Xerxes Verdammt

I got a job as a bike messenger in Manhattan. I just bought this item on ebay to wear while I am on a bike, delivering messages to Manhattan design and financial firms.

marlowe1 wrote an entry about a "cute couple exchange", describing how "today I was helping a friend move and when we got back to his apartment, his wife asked for a new shirt because their daughter pooped on her... I don't know why I found that charming. "

This got me thinkin. My response is: hmm, I don't know. These kinds of exchanges are incessantly celebrated in "indie" culture and movies and web comics and "cute" indie comics (c.f. Jeffrey Brown), so in fact I bet modern young couples hope and expect to have precisely that kind of conversation.

I guess one reason I don't like most celebrations of "long-term relationships" is that people don't seem to acknowledge that good long-term relationships are basically "boring." Correct me if I'm wrong, but people seem to think that the perfect relationship is one that combines the excitement and thrill of "falling in love" with the stability of, uh, being in a stable relationship. Based on my own experience, though, and based on what I've seen and read, this is impossible. It is always one or the other.

"Bad," unhappy relationships preserve the thrill of first love better than good, happy, stable relationships (although unhappy relationships do achieve a certain stability, too, and often do get boring as well--but in a different, and much worse way). Good relationships are "boring" because the relationship becomes like this steady platform on which the rest of your life can unfold, and you don't even notice the relationship that much after a while--you just notice the person. In fact--and this is crucial--good relationships become--shock and gasp--barely, if at all, distinguishable from good friendships. However, this idea seems to offend people's 19th century Victorian/Romantic sensibilities, which are what comprises most people's attitudes towards love and relationships to this day--probably because this is profitable for the media/advertisers or something.

On the other hand, "bad," unhappy relationships, where parties do not feel secure, artificially preserve the excitement of "being in love for the first time" (of course, there are probably reasons other than insecurity for a relationship to be unhappy, like constant fighting over money or something; but, insecurity--vis-a-vis the other person, and vis-a-vis the whole idea of "romance"/"falling in love" as a whole, e.g. am I too much in love, not enough, etc--seems like the main problem in modern youthful-type relationships of the upper-middle classes). The excitement of "first love" or "limerence" necessarily depends on uncertainty, liminality, not being sure who the other person is, the sense of one's life being uprooted, etc. This state of affairs vis-a-vis one person by definition cannot be protracted indefinitely. If the people who are in love are "compatible" and everything goes well, the relationship progresses to a "good" and "boring" relationship where the people trust each other. Alternatively, as the relationship progresses, the people will continue to manufacture more and more drama, which will slowly get more boring over the years as the people get used to each other's tricks and/or get tired of its negative effects on the rest of their lives (c.f. Swann's Way, 50-60% of all novels).

So, to get to the point, yes, the couple's exchange about poop embodies the dynamic of a "good relationship." Yes, "isn't it amazing, this couple has actually managed to become really good friends." HOWEVER: I am very irritated somehow when indie comics and movies depict these little exchanges. They depict them in the same pornographic way that "mainstream" movies depict couples, say, kissing passionately.

It is like we are trading one disingenuous ideal (getting to be with the sexy stranger forever) for another (getting to be in an eternal quirky comedy starring the happy couple). I am sure there are already Hallmark romantic greeting cards that refer to poop, or there will be soon. Now, people seem to fetishize happy long-term relationships the same way one fetishizes a sexy, mask-like face or jackbooted pair of legs. It doesn't make any sense. Or it does, but--

I mean, long-term romantic relationships can be good and everything, but they're not, like--the answer to one's wildest hopes and dreams, the impossible thing that you are pursuing when you have "fallen in love" with someone. They are no more likely to bring you to the goal of that Impossible Striving than, say, friendships, or favorite activities, or even religion. They are not even an end to loneliness. Only gnostic union with God is an end to loneliness--and if you don't think that's possible, sorry, you are "fucked" whether you have a romantic partner or not, haha.

But, modern capitalist culture has allied with Goethe in convincing us that romantic relationships ARE all of the above things. And that we are "losers" if we can't get one, like if we can't afford to purchase an iPhone or something. In fact, it's probably this sense of being an unlovable "loser," rather than the absence of a romantic partner, that is the real cause of single people's feelings of loneliness. Or maybe it is the notion that we can't get real emotional gratification/pleasure from our friends because that's what romantic partners are for (that is what sexual/romantic relationships are being "sold as"). I know both of those were the case with me.

