This is a collection of random things I think and hear and see.

• The best way to get a monkey high is to fill its cage with smoke.
• Can you take crack in pill form, or would it take too long to be absorbed?
• "I just had some inspiration for you--I guess that doesn't make much sense."
• Never underestimate the insensitivity of man.
• Two guys frolicking on Harvard Yard. Have you ever seen something so homoerotic? "I was sodomized on Harvard Yard."
• Inject crack right into monkeys' brains and cut their heads open.
• "Animal testing has let these protesters live 22.7 years longer."
• Civilization is an urge towards abstraction.
• Keith Moon's Illegitimate Children
• Riding the crest of a caffeine high, I realized I don't have many friends, just people who amuse me.
• John Updike, "Separation"
• Charles Bukowski
• Jack Kerouac, On the Road
• We've grown to expect the freedoms of film to the point that our plays only work as movies.
• "Ramble" comes from an old Dutch word meaning "to fondle oneself while walking around."
• Write page 217 of your autobiography.
• Possessed microwave
• 3 Rules of Fights: 1) Make sure you will win. 2)Make sure it's worth winning. 3) I forget rule number 3.
• Why would they buy the ice cream truck when they can get the popsicles for free?
• Answer to wakeup call: "We don't want any!"
• A man's home is his castle. Except without the dungeon. Well, I guess it depends on the man...
• I don't understand the concept of liquid.
• Add a stranger to the mix, and conversation gets even more shallow and trite.
• Frustration with intellectual shallowness is the most biting.
• Deepness comes at the deepest parts of the night...articulation, too.
• To write ideas and not synthesize creates pain approaching guilt.
• Everyone who graduates here has to be a little crazy in the end.
• Thinking is easier than not thinking.
• My writing comes from my exhibition, which in turn arises from my latent voyeurism.
• Colors are perception.
• I hope this isn't a passing trend.
• I have to force myself not to write. This is irony...or an utter lack of will or volition.
• At about 4:30, conversation turns to The Breakfast Club. This is a law.
• Britney Spears is the best fight music.
• Art requires alienation.
• How is it possible to endure a whole day without any noteworthy comments? Is it a function of who one spends time with, or how one spends that time?
• "I want that!"--the cry of the mainstream teenaged girl. When, exactly, did America become synonymous with greed and materialism? Or is what's new the ability of counterculture to conceptualize words like "materialism" and try to alienate its members from the ranks of enlightened hypocrisy?
• A little boy sitting on his mother's shoulders, trying to climb over the fence into Harvard Yard.
• Sometimes, things look posed for a photograph--out of real life, though--and the metaphor seems more real than the thing itself.
• "My mom's so happy--her boyfriend's nephew has cancer--Let me finish!"
• Love changes: sometimes it's comfortable, sometimes it's delicate, sometimes it's passionate--it's always true.
• Girls, when left to their own devices, will have pity conversations. It should be annoying, but isn't.
• You can pierce your tongue in five different places.
• Isolating oneself in a large group of people is surprisingly easy.
• "In 7th grade, a guy told the whole class he liked me because I was smart, pretty, and had nice boobs." "Well, at least it was in that order..." "Yeah, like an essay--save the best for last."
• "Why don't we get something different?" "Okay, you get Peking ravioli and I'll get fried wontons!" "But we share, so it doesn't matter! It's the same food!" "No, it's different."
• "Remember Matt Levitt? Well, he's decided to become a pothead." "What?" "Yeah, he decided that since he's already lazy and useless, he might as well." "Wait, isn't his dad...?" "Yeah, makes it kind of weird." "I dunno, buying it inhouse, he can probably get a discount."
• 2 Jokes In Bad Taste: 1) What's the difference between a Jew and a pizza? The pizza doesn't scream when you throw it in the oven. 2) Did you hear about the new German microwave? Seats twelve.
• Proof the South is fucked up: In 1974, a guy in Georgia told my dad and his new Bedlington Terrier "Hey, I had a nigger with a dog like that."
• One of the scary things about life on a college campus is the sea of people one sees every day. Scary not for its crushing numbers, but for the fact that there are always reoccurring faces. If the only tenable, romantic position on the issue of fate vs. free will is that, somehow, there is an ineffable plan, but it's up to the individual to make a fateful grasp for it, then every one of those faces is a lost plan for life. And when one is old and tired, what could be worse than to ask "What did I do with my life?" and have the answer be "Noting of importance..." For then, how can one keep from reflecting on the untouched pattern in that long-ago sea of humankind?
• I continue to make conscious attempts to emulate great writing, even though I know I always fall short of it. Sorry.
• "How to score on a first date? Make sure the date's with a girl from Hollis!"
• "I really see it as Paradise Lost meets 'Mork and Mindy'..."
• My writing is vaguely a form of self-analysis.
• Artists congregate because it is difficult for others to comprehend the guilt that comes with living through the fabrications of the mind.
