most of the writing is really some of my favorite, it is based on a false world, a world cheapened for the sake of making the story easier to write. The Invectives was all very true to me.

All in all there were three sentences in The Invectives that I feel I could call my own and really love. That's not too bad when you think of the opportunity writing has to say the same exact thing that's already been said so many times before you. What has also been interesting is how everyone I've discussed the book with has never made mention of any of these lines. I won't say them here because I'm waiting for someone to mention them before I have to. This also shows how difficult it is to ever really artistically connect with anyone, ever.

I think doing some sort of performance where a bunch of people act out comments left on AOL news articles would be really incredible. Like each person would act as a certain user. These posting arguments get longer and more convoluted than most movies or novels do nowadays. I think it could be really great.

This is more than I've written on here in a very long time. I think it's because I got new glasses. I'd write more but I need to really get ready for bed and try and read some of the comics I purchased this weekend.

1:51AM - My first nigt in college

It wasn't the first first night of course, who knows what I did the first first night, probably spent the whole time online trying to find someone to buy me booze or take me to a party, the majority of first nights in college were stupid, who gives a shit anyway.

My first first night was that Fiery Furnaces show oer at the Paradise. It was the first time going to a show that didn't have assigned seating or wasn't in a shitty venue where I was performing with my friends and no one else was allowed in unless they paid the bar seven dollars. Before I went to the show, I went to In Your Ear and found a True Love Always CD. I listened to that CD while waiting alone in front of the Paradise before the kids I was seeing the show with came by, It was a really long time.

Anyway, they, too, showed up early, not as early as me, but early enough, and we chatted while waiting for the show to happen, and then the show happened, and then we went back to Rachel's south campus place and got drunk off my water bottles of jagermeister and a bunch of liquor mixed together, and Glacier and I met for the first time and talked about FLCL and Of Montreal.

Then there was the second night I met James and Bryan and we listened to The Thermals while rocking out around a keg and I kept punching the wall and showing everyone my bloody knuckles and I lost my hat. Then there was the night I passed out in Katherine's backyard, and I wasn't found until someone took out the trash.

Tomorrow I go up to Boston. I will get drunk with my good friends and we'll probably say the same things we've already aid thousands of times before. Then I might puke in the morning, and we'll go to the popfest, and we'll drive back. Then I'll drive back on Sunday and we'll be back to work.

Nothing will happen this weekend that hasn't already happened so many weekends before. I won't fall in love, nor will my heart be broken. I won't start a fight.  I won't get into a fight. I won't be arrested. I won't be responsible for petty vandalism. I won't defenestrate.

All I'll do is talk about music and how we should overthrow the government and then I'll pass out. I don't know where I go from here. Until I move and I start writing the next book I probably won't have any sort of idea of where I'm going.

I've started so many posts this week and ended up deleting them. This has never happened so often before. And I had so much more to say ten minutes ago than I have to say now. 

I think I've become more of a talker. There is so much I want to write about but it's so much easier just to say it to someone.

Milestones in growing up:
-Speaking as well as you write
-Loving Will Smith
-Making concessions in conversation to avoid awkward moments
-Keeping things to yourself, hating people, basically doing all the things you were taught not to do when you were 4 years old
-Ending all of your Livejournal entries with stupid McSweeney's-esque lists

11:55PM

Things are getting oversaturated in my social life. I guess that makes sense when my social life takes place in New York City. There's too much to do in too short a period of time, and nothing I'm doing out there results in any development. The only new friends I make are the ones I get to see at my old friends' places and I have to worry about getting back home with the car I take in every weekend and I can't really ever a girl back to a place. And even if it happened the other way, if I went back with a girl, it couldn't be much more than a weekend thing, I couldn't invite her over sometime to watch a movie, and the next morning I'd have to figure out how to get back to the car, wherever it's parked.

This book thing has suddenly made me an interesting entity to girls. It's funny. Saul Bellow once said being a writer is like an aphrodisiac for women. I just never really thought it applied to today though since I thought no one really reads anymore. But when I mention it, there seems to be more of an attachment, it's not like I witness a change in personality, but someone will linger with me a little longer than normal, and look at me more often than normal, and have an all-around more receptive attitude to who I am an what I say. It's frustrating not being able to act out when you can tell someone shows interest in you for practical reasons and practical reasons alone.

