Basic purity test- I'm 66% sexually corrupt. Yay me. :)

Well it's official. I dub this day, The Day To Rule All Bad Days.

First of all... I had to work. And I wasn't even supposed to be there today. I went in thinking, "Okay, it's bad. I had my heart set on coming home and doing nothing and instead I'm working - but maybe it won't take me that long. Maybe I'll be out of there in no time." Twenty minutes past closing time, I realized that, yes, my day had indeed caught fire, melted, and was now stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe.

This realization was also made possible by the fact that not only do I have to make an appointment with a counselor to possibly learn that next semester won't be my last, but I also received a quiz back today from a teacher with a note that read, "Make an appointment with me." If that doesn't scream disapproval and a barely, if even, passing grade on the horizon, I don't know what does.

So... here I am. A tense little ball of wire. If only I could at least have the satisfaction of waking up tomorrow and having all of these problems be gone. Unfortunately, the world doesn't like Jenny at the moment, and I guess I just have to sit here while life throws things at me.

I want one of these. Anyone who's willing to get one for me will be added to the list to be considered as my friend. Thank you and goodnight.

I have to know. What is this?

If this person is speaking English, I mourn for the language. Obviously it's fast on its way to an untimely grave. When this, "i dun understand bie e msg u sent me late late last nite. abt e sellin of hp? hehhx.call me kays? -hugs u closely- lurvve ya!" can pass for written communication, is there any reason to even hope for the best? Would Shakespeare cry?

What I don't quite I understand is that poems (or what might loosely be called poems) litter this page. Perhaps this is an experiment with language? A Faulknerian venture into the use of dialect? Caught between dismay and confusion as I looked at the "words", I thought that maybe I was misinterpreting a work of art, a subtle play on what the general populous accepts as English. That is, until I saw the guestbook. The author of this page isn't alone. Messages with such mind-bending sentences as, "just hanged up on yah cos yah darn fone wust farting sho much," and "we had sho mich fun tat dae. and dont crie sillie babie," reinforce my first fear that English is stumbling into an open grave.

Do English teachers across the country go to class to sleep? Does anyone teach proper grammar and spelling anymore? It's enough to make a girl want to abandon her lifelong slacker career and take up a piece of chalk.

Of course, there are people like my History Of The English Language professor who would say that grammarians and organizations like the MLA are merely holding back a door too heavy to keep from opening. He claimed that the natural progression of the English language is toward simplicity and that things like the transposition of "ask" to "aks" is a natural and predictable thing. I can't dispute that entropy, decay, has a strangle hold on everything - including language, but there must be a line drawn somewhere. When we reach the point where things like this are looked upon as acceptable, what kind of pride can we take in anything? No standards = idiocy holding the reigns.

Maybe I just need to calm down...

But something tells me that entropy has everything under control.
(And the interesting thing is that the site's name begins with "prevaricate," a fabulously $5 word for a site that liberally employs words like "wif" and "sho.")

Boredom created this, with help from Jenni and myself. When someone starts up a story and passes it to you, what else can you do but babble and pass it back? It fills the time...

My concert hunger has been more than adequately sated by the D. Last night at The Joint in the Hard Rock, Tenacious D put on a show so kickass that I will actually use the phrase, "It rocked me hard." Oh yes... After the two Pumpkins concert I saw, that show has to rank at about the third best concert I've ever been to. Mmm...

Well, enough with the cheesy rock fan cliches. I'm off to bask in the warm after-concert glow...

This image brought lovingly to the people from the streets of Chicago and Jenni.

Time: -too early in the a m
Feeling: -a little bit very sleepy
Enjoying: Jimmy Eat World's "A Praise Chorus"
Singing like a fool: "I'm on my feet. I'm on the floor. I'm good to go. All I need is just to hear a song I know."
Thinking: I should be in bed. There's no real reason for me to be up right now.
Last cereal consumed: Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Should be reading: Hemingway and Katherine Anne Porter
Recent happy memory:
Scene - Albertsons grocery store, general merchandise.
[Jenni's trying on hideous bucket hats. Tony finds a pink lifeguard cap, and runs down the aisle to me in front of the toys.]
Tony: (in exaggerated machismo) Hi, I'm a lifeguard. Do you need assistance?
Me: (after laughing) A lifeguard, huh?
Tony: (still in exaggerated testosterone tone) Yes. (Smile) Do you need assistance?
Me: Well, you'd better go save Jenni. She's over there drowning in bad hats.
[We both look down the aisle to Jenni who has just looked up, holding down the sides of a beige woven sun hat, and with precision sitcom timing, says...]
Jenni: Huh?
Current decision: Time to go to bed.