So, in conclusion, who are really the most "cute," most romantic heterosexual (to avoid bias) couple I can think of? Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell -- artists, body builders, and models (for one another).

Hey guys, I already posted about this on facebook and stuff, sorry if you are tired of hearing about the fucking cat.

Does anyone want a cat? Does anyone want this specific nice, cute cat? Or know someone who might?

( Look how cute this cat is. )

It is really "a lover not a fighter." You don't want this cat to be turned away into the streets? Yet that is what will happen if a home for the cat is not found, as the cat keeps fighting with the other cat.

I have some money right now and I need a vacation anyway, so even if you do not live in New York and want the cat, I would seriously consider taking a trip to anywhere in the USA, or nearby parts of Mexico and/or Canada, to deliver this great cat to you, personally. If you are living in another part of the country and desperately want to see me for some reason, this is a great time to consider adopting a cat!

Of course it would be even more convenient if you lived in New York.

( Here are more cat pictures! )

Ultimately I guess my issue with this "etiquette regarding couples" is that, to me, it seems "impolite" for people who are in a sexual relationship to show any kind of warmth towards each other in company. I feel like, if you sit next to your "partner" at a restaurant in front of a third person, you might as well just be having gentle, loving sex with your partner right on the table while the third person watches. But I guess other people don't feel this way, and I should respect this.

There are important rules about what to do if three people are socializing together and two of them are "a couple." They just mess me up every time for some reason, and I feel there is no way to negotiate them gracefully AT ALL.

First, if you are in a restaurant or some place where you have to sit down, you have to make sure the couple sits together and the third person sits across from them. Those are just the rules, and if you mess this up, it will ALWAYS be awkward, and people will NEVER accept it--something I've learned from years of personal experience on both sides of this tense situation.

Restaurant seating arrangements used to be my worst enemy when it came to "the couples crisis," but lately I've started to feel that places like the subway or theater, where you have to sit three in a row, are even trickier. You'd think three-in-row situations would be easy because they have an obvious "egalitarian" solution: the member of the couple who knows the third person best sits in the middle, duh. BUT, this only works well when it's very clear which member of the couple knows the third person best. Otherwise, it's a mess: as a member of the couple you have to make uncomfortable assumptions about the third person and which of you he or she would rather sit next to; as the third person, you are forced to pick sides.

Do you sit next to the member of the sex you're attracted to? Do you pointedly avoid sitting next to the member of the sex you're attracted to? What if you just want to sit next to the person you've known longer, but it's interpreted as you trying to "steal" the person? Or what if you actually just like one of the people better, not even in a sexual way--surely it is impolite to express this preference openly? Or maybe not? What about if you are gay and the couple is straight, do you just automatically sit next to the same-sex person anyway? Does this perpetuate "heterosexism" and just plain sexism in the world somehow, assuming that men cannot be friends with women, etc?

In short, three-in-a-row situations require some in-depth strategy (for example, I always try to make sure I am lined up in an inoffensive way right as I enter a theater, as if I'm just going to plop down "wherever," and I've learned to stand up in subways). Yet, I thought I had mastered restaurants up until today.

Like an autistic person who has memorized different facial expressions (so I have read), whenever I've been in a couple+1 restaurant situation lately, in any capacity, I have always been the first person to sit down, amazed by my social facility, proud of my mastery--earned through bitter experience--of the simple rule of "the couple sits together and the third person sits across." Yet, today, I was in a restaurant with a couple and I liked both people (while knowing the male individual somewhat better). And then, the female individual completely messed me up by proceeding to just sit down across from her romantic partner instead of next to him!!! I didn't know what to do! I only had a few seconds to make a decision.

I wasn't thinking very clearly, and I made the wrong decision. If the rule of "the couple must sit together" is broken, then the rule is "two people of the same sex must always sit together across from the person of a different sex," no matter what. That is a true rule.

Why does this seem like the perfect TV show? Why does it seem like any child exposed to this show has approximately a 60% chance of becoming an artist or gay/sexually ambiguous?

Fuck - fuck. I don't know what to do. I don't want to be "Anna" anymore. I don't mean just sex change, I mean this whole pattern of passive, impotent thought and behavior--tendencies that I've developed, some in childhood, some in adolescence, that have been the stupid undertone of this livejournal, of my thoughts, of my life, undermining everything that is good and fun in my life. To an extent that I've tried to hide from everyone I know except one or two "intimate friends" who are so bored and tired of hearing me talk about this and can't help me anymore than anyone else, except myself.