New York has just been too huge for two days. Not to say I'm growing older and more boring with my age, but more that it can be jarring, arresting, almost, and it lays such a large shadow over the workweek  that just really really bothers me. i know if I lived in the city I'd be out writing every night, or going to free shows, or visiting friends, or walking and listening to music, or starting a band, or seeing a movie, or having some interesting discourse. Instead I am squeezing all of that into basically two days a week. The fact is I spend the other five days of the week in Barnes and Noble or the gym or hanging out with Scott's pothead coworkers or just sitting in my room not doing any of them because I spend too much time scheduling the day.

All I know is that by February I'll be somewhere else. The problem is, of course, how far away that is. Really my big dream right now is to live in a motel in a small town where I write all day and then go into the main strip to drink at night, and I become so friendly with whomever owns the place that he offers me a job there in exchange for room and board and basically some food and booze money.

Things I spend money on:
-Food
-Alcohol
-Gas/public transportaton
-Student loans
-Car iinsurance
-Phone bill
-The occsasional record
-The occasional book

12:27AM

There are three things I think people have to remember when talking about and defining generations.

1. When you talk about your generation, and you make generalizations about your generation, you have to remember that the people you speak on behalf of are actually only a very small portion of the people in the age group that could more scientifically categorized as your generation. For example, my generation middle to upper middle class white neighborhood college educated creative kids. This is who I am, these are the people I grew up with, and with something like The Invectives, those are the people I write about.

2. The novel is not the only way to speak on behalf of a generation. Hip hop defines a different group of people, so does shitty pop music, so does television, so do movies, etc. I will argue that the novel is most likely to paint the most accurate portrait of a generation since it has the least rules of most mainstream mediums of art, but this does not mean a generation lacks a voice if it doesn't have an author. Maybe it's just because I'm a writer that I like to believe people tend to look at books as THE most accurate depiction of reality in a fictional environment, maybe not. All I'm saying is you can't forget there are other ways to define a generation.

3. Just because a medium of art only speaks for one small portion of a group of people all the same age, that does not mean it isn't a voice of a generation. The ability to write something that can create the same reactions in all the suburban neighborhoods all over the country becomes the voice of a generation for this very reason.

i guess what I'm trying to explain is that just because a rich white boy writes about being a rich white boy does not make sexist and classist, which seems to be something mainstream literature seems very nervous about, which is why it seems mainstream literature has so many big name writers who are first-generation immigrants or have different names or live in households where they pray five (gasp!) times a day. I have a feeling that this is also the case because the more American writing gets taught in the classroom the more the American characteristics of writing -- independence, adventure, and an unhealthy passion for life -- have to undergo compromise, and where better are you going to find compromise than in a household where your parents came to this country with nothing and want you to go to school to get a good job when you just want to be a great writer? The product is right there. I want to write x I need to go to college = creative writing grad school. But I digress.

I've been trying to define our generation through my writing. I'm actually workng on a bunch of pieces of prose poetry that are supposed to be the equivalent of some sort of Howl. I also think The Invectives did a pretty good job of defining one part of our generation, which is our obsession of being one step ahead and our blatant hypocrisies and our own self-imposed 'cool' hierarchy. At least I mean this is what college was. Which is why I am happy I moved out of Boston since Boston is just the same kids stuck in the same enlightening 4 year rut over and over. This appetite for calling other people's bullshit, or being more clever, or cooler, or more erudite, or more ironic... oog. A time that deserves a belt in the mouth.

Now that I watch myself and people around me grow older I am beginning to notice this niceness. I feel like our generation is just really nice and open minded. I think we're being so nice because we realize that acting like an asshole never facilitates change unless it's backed by bullets, so we are trying to have conversations with people we'd normally roll our eyes at so we can eventually persuade them to go green and be comfortable around gays etc. With the Obama thing I think once our generation wins we're gonna nice the shit out of all the people against liberal policies until some nutjob racist assassinates Obama and we have a whole new civil rights movement. But yeah. Nice. Rght now I get the impression that everyone is really nice.

I don't know what to feel about nice. I guess it's worth a shot. I mean anger apparently didn't work in the sixties. And considering our generation is shit tons more indolent than it was in the sixties we probably couldn't even coerce on rage.

Well what do you think? What impressions do you get? Right now, if I had to sum up our generation real briefly it'd be friendly passive-aggressive text messaging beard.

11:36PM

I've been listening to Whitehouse a lot recently. I want to pick up some Peter Sotos books. I probably need to if I wanted to get started on book 2. And when will that be?

