Audrizzle

My new favorite website.

2010-02-04T20:43:00.003-05:00

WormSpit.com

I never knew I cared about silk worms or moths or anything like that, but this stuff is incredible. I love it!

I spent most of today going through every page of this website, and I'm still working on it now.

Very photo-intensive, and not too flashy. To the point!

Anyway, Blogger is apparently getting rid of FTP access next month, which is ridiculous. BOO!

I will have to figure out what to do.

Funny, though, because I actually "programmed" my own PHP posting-type-thing back in high school... now we're on HTML5 and I'm sure a 6 year old could hack the thing I made (if I could even find it...)

booooo blogger.

Also LOST is amazing as ever.

That's it for now. Really I just came here to post that worm thing.

CHECK IT OUT!

WormSpit.com

From On High.

2009-12-29T15:02:00.001-05:00

So, I'm writing this from the plane. I am 36,000 feet above the planet earth, and since I don't have internet access, I can't distract myself with anything.

Well, technically I could distract myself with plenty of things, but right now I'm choosing not to.

Anyway.
I haven't posted in a long time which is terrible.

Not really terrible for anyone who reads this website, if anyone reads this website. But terrible for me, just because I hate it when I go for long periods without writing.

Today I got very angry at a man on the bus to the plane… he asked me to move my backpack, and I just got so angry because there are certain times when you have to sacrifice your personal space so that the group as a whole may move forward.

The subway, for example. I could never understand how anyone who is very particular about having a "personal space bubble" could live in New York City. Whenever I was waiting for a train with a crowd of people and one came, a lot of people would get on, but then some other people would rather wait around until the next train than squeeze into the last spots available. So, being the efficient person that I am, I would always move past and squeeze in before the doors shut. If you want personal space, you don't live in NYC.

Somehow, in the rows in front of me, directly to my right, and behind me are infants.

The one right next to me just threw up all over his mom. I feel kind of bad for her, it must be really embarrassing. But at the same time it could be much worse. The kid in front of them was banging on the seat for a really long time earlier and the parents didn't do anything about it, and that also made me very angry.

I guess I always thought people found their own kids much more annoying than other people found them to be, which is why strangers ooh and aah over how cute babies are. I guess you get used to the cuteness, just like you get used to the annoyance. So even though it's completely rude and disrespectful to the dozens of people around you, you just don't care, you just let the kid scream or hit his toys against chairs or spit up on strangers. Because you certainly can't be expected to bother to take responsibility for yourself and what is essentially your creation.

I just feel sorry for the woman next to me. She's changing her baby's onesie now, because the green one with the dinosaur on it had vomit all over it.
Luckily I didn't smell any of it.

Now the baby is looking at me and saying Daddy and smiling laughing and reaching out his hand toward me. I guess that's the main reason I feel so sorry for his mom, because she's alone, no dad, no aunt, and my god - she's soaked in his vomit. I am amazed a baby could even hold that much liquid.

I don't mind this baby. The one in the row ahead of me is being quiet now, but both his parents are drinking alcohol. I wonder if you are allowed to bring a 3-oz container of booze onto the plane with you (provided that it is in a 1-quart plastic zip bag).

Captain says we're at 37,000 feet now.
It's kind of funny because his announcement keeps getting interrupted by other people radio-ing in. You'd think they'd plan ahead so that doesn't happen. Kind of looks unprofessional.

Also, I apologize right now for any and all grammatical errors in this document. I am being lazy, and it's very hard to move here. It is also impossible to google English rules.

So, what's going on in my life?

Oh. Well, I'm on a plane. I'm coming back from Key West, where I spent Christmas. Christmas was OK,
(the flight attendant - or maybe I should call her the flighty attendant - just gave the dad of the loud kid a free margarita. Not cool.)
for some reason my first instinct when I got there was to clean & organize my mom's entertainment center. I also made her up a nice little list of instructions for how to use it - which remote to use, which buttons to press, how to play Wii and listen to the stereo at the same time.

It's kind of funny that my mom can't figure this stuff out. I always figured that I got my "good at hooking up electronics" gene from her father, who owned a TV sale & repair business. I guess sometimes these things skip a generation.

I also think it's kind of funny how good I am at working with my hands and doing "labor" type things, I guess because everyone has always considered me so cerebral. If you grow up hearing over and over how smart you are it kind of gets ingrained in you and you end up believing (or at least I did) that intelligence is the only thing that matters and why should you need to know how to do anything physical, you're so smart you'll be a zillionaire and paying people to do things like clean out lint traps or rake leaves or carry boxes for you. Never work with your hands.

But I still have to admit, I do love manual labor. Mostly what I love is that I can get into it, I can focus on it and not think, or my mind can wander and do whatever. But it's straightforward, repetitive, and you can see a visible effect or outcome when it's complete. You can see the hole you dug, and think about how they can't teach how to dig a hole at college.

Maybe they can.

It's just that more and more, I think college is overrated. So much of college is learning things out of books, which is ridiculous. Why pay thousands of dollars to have the "privilege" to pay thousands more for books you could find at a library for free? I mean, I understand the desire to discuss literature with someone, but when I went to Webster, the majority of the students either didn't read the books assigned, didn't read them on time, or didn't want to talk about them.

It's amazing, but looking back, my experience in college classrooms was a very isolated one.

Oh. Here's something I wanted to bring up.

I finished reading The Magus at the airport.
It's one of those books I enjoyed so much while I was reading it that I stopped for a while to prolong the moment when it would have to come to an end.

The last time I did this was with The Idiot, which I finished about 5 years after I started it. I think that's because I was reading the David Magarshack translation, the new one by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is a lot easier to get through… yet I still think it loses some of the cute little oddities the language held before.

It's so interesting to think about translation. There are double meanings, alliteration, so much fun that just isn't translatable. And then you wonder whether you should translate to a sentence that is 100 % accurate in meaning, or one that sounds as artful in your language as it does in the original. Very difficult. I can spend hours trying to work one sentence, I imagine it would take ages to do a full book.

Anyway.
The Magus was great. Great isn't really even a good enough word to describe it. I want to say "magical" but that's not it. Intoxicating, in some ways, I suppose… but mere intoxication is such a bland, colorless state compared to the sensations this book arouses in the reader!

I almost don't want to talk this book up too much. Not many people have read it.
At first, I told everyone to read it. Everyone. But now I like it as my secret, as my treasure, it's not a sluttish piece of writing that everybody knows inside and out. It's special to me.

Of course I want to read it again, immediately.

I also want to give up the internet. Maybe I should only allow myself certain times of day to use it.

I guess I'd have to be careful with my phone then.

I think the concern is that we've become such a society of instant gratification gluttons. What was that movie with that guy? I have to know now.

It's really interesting to think about wanting to know something for more than an hour or two… how did people learn anything before the internet? How were they satisfied without being able to find out whatever they wanted whenever they wanted?

It's infuriating, really. When I was at Angelus House there was no internet. There was a large collection of reference books, however (many of which were mine) and trying to glean a specific piece of information from a book is very fun, in a way, especially if you are used to using the internet.

I think it would be a neat experiment for me to one day, instead of looking up words in the dictionary or googling this statistic or that, I want to just write down every single question that comes into my mind, then look them all up at the end of the day. I'll do that tomorrow.

I'll need to carry my big notebook around with me, probably.

I should start a chapter in it called "Internet Withdrawal".

There will be so many things I think I "can't do" without internet access. Can't contact my friends, can't write, can't do artwork, can't think about the bank, etc.

Who knows.

Anyway, it's 9:52 PM on Sunday, 12/27/2009.

The seatbelt sign is on and the babies are being quiet. I am exhausted and I hope the plane lands soon. This is going to be it for now.

Oh, one more thing….
on my personal/mental state.

Had been doing really quite well for a while except for occasional bouts of indorsiness, but the last couple weeks have brought on serious empathy attacks.
I have also been more loving and helpful, which is weird.

I think it's so funny that they make such a big deal about adults wearing seatbelts on the airplane but the kids just jump up and down on their laps. Incredible.

Plus. It seems like I see a lot more kids on planes these days than I used to.

I wonder when the captain is going to tell me to turn off my portable electronic device. I think it is very funny the way they are called "portable electronic devices"… like anyone could really bring a non-portable electronic device on an airplane. "Whaddaya mean I can't set up my surround sound? I bought all the seats in first class so I could! Do you know how much these speakers cost me?"

Sigh. We're descending, surely. I imagine what I see to my left is Chattanooga, that would make perfect sense. Planes go about 200 miles an hour, right? And we're about half an hour away, and the Chatty is about 100 miles away, right?

Oh boy, here it comes… I don't know why I don't just put away my damn laptop. It's not like I'm being extra creative or clever. This post is surely quantity over quality; please forgive me.

If we are flying over Chattanooga, though, has it always been this big, and where is Lookout Mountain?

I've got to say. Maybe it's just because it's the holiday season, but I think flying with Tennessee passengers is a lot less pleasant than flying with … well, I don't know. I just get the feeling the people on this plane don't travel a lot and so they want to make the most of it - get all the drinks, start all the conversations, ask all the questions, use all the lavatories, stand in all the ways they can.

It kind of sucks that I won't be flying over Knoxville. The airport here is about 10 miles south or so of the city, and since we're coming up from the south I won't be able to see the city lights at all. I bet Knoxville is bigger than Chattanooga, but if this is Chattanooga on my left, Chattanooga is a lot bigger than I thought it was.

Oh, suburban sprawl! I like the suburban sprawl in Knoxville because it seems like Farragut, Oak Ridge, Maryville, etc. are all spaced out enough that you're not expected to roam through all of east Tennessee. Boy, I was not fond of Connecticut, where all my friends lived a half hour away - in different directions.

I want to see the movie of The Magus but I can't imagine it could possibly be any good. So much of the book is internal monologue.

The drunk people's child is being really annoying. I didn't mean to, but I gave the dad a look and they tried to quiet their child a bit. Basically he is still making all the noises he was before, but now he is sitting down on his mother's lap instead of standing with his hands on the back of her chair.

What else is going on in my life…

I play Wii a lot. Dave has made me clean the apartment. I have good ideas occasionally but I don't always write them down. I haven't been going out or spending money as much.

The child in the row behind me has now started shrieking, the one in front of me is repeating "Ayyy yii yii yii yaaa…" over and over. The one that threw up earlier is somehow sleeping through all of this.

I think the weirdest experience ever on a plan was once when there was a screaming child in the row behind me, and I couldn't see it, but then after a while the screaming sounded really muffled, like they were smothering the baby or something. And then it stopped. I mean, I'm sure they didn't kill or drug their baby right there on the plane, but still… just one of those very eerie situations.

I cannot get over how rude the people in front of me are.

Money is still a major issue, of course. I'm knitting quite a bit since it is winter. I made a hat and I look like a mushroom head when I wear it. So i am going to make another hat, where I will look like an alien instead.

I need to stop at Walgreens on the way home. Also an ATM.

Also, here's something I don't know very much about: When you want to buy a gun there's some kind of waiting period, where they check up and make sure you're not a confirmed homicidal maniac or whatever, but if you buy a gun at a gun show they waive the waiting period.

How does that make any sense? I mean, do the gun sellers check up on the people they sold guns to once the gun show is over? Or do they just not take any identification at all?

Again, you'd think that by now the whole system would be digital, but this country is just too big for that.

"Ayy yiii yiii yaaa".

Now I can't see anything. Clouds, I guess. I wonder why they put the seatbelt sign on 20 minutes ago, don't they usually only do it right before they're about to land? I guess I don't know.

Well, NOW it's time to prepare for landing. 10:16. Going to put up my laptop and hope that I don't have to wait too long at the baggage claim.

SEEYAZ

wacom practice, yesvember, etc.