• Another thing we lose as we mature--besides the obvious, the sense of wonder--is a dissatisfaction with imperfect endings, to the point that lack of closure is applauded for its great aesthetic merit. This disturbs me, because I see it in myself, and all I can ask is "Why?" Because it's good, or because it's easy?
• "Male slut"--there is just something fucking COOL about that term.
• Strangely enough, soap operas seem to require as much if not more background as a great dramatic or literary work.
• Workshops work; they work not because of the comments of others, but because when you're supposed to be critiquing others' work, you have a perfect time to zone out and think about your own.
• Rhetoric is a symptom of falsehood.
• The answer to any physics question involving liquid is "viscosity."
• Is it possible to write a play wherein the stage directions, when read, give a totally different story than the lines themselves? Not something as simple as Beckett's "Let's go--The do not move"...a full running narrative that makes every word, every event in the play different? A novel, novelistic drama.
• Is this just a notebook of thesis statements?
• Michael Frane, Cophenhagen
• I can think of few aspirations nobler than to be a writer great enough to explicate the soul of Varnado Simpson and those horrible events at My Lai.
• Wouldn't it be funny if there was a narcoleptic monkey? One minute he's swinging from tree to tree, and then THOMP.
• "I dunno, my daddy always told me that when I heard a lot of loud prayin', go an' check the henhouse."
• "A ruler? What do you need a ruler for?!" "It's blue!"
• The scariest thing about The Shining is Shelley Duvall's face.
• Caffeine and nicotine rhyme.
• I drew a separating line without having anything to say. Oops.
• "Did you know Ethiopia made beer?" "So what? Name a people who don't like getting drunk." "But they're starving!" "Your point? So're the Irish."
• If you make the lines move fast enough, people will laugh because they won't know why they didn't find it funny.
• Humor is the release of the solved terror of a moment of incomprehension.
• Laughter is closely tied to terror; tickling is preparation for stress; giving in entirely to another person like that can be, truly, orgasmic at a spiritual level.
• "...he also sucks cock for money." "Really?!" "No, not really."
• There are Starbucks in Hell.
• "It's funny, because taken in adolescent context, that could be vulgar!"
• "Jessica offered Sam her cherry as compensation for a debt which has not yet been paid."
• The feeling you get after crying is euphoric. Except for the taste it leaves in your mouth.
• Do lesbians give their vibrators female names?
• Irony: a web site about how TV and radio have changed the face of popular culture.
• How many Everclear songs, exactly, revolve around Art Alexakis' ability to bring women to orgasm?
• All tragedy is missed opportunities.
• Irony is an escape from profundity.
• All my writing sounds the same. Is this style or unoriginality?
• Youth likes Plato. It's reassuring.
• The most learned writers are only the best liars. The trick is avoiding pretentiousness.
• Don't dream.
• Patterns are base. Ideas are developed, and can die. Things in primal form, though, these can survive forever.
• "...and maybe then I'll rape her, for dramatic effect."
• Aphorisms are a way of thought.
• Religion's controversy is due to the fact that its sense of "good" is both vast and static.
• Steal an oak log. Treat it like a person. "Dante wants a Coke." "No." "But he's thirsty!" "Dead as a log." "Dante's got wood!" "He looks a little bored." "I'm sure he could do better. If only he would." "Dante logs onto his computer." "Was that some kind of a j-oak?" "Oak-ay."
• A syllogism: Childhood is wonder. Education is the cessation of wonder. Thus learning is what ends our childhood. School matures us, not age.
• All poetry is about sex or death.
• Meta-standup: the comedian creates humor through citing other comedians. "Bill Hicks--'Nobody move, I've got a soccer ball!'"
• I'm finding myself answering an implicit "Why?" far more often than in the past.
• Except for conscious moments like this, this thing is an indirect journal of my personality. I didn't know I could do that.
• In a new ad, Best Buy is basically saying that learning how to channel surf is an achievement on par with learning how to talk. Does this scare anyone else?
• Modern literature is bleak because authors are bitter that all the real money's in screenwriting.
• I am realizing, again, that Jesus Christ Superstar is a far better transmitter of Christianity in the modern world than, ironically, enough, any religious effort to do so.
• I would be so pissed off if I was one of those scientists who fix evolutionary theory to work with modern science, since Darwin still gets all the credit.
• Everything is relationships.
• Once an idea enters the minds of the people, it cannot be stopped until it is so endemic that it cannot help but contradict itself. At that point, one who is permeated by the idea will awake to his culture's ideological flaws.
• I have this weird thing, where I'm always really interested in hearing about people's lives and problems, but never comfortable if the conversation isn't focused on ME.
• Did we always "see" our memories like a movie, or is it a result of being inundated by a video-soaked culture? Did our mind's eye always act as an "eye," or in ages of oral storytelling was it sound, or words in a print culture? But wouldn't that be a higher level of abstraction, visualizing events through aural or logical symbols? Or is the true achievement of abstraction being able to abstract oneself from oneself, to look at life from the third person?
