Wednesday, February 24, 2010
This weekend I took a bit of a vacation, accompanying my only remaining friends on a nostaligic trip back to our primordial origins, a journey backwards in time to the place we might've called our hometown. It was a welcome reprieve from the monotony of my life, something which has evolved into an endless cycle of spacing out in front of a computer for eight hours of the day, only to return home and have my creative desire stifled by the allure of cheap entertainment and internet pornography.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Is it callous to call myself an artist? I have no great works to my name, no formal training in the field and a fairly limited skillset. Maybe someday I'll stop my useless dreaming, recognizing my mediocrity as I discover I'm long past the point where I could've made my mark on the world. A stout balding middle-aged man with a nice television and a decent job selling computer software or whatever career my decades of meaningless work experience have contributed themselves to. And if I'm lucky maybe I can take my son along with me on my business, just like my dad used to do, lamenting all the opportunities I passed up on and the women who'd broken my heart. Regaling him with the same tales of how bright the world looked when I was young.
I've long held the theory that middle school is the point in time at which your life is most embarrassing. There are no memories of middle school that I recall with any degree of fondness, every scene left in my mind a cringing mess of misplaced confidence resulting in overwhelming failure. Whether it was my pasty overweight self wearing a headband the first day of school in an effort to kickstart my image, or entering my awful drawing of an anime angel warrior into the school's yearbook cover contest - every decision I made sticks out to me as completely illogical. I will say that middle school was the first time in my life I ever made any friends, something I honestly attribute to having developed limited social interaction skills simply by hanging out on Pokemon message boards for an entire summer. The point is, I was an awful fucking person - we all were, and yet somehow middle school puts the idea in you head that you've arrived. That you are a living breathing competent human being, that your opinion is relevant, that your useless dreams of rock and roll superstardom are easily achieved if you keep strumming away at that Wal-Mart electric guitar everyday after school.
(My only relic of middle school is an obviously anime-inspired story I wrote called Kaze's Revenge or something. It's cringe inducing beyond belief)
I think if anything I learned more from middle school than most people, simply to never take any thought or feeling you might have seriously. As most any artist knows (or at least, should know, many seem blind to it) - it's impossible to judge your own works correctly without distancing yourself from them for at least a small period. Many times I've opened old sketchbooks to find figures I had once considered the pinnacle of my own talent, only to become disgusted with the awkward proportions and squashed faces. Sometimes it takes only a week, or maybe a few hours before I can return to something no longer running off my creator's high, and revalue it objectively.
The problem then is that I realize I'm still stuck in middle school, and may remain there for my entire life. Despite my recognition of how pitifully juvenile it is, I still find myself lying in bed listening to the same Radiohead song over and over. I still find myself strangely clinging to the unrealistic ideal of myself as some sort of tragic figure, ignoring the fact that my youth has all but faded. 22 years old and I still want to do it all over again. I want the high school romance I never had, I want to take that quiet shy girl to the prom before taking her back to my house and fucking her properly.
I just finished reading a Japanese comic called Onani Master Kurosawa (Masturbation Master Kurosawa). It's an impossibly endearing story about a confused middle school kid who masturbates in the girl's bathroom at school, his rape fantasies about classmates his only revenge against the world he feels no place in. This somehow spins from a quick gag to a legitimate coming-of-age tale, and I found myself wondering what middle school would've been like if like him I'd tried to change.
Instead, I find myself still lamenting my dead loves. Still obsessing over the things I could've been. Still printing out porn and satisfying myself in the men's bathroom.
I'm trying to change.
It might even work this time.
I've long held the theory that middle school is the point in time at which your life is most embarrassing. There are no memories of middle school that I recall with any degree of fondness, every scene left in my mind a cringing mess of misplaced confidence resulting in overwhelming failure. Whether it was my pasty overweight self wearing a headband the first day of school in an effort to kickstart my image, or entering my awful drawing of an anime angel warrior into the school's yearbook cover contest - every decision I made sticks out to me as completely illogical. I will say that middle school was the first time in my life I ever made any friends, something I honestly attribute to having developed limited social interaction skills simply by hanging out on Pokemon message boards for an entire summer. The point is, I was an awful fucking person - we all were, and yet somehow middle school puts the idea in you head that you've arrived. That you are a living breathing competent human being, that your opinion is relevant, that your useless dreams of rock and roll superstardom are easily achieved if you keep strumming away at that Wal-Mart electric guitar everyday after school.
