moving

this is now hosted at nomorefuckingdjs.com/blog/. please update your bookmarks.

bury myself under a blue sky

This weekend has been amazing. Lily was in town, and with her she always brings the most delicious chaos. Friday was our day to each other, and the plan this time was to go to San Francisco for absolutely no reason. So we packed Seamus into the car after getting all dolled up and off we were.

We ended up at a burlesque show, which was INCREDIBLE! All the people were incredibly skilled, and it was really campy and fun. I had a great time and totally want to go again (it’s at DNALounge every two weeks- Hubba Hubba Revue. Look it up!). We ran into Noel there, who was looking gorgeous as usual, and after getting lost trying to find a 24 hour place near the wharf, we headed to this place called Sparky’s. Lily is going veggie, but she lapsed when Noel insisted that she order a gigantic burger. Mmmm. Cow.

And then we went to Ocean beach and played like we were children. It was 5 AM.

God, it was wonderful. I hadn’t felt as carefree as I did in a really long time. We looked for shells, played in the caves near the Cliffhouse, took silly pictures (of course) and just, didn’t care about anything in the world for that one beautiful hour.

The next night was Andy’s 21st. Luigi showed up, as did Isis, Lily, and Shadowcat (with a guest appearance by Mortalia). It was supposed to be this big thing, and it turned out a lot of people canceled. But Isis, Lily and I are all Mobile Party Units, so everyone had a really good time. And I… haven’t slept since.

My sneaking suspicion came true. We didn’t get approved for the new place… which means I’ve been trolling the craigslist rental section all weekend (when I wasn’t out being wild and crazy). So now we have to go through all the trouble all over again. I’m waiting on my second viewing as i write this post, with as many as I can in the week to follow… and I can’t get in touch with Mortalia for some reason. FRUSTRATING. Everything frustrates me. It’s a big broiling fireball of frustration. Frustration and insomnia, each fueling the other.

I think my reward to myself for getting into a place is going to be a redesign of this blog.

“hallo?”

yet another 4 am blog post.

I was on facebook today, and I found out my stepmother has registered a profile. My first reaction was to friend her; I don’t speak with that side of the family nearly as much as I should, and it would probably help as the people that I tend to keep in touch with the most are the ones that are the most tech-savvy.

But then I balked. “Do I really want my stepmother reading all the dumb stuff I do on the Internet?” It’s the same reason I don’t make a big deal out of my net presence at work- it’s irrelevant to my duties and there’s the possibility that someone would get offended by the things I say, considering that a great deal of what I say is influenced by people who would not be allowed to do the work I do (you know who you are, and you know I’m telling the truth). Which got me thinking about La Femme Nikita for some reason. Upon my first viewing of that movie, I got into a discourse with the interloper I was viewing it with about the concepts contained therein. “I could never live a life like that,” I said. “To be constantly lying to the person I loved, I couldn’t do that.” In typical fashion, he smiled and responded “You couldn’t live a lie? Go by a false name? [All the other things I do on a daily basis]?”, and I smiled, pressing my head into his sternum. He made a fair point.

Or did he?

In a lot of ways it could be argued that everyone lives a lie in the professional world. We go in, and we’re not ourselves, we’re Sally in Accounting or Barry the Supervisor. The level of discourse in most jobs, at least in my experience, has been one revolving around the work one does and occasional small talk about television shows. We don’t talk about the topics that really matter to us; we have real friends for that. In my current position especially, there are a lot of topics that we don’t and in some cases cannot discuss. Even the merest hint of an unprofessional topic, I’ve found, can lead to a completely blown out of proportion social gaffe. Add that to the sheer variety of new people I encounter on literally a daily basis, and you have an environment in which you construct a parapersonality to interface with people that fall into Categorization: Coworker.

The vast majority of us do it with our families, too. “No, dad, I’m doing fine…” We don’t introduce them to our partners until it’s absolutely necessary. We, in the vast majority of cases, keep it to the same topics as we do our coworkers, trying desperately to sanitize our lives for a vast panoply of reasons. Some of us have discourses with our parents wherein we discuss everything, from sex partners to bowel movements, but those are definitely the exception and not the rule. It’s strange though; we came from these people. In theory, they raised us, and in so doing provided most of the nurture and all of the nature that causes us to take the actions we take. Why are we then so afraid of their disapproval that we hide anything that we fear may not live up to their standards for us?

