I have bizarre self-destructive impulses as it relates to drugs and alcohol.

I don't drink. I don't do drugs. But sometimes I think to myself...man...I need to start drinking. These are times when I'm not feeling especially great, you might imagine, and am feeling maybe lonely or abandoned or frustrated with life. It's almost sort of a suicidal ideation, now that I think about it. But the thought will just casually occur to me, just pop into my head that, you know what I need to do? Heroin. I need to start doing heroin. Because I feel bad.

And that's about as far as it goes.

I am a strange man.

No, I've no intention to start doing these things, but hopefully I'm at least bordering on being comprehensible. I don't think my impulse is THAT bizarre, or, then again, maybe it is.

Just bought some ice cream. Haagen Dazs peppermint bark flavor. Doesn't sound great, but that old coworker of mine that I mentioned said it was the best thing ever, so I'll give it a shot.

That song I posted before... That line kills me, because I picture someone singing it to their kid, and it's an amazing line. Switchfoot has always been pretty strong lyrically, but...I don't know. Sometimes certain phrases jump out at you, right?

"and this is the hole where most of your soul
comes ripping out from the places you've been torn"

Referring to the mouth, naturally. But then the refrain...I don't even know if that's the right word, but,

"and it is always
always
always yours"

Referring to the soul, I'm sure (though I think it works for the mouth, too- I like the duality there, even if it was unintentional).

That part really got to me, as you might be able to tell from the fact that I just mentioned that it did, just now. I don't know if you were paying attention.

So I guess that's something to write about: been buying too much music, as per usual. New Switchfoot (Hello Hurricane) album is good, thought not exactly my taste. A little U2ish for me, maybe? Although the song that sounds most like a U2 song, Bullet Soul, is one of my favorites. I dunno, maybe it'll grow on me. I hope they stop in town on their new tour like the last time I saw them, they were pretty great.

Speaking of seeing music, I saw Cage the Elephant a few weeks back, since they were playing a gig not far from here. Cage the Elephant, AKA "the guys with that song from the Borderlands TV commercial." Not bad, but the lead singer was clearly wasted. I don't know if he was drunk or high or some combination of the two, but it was a fucking bummer. On the plus side, he had a good energy and the rest of the band played well- their two singles were done especially well, and they were cool enough to come back on stage and do an encore after their set, which was good. As for how they sound live, picture yourself in a club in Seattle in 1992 and think of them as a grunge band. That will prepare you. Due partially to audio problems it was hard to hear the lyrics of the songs, so in that regard it was more a show for fans who already knew the songs, but the actual music made me not care so much.

Oh, I found a fucking park. Apparently there's a park not far from here that I didn't even know about, but managed to stumble across a few weeks back. Yeah. I found a park.

Odd, that.






The Scooby Doo van was parked across the street from said park, which is where I go walking/running/jogging in the mornings, now. Speaking of which, when I get some money I need to buy some running shoes. The ones I have are fine for walking, but for running and jogging...not so much. Shins are getting sore, too much shock damage from my fatness.


Alright, picture time:

1. Are warning signs supposed to be hilarious? Are they done this way on purpose? Or maybe I'm just a weirdo for being amused by them? Because, really, I've seen a ton of these that tickle me, a few of which I've uploaded pics of.

2. Dog park sexism. (#7)

3. A leaf I saw. It was hanging by a spiderweb thread, just spinning there about 5 feet off the ground, I had to snap a picture.

4. (self-explanatory:)




Also a product of the park I mentioned earlier. Well, that and some mild vandalism.

Teenagers shouldn't be able to read books about vinegar.

Because vinegar is disgusting.


Other than that, I have no ideas.

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/776895778/a0c3f61ec1d2d552a3a8c122458eb03e

Makes me think about babies.

In a good way, not a Roman Polanski way.

Ladies and gentleman, Renee Gauthier (pronounced go-tee-yay).