"Lots of people have problems getting things done." True, but not helpful to actually dealing with a specific problem, a specific mind--specifc patterns of thought and behavior that are as familiar and boring as the walls of my room or the view from my bed wherever I've been living for more than 1 month because I don't leave the house because I have this stupid "problem of inaction."

You can't force this kind of change to happen. It has to be slowly engineered, over time. I know it can be done. I can SEE what it might be like to live and not be this way, this passive, impotent, spiteful and fearful way (I used to not even be able to imagine this until maybe 1 year ago), to be able to actually get things done and do what you want. The most familiar example, to me, of the kind of change I'm talking about is "saizai" on livejournal, the way he stopped being "Ilya" and over the years became "Sai Emrys" in the early 2000's. I used to think saizai's way of talking about himself was so unnecessarily melodramatic, but now I'm thinking in those same terms, explicitly so. I know this change can be achieved, using specific mechanisms that can't be talked about because it will only make them seem like generic "self help" stuff and undermine thier effectiveness, and because it's not useful to talk in this case, only to do, and because for some reason I am really ashamed and embarassed of having this huge problem/preoccupation.

I try to avoid telling people how obsessed and preoccupied I am with this, always, this problem of passivity and "being productive" except for one or two "intimate friends" who are so tired of hearing about it. As a result I always feel guilty and furtive around other people, like I'm trying to hide my true concerns and motivations from them in all my interactions. Because of this I sometimes avoid other people, don't hang out that much, etc.

Worse, I feel even guiltier and even irrationally resentful around "intimate friends" who know about this problem I have. It is comparable to the way I always feel guilty and irrationally resentful around my parents, scarily enough. It's the same as how an alchoholic can feel resentful and fearful around his spouse, even if he cares for the spouse. You let someone see your vulnerabilities and then you resent them for it, even if you like and care for the person. And if the person tries to be helpful--then you feel humiliated and you resent them. And if they don't try to be helpful--then you're afraid of them for being better than you and you resent them more.

Goddamn it, goddamn it.

Surely going off to live by yourself is not the only solution to this problem. No, writing out these things helps. It seems like it is better if people at least read these things about me in the format of a vaguely "dramatic livejournal confession."

I just have to tell myself not to worry when I see other people, while quietly and privately effecting other things, and eventually it will all become better and not be such a big deal. Same as undergoing a sex change.

This has been big deal to me, I think about it all the time.

I just wrote this entry because I finally went into the city by myself to work on writing, which I haven't done in like a week, and I looked at the story I was writing and it just looked so hopeless and irrelevant that I felt like nothing could be done, that any changes I attempted would be " a drop in the bucket." Now I am ready to try again I guess. I don't want any comments. This will probably be my last entry in this livejournal (though I'll still read and leave comments), as I think it is a very good summary and encapsulation of its concerns.

Update: Ha, I always think writing these entries will be "cathartic" or something but I just end up feeling embarassed for a few hours and then going back to normal. I guess I am always harkening back to 2001 when I get into "livejournal mode"--when I lived at home and livejournal was a dramatic teenage diary that random strangers could read. Something that is perhaps impossible to have in these heady days of widespread "blogging," and of internet acquaintances being really common and not a novelty.

Update 2: There is no reason to think this will be the absolutely last entry on my livejournal. What a bizarre artifact this stupid journal is.

A fun thing: if you search for "Xerxes Verdammt" on google, you will get not one, but TWO bad German fantasy "fanfics," I guess, that feature the phrase, "Xerxes--verdammt!"

Right after New Years, a month ago, I wanted to make a post about how fun the party was, but instead I ended up writing a long entry about how I feel like a failure all the time. So I have stayed away from livejournal, again.

I haven't left the house in two weeks.

The party was fun though, especially the weird part at the end when everyone was gone except Cory and Pschnt Ilya and there was some kind of emphatic conversation. On the subject of "what it means to be male." Also talking to amberite and wynand about LARPs--I wish that went on longer.

It's probably emasculating to talk about how little you're earning, but really all I want is the ability to make $1500 a month while working 20 hours a week so I can write and draw and go on trips. And preferably to work from home, or a not-depressing place full of fun colleagues that are going places. That is all that I want.