At a dance concert tonight that I had to attend for one of my classes, I spent most of my time conjecturing to myself about what the dancers were thinking rather than what they were doing. The girl stood in the center of the room, arms grasping up toward the hot white light, and she could have been thinking that this was the moment she would look back on from the elevated cushioned seat of a stable and acclaimed dance career and reminisce about how she began... Then again, she could have been thinking, "Tighten calf muscle, tilt chin up." I have no idea. Maybe it says more about me than her... this pondering. I thought in this vein for most of the time we were there. About how most of the dancers probably spend hours a day, devoting themselves to their movements, knowing that one day... one day they would shine in bigger lights. And most of them will probably end up behind desks, moving paper in place of limbs, lit only by flourescents.

Your local grocery store is a veritable treasue trove of boredom-beating diversions. Don't believe me? Just check it out. For instance, last night, I learned that I look damn good in just about any pair of cheaply made, mass-produced sunglasses in the Albertsons general merchandise section. I also learned that for sheer shelf disordering power, the Pinky superball is far superior to the translucent glitter ball. Blood pressure machines are perfect distractions for the amateur masochist. And certain water balloons can hold an amount of water equal to the size of a large watermelon before busting and throwing plastic shards in all directions. Investigate for yourself. You'll be glad you did, I know I am. (Cheeseball grin and two thumbs up)

Ever feel as though the nature of life is just to be a rolling snowball? An exponentially growing and quickening avalanche that chases you down? In everything I do lately, I see that speeding wall of white behind me, that huge ball of ice racing to crush me at the bottom of the hill. My schoolwork is just one snowflake in the whole mess. Miss a day, fall behind, miss another day to avoid getting yelled at for falling behind, miss another day to avoid getting yelled at for missing so much school, and eventually you're looking at a row of absences and a lack of work to show for it, and it's like looking up from the bottom of a well. Or painting yourself into a corner. Or letting the snowball build. (Insert your own cliche here.) Well that's what I've done. In so many ways. We all get crushed sooner or later. It's just a matter of how small you keep the ball that determines how uncomfortable your demise will be.

Fickle. Fleeting. Flimsy...
I'm tied up again in the early hours of a Wednesday morning. Try kicking at a 2AM. It doesn't move. The morning hours are staunch and still and unwavering. I, however, am as I always have been....
Fickle. Fleeting. Flimsy...

"Get onto the bus that's gonna take you back to Beelzebub."

Time: Tuesday afternoon
Current deadly sin: Sloth
Drinking: Capri Sun of the Splash Cooler variety
Thinking: "Maybe I've been listening to too much Soul Coughing lately."
Near-future plans: Sitting, chasing down people with a camera

"Yellow number five... yellow number five..."
File List - An example of the adverse effects of artificial colors on developing young minds.

Extra bonus points and a cookie for anyone who knows what this is and tells me about it.

I've gone through almost three rolls of film now that my Pentax was fixed. Photography for me, though, is a necessary hobby. The pictures I take act as a supplementary memory. I wouldn't remember anything if I couldn't pull out accompanying video or photos...

In other news: (insert late breaking boong boong music here)
Yet another to reason to question the existence of eight am: After four hours of sleep... (yes, I didn't get to sleep until 4 in the morning - and what was I doing, you ask? Laying in bed, staring at Antiques Roadshow. Yep.) Anyway, after four hours of sleep, I was on the road, driving to class, to sit through another fifty minutes of exciting Latin instruction, which by the way, I usually spend occupied in the corner engrossed in a game of Palm pool. Eight AM is not a friendly hour for freeway driving. I actually get into the mindset of, "Okay, I'm just going to close my eyes for a couple seconds. I just need to rest my eyelids a little." Seconds later, the car is making to the shoulder of the road and that bump bump bump sensation jars me back to reality... and then I get really depressed. I'm not sleeping; I'm on my way to Latin. ...Eight AM should not exist... Oh wait, maybe the foreign language requirement shouldn't exist.

...and another weekend slips and slides on by. Some days are just hung with a stagnant air. Despite my attempts to ignore it, this Sunday's musty fog stayed with me nearly everywhere I turned. Headaches, heat, sore throat... even my tasty new hard drive is still putting up a fight. The day's one spot of fresh air came near the end - curled up on Tony's bed in the dark, watching an impossible episode of The X-Files. Every stagnant day has that one moment of clarity, one hole in the bag you feel trapped in - that was my moment... Lying there with the one I love, sharing the end of yet another weekend.