(My only relic of middle school is an obviously anime-inspired story I wrote called Kaze's Revenge or something. It's cringe inducing beyond belief)
I think if anything I learned more from middle school than most people, simply to never take any thought or feeling you might have seriously. As most any artist knows (or at least, should know, many seem blind to it) - it's impossible to judge your own works correctly without distancing yourself from them for at least a small period. Many times I've opened old sketchbooks to find figures I had once considered the pinnacle of my own talent, only to become disgusted with the awkward proportions and squashed faces. Sometimes it takes only a week, or maybe a few hours before I can return to something no longer running off my creator's high, and revalue it objectively.
The problem then is that I realize I'm still stuck in middle school, and may remain there for my entire life. Despite my recognition of how pitifully juvenile it is, I still find myself lying in bed listening to the same Radiohead song over and over. I still find myself strangely clinging to the unrealistic ideal of myself as some sort of tragic figure, ignoring the fact that my youth has all but faded. 22 years old and I still want to do it all over again. I want the high school romance I never had, I want to take that quiet shy girl to the prom before taking her back to my house and fucking her properly.
I just finished reading a Japanese comic called Onani Master Kurosawa (Masturbation Master Kurosawa). It's an impossibly endearing story about a confused middle school kid who masturbates in the girl's bathroom at school, his rape fantasies about classmates his only revenge against the world he feels no place in. This somehow spins from a quick gag to a legitimate coming-of-age tale, and I found myself wondering what middle school would've been like if like him I'd tried to change.
Instead, I find myself still lamenting my dead loves. Still obsessing over the things I could've been. Still printing out porn and satisfying myself in the men's bathroom.
I'm trying to change.
It might even work this time.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday we celebrated by purchasing twenty-four pieces of supermarket fried chicken and a varied assortment of 40oz malt liquor bottles. I like to pretend that this act was committed in the name of some bizarre social justice, lambasting the racist iconography and the absurdity of its existence. Truth be told it was more an excuse to eat greasy chicken and get unreasonably drunk.
Tell the children all is well. We have not yet succumbed to our weakness.
Tell the children all is well. We have not yet succumbed to our weakness.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Happy New Year
Was it the Mayans who first decided to break down the formless eternity of existance into easily dicernable chunks? Sliced the endless passage of time into seconds and minutes and hours, broke the passage of days into months and seasons and then finally years? If so, the real question is why. Were they simply tired of no one knowing exactly when to show up for the afternoon beheading? Or was it some strange human desire to feel something pass, to for some reason anticipate the turning of the calendar page, to pretend each day is somehow unlike the last.
New Years Eve I accidently found myself at a Jersey Shore theme party, legions of middle-aged professionals in muscle-ts and halter tops, screaming and pounding Yaeger-Bombs as a household of Italian Stereotypes did likewise in a much less ironic fashion. I quickly escaped, spilling out into the cold night air and taking the trains downtown with Grocer and Click's Sister. We looked at the lackluster ice sculptures and blew as hard as we could on our noisemakers, which were for some reason so fucked up that if you blew hard enough it sounded like a woman was screaming as a car drove over her. People kept looking around for the apparent accident, which only made us laugh and blow harder.
Down at the wharf the fireworks are exploding in rather grand fashion as we hoot like idiots. And when the girl kisses me on the cheek I try to tell myself it's a tradition. That like most things it means nothing, and even if it had meant something, in the grand scheme of things it really didn't. Still, I find myself recklessly believing this is some sort of grand sign - a great culmination of my years of regret and lonliness. Not knowing the words to Auld Lang Sine me and Grocer make it halfway through the Star Spangled Banner before realizing we don't know the words to that either. Instead we start screaming the chorus of Born in the USA as loud as we can. And as we scream our reckless and lofty new years resolutions at the exploding light show and guzzle down plastic bottles of orange juice spiked heavily with Vodka I wonder if maybe everything'll be ok.
For the longest time I've been recieving email messages intended for someone else with the same name. I open my inbox today to find an email from Uncle Rick, forwarded by Grandpa Dr, wishing me a Happy Birthday.
Here's to that I guess.
New Years Eve I accidently found myself at a Jersey Shore theme party, legions of middle-aged professionals in muscle-ts and halter tops, screaming and pounding Yaeger-Bombs as a household of Italian Stereotypes did likewise in a much less ironic fashion. I quickly escaped, spilling out into the cold night air and taking the trains downtown with Grocer and Click's Sister. We looked at the lackluster ice sculptures and blew as hard as we could on our noisemakers, which were for some reason so fucked up that if you blew hard enough it sounded like a woman was screaming as a car drove over her. People kept looking around for the apparent accident, which only made us laugh and blow harder.