I've been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion this week (never seen it all the way through before), and as a result have been having the scary, vivid dreams all week. Dreams that now seem very clearly related to the show, that are pervaded with the feeling of bleakness one gets from watching it. I rarely have dreams that are so flat-out unpleasant. Most of my "nightmares" are still about embarassing myself socially or something.

Evangelion is so good for some reason. It has the same "feel" as awesome and bleak Soviet sci-fi such as the movie Solaris (the 70's Russian one) or the books of the Strugatsky brothers (the ones I've read). Part of it maybe has to do with the fact that all of these works typically feature a monolithic, crappy, sort-of-sinister (but also sort of mediocre), sort-of-impenetrable government organization facing a supernatural phenomenon that refuses to explain itself. All of these works also typically feature a future where technology, government, and historic events have made life--not a nightmare like in 1984, but also just sort of crappy and a little bit bleak.

What's so terrifying about these works, I think, is that typically neither the monolithic government organization nor the supernatural phenomenon ends up having any kind of real central intelligence, any "ego." Anyway here are some of the dreams I had this week.

Yesterday: I dreamt that I was watching my friends perform and I was part of the performance or something. It was probably a Fiction Circus performance. My father and sister were there. My father was complaining about how the performance was too indecent, and I was worried about what this meant. Were my friends failures as artists, and as people? Was I?

Then everyone starting running--there was a group of gunmen in the crowd that was firing at everyone. My father and sister ran into the car that one of my friends was driving (it was some generic "friend") and that I was in the front seat of. Finally they were experiencing genuine terror; finally, instead of complaining, they were moved by something that happened during the performance. I was proud of myself. The show had inspired this group of crazed gunmen to commit violent acts, even against the very performers. The show was a rousing success. I was sure that my friends and I would escape, with my father and sister, and we would get to tell everyone about it later.

Except as we kept driving and the gunmen followed us inexorably I realized that the gunmen didn't care about the performance at all. They had randomly chosen to shoot at the performance and then randomly chosen to follow this car to follow and kill everyone in it. We couldn't get away and I kept facing the gun and realizing with this terrible, terrible certitude that this was it--that I was going to die, and for no reason, and because of this the show didn't matter, the fact that my friends and father and sister were also going to die didn't matter--everything that I had cared about was retroactively made random and meaningless by my impending death. This kept happening over and over. I kept facing the gun and having this realization, and then something would happen at the last moment (i.e. the killer would start to feel remorseful) that let me escape, and I would try to run away again, and then I would face the gun again and think, "This is it, you won't have another chance."

Today: For some reason I was living with my mother. We had gotten so poor that we had to leave our hole of an apartment and start living out of a used car that someone who pitied us donated to us. That is probably why my mother and I were living together in the first place--because we were so poor. We worked really hard to get the seats out of the used car, so that we could fashion a sleeping place for ourselves inside. I put the seats outside the car and was trying to feel cheerful about the situation. I said something like, "See, now we have an outdoor patio." Unfortunately, we didn't have any money to buy food, but I found a guy (I think it was miraclejones) who could tell me how to make a special nourishing stew that would let us eat for a week.

There was a stove that still worked in some kind of old parking lot. The guy told me to put all these vegetable into a pot on the stove, and a bunch of bacon grease. There was a whole section of the dream where I tried to hide my mother from the police because she couldn't afford a MetroCard and tried to use the subway because we needed to go somewhere. When that was over, I went back to check on the stew. There was a small black cat with yellow eyes sitting in the pot, which was boiling (it looked like jones's real-life cat that is now mine I guess, but it wasn't). The cat was narrowing its eyes a lot but not moving.

I was said something like, "Oh, I guess the cat needs to be in there for the stew to work." I thought to myself, "Huh, I guess cats aren't harmed by boiling water. I remember reading something like that." The guy was like, "Yes, the juices from the cat as it boils are what makes this work." It somehow became clear that I had been the one who put the cat in this boiling water, and that I was the one who wanted the cat to be boiled alive as part of some project I didn't remember anymore.

I looked at the black cat again, and realized that it wasn't moving because it was already about to die. I looked into its yellow eye that was in the process of slowly closing up. It was the only part that was still alive. The black body of the cat was melting all over the place, all around this one slit of yellow.

Hey, if you really want to address the issues on this election day, vote for ME and MY COMIC:

http://www.creditcardreform.org/contest/groups/15

The prize is one thousand dollars. I could really use that One Thousand Dollars. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would be replaced by big dollar signs--that is how much I would like to have that one thousand dollars. If I win, I might even buy you a meal. I guess you have to "sign up" or something to vote, but the potential reward of knowing someone who has $1000 is well worth the trouble, I think. My comic is kind of half-assed, but I sure want that prize money.