I just slept for about eight and a half hours, and I'm completely exhausted. Here's why: elevator fall (good old staple of any of my nightmares), rejection, men in masks at the front door with semi-automatic weapons, parental disapproval, scholastic failure, running.... I had a busy night, in my head anyway. And now, even though I slept for a completely adequate amount of time, I feel as though I haven't slept in days.

The elevator fall was modified from its normal appearances in my dreams. The moment the elevator began to shake and shudder and my mom and sister (in the elevator with me at the time) started to freak out, a thought floated up into my consciousness, "Oh here we go again." And then I actually had the presence of mind to tell them, "Oh this happens all the time." For a moment, a was completely aware that I was dreaming. The problem is that I didn't even think to use that knowledge to my advantage. Though, as the elevator screamed down the shaft and fell toward its final destination, it started to slow, and by the time it reached the bottom, merely floated lightly into position to let us out. Maybe I did influence it...?

Either way, it wasn't the elevator that woke me up at 6:39 AM. The part with the masked men with guns that pounded their way into the house can be blamed for that one. As the other five ran down the hallway after my family and a couple of friends, one of them broke away and chased me into the kitchen. My zigzag pattern around the dining room table destroyed his ability to aim, so when I reached the hallway and turned around to face him, he picked up a pillow and blocked my view of the gun with it. At this point, not knowing where he was aiming or how to avoid getting shot, I started kicking and punching in a mad flurry of limbs and fists. And at 6:39 AM, that's how I woke up - with my legs kicking at the air and my hands rolled into tight little balls above my chest.

Sleep is far too tiring.

explodingdog <--- Something to look at.

Rant ahead. Proceed with caution.

People don't understand signs. That's the conclusions I've come to. Street signs, in particular. Apparently, 45MPH means 30MPH to most people on Tropicana. Why?? Can they not read? Is the number system too complex a concept for their feeble minds to grasp? Does Tropicana have some strange magnetic force beneath which causes certain cars to slow to unendurable speeds? I only whine about this now, because certain people like to be at school on time, and the number-illiterate always seem to thwart my efforts to do so. It's not limited to numbers either. In the Californian universe, STOP means SLOW DOWN. And every day, countless Californians vacantly make their way through town on the way to the dam, or the lake, or whatever else they're here for, and it's a rare sight to see one actually stop at a stop sign. Why? I'm just trying to understand the lack of driving abilities here. Does it come down to ineffective driver's training? Or is it (as I am more apt to suspect) sheer stupidity? I suppose that the flood of moronic behavior has extended to the ability to understand traffic signs. Errrrg.... Errg. Boom! (And this is where my head exploded. - I really need to calm down.)

...And you know what that penguin means, don't you, boys and girls? That's right! It's time for this little cat candle to crawl beneath the sheets and return to NightmareLand. Maybe I'll look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming. Cross your fingers for me.

The nights catch up with you after a while - 4 hours a night - 5 nights a week. It leaves you shuddering with exhaustion. I came home today and, after calling Tony, collapsed into the fetal position on my as yet unmade bed and fell asleep. An hour later, I can still feel the cold restlessness on my skin and the chills that surface from beneath my spine every other minute. Some nights, I sleep longer - maybe six hours or so. But my dreams are tiring. I'm running all night from anyone and everything, and I almost wake up breathless. At times, I think a coma might be nice.

No work for me today... mmm... tasty lack of responsibility.
Necessary emoticon: :)

"Your loyalty and kindness in our friendship never ceases to amaze me. You are like one of those tough doggies that grab on and don't let go, even when it hurts."

I saw this signed in someone's guestbook while amilessly trolling the wastes of the digital void. "...even when it hurts." That's an impressive sentence to find in a guestbook, don't you think? Clinging love. I used to think that I could live without that kind of attention, the kind of love and adoration that just envelope you, as though the other person couldn't exist without you. I used to run from it, looking back and hurling oranges... Maybe I felt more sure of myself then, maybe I just wanted to be alone. Either way, that's all changed now. At times, I feel alone in the most intimate company, and the people I pushed back don't run back and cling. I need that reassurance. I need someone to latch on and not let go... even when it hurts.

