One year staggered stopgap for Luc papa bro Forget

Haven't remembered enough. Haven't felt grief enough. Need to plumb further. Ah. Luc was going to be a plumber. Or a pipe-fitter. Or a geo-thermal technician. He even studied goddamn algebra toward that end. He said, to a friend, on having moved to Victoria: "One day you'll see my name in lights."

Audio records. A lazy day with Luc and Fidel. Nothing much happens. So retrospectively sweet.

"Doe, a dear..." fading into room ambiance, AC hiss and spring sounds. The spaces and silence, and mellow Luc in papa mode, gently tempering the Fidel. So much happens in a lazy afternoon, with the novelty of Luc and his little son over at my place on Creek Street, such a funny confluence, Uncle Jonathan sleeping in the bedroom - putting Ratatouille, the movie Fidel wants to watch, on what must seem forever hold in kid-time. We did watch it later though, I remember. And Luc cried, moved by how beautiful a movie it was, respectful to food, and animals, and children, and all these other things he came up with, and I just howled with delight at the scene where the adolescent dishwasher masquerading as genius chef gets his first ever wine-buzz.

Around then, Luc would sleep under my bed sometimes, the high one, making a makeshift lower bunk on the floor out of my extra blankets and quilts - because the alternative was living out of his car. He was tough, he could endure a lot, but he didn't have to, I saw to that as much as I could, because he trusted me in a pure and perfect way. Maybe that's how the bond cemented, but there's so much more, don't know if I'll ever know where to begin. He gave me the gift of feeling useful, and able to comfort someone in need. It was a pleasure. So unique, when I'm in that role. I would play Aphex Twin ambient tracks at night to sooth us to sleep, or sometimes we would listen to the chill stream he introduced me to, soma. While we talked deep and shallow and every place in between. But the silliness was the best, because it was the most like music, when words played hard and dissolved into melodies and box beats.

Yes, it was a bromance. We had some cuddles, the only guy I could ever do that with, one of my fondest memories, on the porch of the edgewood house when it was Rhi's, after a blissful day with debauched serrations, booze and barbecue, cider and potluck, kids and family that's not family, when you can feel a bit looser but still close, and that was the afternoon we wrote "Trumpet Borus" together, about his boy. And then stumbled down from Gyro that night, and ended up sleeping on the porch together.

Step-mom Lata was going to put him in her will. But he died first. So many Forgets and Thibaults were dying around then, Luc said his people were dropping like flies. That's how I met Luc, not the very first time, but the origin of our true meeting, in that we shared the intensity that would become the norm, when he came over to my place, after his uncle "dragged himself into his cabin and blew his head off." Because I asked Luc how he did it, his favourite uncle who used to smoke hash with young Luc while they worked on muscle cars. I don't know how much of this information is necessary to whatever this is, but I'm going to spend a little time swaying to and fro on whatever twig I end up on. And we dealt with it somehow. Drink and song - back in those days, the drink wasn't necessarily totally evil. I nudged him into blowing off work that morning, I had to coach him through the phonecall, not to cave to his boss and "suck it up".

Later on, an uncle on his mother's side. It was a crazy day for Luc, lots of resonance I never recognized, still don't. Luc was on a trip. I don't know how much was real, but I'd never heard him rant like that before. This strange fractured picture of organized crime. Deep pain mixed up in paranoid metaphors that could have been true, I don't know. I was distracted by the black paint Luc squirted out of a tube into my eye after draining a bottle of whisky on the picnic table at Taghum beach, around 4pm. I don't know what that was about, but it's gone down as legend, how Rose had to drive over to pick us up. 

Then Luc's dad with the brain aneurysm. But at least he got to meet his grandson, the one time, when we went to the family reunion in Grand Prairie and took pictures together in classic cars.

Still, Luc could be light and joyful like no one else I've known, and at least graze against the state that I dunno if I've ever reached, and reflect it back at me, so I could enjoy it through a bit of osmosis. He had a big window inside him, he could let a lot of light through. But I loved the frame even moreso. I loved how he framed everything. The goofy guy, the gentle man, baring wounds quietly, was it a rail-trip to death for him? I don't think so, accidents happen, they're cruel if there's any morality to it, and infuriatingly, there isn't, that's what I'm left with.

It's still too big for me to take on, the issue of a friend like that, like no one else, having died. It's sinking in over what are now multiple years, how there's never gonna be another person that will make me feel like he did, just being in his company. I'm still far from rising to the occasion and typing a fitting tribute, much less making a song out of it. That would take a kind of heroism I don't have. I don't know what that says, just that it's too huge for me, it's blinding. Somehow, unconsciously, I ignore the enormity of it, and go about like it's on some other plane, to an irrelevant degree. Can't make it relevant, can only feel it as cryptic mystic transcendental loss... and write a bromantic pamphlet in response.

There's so many sides to a person, I know so many people had their own angles on Luc. Of course I treasure my own vantage on the man, even knowing how different it was from others', how I knew him in what he ambivalently called "the bad ol' days", often down and out, both of us taking solace in a perfect blend of music, intoxicants, and sketchy edges.