2009-11-05T19:44:00.003-05:00

Practiced with the Wacom. Went for a little longer than usual this time, this took about 2.5 hours. I did it just as practice which is why it's far from perfect, but I think it's pretty good for just practice.

This is my cousin Cahalen, who played here in Knoxville at Preservation Pub last month. He was fantastic! I'm so proud he's so talented. Check his tour dates, he's always playing everywhere, I recommend that everyone go see him!

Anyway.
Not a whole lot de nouveau is going on, I have been thinking really really hard about getting a job and have even applied to a couple. But mostly what I've been doing is thinking, as opposed to going out and doing.

This is partially because I am sick as a very sick person. I did not write "sick as a dog" because I don't know many sick dogs.
Also this: once I was at my mom's house and her dog Loopy threw up on the carpet, so I went to the kitchen to get a paper towel. When I got back, Loopy had just finished licking up & eating her vomit from the floor.
When I'm sick, I don't do that.

I guess what I thought I had was a sinus infection, because at the beginning of last week it was mainly my nasal area that was giving me trouble (in the form of... well, I'll not go into details) but since then my throat has started hurting a lot, and last Tuesday my chest was really bugging me too. Luckily that's mostly gone, so it's just the sinuses and my throat being itchy & sore.
Also mild fever, 100.2 degrees.

But I've had a mild fever pretty consistently for the last 2 or 3 months. Which isn't fun, but at least the weather's cooling down outside. And boy, is it beautiful!

Knitting is my usual fall sport, and this year is no different.

The other thing that's a whole lot of fun is Wii.

I think my favorite game right now is Groovin' Blocks.
It's like Tetris meets Dance Dance Revolution. That's pretty much the best way I can describe it.

Working on my art, still reading "The Magus", trying to organizize the apartment, taking cough syrup and mucinex. Oh, what a joyous life.

Hopefully I will be better by next week, because next Thursday is my BIRTHDAY! WOOHOO! Actually I don't really care. My mom is coming to town, though, which should be interesting.

Also, sad news: Timothy Brown passed away last week.

He was a really great guy, and very good friends with my mom. When she was queen, he was her King.

Rest In Peace, King Captain Timothy.

peace.

2009-09-20T03:27:00.002-04:00

Spent a lot of time writing and thinking (same thing). I concluded that my life could not progress any further on the rickety precepts that functioned as crutches for so many years. I wallowed in despair and hopelessness until I discovered that this is not a terminus, but a transition. Where I once saw the end, I now see the beginning. A burden has been lifted. I can do anything, and I will.

special keith, apology accepted, & art roundup.

2009-09-19T03:32:00.002-04:00

We all know I have a tendency to become obsessed with things.

Here's a new one.

Dear god.

I have always been a fan of Kool Keith (or "Special Keith" as some confused baby boomers are prone to call him) but I watched the "Livin' Astro" video again yesterday for the first time in about 4 years and fell in love with it.

Sigh.

I guess I first saw it in fall of 2005 on GTV, which I will admit to watching. I will also admit to hosting a show on GTV, but that's as far as I will go.

So, technically I can say that I fit into the following categories:

* Award winning writer
* Published photographer
* Museum-featured artist
* Former TV show host

On top of many other things.

Or alongside of them.

Whatever.

all of A sudden is the proper way to write it. I have been wrong for YEARS, thinking it was "all of the sudden." I can't tell you what an idiot I feel like for this. I can't even begin to bring it up.

Also, the other day...
this is getting a bit personal, OH NO! ... Well, the other day, J apologized. I'm not going to say for what, but the fact of the matter is that I had been waiting for J to apologize for 7 weeks, and a couple of days ago he finally did.

Now, I had been waiting and waiting and expecting and HOPING that the moment J expressed his remorse would come along, but when it finally did, something interesting struck me.

Everything that he was going to say I already knew.

Seeing as we had not discussed the incident, I can't say how I knew it... people often assume things and most likely they are wrong. I guess I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and came to my assumption which turned out to be right. And though I think the old me would have been ready to rub his face in it, would have preferred he lick my boots in addition to saying he was sorry, would have laughed as he groveled at my feet... well, the present me just felt sorry for him. I mean, getting to the root of the issue, I realized that his problem was his inability to react to things as a mature adult. He had felt uneasy the entire time about it whereas I was able to get over it after a very short time.

I felt horrible to think that two people could go through the same experience and come out of it so differently. I mean, I'm sure he wasn't agonizing over it, but the depth of his apology to me was so genuinely heartbreaking I fear that it was almost as bad.

What really struck me about the situation was this: J caused me to suffer, so in the past I would have wanted to see him suffer. BUT when faced with the actual front of his suffering, I realized that he had already suffered much more than I had as a result of his actions, and whatever petty need for revenge I'd had was long gone. I just wanted him to be my friend again.

So, I accepted his apology, I halted his pathetic pleas for forgiveness, and I told him it was alright, to stop fretting.

Anyway.

I guess my ultimate point is this.

There is something that I know the old me would have done. The bad me. The hateful, mean me. And I couldn't do it.

So many times when confronted with a situation, I have thought to myself...

A) This thing is bad but it's the only thing I can do.
B) This thing is bad, and I know I should do the good thing, but I'll do the bad thing anyway.
C) I want do to the bad thing, but I know I should do the good thing, so I'll pretend to be good even though I really don't want to.

This occasion brought me face-to-face with a new course of action.

D) In the past I may have wanted to do the bad thing, but now I can't bear the thought of it, so I must, i WANT to do the good thing. It's the only thing.

Result:

I am "getting better, becoming human".

Becoming a decent human at least. There are plenty of humans out there who are juvenile and oblivious and all the more unhappy because of it.

And I guess I'm not unhappy.
Saying so is really a giant leap for me.

In other news, some friends and I were going to go see The Goonies at Market Square in Knoxville this evening, but it ended up storming like crazy, so I stayed in and did artwork.

Soo, that brings us to the Friday Night Art Roundup!

If I wasn't super lazy, I would make a cool graphic for that. Who knows, maybe I will later!
(ha yeah right)

Anyway, here's what we've got:

First was the top left, then the bottom left, then the top right, and finally the bottom right.

The bottom right is very different from the other three, obviously, though you can still see some light dripage in the middle.

Anyway, I am pleased with the one on the top right less than I am with the other three, but oh well.

I think the one on the bottom right is interesting because it's obviously very intricate and took me longer to complete than all the other three (plus cleanup & setup time) put together.
Anyway, what's interesting is that I didn't notice while I was painting it, but am noticing now, 4 feet away, the lines through the bumps on the "enclosures" around the shape. If you look where the encircling lines go down (especially around the middle part of the right side) you notice some non-lines are formed in the pattern just by the shape of the painted lines. It's hard to explain, and if you can't see it already, it's probably not worth it to you or me to continue explaining.

Anyway, it is interesting, was unexpected, and like I said, I didn't even see it until after I was finished.

Another "discovery" that I will try to put to more use at a later date.

Sigh.

Wish I could sleep. Apparently I don't have any desire to stop writing.

It's been a long day, filled with terrible dreams about monsters and conspiracy.

And then some painting and some music and I'm feeling better now. But not tired, not tired at all.

Oy.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I'm out. PEACE!

dear god.

2009-08-21T03:52:00.002-04:00

OK, so I saw this posted on Tumblr and had to share it. Because it made me laugh like there's no tomorrow.

It will take you a while to read it but it will be worth it. Trust me.

This is just one page of the magic. Click it to see the full beauty.

I just cannot believe this person actually got a passing grade.
The teacher must be retarded. Plus, mixing up "to" with "too" ("Page is to big") ... yeah, that teacher is definitely retarded.

I wish I had tried to pull some shit like that while I was in school.

Sigh.

Common Errors in English - A great website.

2009-08-06T06:09:00.000-04:00

There aren't many great websites around anymore, so when I find one I am going to post it. I think I posted one about yeast infections around New Years. But this one is more... universal.

This website is of Common Errors in English. Drank vs. Drunk, exceptional vs. exceptionable, hyphens & dashes... it's an INSANELY awesome collection of grammatical rules and tips...

There are plenty of grammatical rules that most people don't follow anymore, techniques which, when used, can make the writer seem outdated or naïve.

This is where the tips come in handy: learn what's PROPER vs. what flows better.

Anyway, great site, clearly I still need to read a lot more of it.

One of the few sites that isn't all modernized and slicked over and it's more about content than design, which is good. Design is nothing without content.

Finally, here you go.

Common Errors in English

Liar extraordinaire: Michael Palmer/Gonzo Palmer/Michael Marcum/Michael Markham

2009-07-30T22:00:00.003-04:00

Michael Palmer, the definition of pathology.

This is the letter I wrote to Michael's goddaughter in response to her question of "What happened?"

On Tuesday July 21, Michael told me that he had tickets to go see Marilyn Manson and Slayer in Atlanta. Tickets AND Backstage Passes. I'm not a huge Slayer fan, but I love Manson so I thought this sounded cool. The thing was, since Michael apparently had a DUI a couple years ago, he doesn't drive, and doesn't have a car. So he'd kind of be using me to drive him to Atlanta, while I'd be "using" him to go see this show.

I went to Atlanta with Michael on the condition that he would be paying for the trip in exchange for my driving. He told me he would pay for the gas, for the hotel, the meals, and entertainment, and promised me he wouldn't fall asleep when I was driving - that's my biggest pet peeve, if I'm taking a road trip with someone and I'll be the one doing all the driving, the least they can do is stay awake and keep me company.

20 minutes after I picked him up, we stopped for gas and Michael told me he realized he had left his credit card back at his house.

I said that we should go back and get it, since he had no other money (though this part he lied about... at that point he said he DID have some cash, later on he said he DIDN'T, then went back to saying he DID...) BUT he refused, saying that we would stop at a bank before leaving Tennessee and he would get money using his bank card.

Later when I asked him where we should stop, he said we would try a bank when we got to Atlanta.

I ended up paying for all the gas for the way there, which was not supposed to happen.

When we got there, we went to the hotel he had booked, I waited in the car, and he went to check in. He said that they would not let him stay since he didn't have his credit card with him, though they had all the information on file. He told me that he cursed at the hotel manager and told him to "fuck his mother, and that if she was dead he should go dig her up and skull fuck her." Needless to say, at this point there was absolutely no way they would ever let us in.

Then, Michael told me we would go to the Omni hotel, since somehow he had some free nights there. Originally he said he talked to them on the phone and we would need a credit card to secure the room, and I offered to let them use mine as long as nothing was going to be charged.

When we made it to the Omni, they told us they would have to charge my card and that when Michael mailed them the letter saying that he had free nights there (which he said was back at his house in Knoxville) they would refund the card. Michael said "Don't worry, we can go to a bank right after this and I'll get you the cash."

On those terms, I agreed to let Michael "borrow" the money for the hotel room - which was over $230.

Of course later that evening he never went to a bank. The next day he lied to me and said he had tried using an ATM at the hotel lobby to get cash, but when I spoke to the people at the front desk they told me there was no ATM there.

Later that night Michael had me run errands for him, buying him cigarettes and beer- promising me that first thing in the morning he would pay me back, he was going to have his agent wire him the money through Western Union.

The following morning, Michael got mad at another girl who was staying with us (Leigh) for not "cuddling" with him when he was cold, so he called her a "hateful psychotic bitch" and told her to leave. I told her I would drive her back to her house, and asked Michael for the valet ticket for MY car, but he refused to give it to me and said "that bitch can walk home". I felt horrible, and was truly afraid because Michael had gotten so angry and mean for almost no reason.