It's something I'd really like to wrap myself up in. I'm not sure when I'll have such an opportunity to be that way again. I'm patient, but I'm excited and restless, like dealing with the prospect of having your mom or dad telling you that you're going somewhere very fun, but you don't know when you'll actually go. Work and bills really muck up everything. This week I intend to start contacting comic artists and some writers whose work I like and show them the website and just basically see if they'd be interested in becoming friends, almost like what that twerp did in Orange County.

Jeez I just listened to the title track off of Birdseed. That was really distracting.

12:43PM

www.thomassimmonssucks.com

11:46PM

The whole application process for graduate process has temporarily brought me into the same sort of time budgeting I thrived on in college. Writing never brought forth this sort of discipline because I am not deadlined for writing, and no one ever has to read it if I choose not to show it off, and i am not investing any money into writing because it is probably the most inexpensive medium of expression next to talking.

Goddamn! Of all the arts, really, writing has probably the best racket going on. Even though most literature is available for free at the library, and most literature is cast aside and never looked at again after the first read, people still go out and buy books. It's so funny how people think owning books is such a great indicator of sophistication when the only thing it shows is that a person has expendable income and he or she does not know what to do with it. Well I guess that's what stores like Barnes and Noble prove. Commercialized sophistication. An oxymoron for morons. I'm in a really foul mood, huh? To be honest I just want to fall into bed and go to sleep, but I am really trying to hard to write in here, as I haven't written in here in a while, and i haven't written in a while in general. I started substituting my writing time for GRE studying time, which I'll be taking in a month. What I've learned so far is how much I forgot about math but how easy it is to remember it again.

I just haven't been freaking out lately. I've accepted my situation, mapped out a new plan, and for now I'm biding my time. I'm sort of in this bubble right now where nothing's going to happen for a while. As in: I'll floss regularly, go to the gym regularly, get to sleep relatively early, study, and get drunk. These are all good things, but without some sort of outlet to sum up all the parts into one experience or feeling, you're just going around in circles. Hey, but we are all, right? Our entire universe is based on keeping the path. Gravity always wins.

If I don't shower tomorrow morning, I will be going to work two days showerless.

12:19AM

So until technical difficulties get ironed out:

http://www.thomassimmonssucks.com/TOMhome.html

I'm gonna talk to Alex about moving some stuff around, prettying things up, adding more links, blah blah, but that should be up soon. I guess I'll ask anyway maybe you guys know:

I am trying to get www.thomassimmonssucks.com to forward to http://www.thomassimmonssucks.com/TOMhome.html, the site that actually works. I went to my godaddy account and set it up so that you should be automatically forwarded to the working page, but I'm still getting a message saying no page exists for the original domain name. Any idea, guys? Any help?

I'm really excited to post things every month and expand the whole kit and kaboodle. One step closer to becoming a big deal.

11:36PM

As a writer, every once in a while I like to see exactly how much I've written over the course of time. I basically copy all my stories and paste them into one document, and it's only the ones I really like  or could potentially be worked on to be made worthwhile. I've never copied and pasted all of my abandoned writing into one document. That might be an interesting project. Anyway by the looks of it I have about 57,000 words worth of short fiction I am proud enough to eventually implement somehow somewhere. What's funny is how reluctant I am to submit this stuff. You always hear about the douchebag writer going "Oh it can't be seen yet it's not ready yet" and I think I've always prided myself in being the opposite of that, but looking over all these stories I feel like this isn't the case. Like I am a big fucking liar.

I didn't count the amount of stories, but I'm assuming about ten short stories and ten pieces of flash fiction, I should probably do more flash fiction as I have not done it in forever. Combined with The Invectives it is a solid 100,000 words. Combined with my unfinished manuscript of the trip it's about 160,000 words. Combined with the unfinished book about how college is a social warzone of a bunch of alpha douchebags and it's about 170,000 words. Not bad. Not good, but not bad.

It is a good thing to be perpetually unsatisfied.

What a good weekend. I got home on Sunday and passed out at 7:30 and woke up at 8 in the morning. Holy shit. It was incredible. That is the sign of a good weekend. And on Saturday after I saw Stereolab I caught a legitimate second wind for the first time in Christ knows how long and I stayed out till 5 in the morning, which felt incredible.

Really fucking incredible.

Huh.