Nowhere close to knowing what I can say about his death yet, if I'll ever be. But Rose is good about stuff like that. Grateful me and Luc had some amazing mutual friends with hyperkinetic expressive abilities that figure in to my remembrances these days. There are obvious implications for all of us. There's morbid curiosity I'm not expecting to be satisfied. Like in that letter he wrote to me near the end, in pretty good penmanship, but that ambiguous mark, was that a lower case h, for heroin? I'm not sure if he ever went there, and what does it matter, but some of it does matter to a dark part of me that turns to blinding deadlight like a sick plant pining for an alien homeworld.

essential oils

Inutile.

If it was a little more butyraceous, maybe there'd be some use in it... maybe it'd taste better anyway. Certain words have lost all magic for me. Even worse, certain words that had none to begin with, now charmed with an inverse sort of magic. Bacon zombies.

There's a whole tangent on waffles in the crack between the rug and exposed insulation. I care too much to compose a daft draft with a limp wrist and lame-duck dick. There's words I can write if I can manage it, a new style prior to inspiration.

Misery. Miserable times for no reason. Maybe things just got all zombified, but it doesn't feel like that, only looks like it, doesn't seem to deserve the zing of a word that begins with a Z.

I could spin straw into gold, by writing as if... acting as if, going against the flow and spinning lies from whole cloth that turn into the truth for existing in a Cartesian way, the way he would argue for the truth of God, because God must exist, because a perfect being would have to exist rather than not exist, existing being part and parcel of said perfection, the whole kit and kaboodle, like if there are unicorns, you're damn sure they have the one horn, otherwise they wouldn't be unicorns, but if, and hey, wait a second, I'm reaching back that far, for, what? Almost not a tautology? I missed something terribly important.

Missed the boat, lost a chromosome, pretended I didn't need to catch that train. Novelty is habitual, another stripe on the lolly, everything's so sweet and bone-corroding, mimicking carpal-tunnel and fibromyalgia - two-hundred flavours of dishsoap on one aisle, clever extracts, facsimiles from flowers and fruits I didn't know existed with florid latin taxonomy.

How's this for an aside, I'm so atrophied, even though I thought I expressed so hard, tonight, well, I did. But this is different, it's a lost art, tantamount to tautological corpse-fucking nostalgia abuse. I could clean it up, but whath the point? When the world'tho full of crap.

The best comedy sped to me through feeding tubes, a depraved density. I got all laughed out. Never been so free of chemicals but still filled with other kinds of synthetic. So what do I expect?

Misery. For a moldy crumb of reason. Not horror. Been here and there before though. Texan and Mexican decorated tiles polished with stainglass subterranean xenonic light. Cause that could just about mean something. Well that's not the point, it's that I created that image in my head, but that's not the point either, it's that it made that sound, describing the image, pretty words standing around on the fringes of a social situation, a wingding with drunk F Scott and caricature Hemingway and wisecracking Joyce and an illuminated salad bar glass cover of commentators.

Might as well say some things straight out, but, nah. Where's the fun in that? There's some fun to be had trying to keep it all under cover of circus tents. That's not it either. It's the late late after ramble coming ghostly after what was assumed to be the last ramble, after such an out of the blue pall of silence and no scaffolding, no technique, and why would anything ever be read? When you got your Plato and Aristotle and Vice columnists and the crowd source for list-based click-bait articles. And colleagues who are mostly theoretical, albeit being a click away.

So, synthesizing a connective tissue with weldbond, here I am on Latimer street in a new place, and it's never been a shabbier novelty. I blinked, I blunk, opened my eyes and had a personal best beard, just about. That's how you get one of those, you've gotta care so hard about not caring, until itchy stubble smoothly transforms into an oblivious chin-mane. Caring all the while, not allowed to have a breakdown. This is the habit of staying sober, and being lucky to have work, and not caring to spend money on anything, nothing to buy, nothing will buy me out of this pointless purgatory, there's no purging, only becoming one with ammonium chloride. That sounds about right.

rentals

Looking for contrary-minded, health-oblivious, passive, pessimistic roommate to share dim, decrepit 2 bathroom, 3 bedroom, 4 basement gray market pharmaceutical salon with negative cash flow.

Downstairs room with dying area, no natural light but a lot of 30 watts / 60 hertz. No windows, but features cracks, chasms, portholes, peepholes. Excellent wifi.

$750+ utilities/month. Laundry, shared kitchen and entrance. No parking. 57 min walk from bus route. Unfurnished. Available April 2.

Call 250-505-4311 or email for more information.

That beautiful aerial shot of autumnal Nelson in the clinic waiting room actually sooths a bit. Inspiring. On this rainy dark anxious day. Life half unraveled. The whole town and all its bright associations in a single eyeful.

neurotic cats

maybe i'm projecting, but if their whole role in life is to sleep, or eat some shitty food - that can be a hard choice - maybe that's why they meow - so plaintively, but annoyingly - if you can't sleep, you gotta do something - and that's when you get annoying - there's only so much sleeping you can do, even for a connoisseur of sleep. i don't believe in reductionism though - i feel like i gotta pay homage to it, and it's a bitch, but it can't tell the whole story - it's convenient, but true.