That morning he said we would go get breakfast around 8 but he never got his act together and got ready. He also called his agent around 8:30 and asked her to wire him the money, and told me that we would get it before we went to eat. All that morning I just did the crossword puzzle and heard him make jokes about fucking my mom, and telling me to suck his dick (which I had already told him I was not going to do). Eventually I forced him to get his stuff together by 11:45 because check-out time was noon, and I did NOT want to pay for another night at the hotel - after he'd broken so many promises I didn't want to take any chances and end up losing ANOTHER $230.

We checked out and were going to get the car when Michael noticed his ipod was missing. He said he'd run back to the room and get it - this was 11:55 AM - and be back in 5 minutes. After waiting in my car for half an hour, he called and said he couldn't find it, could I check my bags for it, etc. I looked thoroughly, called him back, and told him I didn't have it. At around 1 he called and said he was really angry and was going to call the police, though he didn't know if maybe Leigh had taken it. At 1:30, he called and said Leigh had agreed to take a polygraph so he really believed she hadn't taken it. At 1:45 I called him and told him that I had been waiting in my car in this garage (which is supposed to be valet, for pick ups and drop offs only) for almost 2 hours, and that I was going to have to move the car. He said he was going to call the police and file a report, and I told him to call me whenever that was over with.

So, after 2 hours of waiting in my car I finally left and went to get my "breakfast" at 2 pm. I was going to try and check out the area and was driving around until 2:45 when Michael called me. He said the police wanted to know if I would take a polygraph, even though he "knew I didn't take the iPod" and that I "would have no reason to take it" since I "drove him down there" and "had my own damn ipod". I said "Of course I'd take one, if they really want me to," and then I could hear him cursing at the police over the phone and he hung up. He called me back in 10 minutes and told me to come pick him up, which I did. He said there was absolutely no success with the police (which I had expected) and that we were going to his friend's hotel which was on this one road. He told me he knew exactly where it was and would point it out to me. Unfortunately, he kept falling asleep while I was driving and he didn't know where it was - and neither did anyone we asked on the street.

Finally, after an hour of driving around I said "Do you want to go back to Knoxville?" He didn't give me an answer, just said "The show is tonight... why, do you want to go back?" and I said "Yes, I'm really not having any fun, and you told me you would get me money over 24 hours ago but that was a lie, and you've been really mean all day" and he said "Well I'm sorry but I couldn't have foreseen that my iPod would go missing on me." and I said "I know, I understand that, but you're angry and you're taking it out on me, and I have been sitting around all day waiting to do something, ANYTHING, even spent almost 4 hours in my car just waiting for YOU and now you don't even know where we're going." Then I said "Would you mind just getting me the money like you promised you would and then I could go back? I mean, couldn't you take a bus back to Knoxville tomorrow or something?" He said "Yeah, ok." and hardly anything else.

He called his agent and she apparently told him where she had sent the money to, so we spent another half hour trying to find Peachtree center. Then at around 4 Michael pointed to a place up ahead and said "that's it, that's where the western union is, park the car over here and wait for me." I didn't see any sign that said Peachtree Center or Western Union, but like a fool, I believed him. He got his bag out and I said "Why don't you leave that in the car, then I can drop you off somewhere after you get back?" and he said "No, I'll need to show them my identification." I was a little suspicious, but I said "Okay."

After 15 minutes I looked on my iPhone for Peachtree Center and found it was 2 miles away from where I was then, and where I had dropped Michael off. I looked up Western Union as well, and yes, it was in Peachtree center - two miles away. I called Michael and he didn't answer his phone, I waited 10 minutes and called again. He didn't answer, so I left a message saying "Listen, I know there's no Western Union where I dropped you off, and I know that Peachtree center is 2 miles away. I understand if you want to ditch me, but I'd appreciate you actually telling me straight out instead of lying. If you want a ride to the real Peachtree center, I'll wait around here for another 15 minutes, or you can call me, but if I don't hear from you I'm just going to have to go."

He didn't call. I waited in the car for another half an hour but realized that he HAD ditched me.

Then today (Sunday) he sent me a text message that said "I know you got my Ipod. The best thing you can do is stay the fuck away from me."

I replied "I swear to Christ that I didn't take your iPod. The best thing you can do is pay me back the money you owe me." He didn't respond.

Not counting the gas for the return trip, Michael promised to pay me back over $277.

If Michael had done the honest thing, gone to the REAL western union and gotten me the money, I might have been willing to stay in atlanta at least for the night so he could see the show, and then take him back late that evening or the next day. However, he lied to me and ditched me, and didn't even give me the opportunity to change my mind.

Even if he had said "You know what, I can't get the money right now, I'll pay you back next week in Knoxville" I might have been OK with it, but it's just the fact that he lied to me constantly that made me realize I had to leave.

I found out that Palmer isn't even his real last name, and he was trying to keep it a secret from Leigh and me. His last name is Markham or Marcum, and now he's trying to go as Gonzo Palmer, probably because he knows that everyone who knows him as Michael Palmer knows he's a liar.

I didn't want to leave him, and I didn't - he left me. I would have given him a ride back if he had just paid me the money he promised or if he had told the truth for once, but he chose to lie.

If you talk to him, tell him I'm sorry he couldn't get a bus back, if I had known he didn't have ANY access to money (he lied and told me he did) I wouldn't have let him leave. But I left thinking "well, he's got the $277 he stole from me and more coming from his agent, that should be enough to get him through another night."

He really just needs to learn that his lying is what got him in trouble with everything. If he had told the truth we all would have had a great trip.

---This is the majority of the message I sent to his Goddaughter. She messaged me back telling me that he had also lied to her, and if she talked to him she would ask him to return my money, but she didn't want to deal with his lies anymore... which I found to be very sad. I mean, I had heard Michael claim to love his goddaughter, and now apparently he had lied to her and greatly hurt her mother. How terrible.

And now, the story continues... he's trying to go by a different name - "Gonzo Palmer" and we CAN'T let it happen again. Apparently he's trying to run the same scam again, get a ride to some show with someone on facebook and probably fuck her over the same way he did me... So, if you live in Knoxville or Atlanta or anywhere and you're contacted by this bald guy who looks like a sociopath, take caution: he IS a sociopath. Watch out, or he will take advantage of you too.

I am not the first person who has been taken in by him. I will link to Patrick Christian's story about the whole Les Claypool fake interview fiasco that Michael screwed The JustUs Leeg over with.

Dead bodies & art.

2009-07-13T18:55:00.006-04:00

I'm not a big person for posting links, but right now I am just fascinated.

I mean there is so much art done with corpses these days that it's not really all that shocking anymore.

see: Ferrarri Forever - "Marco Evaristti is searching for a person on the verge of death, who wants to donate his body..." to be placed in an awesome Ferrari as 'art'!

It's funny, though, because I have always said that I would like to donate my body to art after I die. Art, then cannibalism, then science, in that order. But only art in a public sense - in a gallery at least for a while and if it does end up in someone's private collection, i would like there to be high resolution prints of it available online, no matter what.

At first my thought is "I'm not sure if I would want my name associated with it, though, what if it made me look bad?" Then I realize "Wait, I'd be dead, why would I care if I looked bad?" I don't know. I guess most bodies that are donated are donated anonymously.

Speaking of donating bodies... I was very shocked to hear about this almost 6 months after moving here. Just because I am weird and interested in this kind of thing but didn't know about it at all...

The original "Body Farm" (started by William Bass) is the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility located a few miles from downtown off of Alcoa Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I drive Alcoa highway pretty much any time I go out. I know exactly where that is. Unfortunately, Google's satellite image isn't very revealing, but still, crazy, right?

View Larger Map

Anyway, I would love to go visit there but it's closed to the public. Maybe it's time to start studying anthropology?

Body Farm, originally uploaded by ZenOptic.

I guess this is a photo of the body farm in winter, when you can at least kind of make out some of the structure of the place.

Also, here is a set of much closer-up photos, but all you can see is the fence.

Hmm, where was I?

Well, I was talking about dead bodies & art. Unfortunately I don't think many of the bodies at the "body farm" are taking part in any artwork of any kind.

So. Anyway, one thing I stumbled across (when reading about the Ferrari thing above) was Honoré Fragonard, who was an anatomist in the late 1700s. (See? I didn't even wikipedia link it, because the wikipedia article isn't actually very good)
I guess some of his écorchés or "flayed figures" (though I think the literal translation of écorché is "scorched" - ok, i looked it up and the answer is "skinned" but I can see how "scorched" is similar. A neat trick with French words is if they start with "é" that "é" can sometimes be changed for an "s" to create a cognate. "étudier" for example, is the verb for "to study", "épine" is the word for "needle" -like spine, get it?-, "école" means "school" ... so if you are ever confused in French and can't look it up, try that trick. It doesn't always yield the answer, but it does sometimes and it can help. Another useful trick is that the circumflex (^) often goes over a vowel where the S afterward has been removed. "pâtes" is "pasta", "hôpital" is "hospital", "île" is "isle", "fête" is "festival" etc.)

Ahem.

Anyway. It makes sense that the word for "skinned" would be similar to "scorched", I don't know though, I often try to make connections when there really are none.

What's cool about this Fragonard guy is his stuff really did leave the realm of educational or scientific and has crossed far over into art. Amazingly, the museum that has his stuff doesn't have very many good photos of it on their website, but I found a photographer's website which has some very nice photos.

Warning: You may find the image below offensive.

Click here to see the full series.

My favorite piece by far is "Man with a Mandible," which I will link to after the description.
Just because the description is so... I don't know, exciting.

This tall écorché was inspired by Samson knocking the Philistines down, using a donkey jaw. The work carries extreme violence : his arm brandishes the threatening mandible, his lips are tense, his look is deviated, his injected penis is obscenely taut. Fragonard went as far as twisting his ears and lips, and deep-setting his nose to give him an aggressive grin.

Click here to see "Man with a Mandible".

I guess it's just part of that whole incredulity I have with death, because these bodies are so ... energetic, it's just almost impossible to believe that there's no life within.

And to think about the guy that put that together, an anatomist being inspired by the bible, it's just awesome. And I don't mean awesome as in "bill-and-ted" awesome, but as in awe-inspiring. I don't know.
I just think of this guy and maybe the life he was living and how it came to be that he chose to do that pose. He had to put bodies together somehow and maybe he was complaining to his mom or something, "I just don't know how to pose them," and then she says "Well, why don't you look in the bible for inspiration?" And he did, it's perfect. Just perfect! This nerdy guy and his mom gives him the idea for it!
OK, well I don't know if that really happened, but this is the kind of thing my imagination takes and runs wild with.

Also, see the movie "Anatomy" with Franka Potente (trailer here). I am linking to the German trailer because the English language trailer sucks a lot. Walmart used to sell this movie for $5.50 and it's definitely one of their better deals. Most of the DVDs in those huge bins suck, but this one is great - however, I don't think they still sell it there, I think I bought it about 5 years ago. Anyway, it's all the "plastination" stuff where all the water is sucked out of the body and replaced with plastic so it doesn't decay... like that "Bodies" exhibit that everyone in the world has seen but me. And I lived in New York while it was there, what is wrong with me?

I guess it's in Atlanta until January, that would be a reason to go see it.

Hmm.

Anyway, I don't really have much to say right now. Just saw some stuff that I thought was interesting. Am moving soon, which is going to be exciting. I just can't wait to get out of Maryville. It's a cute town and all, but all I ever do is drive to and from Knoxville all the time. Oy.

So that's it for now.

See you all later.

Billy Mays

2009-06-30T02:48:00.000-04:00

So Billy Mays died this weekend, and it really upset me. I don't know how to explain it, and I'm not sure if I even want to, because when I tell people I loved him, their initial reaction is "lol wtf?" and when I explain further the reaction seems to be "Jesus christ you're tucking weird."

Anyway here's the post I left in the Billy Mays Fansite Guestbook.