Down at the wharf the fireworks are exploding in rather grand fashion as we hoot like idiots. And when the girl kisses me on the cheek I try to tell myself it's a tradition. That like most things it means nothing, and even if it had meant something, in the grand scheme of things it really didn't. Still, I find myself recklessly believing this is some sort of grand sign - a great culmination of my years of regret and lonliness. Not knowing the words to Auld Lang Sine me and Grocer make it halfway through the Star Spangled Banner before realizing we don't know the words to that either. Instead we start screaming the chorus of Born in the USA as loud as we can. And as we scream our reckless and lofty new years resolutions at the exploding light show and guzzle down plastic bottles of orange juice spiked heavily with Vodka I wonder if maybe everything'll be ok.
For the longest time I've been recieving email messages intended for someone else with the same name. I open my inbox today to find an email from Uncle Rick, forwarded by Grandpa Dr, wishing me a Happy Birthday.
Here's to that I guess.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Winter
I've had to start taking the train to work because it's too cold and dangerous to be riding my bike anymore. I'm vaguely pissed about it, since there are only downsides to the experience. It's also this time of year that the trains start breaking down, often leaving me stuck for twenty minutes at a time in a car packed full of similarly depressed travelers, each of us quietly eyeing each other either out of boredom, or a desire to find the most hideous person on the train and enjoy the brief feeling of regular everyday superiority.
Growing up is a pain not so much for the responsibility, but for the fact that for the first time in your life you have to acknowledge that you aren't as unique as you had imagined. I grew up expecting fame and fortune to be waiting for me once I struck out on my own, only to come to terms much too quickly with my lack of motivation or talent. I grew up honestly believing I was the only living breathing human being, the only person who understood truly the tragedy of our brief short lives and the only person to ever be tormented by the false faces we're forced to wear each day to remain sane. Thankfully this middle-school level of philosophy fades from most of us (the unfortunate self-proclaimed poetic suicidals too busy cutting themselves to realize just how pathetic they truly are). It's an odd mix of thankfulness/disapointment to seee your own illusions about your self-important grandeur be shattered in an instant when you realize everyone is terrified of death - it's just that nobody talks about it. The faceless silent people you see on the train aren't blank slates, rather brains are rapt at attention behind those blank eyes, the whole lot of us waging a silent war within ourselves to not scream misfortune as we wait twenty or so minutes for the trains to start up again.
It's in these odd moments of clarity that I sometimes discover the odd inconsequential nature of my existance, realizing that my perception of time is an awful illusion, and that the whole lot of us will live forever despite already being dead. This is why, staring at my fellow disgruntled train passagers sighing relief as the train doors close finally, I consider holding my cell phone aloft and announcing "Attention ladies and gentlemen. The cell phone in my hand is actually a detonator linked to the highly-sophisticated bomb strapped to my chest, set to explode in ten seconds time. Find peace with your god while you can!"
In my mind the few men closest to me have tackled me to the ground long before I finish my rant, while everyone else is screaming, trampling each other as they try in vain to run to the other end of the crammed train.
Back in the real world I chuckle like a madman, while all the hidden people wonder what's wrong with me.
Growing up is a pain not so much for the responsibility, but for the fact that for the first time in your life you have to acknowledge that you aren't as unique as you had imagined. I grew up expecting fame and fortune to be waiting for me once I struck out on my own, only to come to terms much too quickly with my lack of motivation or talent. I grew up honestly believing I was the only living breathing human being, the only person who understood truly the tragedy of our brief short lives and the only person to ever be tormented by the false faces we're forced to wear each day to remain sane. Thankfully this middle-school level of philosophy fades from most of us (the unfortunate self-proclaimed poetic suicidals too busy cutting themselves to realize just how pathetic they truly are). It's an odd mix of thankfulness/disapointment to seee your own illusions about your self-important grandeur be shattered in an instant when you realize everyone is terrified of death - it's just that nobody talks about it. The faceless silent people you see on the train aren't blank slates, rather brains are rapt at attention behind those blank eyes, the whole lot of us waging a silent war within ourselves to not scream misfortune as we wait twenty or so minutes for the trains to start up again.
It's in these odd moments of clarity that I sometimes discover the odd inconsequential nature of my existance, realizing that my perception of time is an awful illusion, and that the whole lot of us will live forever despite already being dead. This is why, staring at my fellow disgruntled train passagers sighing relief as the train doors close finally, I consider holding my cell phone aloft and announcing "Attention ladies and gentlemen. The cell phone in my hand is actually a detonator linked to the highly-sophisticated bomb strapped to my chest, set to explode in ten seconds time. Find peace with your god while you can!"