I just saw the movie Hard Candy, and it was sorta great. The summary version is, there's a guy, he's 32. He's chattting with some girl over the internet, and decides to meet in person. There is a girl- she is 14 years old. They meet up and flirt with each other, and he takes her back to his house...

And then things go very badly. She is not the person she pretends to be, and it is actually more of a suspsense/horror movie than a drama.


~~~~~~~~


I Know Who Killed Me. This movie was...interesting. I thought it had a great premise way back when it first came out, but it was a complete failure in terms of profit, though the distributors have probably made their money back thanks to DVD sales. The movie...I don't know. It's not a "good" movie per se, but it has a very interesting sense of style, even if it starts out a little obnoxious and overstated. I really enjoyed some of those parts of the movie. The plot is passable, even though I don't like the change of direction that happens about 2/3 of the way into the movie, maybe a little later (regarding the main character(s). The scenes of gore at the end of the first act are surprisingly graphic...I know it's an R rated movie, but I'd figure since most of Lindsay Lohan's fans are young women and girls, that it wouldn't be so...explicitly shown.

Another thing about Lohan: wow, she's very attractive. Like I've never really been into her, and if anything I've only felt sad for her given that her life is a fucking train wreck (drug and alcohol problems, weird scumbag parents, boyfriends, etc). But there's a scene in this movie that...well, I was very impressed by her physical presence, I'll say. Maybe I just had low expectations, or maybe because I've never really thought of her in that way- it's always weird when girls get famous young, I have a tendency to think of them as always being that age, even when tehy grow into adults.

Oh, and her acting.... Well, it isn't bad, but not great, either.

I don't know. Worth a watch. There's an alternate ending which is completely fucking different, apparently. If you do want to see it, I suggest you not look up plot details or check the wikipedia page, etc.


~~~~~~~~~~~


The Box. The Box was good. Well, it was as I've stated elsewhere 60% good, 20% medicore, and 20% "wait...what?" Good acting, and I do very much like the way the film is aggresively scored. It's had many comparisons to a Twilight Zone episode, which is nealry appropriate- it's based on an old short story by some guy named Richard Matheson (What Dreams May Come, I am Legend, etc), which was turned into an episode of The Twilight Zone...though it bears mentioning that it was an epsiode of the inferior 80s version of the show.

The plot is the same (couple gets a box with a button in it: if they hit the button someone they don't know dies, but they get a million dollars), at least for the first third or so of the movie. After that...it gets even weirder. As a matter of fact, it gets progressively more and more weird, to the point of confusion.

All that said...it' still an interesting movie, if you don't mind things that are weird. The director is the same guy who did Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, neither of which I've ever seen...but if you have seen them, you might know what to expect in terms of oddity.

