It is Valentine's Day which is almost but not nearly upon us, except that the date of this writeup is on Valentine's Day because of different computer time. This is often when loved ones will buy gifts and accomodate needs of each other when they are together. Tacky couples of questionable sexual ability may get married or propose on this particular day. This is not exactly how one shows original romantic thoughts about each other. It is just very simply tacky. Christmas on the other hand always has Santa and presents for those who believe in Jesus or at least think about him from time to time.

I can be like the wise elder or bearded minister at a church or religion organization's summer camp at this time and begin to tell you the story about how my personal faith in romance and the Hallmark rubber stamp of love was lost in various sands of time.

I was married during a time period in the early 1970s through to the disco era and in fact a time when Chic had a top number one hit. It was in Valentine's Day of this year that I made a gruesome discovery not of the one hit wonder type and that is not a reference to Chic because as a band and not a clothing brand they had more than one number one hit and were popular especially with those who were putting cocaine, a subject like flour but with some different purposes, in their nostrils (the name for the hole in your nose).

It was not long after Christmas I made the gruesome discovery, a holiday in which my former wife, or spouse for those who are also thinking gay marriage is adequate for support of romance, gave me a nice watch and a number of shirts that I could wear to work. At the time of this gruesome occasion I worked in sales of high dollar amount vacuum cleaners on a door to door basis. There are people who think that sales is difficult when all you have to do is maintain good relationships with establishment customers who know you are coming. I present to them the case that making cold calls is much more difficult because what is involved is bothering people at a time which may or may not be their dinner hour. Often people fresh home from church will be the rudest, putting the needs of their family ahead of those of a stranger, unlike what Jesus tells them in The Bible. It is untrue to act in a fashion such as this when you have been to church within 48 hours. There was also a movie with Eddie Murphy that was named this, named meaning "48 hours" and there also was a sequel called Another 48 hours which was not nearly as good and now Nick Nolte has legal problems which may prohibit a third movie in the series at a time when sequels are so popular due to falling stats for imagination in today's world. Nick Nolte also was a starring character in Prince of Tides, in case you were looking for something to rent for a guys night in.

Getting away from myself, I shall return to the original thrust of my Valentine's Day message to you, like the wise elder or bearded chaplain I discussed at an earlier point in this particular writing. I was speaking primarily of my gruesome discovery which involved seeing my wife, whom I trusted with all my valentine's heart, with a man of not so questionable sexual skill, especially with his tongue. He was masterful in his ability and it showed in the facial expressions of my wife, who was quite beautiful when in the throes of pleasure, at least at that time because I am sure she has aged quite a bit and not well due to having too many lovers over a lifetime.

This was not long after a pretty good New Years party at my friend Dale's home, Dale being a pretty heavy churchgoer. I have gone a few times after that but since have grown distant from Dale due to flirtateous periods with his wife, especially within 48 hours of being at church, which is dead wrong. We were friends for damned near twenty years and then that flirting, which sometimes involved close personal physical contact, made us not act so much as friends anymore or visit with each other.

It went on for a while, this affair with my wife and the skilled sexual tactician. I would watch, sometimes only briefly and at other times more intensely. Sometimes it would bore me so I would merely glance at them during their lovemaking that was more passionate than her lovemaking with me, which had lasted one and a half weeks after we tied the knot. I thought perhaps she had lost interest in the personal mingling of bodies in a physically intense way but she apparently was in need of a more skilled sexual partner, especially with the tongue. She also was kissing a check out girl from the supermarket for one afternoon but it never went any further, unless I am unaware, which is very possible in light of the other things I was not aware of during the same time period.

On Valentine's Day I came home from shopping at a lumberyard (this was before Home Depot was popular although there may have been Home Depots at that time but not in our town until some years later) and they were going at it in a physically intense way. I tried to avert my eyes and pretend I had not seen, but because I tripped over his ankle on the way in due to lumber blocking my line of vision, it became improbable that I would be able to continue to act unaware of their physically and now also emotionally intense lovemaking.

We broke off into discussion groups almost immediately after it was clear to them that I was aware of their passionate desire to share bodies at a time when there was no need because of excellent heating in our home and it not being at all drafty because of various items I had bought and used in complimentary construction in order to eliminate the severe problem of winter draftiness. The first discussion group involved my former wife and myself and this discussion group stepped into the kitchen area (more of a kitchenette because our home was not big or grand depending on which you think makes the point better). I took a beer out of the refrigerator because I was both nervous and had dry mouth because of this particular experience I was having in my life, which was unlike any previous experience and many of you know what that is like. I opened it with a bottle opener because it was not a twist off (usually I drink Miller Lite but this was a foreign beer I was trying and I don't want to name it here because that would sound like an endorsement and I did not enjoy the product enough to endorse it without receiving a contract and some money for the trouble).