My steadily increasing apathy is beginning to scare me. It's as though two halves of me are battling it out for control of my actions: responsible good student girl vs. indifferent slacker girl. Both have their upsides, don't get me wrong. It's not as though I'm entirely on the side of one or the other. But still, it would be nice to go to school once in a while and be scholastically proud of myself. It's just that I can't seem to drag myself there. Indifferent slacker girl will not go willingly.

Mmm, leave it to the Onion to make one proud of her home state. I guess this means I can finally start using that tourist-cattle catcher I installed on the front of my car for trips to the Strip. Nice...

Nevada To Phase Out Laws Altogether
"Critics always argued that if we allowed gambling and prostitution, it was just a short leap to lawlessness," said Senate Majority Leader William Raggio (R-Washoe), flanked by a pair of armed strippers. "It didn't sink in for a while, but we eventually just sort of looked at each other and said, 'Why not?' Without laws, Nevada could offer a whole range of entertainment and lifestyle options never before imagined."

This past weekend was quite an uneventful one, one of those sets of days that just seem to evaporate before they're even over. I remember seeing a movie, but not one that particularly impressed me much. When that rolled off me, dragging two hours of my weekend with it, it was already Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I feel as though if I could just document everything I do - employ some camera crew, carry notepads to jot down itineraries - then maybe I'd be able to look back at such sets of days and realize that they weren't completely wasted. Who knows? Maybe I just forget everything... Then again, how depressing it would be if on surveying the notes on my days I realized that I actually didn't accomplish anything. I guess that's the problem with my life's main goal - happiness in the moment. That's something you can't hang on your wall to be proud of at a future date. It's more like a tall, hot fudge sundae that exists only for the moment to be appreciated right then and there... and then it melts.

My weekend melted.
And this Monday swept in with a khaki colored sky and dirt-soaked gusts and left me standing with a bowl of sandy ice cream soup.

Bitch | Feminist Response to Pop Culture
For the past hour or so, I've been reading through some of the most insightful criticisms of popculture that I've read in a long time - the (S)hitlist in particular.

"So what do girls want anyway?" (smack)

[np - Soul Coughing - Disseminated "Well it's a self-fulfilling prophecy."]
It's that time yet again, boys and girls. Let's have a chat with the all-knowing Magic Eight Ball!

Magic Eight Ball Question (MEBQ): Hey there, MEB. How's your night going?
Magic Eight Ball Answer (MEBA): Very doubtful.
MEBQ: Hmm, not well, huh? Same here. My night's turning out to be a pretty dull one. So what do you want to do?
MEBA: Very doubtful.
MEBQ: An omniscient ball of few words, I see.
MEBA: Cannot predict now.
MEBQ: Okay then. Do you think maybe I should go grab some tasty Smirnoff Ice to amuse myself with?
MEBA: Most likely.
MEBQ: You are wise indeed, little ball. Have you always been this wise?
MEBA: It is decidedly so.
MEBQ: You're not being as entertaining as I had hoped.
MEBA: Very doubtful.
MEBQ: Well, think whatever you want. I'm bored. I think I'll head off now to go fetch some drinkage.
MEBA: Cannot predict now.
MEBQ: What does that even mean? See, you're not even making sense. I'll talk to you later, Magic Eight Ball.
MEBA: Yes, definitely.

"You're all ears for good news, but when things are scratching at you, you're calling out the rescue team. No one can be trusted with your precious, precious faith." - Expert On October

Why does it seem that all good bands are doomed to disintegration? Meanwhile, classic rock bands have a cockroach-like invincibility. I suppose that everything walks or runs toward oblivion and gets there sooner or later. Unfortunately, it's the things that matter most that seem to rush by you toward the train. Ooh, nostalgia must have a choke hold on my brain today... Maybe I need to stop listening to all of these now defunct bands.

Tick tick tick tick tick....
(And Jenny makes herself stop staring at the clock.)

Ah, what a week. Work: selling the short time you have to live just to buy more of what they're selling. I swore that I was retired. I did my six months of capitalist slavery a couple years ago. Supposedly though (and get this), usually people have to work more than six months in their lives. Damn. What a tasty fog of delusion I was living in. My body has been protesting the new energy uprising required for work, though it's four a m and I'm still wide awake. Obviously it hasn't been protesting hard enough. [sigh] Maybe I should sleep. No one is around to talk to anyway, besides you. And you're not saying anything....

...And ahem.