• "This is kinda shiny, wanna play with it?"
• Confirming a drug deal across the street from a police car. "Is that that bitch cop?" "Hey, guys, how much do we want?"
• Explication is a crutch for the weak, an attempt to bring about the essence an intelligent individual experiences upon reading, and thus, inevitably, inexorably, fails.
• I use my sense of the written word to hide a lack of true depth of thought. Surprisingly, such literary hand-waving works best in non-fiction. People are more critical of imagination than of professed truth.
• "Bob Marley died when he was 33. That's only 3 years younger than Jesus."
• America gains stability from its heightened sense of self-awareness.
• "He's...he's a pot-bellied pig." "That's cool, since, like, it works on two levels..." "Yeah. He's a pig for the pot and he's a pot for the pig. Wait. No he isn't! That doesn't make sense."
• Writers describe with words. Poets evoke. But so do playwrights and screenwriters and directors. Does that mean the performing arts are more like poetry than literature?
• I'm only relaxed when I have a script; ease comes from rules, not freedom. But freedom is the natural state. So is it normal to be nervous?
• I notice I've gone back on my original concept, that this would be a collection of images, or analysis, not both.
• A little tidbit: I'm noticing that I write most of these in practically a trance-state; sometimes I don't even remember what I write until I read it days later.
• How many times, per week, do journalists go out of their way to say things like "criterion" and "datum," just to sound smarter than they really are?
• Last night, before I fell asleep, I had the chilling thought that maybe my friends just use me and despise me behind my back. Down this path lies paranoia.
• Economic unity has only worked in the past because the countries in question were basically the same ideologically. The WTO is trying to tie together truly disparate lands, and thus is failing.
• Theory: there are no names in Heart of Darkness because Conrad was too stoned to remember them.
• "You put 18 and 76 together and you get, well, Brussels."
• "It's better to do a bad thing to something bad than to something good." "What do you mean?" "For example, is it better to kill a child molester or a priest?"
• I can create an incalculable number of college admission essays. This is potential, not hubris.
• I am, truly, quite immature; my cruelty to others is a result of either jealousy or shyness and respect.
• "Inertia is real. It's a real thing."
• "Hell yeah I'm going to services! I'm gonna get my Jewve on!"
• It's ironic that school, which is about learning, keeps me from writing when I want to, and, more importantly, have the spark.
• WHY THIS FIXATION WITH IRONY?! Is it me or pop culture?
• No one seems to care about this new wave of anti-free-trade protest because it is so global. The only ones who can see how it permeates the whole world are intelligence agencies, who, of course, would never give the protesters any sort of legitimacy.
• When spots appear on your field of vision, is it really hiding anything? Or does that merely show reality--is vision actually the mind interpolating based on incomplete and constantly fluctuating data?
• Drugs fill the same hole as love.
• You know you're down when you ally with Ireland.
• The best line in Wallace Steven's "The Emperor of Ice Cream" is "Let the lamp affix its beam." The lamp acts on itself. It affixes itself. Death causes its own clarity; paradoxically, it creates itself. The only thing that makes itself is God, and thus Death truly is the only Emperor, the Emperor of Ice Cream.
• More poetry. "A Heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,/Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er/She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." --Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess."
• Apple is France.
• "He was so funny! Not like intentionally, but..."
• Except for sex, everything that feels good kills you.
• The best metaphors come from reality; that is, the theme gets wrapped around an image. They don't really exist, not even so much as ideas do.
• In less than a week, I think I've experienced the best and worst days of my life; the best was artificial and the worst was all disillusionment and reality.
• I desire love because love shows that I rate somewhere on someone else's priorities, in contrast with the utter apathy and rejection I currently sense. Life isn't livable without others' concern. It all is slipping away, the illusions of my life are slamming down, rattling the dirt of my deluded psyche. I've hit the wall.
• It's like all my ambitions and talents have been hijacked by others, and I can only watch from a distance as they live my dreams.
• Angst: it's good for the soul.
• Writing these depends on momentum.
• My problem is that at the center I have nothing solid, no foundation. Instead, there is a vacuum, an utter void so powerful and so at odds with its multitude of satellites that its surface appearance is solid. But things fall through...and at a critical point, everything will.
• The only important thing in life is legacy. Ironic. The only important thing in life is what is left afterwards.
• The beauty and power of thought lies not only in its ability to give form to the intangible, but in its singular talent m for allowing physical impossibilities. What physical model of opinion could portray both the utter disparity between "like" and "dislike" while also showing how simple it is to be undecided.
• What about a bong, but with Arizona Green Tea instead of water?