My wife (at the time, we are divorced now) explained to me that this had been going on for a while, and I made the confession that I had been aware of it for a while but had hidden my discovery from conversations with her (those I had aloud and not just in my head behind her back - and I don't usually talk behind people's back but at this time she was cheating on me so I had the right). She made the rude suggestion that I join them for a threesome but I was appalled by the idea (and slightly tittilated but I don't like to admit that). I moved out but also paid her expenses for living there for more than eight years after the final witnessing experience was completed.

It was on Valentine's Day that we made our confessions regarding having the affair and the witnessing of the affair. I don't know how long it would have gone on if I had not been awkward at that moment and tripped over her skilled lover's ankle. He may not have been as skilled as I suspected (based on what I witnessed during my witnessing) because then he would not have left his ankle in a place where an innocent bystander could trip over it.

I suggest to people that they be good to each other and if they are tired of each other for living together or having passionate lovemakings that they need to go different directions. It is a very special thing to be married unless you are not married to a very special person who doesn't need a different person with a higher level of lovemaking ability than you do. You can practice with a few prostitutes or escort boys before you take the plunge in order to hone your skills which may be a good idea. If you have questionable ability in physical expressions of love in the form of sexual lovemaking, then eventually your partner will want to get either a loose woman from the mall or a handsome stud with forearms that can effortless handle a little up and down push up action during this act. I am aware that there are men who do that due to my witnessing.

Happy Valentine's Day to people who are happy and suitable sexual partners for each other due to having been with whores.

ALOT like shit

I wallop and wander in your voice
A tiny choice made by your fucking neck
O, lord G♥d, when you broke up with me on your deck
That your dad just made, which is quite nice actually, with a place for a barbeque pit
I cried and cried and felt ALOT like shit.
But then a voice inside me said
Something like "Ghhrrgglllglle"
Which I took to mean that one day you'd take me back
And you'd finally give me head in a movie theater like you promised me on Valentine's Day

I have had more than my fair share of romantic dust-ups. I have, in fact, been the clown-faced bop-toy of Love. But no more.

I used to have this problem, see? I liked girls who absolutely hated me. No, wait. I had multiple, somewhat related problems. I liked girls who absolutely despised me, and I had a tendency to fall for women for the shallowest possible reasons.

In junior high and high school, I was the biggest horndog for cheerleaders around. I'd be completely uninterested in a girl until she put on that little miniskirt and started waving those pompoms around. Then she became, like magic, my One True Love. My Holy Grail. My Precioussss.

This was a problem. Aside from my permanent lack of money, I was also miles below everyone else's social class. I didn't even get invited to D&D parties 'cause even the geeks thought I was contemptible. So the cheerleaders, these paragons of short skirts, long legs, bouncy bosoms, and social snobbery, despised me, almost entirely because my affection tended to devalue their own popularity the way a sleazy pool hall would lower property values in a ritzy neighborhood. Of course, the fact that my unwavering devotion swung from one cheerleader to the next might have had something to do with it, too.

It also didn't help that, when I was a kid, I had this aura I gave off -- even at my most cynical and evil-hearted, everyone thought I was a wide-eyed, naive, saintly schoolboy. Quite aside from my astounding unpopularity, just about everyone wanted to pound me into the concrete. Hell, I look at pictures of myself from back then, and I wanna pound myself into the concrete, too. So I guess it wasn't that surprising that other people, including cheerleaders and their boyfriends, treated me so horribly.

I used to wonder what was the matter with me, until I realized that, while other people gave off pheromones to get other people to like them, I was actually emitting anti-pheromones which caused girls to hate me, or at least to see me as a completely unsatisfactory boyfriend. I'm hoping to find a doctor someday who'll help me isolate and patent these anti-pheromones. Something that rare must be valuable, right? Who needs love when you've got millions of dollars earned from your bizarre biochemical physiology?

Things turned around a bit when I got to college. Almost immediately, I discovered that people didn't give a flying fuck what my social status had been in high school. The guys who played football didn't want to kick my ass -- they wanted to play hacky sack and smoke de ganja. The tough guys and rebels didn't want to kick my ass -- they wanted to talk about religion and smoke de ganja. A few of the fratsters acted like they were still in high school, but most of them wanted a ride to the grocery store and a little extra pitch-in money for beer. And to smoke de ganja, of course.

Girls were a lot different in college, too. Yeah, there were cheerleaders, but my fetish seemed, for some reason, to quit working. The cheerleaders in college were athletes first and foremost, selected because they were strong, agile, and willing to work hard, not because they were pretty, popular, or had sex with the cheerleader sponsor. Yes, they were attractive, but they just didn't make my head spin like they had in high school. The two sexiest college cheerleaders I knew were hotter'n a pair of two-dollar pistols, but I'd never, ever seen them wearing their cheerleader outfits, so my feelings for them weren't actually related to cheerleading.