I got a green light for a couch from Forman if he goes to grad school. I'm still debating when to write my next book. Might wait till after this whole grad school business. Write one before grad school. That'd be a pretty fucking cool way to start things.

10:34PM

Back in the day I used to write posts based on other people's posts, counter-posts, after someone said something that made me think and then inspire to write about something. I used to read my friends' entries and see if what they wrote about was ased off something I wrote, too, and in that way it was this happy mutually beneficial community of kids learning to indirectly communicate with one another at a time when it was difficult to express those same thoughts and feelings in person at a Barnes and Noble or a bowling alley or the hallway of a high school.

Forman when we were plannng that philosophy night? Where we were gonna sit in Travis's gazebo in his sick backyard and wax abortion and shit? Ok I see this post breaking up into two separate sutopics. Awesome. Don't you love that feeling? When you say something and it conjures up like several topics to discuss from there, and you're reassured that you have an impressive arsenal that won't let conversation run dry anytime soon?

Now, hopefully I won't forget the second subtopic while discussing the first because I think I already did. Anyway, though, my friends list has devolved since those fledgling days of introspection and growth. I read a handful of people on it, and I only read two or three people consistently. Others I just jump in and out of on occasion just to get an idea of what's going on. If I see some really interesting shit going down, I'll backtrack and get a hold of the story. If not, I'll take the entry for what it's worth and move on. No harm, no foul. Whatever.

Basically what I'm saying is that since we've grown older everything's become old hat, there aren't a lot of new topics for us to discuss, we've realized a lot of the things we worried about in the past were neurotic and stupid now, and now it's more like we've reached our own received our own degrees in steadfast philosophies of life and are going out in the world to practice and not so much learn it. And everyone who's ever practiced a profession knows that you'll run into the identical case/patient/idea/song over and over again and any unusual impetus for thought is thrown far and wide the murky boring gray. When it comes to making entries now I don't really know where it comes from. I guess it's therapy, mainly. Getting to say all the things I want to that I might not get to say to someone in person, and also the practice of presenting it with a big ol wallop. I've never considered myself good at non-fiction, organizing real life stuff so that it really comes together and wallops you, but it's been becoming more natural, I'm finding it easier and easier to do just the same. I would be lying if I said I haven't gone back to some of my old entries of recent because I thought I had done a really good job of summing everything up.

It's like Livejournal reached a new point. I still like it, but I feel like it was much more useful and exciting when we didn't talk about the things we posted in public. Now I write about shit and then I talk about it with someone in person and I think to myself, "Shit, maybe they already read this, maybe I'm just wasting breath and time." We're not parents; we don't and should not need to tell our friends things more than once.

Oh wow I did remember. But there isn't much of a cool segue. I just wanted to talk about alcohol.

There is a game I still believe in very much and I feel does the best job of having people open up to one another. It's called the shot circle. If you don't know how it works, you get 6 or 7 friends, maybe more, and everyone gets a shot glass, and there's a can or bottle of soda and like a handle of whiskey. And basically the way it goes is you keep taking shots and chasing and passing both bottles until you feel like stopping. And you can pass on a shot midway, and you can get up and go to the bathroom, and you can just hang out and watch, but the idea is just to get wasted at your discretion and do it in a social situation where everyone's doing the exact same thing. One of the things I like about the shot circle is that it always reveals all of the horrible or wonderful things people hide in their sober day-to-day lives. For those few hours where you are completely tore up and sloshed and before you (most likely) go to vomit somewhere you are the most honest person you've ever been and the same goes for all the people around you. Hate comes out, love comes out, lust, jokes, racial slurs. That's why I love going shot for shot with someone you just met. It's probably the best way to become a good friend with anyone. Because in the course of one night you lay it all out on the line, your fears, your irrational likes and dislikes, your insecurities, and all of a sudden in that drunken state of desiring company no matter who they are you LEARN TO ACCEPT A HUMAN BEING FOR WHO THEY ARE. There is nothing better than watching a person with pent-up hate do a shot circle because they are forced to face their hate and rationalize it and sometimes they get over it but most times they just pissed off and give up.

I think this all comes out because I'm not as bummed out as I was for the past two weeks. I'm doing things. I'm not moving as quickly as I'd like to, but I am doing things, at least, and I'm writing, and as long as I keep doing that something's gonna happen with it, and I'm saving money so that one day I can just leave.

www.thomassimmonssucks.com coming out soon be on the lookout y'all.