• Idealism's importance stems from the generation gap--it is, in many ways, its cause. The difference between youth and old age is often mistakenly defined temporally when it is far more philosophical in actuality; youth believes we can change the world, adults think it is constant. Authority is derived from the flawed belief that experience is always right, a belief which ignores a glaring logical flaw. Unlike the shift from childhood to adolescence, which is a gradual loss of wonder, adulthood comes with one event. It comes when idealistic crusades fail, and that failure becomes a symbol of the innate constancy of life. But it is a fundamental tenet of logic that just because an operation is negative once, it is not, necessarily, always so, and thus proclaims youth.
• It's somewhat incorrect to call the scientific method "inductive logic." True induction makes specifics a general rule; the scientific method merely requires that general rules contain specifics.
• "Consume my heart away; sick with desire / It knows not what it is" --"Sailing to Byzantium", W.B. Yeats
• "The sex life of fish is very boring."
• I feel time and life and opportunity slipping away from me and I DON'T CARE!
• People say we all change over time, and I must admit I don't identify with my recollections of myself, but how much of that is real, and how much is merely forgetting myself?
• I felt an urge to buy a dozen roses on the way to school, and then realized I had no one to give them to.
• I used to ask for cash gifts to avoid bad presents--now it's because I can't let my parents know what I spend my money on.
• It's easy to be a liberal when you make conservative choices for yourself and only have to defend others.
• Maybe what's happening is that I repressed grief over the end of my relationship with Lesley, and the low serotonin levels post-rolling unlocked it. Or maybe I know too much pop psychology.
• Whenever arguments get to the point where both sides are trying to explain facts, the argument's over for all real intents and purposes. It's all perception, word choice...semantics.
• You're not truly alive until you know that you will die.
• Colleges don't have a choice: they have to teach in a different manner because after 12 years students learn, at least subconsciously, the patterns of primary and secondary education. Catch-phrases, wide themes, repetition. I hold that this is why students have such apathy. They've solved the puzzle of how to learn.
• History is full of selfish perception.
• While I respect existentialism as a valid world-view, it's an untenable position for me personally. I hunger for Romantic ideals far too strongly. I believe in true love. I believe in a world with some rational plan, a moderated, moderate Fate. But it's all bad faith, unless the fact that I think of all these Platonic things as my own perception makes it OK. I realize there's nothing in the substance of life but itself, and that I assign ideals. Somehow, I can believe in a Fate which doesn't exist.
• My opinion on finding/creating meaning in life is that our meanings are patterns that we see. Everything but physical things are patterns, but patterns exist no more than any other ideas. This is the most compelling reason for education: learning analysis. We say educated people understand the world better--NO. But they can analyze the world better thanks to practice in English and history and all other arts and humanities and social sciences. A strong liberal arts education lets one create a more fulfilling meaning for life.
• So why, then, are ignorant people more happy? Two reasons: 1) No ever said a fulfilling meaning gives happiness. 2) The better one can see patterns, the more obvious it is that they are placed over the world in much the same manner as artists lay metaphors in their works. That is to say, they don't exist. And that, of course, is disturbing.
• Is beauty's power and draw the fact that it denies reality? Art is about metaphors, and within the set of a work of art, meanings do exist. Is beauty escapism? And if it is, what does that say about life? Beauty is what makes life worthwhile, but if beauty helps us ignore reality, does that mean the goal of life is to deny, or at least hide, from life?
• To continue that, I suppose the self-defeating nature of life is just another sign of its lack of real meaning. Just as when equations end up with both sides in the same form, it says something which means nothing. The quest is for a meaning which isn't self-defeating. And to go back two pages, a third reason educated people are less happy is that it becomes more and more clear that all meanings are self-defeating, the more patterns one sees.
• I am obsessed with tautology, and I have no clue why. But without even planning to, I always hone in on circular or self-defeating logic. My analytical essays always end up with me deconstructing the work and presenting my find--but to eerily if aptly use the phrase again, a find which MEANS NOTHING. Like a faithful dog, I present my bone to the teacher, hoping for a pat on the head. But it's also as pointless as a dog's game of fetch. Example: the preceding entry talks of life as a quest for meaning. But look at that: "life is" anything is defining, giving meaning. And then I go on to say the quest is doomed to failure--it is pointless. So all I did was show how the meta-meaning of life is pointless, without meaning. Here's the singer: I just deconstructed a deconstruction. But is the lack of meaning in only the text, or both? Deconstruction signifies nothing, I hold to that. But is the meaninglessness nested--like a series of equations multiplied by zero, one takes down all--or does the act of deconstruction create a new meaninglessness? Is the lack of meaning based in the lack of validity of the method, or its product? Is it only incidental that deconstruction doesn't work, or is it a fundamental flaw? If the meaninglessness is in the product and not the action, it has to be nested. The first product is a zero. But if the problem is the process, every level of deconstructive analysis is equally invalid. I'm not quite sure why it matters--if the product is a zero or the operation is nonsense, the answer is equally meaningless. The only difference, to continue the metaphor, is that if the problem is the operation, the results are real, they just follow no pattern and thus, by my definition, no meaning. While if the problem is that nested zero, the result is a void, but one can hope--sorry Camus--the operation will at some point work and reveal meaning. But induction would seem to show it's a futile hope. So, I'm back to a lack of meaning, reached in two different ways, but now together. It is the same feeling I get, questioning why deconstruction is pointless, as when I want the school to do the same wrong thing as before, just give a legitimate justification. And ironically, frustratingly, the same feeling I get from deconstruction.