So far on "The Adventures of the Mundane Brigade"....
{-cue action montage-}


03.04.02. Everyday I'm beginning to be more and more convinced that there is overwhelming evidence in favor of the idea that everything is relative. And I mean everything - morality, truth, pain, happiness, friendships, compromise. It all just depends on your point of view. So is it just convenient to say that at the end of the day all that matters is how you see yourself? Is it self-centered? No. Because maybe that's all there really is. Everything considered, everything is relative, and everyone is alone. So I guess even "self-centered" all depends on how you look at it. ...[And Jenny stops mid-babble to ask herself what the hell she's talking about. Not receiving a satisfactory answer, she continues.]... This can be much better explained I think, but I neither have the time nor energy nor compensation. So tell me I'm wrong if you know that I am. Then again, I'll probably just use it to illustrate my point about everything being relative. {END FILE}

02.26.02. I felt very college-girl today in my fading and overworn jeans and sandals, though by all accounts I shouldn't have. Lately, it's been a notable achievement for me to even drag myself to class. You can't deny that the universe has an ironic sense of humor, though. When I finally do force myself to go to class and be the college-girl that everyone thinks I am, my classes get cancelled. When I arrived at my math class this morning, it was the first time in about two weeks that I had actually shown up. There was one other girl there, all smiles and genuinely friendly (the kind of friendliness that isn't accompanied by forced and false politeness). Between her coffee-fueled giddy laughter she admitted that it was only the third class she had shown up for during the entire course's semester. I laughingly admitted the same, plus or minus a few classes. No sooner had she hand-copied my syllabus (which in her absences she had never received) when we looked around and realized that no one else had shown up. "Umm, was the class cancelled?" I asked in half jest. She laughed briefly before quickly realizing that I was probably right. ... And so with an hour and a half of boredom ahead of me, I proceeded to look over the book I still hadn't read for my next class. Sitting in the vestibule of the humanities building, flipping distractedly through yet another Fitzgerald tome, I realized yet again how tedious school had become to me. It all seems a joke without a punchline. With a mere two semesters left ahead of me, I can't seem to drag myself to my classes for even two weeks in a row.

And I have to ask myself whether my laxness is just a chronic case of senioritis or the manifestation of my realizing how pointless it all is. {END FILE} file list image

10.27.01. In cases such as this, it's important to show reverence for the power of the Magic Eight Ball. ...Oh, I suppose I should elaborate on what such cases I mean. Why, of course. It happened just yesterday that I was faced with a seemingly insurmountable decision. And as the struggle raged within me, I wondered, "Should I have Subway for lunch?" And then the thought struck me. A light shined down from the heavens, a choir "Ahhh"ed, and there was the Magic Eight Ball, gleaming in all its spherical perfection. Now, I would have thought that was kind of weird - you know, the whole thing about singing and light coming out of no where - but I was pretty hungry, so I didn't really care. I snatched up the wonder ball and asked, "Should I have Subway for lunch?" Reverently turning the ball upside down, I waited for my answer. "Outlook good," it told me. (More "Ahh"ing followed) And there I had it: the answer to my lunchtime dilemma. Indeed, I did as the Eight Ball suggested, and it was good.
For those of you that are quick to question the magnificent omniscience of the Magic Eight Ball, think again. Consider this: when asked, "Is the mighty and noble orange the king of traffic-deterring produce projectiles?" the Magic Eight Ball answered, "Without a doubt."
And you just can't deny how right it was.

And by the way, I added some things to 4 of 5 of the galleries for visuals and made some amendments to the attachment. I know how bored you get looking at the same old thing. {END FILE} file list

9.7.01. More than a week later, and I have yet to make good on my promises. Lying is fashionable. What can I say? I can say many things. But I'm learning that saying many things does a disservice to both the speaker and the listener. You might rather have me say nothing and hold fast to your idea of me. To you, lost reader, I am invisible, maleable, and completely yours for the making. But if I went too far, if I said those many things, you'd lose that power of invention. I would be what I have given you, and the many things I say cannot be unsaid with the power of your mind. In a literal sense, nothing I say here can make me concrete, make me visible. Five hundred paragraphs later, I'm still here, digital and non-existent, and you're still there, with the power to ignore me. But here, literal isn't everything. Five hundred paragraphs can't alter the physics of all this, but it can change minds. Maybe even five words could do the trick. So I'll be careful to keep my many things in my head. ...At least until I get bored with the safety of it again... {END FILE} image file