Maybe there's some comfort in complaining. I hope there is. I mean, she's so black, and so cool, she's gotta have more going on than I understand. Well, I'm almost banking on a lacuna of empathy. Or just sentimental love of the cuddly cat. I'm susceptible.

It's a strange state, to have all your mental faculties, but hijacked. You take a hard look at emotions, from a gauzed-out perspective. There's more going on though. I prefer imagination to cynicism and shallow reductionism, and there's people who realize the possibilities of that.

-

and just another drama - a corner of a polyhedron wiremesh - do you remember, you node? i felt your personality, i just don't wanna describe it right here, right now, maybe i should, or i should have figured out how

i might not be able to communicate, so i might have to fill the null space - wow, what a job that is, what a wall... maybe not so bad, if values were slightly offset. it could be a lot different, when emotions are so arbitrary.

It's not even all that different. Unless that could make a difference in some economic scheme. But it can't, so it's lovely, yeah, it's smooth. And maybe some other words I'll come up with later.

Struggling to find a comfortable place. Where I'm not crawling out of my skin, bleeding fingers, spring cliche s. Leaning on the writing. Putting out energy. Lack of cannabination. Not feeling overly guilty about withdrawing from society. Not transcribing finch brood. Anti social. Imminent death syndrome. It puts us all in an awkward position. Gotta keep typing taping tapping sweeping swiping anything, testing out the brave little seed of auto correct growing stronger and slicker by the semester, and suggesting stuff that is cool all the time. Could find a better synonym for that if I tried. But, waiting, waiting waiting_ for malapropriate. Mutually beneficial I suppose. Chill axy finch vibe. Casj. Squirming for comfort like a selfish tree seed.

Spring cliches. How lovely. And I don't have to apologize for the word. It's a lovely word. For lovely people. For lovely Briar. She was lovely. I loved her. It's hard to love her these days when it's 100% unrequited. And I hardly try. But even so, some seeps through. She was lovely and sexy and cute, so cute when we were talking about, I don't even remember, but it was the idea of parodying nursery rhymes and replacing the original content with... something. And I went straight to sex, atypical of me - like the friends we were with. And she went to violence. Like the typical me would have. Ah, my little Arya. I still want to hug her so tightly for that. Can't explain why, but I know why, and will probably remember. I wished I'd hugged her in that moment. It was her realizing her error, of not giving the expected pseudo-"sophisticated" "adult" fill-in-the-blank joke - and then her feeling embarrassed and bashful, like I know so well, how I feel so much of the time. Weird bonds we had that I could never really articulate. Too bad we didn't work. And now there's nothing but this.

 Still dunno what to do with myself. And it's getting colder and colder, no time to be outside, waiting, for a ride home. But I had a few decent brief chats.

Uh oh. Another one of these predatory preliminaries. Better scrunch into a lovable snug bubble. With chrome exterior, a safety layer of carbon steel exo-skeletal blast shield, electromagnetic info shell, firewall.

Oh man. Look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show. Kennedy umbrella. Great-Aunt Espionage. . , . . ` ... ^ ••• |=|=|=| °°° × Non existing camaraderie.

[^¥^`^`^,...[]...<>...<>...[]...∆...<>...<>...[]...,^]^]^]€∆£¶

It is. .. .....  something ... to be rich. Modestly affirmable? Mao would disagree. Meow mentioned multiple new houses and cars. Follow the clientele around.

Imagining what conditions you could set up under which swipe would function better. Or, what might already be built in, logical programming structure. Messy code that works. Or maybe it's even beautiful. Can stoners write beautiful code? Or is it brutish hackwork? That gets the job done?

Fuck twitter til the end of time, negative legacy in anti-social information dispersal. Pick a social network to not join, then have that lack of affiliation be your entire identity.

The Shrillness. The Creepiness.

The unfuckability. None of it will matter when I get on stage. Although my hands are shaking. I should do some callisthenics. Can't even swipe right. I know how to play nine songs tho. I'll do what I can.

Guy dressed up as Dr. Rockso. "I do cocaine!" they supportively shout. Would like to join in the hilarity, because I really do appreciate it so much, you don't even know how much I appreciate, can't see it through my grate of cringe and scowl. Don't think these notes are gonna be good for much.

What to do, what to do ... Waiting. In bad company. Jer on sound, and I'm accused of being shrill - by some independent observer, not the guy who said it at that show six years ago. I guess it's a standard thing people say now, something I should have dealt with earlier. It burns me. Exhausts me. Makes performing feel futile. Maybe if we're doing more shows, I should... you know. Invest... and all that. In some kind of equalizing output pedal or rack or overpriced guacamole. Like that'll work. Maybe I'll record the show after all so I can reference what will be the inevitable issues soundcheck amply showcased but failed to solve. At a certain point I get tired of asking for adjustments that prove impossible. But I take pleasure in being able to document how I can't hear shit. Can't see shit. This is like one of my fever deliriums.