So that leaves us with only one outlet to talk openly about the rest of our lives: friends and complete strangers on the Internet. For me, though, and this is going to sound like a betrayal of everything I have ever said for the last five days at least, sometimes I just have to see people. So, say, relying on Net strangers for relationship advice or talking about violent films or, let’s put it out there, the dumb shit you put up with at work, feels empty. for one thing, it’s just text. I like hearing a voice, listening for the shifts in modulation, monitoring posture and body language. The reason a lot of people are able to have so many simultaneous IM conversations is because the individual stimulus of each conversation is pared down drastically. So, we have frank and honest discourse with our friends, and sometimes it takes people years to warm up to each other and become confidants. It’s one of the reasons I value my friendships with Kieran and Severus so much; in knowing them the span of a year I’ve already become more candid with them than I have people I’ve known for a decade. Isis, Edith, Andy, Emma, Lily and Kiyoshi are all great and trusted confidants, but, with the exception of Lily, it took years to get to the level of candor that we all share. Er. Individually.

Unfortunately, we also tend to want to trust our lovers. Many of whom, well, turn out to be untrustworthy. I went through a phase after reading the autobiography of Andy Warhol that I was going to be completely upfront with people about all of my flaws. That got me nowhere fast… but that’s all the detail I’m giving. I find myself disclosing less and less information with each one that burns me.

So, I suppose Mister Six was right when he dubbed me what he did. If nondisclosure of information is tantamount to perjury, I lie all the damn time. So do we all. So give me a haircut, holster my handgun and call me Joséphine. I’ll meet you at “L’Champs Élysée. Une heure.“

here comes the new boss

“the way they look, they were made to let each other down”.

In the White House, George Bush and Larry King are winding down an interview with stale jokes. “[The White House] is a terrific house for hide and seek” is a metaphor for the last eight years in many, many ways.

It’s weird, the change in administration that we’ll be watching in a week. We’re going from someone who basically stole the office of President twice in a row while reviled by the intelligentsia to someone who charmed their way in with the promise of complete change… who is already starting to back away from campaign promises. I staunchly supported Obama for president, but that was mostly due to the fact that i didn’t want some PTSD nutjob and a wolf-hunting ditz in charge of the show. Like Al Gore before him, he was a lesser of two evils vote, who at least had a semblance of eloquence (already an improvement over the master of malapropisms currently in office at the time). There are three problems that could severely affect Obama’s presidency:

The epic nature of his campaign

what he’s walking into

and the aforementioned tendency to backpedal.

It’s funny, with that story of his, he could be the next kennedy… but maybe he’ll just be another link in the chain.

a pain that i am used to

better the devil you know than the devil you don’t… except that the devil you know is so god damned frustrating.

I haven’t slept in three days. maybe that’s affecting the way I deal with things.

“Horus is the Lord of Force and Fire. He levels and destroys, in order to rebuild anew. Horus, like all children, wants to play. He can’t be fought – he’s younger, faster and stronger than all of us and always will be because he is a powerful, living archetype. He does not like restriction and if restricted will explode in our faces. He is the Spirit of the Age and he likes to play with fire. “

I love the way you put me in the big house.

truce.

you call it over and i call you psycho.

significant others. just say we were lovers and we’ll call it even.

i am the ground zero ex friend you ordered, disguised as a hero to get past your borders. i know when i’m wanted. i’ll leave when you ask me to. mind my own business and speak when i’m spoken to. i am the tower around which you orbited, i am not proud i am just taking orders. i fall to the ground within hours of impact i hit back when hit

and attack when attacked.

and i am an accident waiting to happen, i’m laughing like mad as your strangle the captain, my place may be taken but make no mistake. from a little black box i can say without shame, that you’ve lost. that you’ve lost. do you know what you’ve lost?

so

take whatever you like. i’ll strike like the states on fire. you won’t sleep very tight, no hiding no safe cover. make your bed now lie, just like you always do. you can fake it for the papers, but i’m on to you.

i may look young but your game is prepubescent

if I deleted my Myspace account, would I be truly happy?

Really, I’m just counting down the days until we’re all uploaded into lovely great machines, our brain patterns encoded onto whichever storage format in fashion at the moment, to live immortal lives of endless entertaining. It’d actually be a giant bore after a while (cross-reference this post with All Men Are Mortal, by Simone de Beauvoir, which describes some of the perils of living forever), but christ, it’d be better than this.

I hate my body. And I don’t say that in the sense of “I have a weight problem”, or “I’m dissatisfied with my appearance” or all of the other things people complain about (“I have really bad breath in the morning”). I just genuinely despise having to look after this sack of flesh that provides me with quite frankly, nothing but distractions. I already think of my mind as a hard drive, why can’t it just be on one?

I actually had this major identity crisis right around the time i was breaking up with Mihoshi, which basically centered around the fact that I really, really, really wanted to be a robot. It had to do with more than that and it was on a variety of levels, mainly religious (what church do you go to if you’re a nanomachine consciousness?) but that’s what it basically boiled down to. I think being in a robot body, a la Ghost In The Shell, or just being able to switch out, like in Ready To Wear by Vonnegut would basically solve all my problems. it would set up a whole set of new ones- those two examples are filled with them- but I definitely think it’d be better than being trapped in the same hardware for your whole existence.