8.28.01. [Jenny stumbles in from stage left, looking side to side and holding her head in confusion] Oh, I have a webpage? I guess you couldn't tell by the way I've been treating it lately. I have a good excuse though. [Drumroll] I didn't feel like updating it. Yes yes. [Straightening up and adjusting various articles of clothing] The fact of the matter is that during the summer months my mind resembles more of a tasty strawberry gelatin than a functioning organ capable of intelligent thought. Just like the poster says, "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now." With the resumption of classes though, I've returned to once again bore you with my pretentious, near-masturbatory droning. So without further ado... [Curtsey and exit stage right] ... [Crickets chirping] ... [Jenny returns from stage right] Okay, well, I don't have anything to tell you about today or to give you in the way of files either. Maybe tomorrow. I'll be giving you some more visuals and adding on to the attachment soon, so... Come back then. Or don't. I don't really care. I'll keep talking either way. [Smile] Ta ta. [Exit stage right... again.] {END FILE}

6.8.01. My cousin's graduation tonight did nothing for my acute awareness of time's passage. There's a ticking in my room that I can only hear at night - staring at the ceiling, waiting for Sleep to show up. I was exhausted four hours ago, but my mind wasn't willing to stop. It wasn't willing to turn me over to the sadness of what I guess you could call my dreams. So I'm awake. At 3 : 4 3 A M. I've slept two and a half hours in the past two days. Why? I don't know. Maybe so that I can stay up and write to you, babbling to you about insomnia and time and all the inane profundities that a lack of sleep can conjure. I have no file to attach tonight (Morning? What day is it?), so I will face the bed once more and wait for Sleep to come. {END FILE}

6.3.01. I would apologize for my lengthy absence, but I realize it falls on deaf ears. We are separate, you and I. Though I try to assume otherwise. The more I read, the more I realize that I am just a shrill tiny insect voice among the roars of a society already too cynical to listen. I know, I know, I know too well the folly of assuming a place, the mistake of believing I'm something I'm not - like a writer, a beauty, a friend. Why then do I persist in vain to stretch myself to you or any other - stretching my digital spine along the bed of humanity's Great Separator? Time is only location, and location is only coincidence. ...But coincidence makes all the difference. So rather than apologize for my absence, I should wonder at my return. {END FILE} file image

4.29.01. I've decided to talk. Though I'm not sure why, because you never seem to answer. In any meaningful way, anyway. I was thinking yesterday that I wished I lived inside a book, and the omniscient narrator could describe me - and as I would be the heroine, would have to flatter even my faults with an all-embracing wit - could direct me, coddle me in words, choose my path, chain me to a destiny. Instead of floating around in silence, with no distanced voice to guide my way and show me who I am. Sometimes I think any voice will do. And then I realize how cowardly that is. Being afraid to choose means being afraid to live, and being directed means being controlled. Why you would care is what I still haven't decided. {END FILE} file file image

4.25.01. Nothing comes. It happens. People don't always talk. They don't always need to. Sometimes silence is a good thing. Sometimes, though, silence means something more insidious than peaceful reflection. {END FILE}

2.21.01. Bored again. I took some pictures a while ago while wandering through town in the rain (something I suggest everyone should do), and thought I might as well share some of the products of my exploits. Can wandering through town be considered an exploit? Well, either way, I was out of the house and away from the TV and the computer and the books - just outside in the rain taking pictures. It was nice. {END FILE} file image image image

2.19.01. Random thoughts for the day:
I was looking through some old stuff, and I found two delightful little HTML treats that I had completely forgotten about despite the ridiculous amount of time I spent on them. I'll tack them on to the bottom of this correspondence for your perusal.
Valentine's Day got me thinking about tradition and the role it plays in a person's individual life. I won't go into what I came up with in full, but I think I decided that, in general, tradition in the broadest sense is a wholly societal tool and when applied to an individual's circumstances only becomes burdensome and useless. It is only when one creates his or her own traditions that the tool becomes a plausible and imaginative way to experience nostalgia. No use going into specifics right now, because things like that are better saved for an essay environment.
Finally, I was thinking of perhaps sending these correspondences and their attachments in a more aesthetic way. Maybe some eye-candy would make my ramblings to you more palatable. Time will tell if I have the willpower to bring the idea to fruition. Until next time, here are those folders I mentioned... {END FILE} forgotten folder forgotten folder

1.13.01. Updates come slowly these days. I think it has to do with the fact that time moves too quickly and life has slowed down immensely. The lightning-fast monotonous days don't really allow time for writing to you, just for sitting and staring. Everything else is too strenuous. ...Damn, I need to wake up. {END FILE} image file