I am shocked and truly saddened by the death of Billy Mays. I have always "loved" him and felt connected to him in some strange way, I can't explain it ...
It's just that he was so full of life and enthusiasm, and he really believed in everything he was selling. I have worked in sales off and on and Billy has always been my inspiration... Not just in work, but in life as well. Always be there, always be smiling, always give 200%. Thumbs up, and believe in what you're doing.

It's so horrible to think that a man who was so exuberant and vivacious is now lifeless... I can't imagine the pain his loved ones must be going through, as I never even met him but am still incredibly upset by his death. I wish those who loved him and were close to him the best, as well as those who loved him from afar like myself. I hope everyone can take with them the lessons Billy's taught about sheer joy and enthusiasm, in work and in life. I know I will.
Rest In Peace, Billy. You are in my heart now and will be forever. You (and not your products) have truly made a positive impact on my life and the way I live it.

Gordon and Snowy, Rest In Peace.

2009-06-21T03:03:00.003-04:00

However many steps I take forward, I always end up going backward.

On Thursday I spent the day with my mother and her new boyfriend Paul. I gave her a shawl that I knitted for her, which she loved. We went to therapy, which went well. We went to lunch, she had 2 glasses of wine and so did I, but it was OK. We looked at apartments, and she thought I deserved to live in a better place than any of those that we saw. She wanted me to be happy. That night we got caught in a crowd and I hugged her and told her how much I really love her, how I used to be embarrassed by her when I went out with her but that now I was so proud of her, I was proud to be her daughter, and I was so grateful that she cared about me.

And I meant everything I said. All of it. I still do.

She said she loved me too, and I knew she did.

But still, that night while I was driving home I stopped to get gas and also bought cigarettes. I burned my left arm and right hand 5 times. I wasn't depressed, I wasn't crying, I was a little drunk but no more than I am on other nights I go out, and other nights I don't end up wanting to harm myself. Or if I do, I don't do it.

But for some reason, on Thursday night I did hurt myself. I burned myself badly.

And that really scared me because I wasn't feeling depressed, I wasn't feeling angry at myself. I was amazed at how well things went that day. Has my urge to punish myself become unconscious? How can I fight it if it's gone underground and I can't even recognize it's there?

Also, Friday night we went out to dinner with my friends and all was going well until Mom mentioned that Gordon died in March. She and Gordon dated from 2001-2006, and he was one of the few people that took my side and helped mediate when things got rough with mom. In 2008 when I was living in Florida and working at Office Max he came and visited me often, and asked how my mom was doing and how I was doing... he was such a good man. He always told me he thought I should go to Johns Hopkins University.
I couldn't believe it.

I started crying and couldn't stop (despite the fact that we were at one of the fanciest restaurants in town, so fancy it wasn't even IN town), and then I got a text from Charles saying that Snowy had died as well. Snowy was our household pet for a long time, we got her probably in 1992 or 1993. She almost died, attacked by our dog Carmen (who had actually killed our previous kitten) but then Carmen got sick and died and so Snowy lived the rest of her life as a mean, traumatized pet. When I started dating Charles in 2005, he was really in love with Snowy despite the fact that she was as mean to him as she was to anyone else. As my dad's Alzheimer's progressed, Charles took responsibility for taking care of Snowy.

In August of 2005 when I moved out to go to college, Charles continued to go to my dad's house to feed, clean up after, and attempt to play with Snowy.

Even when Charles and I split up in spring of 2006, Charles still cared for Snowy. And my dad, too, they got along well. When Charles got an apartment that summer he got his own cat, Leo, (seen here with Hilary) but still as soon as my dad would let him, Charles adopted Snowy and until a couple weeks ago I guess they were all one big happy family. Charles said Snowy was very sick the last couple of weeks, probably from her kidneys, and he had to put her down yesterday.

Anyway, if she lived to be 16 or 17 I guess that's a good lifespan for a cat.

I feel bad devoting more of this entry to Snowy than to Gordon, but I don't know all that much about Gordon. A few things about Gordon that I do know for sure: He loved me, and he loved my mother. He was funny and honest, and he believed in me and wanted to help me. He did help me, me and my mother. There are several occasions I can think of where my mother and I would have killed each other if he hadn't been there to calm us down. And we probably wouldn't have ANY relationship today if it weren't for him.

No offense, but my mother has just about as many issues as I do so one must be a saint to deal with her, and Gordon certainly was. Unfortunately, prostate cancer got him, and fast.

Obituary for Gordon Brown Jr.

A thought just came into my head. "Why did Gordon have to die? He was such a good person, I wish I could have died instead of him, I have nothing to offer the world and I'm just miserable all the time anyway." Then I caught myself. "No, I do have a lot to offer, I have a great future ahead of me, I can and do make people happy. I am happy myself very often, though some people don't see it. I enjoy my life, and I'm not giving it up."

That's progress, right? That's definitely a good thing to be thinking.

Now, if I can think like that, why did I stab myself repeatedly with lit cigarettes on Thursday night, before I heard any of this bad news? I wasn't crying when I did it, I wasn't listening to Elliott Smith or anything sad, I was just driving, listening to Beck. and I just couldn't help myself.

I couldn't help myself.

But I have to help myself... If I don't, who will?

ghost brain.

2009-06-09T13:29:00.003-04:00

Something's going on, something's happened.
There's just a stillness, a silence. I'm not sure if it's peaceful or deafening.
I just feel empty. I don't know why. I can't even think of considering why. I'm empty, and I have to stay that way. I have no choice.
Something's happened.
I don't know what. I don't understand. I don't have any desires, any thoughts, any memories taunting me or the usual negative affirmations coursing through my brain.
And that's good.
Or it should be good.
I just don't care.
I feel genuinely bored, more bored than I've ever been in my life. Other times when I was bored it was because there was something else I had in mind that I wanted to be doing.
Now there's nothing.

And it's only Tuesday.
Last week flew by because I slept the whole time. So far this week is dragging because I've slept all of 7 hours in the last 72.

And I'm tired.
Believe me, I'm tired.
But I can't close my eyes. This morning at 5 they just popped open and now they won't stay shut.

I keep yawning. Physically, I'm exhausted. Mentally, I feel like my brain is just a factory. Just going through the motions of everyday function.

Except my usual non-function. Or really, I should call it "negative" or "counterproductive" function.

I can't draw, I can't write. It's so hard for me to do this. There's a pain in my thumb, it feels like a splinter or a cut but nothing's there.

The pain in my chest has spread up and eastward. It's below my armpit now, though more toward the center of my chest, and I can feel it hurting through my back too.

I don't know if any of this makes sense.

It's not that I feel weird, I just feel nothing.
I wish I could feel something in reaction to the nothing, but I can't. I'd like to be grateful to be at peace, or to be angry at the apparent disintegration of my soul, or even just to go back to feeling the misery I usually feel.

I'm trying to find the cause of this.

Yesterday in therapy we came to the realization that my episodes of self hatred are triggered by my participation in successful or positive social interaction with other people.

I had what I consider to be a successful social interaction with a friend last night. As I should have come to expect, on my way home I had a violent attack of self loathing. I cried, and I wanted to hurt myself so badly. I have never felt the urge to hurt myself that much. I wanted to get home as fast as I could and I wanted to see blood.

Then I told myself to stop. That it's okay. It's okay for other people to like me. I don't have to punish myself for who I am. I don't have to punish other people for liking me. It's okay.

I don't know why, but it worked. I calmed down. I made it home, and when I got here, I went to sleep.

So maybe I'm okay. Maybe I'm better. I mean, it seems improbable that I could be "better" instantly, but something happened and I feel very different.

Which makes me wonder, once again, what am I without my illness?

And yet, unlike in times past, I don't feel the urge to run out and create drama and bring back all the problems. I don't feel the urge to do anything.

I've never felt like this before. I don't understand it, but that's okay I guess.

hatred.

2009-06-07T06:17:00.002-04:00

I can't write the word "hatred" without splitting it and seeing the two words "hat red". Hat red? A red hat? How involved with hatred can a red hat be? Pathetic.

Pathetic pathetic pathetic.

It's not as moving if I copy and paste "pathetic" a hundred times as if I write it in my notebook.

Which I did.

Pathetic.

It's june. It's 10 years since I went to my first concert: june 1, 1999. Ben Folds Five at the American Theater in St. Louis.

I guess I had been to other shows before, with my parents or whatever, but this was the first concert I was actually going to of my own volition, that I actually chose to see. It was great.

Jude opened, Ben Folds Five played, I was in love and cried (as is to be expected from a thirteen year old girl) and I'm still grateful that I got to see BFF before they broke up.

After the show I got to meet the band. Which was exciting for me. When Darren came out he didn't have a sharpie to sign things with, but I had one and I let him use it. He gave it back to me after finishing and some girl offered to pay me for it but I said nuh-uh.

Hatred.
Why am I thinking about hatred? I don't hate anyone else. I have nothing against anyone else. Just myself. I hate myself, but that's no news to anyone. Nothing surprising to anyone, nothing out of the ordinary.

I've been listening to The Halo Benders a lot lately... it's Doug Martsch from Built to Spill and another guy whose name I can't recall at the moment. It would be so easy to google him, except I'm in IE on someone else's computer and I don't want to start a tab riot like I have on my computer back home. Anyway, the other guy has a really unique voice, and I recognized it immediately... he did vocals on Beck's album "One Foot In The Grave".

I feel like I have two feet in the grave.

Better yet, one hand and one foot in the grave. Both righties. My right hand and my right foot are in the grave. Somehow I manage to write throughout all of this.

I'm on my 6th beer for the night. This evening I'm drinking Shock Top Belgian White.

The first place I had this was at Bar 4 on 7th Ave in Park Slope, NY, where I met my new roommates. It's funny because I could afford to be a third roommate there for what I would pay for a luxury one bedroom here. And really, I'd rather be a third roommate in NYC. At least there it would be easy for me to get treatment. If I didn't have to worry about persecution for mental illness.

But no, I don't care how much other people hate me, because it could never match the amount that I hate myself.

It's selfish. If I'm going to be filled with hate, why don't I hate anyone else? Why am I so selfish about it, why do I only hate myself? I should be hating the republican party or my parents or the government or Michigan or something.

But no. I'm too busy hating myself.

Pathetic.
Pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathiehrtsoihdxhf

I didn't copy and paste at all. I totally would type it out a hundred times for you, but you don't care either way. No matter what, you're not going to find me as pathetic as I find myself.

Happy Birthday Norris. Too bad I'm too selfish to care about anyone except myself.

Writing on Writing

2009-05-01T12:15:00.004-04:00

I feel kind of bad that I haven't written anything here lately. But I haven't written anything here because I've been feeling kind of bad lately. Make sense?

Often, if I'm "depressed", I'll avoid making plans with people. The fact of the matter is that if I'm not happy with myself, I'm not going to be happy around other people. It really really really bothers me when I refuse to hang out with someone on the grounds that I'm in a bad mood they often reject my feelings and say "Oh, I can cheer you up..." That's what it is, a rejection of my feelings. It's kind of like rape, if person A says "No, I really don't feel like having sex," and person B says "Oh, come on, you'll like it." I know they're two different situations, but to me they seem really similar, and thus I feel quite violated if someone chooses to outright deny my right to my emotions.

I mean, it's not like misery is an emotion I really enjoy experiencing, but I've found that to suppress any emotion - positive or negative - is not a good thing to do. For me, anyway. I can't really speak for everyone else, and I have no desire to.