11:18PM - Being Happy by Means of Writing

Finished a rough draft of my first short story since The Invectives. Should have it revised enough by the end of this week to be happy with it.

A Barnes and Noble just opened up in town and it's open until 11. This is a huge deal. One of my biggest issues with writing is I need to write somewhere that's not home. Another big issue is that I like to have a minimum of two hours to focus on my writing at one time. One of the things that's held me back from writing every night is that the only place I could write on evenings was Borders, and that was only open till 10, and if I got out of the gym too late or futzed around the house for too long it'd be 8:30 and I couldn't get my two hours. This has seriously been an issue. And now that there's a Barnes and Noble that is open till 11 I should have no reason not to write every night.

If everything goes according to plan, I'll have this story finished and a new one drafted by the end of the week. Maybe I'll do a play already. Maybe I'll start writing in here more often.

So do priests have lots of wet dreams? How does that work?

10:29PM - Things that have been happening

I was drunk when I wrote that past entry but it felt good to write.

I am really good at avoiding perfection. I've been doing it all my life. Now I'm watching it as I send out cover letters and resumes to new jobs. I keep resending the same template, but I always forget to change one thing, the subject line, removing the FWD:, changing the name of the position, posting the resume in the body of the email. It's funny because I'm applying for editing and proofreading jobs, where that kind of stuff is generally frowned upon.

I signed up for the GRE. I start studying in October, I decided. Or once I finish this short story. And since I'm in a crummy mood I'll tell you that the story is about a guy who takes care of his friend's Real Doll and spends the next month getting drunk and doing horrible things to it. At one point he brings a homeless guy up to his apartment to offer him a place to stay and then he forces him to have sex with the Real Doll while he watches.

I'm in a crummy mood because I seem to be succeeding at a job I do not want to succeed at.  Tomorrow I go to a couple of hearings in a COURTHOUSE to observe one of our lawyers represent some clients because they think I got potential. The problem is I don't want potential. I want a new job somewhere else or a published book or an MFA in creative writing, none of which really have to do with Social Security. My problem is when I have to work, I like to work, and I like to do a good job, and the fact that I know what I do could actually somehow greatly affect someone's life motivates me. But shit. I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to be a writer. And I want to get drunk any night of the week without having to worry about being in front of a judge the next morning. i'm too selfish to be a lawyer. Plus my face is all cut up from shaving.

1:08AM

It's funny when you think how much we reject our bodies. We costume ourselves so we won't look too much like dogs when we die. Even the most powerful men shit blood and get cum stains on their pants, and even the most beautiful people rot away and get conjunctivitis. Death is our only equalizer, and it equalizes out of humiliation, not out of good-will or kindness or fear, but out of everyone's right and opportunity to become ugly. Not everyone can be pretty. You can see the bags in the starlet's breast wrinkled against her skin when she bends the wrong way. The ones who are most focused on being pretty usually end up becoming the ugliest. But anyone can eat shit, and refrain from exercise, and not shower or wash or shave.  And when we're dead we all have the freedom to have our bodies sliced open and our kidneys squeezed and our stomach dried out. We have that freedom because we no longer mind. With death comes the loss of the need to be pretty, and thus our acquiescent entrance into the kingdom animalia, finally, and the homophobes are here, and the racists, and the homophobic racists on tv, and Kimbo Slice's beard, and the dominatrix and the miserable pedophile and the lascivious pedophile, and the silver headed convertible drivers, and the college-educated African-American, Asian-American, transfer student, Afghani who never wears shoes, and sixteen year old who likes feeling sexy, and our sexist girls on tv, and our sexist VJs, sexist anchors, tongue-in-cheek comedians with hands in pockets standing in front of microphones with crow's feet grins, the lame ducks, the star rookies, the injured disappointments, the living shells of celebrity, the cocaine users next door and the meth users downstairs, and the punks with the dog outside the liquor store, and the liquor store owners, and the pilots afraid of hijackings, and the truck drivers afraid of falling asleep, and the sailors who cry for three days without  land, and the sleepaway camper writing a letter to his parents asking to be picked up and taken home on the second day, and the kids sliding on hardwood floors in socks on Christmas Eve.

9:01PM

So I'm sick. Again. This time with a cold. As a result this weekend elt like this dreamy hazy raw throated drunken hungover adventure. I'm pretty sure throwing bile up a sore throat is not good for a sore throat. I think that makes sense.

