rompin' and a stompin' cause I'm in my prime

Yesterday was a hot day. It wasn't as hot as some other days have been though, but it was kicking my ass. People wanted me to go play basket ball in the middle of the afternoon and I wouldn't go because I knew the sun and heat would kick my ass. Later when we went over the the skot/ethan/cheb/zaq house I had to go outside because it was way to hot inside for me and I was getting sick. After a while outside I was dying and I made paul take me home because I thought I was going to faint from the heat. I really don't do well in any heat. Of course, I can usually handle it in the summers, I don't know what it is now. Maybe there is some sort of underlying problem that is making me more heat sensitive these days. Whatever it is it is not pleasant.

I should be reading right now. I really should be reading right now.

Sometimes I wake up after having a dream or a sleep thought that there is some girl in my bed and I reach over for her and wake up enough to realize that no such girl exists. Most of my days I think that there really isn't any reason that I really need a girlfriend now, I think to myself it'd be nice, but its not necessary. But then when I think of how insanly nice it would be I get a little depressed. I have trouble getting close to people. I think thats why I've had such a hard time finding a girl that I connect with in even a slight way.

I was just thinking about taking a magnet to my cell phone. Not to destroy it, or at least that wasn't the reason for doing it, but to see what would happen. I assume it would probably destroy it. By the way, if robots ever start taking over the world, we should stock up on magnets. Also EMPs.

Today I feel different somehow. I just woke up and felt this weird longing for something. And I woke up and realized that I was actually experiancing something most people call 'emotions.' usually the only thing close to real human emotion in me is hunger or the need to crap. not really emotions, but thats as close as I come to them. i just woke up feeling a helluva lot different today. i don't know why. whatever it is i sort of like it. "maybe its love." "i know what an erection feels like, michael! no... this is something different. It's like... my heart is getting hard." It's not love in this case, but yeah. today is not a good day for writing, i can't really think right. today is a good day for experiancing, so that is what I shall do.

Nature is Cool

Lightning struck a tree right across the freeway. There was a pretty cool looking ring of fire for awhile. I've never seen lightning strike that close, it was hitting the hills behind TMCC and smoke was raising all around the landscape. We were outside on the stairs watching it, the neighbors were out, they have a little boy, who was the first to see the fire start on the tree, and was scarred out of his mind for a while until his mother, who has blonde hair going down to her butt, comforted him. Later we were watching a terrific magnificant splendid combination of what looked like 7 differnt bolts of lightning, but was probably really just one, all spread out, hit a spot on the other side of the hill. A strange glow of green lit up the crest of the hill, it was beautiful, jumping up I pointed it out yelling "Did you see that?! That was some special effect shit going on over there!"

My point is, Nature is cool.

I was driving from my apartment over to pauls and turned on Bob.FM and the DJ was drunk as a drunk. He was slurring trying to explain something about some sort of thingy going on tommorow. It would have been funny except for it was really just sad. Maybe he wasn't drunk, maybe he's just one of those people that have blown out their brains with decades of drugs and alcohol and now just sounds like that all the time. Like a rock star.

My sister is broke and stuck in europe for a few more weeks. Actually I think she got some money now, somehow. I don't know, she's going to be in so much debt when she gets back, which is augmented by the fact that she is taking out a lot of student loans as soon as she gets back to go to grad school.

I still have to take two or three lower division classes at UNR before I graduate. I really, really don't want to take those classes. I don't know why I can't just take the upper-division courses in the same field, I would much prefer it. I can't stand lower level classes anymore. Their just so basic. I hate basic.

Zaq is talking about going to see a couple of movies tommorow. One is Clerks II, the other is Lady in the Water. So far Lady has gotten pretty universally bad reviews, with even the people who liked it saying "hey, its not great, but, you know, hey, I sort of liked it." Actually that is pretty much what people have said of Clerks as well. But I think the Kevin smithy-ness of it, the zaniness I suppose, makes people on the fence like it rather than dislike it. I'm not sure if its going to be any good, I hope it is. I'm usually pleased with Kevin Smith movies. But I think theres something thats happened where a lot of people have said Kevin Smith is a genius because of Clerks and yet aside from that movie none of his movies are great achievments. I don't think thats a bad thing, I'd love to be known for one really good movie, but in compairing everything evenly to Clerks I we seem to hold kevin smith higher than he really is. Without Clerks he wouldn't have had a career, but since then he hasn't been able to achieve what he had, but I'm okay with that, hes movies are fun, devoid of any real intellectual processes. Things to have to be brilliant to be enjoyable. And the movies are all so differnt from anything else being made, its what sets them apart. A little slapstick, a lot of blue collar comedy, a little bit of philosophy, a lot a bit nerdy. I can't speak to Clerks II yet, but I'm going to think positively of it for now because I think that it will be a movie that really depends on your attitude towards it. If you go in wanting to like you and ready to let the movie just go then you will probably dig it. If you go in with low expectations and not in the mood for the crude humor and what not then you will probably leave feeling it was a bad movie. It's a theory for now, I'll test it out later I suppose.