• I am too ignorant to write about the things which I yearn to explore. How arrogant, how presumptuous, to write on existentialism without dedicating the time to first study it. How lazy! I need more humility; it is hubris which momentarily convinces me that my opinion is worth the paper it's written on or the time it required. My only defense is that this journal is meant as much as a record of my intellectual development as anything else.
• A better defense: my opinion is worthwhile because I am a human being. My opinions have merit because I exist. All opinions are equally valid because opinions are what people think. And as much as you might disagree with someone's opinion, you cannot deny it because the most precious of all human rights is the sovereignty of self over self's thoughts. All people's opinions deserve respect. You can argue with opinions, try to change them...but only after acknowledging their constant, equal value. Thus, to be meaningless again, relativism has implicit constants: except instead of "Right" and "Wrong," relativism requires a supreme existentialist "Etre." I digress. My point is that my opinion might be simplistic and, for all I know, contradictory, but I still have every right to express it. Never condemn as I condemned myself; no matter how ignorant you might be, expressing your opinion is never hubris. Hell, in a democratic society in an increasingly democratic world, it is not only your right but your responsibility to express yourself. Democracy's strength comes from its vibrant community of contradictory ideas. People often mistakenly reference a "market" of ideas, but capitalism is the wrong analogy, because all opinions have equal value. Nor does thought evolve, as rabid Darwinists would maintain. Society, rather, synthesizes ideas. This is why all opinions are vital--the organic, orgiastic, eternal, and fundamentally morphogenically instable thing which is civilization grows only stronger with each additional volunteered idea. The only stability in a body of thought is its instability (there I go again). It has identifiable form only due to intellectual friction--the give and take of contradictory ideas. What can I say? As I began this splash of entries describing, I have no given example...my philosophy of life demands idealism.
• I've said it before, I'll say it again: writing, sometimes, is the authoritative master of me. I don't have a choice right now. Giving in and betraying any desires to remain in the real world is worth the cessation of painful guilt.
• How can you believe in existentialism and love?
• For the first time today, I really started connecting to some people in my lunch. Ironically, it was on a day when I could barely spare the mental energy to converse, thanks to this damn journal.
• It always is a serious blow to my equilibrium when others show insightful observation of me. Sonya saying I liked to manipulate people, Pete seeing just how bad my writing really is, Maanasi noticing this notebook, and now Rachel knowing I'm a romantic. I bemoan how everyone thinks I'm so cold and angry and cynical, but this just proves how cursory of an acquaintance with me is required to see through that posturing. I should know this by now, but each time, it's still a shock.
• I thought this summer (read: Lesley) had cured me of my Puppy Dog Syndrome. I thought I was done with lusting futilely in the Petrarchan mode. But no. The more time that passes, the stronger my ideal of Romantic love returns. I know that soon, I'm going to end up picking a girl to adore from the distance, and won't stop it. Won't. The one, minor change is that if I wanted to, now, I would end it. I used to think there was something mature about having discerned flaws in myself and letting them be, but due to peer pressure and a certain amount of personal frustration, that's no longer the case. I see the pathetic true nature of being too scared and weak to fix myself. If I see flaws in myself now, and wish they were gone, I effect change. But I don't want to fix this. I must be mildly masochistic. I want another obsession, if I can't (and it does seem that I can't) devote my heart to someone who does return my affection. Or, possibly, it's a coping device; by focusing on a girl on a pedestal, I'd be able to ignore every other problem I have. In dissent, though, I have to think the pressure of unrequited love would only amplify an anxiety attack, if I suffer another. My intuition says I will.
• To return to love in a world devoid of innate meaning, I'm still (a whole 20 minutes after I wrote the question down and less than 12 hours since the question was first raised in my mind) confused by the mechanics of it all. I do not see how love could possibly exist in an existentialist world. Sartre would, I imagine, call it bad faith. I might even go so far as to say it's one of the main failings of existentialism; love is a concept, and one which can shade your perception of the world to boot. And yet--and yet--love exists regardless of whether or not you choose to believe in it. And a rough working definition of "existence" is that which exists independently of belief. Try denying love--I dare you to. It doesn't work. It fucks you up, denying love. Exhibit A (not because it's the best, just the first I could think of): "Anna Begins," by the Counting Crows. Go. Listen to it--The song's particularly apt because it lets me draw from art without falling prey to creations which give limited, artificial existence to bad faith. Adam Duritz's song is autobiographical, drawn from reality, and his confusion and anguish caused by denying love are real. So love exists, independent of perception. But how can something intangible exist? Is "love" a lump term for various, individually negligible physiological reactions? I denounce that position. My romanticism and idealism are repulsed by it. Existentialists would say my bad faith in those isms has clouded my judgement. And reality, they would say, deserves no such emotional of a response. Things are, you might as well accept them. And while life may be absurd, it is simply ridiculous to reject reality because it disagrees with a belief. And they would have a point in saying all of this. And if existentialists' gamble is right and life has no meaning we don't give it then idealism and romanticism are items of bad faith I knowingly embrace, at the expense of a clear view of reality. Whether life has a constant meaning or not--and I suspect it doesn't--my isms are worth it. They make life worthwhile to me, and a worthwhile life is more important to me than a realistic one.
