Below are the most recent 9 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
coverthitman	2:11p	An Argument Against Lapels in Sci-Fi; Library Exam This entry ends on a big downer, as they all do. So I want to go on my tangent now because I don't think I can tie (hah! you might lol at this pun at the end of the paragraph) this back into things towards the end: I had heard lots of great stuff about Battlestar Galactica (herein referred to as BSG) for years, but never picked it up or turned it on. I think I did once or twice, but didn't get why the same actors were running around in different clothes and being called different names. At first I thought I was just racist because the only actor this was happening to was an asian chick, and I was like, "Wow, my racism has gotten really trite." But then I noticed it happened to Dean Stockwell and a blonde chick, and I sort of caught on. Anyway, I thought before I jumped into the series, I would get a couple of primers: I picked up "BSG: The Miniseries" and "Caprica". After that, I was sufficiently caught up to watch the last season, 4, without missing too much detail (aside from one huge arc that gets referred to enough to be fleshed out). The big reveal is basically that the human race is a complex experiment orchestrated by a clandestine force that may or may not be divine, and it is caught in a self-destructive cycle of violent technological excess, pride, hubris, etc. Here's the thing that gets me, the ONE thing: in every iteration of human in the BSG universe, they evolved formal wear with lapels. LAPELS! Is there anything less practical (that isn't widely produced and worn, and isn't just the stunt of some grinning, shit-eating, graduate design student, who always carries an actual pipe carved with the inscription "Ce n'est pas une pipe." I hope you choke on that!) than a fucking lapel? Granted, there are sci-fi shows where, in the future, the lapel has fallen out of style, e.g. Star Trek. The collar is still around in a minimalist sensibility, but the lapel has fallen widely into disuse. But in a show like BSG where there are at least two separate evolutions of humans, is it probable that a practical and geometric superfluity like the lapel would also evolve into fashion through the random-preference crap shoot of aesthetics? I don't mean to be a nerd, but the lapel needs some serious looking into. Moving on. I took the Library Clerk Exam and scored a dismal 85. I tried to do some math (which I unsuccessfully tried to reproduce here) and figured that that means I got approximately 9 out of 60 questions incorrect. You might reason that, on a normal, uncurved, letter-grading scale, an 85 is a solid "B". But, to put things in a more realistic perspective, (i.e. in relation to the likelihood that I'll be interviewed for the job) consider the following: - Eligibility for employment is based on rank within the scoreboard, and only the three highest candidates get interviews (a self-abiding directive that the Civil Service website refers to over and over again, in bold, as "The Rule of Three". I always sort of considered the aforementioned rule sort of like the fabled "Murphy's Law [sic]*1," that is, more of a figure of speech than an actual edict. - Julian reportedly scored a 98 on the same test, and said even he was on the bottom of the list, which doesn't illicit confidence in my rank. So I was feeling pretty shitty when I went to group, and the pretty girl sat directly next to me. I was sitting tucked in the corner, legs crossed, leaning severely to one side slouched over the only open chair next to me, headphones on, dressed all in black*2, reading a book--body language unmistakably saying, kindly fuck off, thanks. She plopped right down next to me in a row full of empty chairs; I forgot to breathe and promptly had a panic attack. Instead of talking in group and being a normal person, I snickered derisively at a tense exchange she had with another guy. I noticed she had pierced that skin between her thumb and forefinger and I was going to use that to make conversation, because it looked infected*3, but before I could say anything, she was up and out of the room, out of the building, into her car, and driving away. I used the time waiting for the bus alone in the cold to bully myself for being such an idiot, for never having a backbone, for letting even the little happy possibilities slip away like tonight, and the night before, and many nights after. *1: Which, by the way, is a real thing in theoretical physics, but has nothing to do with pessimists comforting their misanthropic loneliness and self-fulfilling failure with the mantra "Anything that can go wrong, will." *2: Not really on purpose. *3: Charming. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 28th, 2009