In my mind the few men closest to me have tackled me to the ground long before I finish my rant, while everyone else is screaming, trampling each other as they try in vain to run to the other end of the crammed train.
Back in the real world I chuckle like a madman, while all the hidden people wonder what's wrong with me.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Dumb people
I'm rather hung up on a particular aspect of society these days, one I feel myself reluctantly unable to accept. In a way I feel rather betrayed by my childhood, though honestly I should stop expecting so much of the American education system, stop blaming others for my inability to reconcile reality.
Simply, I cannot come to terms with the fact that stupid people exist. I am unable to wrap my head around the idea that there are people who are unable to think logically, and whose reaction to sound logic is to become upset and enraged, to turn that which they don't understand into something worth fighting about.
I really don't want this to come off like some rant against the ignorant. I've honestly had it up to here with the holier-than-thou attitude of the new intellectuals, the bastard children of our awful higher education, using their newfound learned status to loudly denounce entire subsections of people for having beliefs contradictory to the liberal spectrum. There was an underclassman in my community college who I entertained a friendship with, and to be honest he was a pretty decent kid who will probably do well at getting stoned and playing bass guitar for the rest of his existance. Once the two of us epically bailed on a play we were forced to attend as part of an English class. I had recognizing more than a few performers as part of the horrible LARP crew that frequented the comic store I worked, I declared I was having none of it and the two of us snuck past the instructor and out through the rear stage door, nodding at the preparing performers as we ran for our cars.
That was a long explanation which basically comes down to the two of us dicking around at the mall, this mate of mine noticing a Confederate Flag license plate on some big red envirorment killing truck, and in a moment of "take that!" inspired bravado he bent the thing over backwards.
"Take that!" Shouted by countless numbers of my educated peers. The lesbian classmate who invited me to her protest rally outside the supposedly anti-gay coffee shop which fired her, the youtube rebutals of smirking atheists, disproving god with pie charts and other useless hyperbole. "Take that! This is the rallying cry at which I cringe, wishing people could learn to emphasize with their supposed enemies.
I don't really know where this goes. I guess I'm just very lost these days. It used to be I could just talk to somebody, though I now find myself constantly worrying if I'm actually connecting on an intellecual level with these people. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm horrified when things which make perfect sense to me are seen as great insults by the people I interact with, or when I'm caught in a situation talking to someone, and it feels like I'm talking to some puppet or something, nobody watching from beyond the veil of humanity. It scares me to realize there's likely been countless scores of people who've thought the same of me. Tried to engage me on a higher level only to recieve a spattering of sardonic wit, my dismissive or sarcastic manner regarded as ignorance.
I really must sound like an elitest. Honestly, I find myself in a great conundrum. Do I consider myself a smart person? Maybe, I wish I was smarter to be honest. I wish I found time for books, for engaging cinema, for rewarding discussion amounst peers rather than just reiterating highlights of the latest South Park episode. Unfortunately, I am caught between two worlds. I am one of those people who is in love with the disgusting pulp media delivered to the masses. Maybe this is just a poor excuse for being a nerd but I read comic books more entranced by the attempted mythos of these ridiculous characters rather than for any reasonable plot. I consider pro-wrestling to be one of the highest art forms ever attempted, great stage plays starring an outlandish cast of muscle-bound men and over-sexualized women - the storyline never ending, the audience consisting of those who have no idea what great poets these men are. Most of all I love everything Japanese, a culture where a man dressed as a devil riding a motorcycle in a rubber suit can be an enduring character, where dangerous obsession with fantasy cartoon violence and underage pop idols is the norm for outcast Japanese men.
I guess I'm one of those people who likes things "ironically," as is the term tossed around. But really there's no irony. I love this filthy, self-serving media. I'd probably even watch Nascar if they didn't take it as seriously as they do - if the cars were painted up with skulls and during the Mountain Dew Turbo Minute everyone in the stands got to fire bottle rockets at the lead car.
So this is my problem - I am an educated person who longs for ignorance. I want to live in a world where I don't have to think all the time. I want to sit around and play Madden video games, watch The Dark Knight fifteen times and have no honest idea who Citizen Kane is or why on earth I should care. Instead of a backlog of important books and literature to read, I want a list of which Spiderman comics I'm missing. I want to be the kind of person who when someone presents me clear and direct evidence that god is dead, I can hold my head high and tell them "I hope that you find Jesus someday."