Which is not to say that I'd magically become less shallow. I was still chasing girls with long legs and bouncy bosoms -- my libido had simply unchecked "short skirts" and "social snobbery" from its list of Must-Haves. And yes, my new college-age fixations still hated me, so I suppose all remained right in the universe.

There were the two interchangeable sorority girls with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the bespectacled brunette library genius with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the chain-smoking, leather-clad bad girl with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the regal, opera-singing redhead with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the Mexican restaurant waitress with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the punk-as-shit ass-kicker with long legs and bouncy bosoms; the intellectually uptight blonde with long legs and bouncy bosoms; and many, many more (Yes, my college was, at the time, singularly blessed with girls with long legs and bouncy bosoms -- I've been back more recently, and it just ain't the same). I chased after all of them with wild, unchecked enthusiasm, and they all hated me with the intensity of exploding suns.

That hasn't changed. I don't think it'll ever change. It used to bother me, but it doesn't anymore. I used to be the T-ball to Love's four-year-old ritalin-addled toddler, but no more. I've made peace with who I am.

But still, thank god for hookers.

I've struggled through years of strife in my attempts to find a suitable woman. Year after year, I have cursed this heathen holiday, one which reminds romantically impaired individuals of their consistent failure to find a suitable lover.

No more.

It was only a few days ago that I realized that perhaps my feminine problems were not because I was bad with them, but maybe I simply wasn't attracted to them. Maybe...I wasn't hetero?

Now, I'd long ago determined that I wasn't gay, thanks to a lot of repulsive cock-sucking in college. And some buttsex. And a little rimming. And there was that sex sandwich with the Dean and the delicious star quarterback, myself acting as a human fingercuff, engulfing the wholes of their throbbing meat daggers.

So I'm definitely not gay. But if I wasn't straight, what was I?

It dawned on me while I was undressing for yet another unreported incident of self-inflicted physical abuse. Who was the only person I'd spent my entire life loving? Who was the only person I'd slaved long hours to finance their increased quality of life? Who was the only person whom I always lavished with gifts when their birthdays and holidays came round?

Who was the only person I'd ever been given an orgasm by?

The answer to all these questions was only one person:

Myself!

I, machfive, discovered I am a narcisssexual! The only mate whom I will ever find lasting love with is ME!

A weight dissipated from my weary shoulders, as the pressure of finding love from without was gone. I realized I need only to find love from within! If I loved myself fully and unconditionally, everything else would fall into place!

Coming to this decision felt totally natural, even faced with the potential repercussions. With homosexuality slowly gaining acceptance, us few and divided narcisssexuals are the last persecuted sexual group left. Even some victims of gay bashing have expressed disgust and loathing at the narc lifestyle. Progressive states like Vermont, who allow civil unions for gay couples, routinely deny narcs marriage certificates, stating such ridiculous justifications such as "marriage and civil unions require two people." Hate-mongering religious groups routinely show up at funerals of known narcisssexuals, waving pickets with venom-laced phrases like "Narcs burn in hell!" and "Adam & Eve, not Adam, his left hand, and a bottle of Jergens!"

But one doesn't choose their sexuality, any more than they choose their taste in foods. No one in the world (save the highly bigoted French) would persecute me for my distaste in cheese, so why ostracize one for their sexuality?

This Valentine's day, I had the supreme pleasure of spending it with myself. It was magical in every conceivable way.

The night started out by surprising myself with a box of chocolates and a dozen red roses. It sounds clichéd, but no human being has ever shown me such affection, and I was instantly smitten with myself. I was wearing my best shirt and tie, my hair randomly spiked and my nails trimmed, and me was equally stunning. After some innocent small talk, I escorted myself to my car, and we were off to a quiet dinner at Mai Wang's Gourmet Chinese Restaurant.

On the way there, I noticed how dirty and rundown my car was. But that didn't matter to me, and it didn't seem to bother myself, either. It was refreshing not to be judged on what kind of car I drove. It was instantly clear myself put little value in material extravagance.

We arrived at Mai Wang in due time. Myself, being a perfect gentleman, was kind enough to open my door for me. He even pulled out my chair as we sat. Such chivalry is hard to find these days.

Small talk ensued as we sipped green tea and shared a blushing laugh when we ordered the same thing. As our conversation took on a life of its own, and began to turn flirtatious, I experienced the glare from several narciphobic restaurant patrons. I paid them no mind, and neither did me, and we continued our stimulating conversation as we shared a plate of chicken fried rice.

Over red bean ice cream, I got a little fresh and place a hand on my leg while doing my best bedroom eyes. I think me got the hint as we found ourselves anxiously paying the bill and speeding to to his place with haste.