coverthitman	3:09p	Ridley Snot I will say this about forced sobriety under the threat of jail time: physically, I feel pretty good. Granted, I've never gotten rid of the surfeit of tummy fat I accrued over my funemployment*1--it's been almost a year!*2--but I fit splendidly into my skinny jeans and gained all the muscle tone I lost in jail (I was looking very gaunt, crazy, and terrible when I came out. Also, I smelled bad). Aside from not getting enough water, which I never have, I eat a ton of fruit, a good portion of yogurt, a lot of oatmeal, and drink a lot of coffee. The rest of the food is cooked by black people and Puerto Ricans, so it's mostly fried or covered in butter (unless it's rice and black beans, in which case it's mostly carbohydrates I don't need, but not all bad), but my schedule is arranged so that I conveniently miss dinner and can prepare something small and light when I get to the house. Also, I've quit smoking. It wasn't hard, or even conscious--I stopped smoking my cigarettes because I was selling them to everyone else, a buck for two loosies, or trading them off (I got a nice belt). I started smoking more at first to be more social, but since I got my laptop into my room, I'm not bored anymore and don't have to be social.*3 In this one particular instance I am lucky. As I understand it, smoking becomes a pairing habit, like wine and cheese: coffee and cigarette, driving and cigarette, walking and cigarette, cigarette and cigarette. For me, it was alcohol and cigarette. I really can't stand the things without a drink (and I can't have a drink without a smoke). Take one away, and you might as well cut 'em both off. My roommate, who isn't a person I would normally hang out with, is pretty cool. He, like all dudes who go to jail--except me, evidently--is typically vaguely homophobic (he covered his eyes during "Bruno" when the prolonged penis--both the length of the scene and of the penis--came abounding onscreen), but he tolerates me. The reason why I append his attitude towards gays with his attitude towards me is this: I can come off as pretty gay sometimes. This has to do with going to Emerson, hanging out with a lot of girls, hanging out with a lot of gay guys, and being pretty smart (not stupid, at least) and well-educated, which means I don't hate gays, which makes me look gay when I say, "Gay people aren't abominations," or, "Yes, idiots, gays should be allowed to marry, and no, that joke about gay people 'being as unhappily married as the rest of us,' is a lame way for late-night talk-show hosts to keep from alienating their age demographic without being political," in that obnoxious, heard-it-all-before, know-it-all voice*5. Knowing my roommate has brought a few good things: - First, he is, to use a term that Larry appreciatively coined, a "Bro-Dawg". He's in really good shape, likes beer pong, and the only books he takes out of the library are about working out. (Incidentally, the only other book he's taken out is a pop-psychology book called, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". His father died, so your guess is as good as mine.) A few years ago, I might have been self-conscious around a guy as in shape as he is, but for some reason, I have very little physical envy anymore*6. Instead, he cajoles me to join him on his daily workouts, which usually involve about an hour or so of push ups, lunges, and stuff like that. I haven't taken him up on it yet, but I will. So far, I've been walking 6 miles four times a week, and I do pull ups on a bar by the bathroom stall, which is private during the morning when I have the energy. - He might have a place for me to live. He rents a house by some college slum and they're always looking for roommates. It would be a straight up terrible place for me to move to--straight up. But it would be cheap, and it would have a roof, and that roof might not be the previous cardboard container of a refrigerator in an alley. And, evidently, when college is in session, they have huge parties with cover charges to pay the rent. He tells me these always get broken up by the cops and high school girls are always sneaking in and getting trashed, but it's all in good fun, he says. -He gets me free bus passes. With all this good health, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish I had an aperitif or two, now and then. "They" have said that, if I stopped drinking, my depression and anxiety would clear right on up, but that hasn't been the case, as I've kept explaining. One of the things I'm anxious and depressed about is not if I'm ever going to drink again. To be honest, I don't really care anymore. At first I did, mostly because I was angry. Now, I'm depressed because I want to go out and have fun. I had coffee with Julian the yesterday and he told me that he was at some crust punk party*8 the other night with Julien and that Mike D was there and other people and someone asked about me. I kind of wondered aloud why no one invited me, but two thoughts came to mind: the reason (no one ever invites me anywhere, especially not Julien, who does nothing if it's not in his best interest), and the excuse, which, turns out, is a pretty good reason too: no one can get ahold of me. They can call, but I don't get messages if no one is in the office, and even if they could get me, it's not as if I can run out to go