Also, worth watching.



~~~~~~~~~~~


28 Days (not to be confused with the zombie movie 28 Days Later), which I caught the last half of on cable once, and thought it looked interesting. I bought it for cheap at the record store last week...it's a movie about drug rehab, but a very whitewashed PG13 version of the process. Still a decent movie. Surprise: worth watching. I just really liked that fucking sign. "Confront me if I don't ask for help."

Thoughts and other things to post about

-Penpals need to make a comeback.
-Loss of objective sense of reality via depressive states
-The reprehensible ending of KWOD 106.5
-I found a park
-Odd things seen at the 99 cent store
-Conditional love in the form of self esteem, and a note on Thanksgiving
-My mom waving on drivers
-Lack of trust resulting in inversion of trust
-"normal trust"
-The movie 28, and "confront me if I don't..." sign
-The movie I Know Who Killed Me
-The movie The Box

In the mean time, enjoy more pictures. None spectacular.

Actually, I take it back, these 2 are kinda great:




A real van that I saw across the street from the park I found. More on that later. Scooby Doo fans, I'm gonna guess.


Seen at the train station. Some genius (a gentleman of fine standing and impeccable upbringing and breeding, I'm sure) took it upon himself to write "I need pussy" on the thing the train schedule is in, cleverly writing his phone number below.

It's hard to make out, but someone apparently saw this and wrote aside it, "you need Jesus."







Less interesting pics here: http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/tsdcs/cell%20phone%20pics/

I have a great many thoughts I feel the need to post about, and will at the very least post a list of them in the near future.

What strikes me now at this moment, is that there's a movie I'll post about later in which, as sort of a therapy thing, our main character is forced to wear a sign about one of her bad habits. The sign she wears around her neck (a big square of cardboard with a string so she can wear it) says:

CONFRONT ME IF I DON'T ASK FOR HELP.

I saw this sign, friends, and it occured to me sometime later, that I don't believe I've gone more than a week without needing to wear that sign. It has always been a big problem of mine.

Stopped by the record store and bought too much stuff, though it was cheap:

DVDs-
Children of Men ($3!!)
TMNT movie (the old one)
The Spirit (not a good movie, but entertaining)

CDs-
Jamie T
Blackalicious (see previous posts)
Vivaldi

Haven't really listened to any of the CDs or watched any of the DVDs, other than TMNT, which is a little dissapointing. It's an old DVD (from 1997) and the video quality isn't great. At least it's in 16:9 aspect ratio, and the quality is far superior to my beloved old VHS tape of the movie, which I still have.

Yeah Yeah Yeah's is a band with some crazy chick as the lead singer. She's...she seems Amy Winehouse-esque, if you will. I'm not even sure the band is still together. I bought one of their albums a few months ago, Fever to Tell. I didn't really like it, but while running around doing stuff I had the album on repeat, and it really grew on me. Despite all of its harshness and weirdness, it's actually kind of sweet.

Also, there's this thing about music, where some music I can just listen to while doing nothing, some music is better while walking around, some better when running, some when it's just playing in the background while I'm occupied, etc. Fever to Tell is better when you're doing stuff. I was doing laundry, mostly, as it was playing. Which, for me, involves running up and down 3 flights of stairs carrying stuff, since the laundry room is on the bottom floor of my apartment building.

Also, got Curse Your Branches by David Bazan. That album is a fucking downer. It's good, though. I gave it another chance, because it's not one of those albums that you can just enjoy normally, you have to be distracted, a bit, and somehow it works much better. I was exercising, sorta. At least, I think. I was also doing laundry, I'm pretty sure.

My new theme music is that Switchfoot song from an earlier post. By the way, what the fuck is wrong with record labels? The band puts up a video of their own fucking song, and the record label takes it down? It had hundreds of thousands of views, and was basically free advertising for the album!! What the fuck is wrong with you people??!?

Anyway, I'm not so interested in the politics of the song (that being abuse of prescription drugs, among others), but more the spirit of it. If not a song about my life, it's very much a song about how I feel.


Speaking of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the lead singer Karen O (who has stopped drinking, I hear) did basically all of the music for the movie Where the Wild Things Are, which I saw on Friday.

Pretty good movie. As you may have heard, it's not really for kids, so much as it is a movie about childhood. The first 1/3 or so of the movie is better than the rest, I felt, just because I enjoyed seeing the main character and his life. Once he gets to the titular island, he stops becoming the main character, which sorta threw people off. Even if the Wild Things correlate rather strongly to aspects of his personality and issues he's been going through.