I really don't do a very good job of keeping good care of myself. Thickheaded, sometimes. Right now the floor of my room is covered with clothes, some clean, some that should have been washed a week ago, all of my pants are stained with alcohol or energy drinks or grease or rips, CDs strewn all over the place, using a toothbrush that my friend left in my shower a few weeks ago because I lost my other one. I still have eczema on my foot, I need new glasses, I have to inquire further about an eye treatment which I should have done two weeks ago. I have some toilet paper lodged in my left nostril.

The one redeeming quality about my room is that it has a lot of stuff in it that makes me look like a sophisticate. Oh, The Queers on vinyl? Yeah I'm a pretty big fan. Katzenzakis is great. Have you read The Last Temptation of Christ? The Eux Autres -- I saw them in Portland with The Lucksmiths, they were really great. Yes, that is a photograph of Roald Dahl's writing chair I cut out from a New York Times Magazine article years ago pinned on my closet door. And yes, those are boxing gloves. I dabble.

The only things I want in my life are things that can tell stories.  Telling stories is like the everyman's poetry. Finding the beauty in a combination of images and senses put together to capture a specific, beautiful moment that you can always go back to.

I was outside the San Francisco Public Library around noon reading The Jungle and it was a beautiful day and it was one of those stone blocks I sat on, not really a bench, not really a wall, and I was reading The Jungle when this homeless lady came up to me, sat next to me and asked if I had anything to eat. She was wearing a bunch of worn and big brown clothes and a backwards baseball cap that wasn't fitted, and her face was haggard but she had blue eyes and most of her teeth were missing but I remember she still had her lower left carnivore still in, and it stuck out a little from her mouth, this yellow little nub. Fortunately, I had a bag of peanuts that I purchased, I think during the Chicago to Seattle trip, it was wrapped tightly with band aids in one of the side compartments of my backpack. I took it out and gave it to her and she thanked me and sat there and ate some.

The first thing she said after that was "I really like ice cream" and I seriously considered going to a creamerie with her but I was trying to to be frugal, spending my money on booze coffee and meals only, so instead I just nodded and said "Ice cream is pretty good."

Then there was a little pause, I went back to reading, but then she started talking, and I looked up, and she realized she had interrupted me and apologized, but I told her not to worry about it, and she told me how the night before someone had hit her in the back of her head, knocked her out, and she didn't know who did it. I told her that was too bad. Then she told me she was scared. And I was sort of ticked off because it was obvious she was looking more for charity than company so I said I gotta run sorry and closed up The Jungle and picked up my bags and she said, "Please, you don't have to leave, I won't talk again," and I paused, but then I said, I'm sorry I really have to go, good luck to you, and she thanked me for the peanuts, and I walked off somewhere else, I forget where, maybe back inside to the library to find a good place to read The Jungle after having not purchased a homeless lady some ice cream.

One time Billy and I got drunk and decided to light a candle on fire.We took a wide green candle and put it on tin foil and doused the candle in lighter fluid and put it on the porch and Billy threw a match in, but the match basically bounced off the candle and fell onto the tin foil covered in lighter fluid and sparks started shooting but we got some water quick enough before we needed to freak out. I still don't think I've met anyone who's fully appreciated the brilliance of lighting a candle on fire.

I treat myself like shit as some sort of self-imposed test of will. Because I know I can handle it, I choose the challenge over the easy way out. Back when I used an agenda in middle school I'd rip out pages with future dates so I couldn't write my homework then. Bryan brought up a good point last night when he said I find too many reasons not to fuck girls. My face is always covered in the negative. I focus on the negative too much because of that need to challenge myself.

But sometimes it can just get too much. You come home with a hangover and a shitload of things you just don't want to do, and a shitload of responsibilities, and guilt, and all you want to is jack off, lie in bed, and have semi-conscious dreams. How do you envision Heaven, and will it ever change.

I might be moving to New York soon. I'll know really soon. I'm ready to write another book, though. And I want to disappear from everyone for a while, just like I did when I took my trip one year ago. Who knows how solitude became something I like, but it has. After having written one book I want to write a thousand more.

Plus an interesting fact: I think the best way for me to go about bungee jumping if I ever did it is convincing myself I was going to die no matter what and being surprised by not dying. Because once you accept a fear as an inevitability you can probably live pretty well with it.
 