Waiting for the show with no booze to blunt so many edges. And no, people, I don't get laid cause I'm in a band. Oh, plenty of people do, they "clean up", but not me. In fact, I get told that I'm "creeping people out" cause I'm sitting alone in a corner drinking my coffee. Well, in all fairness, I'm in the corner of the room where people are trying to dance to the DJ music, and I'm creeping out "the girls" specifically. Should specify how it stings all the more for that specificity. Some drunk bitch told me that. Like it's my problem that she's creeped out. Yes, put it all on me. I'll drink my coffee somewhere else.

So fuck the empty promises and clichés and faulty pheromones and how I'm not good looking and can't talk without being fucked up and other shit I didn't need to hear and extrapolate from accordingly, and how I underestimated the amount of nicotine I was going to need for this ordeal, and so I have to bum smokes from people who are almost out, and then share them with the drummer who complains that I slobbered on them, and then apologize to the sound guy for my keyboard's shrill tone. Well what do I expect, trying to play in a metal band? He made me smile, at least, when he passive-aggressively snarked that we should all just turn up 'til we bury each other. I've tried to educate myself on technical matters, but in the trenches, the only way I know to wrest my head from the mud is cut through with double digit kilohertz.

I got nothing to do but rant to my phone, so...Well. This is slightly better than standing around on the peripheral of conversations wishing I could take a drink or contribute anything. I can grind out another hour and a half, locked inside the car for solitude. Maybe I should take a nap 'til the show starts and conserve energy required for navigating through this antithesis of controlled conditions where it just doesn't work right and I'm not myself. Not at my best. Could have better wisecracks under better circumstances.

At least we won't be stuck out here in Balfour, cause I got a car and an exit strategy. Kind of want to get out and do something again, but how quickly will that get stale, with the open maw of awkwardness waiting? Maybe I could charge the phone tho? Yeah. And smoke another cig. Cause even with this sealed vehicular buffer, I'm too close to people in the grateful dead parking lot, people who trust their vibes too much, thinking they know what I think. Let's just do the set already.

Yay, I powered through the show and stayed sober.

Leaves me with a bad feeling. Angry. Frustrated. Disillusioned. Foolish. Solitary. Alone. Unfriendly. Unfuckable. Why am I doing this now, of all times, when I'm staying sober? Someone spare me a dart, even? I'm not asking for one, fuck that, I'll suck scavenged smoke from wet stubs. No one to ask. Just people repulsed by my bad energy and physique. Could use some kindness but this ain't the place for it. I'll throw this shit up on blogger anyway, I don't care how it sounds, just for the rawness, and to fill in voids, since I don't write much these days except when feeling shitty enough.

Is it really worth it? Or should I narrow my energy output down to more worthy collaborators, myself alone if need be? On the peripheral. In music, conversation, shows. Oh yay, a fucking ambulance joined the fire truck in blocking off the one car. My borrowed car. When we're all packed up and I just want to ducking ducking fuck fuck fuck fuck ing duckfuck this phone. Fuck inh. Fuck inh fuck ing leave.

I thought I had an exit strategy. Be stoic I guess. About bleeding money from "low cost" dental clinic toothmarks - and everything else. Like this. And oh, I almost forgot. What a goddamn fool I feel like. Playing my heart out in that clusterfuck context. Playing the fool. It gets worse and worse. Stranded here. Waiting for someone to show me some kindness. Ducking shrill visit.

It's hard being sober. OK, I passed a test, I guess. Doesn't really feel like it though. I satisfied my smarter second order desires and saved myself the disaster of a debauch by enduring this. So fine then. Oh. This is tiring. And cold. I need to get warm. Yes. Indeed. And wrap myself up in my phone. I'll re-watch Game of Thrones when I get home. Pathetic, the lengths I go to for escape in sobriety, binge-watching fantasy epics. And fuck music, I'm so off music and the interlocking scenes. Fuck these ducking shallow dumb unkind people... Not my band, they're OK. But fuck them anyway, cause they're not doing me any good.

Wish I could be happy and join the party. If I felt better about the show I could probably be sociable and have some clean fun. But I don't feel good about the show at all. Or about how the one song where I had solo parts I had to play deaf and guess at what I was doing cause the sound guy faded me down to oblivion. To accommodate the real instruments that aren't shrill.

Still blocked off by emergency vehicles here to accommodate multiple mushroom freakouts and firestarters. Noah says this puts a damper on things. He says the right things sometimes, like the VCR that's still blinking 12:00. And all I hear are the names of drugs in peripheral conversations. So disgusted, and it doesn't make me want the shit any less. Dr. Rockso, where are you when I need you? I still love your crazy comic coketastic style. Maybe I'll see you at that great rave in the sky. Maybe when I get dead I can get fucked up again like I used to love, the very idea of it, and the execution, and even the aftermath was afterglowy, when my brain had the capacity to bounce back from outrageous neurochemical abuse. Surely there'll be some silly reward for this toil at the poetic end of it, like how I might have imagined that heaven was an infinite pile of Chips Ahoy cookies when I was five.