Make it to the moon never have to crawl

Yesterday I was all suped up and ready to go with this whole school and thinking thing. Now I am just tired. I still like being in school and actually having that nice little motivation to use my brain, but now I am ready for a break again before I have to wake and go in.

Do you ever get that impression that you are in the middle of something that doesn't make any sense to you, and yet you suspect that it wouldn't make any sense to the people that it supposedly does make sense too? I suppose its just the idea of who the hell really is in charge around here. Well, not here, no ones in charge here. I used to like being in charge of things. I guess I still do. Of course the problem with being in charge of things is that you generally have to work with other people. I'm not really a networker sort of guy, and I don't like telling people what to do really. I was sitting in that class I ended up droping and the prof. was rearanging everyone into groups, and I just sat in one spot, deciding if I was going to drop the class or not, and I didn't really know for sure, but then I realized that in my personal obstance a group had just grown around me. Bag in hand I walked out, "where's he going?" they asked with pathetically disoriented faces. I don't blame them, people are always looking for a leader, I think what makes me seem more like a leader then some people is that I am not looking for a leader. But I'm not looking to lead. Group dynamics are not my strong suit. Autonomy leaves such a sweet taste in my mouth.

I need a bigger bookcase, or just another bookcase to add to my room. I bought a bookcase from walmart once. I had to put it together myself, which seemed easy enough because it was more like a giant wooden lego set than a piece of carpentry. A few little plastic pieces in a few little holes and it would be done, in twenty minutes or less. Of course, within eight minutes I had managed to clog three of the holes with tiny bits of broken plastic. I never got the bookcase put together. I blame it on walmart seeling crappy shit that breaks when all you do is bend it in three different directions at once. I havn't bought anything, save a couple of small things that I didn't realize I was buying until we were at the checkout stand, from walmart in nearly two years now. Usually if I say I'm going to boycott something it lasts about as long as I still give a crap, and although I stopped giving a crap about my brilliant plan of not spending upwards of 3o dollars a month at walmart, thus ruining them economically, I still havn't gone back to that place. I think its more than a political move, really, walmart is just a crappy place to shop.

Speaking of a materialistic culture, there is really only one item that I buy now with regularity that isn't a... disposable material? I don't know what word I'm looking for. But you know, things that get used up when you use them (used up when you use them, you brilliant man you! you thought of that all by yourself did you?) food and gas and such, the only thing that I don't need to buy to get around and, you know, survive, is books. Occasionally I buy movies. I guess I rent a lot of movies, and go to a lot of movies, so I guess I would need to include some sort of entertainment related category of things I buy. I don't know what the point of this whole paragraph really was. I'm not trying to say that I am a non-materialistic person, I very much am, I mean, shit, thats just how we live these days, but what I'm saying is that there are very few things that I want to buy and to have anymore, and books (and, yes, I count comic books here) are the only things I want to buy all the time. Its a strange feeling for me, because I used to buy everything like it was going out of style. And then some.

I really have still quite a bit of reading to do before 8am tommorow morning, so I should stop this little break in my reading to get back to what I was reading. Which was crap, by the way, never read anything by "Laxalt, Robert." Also, he's probably in some way affiliated with UNR, so you maybe heard of him? If not, watch yourself. I imagine a common scene in his day is walking around the UNR campus, finding a student that has fallen behind the pack and siddled up aside them "Hey, how's it going?" Asked Robert in a gentlemans voice, "Very well! And how are you today, sir?" says you, the common student in this steadily deterorating example, "Well, I am just wonderful. You know, the Nevada desert is such a nice place. I should now, I'm Robert Laxalt, I write about it all the time." Robert smiles and leans in, the stale stench of cigar smoke hovers over his head, and his eyes narrow. "You like Nevada, right?" insistantly his voice comes out, licking his lips he snarls "because if you like Nevada you should read my books! Because they are about Nevada, and Basque culture in Nevada." His large, hairy, sweating hands are on your shoulders, you try to squirm away but he holds you tight, and farts. "Oh, god!" sputtering, trying to spit the taste of the foul air from your mouth, but it is a tricky scent, and knows that your nose is in fact the place that smells are supposed to go. The smell stops for a moment in the small gap between the two of you, stretching and pulling a diving cap over its small, yet vile, odorous head. The infectious smell takes a deep breath and pulls a triple back flip with a swan closer and lands with only a slight sudder and swims deep into the vast caverns of your olfactory. "Oh god!" but its too late, and Robert smiles as he pushes you to the ground, for a few moments you try to scream for help, but the smell has infiltrated your brain by this point, and its nothing for it to stop the vocal cords for a few minutes. The water drips slowly from a rusty pipe. Your eyes finally open to the a single swinging 60 watt a few feet from your head. A blur of a black haired man, shorter than you, but with muscles bulging from places that no muscles have ever grown before, pulsating as the bulb casts shadows upon his face and devlish grin. No! Your mouth doesn't yeild to your plea, it has been handedly hogtied and left to dangle on the other side of the room. Okay, so you can't call for help, but you can run! Yes, all you need to do is slip out of these ropes, fortunatly you always carry a pocket knife, if you can reach your pocket. But thats when you see that your pants have also been hogtied and left to dangle by your mouth. The fiend, he must have known about the knife. Although that doesn't explain why your legs are still in the pants. Unless... no! No! ""The Basque Hotel," he begins in a deep and somber voice, it reverberates off the walls, echoing ever louder, "By Robert Laxalt, Chapter One..."