12:48AM - Tara Billinger

I've been waiting for a long time for someone who is younger than me to really leave me in awe and make me feel like I could learn something from them and I think I found her. Nineteen years old! Nineteen!

Had a really nice long weekend in places I don't get to see too often anymore. Was assured that not staying in Boston was a good idea. Just applied for some jobs in Philly. Haven't written in a few days tho I am not very worried about that. I took like a month off from not doing anything and now it's time to get back in action.

I'm considering the idea of starting to carry around a tape recorder wherever I go and recording any and all ridiculous moments I get myself into and then making copies and passing the recordings to people. Opening night at the black movie theatre, getting pulled over by cops, nights deteriorating into drunken mistakes and sex and messy messy messes. I think that would e really interesting to listen to. Ethical thoughts?

12:35AM

I think I'm making a website to host writing on. I'm making this entry to ask you guys if there are any memorable things of mine you read that would make a good domain name.

11:26PM - This might actually be cohesive even though I'm kind of drunk

Last night I couldn't get on to Livejournal. My internet wouldn't let me. I even tried going onto my parent's computer and I still had no work. Better yet, when I put in the url for my journal (with the www.) it said the site didn't exist.

So in my paranoid mind, my always looking for a fight mind, I decided that someone had seen that I used some inappropriate words in my previous entry, and notified LJ, and my journal was eradicated, and any computer I used for logging into LJ could no longer go onto LJ at all. I swear to God. This was the not too distant conclusion I came to. And it pissed me off. I took a shower that night, and while in the shower I tried to put together some polemic on the current race issue, where it's more racist for a white perosn to use the n-word in a non-derogatory manner than it is for  white person to not donate money to Hurricane Katrina, or believe in affirmative action, etc. etc.. That it is more racist for a white person to use the n-word in a non-derogatory manner than it is for a president to let a predominantly black and impoverished city go to shit. That a white person who used the n-word in a non-derogatoy manner was more likely to get the shit kicked out of him by a black dude than the president was. I was ready to wage war. I swear to God. But then I got a good night's rest and I realized I was freaking out when it'd be much easier to laugh at someone's uptight irrational politically correct ideals. And on top of that LJ returned to working!

Ever since I've taken this legal job and I told Scott why I believe in anarchy I've been thinking in way too many big pictures. Because I've never read a book on anarchy, only took in a vague understanding of it after reading The Jungle and The Bible, I've been wrestling with its theory in my head on a daily basis. It's my biggest issue. So in a sense politics have been stuck in my head forever. Passion for changing the world and helping people has been there forever. And now after finishing Typee which is about esentially an anarchic and happy tribe, and starting For Whom the Bell Tolls which touches on more leftist ideals, it's too fucking much. It is dangerous to have radical ideals and then be encouraged by literature from great thinkers and writers, snce they are both the same thing, and especially since the best writers are humanists first and everything else second.

So yeah. Politics have been troubling me. Because politics is the standard method for change, but politiics is also the standard method for bullshit. Both inspiration and stagnation. Both liberty and oppression. It is the best at twisting these principles however it pleases, however it needs.

I was watching the DNC tonight. I was drunk. I watched Hillary Clinton speak. And while she spoke, I watched the camera switch to her husband, who was aware that the camera could be on him at any time, and he showed all the perfect facial expressions to show inspiration and passion. And I watched a politician who didn't frown her entire speech spew more inspiration on television than I had seen for four years. And then it occurred to me that the reason we are so fucked is becasue the talking heads, the charismatics, only use their appeal to move people to change once every four years during election time. The rest of the time we watch victimless comedy that blames everything on the politicians and assures us we are helpless and can't do anything to change the system. It was disturbing. Imagine if television was filled with daily propaganda demanding not support, but change? Imagine if every day the news didn't just say a bunch of people are dying, but also inspired us to somehow reach out and help? How could we then live as we do now? And as I watched Hill's speech, it wasn't whether or not I believed in what she said; it was that there was someone out there who wanted to make things better. For that temporary moment she was on tv I was drunk and dumb enough to believe in her, to believe in something other than Scrubs, and believe that by voting democrat, things could get better, or that I had the power to change the world in general. ONCE EVERY FOUR YEARS!

The rest of the time we are happy with not being disturbed from our hibernation. Bunch of fat cozy animals, sleeping and happy to be blameless of what happens to the world during our nap.

That fucks with my head. That we can only be worried about change on such a remote cycle of time.

