the gray

the gray metal looks like fog in the predawn glow. i feel my luck could change. slow down.

in an interstellar burst...

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

So it goes.

A great man died yesterday. His name was Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes.

April Fool

If the fact that my thesis is due on Tuesday turns out to be an April Fool's joke, I'll be equal-parts elated and angry. Is this simultaneity possible? I think so. I can't believe I just spelled "simultaneity" correctly on my first try, by the way. Sweet!

Everything should be a collaborative process, even writing -- the traditionally "solitary loner" practice. OK, so not "everything" everything. Collaborating on going to the bathroom would be pretty awkward.

Goddamnit, I need to work on my thesis...

The Other People

I look at all the Other People. The Other People are the People we rarely notice, the People who were designed to go unnoticed. The People that actually make sure things work, but invisibly. The People you aren't supposed to meet face-to-face, but you sometimes do anyway. That small old man with the push broom at the fancy hotel, for example. I look at him, and I want to say hello. Do not mistake, I don't want to say thanks -- not a cursory, socially-obligated thanks, anyway. I want to say hello. I want to ask him his name. You see, he doesn't get a name-tag like the lady at the front desk. I want to let him know that he shouldn't act like he's supposed to be invisible. I want to tell him to go trip patrons with his broom. Go sweep right next to the front door, not when the lobby's empty, but when it's full. Go under tables that are being occupied. Take the gold-gilded elevator like everyone else, not the cold concrete stairs. Say hello to people as they pass, don't hang your hand and grip your broom. Why? Because I look at all the Other People. And they don't belong in the woods. They belong in town, like everybody else. All the People. Laughing.

A post in which the author attempts to find his inner voice through experimental exploration of his mental space

Must everything begin with "I?" Is this the folly of mankind? But how else to begin, if not with "I?" It's impossible to begin with "We," for instance. "We" requires "I" as a necessary component, or else it becomes "Them." Can one begin with "Them?" This seems no better than beginning with "I." Where to begin, where to begin... In the beginning... in the beginning... First. What comes first? Exposition? No. Too traditional. In the beginning, there was time. Begin with "Now." Yes. Live in The Now, as they say. Not "In the beginning...," but "In the now..."

In the now, time remains still, relatively speaking.
In the now, life lives.
In the now, there is no such thing as a past, or a future.
In the now, the now never has to leave.
In the now, action is impossible.
In the now, there is only existence, existence without action or agency.
In the now, there is nothing.
In the now, nothing burdens.
In the now, a dark room.
In the now, peace.
In the now, eternity.
Now is forever.

december never seemed so strange.

Time is Life

Don't say that time is money. Time is much more than money. Time is life, and therefore invaluable. Give me my two-week vacation over my pay-raise any day.

Trains Suck

Whether you're on one or watching one disappear.

*

They never mentioned how lonely it is to be an adult.

Good Line

"I'm not flirting. I'm just trying to be interesting!"

The Curse of the Green Grass

Whenever I'm at school, worn thin by the demands of unreasonable classes which imposition such silly requirements as showing up, doing homework, and even participating in class discussions, I find myself extolling with my peers the virtues of just "sitting on your ass" and "doing jack-shit." In fact, I yearn with strong earnest for that day of the last deadline to pass, so that I may immediately commence with such underappreciated and neglected "sitting on my ass" activities, like checking my Gmail every three minutes, revisiting the same websites I know will not be updated again for at least another twenty-four hours, changing my AIM away message, organizing my iTunes library, or simply zoning out to Microsoft's eternally trippy "Starfield" screen saver while listening to the appropriate space-rock stylings of Pink Floyd, perhaps for the length of an entire album.

This gets old after about a day, at which point I begin to wish I was back in school again. This phenomenon is what I now term the cheery appellation of the Curse of the Green Grass. This expression is categorically derived from the adage, "The grass is always greener on the other side," and it is an affliction marked by its ingracious regard for the benefits of "the moment," and over-hyping of the former, now "contra-state" of affairs. I've been diligently performing all the "sitting on my ass" activities for weeks now, and all I want to do is go back to school -- I fail to appreciate the virtues of my current situation I had previously dreamed of with the hope of a soon-to-be-liberated P.O.W. In fact, I yearn for another tour of duty, back in the trenches where the action is, while I feel my brain slowly melt and dribble out my ear in this warped world of domesticity. I suppose the choice comes down to this: to have my brains blown out in a grand explosion, or to have them rot slowly from the inside and leak silently away? Indeed, school or home?