party with my friends anyhow. I'm going to see what I can do about that... Anyone got a house I can stay at for a weekend so I can go out and party? *1: A term lifted from the second issue of Sparkle Mag, which is even better than the first. Pick up yours today! *2: Upon realizing this, I was pretty depressed. It's been a LONG time since I've gotten laid! I haven't gone this long since I first lost my V-card! Ouch! But then I started to think it through, and considering how I started things after being laid off--in a mental ward--and how long I've spent hopping (or being dragged) through various state-run institutions, I've done quite a bit, also considering I never intended to survive more than a couple of days: after getting out of the mental ward, I drank straight through the first month, spent the next four months on the road, spent a month at home on vay-K, two months in jail, and the next three at TASC, using it as my own personal writer's colony--writing, drawing, and looking for work. *3: I think I've said this before*4, but if I had my laptop in jail with a good outlet and a strong wireless connection, it wouldn't have been so bad. I've heard the argument that, ironically, because of our reliance on the internet, our generation isn't connected to anything; but I disagree vehemently, and never has this been so pointedly clear as when I was locked up. I remember one of the first commercials I saw was for Wendy's, and it had an actress in it who looked just like Sasha Metz. Was it her? I wanted so bad to jump on facebook and dig up an answer! I wanted to ask all my friends! More than that, I couldn't even ask my friends by post--few of them have residences more permanent than a year or so, so I've never bothered to learn their addresses or send them real paper mail. A person of the older persuasion might decry, "Case in point!"--that by having personal spaces that are digital and intangible, our friends, children, parents and family aren't held down to anything tangible, like a mailbox, town or county--or a country even, in cases that don't seem that extreme--and therefore those people aren't there when we need them, and maybe there lurks a danger in that disconnect, if not to a greater society, then at least to the family unit. But my point is this: just because the means of connection have changed doesn't mean our need for that connection has. I'm not going to argue the merits of internet use for inmates here, but if the jail system wasn't behind the times, the issue of finding out if Sasha Metz was in a Wendy's commercial wouldn't be an issue--and this issue wouldn't be an issue. *4: Which is fine--I write the same thing over and over again as an exercise to dredge the details out of the muddle and put it down anew. *5: ...That I have fucking earned. Idiots. *6: I don't know why. I'm definitely not secure, but I've noticed I care a lot less. For example, I would never demand to know of a hypothetical ex, "IS HE BETTER THAN ME!?" or something jealous and crazy like that. A part of me wonders, but the wonder is curiosity, not concern.*7 *7: It's the same reason I wikipedia'd Lady Gaga to find out if she was a tranny. I was thinking, "She's kinda hot...but I think she's a tranny...but I can't stop staring at her crotch...but without those sunglasses, that nose and big upper lip from certain angles makes her look like a tranny...but in this picture, if she's a tranny, she's a really hot tranny, and if she were a tranny, someone would have said something, and her album probably wouldn't have been produced by black guys...I GOTTA WIKI THIS." See, I wasn't wondering because I was concerned she was a tranny and I might become "confused"; I was confused because I was attracted to her, which is curious because I've never been attracted to a tranny! *8: Julian claims that Albany is famous, or at least well-known, for having a burgeoning crust punk scene (is it a diaphanous splinter of the gutter punk scene, i.e. gutter punk-lite? Is there a difference?). I wasn't aware Albany had any reputation. "They're everywhere!" "No they're not. Where?" "Well, maybe not now, because it's winter. They've hopped a train to somewhere." Personally, I'd like to see more of these crust punk scenesters. I like to look at pretty people, especially those who are creative and ingenious: I respect someone who can make dirty and poor look chic. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