Moving on. On the topic of writing: I've been "journaling" a lot lately. As in, physically writing in a notebook. Moleskines have always been all the rage, and though I'm a slave to fashion I just can't get myself to stick to using them. Since early 2006 I've been very "into" full sized spiral notebooks with graph paper. When I was at Cottonwood I used my black graph notebook as a journal, but that was primarily because I didn't have access to a computer at the time. When I got to Angelus, they let me have my laptop so I pretty much wrote everything in an Appleworks document. Nothing made it to the web, but I have over 100 pages typed (single-spaced, 10 point Times New Roman) from my experience there. Occasionally, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I'll go back and look at it, usually when I'm looking for specific dates of events.

That's one thing I'm weird about, having the dates of everything. I was kind of a "know-it-all" there, I knew the dates of every major event, every person's comings and goings... And now, a project I'm working on is organizing all of my old photos- I have over 15,000 digital photos from 2001-2009, and everything before May of 2003 was just kind of floating around and didn't have any "date taken" information attached to it. So, I've been trying to go through all of these old photos and correlate events with known dates... Bastille day, PrideFest St. Louis, our trip to Colorado... I've been cross-referencing everything with old diary entries, and it's kind of fun. I think it's kind of amusing that I spend so much of my free time doing the exact same thing that my father uses his free time for - except his photos aren't digital.

But back to writing. I've been getting these graph paper notebooks from Staples for a while now and just using them for general "business" type notes, appointments, phone numbers, endless "to do" lists (that never get done), directions, rough drawings, ideas, whatever. No graphs, sadly.

About 2 months ago I was at a bar and decided to actually write in my notebook. Not out of necessity (something I needed to remember) but because I wanted to.

I kind of went crazy and filled up ten pages. What did I write about? Well, crap. I wrote a bunch of crap. And I was happy to write it, because I knew that no one would see it. For the first time in ages I wasn't writing for an audience, and that feeling was very liberating. I mean, not that the things that I write here are all that great, but I can write about some REALLY stupid stuff if I don't think anyone's going to read it.

So, what's the point? I don't know, exactly. I think for me writing is just a different form of thinking. It's similar to talking on a tape recorder... I would NEVER let anyone else hear the crap I record. But, I never go back and listen to any of it. So I couldn't really say why I record it. I guess it just comes back to this obsession with knowing everything. Everything I did on this day or that. Everything I was thinking at every moment of my life. I don't know why, but I just feel there has to be some record of it.

I think I suffer from chronic nostalgia. The definition of nostalgia is "a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations." A synonym is "homesickness". I'm not 100% sure if I agree with the definition... many of the periods I "long" for do NOT have any "happy" associations attached. The case is usually that at one point in the past I thought I was miserable, but looking back, in one way or another I enjoyed it, and I miss it.

I should really focus on the present. If I am longing for the way things were in the past, I am surely forgetting that in that past I was likely longing for a former past, during which time I was longing for a past even before that, and so on.

I think it's interesting that "homesickness" is considered comparable. In my case, at least, I don't think I can be homesick because I've never really felt "at home" anywhere. I mean, duh, I've moved about 100 times in the past year, but besides that... when I was a kid I don't think we stayed in any one house for longer than a couple years, sometimes we moved more than once a year. Hmm, maybe that's where my nomadism comes from.

Well, maybe that's a reason I get attached to so many things/situations... I don't really have a "base" attachment in my past to compare things to, so I'm constantly looking for new "homes" - and I don't mean home in the place-where-you-live sense, but in the sense that it's the place where you feel comfortable and safe, "right". And sometimes in my life I find a place or a thing or a person and I just immediately fall in love with it because there's some void in me, some abandoned emptiness from my childhood that still yearns to be filled.

Or not. Haha, that's what I get for being so noncommittal. "I think" "maybe" "I guess" "probably" "kind of" "sometimes".

Anyway. So, I've got this graph notebook, and I've been writing in it. I don't go to bars and write because I want someone to ask me what I'm writing, in fact, I don't even have a prepared answer. People ask me all the time. I guess I say "just my thoughts, kind of a journal." I should say "I'm writing a personal narrative" because that's just kind of a pretentious asshole way of saying journal. I don't like the word "diary" because a) it sounds girly and childish and b) the word "diary" sounds kind of similar to "diarrhea". I think people ask me because they think I'm writing something interesting - novel, memoirs, manifesto, poetry, whatever - but really they couldn't be further from the truth. I write in a notebook because I can write whatever the hell I want and I don't give a shit whether or not it's any good.

"I'm writing young & gifted in my autobiography
I figure who would know better than me?
I'm certainly the former but I'm not so much the latter
But no one's gonna read it so I'm sure it doesn't matter"

So, if you see me at a bar writing, and you're wondering just what I'm scribbling, let me tell you now: it's just boring crap. But you can still ask me about it if you have no other ideas of ways to start a conversation.

See you in a month.

Nova - Hunting the Hidden Dimension

2009-04-03T04:36:00.002-04:00

Was just watching an episode of Nova that focused on fractals, and some stuff came up that made me think.

The subject came up of "The larger an organism is, the more efficiently it uses energy." So if an elephant is 10,000,000 times the size of a mouse, somehow it only needs 10,000 times the energy to run itself. This has been a long-known fact, and the formula for it is E=M^3/4
This also makes me think about how big things are slow(elephants, whales), and small things (mice, hummingbirds, etc) have high metabolisms and move much more quickly.
But the other thing that it made me think of is merchandise. If you buy a big tube of toothpaste, a tube that's say 5 times as big, it doesn't cost 5 times as much, usually it doesn't even cost twice as much.
The smaller something is, the less efficient it is - in terms of cost, energy, resources, whatever.
This is just something I thought of.

I think this might have to do with the fact that things can only be so small - cells, for example. There are many more cells in an elephant than a mouse, therefore the elephant's cells can be more organized. Think of it as being similar to pixels - the more pixels you have, the more definition you can have. Pixels are a set size, however - as are cells - and so if the image is going to be smaller, it's going to have less definition. Cells are *probably* the same size no matter what animal it is (the same or very close to the same - i haven't done biology in too long, and food stamps won't pay for microscopes - or elephant & mice tissue, to my knowledge).

It's like the small tube of toothpaste essentially costing more. The exterior tube that holds the toothpaste is still going to have to be thick enough to hold it, whether it's holding 1 ounce or 4 ounces. I think, though, i'm not really sure.

One thing that I am sure of: surface tension. Surface tension is the reason that shrinking/growing things doesn't work. Let's say you've got your jesus lizard, at its small size it can run across the top of water. But if you made it bigger, say, the size of the actual Jesus, then no way, it wouldn't be able to do it, the surface tension wouldn't hold it.

In the larger animal, more systems can be automated. More cells are the same and don't need "blueprints". So say in a large animal there are 10 organs with 10,000 cells each. That means you need 10 sets of blueprints for 1,000,000 cells. But if you've got a small animal with 10 organs but each organ only has 100 cells, that's 10 sets of blueprints for only 1,000 cells. So clearly, you're going to have less efficiency there.

Also: I know it is very very unlikely that any animal would have 10 organs with 100 cells each. I'm trying to keep this simple.

Eh, it's 4:38 AM.

I shouldn't get into math/science stuff this late at night. I'm more "mad" and less "scientist".

Something HILARIOUS! Play on "craigslist"?

2009-03-23T02:27:00.003-04:00

I usually don't post stuff that I see online that I think is funny all that often, but this is probably the funniest thing I have seen in at least the last week and a half, and other people think it's funny too. So, you might enjoy it!

Anyway, this was originally posted on twitter by domfosnz, though I don't know if he/she is the origin of the picture.

The original picture is here, on imageshack.
I decided to also host it myself in case it disappears, because seriously, this is FUNNY.

Anyway, here is a link to it because it is HUGE. Enjoy.

Also, all the notes are left by a person named "CRAIG" and they are all written caps lock Times New Roman black-on-white (though that's kind of expected) so i was thinking maybe it's a play on craigslist? Because that kind of shit is probably the "best of" craigslist type stuff. Though I haven't seen it on the official "best-of-craigslist" page yet.

I'll have to look. That stuff's pretty funny too.

Anyway, ENJOY!
PLZ RT!

Lakeshore Mental Health Institute: Part I

2009-03-16T19:56:00.003-04:00

So, here I am, sitting on a crummy cot in my crummy apartment feeling pretty crummy.

I was feeling even worse last week, so I went to the Fort Sanders Hospital Emergency Room to check myself into their psych ward. Well, it turns out they don't have a psych ward there, if you need to go inpatient, you have to go to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute.

I really did need to go inpatient, so despite the fact that I was calm and cooperative, they had a police officer handcuff me, escort me to the back seat of his cruiser, and drive me to Lakeshore.

Now, Lakeshore Mental Health Institute is probably one of the worst hospitals I have been to. It's a toss up with New York Methodist Hospital. At Lakeshore, they did a complete psychiatric evaluation, which they did not at NYMH. However, NYMH did offer group therapy, and you have to be at Lakeshore for at least a week before they will allow you to do anything, even take a guided walk around the halls. Lakeshore's food was absolutely terrible; NYMH's was actually pretty good. I kind of like hospital food, because it's all pre-portioned. You have just one tiny container of butter for 1 piece of white bread in a plastic baggie, you don't have to make any decisions about what to do.

One thing that really bothered me about Lakeshore was that they didn't take me as seriously as I would have liked, and told me things to more to quiet me than to provide me with the information I was requesting.

I started writing this to point out flaws I found in their system, but rather than a list it turned into a narrative. It's gotten pretty long, though, and even though I've only finished writing about the first "day", I'm going to stop for now.

---

I signed into the Fort Sanders ER at 4:00 PM last Wednesday, so when I arrived at Lakeshore at 11:30 PM, I was hungry. I asked if they could give me anything, just a sandwich or something, and they said "As soon as you get upstairs they can give you something." I inquired as to when that would be, and they said "Oh, probably in a half hour or so."

Two hours later when I actually arrived upstairs, they said they didn't know if or when they could get me something to eat, it would have to be dealt with by Security, who were downstairs.
"Well, if they're downstairs, maybe you can call them and ask them when they'd be able to do it."
"We will once you're in your room."
This bothered me, because again, it just seemed like a dishonest attempt to placate me. Downstairs, when checking in, they had refused to let me take my notebook, even plain sheets of paper or pens upstairs. I said I needed to write, and a security guard said "They can give you paper and a pencil upstairs."

Back upstairs, I flipped through the "Patient Rights & Responsibilities" brochure that was given to me in admissions. I looked up and said "Well, you're going to have to give me a pencil and something to write on so I can take notes about the patient rights that you are violating." One of the women in the room said "We can't give you a pencil, but when you're in your room we can give you a marker and some paper."

Another woman behind a high counter picked up the telephone, dialed, and after a pause said quietly, but impatiently, "Can someone bring some food up? One of the girls is talking about writing stuff down..." I smiled at this. Obviously, my remark had proven to her that I wasn't just another brain-dead/drug-addled idiot who could be ignored without consequence, and, more importantly to her, I might be able to get her into trouble. More importantly to me, her action was an admission that she hadn't been doing her job properly, though I don't know why this gave me cause for pleasure. I found it amusing that she expected security to understand the gravity of the situation simply due to the possibility of something being written down. Were the majority of the patients illiterate? I mean, true, this is Tennessee, but I haven't really found people to be less intelligent than in New York/New England. Less arrogant, maybe, but not any less intelligent.

For some reason, they had confiscated my wristwatch as contraband, so I asked if there was a clock in my room. A woman told me that if I wanted to know what time it was, I could look through the window to see clock in the room we were presently in(which was kept locked). I pointed out that the wall clock that should have been visible was laying face down on a counter, to which she replied, "Oh, it's broken right now."

