This is one of the more direct ways - from what I believe are my fingers to what I believe are your eyes. Underneath those are what I've been told are nerve endings, running from what I believe to be my center of consciousness somewhere near the center of my head, through the synapses within my body to the tips of my fingers, through the synapses of my computer to the internet, through the nodes of the web to your computer, to what I believe is a computer screen before your face, where these words (so I'm told) are formed as an inverted image inside your eyes where nerves carry these words to what I think is the center of your consciousness.
Perhaps the world isn't like this at all. Perhaps I shouldn't have believed everything I was told. Perhaps you are only toying with me, making me believe what you want me to believe. Where then, are these words really going? They must be going somewhere. The world around us forms the feedback loop from our fingers to our eyes, from our minds back to themselves. What good is it? At least it is entertaining at times, that's for sure.
I feel hungry. I feel like I must hold on to this moment and explore these thoughts before they drift away into the humdrum of everyday life. Can you hear me speaking to you inside your mind? Who are you? Who am I? What do we imagine the other to be like? We could be anything beneath our layers that separate us in this world, the layers of interfaces that separate my consciousness from yours. What are we really like inside, beneath what I assume to be are our bodies? A tiny star that is the focus of every thought, memory, and sensation we use to make sense of the world? Are you really out there? I hope you are more than just a figment of my imagination, more than a part of the most complex dream I have ever dreamt.
"Plan B" The matchbook that holds up the table leg The red jellybean Which is inhaled while laughing And choked on The postcard recording the phone number of the woman from the bar The piece of wedding cake stored in the freezer Brought out on the first anniversary Examined And thrown away The pencil supporting the mainsail of the toy boat The song about the ex-boyfriend Written before he announced his indiscretions Sung for the new boyfriend The on-line service free trial CD Hung from the branch of a Christmas tree After being microwaved for 3 seconds The Victorian-era crib Suddenly sold in a newspaper To finance the termination Of an unplanned pregnancy At the age of 48 The racial slur used as a greeting between friends The cardboard box fort The collection of poetry notebooks with only the first two pages used The thousand dollar computer Replacing the eighty cent notebook and two dollar pack of cards Made worthless by the reading of a seventy dollar programming textbook Leading to the purchase of a two thousand dollar computer Made worthless by the reading of five hundred dollars in textbooks Redeemed by the seven hundred dollar upgrade Funded with the money from the new career That in two years would lead to the frustrated burn-out Resulting in the purchase of an eighty cent notebook and two dollar pack of cards The pair of old running sneakers that help the dogs find the body
The matchbook that holds up the table leg
The red jellybean Which is inhaled while laughing And choked on
The postcard recording the phone number of the woman from the bar
The piece of wedding cake stored in the freezer Brought out on the first anniversary Examined And thrown away
The pencil supporting the mainsail of the toy boat
The song about the ex-boyfriend Written before he announced his indiscretions Sung for the new boyfriend
The on-line service free trial CD Hung from the branch of a Christmas tree After being microwaved for 3 seconds
The Victorian-era crib Suddenly sold in a newspaper To finance the termination Of an unplanned pregnancy At the age of 48
The racial slur used as a greeting between friends
The cardboard box fort
The collection of poetry notebooks with only the first two pages used
The thousand dollar computer Replacing the eighty cent notebook and two dollar pack of cards Made worthless by the reading of a seventy dollar programming textbook Leading to the purchase of a two thousand dollar computer Made worthless by the reading of five hundred dollars in textbooks Redeemed by the seven hundred dollar upgrade Funded with the money from the new career That in two years would lead to the frustrated burn-out Resulting in the purchase of an eighty cent notebook and two dollar pack of cards
The pair of old running sneakers that help the dogs find the body
Last night I signed up to go to American University for the next four years of my life. I'm excited, but I'm sort of wondering if there's anyone out there who's goes to that university... For me, this is a short but important daylog. /msg me, please, if you go there or have gone there or just know anything about the school. Thanks!
I'm listening to Pete Yorn's musicforthemorningafter, finding it the appropriate mood for me right now...
This weekend was another show; afterwards, I went out with the rest of the cast to Manny Brown's (a bar on South Street) we all frequent. My director was my good friend Josh (who we'll call JT); he brought with him a friend of his, also named Josh. When the bars closed, JT suggested we all go back to the Armory, the national guard headquarters in Philadelphia. (JT and Josh are in the national guard.) The Armory is this old castle-looking building; we went in, a group of us actors, writers, and directors, as well as Josh. As I'm playing darts (very badly, I might add), JT informs me that Josh is interested. So... We start talking. Getting personal. And so on. He kisses me when no one is looking. We go off to be alone.
Well, before you know it, it's 7:30 Sunday morning (after losing that one hour, also), and I've got to get home. We exchange email. I guess I won't be seeing him again.
While my sexual dry spell broke, I still feel lonely; and maybe I deserve it, in a way, but that always seems the way, bouncing from one encounter to another, but never finding anyone who maybe would be intersted in something more.