Instead here I am anxiously awaiting the weekend, where me and my local fetish support group will be dressing up in costumes and living out our depraved fantasies. Most of them seem dumb enough to just enjoy the fun, not thinking about what dangerous perverts they all are.
Maybe the fact that I recognize this, makes me the most dangerous one of them all.
Simply, I cannot come to terms with the fact that stupid people exist. I am unable to wrap my head around the idea that there are people who are unable to think logically, and whose reaction to sound logic is to become upset and enraged, to turn that which they don't understand into something worth fighting about.
I really don't want this to come off like some rant against the ignorant. I've honestly had it up to here with the holier-than-thou attitude of the new intellectuals, the bastard children of our awful higher education, using their newfound learned status to loudly denounce entire subsections of people for having beliefs contradictory to the liberal spectrum. There was an underclassman in my community college who I entertained a friendship with, and to be honest he was a pretty decent kid who will probably do well at getting stoned and playing bass guitar for the rest of his existance. Once the two of us epically bailed on a play we were forced to attend as part of an English class. I had recognizing more than a few performers as part of the horrible LARP crew that frequented the comic store I worked, I declared I was having none of it and the two of us snuck past the instructor and out through the rear stage door, nodding at the preparing performers as we ran for our cars.
That was a long explanation which basically comes down to the two of us dicking around at the mall, this mate of mine noticing a Confederate Flag license plate on some big red envirorment killing truck, and in a moment of "take that!" inspired bravado he bent the thing over backwards.
"Take that!" Shouted by countless numbers of my educated peers. The lesbian classmate who invited me to her protest rally outside the supposedly anti-gay coffee shop which fired her, the youtube rebutals of smirking atheists, disproving god with pie charts and other useless hyperbole. "Take that! This is the rallying cry at which I cringe, wishing people could learn to emphasize with their supposed enemies.
I don't really know where this goes. I guess I'm just very lost these days. It used to be I could just talk to somebody, though I now find myself constantly worrying if I'm actually connecting on an intellecual level with these people. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm horrified when things which make perfect sense to me are seen as great insults by the people I interact with, or when I'm caught in a situation talking to someone, and it feels like I'm talking to some puppet or something, nobody watching from beyond the veil of humanity. It scares me to realize there's likely been countless scores of people who've thought the same of me. Tried to engage me on a higher level only to recieve a spattering of sardonic wit, my dismissive or sarcastic manner regarded as ignorance.
I really must sound like an elitest. Honestly, I find myself in a great conundrum. Do I consider myself a smart person? Maybe, I wish I was smarter to be honest. I wish I found time for books, for engaging cinema, for rewarding discussion amounst peers rather than just reiterating highlights of the latest South Park episode. Unfortunately, I am caught between two worlds. I am one of those people who is in love with the disgusting pulp media delivered to the masses. Maybe this is just a poor excuse for being a nerd but I read comic books more entranced by the attempted mythos of these ridiculous characters rather than for any reasonable plot. I consider pro-wrestling to be one of the highest art forms ever attempted, great stage plays starring an outlandish cast of muscle-bound men and over-sexualized women - the storyline never ending, the audience consisting of those who have no idea what great poets these men are. Most of all I love everything Japanese, a culture where a man dressed as a devil riding a motorcycle in a rubber suit can be an enduring character, where dangerous obsession with fantasy cartoon violence and underage pop idols is the norm for outcast Japanese men.
I guess I'm one of those people who likes things "ironically," as is the term tossed around. But really there's no irony. I love this filthy, self-serving media. I'd probably even watch Nascar if they didn't take it as seriously as they do - if the cars were painted up with skulls and during the Mountain Dew Turbo Minute everyone in the stands got to fire bottle rockets at the lead car.
So this is my problem - I am an educated person who longs for ignorance. I want to live in a world where I don't have to think all the time. I want to sit around and play Madden video games, watch The Dark Knight fifteen times and have no honest idea who Citizen Kane is or why on earth I should care. Instead of a backlog of important books and literature to read, I want a list of which Spiderman comics I'm missing. I want to be the kind of person who when someone presents me clear and direct evidence that god is dead, I can hold my head high and tell them "I hope that you find Jesus someday."
Instead here I am anxiously awaiting the weekend, where me and my local fetish support group will be dressing up in costumes and living out our depraved fantasies. Most of them seem dumb enough to just enjoy the fun, not thinking about what dangerous perverts they all are.
Maybe the fact that I recognize this, makes me the most dangerous one of them all.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
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