A small desk clock told me that it was 2:00 AM by the time they were ready to take me to my room. The girl who escorted me was wearing a college sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, and couldn't have been any older than 22 or 23. Rather than condescending (as the other staff members had been), this girl was actually quiet friendly. Maybe it was because unlike other patients, I was around her age. I also didn't have meth mouth. The back wall of the room had a large window, and there were twin beds with wooden frames on either side of it. Each bed had an 8-inch thick mattress covered in beige vinyl, and on top of the bed on the right were 2 thin plastic pillows next to a set of folded bedclothes and a blanket, bleach white.

"I didn't make up your bed because I didn't know which one you'd want." I wanted to laugh. I'd just been admitted into a mental institution, so I wasn't really in the state to have any kind of strong opinion on which bed to sleep in. I chose the one on the left without any deliberation or difficulty, which is incredible, considering it usually takes me over 10 minutes just to decide which toothpaste to buy.

"They said I could have paper and a marker..." I mentioned, and she replied "Oh! Sure, hang on," perky as hell. I made up the bed, and she quickly returned with a few sheets of printer paper and a pink Crayola marker. Pink.
"Here you go!"
"Thanks..."
"Do you need anything else?" Is that really a question you want to hear the answer to?
"Well, no, but I asked earlier about food..."
"Oh, someone will bring it to you when it gets here."
"Ok, thanks."
She left the room almost with an air of skipping, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her.

Something I find interesting is that even though I'm a pretty bitter, unhappy person, when I see people who seem happy it makes me feel good, rather than angry or jealous. But then I realize I'm by myself, and that I am myself, and things darken quite a bit.

I kicked off the navy blue slip-on shoes they had issued me earlier and sat on the bed, legs crossed. Amazed that the marker wasn't dry at all, I wrote for a few minutes but quit after less than half a page. My belongings were at the foot of the bed in a paper bag, and I grabbed the one non-clothing item it contained - a copy of The Fountainhead I had bought in Florida a month earlier but not yet cracked open. I decided to read but about 8 pages in I was bored and put it aside. I lay down and quickly fell asleep, despite the fluorescent lights above.

I really don't have any comments about the comfort (or discomfort) of the mattress, but this may be that I haven't consistently slept on a real bed in several years. My current mattress is inflatable.

I awoke to a quick rapping on the heavy door to my room, and someone came in and handed me a brown plastic tray with what was to be my dinner. As the person was leaving, I asked "What time is it?" From the hall, I heard the yell back "It's 3 AM."

When I opened the styrofoam container, my eyes were immediately drawn to the primary compartment: it contained big chunks of what turned out to be potatoes covered in a reddish-brown liquid dotted with ground beef and spots of grease. The first thought that came to mind when I saw this was "pre-processed diarrhea". One of the two smaller wells contained what looked like regurgitated broccoli, under a yellow-orange sauce which had the consistency of pudding (including an impressively developed skin). It was probably supposed to be cheese of some sort.
I think that in any other situation either of these foods could have been decent, even good, but here they were somehow unfathomable. Not to mention cold in places.
There was another small container with a plastic lid that contained some very feeble pear halves. These tasted okay, but their limp, degenerated softness almost made me feel even more hopeless.
To drink, they had given me two options: a carton of 2% milk, and a carton of sugar-free sweet tea. I don't drink milk, so I had some of the tea, which lived up to the title "sugar-free" more than "sweet".

Thoroughly disappointed, after finishing half of the "meal" I put the tray on the nightstand (which happened to be next to the door, across the room) and went back to sleep - lights still on.
I think I sleep with the light on for the same reason I always have a heater/fan/air conditioner turned on, it distracts me from my own isolated existence. I'm not afraid of the dark, I'm afraid of myself.

in other news.

2009-03-04T01:58:00.003-05:00

Well, today is Tuesday - or was. Now it's 1:59 AM on Wednesday.

Amazingly, I slept all day Tuesday. ALL DAY!

Everyone says "Oh, Amanda, the reason you sleep all day is because you go to bed so late! If you're going to bed at 8 AM of course you're going to sleep all day! You should go to bed earlier!"

So last night, I did. I took some melatonin and was asleep by 2:30 AM (Monday night/Tuesday morning).
I woke up Tuesday at 7:30 PM.
That's 17 hours. SEVENTEEN HOURS.
TOTALLY unnecessary.

Also, I was just thinking that I have won a lot of scholarships and awards. And I just realized that I can (legitimately) call myself an "award winning writer". I am!
Not as in "I guess I like to write some, and on a side note I happened to win an award, which happened to be for best 80's hairdo," or something, but I won an actual writing award.

I have a plaque! And I'm not talking about on my teeth, either!

Also, if you go to the website for the Webster freshman writing awards page, I am in the damn picture! So is Brian Gordon Kennelly, but unfortunately he is vignetted out. Boo! He was a great teacher (probably still is) and had more impact on my thought process anyone in post-high school education.

Here's the image, so you don't have to click on the link (I know how hard that kind of thing can be).

I gave that blazer to Sadie a couple years ago, but I still have that t-shirt. And considering that I have reduced my t-shirt ownage (ha ha, ownage) from that point in time by over 90%, that's really saying something. The t-shirt features a quote from Twin Peaks, a subject about which people often (though not often enough) have something to say.

Also, it says "Twin Peaks" on the "chestal area" (props to anyone getting that reference) so people who don't even know what Twin Peaks is can also find a reason to comment. Sigh.

Looking at that picture again (as in 5 minutes later) makes me wonder why people always wear subdued colors. I mean, not that I'm not guilty of it, but I think I only wear "quiet" attire because it isn't always easy to find clothes that are as loud as I am. I mean, not that I want to look ugly, but I'd rather stand out due to people's ... mild displeasure ... than just blend in.

Sometimes. Sometimes I don't want anyone to see me at all. I know how to be invisible, by the way, but I'm not telling any of you.

My dad had a book passed down to him by his grandfather, which had been passed to him by HIS grandfather. I think it was published in the 1850's or 1860's... had all sorts of "miracles" in it, cures for scurvy and the like.

Also, here's a subject that I wonder about:

Who was sitting there eating some ground up meat and was like "Mmm, this is good, but it would be even better if it were more "contained" some how, packed tightly together in some way... I know! Pig intestines! Just the thing!"

The other way I picture it is a person just sitting there playing around with pig intestines and thinking "Mmm, this is fun, but it would be even MORE fun to fill these with ground up meat, twist them into phallic oblongs, and eat them! What a great idea!"

I really hope it was the former.

It's probably a bad idea to look up "intestines" on youtube. I didn't try it, but after looking up "tapeworm" on youtube, I have decided to think more carefully about what I search for there.

Oh! Speaking of YouTube!

I just put up videos from when I did neurofeedback in Key West with Monica. you can see them here on youtube. Watch them all at once, one at a time, or (though I would hope this isn't your choice) none of them.
Or you can watch it here if you realllly want to. Haven't tried embedding a playlist before, but here goes...
.

Also, the movie "Neu Wave Hookers" is a pretty good movie, and worth a watch, if only for the "video" for Dirty Sanchez's "I Dig It". If I didn't think it'd get removed from youtube (along with the fact that on principle I only post my own content on my account) I'd totally upload it.

Oh my, look, some youtube newcomer did it for me! How awesome!
I'll link to it, as it's only like 80% SFW...

Also, I am OK, considering the recent 2-year anniversary of an event that was really devastating, and is always really hard to think about.

Annnyway. This is one of those middle-of-the-night aimless posts that doesn't really go anywhere, and if it HAS gone anywhere, it's reached its "destination" and definitely puttered out of gas

How to convert .lit files to .htm on a Mac

2009-03-02T00:45:00.005-05:00

Don't want to read all this crap? Go straight to the answer by clicking here.

Not that I use this blog for a lot of computer stuff, but this is an issue I tried to solve over a year ago and wasn't able to. Finally figured out how to do it, thank god, so I figured I'd post in hopes that anyone else searching for help would find this.

Before I begin: This article has nothing to do with anatomy or romance... just cold, boring technology. So keep in mind that I use the word "clit" only in terms of filenames and commands. Sorry to disappoint you.

So I want to make a post about the whole .lit/Mac thing. If you're like me and have a Mac but also have .lit files you'd like to read, you probably hate Microsoft. Well, maybe not, but you're probably annoyed at the fact that .lit is a file that only opens on Microsoft, and converting the .lit files to a readable format on Mac isn't very easy. Even googling it still requires a bit of reading and effort... so hopefully I can help make that easier.

Now, if you're like me, you probably googled .lit mac os x open files pdf html txt rtx doc wpa read help hate f&*k Microsoft ... etc.

One of the first things that comes up on google when you're searching this stuff is the the convertlit app (if you can call it an app). When I had tried this in the past, I had had no success.

Let's go over the process of when you download convertlit:
OK: So you download the clit file, and open it. It will open in Terminal, with a window giving (in my opinion, incomplete) instructions. It tells you there are three options for converting the .lit file, but the first is the only method we will be using, as the second and third options just convert a .lit file into another form of .lit file - which will still not open on a Mac, and therefore is useless to us.

Note that in the terminal window that the clit instructions opened in will not allow you to type anything else. To start working, you will need to open a new window in Terminal (command n).

Now, the direction it gives you is to type your form of the following into Terminal:

clit ebook-propietary.lit ebook-oebps\

So, if you're like me, you put in something like the following:

clit AtlasShrugged.lit AtlasShrugged\

After which, Terminal will give you the following error:

-bash: clit: command not found

Now, thanks to this forum topic I was able to figure out that this is because Terminal has no idea what clit is (no jokes, please). The reason Terminal can't find clit is because we haven't told Terminal where clit is.

I've only used Terminal a few times before, and by now I've figured out that if you're going to be dealing with files on your hard drive, you have to tell Terminal the file's path: the specific location of the file. If you give Terminal a file to work with without specifying a path, Terminal will not know what you're talking about. The base drive Terminal assumes is the Macintosh HD folder, but even if you are referencing a file in that folder, you can't just type the file name.

For example, even if I put the files I'm working with in the Macintosh HD folder, the following would not work:

clit AtlasShrugged.lit AtlasShrugged

OK, if Terminal assumes each file is in the Macintosh HD folder, and each file IS in the Macintosh HD folder, why isn't it working? You need to define the path. In this case, the since we are working in the base folder, we have to start the path for each location with a /.

So, assuming you've got the clit file, the .lit file, and the folder you want the "explosion" to happen in all located in the Macintosh HD folder, what do you do to get terminal to actually realize that?

/clit /AtlasShrugged.lit /AtlasShrugged

Now, doing that is kind of annoying if you don't feel like moving your files around constantly. So, instead of switching everything to the Macintosh HD folder, one thing you can do is to type out the LONG path of where your stuff is.
You could end up spending HOURS typing out a novel like this:

/Users/skweeds/Downloads/clit /Users/skweeds/Downloads/Transmit/Books/AtlasShrugged.lit /Users/skweeds/Documents/Books/AynRand

Now, if you're like me, you really don't want to type all that out. Also, if you're NOT like me, you probably don't have your Mac account name as "skweeds", so the copy/paste/adapt method might not really work in this situation.

There is good news: I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance. Ok, that was a joke. Better news: It can be REALLY EASY to do, using Drag & Drop! I stopped using PCs for personal use in 2003, and I believe they had the drag-and-drop feature then, but I really don't think they've made it as useful as Mac has.

The short answer on how to use ConvertLit in Terminal

1. Download & unzip the clit app. As long as you know where it is, the location of the file doesn't matter.
2. Open a new terminal window.
You should see something like this:

Last login: Sun Mar 1 23:14:44 on ttys001
macbook:~ skweeds$

The specifics don't matter, just as long as you have a prompt available where you can type (but you don't need to type).
3. Drag and Drop these items from the Finder into the window in Terminal you have open (in this order):
I. clit file
II. whatever.lit file you want to convert
III. the Folder you want the .lit file contents to end up in.
As you drop in these items, Terminal will add their location to the command line. You don't need to press space or type anything.
4. Press return and let Terminal do its work. When it's finished, Terminal should read something like:

Exploded "/Users/skweeds/AtlasShrugged.lit" into "/Users/skweeds/AtlasShrugged/".