So I'll sit and listen to music, like I always do, and dream of being something else...
Do any of us talk to each other? Do any of us hear each other?
So, I've been on E2 now for a month and a half or so, I've written several writeups, had a few eaten, and even went to a recent E2 gathering. I've met a few people, said hi, and now have written (will have written once I finish) a daylog.
Track 2: Kronos Quartet, Meltdown
I've noded Kahn during my time here. I'm happy about that. Kahn is doomed to fade into obscurity; it's good to tell more people about it.
This site is a wonderful thing, and I've never seen anything both like it and as cohesive as it. It's really rather amazing. And #everything has earned a place next to #kahn; you'll be seeing plenty of me, if you wish.
Track 3: Chrono Cross, The Dream That Time Dreams
It's amazing: I knew qousqous before I came here. I knew him way back in the 3rd or 4th grade; he's two years my senior. It wasn't until I read his homenode that I realised I knew him. Go figure.
My first E2 gathering, with its node's obsessively long name, was fun, though I was unable to stay the night. jasonm gave me a ride to the MAX station nearest, and a surreal midnight run through Portland's mass transit system ensued. That's always fun; seriously, riding the light rail and the bus at night is always a trip, Portland being a fairly safe town.
Track 4: Nine Inch Nails, Just Like You Imagined
So, here I am on Everything2. Lesbians! Monkeys! Soy! man's desire to blow shit up, and to have a nice attache case. This site is, if nothing else, a repository of almost all knowledge that can be found online, which is almost, but not quite, everything known to man. I think I've got the hang of things.
Now watch me make an ass of myself.
end track
I'm staying up late this morning, so I may as well node what's happening on such a fine spring day.
I went outside a little earlier (which is something I don't do often during the day, because I work overnight and sleep all day), and I was once again reminded why I love living in New Orleans. I only walked around the block, as I am sometimes wont to do before bed (which is coming up in a few minutes), and was inundated by the olfactory assailants of spring: growing grass, palm trees, willow trees, moist dirt, and a thousand year-round gardens. Spring is my favourite time of year, particularly when I experience it in New Orleans. Uptown, it smells so fresh it's almost overpowering, but it's not yet fetid like it will be in a few months, once summer arrives and the air starts smelling like Crisco for some reason.
Thanks to Yo La Tengo and my copy of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, I've been listening repeatedly to Our Way To Fall and crying about it not because I'm lonely, but because I miss intimacy. I guess. I know I'm not lonely -- six months living alone and I'm not sick of it yet -- but I'm a sucker for love songs. Particularly when they're played by Yo La Tengo.
I have an appointment with my psychotherapist tomorrow morning, and up until about 10 minutes ago I had no idea where her new office was. (She moved about two weeks ago, two weeks after my last appointment.) Supposedly she was going to send me a notification by mail of her new address, but if she did, I never received it. Thank "Bob" for 411, lest I would've had to skip the appointment altogether and had one less chance to badger her about finally writing that letter of approval to my endocrinologist. My endoc needs her approval before putting me on a "real" hormone replacement therapy regimen, and I've been bugging my therapist about such a letter for two months, amid her promises that she's working on it. As a result, my endoc has only perscribed me 1mg of DES, which is weak at best, and 10mg of Provera, which is helpful but it's not all I need. Ideally, I'd have persriptions for spironolactone, estradiol and Provera together. I'm getting a little sick of DES's weaknesses. Supposedly, it's a testosterone suppressor, but I'm beginning to doubt that since the only adverse effect it has on my testosterone levels is my lack of a sex drive, which could easily be caused by the 40mg of Paxil I also take, for all I know. If I can't get a letter out of her tomorrow morning, I'll have to switch endocs. That's not a major problem (yet) -- I know an endoc who's a trannygirl herself, and would surely sympathise with my plight.
Oh, before I submit this entry, check out Dead Inside and then go by the CD.
Aside from being a student, I am also a campus cop. Every Sunday (and whenever else I get an extra shift), I work from 8 o'clock AM until 4 o'clock PM, doing rounds at my small campus, making sure that no one is smoking pot and opening doors for people who have locked themselves out of their rooms.
Pretty mundane, right?
Usually. But this Sunday past, a pervert psycho maniac managed to infilitrate the girls' residence through a basement door that had a malfunctioning/shut off alarm. He made his way up the fire escape stairwell, got into the 2nd floor hallway, and started checking doors - opening the ones that were unlocked, of course.
A girl I know was in her room alone, when she turned around to find him in her room with her.
I was called over, and managed to run into him on the 3rd Floor. He was sweating profusely and acting like a jittery crackhead. I asked him what he was doing, and he bolted down the stairs and out the front door. After that, he showed up in dining hall, some of the guys' residences and even a don's suite - asking again and again for the location of the girls' dormitory ... after he'd already been in there, of course.
He didn't look or dress like a "normal pervert" - he was very well dressed in expensive clothes, was clean cut, shaven and generally well groomed.