• A certain compromise just became clear to me...my idealism finds a compromised life view to be repugnant. There is no excuse for not being cognizant of everything I possibly can be. Idealism is the territory of youth; compromise belongs to old age. So, yet again, I unintentionally stumble into meaningless word games. If I refuse to compromise and force myself to view stark reality, life would become a dirge for my crushed isms of bad faith. If I do hold to them, though, they leave me with guilt of lost integrity. So I suppose I have two ways of looking at this situation: 1) I have a very inflated sense of my own self-consciousness, an I am so bound by bad faith as to be fated never to really live my life. 2) I trust my intuition, and the inability of idealism and romanticism to coexist with existentialism means existentialism is wrong. Life does have purpose, and beliefs are connected to it. Ideas, in the world I hope to live in, have power and existence of their own. It's a very ancient, Platonic world-view, and not particularly popular 2000 years after the birth of Christ. But part of my idealism, after all, is a sense that underdogs are to respected. It connects, I think, to Rousseau, and the idea of a respected and protected minority. I think I'll choose the latter choice. Because, hey, if it's wrong, I'm stuck in a stark, empty reality and too deep into self-deception to ever even know it. Somehow, I've managed to consign myself to the very option I wanted to take. Funny how that turned out.
• Which raises a question: how can you trust internal decisions to be rationally correct? How do I know I didn't trick myself into ignoring some option which would have, in the end, been better? If nothing else, I am nearly certain I've ignored the flaws of idealism and romanticism. There simply comes a point at which you have to stop second-guessing yourself and accept your conclusions as correct. This is why human reason, that sacred icon of the modern era, can never be fully trusted. It is always susceptible to self-deception.
• Ignoring is worse than ignorance.
• Nationalism is a cult.
• I'm in awe of what I've written today. Simply in awe. I know much of what I wrote isn't workable in practice, but it's a basis of self-law from which to build. This flow of creativity gives me renewed faith in my ability to nurture ideas in my mind, and wait patiently for them to give forth of their own accord.
• Be warned--this is what happens when you mix writing utensils and Adderall.
• I've been thinking about it lately, and it's true: musicians get the girls. The quality ones, at least. A pity it doesn't extend to all arts--while my notorious "essay about stuff" did play a part in getting me laid (though not in the manner I expected), I also know it was only a small part. Expressing myself through the written word is so easy; I wish it was worth something.
• The only deep thing I have to say about life is that I have nothing deep to say. I am a very sheltered seventeen years of age, and everything I say is bullshit. The only thing that sounds right is how hollow my pronouncements are. That is, in some respects, at odds with how I've been using this notebook. When I record slogans and pithy sayings they are foolish. Ironically, I believe my Adderall-induced burst may have hit upon a worthwhile method in its self-important "philosophical" blatherings: I have to explain myself. But even that is useless if I don't ground myself through realizing reality.
• This is pathetic--I want to write, but this pen is so shitty it's not worth the bother. If I end up famous and my opinions bear weight, mark my words: Sanford Uniball Grips SUCK HARD! I had something beautiful and faintly meaningful to say about myself and my age, even including a quote from "Chemistry," my favorite Jawbreaker song, and the crappiness of this pen stopped me cold.
• "When I grow up, I wanna be an artificial flavoring."
• All my bragging and whining in here finally makes sense...some day, I'm going to give this notebook to a girl.
• Life was a lot more exciting when I was younger, because of that sense of wonder--I didn't know what wasn't possible. Of course, from my current perspective, that was all illusion, the fog of ignorance...but God was it more fun.
• Is it odd that I like nearly all girls equally? Why does physical beauty matter so little to me? I'd like to blow it off as mere desperation, but I'd bet I'd feel the same even if I wasn't desperate. Which means I was either warped by a lonely childhood, or I have values truly at odds with those of my peers.
• Arealism.
• Hollywood (and the rest of modern American corporate media) doesn't stifle competition, it commoditizes creativity.
• Budnick was the Salute Your Shorts dealer on the DL.
• "Sad" is not as inapt a term for "something pathetic" as it might appear; rather, for someone with right values, that which is pathetic produces sadness, the sadness which captures all the guilt and empathy and good will and selfishness and fear which characterizes--permeates the middle class.