coverthitman	2:39p	Now I find out that John Krasinski is engaged to Emily Blunt. It's like this man can read my mind two weeks in advance, which was when I was thinking of marrying Emily Blunt. Watch your back, Actor/Director/Screenwriter/Producer/engaged-to-Emily-Blunt John Krasinski--I'm coming to beat you up, lock you in a closet, and dress up in your clothes and take your place. Christmas was unspectacular. Except for Rob Snow coming into my room to ask, "What did you get?" I barely even noticed it. Actually, I did get something: Two gift cards from my parents with a note saying they just got the biopsy back and Dan doesn't have cancer. I did not receive either the gifts or the news with any mixed feelings. I sent the cards back and told them I want the money I'm owed--$200 for Cat 5 cable, $100 for the two PS3 games Alec lost or sold, and $160 for the PS3 repair after Alec borrowed the thing and I had to pay to fix it--and I am disappointed Dan isn't going to die soon because I really wanted that to happen. I spent the day watching "Pushing Daisies," which I love. But I was alone in the room (my roommate had a pass to go home), and I thought about the Christmases years prior. Two years ago, I was at Beach Street, disassembling a futon frame in my underwear while watching "Dark Star," and having panic attacks despite how much Attivan and alcohol I was mixing. The year before, I was sober for three months prior. I didn't drink on Christmas eve or Christmas day, but that night, I got into a fight with my father on the phone about my student loans and couldn't sleep, so I took a bunch of Valium and chased it with a tall glass of vodka, and (allegedly) trespassed into a volunteer fire station and then someone's unlocked house looking for cigarettes. I didn't find any. I'm still looking for a job. I still don't have medicaid. I've still got no place to go when I'm able to leave TASC. I have the exam for the Library Clerical position on the 29th, however, and Pet Smart says they'll call me back after the holidays. So there's that. Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret each time a city bus sped past me and I didn't have the good sense to anticipate it and step to my left into its barreling path. Not as fast as the T; another reason I miss Boston. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
coverthitman	8:07p	There's some way people at the house have been getting free haircuts at the Austin's Institute of Spa Technology. It's some deal they have worked out with their counselors at their treatment program called "Hope House", which, as I understand it, is a place so desolate even I don't belong there. But they get free haircuts, so my caseworker thought she could figure something out. She made some phone calls and said, "I guess you can go in and ask for Kyron between 5:00pm and 10:00pm." More on this later, but basically, a guy dressed like Prince got mad at me for asking for a free haircut. "We are a school." Correction. You're a bunch of cosmotologists. Scissors haven't been "technology" since their inception in ye gaye olde Renessaince venice*. Fuck you, queen. *I might not know when scissors were actually invented. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
coverthitman	8:06p	"I'm happy to be here. I have a great job at a record company. And I'm happy to have two dollars. In Arizona, when I had two dollars, the first thing I would do is go out and buy a bag of needles. Now I have two dollars--in change--and it's like, 'Cool. Toll booth change.' Though, I'm also mandated, and it's either this or 7 years in federal prison. But that was just me at the wrong place at the wrong time, really." There are like, three great-looking girls in Albany, and one of them is a 22-year-old, recovering opiate and meth addict who used to be class president at her high school. The quote above is hers. (Comment on this)
coverthitman	1:58p	Return to sender: gift cards from family. Close out joint checking account; open new account. Look for job. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 21st, 2009
coverthitman	3:42p	There are about five things I do frequently--nay--furiously, with immutable habit, and with this habit I have edited, economized, and choreographed my movements beyond form or art: these things are performed with science. I've made steps throughout the years, consciously and unconsciously, to pigeon-hole myself into a niche. Generally, this sort of thing is bad: consider, for instance, the Giant Panda or the Koala (both of whom, coincidentally--or not!--, resemble closer the raccoon than the bear), whose specified diets cause the population to starve as their one food source, bamboo and ecachea respectively, are deforested. However, confident that I am not either a Giant Panda nor a Koala, I am trusting in Darwinism to make me a species of person I can be proud of; the alternative, of course, is to join the Dodo. Again, I'm performing this niche act without a safety net, and I'm doing it for the reason of vanity, and also laziness. As I've said, there are five things I do naturally, and naturally well. Two of them I can make money at, and these two things, evidently, are writing and drawing. At the TASC house, my roommate sometimes refers to me as "Prince Jon". This has to do sometimes with my pedantic attitude (which, coupled with my toe-walking, is more a sign of autistic spectrum disorder than a stately, northeastern education), but more often is a jealous reaction to the tolerance of my laptop in the residence. I convinced my counselor that, more than just being able to take my laptop to the library to work, it would be considerably more efficient to just keep this laptop locked in my room; that