There's something new under the sun, let's say, some thing in whose context I'll be so great a fool, such a full blown Quixote that it'll be blissful awareness of folly, a cosmic laugh I can join in with, like a fucking tantric orgasm.

whatever depth

My irony will trump your sincerity at any turn. Cause even when you think you've cleverly brought sincerity to a raw extreme that should shut down any snarky above-it-all posture, like mentioning that your mom just died or something, I will then lower my apathy in accordance, to whatever depth the occasion requires, and make it all meaningless. Death, what does that even mean? Nothing but an opportunity for a wisecrack. Gallows humour, it's all I have, it's where I draw my identity and purpose now, even if it isn't very funny. Funny, as if that's the goal. No, it's a reference springboard, so's I can bounce to the next bit of glitched digital detritus.

Career Workshop Sutra

It's the morning. I don't feel that guilt I get before sleep, that hopeless, cope-less inadequacy and confusion. Righteous anger returns, ratchets up the blood pressure, but my system can take it, so far, clots so far downstream. Anger's better than nocturnal dread, what I call "bond with Blank", what I feel when I'm too tired to do anything but lie in bed hoping sleep comes soon, because I don't want to be a conscious zombie under trazodone sedation, and I'm a thirty-three-year-old babe in the woods. EXGF association. It's eerie how that bond with blank more than anything else is the resonance of a relationship, how once upon a time, she articulated a feeling I thought was so personal no one would ever understand, and despite our chronic communication failure, she worded this feeling, out of the black, in such a way as I knew without a doubt she'd had the same subtle feeling I'd never even thought to verbalize. It's one of those cruel ironies, the thing that made me feel closer to her than anything is apparently just a product of emotionations locked inside the wetware, fall apart without me, body. I even mentioned the "bond" in a letter to her, thinking I was being really expressiony, almost romantic, maybe, but I never heard back. Well, whatyagonna do? Share the sacred nocturne with self in moments of weakness that will rhyme because memories are based on what you thought back on most often in annoyingly repetitive redundancy.

This guy is putting his resume up on the projector for public scrutiny. I gotta respect the humility. He deserves to be a working janitor more than I do. He even used that word, rather than "custodian" or "cleaner". But fuck me if I'm gonna share my pathetic resume or ridiculous career aspirations with anyone, let alone everyone. Gonna stay closed, oh yeah. Workshop participant critiques of workshop participant resumes is just as aggravating as I would have imagined. Absolutely everything that can annoy and depress me... will. Good thing he doesn’t feel my subjective neuroses. Good thing I'm neither exhibiting nor critiquing a resume, lest I get shot down in any way for any reason.

Still so hard dealing with these people. 289 flavours of awhwhkckwhard ness! A real nerd, who is not suddenly revealed to be sexy when the glasses are removed. He's still, sadly, a nerd. He's not happy to be one. Not proud. Neither is she. Yes, even her, even though she's of the sex that makes her a desirable human in the eye of this beholder, flaws rendered passable, even adorable in a weird sort of way, blotchy skin not such a big deal cause she's got that feminine form, a nice figure and a fine face, but even she is a real nerd, the sad kind, despite how clueless I am that she doesn't have it made, being desirable to me, can't she see? Perhaps I should go fuck myself with a VR avatar, post-modern information age nanotech superbot ouroboros coitus.

Hiring practices... Discrimination based on religion is mentioned. Tangent opportunity! Our resident juvenihilist springs into action like he was waiting all workshop to introduce us to the wicked satire of the Pastafarians and their mock deity: the Flying Spaghetti Monster, atheism at a grade nine level. The "bit of a socialist" guy gets flak for them not seeing any volunteer positions on his resume. Ouch. Disgustingly cute: the participant trying to be facilitator. Some guy's misinforming the crowd about PDFs. I won't deign to correct. Is he an adobe shill? "Adohbee". Exaggerated vowels, what Americans think Canadians sound like, local folk happy to validate stereotypes.

This is the Kootenays, someone says for some reason. This is the "Keet-nees" cud-chewing dopey cali dialect, bent, canuckisized, fair-traded. "Trimming bud". Is a funny thing to mention while we're on the subject of jobs. At this job workshop. Ahaha, how hilarious, another bud-related bon-mot. And see if you can work in a reference to Shambhala. Seeeper Keet-nee enunciator takin' his sreeet time, seeeper sreeet, beakin' off about how he got burnt out and qruit that time, campin' out in chesty vowels, mashin' those words to mush, making it impossible to think of anything else, seeeeeeper confident in conveying what precisely he doesn't know, for your perusal. Pause for laughter. Nice. "You're so Kootenay dude", someone says. And a reference to Starbelly, could you at least say Starbelly Jam to make it a little less nicknamey? Everybody perks up at Starbelly. Perk perk perk. It's fun to think about, when you're at a work workshop, cause it's a music festival. Something to talk about. And rig-pigs, and Fort Mac.

Now I'm treated to people opining about movies. Smooth how he worked in the phrase "anti-septic" to describe 2001, so slick, like he tosses around such qualifiers as a matter of course, when pontificating on the nuances of sci-fi filmography. "It wasn't anti-septic to me", the other guy says.