Voilà, you will have your ebook in readable files in the folder you chose.

When I used this method, I got .htm files of the table of contents & the actual story. I also got a few cover images, and an .opf file. I opened the opf in TextEdit and it kind of looks like an HTML source file, with links to each chapter and also images... "pocketpc" appears a couple times in the script, so I guess that's what it's for.
Anyway, everything you need will be there. So, enjoy!
I hope this saves you some time.
Note: I know there is lit2html out there, but it does not work for me. Boo!
Anyway, HAPPY READING!
You might want to check out spreeder.

Can you feel the darkness shining through?

2009-02-12T03:12:00.005-05:00

"You can't trust anyone 'cause you're untrustable
How can you trust someone you know can't trust you?"

- Built to Spill "Untrustable Part 2 (About Someone Else)"

That's a line that's stuck with me for years. Well, saying that doesn't mean much. Years is such a relative term. 5 years ago if I said something in my life had been static "for years", that would have been a major accomplishment. I was 18, and people change a lot up to that point in their lives.

But actually, looking back at it now, 5 years later, has anything really stabilized? No, no it hasn't. In high school my grades were either very good or very bad, same thing in college. I almost dropped out of high school (and would have if my parents/superiors had let me) and I ended up dropping out of college. Twice. Though it's not like I was "so close" or anything, I only had (have?) 25 credits - 9 of which are "pass" credits.

I keep moving around -not just cities, but states- and don't get me started talking about relationships.

Well, maybe I'll sneak up around the side of that subject.
In kind of a circular motion - bringing us back to the main idea of the post: Trustworthiness.

Relationships are all about trust. Am I trustworthy? Do I want to be?
More and more lately I find myself trying to do myself harm - physically and emotionally. I make myself out to be a bad person, and I feel that I want to be a bad person, and that I want people to think that I am a bad person.

At the same time, there is a strange duality. I am very afraid of losing people's respect. Which is weird, because I don't actually respect myself.
In some ways I do, I guess, especially lately with this anger I've been having. It's a good thing in a way, because the reason I am blowing up at people is because I'm not going to take their bullshit the way I used to. I've realized that the beliefs I have are important enough for me to stand up for, which is a very good thing. In a way, I really like the fact that I have become so angry.

Sadly, I have taken things a bit too far and am becoming psychotic. I yell at people over stupid little things, and what REALLY bothers me is that I can't get my wording correct.

When I used to yell at people, my syntax and vocabulary was astonishing. Admirable, really.
Now, I'm just really confused. "Why can't you just leave you alone?" "You're always trying to shit from you!" "Can't you stop bother you? "You doesn't even !!!"

It's ridiculous. I guess maybe I'm more angry than I used to be - Angelus house pretty much brainwashed me out of being angry. It's weird, because looking back at the treatment, part of their therapy was that you do need to become angry. But for some reason whenever I was angry I was "wrong" - pretty much everything I did was wrong. I'll admit that I was no angel there (no pun intended), but my rule breaking was no worse than anyone else's. Maybe I'll never know, but I don't think A.'s death was my fault. And of course, everyone SAID it wasn't my fault, but none of them ever treated me the same way after it happened.

Back to the lyric. 2007 was when I really started lying a whole lot. It started with my relationship with A., which had to be a secret. When we came out and told the truth about that, the consequences we faced were terrible. I don't want to get into it too much, but we were both punished - severely. I'm kind of in the middle of the two year anniversary of when it all happened - because it spanned a few weeks.

Brownie-type cupcakes I decorated right after A. and I were banned from seeing eachother. Yes, I was a tad bitter.

What I learned from that ordeal was that telling the truth is worse than lying. I shouldn't have told Dave the truth, and I shouldn't have told A. the truth. Or what I thought was the truth. By that point I had already been brainwashed into thinking I was a terrible person, so I told A. that that's what I was. I told him I was unhappy and that I was a deviant, and that he could never help me, he could never make me better.

If you have issues with your sexuality, the worst possible thing you can do is to go to Angelus house. Dave used to be a Catholic priest, and he will pass judgement upon you and treat your problem as YOUR problem, you're making it up, you're pretending, you're bullshitting and that's what's wrong with YOU. It's all YOU, no, it's not because you were raised in a fucked up environment, or your parents taught you warped views on sexuality, it's not because you were raped or oversexualized as a child, no, nothing like that, it's because YOU want attention, you don't REALLY have a problem, it's just your pathetic way to try and get people to pay attention to you, and YOU'RE not going to waste MY time with your pitiful attempt to be "special" and "different".

Now, THAT'S bullshit. So, if I want to have my own beliefs, Dave, you are OK with me hating myself for them? Oh, that's how you would PREFER it? Original sin, right? I don't know enough about the catholic religion to get across the point of how biased he was.

"How can you trust someone you know can't trust you?"
Part of the brainwashing at Angelus house was that I was trained to believe that I was always wrong, thus I learned that I can't trust myself. They taught me to believe that I was untrustable, and because I was in such a vulnerable position, I believed them, and then grew to live up to it.
How can I trust someone I know can't trust me? What if that someone is myself? Playing silly with words here, but to me it makes sense.

That brings up another issue: If I know I'm crazy, does that make me less crazy? And what if I'm only aware of some of my insanity? Like, when I was yelling at people today, I knew I wasn't in my right mind, but I couldn't figure out that was the case. But another thing is, part of me sees my anger as being a good thing (re: standing up for myself) - I know I take it to inappropriate levels here and there, but at the same time I'm glad it's here.

Oh well. This is the issue of sanity.

Or insanity, whatever.

Also, I have to be back in NY soon, I have an appointment there on 2/23. So wish me luck on that. And if you're in NY and want to hang out or whatever, don't hold your breath, HAH! And if you do run into me, watch out, because I may still be psychotic. Luckily I haven't started to throw things yet. Let's hope that if that begins, my laptop is far, far away.

Also, when does a quote become a quotation?

Note: I am noticing that I've become more "rambling" (Sprawling?) and am having more trouble staying on topic. This is bad, because one of the only things I think I'm good at is writing, so if I lose that, what have I got?

One thing is for sure: I'd rather write something badly than write nothing at all. Which explains the low readership of this blog...

That lizard is so cool I would follow him on twitter.

2009-02-09T16:14:00.005-05:00

For those who DON’T know, lately I’ve been obsessed with Twitter. I’m going to be unique here and not immediately link to my twitter page. Note that I said “not immediately”, not “not at all”. So, if you pay attention you may find yourself with a link to my twitter page staring you in the face. This will be the moment of ultimate truth and choice: Knowing what you know about me and having read what you will have read, will you choose to follow me? Will you even have the courage to click the link?

There is a possibility that the things you may see on my Twitter page may shock or even offend you. Or, more likely, they will simply bore you and not have much of a real effect on you and/or your perception of me.

It’s hard think about the duality of having a blog when I also have a twitter persona. If one of my twitter followers starts to read my blog, will it be easy for them to recognize that it’s the same person writing?

Do I want them to? That is a question I am not ready to answer. One thing I can acknowledge, however, is that due to Twitter’s 140-character-per-tweet constraint, my “writing” there varies greatly from the what I post on Audrizzle. Another thing that concerns me is the issue of “followers”, who can be very fickle. It often feels like a high school popularity contest, who can get the most followers.

If you don’t know how Twitter works, I’ll tell you (and I wish you luck finding a new home that isn’t under a rock). It’s “microblogging”. When microblogging, u make posts (as 1 would on a blog), but “tweeting” is “micro” because ur posts can be no more than 140 characters long.

Note that the previous sentence was exactly 140 characters long. I did that to give you a general idea of just how “micro” you are required to be when tweeting, and how it’s difficult to get across a point without using the teenage-girl abbreviations (“you” becomes “u”, “your” OR “you’re” is “ur”, “between” changes to “bt”, etc.). I often find it difficult to choose what to abbreviate. As despicable as I find it to abridge the words in the style of tween text messages, I think it’s more respectable to do this than to leave out punctuation. At least the words come through somewhat comprehensible, and the punctuation proves that I’m not a total idiot. Not that bad punctuation necessarily makes one an idiot, but I am a total grammar nazi.

I call this type of lingo “Twittar” – like “grammar”, get it? I originally coined this term on Feb. 3, 2009 - so unless someone can find a legitimate earlier creation the term with this meaning, I get all the credit. Sure, “twittar” is used in other contexts, but I think the definition I have chosen for it is the clear winner. Winnar? Bad joke.

Another aspect of Twitter is "following". If you like a person's posts, you can follow them and you will see every post they make on your home page. Often, if one person is notified that another person is following them, the first person will "follow back", which I see as a sign of respect.

Also, something else has been on my mind: the uniqueness of my sense of humor (using the word "unique" is being nice). For example, see Anti-Humor.

Personally, I think that I am hilarious. I crack myself up on a constant basis. Not just things that I say (or, more frequently, write) but some of the things I see, and my perceptions of them.

Now, this shouldn’t really be a problem, but another thing is that I become obsessed with these things easily. I become obsessed with a lot of things in general, actually. I always have. As a nerdy example, in middle school I used to have a crush on one of my teachers, and I talked about him constantly. It was so frequent (and annoying, which I didn’t see) that it got to the point where one girl who sat at my lunch table threatened to talk to the school counselor about it if I wouldn’t change the subject. This was a very frightening proposition (in fact, my fear of this became an obsession), so I was able to cool it down a bit – at the lunch table at least.

My obsession with certain things that I find funny can end up driving people crazy. Mostly because the things I find funny other people don’t enjoy as much, if they see the humor at all. I talk endlessly about something I think is funny, and if people don’t laugh I point out that they SHOULD be laughing, and they often disagree. Which I have learned to accept more, my thought process being “Well so what… if they don’t enjoy it, they’re having a boring life, I would never want to live like that, unable to find not only the mild humor, but the absolute hilarity in everyday life.” Though I still push people to find amusement in the things I think are a riot.

Here’s something I posted a while ago on a different blog that no one else was amused by to the extent that I was. Even if you think the writing is funny, I don’t know if you will find the subject itself as absolutely outrageous as I did.

also, on this video there is a comment simply:

what a cool lizard.

And someone gave that comment a thumbs up. How awesome! It's so simplistic and ... i want to say, naive? It reminds me of the way the guy painted in "Art School Confidential" and someone said he painted like he'd never seen a painting before. I don't know, shit like this i get obsessed with.

what a cool lizard.

Brilliant! And I can't say how much it means to me that the first letter isn't capitalized. But they put a period at the end of the sentence anyway. How perfect is that? Incredible!

what a cool lizard.

The comment is one thing but the fact that someone else gave it a thumbs up is what really gets me. So many youtube viewers ignore the comments and will make their own despite whether or not the same thing has been said 8 times before that. Sometimes it's hard not to.
But someone went over the comments, saw that and thought "Wow, good point, Steelyking6725, I agree. Thumbs up!" and didn't make a similar post. All the other posts are about the rat/eating process itself.

what a cool lizard.

I cannot say how much this excites me! Someone actually posted about the lizard, and shouldn't that be what it's all about? THE FUCKING LIZARD!
This is such a philosophical mindfuck. A statement about modern man. A timeless look into the mind of "the fool."
SERIOUSLY PEOPLE.

what a cool lizard.