Some Quotes

I've been reading this guy's blog, The Martian Anthropologist, and he makes some great points in a consistently well-articulated way. I don't blog about politics are anything because I will never be half as good at it as this guy. Here are some quotes I liked from his blog.

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." ~ Albert Einstein

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in -- 'an interesting hole I find myself in' -- fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." ~ Douglas Adams

And this quote by Hermann Goring, a member of the Nazi party tried for war crimes. From an interview with him:

Goring: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Goring: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Screenplay Ideas

"Dirty Linen"
- guy works at a dry cleaner
- tries on people's dirty clothes and pretends to live their lives
- like One Hour Photo

homage to the hippies
- young dude with long hair, smokes cigarettes, weed, drives van, wears Fuck Bush shirt
- difficulties of doing that 60s thing in the new century

"Roommates"
- explore various/funny roommate-relationship experiences/situations
- one from Stonington, CT, the other from San Francisco, CA

something dealing with remaining true/genuine/indie versus selling out

guy talking to camera confessional/High Fidelity style about...
- pet peeves?
- life?
- society?
- something?

time moving backwards on a spaceship towards some Day 0 event

Asimov's papyrus short story

something from the history of cinema, inspired by the history of cinema

"Wes Anderson: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenenbaums"

"You've got to find the voice speaking to you."

Good conversation about being a writer, man.

Loner Turned Rebel

Loner without a friend
Rebel without a cause

I am a quitter. It's my style.

Some People Write Beautifully About Themselves

The following was actually written on June 10, 2005 at 3:44 AM.

Some people write beautifully about themselves. But it's all just flowers. I don't write like that. I hate crap like that, a whirlwind ultimately surrounding -- what? Nothing.

This is exactly what the following treatise is about. Nothing. No one. And it comes from nowhere. It comes from an empty nowhere, the alley in between buildings where only the occasional hobo dares to spend more than five minutes. That's how I write. I've already said too much.

Methinks. Nobody says that word anymore. Behold. Methinks. Good words. I think we need to... repopularize those words. Lo, another paragraph!

She sat in the rain with him, waiting for the bus. They chatted outside the arcade. She could hear the sound of music from a faraway part deep inside her brain. Was his name Alex? Or Mark? Somebody was a Mark. Oh, well. The music continued.

The same music was coming out of the radio of the car of a man driving back home after a long day of work. He was stuck in the usual traffic. He had just had a meeting with his boss. He had been fired. It was Friday. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe he had to go home to his wife and four kids -- four beautiful girls -- and tell them this news. He was 55. He couldn't just go out and find another job so easily. So he snapped and broke away from the traffic, making a U-turn into the oncoming lane, crashing his car to death. The police cleared the scene in about 30 minutes after arriving. It's those five minutes in between the crash and their arrival that everything in the universe happens.

French may be very romantic, but it's also a very sad language. It can sound incredibly... melancholy. It's just a language with a lot of emotion, of the squishy kind, not of the German kind. Take this song title, for example: "Une Année Sans Lumiere." Sad. Melancholy. In English? "A Year Without Light." Sounds like the title of a science-fiction series.

So the people rose up. The people always rise up. The people always triumph, little by little, but time after time. That's evolution. That's evolutionary fight. That's the human spirit. All genetic. Developed over millions of years. My train just derailed. I completely lost my train of thought.

Allow me to regather. People grow up in neighborhoods. I guess I kind of come from a rough neighborhood. But enough about me. Let's talk about what it's like to ride a bicycle. The beauty. The elegent movement. The wind. The speed. The balance. That rushing feeling. The sun coming through in patches through the canopy of leaves above. A paved road moving downhill. You don't even need to pedal. You just hold still and glide, float, fly...

I love that feeling, that feeling of freedom. Life is perfect. Sic transit gloria, though. And you hit a hill, and you have to pedal. You have to work hard for it. Your legs are tired. You can't make it up. But you refuse to switch gears. You push and push and push. You grind it out. You don't give up. You're never getting off this damn fucking bike. You're not pushing it up, you're not walking it up -- you're riding the fucking bike up. So you push, with everything you've got, and you go, and you go, and you go. And it comes, slowly, the decline of the tip, the tip, the final tap, and the other side... WHOOSH!

Jesus was incredible.

I don't want you to leave.

Intense. I can't handle this right now. Just give me a second. Thanks.

And so he fell asleep.

I Like Ironic Statements Like...

WARNING: Don't panic!

This is the hard part.