The mere mention of Kalesnikov Lumber is like a dagger in my heart. No, that's too romantic a metaphor. More like a catheter in my dick. Oh, they do six hour interviews there? And they don't let you know that beforehand, so it's just, oh, by the way, there's more courses to this thing than a twelve star restaurant. Well then... And somebody mentions that he thinks they pay 20$ an hour. Don't know why, but I loathe this piece of information. Fuck, gotta leave, soon. This isn't gonna get any better. People're gonna keep piping up. I'm gonna keep hating it.

Oh look, the Keets keener keeps opining, on anything and everything. Fun facts about The Royal and liquor licenses. It's objectively funny to mention how they're legally prohibited from letting their patrons dance, but hearing this mentioned is like a catheter in my dick. Here we go on a tangent again. |________| Maybe I can bail before they make us marionette ourselves in mock interviews.

Grabbed a carrot stick from the snack table to crunch on, a loud protest to vent frustration passive-aggressively when they veer off topic into grandstanding horseshit. It's the carrot AND the stick. Oh lookey here, ol' Keet-nee Ale wants to LOOK his theoretical applicants in the EYE cause he thinks he's a poker master and can always tell everyone's tells... Cause no one could ever suppress feelings in person! Here's my tell, here's a pattern you can factor into your trenchant analysis: Every time I take a bite off this oversized carrot stick, I'm praying for lesions on your vocal cords and cancer in your throat. When I ease up on the chewing, you'll notice that the facilitator has resumed talking which is what I came here to listen to.

Funny how quick he was to say he has indeed been on the other side, as the interview-er. Immediate, nay, pre-mediate "I have" when she asked if anyone had been on said other side. "That's what I'd say, if I were an interviewer". Lieutenant Laptop to the rescue. Keet-nee Ale is talking at every opportunity now. He's creating opportunities, cultivated image like fecal decals. Enough of your yapping, Keets Keener. You ain't been deputized for sheeyit.

The guy from Kal Tire does indeed want to know why people want to peel tires. That's a hiring tactic. Note to self: at job interviews, take time to repeat questions to self in own words while thinking of an answer... I guess I am absorbing stuff. Some good info, but at what price? The price of enduring deep chesty voiced keener confidence chatter. Shut up about "flipping". Flipping you know what. I'm gonna fucking flip out. McDs has a burger university, does it? Didn't need to know that. These cliches need to retire to the sunshine state with steak 'n lobsters, bluey skyes, blood diamonds, and brewskies.

Also, I don't wanna know what you have the "ability to" do... but then, we have such use, such a rich full spectrum of use for idiots to fill... the empty... spaces... where we... used... to talk. Okay public audience, occupy the whole headspace. Trillian dollar cadence - GDP cadence - domestic cadence - fireside cadence pretense credential torrent Top 40. What can I offer that a billion red Chinese can't? Some artistic statement on telephone sanitation? Ted Talks are for six figure crackas... and why wouldn't they be? The Cyborg Imperium are the designers aren't they? Most of them are schlockmeisters as well. Some of them write software for reading resumes in bulk. It badly needs debugging. They call them crawlers. How lame. Can we get some walkers? And no, of course you can't read me, I'm encrypted. Stop trying, if there's anything you need to know, I'll tell you.

Bowing, scraping, supplicating to the labour market. Abandon all dignity, all y'all that enter here. Why is it an endurance test every time I do something like this, that's supposed to be good for me? Marveling at my rawness of nerves. Between the smokes and supplements, haven't I got the nicotine covered? Case in point: a new person's resume. They say "quite a diverse skill set". Clench. Don't wanna know. Don't wanna compare. Don't wanna think about your targeted resume for a heli-skiing company. Company. Don't want to hear ___ makes 700 dollars a day, and underwater welders can make four hundred thousand in a few months. Gol-lee, that sure is a lot of money, I agree. Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with me.

The mere mention of the show Family Guy in no particular context draws a laugh. That guy's trying to be funny again. Funny how I wanted the aspiring comedian to bomb... then when he does, I want to defend him, cause that was the one half-decent bit of wit he came up with, not that I would undertake to laugh and validate the attempt. Judging judging judging. I judge, you judge. I justify paranoia at the mental gymnasium. God help me if they do as I do.

I love to say I hate office politics.... as if it sets me apart. Who ever says they like office politics? Where are the self-identified drama queens? That's why I like the Tyrion character from Game of Thrones. He accepts the mantle, he loves the game. We need someone like that, so we can feel superior setting ourselves apart from the game everybody plays but cannot be thought to enjoy playing. Each and every one of us is special, and especially susceptible to ordinary applications of certain brands of sarcasm. Sarcasm's my brand, it's not profitable, cause I'm a non-profit, it gets me just shy of nowhere, but it's a fallback lounge, the perpetual green room pre-debebauch for post-doctoral retires. No one can take my notes away from me.

Haha, they trot out the made-up statistic about how 93% of communication is non-verbal. Yes, if you're "measuring" non-informative delusional extrapolations. Uh oh, "How you're presenting yourself...", here we go. Fruck (just to be diff'rent [sic]). I know smirking is obnoxious - oh, my mirror is gleaming fluorescent screaming contempt back to me, but if you can't handle a smirk, don't ask for a smile. How 'bout a glare? I'm really trying not to sneer and cringe... I'm just failing a lot.