-----
side note, DANKisallweneed commented

“yeah dead rat pretty gross...that monitor looks a little blazed to me hook him up with a drink KOTTONMOUTH is the worst...BLAZE ON"

which i thought was hilarious. laugh out loud hilarious. Not just LOL, but Laugh Out Loud. I just picture this total pothead (DANK or "Dan K" as I will imagine him to be called) hanging out with this lizard being like "dude.... what if we give the lizard some pot? let's smoke him out... oh shit yo he's thirsty, let's hook him up with a drink... Kottonmouth sucks, yo. man i am so BLAZED rite now dude"
hahahahaha SO HILARIOUS!
Also at the hospital toda--yesterday, someone accidentally (staff) set some popcorn on fire in the microwave and so there was burnt popcorn smell all over the ward, and at one point they were trying to air it out so they opened up the doors but they were saying they were worried about someone trying to leave... While they were in the nurse's station discussing this i was passing by and noticed and thought it would be funny for me to pretend to make an escape.
So i went back to my room, set down my notebook, and came charging down the hall, They didn't see me until right before I got to the door so I had to stop very quickly.
They all FREAKED OUT even after I had stopped, put up my hands, and told them it was a joke. I thought it was hilarious, they were all probably having heart attacks and I just could not stop cracking up. I thought it was fucking great! I guess maybe they would have found it more entertaining if they had known me for more than 2 days and gotten to understand my sense of humor, but unfortunately that was not the case.
Unfortunately for comedic effect. FORTUNATELY FOR ME, HAH!
Still, though, I thought it was a riot!
"dude, let's give the lizard some weed, seriously."
hahahaha

Now you see the reason I don't link to that blog. It's ridiculous, it would annoy the crap out of you, and I don't even follow my own "proper grammar at any cost" principle.
I won't link to that blog, but as promised (well, not as promised, per se, but as hinted at), here be a link to my twitter.

Enjoy, and I'll see you all later!

Michael Hohenadel, discriminator.

2009-01-29T06:44:00.006-05:00

This post is about Mike Hohenadel from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Lafayette College, and he currently lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York City. He is employed by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. His full name is Michael Patrick Hohenadel, though he sometimes goes by Michael P. Hohenadel.

Michael Hohenadel is a bad person.

Not only did he unfairly expel me from our shared apartment, he also cheated me out of almost $900. The worst part? He does not hide the fact that the reasons for his appalling actions are due to his discrimination and prejudices against the mentally ill, and his complete disregard for civil rights (specifically the first amendment right to free speech). I would not be surprised if Mike Hohenadel is a racist, nor would I be surprised if Michael Hohenadel is sexist. I would not find it shocking to hear that Mike P. Hohenadel is homophobic, and I wouldn't find it outlandish that one might think Michael P. Hohenadel is a nazi. All I can do is hope that he has not inflicted his hatred upon others the way he has upon me.

Until Mr. Hohenadel returns the money he owes me (for which he signed a document agreeing to pay), I feel it is my responsibility to inform the world of the warped view Mike P. Hohenadel holds on which humans deserve rights and respect and which don't. True, the harm that he has done to me (which resulted in hospitalization) and the abhorrent violations he has made to any and all progress civilization has made towards human rights and equality can never be taken back, but, sadly, even during the present time of revolutionary change in American history, some bigots like Michael Hohenadel cannot be stopped.

Knoxville Update

2009-01-28T02:39:00.005-05:00

Well, I am living in Knoxville now, if you could really call it "living."

I'm certainly not MAKING a living... But the rent is cheap, so what the hell...

Anyway, Knoxville is kind of cool. I do the same thing as I did in NY, though: spend all my money at bars.

Also, LOST is back on, which is great great news.

It's kind of funny, but since I have no money now I seem to have absolutely no problem in giving my non-funds away.

In the less-than-two weeks that I've been here, I've driven over 600 miles. Which is not necessary.

Here is a picture of me in Knox in November (before I knew I was going to move here), at my favorite restaurant:

I don't know what else to post, really, have been kind of reckless and depressed lately, a bad combination. I hate being so anxious about who's going to read this and what I can write and whatnot, but I don't think I really need to care. But maybe the things that I'm afraid of posting are things that I judge myself about, things that I hate myself for.

And why do I hate myself for these things? Why would I do things that I disapprove of? Maybe I don't really genuinely disapprove of them, maybe I've been brainwashed, too (anyone catch the reference?).

I really think I have, in a way. Looking back, at one point in my life there was a person who was my God, who controlled everything I did and passed judgment on me as well, constantly. No, this wasn't some bad relationship or something, I was forced into an institution (which I think was... unconventional, to say the least)... It's so ridiculous to think about it. To think about how much I wanted this person's approval and how I really put down even my own beliefs and ideas because I was just given the impression that what I thought was "wrong". And they held biases and grudges against me, which I think is what ended up making me absolutely hate myself. HATE. I can't stand it, the phrase just goes through my mind constantly. i hate myself i hate myself i hate myself... i hate it. I hate feeling this way.
But maybe I am justified. I mean, what do I do? The 7 Deadly Sins. And maybe, in a way, I'm hoping for them to be deadly. I'm torturing myself because I think I deserve it. And I do.

I think the thing is some people kill themselves because they don't think they can make it in the real world, they feel like no matter how hard they try they just won't be able to. What scares me the most is that I know I am able to, I know I'm good and able to succeed at almost everything I do, yet for whatever reason I just choose not to. So all this "bad luck" I claim to be the unfair recipient of, it isn't bad luck, it's just the result of cause and effect. Karma. Whatever. Every bad thing that happens to me happens to me because I deserve it.

So what is my fate? What is my future? What will inspire me? I know I could do genuine good in this world, I know I could make something worthwhile and make my presence here turn out to create more good than bad, but can I make myself? That's what's hard. I want to help people so bad and I know that I could but I just can't make myself. Maybe it's that whole thing, you have to help yourself before you can help anyone else. But I can't even do that.

I'm going through one of those really really tough times where I wish I had a family who cared about me and would support me.

Well, let's end on a lighter note. Cats are cute, I don't care if you hate them.

Actually, I do care, because if you hate cats you're destroying my life.
Anyway, and now to torture myself in a less-harmful way : by eating Crunch Berries cereal, the crunchies hurt the roof of my mouth.

After watching "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

2009-01-20T17:50:00.002-05:00

This is a science experiment I did. No, an accident, actually, but pretty schweet.

On to the post:

So, I just watched “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.

It made me think a lot. One thing I was thinking about was my friend Joey, because I remember he mentioned that he had seen it the night it came out (well, technically, midnight on the day it came out) and that he thought it was phenomenal.

I thought it was good. Like I said, it made me think about a lot of things.

Not necessarily the most relevant or important things. I thought “Man, the score for this is really great. But maybe I’m just noticing it because I’m wearing headphones, and I never wear headphones. Plus, these are brand new headphones. I mean, they’re supposed to be nice headphones and all, but they were only $20, so can they really be all that great? Well, I guess they can be, since this movie sounds really good. But maybe I just don’t know all that much about sound quality.”

I also thought about this:
“Clearly, this ‘case’ is a medical mystery... how has no one managed to contact the Weekly World News about this? I mean, I guess it would be harder to join a freak show with this type of affliction, since you’d have to wait around years to see anything really fascinating, but still. Part of the story of any kind of biological oddity is being kidnapped by the evil scientists who want to RESEARCH and STUDY, those bastards!”

I think it’s kind of silly that I’m putting quotation marks around my “thoughts” because, technically, anything I write here is already one of my “thoughts”, having come from my mind (through some kind of tubing, I assume).

Anyway, it’s 6:41 AM. I haven’t gone to sleep yet. I’m feeling slightly tired, but hardly any at all.

One of the other thoughts I had while watching BB, which is actually relevant and proof that I was paying attention to the movie, was that maybe I’d like to have a child.

Now, to some, this may not sound like that crazy of an idea. But coming from me, this is absurd. This thought pops into my head every now and then, and then my reason comes and helps me to swiftly dismiss it.
Similarly, I sometimes have the “idea” that I should just have all my teeth pulled now and get dentures, so that I won’t have to deal with any more dental problems in the future. Again, whenever this idea comes to me, good ol’ reason knocks some sense into me and I decide to keep my real teeth - for now, at least.

I think the desire for children - pardon, the desire to have children - is biological, based on evolution. Kind of like Pica. You know, the one where if you have an iron deficiency you have the urge to eat nails. And no, I don’t mean fingernails.
It’s “course correction” - something’s wrong with the body, so it subconsciously tries to force itself to fix itself from the inside out. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

Your body needs iron. Your brain tells you this, but maybe you don’t know that raisins have a lot of iron in them. You know that nails, on the other hand, have a lot of iron, so you have the urge to eat the nails. You may not know why you want to eat the nails (it’s not the taste - trust me), but your body knows why.

So, I figure that my getting the “urge” or “desire” to have a child is something similar.
Since I moved to Knoxville, I haven’t had a whole lot of social interaction. Hardly any, really. Tihs is a big difference, since I moved from New York, where, for the last month, I spent almost all day every day at Paul’s house being somewhat social.

Maybe there’s a biological need for social interaction?

I mean, it makes sense that a woman would want to have children. It’s “biologically advantageous” (this is the phrase we always used in my Bio classes) - this thought leads to behaviors that increase production. Or reproduction, I should probably say “reproduction”.

Anyway, of course a woman is going to have an emotion from time to time that she wants to have kids. But, other than the “ticking of the biological clock”, I can’t think of anything that would spur this particular desire. Why would a woman desire to have children more today than yesterday?

With pica, the urges rise from a specific chemical need that has developed.
The “need” to reproduce in humans is rudimentary, so I wonder if there’s anything very specific that triggers a woman’s urge to do so.

I’m realizing now that this post is kind of out of order, but I don’t really care. I figure you’re smart, you can follow me. If i choose to publish this I’ll edit. Or hire someone competent to do it for me. Hah!

My hypothesis: Humans have a base need to be around each other. We don’t like to be alone. Maybe, in my 23 years on the planet, I have learned that looking for a friend or a mate is only a temporary solution to loneliness. That a child is different, a child will always love me and always be there.

This is my concern: It’s possible that women are experiencing an emotional want (more evident than just a primal urge) to have children based on an irrelevant kind of loneliness. A longing for a companion, not necessarily a child, just a warm body to hug or even sit next to.

In the movie “Palindromes”, the lead “character” Aviva decides she wants to have a baby at around age 12 or 13, “so I’ll always have someone to love.” Non-hilarity ensues.

OK, I’m going to narrow down my whole point into less than 20 words.
Isn’t it selfish for women to have children just to ease their own loneliness?

I think so. A while ago, my mom implied that that’s the reason she chose to have me... she felt that her marriage was falling apart and she was lonely, so why not generate the ultimate companion? One that is basically held hostage, without freedom or even ability to control his or her own life...

But anyway. This was all written at 6:30 in the morning while I could barely keep my eyes open. So pardon if it’s a little strange...

Log homes.

2009-01-09T18:55:00.004-05:00

So I always get these spam emails for log homes, (amongst other less desirable purchases), and today I was thinking "You know, log cabins are pretty cool, I wonder if they're made from Lincoln Logs or something, maybe I'll check the email."

So I opened it.

This is the image:

Pretty schweet rite? Looks so cool, I think I'll actually click here and see what's up. I'm curious as to where these log cabins are built and how much they cost.

So I click the link on the left.

404.

Link on the right.

404.

Boo hoo! Nothing! Googled the name, the email address, the domain name, even the address of the spam company. No luck.

So, if anyone knows about these log cabins (or what font is used in the ad) I would like to hear about it!

On a side note: Usually, hardly any spam gets into my inbox. Yahoo's spam filter's great, maybe .5% of spam makes it through. And sometimes it's entertaining. This time I was really disappointed that I couldn't learn more about architecture by mother nature.