In other news, Halloween went well. My costume was a shark.

( This what I looked like, after I attached the shark's fin. )

On the actual night of Halloween, my shark costume had neither the duct-taped fin, nor the drawn-on teeth, nor the black pits of its eyes. Indeed, as you might have guessed from this description, on the actual night of Halloween my costume was just a pink bike helmet and me saying, I AM A SHARK. I went to a performance by a band called AIDS WOLF in a warehouse with lakini_malich and his friend Polina. I was involved in a "mosh pit" that consisted of like five other people violently running into each other and shoving each other hard in a 15 or so foot circle that the crowd had cleared. My helmet proved an advantage in this situation, as it allowed me to menace to the other show attendees with headbutts.

Outside, there were these four or five girls from Japan. One of them was dressed as a police car, one of them was Mario (she kept handing out normal, non-hallucinogenic white mushrooms), one of them was a buiding, and one of them was some kind of cartoon bunny. They kept talking to this moronic indie band fucker, who kept saying, HOW DO YOU SAY CHEESE IN JAPANESE HOW DO YOU SAY I LOOOOVE YOUR MUSTACHE. The Japanese girls loved the wit of this fresh-faced, drunk American. It was like a 20 minute conversation of this carefree fool saying, HOW DO YOU SAY MUSTACHE IN JAPANESE HAHAHA, and the four girls in elaborate cardboard costumes telling him Japanese words and slapping their knees and everyone laughing in infinite delight. Illustration: Fools Feasting, by Albrecht Durer

Then we left, and I walked around by myself in Brooklyn and listened to Anika be not supportive of my name change.

The next night, after Halloween, I at last got my full costume together. I do not remember much of it. I drank beer after beer, followed by several big plastic cups full of some kind of hard liquor. I stared at a fire. At one point, I think I tried to gum miraclejones with my "shark teeth." I sat still for about 30 minutes focusing on not vomiting. Alas it was to no effect.

VOTE FOR MY SHITTY COMIC

I am going to legally change my name:

ALEXIS EMMANUEL SOLOMONIC

I like how changing the k to a c in my current last name immediately changes it into an exciting, Bible-referencing word, without having me "forsake my roots" or whatever.

It was the birthday of bileograph a few days ago and I got to be at the karaoke bar again. I performed the role of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus, conveying my simultaneous fear of and and longing for God through through movement and song. It went well! I felt like I rolled a "20" on a "perform check." I even got the tune right some of the time, and the rest of the time I could just scream about wanting MY LORD (that song, Gethsemane, is basically one screaming climax after another). It was pretty much as though the second coming had arrived, said these attractive girls who were there.

I diminished the impact of my initial performances with a terrible, embarrassing, ill-timed attempt to sing "Nights in White Satin." I had forgotten how, uh, especially sentimental the words to that song are.

Earlier that week, I myself had a birthday and turned 25. I was sad for a while, because 23 was maybe the oldest I'd ever been able to imagine myself at any point in my life, ever. Turning 24 was troubling, but I could still say, "oh, I'm not that far from 23." Turning 25, however, feels like passing the point of no return. It is when you stop being "a recent graduate" and start being "poor" or "downwardly mobile." Similarly, 25 is the age when it stops being ok to be mistaken for a 15-year-old boy or weird teenage androgyne. Yet the alternative is not desirable. I do not have many options here.

However, my black thoughts were dispelled when my friends took me to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire and later to the adult arcade! By "adult arcade" I do not, of course, refer to a porn theater, but rather to Dave and Buster's--an establishment that has fascinated me since my youth, an unsettling mix between a TGI Friday's and a Chuck-e-Cheese's intended for, I guess, young professionals. In any case, it was the perfect place for a man of means to celebrate his 25th birthday with a group of his friends, or perhaps his teammates in "touch football." And I got to be that man.

I suppose there are two reasons I barely update this journal any more. First, since 2006 or so, constructing an overarching "narrative of my life" has seemed less and less crucial. This is maybe the clearest sign one has that one has left adolescence. You realize how arbitrary and accidental everything that used to seem so meaningful to you actually is: your family, your old town--your relationships, even your thoughts. Your whole life. It's not that you don't value these things. They just don't have the same Metaphysical Primacy that they once did, at least for me. Your subjective experience doesn't have the same primacy that it once did. Subjective experience is still imporant to you, but no longer worth talking about. It's only worth being mined for art.