way I wouldn't have to rely on her to fish it out of the closet in her office each and every time I head off to the library, which could be whenever. My other argument concerned how relieving it was for me to expunge my anxiety through writing, which, because of my curious writerly habits that she might not understand, was simply impossible to do with paper and pen. And that was how I got my laptop into my room, where sometimes I write, but more often I close the door, shut everyone out, put on a DVD from the library or an episode of "Planet Earth" or "Living Planet"--something with David Attenborough's mellow, easily-digestible tenor--and draw pictures of mutant three-headed skull-ravens carrying rusted machine guns in their blood-soaked talons. That's what really relieves stress. Though I always share my movies with my roommate, and we get along great, once in a while, when he's particularly stressed or the staff has been riding him, he flies off with the "Prince Jon" shit. "I can't get a pass this weekend but Prince Jon can go wherever he wants, because he's so great and Megan [my case worker] loves him!" True, I think to myself. Except, of course, for that whole thing where I was arrested and tossed in jail and reprieved here, where I've carved out a comfortable place through patience, being polite, a good vocabulary, old fashioned manipulation, and minding my business. So there are a few things I'm working on. In a ven diagram, they are points within a circle labeled "short-term application," which lies within a larger circle labeled, "long-term goals". The first and foremost is my writing. I'm working on a short fiction story, the first part of the first draft of which I posted here, privately. If anyone wants, I can make it public. It is very rough, but getting there. I've also changed the focus of the prison epic, working title: l'estranger, to be less epic and more episodic. I've got to realize that I don't have the attention span or IQ for a long narrative; I'm going to tackle it like "Jesus' Son" or "The Things They Carried" and do short stories based on incidents or the idiosyncratic lifestyle one had to adopt to live as comfortably as possible, such as defecating or showering without privacy, peeing in a sink, washing clothes with shaved soap in a rubber tub, and the fashioning instruments, like the sticks made out of toilet paper rolls so you could poke at the TV buttons at night. The drawing is something I'm excited about also. I wish I could devote time to one or the other, drawing or writing, but I can't. People around the house keep egging on my drawing, so I do that a little more than I write. The consensus (and it shows a lack of imagination) is that I should sell my stuff to a tattoo parlor. I gave up arguing and shrugging this off to save my integrity and finally started doing logo-esque drawings with purposely thick and clean lines, without my usual sketchiness and shading. There's a lot of clean cross-hatching and other techniques; I even had to buy a big pink eraser to accommodate all the cleaning up I have to do. I even brought the idea up to my caseworker, who says she knows someone who has an "in". I'm going to make a shabby little portfolio and... then I don't know. I don't know what to do. Do I walk up to the guy at the counter and say, "Hey, will you buy these? for money?" I don't know how this sort of thing works. I sent Jasmine a drawing of a Robot invading the forest with rabbits. It was titled "Les Lapins Terribles". One of the staff saw it as I was slipping it into an envelope and asked if I spoke french. I said, just enough to title all my silly drawings nearly nonsensical things. "How can rabbits be terrible?" she asked. "Well," I said, "they poop a lot." I depicted such an instance in the drawing. I wish I had photocopied it because I'm really proud of it, but I think it's more valuable to me when it's gone. Besides, I draw good pictures every day; no one but me will know it's missing. I also downloaded a Threadless submission template. I remember Rachael Gottesman winning that, or something. I don't suppose I'm nearly as talented as her--I may not have modesty, but I have EYES--but I might get lucky. If you're curious, the other three habits that aren't conventionally marketable are eating, pooping, and masturbating. I think there's a fetish market maybe (definitely) combining these things, but, weirdly, my dignity seems to be intact. Speaking of which, I read the first paragraphs of some old shaky woman's living will. "I, Dorothy ________, being of sound mind," etc, before she saw me looking and flipped it over on the desk and shoved it under her bag. It was so strange because I had just been in the bathroom thinking of he unexistential impermanence of life, via the wet-dog smell of homeless people in the public bathroom; the transience, the transplanting of you and your stuff, and therefore your personality and your imprint from one place to another like the scent of piss on a hydrant. Then here I am, nervously checking the front of my pants, watching this old woman place a piece of paper on the table next to me; the errand of five steps from the table to the copier looked life-threatening: here I am confronted with the existential, human mortality side of the coin. It was too much in five minutes and I had a panic attack. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