There's a part where he stands on the table that I thought was brilliant. 3.25 out of 5. Maybe better on repeat viewings? Dunno.


Next up: epiphanies from Street Fighter and Tupac: Ressurection

Oh, women.

Some days, I don't know how to feel.

That aside, let me tell you about what I've been meaning to get around to talking about.

There's this former coworker of mine who has a dog. This coworker is a young woman in her late 20s, and is single.

I was talking with her over the phone about whatever random thing (I was busting her balls via facebook/text messages, though in a playful way, but then I got guilty and called to make sure I didn't say the wrong thing), and her dog decides to make his presence known by crawling all over her legs, which is what he does when she's on the phone with other people, because he's desperate for attention (or, maybe he just doesn't like when the attention is going elsewhere). So the dog starts bugging her, and then later in the phone call starts barking.

I should mention that as I type this right now, I'm drunk from lack of sleep. It's 3 AM and I just got in from a double feature at a movie theater (The Howling//From Dusk until Dawn), and I haven't been sleeping well anyway. So, I'm a bit out of it, but I'm going to try and sqeeze this post out, or at least this part of it.

So the dog is doing what it does, and she tells me about him...apparently he's impregnated his...well, to the heart of the matter, she refers to it as his aunt, but it's her mom's dog, I think. The dogs aren't actually related. More on that later. And she mentions that this dog has a weirdly large penis for such a small dog, which I didn't know exactly how to respond to, but she clarified that she meant it was weird and gross.

So I say to her, that between the jealousy, that, and the knocking up of his aunt-dog, that her dog is 3 for 3, and is an awesome dog. This is, of course, a very male way to look at it.

Here's the deal, though: this dog, is, to her, her baby. That statement makes more sense to women than to men, but that's about the size of it. In some ways, this dog to her is literally like a child. And, being male, there's a special discomfort or unease she must feel when her dog starts...you know...acting like a male. It's gone from being her sweet little puppy baby to knocking up other dogs and being possessive. So, in an odd way, I actually feel bad about joking about her dog being awesome. Because to her, especially since maybe she hasn't had the best luck with men (busted compass, let's say), this thing which was supposed to be her innocent little darling has taken on characteristics of some of her ex-boyfriends, I'm sure.


People are strange. We will find our way to...

We are good at throwing boomerangs, but not so good at understanding why they come back.



Did any of those paragraphs above make any sense at all? I don't know.


Next up: on happiness- documentary about a rapper + SF epiphanies, yeahyeahyeah's + bazan, and my new theme music

Click for more:




Is this lazy, or is this genius? Or maybe both?

http://www.spinner.com/2009/10/25/gift-of-gab-dreamin-feat-del-the-funky-homosapien-and-brother/

Gift of Gab is from the group (duo?) Blackalicious, with DJ Chief X-cel, I think. Best known for the theme tracks Alphabet Aerobics and it's use of alliteration, and Chemical Calesthetics, which references chemistry and the periodic table of elements. Del you might already know, if only for his rapping on that first Gorillaz single, and Brother Ali I'd never heard of, though I like his verse the best on the song.

Also, I was watching TV and caught the end of some commercial which used a new Switchfoot song...didn't know they had a new album coming out:

Things to write about:

Dogs, music, and my doughy window to the outside world.

Finding a job, "weed man," and caring about things.

There are only 60 days left in the year!

The Twilight Zone: "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You."

The first 2/3^rds of the title of this entry describes the lives of a lot of people, doesn't it? I just realized.

Been hanging out with some pretty normal 20-somethings- that is to say, fairly crazy people- and I've some meditations.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suppose I should address the last of those 3 things in the topic: real emotional truth. The book that I was reading some weeks ago, The Drama of the Gifted Child used this term, and I've become enamored with it.

The idea is based on the fact that people deny their own emotions. How many times do we pretend like nothing is wrong when we're pissed off, how many people are we pissed at (friends, family, strangers, coworkers) that we will never actually say anything about, or maybe just not to?

There's this thing that happens when parents are abusive towards their children- the kids grow up and are thankful for it. In their mind they remember it as the parents correcting them, because they were bad kids, or they were out of line, etc. "I wouldn't be the person I am today without..." One of several problems with this, is that it is true at all levels of abuse- I've heard horror stories people tell about how they were "disciplined" by their parents, immediately followed by making of excuses or abject praise. The same way a battered wife is sure at certain phases of the relationship that she got what was coming to her, or she started something, etc.