In the old days, I guess people would leave the self-absorption of adolescence and "enter the community." I've always found this thought and these words to be distasteful (as did Kafka, apparently). For as long as I can remember, even before I had words for it, "the community" has ever been this ominous moralizing force whose love I will disappoint, whose love I am inexorably disappointing or it will destroy me.

Interestingly/predictably enough, the Russian words for this shit are all horribly intimate: "folk," "family," and "ours" (the latter also apparently the name of a new, alarmingly fascist youth group) instead of the English word "community," which is redolent of like 18th century bourgeois civic pride. Are the Russian terms and more or less objectionable? I am inclined to say less, actually, because at least they acknowledge the arbitrariness of this "community." It's not a virtue to be loyal to these people, merely a practical necessity elevated to a virtue by the often-remarked-on "fatalism of the Russians." Similarly whereas American teams sports are all, "we are good sportsmen, we will win because we are virtuous citizens who have trained well"--the "team spirit" of Russian sport is more like, "we are low people, we will bring the other team DOWN TO OUR LEVEL." Guess which team wins MY sympathy?

That's why the phrase "Russian community" (or any kind of "immigrant community" probably) is uniquely retarded and condescending, by the way. But anyway, I don't like "real" Russians that much either, and not just because those who self-identify as such are as a rule unpleasant, sexist, or, at least, irrational people. I guess I just don't like surrendering my mean and obstinate little personality in favor of identifying with the needs of the group.

To get back to what I was saying like three paragraphs ago--instead of "entering the community," I've "entered the world," it seems. My life right now is a constant scrabble for recognition from others and money to live. This is what my "mean and obstinate little personality" has been subsumed in. Living in a basement in Queens. Writing thousands of words of about Spain a day for 2 cents/word (in fact, I am writing this entry because I am slacking off). Making burritos, or seeing if I have enough money to go to the diner or Dunkin Donuts. Neglecting work for days or weeks at a time to read books or work on slow creative projects that don't pay. Sometimes trying to talk to people that I like and find interesting, trying to make them like me. It's an obvious, frivolous luxury to try to put any narrative to it (I guess sometimes it is nonetheless enjoyable, and maybe can even prove "useful," that watchword of our lives). And that's what "communities" are supposed to provide, right, a group narrative to replace your personal one.

These thoughts kept recurring throughout my visit to my parents and family California, which took place over the course of these last two weeks. My whole past is like devalued currency, I kept thinking. Why was this not as depressing as it sounded?

Probably because I actually value people much now more than I did then, in spite of the appearance of having "lost my soul." I see people "for who they are," not as figures in the bullshit unfolding drama of my inner life. Despite my increasing reclusiveness during the past few years, despite the greater and greater starkness of my life, I feel that I "live in the world" more than before. My problems are no longer imaginary problems. I don't even have time to talk to people I don't actually like. I barely have time for those that I do like.

Oh wait! The second reason I haven't really been updating in this journal these past few years, is--to be honest--that there's not as pressing a need to talk publically about one's life when one cohabits with some sort of "significant other" and thus always has the "ideal audience." Well fuck. That is sort of lame. Is that the real reason I like people more now--because there's nothing to lose? Is the title of this entry--a lie?

The answer is, "no," but now it is time for me to finish explaining where to find the cheapest hotels in Spain (hint: it's via a certain site on the Internet). Also I shouldn't spend this much time on livejournal entries, and that's the other reason I haven't been writing.

I attended the event of "Karaoke Night" a few days ago, consumed over a gallon of beer, and alarmed bar patrons with an atonal rendition of Nine Inch Nails's "Closer." I basically just yelled "I want to FUCK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL" a lot, in a sincere, lust-choked voice. I similarly tried to "sing" "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode but realized that I don't even really know how the song goes all that well!

I guess I just don't get singing. It seems like if you hear a simple melody in your head, you should be automatically able to reproduce it vocally the same way you can move limbs and stuff, but apparently not.

The others were all competent singers. The drunker I got, the more I found myself profoundly moved by every single song, even by the guy who kept performing alternative music from the late 90's. Everyone at the bar, except for an annoying gaggle of girls, sang every song with intensity and complete seriousness. The stupidity or, alternately, calculated obliqueness, of the lyrics only heightened the underlying emotion. A giant of a man named "Big Mike" belted out Oasis songs at a more-or-less uniform pitch and (shocking) volume. I was truly "lost in the music." Probably this is what people are supposed to experience at shows and concerts.