coverthitman	4:23p	My parents finally dropped off my suitcase with all of my clothes. Also inside, I wasn't surprised to find a note from Dan saying that he is "hoping" I am "finding solace and health." The man manages to lace every small act with sanctimony, soiling it with a thick layer that makes me gag. Is he dying of cancer? Is that still happening? I hope that happens soon. Deeper in the bag, I found a small manila envelope. Inside was a note from my mother, which said it all: I hope you're doing alright, etc, I wish you would talk to me but I understand why you feel you can't. (The operative word there is "feel", as if it's my problem that I can't talk to my family. My parents, case worker, and counselor are all really concerned about it; I seem to be the person who cares the least.) Under the note was $800 dollars in unpaid medical bills from March and April. It's pretty clear she doesn't understand. I went downstairs and asked my caseworker for my debit card. My mood had changed from polite and amiable to silent and austere. "Why don't you go get some lunch and you can call the insurance company afterward," my case-worker said. "You seem pretty pissed." The first bill was simply for a physical I needed to have with a new doctor to re-evaluate me for my meds, and this visit wasn't covered by my insurance. I could have appealed this within 180 days, but I was busy being somewhere else. It was the smallest of the bills, and I just paid it. The second bill was from March 28th. I fondly remember this ambulance ride: I had awoken on my floor, surrounded by police, a fireman, and an EMT, and I was dragged out of my apartment and handcuffed to a gurney because my former roommate is a cunt. I called the billing department, said I was glad that my insurance covered most of this, but, because of the circumstances, I didn't think I should be responsible for this bill. "You could have refused service at any time." "I did. It wasn't an option. Are you familiar with the situation?" "I don't have the notes in front of me, no." "I was handcuffed to the gurney. I didn't want to be there, but it wasn't an option." "Well someone thought you had to be there." "Then that someone can kindly pay the bill." "We're not going to bill the police department." "I'm not paying it. Like I've said, I vehemently refused your service." "Well, I can contact your insurance and see if they will pay more." "Alright." "I can call you back and let you know if they will cover any more." "That's alright, you don't have to." "Do you even care?" "No. If my insurance covers more, that's fine, but, like I said, it doesn't matter to me because I'm not paying this bill. It's the principle of the thing." "If your insurance doesn't cover it, we'll just keep sending you bills." "Alright." "...And we'll bring you to court, and that will appear on your credit report and ruin your credit." "I don't know that my credit can get any worse. I haven't been paying any medical bills." "Well...well, we can take you to court." "Whatever." "I can call your insurance company." "Okay. Goodbye." The third bill was from the psych ward of Faulkner hospital, DOS: April 1st. I called to try to get some financial assistance, but you need to be an MA resident. The lady on the phone implied I should commit some fraud, but I don't know anyone in MA friendly enough to me to do this. Nor do I think it's worth the trouble. I'll just go delinquent on this is well, on the basis that it is implicit in the act of suicide that I don't want your fucking help. My counselor at SPARC asked me how I would have rated, on a scale from 1 to 10, my stress level when I made the attempt. I told him that, at the time, I would have rated it a 10, but when I woke up and got out of the Hospital, I had to re-evaluate my scale. "Why is that?" he asked. I explained that things got much worse immediately after. That I immediately lost my job and had no place to live, and had thousands of dollars in medical expenses that I didn't want or appreciate. At the time of the attempt I would have said I was at a 9 or 10. Now, after everything and having been in jail, I've adjusted my scale and it fits more into a 6 or 7. I really wish I could take it back. "So what level are you at now?" An 8. What is stopping you from making another attempt? Nothing. What will you do if you find yourself seriously thinking about it? Do it. You can call our hotline? What do I need another fucking counselor for? You can always go to an emergency room. What do I need another fucking bill for? No, I'll just do it right. Hypothetically. Do you have a plan? I'll say, no. Really? Sure. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
ghost_fire	3:42a	toot it up!! toot it up!!! (2 Comments |Comment on this)