This is a fucking problem.

Here is the deal, though: in situations like these, we are talking about an emotional or psychological injury. Just because they have "forgiven" the parent or abusive party for what has happened in the past, does nothing to change it, just like a physical injury would still exist. The denial serves to not only keep people from clarity as it relates to their past and present feelings about people, the sheltering of the love object from criticism keeps people from ever being in touch with how they felt (ie. "real emotional truth"), and to some degree probably still feel.

Let me abandon any ambiguity: a lot of people remember their childhoods wrong. Period. There are a great many events, large and small, that were you able to view as an adult, you would see completely differently. True story. So, as people continue to focus on the ends and not the means (everything worked out okay, so...), the more they distract themselves from their pain, the real emotional truth. They have not mourned those feelings that they had. They view themselves, as victims, as being wrong, as being the enemy. It is a sectioning off of oneself, a denialism, instead of an integration and accepting of one's own pain and feelings into the whole of oneself.

This is a bad thing.

[edit: I use the example of a questionable parent (ironically unquestioned in this case) because this sort of relationship that serves as a template for later human interactions, or even how people relate to themselves. Even if the present is OK, the past is still with you (and sometimes ONLY you), until you actually go swimming in it and explore your feelings uncritically, without making excuses for others.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And as it relates to the first part of the title, hooking up- as I mentioned, I was hanging around some twenty-somethings, mostly, over the past few nights. An old coworker and her friends/brothers etc.

Hooking up makes me sad. People in their 20s kinda treat each other like shit, and that is incredibly sad to me, also. But there's something terribly wrong with it. Funny story, by the way, as it relates to that term: a guy asked his wife about what she was like when she was younger, and she mentioned she used to got a lot of parties and had "hooked up" with dozens of guys over the years. The guy, of course, is greatly disturbed by this and never asks her much about it. He finds out, years later, that she only meant kissing and things like that. He had thought the whole time that she'd had sex with tens of random guys, and it was no big deal to her. I can't decide if that story is more awful, or hilarious.

But, back to why hooking up is bad. The sex part is actually...kind of okay. The problem is that for many people, if not most, it's frustration. "Inside every cynic is a frustrated romantic," an old coworker once said to me. There is truth to that statement. The problem with hooking up is that a lot of people would, all things being equal, rather be in love with somebody, but they're scared and/or hurt, and don't really have the balls or ovaries to admit this, either to themselves or someone else. As a product of getting burned too many times, many people decide, sorta faux-logically, that it's a better idea to just go for gratification with like-minded people. There is something very disturbed about this, chiefly because people lack an awareness about it.

More troubling is the fact that people don't really like the people they hook up with- it's not really a requisite for a lot of people, and sometimes serious feelings are a signal of another big problem- that one person has become emotionally involved and the other person has not. Though I guess that's a different LJ entry. But the fact is that people have sex with people they don't like or respect, at all, all the time. That bothers me. First of all, there's just a lack of humanity about the whole thing- you're actually inside someone's body, literally, and you don't give a shit about this person? Or the reverse, you're letting someone be inside of you, and you have no feelings about them?

I don't think I'm being too much of a romantic when I say that's fucking bizarre to me. Honestly.

I suppose the fact that it's sort of a mutual exploitation is supposed to make it better, but it really fucking doesn't, at all.

And all this isn't to even say that people shouldn't have sex without being in a relationship. Many/most people go through a phase where they have/would have done this. But the lack of emotional truth, the lack of insight into one's own feelings and empathy and understanding of other people's feelings, it... I don't know. My Spidey Sense goes off.

I suppose it's ironic that I've been listening to this song on a loop for the past hour. "The only rings I want buried with me are the ones around my eyes..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On work.

I had the most brilliant idea the other night. And I'm totally being an ass by calling my own idea brilliant, but I was very amused by the thought.