Step outside but not to brawl

I'll rant about how much I hate systems of control that people throw out there all the time. "This is how you need to act, this is how you need to sleep, this is how you need to eat, this is how you need to fuck." I really hate systems of control. And yet I love categories. I don't know if that is really contradictory, it doesn't seem like it should be, it seems like they are too different things. But putting things in categories makes them easier to control. But putting a gun in the hands of an infant increases that toddlers leathal prowess, it mean theres any control. I guess, though, that I should differentiate between my love of categories and the asinine way in which so many categories get created. I like categories that help me through my day. For example, I started taking a class that was labled an english class but when I arrived was clearly a business class. I have no problem with business classes other than that I would rather dip my body in carmel and dive in a pit of mongeese (mongi) before taking a business class. Sometimes I think that I would do good in an office. Sometimes I think that my personal hell would be structured like a corporate job, only without the perks. I think I would do good because it is mindless and I can zone out. Its sort of like cheating your way to a clear mind, or maybe its not cheating, if you believe you can achieve enlightenment through the 'wax on, wax off' school of Zen. Maybe you can, I like turning my brain off, its usually just insulting me anyway. Sometimes I think that Zen must be the simple lack of any system of control. I know that a lot of time when I write in this blog I somehow come back to talking about Zen, but I don't think about it all that often, maybe its just one of those thoughts that only wants to talk when I'm writing. I don't want to follow in any Master footsteps of the enlightened few. Really all I want is some sort of freedom to be who I am. For the most part I have that, yet there are always pressures to be something else. Some people are always in the process of reinventing themselves. Maybe the secret is really to deinvent yourself.

I went to chinese food today. "Turn your thoughts inward - find yourself!" said the magical cookie. I pointed at my chest and yelled "Found him! What do I win?" The cookie and I laughed.

There is nothing quite like going back to school to kickstart your brain into thinking again. It sort of feels like I've had my brain shut off for the last couple of months, making it through with video games and booze and fark. And now that I have my classes going again my brain is stretching and yawning and finally turning the alarm clock off instead of hitting the snooze again. I really think its this feeling I feel when I am taking classes that makes me want to go to grad school. I think to myself "the only thing I would want to go to grad school for was literature, and yet literature people can be pompus assholes, and I'm already a pompus asshole, so I really shouldn't add to that anymore," but then I realize that its really one of the few things that I am good at at all and it is a must if I want to keep going to school. I just don't want my brain to go to sleep. I havn't found a way to wake it up by myself just yet. If you asked me what I learned in college I may just shrug and say I can't remember, but my brains been up the whole time.

Maybe thats the point, just to keep your brain doing something. I mean, I can remember hardly nothing from most of my classes, here and there I have a tasty tidbit of information that I can pass on to others, but for the most part I don't know that I have learned that much, and yet I wouldn't trade it, in fact, I want a helluva lot more of it. Maybe my only real talent is thinking, and my muse is school. Thoughts go by the wayside after a time, all I need to do is excercise my brain. Once I can do that without the formal system of school I will be a little more free.

Soft spoken with a broken jaw

In the last two weeks I have purchased a shit-ton of books for my reading enjoyment. When I bought them I was thinking that I could probably get through most of them before the end of the summer, but looking at it now I don't think thats going to happen, the stack is large and my time is soon to be limited by summer classes. The reason I bought so many was because I thought that it would be smart to get up on my reading before the end of next year. The plan of going into grad school for literature seems to me to be easier if I actually have read a ton of literature, so thats the plan right now. And even if that plans falls through then at least I can be slightly more cultured before I'm out of college.

I don't know why I decided to talk about that just now, I think its because I can't really think of anything else to say at the moment. I got a giant blister on my foot last night and when I first woke up this morning there was a slight pain in my foot and I thought that my foot was trying to communicate something profound with me. Then I woke up a little bit more and realized that it just hurt a bit.

I was reading one of my books and it was talking about the San Fran 1906 earthquake and how it devestated the city and how it was weird that the people there didn't take the hint and just rebuilt everything on the same spot. It went on to talk about in nature an earthquake doesn't exist really because its just a slight shaking that means the earth is restless or something like that. I'm not really doing the author justice by paraprasing it thusly, because he was much better at expressing this point, but I just bring it up so that I can bring up my next point. I don't know much about what happens to trees when earthquakes strike, but it doesn't seem like they go down as fast or hard as buildings, and I got to thinking thats probably because the earthquake would have to literaly rip the roots from the ground. So then I thought of a whole new way of doing archetecture: root systems. Yes, build in an artifical root system to the building, make it out of concrete and wood, and you can be sure that building isn't going anywhere when the next quake strikes.

Now all I need to do is come up with some sort of earthquake resistent pants and I'll be in business.