Plus, it would be really convenient not to have to sleep. I didn’t sleep tonight/last night and I’m leaving in fifteen to go to work. I’ll pound a rockstar on my lunch break, I guess. C’est la vie.

the old cement bridge

I think I’m becoming an animal. The longer I go without a stable place to live, the more chaos I’m surrounded by, the more ruthless I become. And there’s that little voice, in the back of your mind, steadily growing louder, saying, it shouldn’t be like this, things have to get better, jesus christ it’s fucking cold… “It’s changing me, I am becoming…”. My job and access to the internet are the only things keeping me sane. It’s getting to the point where I’m obsessed with being on time and casing cafes for outlets as soon as I get inside… does that mean I have a problem? Arbeit und Internet macht frei, I guess… I think I’m obsessed with communication and information because deep down, I want to know that there’s someone out there for which Everything Is Going Okay- and I don’t want that someone to be screwing people over in the process.

Which is, of course, impossible. We all fuck somebody over in our own little ways, even if we don’t want to- hell, I’m more than sure that something I’m wearing was produced using some sort of sweatshop or at the very least underpaid labor. I rear ended someone the other day and basically ruined a lot of people’s night. I didn’t do it on purpose, of course; but I made a mistake and it ended up causing stupid bullshit. (At least I didn’t cave in somebody’s skull, like some people [god, look at that photo. what a douche].)

It’s a law of diminishing returns, isn’t it? I don’t actively try and fuck people over, that makes me a good person. Or something. I save animals, donate to the appropriate charities, support political causes and social justice, try not to support the atrocity exhibition of the fashion industry… but at the same time, I know, somehow, on this incredibly primal level, that I am causing someone to suffer right now. Somewhere, in the world, my actions are causing a problem for someone I probably don’t even know. Yours, too. Buy a pair of shoes? Congratulations, you’ve just used a six year old in Indonesia. Take a shower? Well, if you live in California, you are causing a lot of people a lot of problems. Do a line of coke? Someone just died- right at this very moment, most likely- and it’s ever so slightly your fault.

And here I am, actively inconveniencing people in order to have places to sleep where I don’t have to chain my access gear to myself.

I’ll make it up to all of you.

Somehow.

press flesh

and in your suffering, know that i have betrayed you.

I feel like some avatar of tlazoteotl. born to face corruption and vice and sin and filth. to take the shit of the world and make it into gold, forgive it into functioning. that was 2008. degradation, guilt, detritus and amazement… take all of it, they said. eat it, anoint yourself in it, let it surround you, feel it under your skin and nails. and make it into silk and gold. make atrocities into beauty. Slaughterhouse Five Six Sex.

i am the patron saint of adulterers.

i don’t even know what i am anymore.

The thing is I can see it. I can see the end of all this. It’s right there and jjjuuuuussst out of my reach. It’s right there, and it’s an empty room, smelling faintly of paint… somewhere new for boys to make me miserable, somewhere new to hide my face. I’ve trained myself not to care- so nothing can stop me now, right?

it comes down to this. shaking in the cold. shaking in the warmth. seeing the untermenschen of society and knowing that i’m one step away. “setting the bar low means a whole new kind of horror when things are worse than i thought”.

hate me. i deserve everything i get.

contents of my bag and various items about my person

• Targus bag, containing
  • Toshiba Satellite notebook computer running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)
  • Power cord/AC adapter
  • Two (2) data cables
  • One Sony DSC600 digital camera
  • Copy of High Rise by J.G. Ballard
  • Copy of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Copy of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
  • One pack of Marlboro Smooths, containing
    • Six- wait, five- cigarettes
  • Two lighters
  • One C.K. McClatchy badge, with classroom key attached
  • One overnight kit, containing
    • One toothbrush
    • Aquafresh travel toothpaste
    • Clean and Clear travel facewash
    • Givenchy Very Irresistable deoderant
    • One comb
  • Samsung YP-UI MP3 Player (1gig)
  • Headphones
  • Assorted Geology 310 handouts (4)
  • Burts Bees lip balm
  • Check stub
  • Map of C.K. McClatchy High School
  • Schedules for Sacramento RT routes 9/10, 14, 21, 55, 67/68
  • prescription for glasses/contacts (-225 in both eyes)
• Wallet, containing
  • CA Driver License
  • CA State ID
  • Los Rios Access Pass
  • Debit Card
  • Credit Card
  • Safeway Club Card
  • Paypal Card
  • Miscellaneous receipts (5)
• Motorola mobile phone (oh, the shame and castigation)
• Keys
• Chinese box
  • Enigma
    • Mystery