10.13.00. I wonder why Friday the 13th is considered special. Did the movies make that happen or did the movies happen because of it? You have to love misunderstood cause and effect. In fact, where did the unluckiness of 13 come from in anything? I recently stayed on the fourteenth floor of a hotel, which of course is actually the thirteenth but because of communal superstition elevator makers refuse to acknowledge it as such. And yet I'm still alive. Now, is that because the architect and elevator maker labeled my floor as 14 instead of 13? Or does the superstition's own falsity provide that action with the credibility it depends on? Floor 14. When you think of it, doesn't that make all the floors above it one number higher than they actually are? Maybe all this time we've been hiding from the thirteenth floor, our number changing has saved us from a floor that actually WAS unlucky. That deadly 17th floor - maybe luckily, because we've avoided thirteen, we mislabeled it as 18 and confused the gods of luck. "Oh no, I've lost track of what floor they're actually on. Ah, to hell with it." Aren't we the inadvertently sly ones? Cause and effect. Does any of it actually make sense? Maybe all our connections and links that make the world seem ordered and sane are merely tiny little superstitions. No, we don't remain on the ground because of gravity; it's something different entirely. But keep thinking it. It'll make you feel safe. {END FILE} file file

10.3.00. Here's something that might interest you. One of my professors today said that, "You can't be a poet and be tied to the mundane." For some reason it struck me. But only for an instant, because I returned to my margin doodles. {END FILE} image

9.21.00. I wonder why any of us think anyone cares about our babble. It's not hard to find. Everywhere you turn, there's someone trying to make a point about this or that to anybody who'll listen, like we're trying to convince walls of the virtues of Marxism. And yet we keep babbling. It'd be just as easy to write this on a piece of paper and shove it into my desk (like so many other pieces of myself), but I write it here, maybe hoping that you will take notice and nod yes. I suppose at least I'm lucky, because I realize how insignificant this all is. I recognize the pointlessness of this. No delusions of grandeur here. When you finally accept how mundane you are, the struggle becomes easier. Apathy is the best weapon. And so I babble to you. Babble. Babble.
Cows painting ourselves blue. {END FILE}

7.26.00. You won't understand this, but I need to say it.
I know it's a sad thing, but everyone has choices. Sometimes it's just scary enough to make everything feel normal, as if time slowed down and let you see all the million things you've ever done wrong. In that tiny moment, all the enormity of your choices - past, present, and future - sit in your lap like an animal needing attention. I've learned all about my future, sitting in the present, stroking the wimpering animal of my past. It's not a happy thing. It's not an easy thing to realize you only have this life, this day to be lived only once. Try telling that to your past. All the days you spent in bed waiting for the next, waiting for something interesting, waiting for a day it would all be different. Try telling your past how not much has changed. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that you're using your life the best way you can. And you can always just sit and fawn over your misspent mistakes waiting for tomorrow. It's a sad thing that everyone has choices. It's makes it that much more difficult to look your past in the eye. That's what I know about time: the screeching halt of realization is followed by the speeding jolt of your life resuming, and it's all about regret. It's all about the sadness of having a choice.
And I know I've said nothing, but we all have our faults. {END FILE} file image image

5.17.00. Nothing profound for you tonight, just life's smallness conveyed through the chatter of an insomniac mind. I've been asleep since school ended a week ago. Everything was a haze of undetermined paths and decisions. It all made me so very tired. And so now I'm asleep. I know the insomia would seem out of place, but it's not. Consider it a dream in which you try in vain to sleep. That's me. One, fifty-two, a, m. The sprinklers are hissing outside my window. A constant hum falls from the fan above. The incessant sound of quiet pushing against my shoulders... I went for a walk tonight in the impossibly cold May air and watched the moon slide across the sky. A hole punched in the black blanket sky. We're all just nighttime puppets dangling in our lifelong dreams or nightmares or haze. Time to return to mine. {END FILE} file image

4.24.00. I find myself recognizing all these new truths and not being able to voice them. I can actually feel the weight of it on my mind. All of this speech around me is electric shock therapy. I've numbed my mind to it finally, but it's a regular and general annoyance. Words are so empty. I've given up on their usefulness. Laugh, laugh, joke, bitch, "and we all have so much to say," and quiet, inevitably fist-beaten by noise. I'm sick from it. I can only see now: that airport sign on the side of the road backdropped by storm clouds. That is what I notice now. The very sight of green and gray and not the words that scream its meaning. {END FILE} image image image file list