• Why do college kids have this weird thing when they're home for the holidays, and want to hook up with other alumni, no matter what? Is it some bizarre hope to want to cash in all the opportunities they never took advantage of in high school?
• Sudden "popularity" has let me see how small the Shorecrest social circle really is. Oh well.
• One goal in my life is to evoke the same level and tone of emotion as the end of (the completion of) American Beauty or "Stairway to Heaven"--Hell--the entirety of either.
• It would be so eerie to follow in the footsteps of Alan Ball, but God I hope it happens.
• Does the passion and hype in this all come through? Because I think that matters above all else.
• The tortuous perfection of American Beauty!
• Boredom is treason against life.
• American Beauty is the shining, idealistic rebuttal to the cries of how soulless middle America is--in the same manner as my "opinion apology" answers critical cries of the worthlessness of wrong opinions; like all opinions, all lives are poignantly beautiful. Life is amazing. Life is achingly beautiful.
• If life was a marketing campaign, "Appreciation" would be its slogan.
• So the Adderall is marking me write, but the pussy-strength alcohol is fucking it all up.
• Is it betrayal to really want to fuck Col's girlfriend?
• At some point, I have to get rid of my need to impress everyone I meet.
• I should write this down so I don't forget it, even though I thought of it three years ago--people get their cues to take a sip from drinks from the rest of their party. Watch; if you take a sip, someone else will too.
• Adolescents are annoying until they realize their own absurdity.
• Banal comments make me feel ashamed.
• Land-grabbing warfare has slowed in frequency in indirect relation to capitalism. As the global community becomes more and more comfortable with things like stocks as sources of wealth and therefore power, ambition switches from the seizure of land to the exploitation of laborers and the environment as a method of obtaining greater domination.
• While at first it seems odd that the 19th century liberals are modern day conservatives, greater reflection reveals that "liberal" and "conservative" are relative labels. Thus, the overt contradiction gives way to a covert revelation: modern history has been the gradual triumph of the left.
• Whenever I want to know something and have to wait to find it out, it's a failure of modern information technology.
• "Can I go run and get it?" "You're going to run?" "Well, walk briskly."
• America is an imperialist republic with a cult of democracy.
• It's rather ironic that parents went from the expediency of opiates as drugs to control children in the past to amphetamines in the modern day.
• Like inherent contradictions, statements which subtly, implicitly acknowledge things they don't actually say appeal to me.
• The easiest way to tell a school's quality is to look at its library.
• I think I want to self-destruct After all, why not? There's nothing better to do.
• "Happier than a fucking stoner in Taco Bell."
• Society is an obsession with history.
• Inspirational posters always emphasize the wrong words.
• "The great thing about not participating is that you don't have to listen to announcements."
• I feel empathic and understanding and joyous, and yet...and yet it's not the forced, similar feelings produced by MDMA. This seems real, concrete...true.
• Bong + Dextramphetamines = THE SHIT
• Walk around with a pumpkin on your head.
• The things that disappoint me with myself are the things about me which disappoint others. Thus my total lack of self-esteem and my depression, when I get rejected (directly or indirectly) by girls. Thus is a guy's self-image wrought by girls as much as girls' are by guys.
• Watching someone draw is always a Moment. Creation, as ever, compels intimacy.
• Existence is saying "I am" over and over faster and faster until the pattern's momentum sustains itself.
• Is it better to let care for others build up into an imaginary, but impressive love, or to strike while the emotion is still low? Do I need to impress? I've had success both ways, and both were long-lasting and fulfilling. But the fall hurts worse with the former. Then again, the fall feels good, in its own way, too. If something doesn't truly hurt to love, is it even worth the effort?
• "Everyone's a slut, deep down inside."
• I think I'm going to start writing down memories in here--that is, every time I get nostalgia and think of something I haven't in years, I'll put it in here. Why? Ulteriorly, because I need to start writing in this book more, but also because I don't want to forget my life.
• "I haven't been this blasted in class since, like, yesterday."
• "I think I'm straight."
• "I'm really nice to strangers."
• Today, for the first time, I truly began to see the thing that makes something poetic.
• "I hate it when people call my name, and I don't know if they're real or imaginary."
