amfmampmadbc

Berkeley, California Oct 07

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:59:51 GMT

      A longing for the company of my family and old companions, coupled with some amount of disappointment in myself for not keeping in better touch, has triggered me to start keeping this journal again.
     A brief update:
     I'm financially poor as any man could ever hope to be, but the freedoms I've gained by forfeiting the comforts provided by the 9-5 lifestyle which anchors one to one place have made it very worth it. Still, as in any life, the joys are soon followed by pains and the pains then by joy. I've seen a lot of this country. I'm fairly certain I'll never really settle down and get a job. I may work on farms once the season rolls around, but I've been stricken by wanderlust and can no longer stay in any one place too long.I've considered my options in rejoining the likes of society, but the intellectual route, the wage slave route, none of it appeals to me as much as sleeping under the stars as a roaming vagrant. I still have a lot to figure out. My lifestyle is flawed.

I love country music

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:36:10 GMT

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:04:09 GMT

Love life.

Novel's taking on life of its own.

Home on an island.

Mozart, driving, the sea.

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:12:58 GMT

Terrence's solutions are always questionable, but his presentation and perspective are stunning:
Culture is your operating system
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ctjNqQPnAk8

McLuhan is another one. The man essentially predicted the rise of user generated websites before the internet was in its earliest stages.

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:47:56 GMT

It's a

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:49:03 GMT

I've been experiencing, with simultaniety, multiple phenomenoms of consciousness. Last night, for instance, I had a deja vu in the midst of a lucid dream that ended in a false awakening. It was incredible.

In general, I've just been experiencing a lot of lucid dreams, false awakenings, and false awakenings culminating in second false awakenings.

I don't want to be here anymore: School. John Taylor Gatto on edumucation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ .

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:00:40 GMT

YEAH

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:21:04 GMT

The term "Larry David Moment" should be more pervasive in the English language. I hate pop culture references, but it would solve awkward coincidences pretty fast. Goddamn, do I hate Larry David moments.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:04:50 GMT

I tortured mice studiously.

This girl has eureka's castle tattoos and I love her.

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:12:31 GMT

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:55:09 GMT

'Twas a good night for sign guessing.

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:54:00 GMT

Migraines. rrrrreeeeeeeeeee!!!

Another day in which I accomplish nothing. I have to go be social. It's been weeks.

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:31:52 GMT

"There's no such thing as life without bloodshed," McCarthy says philosophically. "I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."

Droste Effect

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:32:34 GMT

I want to write a series of short stories like this:

The only short story like that that I can think of is one from "The Stinky Cheese Man".
Vonnegut includes the recursive "yon yonson" song in slaughterhouse five. He also uses recursion in some poem about reproduction in Galapagos.

Does anyone know what this is called when applied to literature? It's not recursion, exactly, because the droste effect entails some exponential decrease in whatever is embedded.

March 06

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:01:29 GMT

School

So, it turns out that I'm doing biological experiments on none other than my hallucinogenic enemy Salvia or, as she prefers to be called, Salvinorum A. Turns out it's a kappa opioid inhibitor.

Writing

In more coherent news, I'm happier recently. I wrote a slew of very short stories recently and I've begun storyboarding this novel.

I'm really quite proud of my progression as a writer. I shed a lot of misconceptions about writing, but I still have more growing to do. Complacency kills.

Recommendation

See Babel if you haven't already. It's nearly flawless. If you have seen it and you still don't know why it is so named, think about it, because the title adds more to any piece of literature or film than any I can think of. It really puts the film in context. This is truly a beautiful piece of art.

Plans

So little college left! I'm losing motivation, and I just have to convince myself to grind it out. And then it is onward into the world or into the mind. Whether I write a book at home or while travelling, or travel and then write a book, I'll always have a safety net and if both plans fall through then I'll certainly live. I will never settle for the 9-5, at least having never said in truth that I'd tried otherwise.

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:35:05 GMT

After reading many of the past entrants' stories, I somehow doubt that I will place. That's alright. I'm 21. They've been at it a lot longer. I have plenty of time to work on my craft. I'm still proud of it. It's a milestone. But at the same time, I'm almost ashamed to have written it.