But that's it. I'm drunk and tired. In anoher day we'll be back to talking about a scandal in baseball or something.

2:27AM

Hey when was the last time I wrote in here. When was the last time I stayed up so late and remembered it. Well that I actually do remember -- I was coming back from New York City with a bunch of friends I don't get to see too often at like 4 in the morning. We got to drink free beers at some nice bar in Manhattan, and I sat next to a pretty black girl, and a drunk old dude introduced me to a girl whom I didn't really talk to for very long.

From fag to homosexual, nigger to African-American, retarded to mentally disabled, you can only determine the best way to deal with something once you look at it from all angles and positions. It's weird to think that I might never work a shitty job with shitty coworkers and to realize that I am going to sort of miss it. In an office you work with the placid masses who are real easy going and kind. I never worked with people like that before. When I worked at City Convenience it was with a bunch of middle aged Morroccans who had move to America only 2 years ago and were scared to death of me because I coud speak English really well. When I worked at the pizza place I watched a 40 something Egyptian constantly lose his temper on a 50 something guy who looked like a weasel and was on disability.

Now I work with a bunch of kids my age, and I never even talk to them because I'm allowed to listen to my Ipod at work. I don't know if I'd want to talk to them, either. I guess I wouldn't mind, but the environment I'm in now isn't natural. It's an adult environment. A proper environment. I have spent my entire life being afraid of talking to adults because adults are the most easily offended people I know. Adults are also the most entertaining people to hear talk about their daily hobbies or activiies because most adults slowly stop doing things in general. One day you'll wake up and think to yourself "I've always been interested in swimming I hear it helps your heart maybe I should take lessons" and you'll be able to afford those lessons and they'll be taught by someone half your age who's already seen more things and been more places than you have in your entire life and that's when you'll know you've died. People, I think, have a tendency to forget that by being alive and existing they have a right to be something more than another bump in the road. People, I think, have a tendency to believe that changing the world is for a group of people they are not a part of. Who wants to be the entertained when you can be the entertainer? Who doesn't leave a really good movie wishing that they could be the people they saw on screen? Why do we convince ourselves are dreams can never be made true?

I think I'm gonna finish writing about my trip around the country soon and only have people look at it after I die as to avoid hurting feelings while I'm alive and having to live with that. I will tell you this, though: when I was in Seattle, on my way to get a bite to eat or something, I was at a corner, not jaywalking, like everyone else in Seattle, when this homeless lady who liked she might've been a meth head asked me if I had any change. I checked my pockets with no luck and apologized. The light still hadn't changed, so I just stood there and she stood there too, and then she told me three jokes about chickens (I wish I remembered them!), none of which I had ever heard before, and I listened and asked the appropriate questions and chuckled at the punchlines and then the light changed, and I told her to have a nice day, and she said  "Thank you for listening and God bless you, you've brightened my day."

I'll tell you about my other conversations with homeless people another time as most of them were what I'd consider interesting, especially in San Francisco, where I gave a doped out juggalo a dime and brought a lady nine dollars worth of juice and crackers.

12:25AM

I'm starting to follow a learning guitar course on youtube this week. It's much more difficult than power chords; I have to read music in order to play along. It's kind of cool that I already know how to read music tho because at one point the guy making the videos was trying to explain to me what a dotted half note was and I was way ahead of him on that. But it looks like each of these lessons won't hopefully take more than a week each, if I keep up practicing and pay attention. Hopefully by this weekend you guys can all gather around a fire and watch me play Ode to Joy.

11:36PM

Two types of people in this world, the cowards and the idiots, and the world works in such a perfect way that the idiots are able to be in control because the cowards don't have the balls to tell them they're wrong. That's basically it.

And even if the idiots are told they are wrong, they won't listen. That's because they're too proud (stupid) to listen to anyone else.

I have plenty of friends I've kept from getting into altercations with because I know they're stupid. As much as beating the shit out of someone sometimes seems like the best way to fix an issue, it is more effective to beat them up over time, slowly chip away at their egos as the years progress, make them slowly change themselves without even noticing it. You beat up an idiot and instead of learning anything they'll slink away like weasels and find more cowards to lord over and spout even more idiotic bullshit than they did before because now they have more hate in them than they did before you beat them up. Nothing gets solved. How many times have I said this in so many different ways. The best part about this slow process of trying to change people is really frustrating and depressing. Wow. I feel like shit. Maybe I just need to get some sleep.