Man, this ain't a good start, 20 mins in, barely hanging on, clenched like a dental patient taking the slow drill, nerves raw as Portland pretense. It's nothing new though, just acute today. Can't deal with voices, colloquialisms, dialects, life... yes, life. I'm sure almost any of these fine people would have sage life lessons for me right now, like, to take it as it comes, live on its terms, etc. From the vantage of facile maturity.

What's worrying is that it gets worse and worse, it's such an untenable trend. Wish I could be okay with people being themselves. Is that a crumb of hope, the mere existence of that wish? The fact that I'm dissatisfied with taking what comfort I can in spite? I can't possibly be keeping my anger to myself, can I? Should I stay or would that do more harm than simply bailing, if I'm just vibing everyone out?

Whew... Calm down. Take a huff of air. Write a one word sentence and place a period. Regroup. Sweet smell of photocopier and love for how the acronym O.S. rolls off the tongue and makes me think of windows and linux and the comforting minutia of software environments and global hotkeys. Perhaps this is my element more than I even know. Let others ask the dumb questions I don't want to. Thanks others. I'll smile to myself when the one lady steals the others' thunder. I loafs it! Yis b'y.

Crisis precipitates change. I need someone to express their suffering, to shame me. But not so much so that I feel stymied and squirm in impotence and incompetence. Best thing would be someone betraying being a loser. I need someone to pull some brilliant balls-out loser maneuver, some petty thing, and also to be aware of it, to feel the full force of their own sad stupidity, to be a lovable pitiable loser. Then I can rise to the compassionate occasion, balance the equation with informed empathy. Yeah.

dysradical

Trying to be perky. Like I am with people I can be bothered with. As "on" as I am with anyone but frustrated and low. Attempting to see a sliver of good in things. Or Cheshire God in things. You won, God, you won the game of hide and seek. I couldn't even find you, you're so sneaky.

Trying not to take things too personally. Don't take them more personally than you need to, beyond the hard reality you better get used to, that they are judging you, of course, uhdoy. So the game is to endure their searing gaze until you're bigger than them. Like when you find god behind the couch in the woods on the mountain. Like you can creatine your way out of the low rung blues, do the protein shake, a fake plan of action.

Fuck it instrymental, horse-corpse percussion, swiping now the co-opted form with the added bonus of sentence case. Idle in details.

the miracle is number 12 in the queue, but the readout isn't visible...

time is running out...
you just don't know it yet

Impromptu Fuck You to my Neighbors

church mouse

all precautions in operation, headphones, sound blanket, everything except what i can't control, the mechanical source of the sound that gets past the dampening, through the floor - and i'm in trouble for playing music again, fuck

finally get out of my slump and play a little keyboard and i'm in trouble for it, and my dumb enflamed emotions signal that it's a punch to the gut, tension headache starting already... feeling very fuck it, want to change consciousness immediately

more than anything, i'm angry - for being chastised, yelled at through the floor, forced to imagine myself as an annoying blundering idiot who i'd make into a big ugly strawman, and there's that extra bonus of knowing i was in the wrong to prompt an assholish overreaction almost anyone would emulate, so i'm not allowed to be angry, plus it's the dubious luxury of normal men, remember?

maybe i could start this new phase of going full-on monk eunuch, accelerate what's already happening anyway - to become a church mouse, worship a language out of earshot, in passing, and mostly just survive on crumbs, and not really worship anything, not grateful

well, my style's gonna get cramped quick... what else can't i do in my own damn apartment? so the paranoia was justified right from the first round of retaliatory pounding, nearly knocked my good old h4n from my computer tower - fucking hell, seven hells too, why not throw them in? what to do now? paralyzed, obsessed, and depressed... turn this already monastic space into the house of total prayerful reflection, subservient to the lord of hypocrites and anal undead?

or cut extrovert activities entirely and write the great solo solipsistic novel? for myself? unless i can't even type either - cause i'm already beaten into a little corner of a shell, paranoid, creeping, suppressed mightily - maybe this is why those others hate it here, what they were trying to impart to me, about the community crap, the crap community... ...... ...... .......... ... . ..... ... .. .!

where can i go to escape conflict? i don't know, nowhere i guess - what drugs can i take to escape conflict? only the ones i can't take - how can i talk about this? i can't, really, or even write, but i'm trying a little bit online, and malik's putting up with it, he actually responded like a good friend would

so let it be written, so let it get stuffed, let it be stuffy, fuck it, fuck all of it, strip the air of every kind of molecule but a synthetic few, thin down the fresh, thicken up emotions for a canned starch

maybe i'll just take what drugs i'm still vouch-safed to take - another round of trazodone, back to the regular dose and then some... man, i'm really angry and a bit lonely, and i'm starting to really crave a brain burning chemical high cause there's a big void tearing through me lately, or it's like my skin's gone - and like other things, like Silver Surfer, and other lackluster hiphop similes