This former coworker I was hanging out with, when I asked her what was new after having not seen her for 3 months, said nothing much. That she pretty much just goes to work, and that's it. And this was my life when I worked there, I pretty much just worked, and that was it. It wasn't too bad, I didn't hate my job, but I started musing to myself while on the top of the parking garage downtown the next night (it's 6 stories high, and nobody ever parks up there- so the view is nice, and I can be alone with my thoughts, music, a book, whatever)... I was the same way, a lot of people are that way, but why? Going to a job they don't hate, but aren't really in love with, either, more or less for money and stability as opposed to doing something they actually want to do. So why don't we do what we want to do? What is that block that prevents us from doing it?

And then it hit me. And I laughed out loud.

Because we don't fucking know.

Well, I'm sure some of us do, and I've always been envious of those people (in a good way). But the fact that so many people are in my shoes....that they have no idea what they want to do with their lives, either, tickled me to no end. That's fucking amazing. I'm completely serious about that.

I don't even know if it's true- it's just that I've felt that for more or less my entire life, certainly my entire adult life- so the idea that other people feel the same...warmed me? I felt connected, I think. It was a great moment, I had, with myself.

It is sort of an impossibly lofty question, isn't it? I think most of us know what we're into, and just don't chase it. But on it's face, "what do you want to do with your life" seems insurmountably vague, impossible to answer. The solution, of course, is to break it down into bite-sized chunks, instead of trying to jam a whole orange into your mouth. That's a bizarre analogy, but you get what I mean.

And the thing is, speaking of emotional truth...we ignore that question, even when we are stuck in our routine and "secure," as it were. Really, we should be thinking about what we like to do, every day. Putting it out of our mind serves no function.

That's not true, actually- it serves out denial, and so it helps us ignore our situation. That is exactly why we do it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TWELVE MORE SONGS
You know what's fucked up? Every time I see something underlined now, I wonder if I'm supposed to click on it. Stupid internet.



On working, and life trajectories:


9-5ers Anthem (Aesop Rock) "Fumble out of bed and stumble to to kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition..."

Lounge in Formation (the Action Design) "Is it human nature to make new rules, or is it human nature to play the game?"

Young Adrenaline (Del the Funky Homosapien) A get-up-and-go song...

Career Opportunities (The Clash) "Career opportunities, the ones that never knocked..."

Under Construction (No Doubt) I've been feeling a lot like this lately. The title basically says it all.

Privilege (Incubus) "The day you were born, you were born free- that is your privilege!"

Sticks and Stones (Jamie T) UK rapper I'd never heard of, but I stumbled across this song as Spinner.com's MP3 of the day...I dig it a lot. Speaking of emotional truth, something which is certainly lacking in mainstream hip hop, and hip hop in general...

Poised and Ready (Brendan Benson) You know, I neglected to mention that I picked up Brendan Benson's new CD, "My Old Familiar Friend." It's pretty great.


On love and emotional truth:
Open Your Heart ~reprise (Yuki Kajiura, .hack//SIGN OST#2) I love the line "Open your heart to eternal dimension, open your heart for love and affection, open your heart for every emotion, open your heart for tears and rejection." It is stated without any bitterness and sarcasm, but with a kind of warmth. I dig that tons.

Everyone is the Same (Innerpartysystem) On hooking up, sort of...

Broken Hearts, Torn Up Letters and the Story of a Lonely Girl (lostprophets) It doesn't get much more straightforward...

Between Us (Brendan Benson) "Okay, I've been known to cry in my sleep... But dreams often show what you don't want to know; when you're awake you're not so deep."

Plus, the FOB song above. Some of the songs cover multiple subjects, etc...

If you don't feel like downloading songs- my radio thing will be shuffling these songs for the rest of the day:
http://www.jetaudio.com/jetcast_directory/list_english.asp?selectlanguage=English&selectgenre=0&sort=title&sortorder=1&page=&pagesize=20 (~~TS)

Downloads will be up for about a week.

This entire entry, abridged: it is important to be able to feel your feelings.


Also, I love Teresa Strasser. And not just because we share initials.

One last bit about emotional truth- it played a part in why the movie The Invention of Lying was such a disappointment. The idea of people constantly telling the truth, saying their actual thoughts and feelings, was fucking fascinating, even if only in the form of a movie. It didn't quite live up to the premise.

It's entirely likely that I'm socially maladjusted and as part of that I never learned to lie or obfuscate properly, but the truth is so...so much simpler, right? I wouldn't mind living in that world where people tell the truth, and I think I'd like it slightly more so than some of my peers.