After seeing a notice up at the front desk of the girls' res, a pizza delivery guy told the front desk worker that this character has been seen down around St.Mary's University as well as up here at the University of King's College.
I talked to the cops and they told me to call them ASAP if he showed up again (well, no duh) ... I hope he doesn't come back, that was a bit too creepy for me. He had that look in his eye like he could've hauled out a knife and shanked me just as easily as he could've run like he did.
Trust no one.
Today I am immersing myself in the oeuvres of the following musicians:
P.S.>>I also took out a book by Slavoj Zizek (sorry, no idea how to type those accents) on Schelling - the front cover is a picture of a dead octopus lying on a yellow sheet. I find this repulsive yet intriguing.
Yesterday, 1730hrs
We sit on our haunches in a bush outside Tesco's, Margate with the capsule from a Kinder Surprise on the ground. I pour some glycerol into one half, Adam sprinkles potassium permanganate into the other half.
The pharmacist had told us that potassium permangate turns water a brilliant purple.
'Sounds fun,' Adam had said.
When you add potassium permanganate to glycerol, a brilliant purple mixture is formed. Royal purple, purple like a black eye after a good fight. This lasts about a minute.
As the two mix together, they react together within the confines of the plastic capsule to produce large amounts of smoke and a fair amount of heat.
As I run around to the entrance of the shop with the capsule hidden up my sleeve, I am aware of this and try to move as quickly as possible without shaking the capsule and aiding the reaction.
Once inside the shop, the capsule pops in my hand, and I know I am past the point of no return. I drop it, and without looking back I move quickly out of the shop. I run, safe in the knowledge that the entire store will now be at a halt as the thick smoke fills aisle 3 - pet food.
Next time I'm there, I'll look for a purple splash on the floor - the damage from the first blow in our own personal Project Mayhem. But for now, I need to get the stuff off my hands.
See, I'm gonna be writing as someone else. As a fictional character. He's a journalist and commentator, among his many traits (many of them downright disgusting). He maintains, despite his depravity, a down-deep longing and loyalty to the core of the journalist's creed, the responsibility - nay, the duty - to find, expose, and tell the truth so that the world can evaluate what goes on in full, fair and free discourse. To pull the hidden out from under the muck it's been thrust beneath, he should stop at nothing - or, well, very little - and should walk without fear. So, in this small, bullshit, virtual online way, shall I. All I can say is that I don't care about XP, nor levels, nor even Golden Trinkets. I do care about speaking the Truth as I see it (even if no one listens, which, I suppose, is their right!)
My nom d'octet is spiderjerusalem. The character on which I'm based is found in the series Transmetropolitan, written by Warren Ellis. Spider writes a gonzo rabble-rousing column on life in his City called I Hate It Here; so, too, shall I. Please don't confuse 'here' with E2. It is meant to describe the larger world, the vasty fields of data and of information in which E2 swims as well as those dim and earthbound roots on which that world rests.
This first column is really just an intro to the whole thing, and (as QXZ has pointed out) is really indistinguishable from a Warren Ellis voice-imitation exercise. That's partially what it is; before I begin to deconstruct current events through Spider's eyes, I wanted to see if I could describe the goal through his typewriter. If I couldn't, then there wasn't any point.
Without further ado, adieu; I submerge into part, and apres moi, le deluge.
That's the name of my weekly toe-rag out there in the steamy shit geysers of that alternate place. It's not so much a place to live as a continual state of mind, disruption and jangle, the dischordant wails of people all over the world realizing individually that the world they were promised when they were small came with bills due, the steering broken and an enormous pile of shit in the back seat.
Fuck it. Let's talk about here.
Who, they say, is this Spider Jerusalem? Bald, ugly, obscene, rude, mean, strange, unreliable (a big thanks to the editors for that one), unbribable, balls-out, uncensored, biased, they answer themselves. Up there, in that place, over there; hiding behind walls of glass and lies while their fucking servants sweep up the lost crumbs of the world's riches that they can't manage to stuff into their faces, shove up their noses, or just plain screw. Me? I like it better outside the wall, leering at women, powerdrinking, chain-smoking and occasionally committing the heinous crime of the Written Word here for all of you to see.
The New Scum.
That's us, baby. We're the ones that keep their shit up there. There's not much we can do about it, by ourselves; not much we can say about it hasn't been said a million countless time over the centuries since the first ape got ass-railed by a bigger ape and made to mow the lawn. Nope, that's it, finito, vaya con Dios. The New Scum.
Now, what I am about to say will quite possibly blow what little minds some of us have left, boys and girls. It will take these few privileged, about-to-be released individuals and lovingly help them to burst the rivets holding together their rotting fontanels. Hear the cracking? It's those lovely pre-stressed seams you see atop every human skull ever removed for the edification of medical students, for the demonstration of Danish princes, or even for the filthy rut of some grave-robbing pervert's last gasp and shudder. Boom. Blow your mind.
Here it is:
It's not all bad.
Sure, your life sucks. Sure, there's shit on the streets and shit in political office; the cops just wanna know whether yo