The next day was a hangover and the knowledge that I could not sing, that there can be no music inside of me. This cast a surprising pall over everything. I even recorded myself singing "Closer," mixing my ghoulish "vocals" with an mp3 of the actual song. Maybe I can improve! Then I went to cafe and drew a man with a large lower lip until 5 in the morning.

It looks like I wrote some kind of terrible exegesis of slash fiction. It's down in the comments. Possibly amberite might be interested in what prompted all this, although perhaps this individual might find it too juvenile or "ignorant of the history of slash fiction" (as someone has, bizarrely, claimed). I just don't know anymore; who can say.

--

Do you know what I also did?

I just did a google image search for "dog in sunglasses." Then, I took this image and made it my desktop background, stretched out all the way, so that it doesn't look friendly anymore, so that it looks neutral and horrible.

Then, I made my screensaver be magenta "system" font quickly scrolling across a blue background, just saying "RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF."

I now have the most unpleasant Windows desktop configuration, of anyone.

A band representing the true values of our lives has recorded a playful, sincere song about cats.

Man oh man, ZOMBIE is the perfect book to finish reading before going to the mall. Going to the mall is the perfect activity after reading the book ZOMBIE. Inspired, I bought and ate a giant burger at Applebee's, at the mall. I sat at the bar and coldly watched boys, families. Is the book good? It is competent, and that is enough.

Embarrassing but true: probably about 80% of my fantasy life since age 4 has been in some way about "existential" gay male killers. My interests in philosophy, history, and the visual arts are directly caused by gay killer fantasies. Sometimes I think maybe female writers can be separated into two categories: those who have thought, often and with approval, about gay and/or woman-hating, solipsistic male killers, who have portrayed such killers as having some kind of true power and insight into reality (for example, Flannery O'Connor, Emily Bronte); and those who haven't (no one good, no one to be trusted). And I guess I can't help but like Joyce Carol Oates, the author of ZOMBIE, as she so clearly falls into the former category.

A few days ago, M. Jones played "Country Death Song" by the Violent Femmes on the "jukebox" of a local bar. In this song, a rural man describes how his habit of brooding by himself led him to trouble, as he eventually "started making plans for killing [his] own kind." The song's power lies in its assertion that wanting to kill your kids is simply the natural outcome of thinking about life: this much was agreed on. But why would thinking about life lead to wanting to kill your own kind? Because you'd want to send your kids away from this world while they're still innocent? Or because transgressive violence would begin to seem like the only way to celebrate/justify the feeling of being alive?

My assumption was the latter but I didn't say anything because I was worried that it would make me seem immoral. Or not even immoral, but ignorant of real violence -- I thought that it would betray a privileged aesthete's background. But, upon sober reflection, the two motivations are both about equally fucked up. Why should I feel bad for "identifying" more with one and not the other?

Anyway the only truly cheesy part of ZOMBIE were the drawings, which I could have done much better.

Possibly a new job. Am writing informative texts about hospitals, universities, railway stations, airports and churches in the country of Israel. Fuck you Israeli hospitals, have you ever heard of addresses that denote your physical location.

Also, a GREAT SITE that I JUST DISCOVERED. These are exactly the kinds of stories and articles that I want to read. Who has ever seen such good writing?

A cat in heat is a deeply problematic thing. Just as something that is fundamentally attractive can gain even more attractiveness by possessing a component of the repellent (e.g. sexy girls or young men that are so languid that they look almost dead), so can something that is fundamentally unattractive (e.g. a creature of a different species trying to have sex with you) become actively troubling and repellent when it possesses, nonetheless, a component of attractiveness. That cat is constantly arching its sleek black back, lifting its ass in the air, grabbing the arms of the couch just like a porn star, and yowling pleadingly while looking at me with dirty yellow eyes full of vulnerability, defiance, and hate. I have been disturbed all day by visions of an abused young woman with long black hair and vertical cheekbones, for whom sex is a compulsion so intense that it gives her no pleasure.

If you are asking yourself why I haven't posted anything for three months or more, it is because art school has turned me into some sort of painting automaton, who cares merely for deadlines and finding new deals on groceries, and disappoints friends. Maybe one day this will change.

( Swimming in a local canal... )