• Some memories. My first times smoking...a jay shared on the stoop of a Catholic church in the capital city of the Champagne Region. Hitting a bong on the balcony of a Holiday Inn hotel room in Tours, then again in a seed hotel in Paris before going to Pere Lachaise. Months later, an empty parking lot off the beach. Earlier memories. Bofman trying to burn down the house at Bryan's birthday party. Playing Ghostbusters with Mike and Jeremy Stiglitz--and going to Toronto with Jeremy. Playing a bizarre childhood game, as a girl on a rope tries to avoid my piss. Going to the Beach Theater to see Alice after Medieval Day. Going to Arabian Nights with Pat. Annoying Sam in Art Class by talking about time travel. Having such huge crushes on Kim Gilbert in kindergarten, Tara in 4th grade. Beat-downs in 7th grade. Awkwardly giving Mel that Tempest tape and Misty book at the end of 6th grade, and that sweet, clumsy "Depressing" tape. Seeing Full Monty and IKWYDLS and The Fallen and The Jackal and a Bong movie with her...and how badly I'd wanted to see Chasing Amy with her. Buying an Enya CD and finding my music for the first time. The change brought on when Ash gave me that tape of AC/DC and Everclear in 7th grade and his "Music From Hell" over the summer. Walking around Lawrence, Kansas for hours in the July sun. Spitting ice at the MS graduation. Programming "Chariots of Fire" and Guess-a-Numbah. Stealing Star Bucks in 4th grade. Two-square, the only sport I ever liked. Trying to hypnotize myself through watching CEVs really hard. Palladium Nights and LOTR at Blue Star, watching half of SoM, visiting CaroWinds. That asshole Jesse Shenk. Michael Gluck who taught me chess. The joy of Care Packages and Granny's Days. Going rafting. Maccabea. My first year there, finding out what boners were. Evening Activities like Casino Night. Making one of the Seals in The Dark Is Rising in ceramics and having my parents think it was a cross. The gigantic, overwhelming crushes I had on Diana Peterfreund and Natalie Schorr. The school closing because of flooding. The bus stalling at Flori's house, and on US 19. Petsel's subliminal tapes. Seeing Dead Poets Society the first time, at TIP--the flashlight codes we had to tell Bruno when our RA, the Knopfler-loving Jonathan, was coming. Trevor, trying to throw my magic wand out the bus. How proud I was of reading "R-rated" literature like Sue Grafton. Watching a tape of RoboCop with my parents, falling asleep, but still being so happy my parents thought I was mature enough for it. My mom giving me Pina Coladas on the cruise--and my first Grafton novel. This is taking up too much space. I need to do this on the computer in the future.
• America's lack of equality is a direct result of its Calvinist heritage. Puritans twisted Western civilization in the US in more insidious ways than drug policies and sexual taboos.
• I just realized that I built my vocabulary through keeping a huge system of interlocking contextual clues in my head.
• One day, a politician will campaign on the platform of a diplomatic revolution, a leftward leap. I only can pray she'll win.
• The fundamental expression of the basic orderliness inherent in nature is the wave. This realization gives me new certainty in the validity of superstring theory. Waves are patterns, and everything is waves. So I think I'm right, about the premiere importance of patterns.
• "It's difficult to run when you can't breathe."
• New prediction: the WTO won't fail--at least, not technically. Over the next generation or two, they'll be able to ignore dissent and pretty much institute global free trade. This, however, will lead to a truly democratic Earth. At that point, dissent will be loud enough and popular support important enough that the WTO will be forced to shift its policies towards a drastically more radical position ("Workers of the World Unite" and all that). As the UN continues to increase its reliance on economic sanctions, the two organizations will naturally merge. The timing of all this is important, but I suspect that even at this point, fossil fuels will remain integral to the world economy, and Israel will still be a hotspot. The huge Mid-East war we've been avoiding for generations will erupt, and be put down by a coalition led by the US (and, I bet, a newly pseudo-democratic China, as its inevitable, lethargic democratization finds the Chinese people able to buy cars, in order to emulate the Americans , and thus giving China a vested interest in reliable sources of crude oil). In the end, Israel will become, as the Pope has already publicly advocated, an international zone controlled not by a group of Great Powers, but by the UN-WTO directly. This will require the true international military feared by Henry Cabot Lodge and Jesse Helms. And it will work, meaning future problem sports (the Balkans, finally?) will get the same treatment. Take a step away and see what that all means: an Earth that will be unified judiciously (ICC), economically (WTO), communicationally (Internet), militarily ("peacekeeping forces"), and, to an extent, politically (the international zones and the now-potent UN). After a few generations of humanity pass and we accept and expect the proper functioning of this global government, de jure will subsume de facto. The biggest danger is for the planners of this new Earth to alienate the Third World and the Mid-East, which would produce a rival hegemony.
• Successfully having deceived my parents into a "sick" day from school, I sat in Crescent Lake Park. IN my mind, I described its beauty to my father. It's right off a major road, and yet quiet and secluded. The lake itself is huge, and, ignoring a few drain pipes, quite pretty. The trees have these surreal leaves, which shine brighter in the sun than you could think possible. And as your sight draws inevitably again to the lake, you notice how the trees are reflected in the center, only marred by the 'V's of force of swimming ducks. And then a schizo throws his empty Mountain Dew bottle in the water right in front of me and fucks the whole thing up.
• A wild guess about Life, the Universe, and Everything: God is a transdimensional sphere. It is everything. The world we see around us is that sphere's trig functions all interacting. The physical laws of the universe are the sine and cosine and all of that sphere, of God.