adrift

Feeling weird. Not knowing what to do. Improvising. Could it be that the world is ending? Or I'm interpreting on hyper drive? A drink would be nice right now. Or I could drive cabs for a living. Feel strange and alien and suburban and first world and hardcore. Interpreting blues fragments. Feel fragile and already starting to burn out. Maybe could veg out instead of burning out. Rejuvenate thru vegetation. I'm not in my right mind. Fragile typing fingers. And writing feels weird. And drinking feels weird. And not drinking feels weird. Could edit better in a solid state. And judge. And not feel overwhelmed by heavy machinery. A hard look into things and interpretations. Don't feel social. This is what I used to cure with booze. And especially other drugs, the ones that are chronically a part of dream wallpaper. Between sandworm negotiation dramas. Medicating medication and neuroses. And animal instincts misplaced. Need a virtual correspondence with an angel online. Would be perfect, magic cure-all... Self-regard. Recordings. That's what it's all for. Not glitchy-twitch euphoria. And when am I ever an artist anymore?

The essence is, I was feeling righteous anger, self-pity, and like a martyr. Now I'm questioning everything, feeling guilt and self consciousness and body consciousness. Won't bother singing the tenacious D song that Gus is playing. Well, you never know what's coming down the conveyor belt. I don't feel remotely capable of going into something and scoring a fulfilling career, but when I get more straight and solid and determined, and a little put-upon-feeling, I'll remember that I want to succeed out of spite, and anger is powerful, if also the dubious luxury of normal men.

Feels strange being here. Could laugh and speculate and anthropologize. And dream of sparkly diamonds crushed in hands, in past glories never re-creatable. Sibling banter. For my benefit. But it's nostalgic. But flash forward on the timeline. A drink would be nice. I remember I used to get hedonistic and tripped out, and transcribe this finch brood casually like this. Miss the freedom to drink. I used to do this, but with a notebook. In some weird ways, very little has changed.

Civilized, with benefits. Charming. And me, so paranoid and bitter, and dissatisfied with life but it could be worse. I'm so slick with devices and interfaces, aren't I? Can't I profit from that ? But I'm just a user. Wish I had the passion and ability for making, anything.

Yeah.

Feels weird, writing, like this. I wonder if I'll ever be a writer again. Or a reviewer or an analyst, columnist, journalist. Yeah, from this scratch, sounds fucking likely. One thing I seem to do well is swipe words that rarely get corrected. But these bids for empires of selves. They never seem to satisfy. So, jonesying for external validation.

And to-do itineraries seem important or at least worth bothering with when I'm solid. Or is this as solid as anything else? I should be rejoicing I got all this fuck off free time. But I don't know what to do with it. The second I'm left to my own devices, I realize they're glitched to all hell. My devices are broken. They need a driver. But I don't like it when others drive me.

justdrain? was it?

pathetic economic niche

if these are life's terms, then fuck living life on life's terms - or, can i live on my own terms if i just stay sober? take me anywhere, is that what she said? christ - animals don't put themselves through this - maybe make my own terms? a little comfort, a little fuck you buffer to the edges of the world? would you wanna see me burn out that quick on clean clean fuel? would it be worth having me have a paycheque, to keep up appearances? like, there's an example of terms that are not my own, and don't need to be lived on anyway

god-proximate guacamole

I shouldn't be a foul-weather blogger. I should write more positive things, share positive moods, they do exist... if I feel like it, cause contrivance isn't my style. But it just so happens that I do feel like being positive, yes, I will allow for that eventuality. Even if that also makes me feel like a tool. A tool for Ned Flanders' God can't be such a bad tool to be. Not the sharpest tool in the drawer, better for spreading mortar.

There's a high I can feel from a good meeting that reminds me what it's all for. I can even sometimes get through the awkwardness of people crying around me, and spilling tears of rage and grief and shame and sickness, and sometimes joy. Can be cool with the awkwardness to some extent, and come out feeling high. And the reason it's such a good reminder is that it's a high based on something real, earned, and pure, the euphoria of seeing other wretches saved from the grave or misery by the healing spirit of a spiritual program, and the plain friendliness of other people that allows it all to happen. The road to heaven is paved with good intent and awkwardness.

Even euphoria based on doing a good job at something, or having mastered a skill - ego-based gratifications - they're healthy and infinitely better than material satisfaction or synthetic bliss, but still based on too many false premises - that my little life is so special, for playing something on a keyboard that's too complex to pin down.

But the euphoria that comes from a good meeting, sometimes it even feels like it's good enough, like I don't need to ultimately turn to the substance crutches again. Every once in a while, it's powerful enough, that it feels substantial, like what I'm supposed to be getting out of participating in this "next-right-thing" spiritual doohickey. The trick is, I think, that it's mostly beyond ego, it's more feeling a part of helping others, and being one of those helped, in a pure way, leaving room for gritty war stories to texture up the primary color candy coat that brings nausea. So, beyond ego, ergo, less transient.

So there, positivity, good I suppose, even though it smacks of charity, and doesn't satisfy me in the raw sense that a good miserable ramble does. Now I can get back to being sarcastic and bitter.

future self absorbed