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:34:29 GMT

My high school livejournal is little more than a catalog of hatred. I cannot believe how apt I was to inflict suffering or how much I suffered.

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:47:04 GMT

Beyond art, he says, he lives for what he calls "mini-epiphanies -- very nice events that last maybe 10 minutes."

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:40:51 GMT

The internet is not a truck.

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:46:13 GMT

Obama. Everything he says is oblique and elementary. He's a politician to the bone, image builder, sympathizer to the common-man, purportedly desires inclusion of the people---carries us on his back to (insert slogan here): a "TIME FOR CHANGE". But what is change? Change appeals to all. It appeals to all but reveals nothing! Hooray! Change!

However, this plan might backfire... he might lose the vote of those who want to stay exactly the same.

I wish there was a king so that we didn't have to futilely worry about this shit, so there was no illusionary promised degree of control--only acceptance of what is unfortunate yet true.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:25:46 GMT

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. - Mark Twain

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:18:21 GMT

I hate talking to people who think and want to learn, solve and do like me and I say yeah yes and they say yeah yes that's good that's the way it should be and we move on to a relatively inane topic, and though we do so regrettably we do so willingly, because we know that is necessary, and it is necessary because of that one unsaid thing, that one very important omission.

Boo Bop

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:24:25 GMT

I was watching late night television in Vermont, and these women were advertising mechanized Dildos. So, it has begun!? An era of robot loving.

Everyone's a voyeur now, including myself. The magazine racks are too colorful not to be. Did you know that Paul Newman has a brain tumor? Someone is hired to ruthlessly hunt for pictures of a dying man, so we can watch him die.

Taco bell's color scheme is designed to make you feel happy. The seats are designed to make you want to leave. The tacos are designed to cure incontinence.

I knew a kid who served in Iraq. He told me that he killed seven year old girls. The muscles under his eye were twitching. He said, it's you or them, if you're told to do it you do it, he'd done some bad things, and politicians are mob bosses. That was at CCE. He was one of the only real people there. Anyone who aggrandized themselves for their "selfless" actions on that job were the biggest assholes. Congratulations, you answered an advertisement that said, "help save the world FOR CASH" and now you're doing it. But you're smart enough to realize that you're a beggar and a con-artist. You knock on doors and ask for money. And then 52% of that money goes to you. The rest of it to overhead and your boss and the lobbyist--the lobbyist who never changes any goddamn legislation. Anyway, it's all in the corrupt methods. You knock on someone's door and say "your money goes toward public education". But what you don't tell that person is that you, the person standing at their door for all of two minutes, are the educator, and your beggary is deemed education. And then you say, "give me the money." That was found during my quest for a job that was not abrasive to my moral standards.

The mail room isn't so bad. I deliver mail. That's something to feel good about.

So what do we do to change things? My hands are in my pockets. I can't do anything. That's the way I feel.

Somebody fucked on my bed and left a used condom in my dresser.

These dogs fighting outside sound terrific with the overhead flight pattern going.

Now it's quiet, except for the ceiling fan.

I need to get the fuck out of here: America.

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:54:41 GMT

Ah, purity
And the purists,
Talking,
Talking of hearts that are pure
And an art that is pure
And an earth that is not at the moment but should be
Some day
Pure.

Talking, talking,
Talking in what would appear to be total ignorance
Of the following simple, pure fact about purity: purity
Is as rare in its purest state
As the absolute vacuum
Of which the phycicist speaks in his classroom when somebody
Knowing too much suggests that all falling bodies
Do not fall equally fast.
"But they would," the physicist says, "they would if you took
All the air away."

"All the air away?
Who would take all the air away? Is there anyone,
Anyone present, anyone living,
Who would make such an issue of purity that he'd take
All the air away?
I must meet him.
I must shake his pure white hand and say to him, "Blast!
If you take all the air away, you'll fall equally fast."

Reed Whittemore

Dell Pianos CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:13:33 GMT

I've been in the computer lab for far too long. This was no way to spend the evening, morning and afternoon.

Though deprived of sleep, I am finally fucking finished.

Only six more months.

Exciting things are in the works.