2.28.00. My fourth correspondence to you and the comfortable ease of interesting ideas is still missing. What is it about a blank sheet of paper that is so daunting? Shouldn't the absence of restrictions spur the imagination to the farthest of its reaches? No. The matter is quite the contrary. When you reach a turn in an unfamiliar road, are you instantly more empowered? No, you sit confused, lost, with too many possibilities for your desired odds for success. And so it is with a blank page. If you can write anything, one option is perfection. And why would you choose to write anything but perfection if you are allowed to? After a while though, you begin to realize that nothing will ever be good enough, so you give up hope to write anything. This is life, on page. It is no different. When you have a world of possibility in front of you, you sit dumbfounded and undecisive. Why choose this, if that might be better? I'd rather be told, than have to decide. Freedom is so paralysing. {END FILE} image file

2.6.00. We are all so amazingly different. The girl in front of me in my astronomy class was drunk during another final. Why should I care? Why do I eavesdrop these conversations? I'm so quick to make judgements, believing I'm so right in assuming. But maybe I am, I'll never know these people anyway, so who's to say I'm wrong? All I do is gather information: clothing choice, body carriage, eavesdropped conversations about who did what and who and all means of ignorance. Paranoia, that has to be it. I can see the world dissentegrating before me. The guy that walked past my desk as I began to take my final carried himself like he'd been hurt before, apprehensive from experience and proud for distance. How do I think I can see a person's history in their walk? Can I? Years of observing - all I ever did, what I do most now. I have this habit of regressing people with my mind. With each step they take, they become 5 years younger. Yeah, I'm right about that guy. He never really fit into one group; he was/is very creative and maybe, no definitely, a little quirky and odd. He can't initially be himself with people, because he's too worried about making people like him. The only bad thing is, I'll never know. I can assume so much about people, but then they walk out of the room. No, I'm in a hallway, just watching them go by. They just keep walking, and I just keep assuming. The two guys in front of me, for instance, talk about movies and girls. They are basic guys, uninterested in dressing to be part of a certain group. No girlfriends, but occasionally a date, maybe parties quite often. They don't have time for life's aesthetics. They know what they like and move on. Like most of these people. Or maybe I'm just assuming again. {END FILE} image

2.1.00. There's a knife in my head. Doesn't stop me. I can complain and carry on, but I'm still awake and reading. I've tried to pull it out, but it's caught on something - stuck, inextricably embedded in my skull. I keep the handle shiny and clean, you know, for appearances and all, but everyone always asks if I'm okay. I'm okay. It doesn't stop me. I have things to do after all. Besides, I put it there in the first place. It's more exciting this way. The hours used to pass so quickly and uneventfully, but since I've done it, I hear every tick of time. Especially at night. Or morning. 3:52 AM. I'd be sleeping otherwise, and what good does that do anyone... yes. What good does that do? ...I'd actually like to know. Maybe just for a night. But like I said - it's stuck. I suppose I'll get back to reading, and hope it just falls out. {END FILE}


1.31.00. Driving to school today, I came to stop behind a dusty green sport utility vehicle. It was one of those kinds of cars I normally wouldn't give a second glance to on account of their over-abundance. The license plate on this one caught my eye and held it there. Around the plate was one of those borders people buy to make their mass-produced transport more personal and unique or sometimes just neglect to remove after leaving the car lot. The border was an aged beige color, and it was cracked a little in places. Along the bottom it read, "I love MY SIBERIAN HUSKY." Of course, in place of the word love was a red heart, or what might have once been one. Now there was only the raised outline of a heart, colored on the bottom by a pink ghost tone. Sitting in my car staring at this border, I began to fixate on this dog and on the woman inside, who sat in the front seat tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and looking quickly left and right so that her ponytail twitched like a cat's tail. I saw the dog's death resulting in the woman's nervous nature. Maybe it was hit by a car that just kept going. I considered that maybe it simply disappeared one day on an outing into the desert. Maybe it wasn't gone at all. It could have been home, waiting by the front door, obedient and loyal, unlike all the men who hadn't had the nerve to put a ring on that nervous, tapping finger. The light turned green, and the SUV sped forward. I slowly pushed the pedal and followed, now concentrating on the road and the speeding boxes on it.

It's sad. I know why we don't think about things like this. If we realized how close we came to people everyday and how many meaningful relationships that could change our lives are just brushed aside, we'd all fall to the ground in our tiny circles... paralyzed. We're all so alone. Moreso than we think.
I've thrown some ideas into these files for you. You might not find them very interesting, but I thought if I sent you some goodies with these writings, it might make them seem more worthwhile. {END FILE} file file file