When I got there, it was straight out of a dream. Candles everywhere, rose petals leading to the bedroom, and a Zen and Lesbians movie queued up in the DVD player. My knees became weak, and I felt myself caving to my overwhelming seductive prowess.

As a gentleman, it'd be improper of me to go into detail, but I will say it was the most fulfilling and mind-blowing sexual rendezvous of my life.

After years of believing there was no one who could complete me, I have found the perfect life partner. He's sweet, charming, caring, and can delight you with his wit as deftly as he can blow your mind with his utterly flawless intellect. A talented artist and writer, with exquisite tastes in everything from food and music to political ideologies, I could not as for a more perfect match for myself.

Though I'll have to endure a potential lifetime of degrading and ignorant insults like "self-lover," "naggot," "self fish fucker," and "chronic masturbator," I'm not the least bit afraid.

This Valentine's day, I can proudly declare: I AM NARC - HEAR ME ROAR!

..so this is the day after classes started.

I decided to code an online game of pente with user-alterable rules to support all the variations that gave birth to it (Gomoku, Renju, Ninuki-Renju) and that it gave birth to (Keryo-Pente). In the process, I learned how to play Go. I'm not good at all, of ocurse, seeing as I just learned, but I can teach others and we can recreate the ~13 centuries of strategy and thought that goes into the current Japanese game easily after a few hours, right? Right?

Since catgirlz has some money now, I'll offer her all the icons I made of Catgirl Z to see if she wants any of them.. and then I'll get a new default of my own... ..I have 15 weeks to spend what I believe to be almost $600 in meal points. That's over $5 a day, which I don't eat. ..it's actually $65 a week now that I check, which is nearly $10 a day.

Um. I'm not sleeping right now and I should be because I have class in like 9 and a half hours. TIS gave me the wrong Physics book, so I need to return it and get a different one.. The Japanese drill I'm in will be impossible. I know I'm not supposed to do well in it - that's why it's drill - but it's all speaking, it seems, or at least the first was. Not only speaking, but hard questions like a jikoushoukai (I never know what to put in one) and a what did you do over the summer (I slept and that was about it).. combine with the fact that the teacher is supposed to be teaching new things, but not in English (I said that all I did was sleep and she said something in a different form and I had no idea what she said.. I need to re-learn polite form, too, I guess). And everyone was talking at once and my right ear isn't working so it didn't work out very well and in the end I almost broke down. I am very glad that my other classes do not seem nearly as stress-inducing as that drill will be.

I probably know most of the 90 kanji I'm supposed to know for my Japanese class, but it seems a lot of them are useful but not easy ones, so stuff I don't know.. ..a good thing: there is a review section at the beginning of the level 2 text. A bad thing: the older kanji apparently does not have furigana readings in the rest of the text, so learning to speak will continue to be difficult. My room is a very mess. I always wake up before my alarm goes off. Always always. So today I set my alarm for a half hour before class and woke up an hour before the alarm.

So there's this guy at a racetrack who decides an investment in scientific research will give him better odds and therefore a larger payoff, so he decides to hire three scientists to help him choose a horse: a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist. The first race's odds are posted and so he sends the biologist to check out the horses. The biologist takes muscle measurements and checks pedigrees and eventually chooses a horse. The man places a bet and loses. The next race, he sends off the chemist, who takes blood samples and measures different hormonal and chemical levels in each horse, eventually choosing one. The man places a bet and loses. Finally, he sends the physicist, who takes out his lab manual, looks over the horses, does some quick calculation, and chooses a horse. The man places a bet - and wins. Afterwards, he asks the physicist, "How did you choose a horse? What was it that made you right when the other two were wrong?" The physicist replies, "Well, first you assume that a horse is a sphere..."

~I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun | One fan remembers6 fans remember~

Definitions of love abound, ranging from a passionate all encompassing feeling to friendship or merely fondness for an inanimate object. A random search on Google will turn up 120 million hits for the word love. The Greeks used 3 words to describe the different types of love; philos, agape and eros. Romantic love or eros can not really be adequately described, only experienced. To my husband and all lovers today I dedicate this Valentine

It will soon be 20 years since we pledged our troth on that beautiful spring morning. I think I was more enthralled with the idea of marriage itself than what it really meant. Little girl fantasies of dream houses inhabited by Barbie and Ken assured me that I would find my perfect mate. Never mind that my own family was far from ideal. I was innocent and carefree. I was young.

True love

What did that mean really? As I searched for fireworks, I found friendship and sex, companionship and passion, but not love.

As a teenager I loved intensely and fervently but not with true understanding. The years passed and I thought I had finally found the one, but alas I was not his true love.

Then finally it happened. You wooed and won my heart. How could I not fall for someone so witty and funny and persistent! Guys, no matter what they say women like to be courted. If you want the girl find out what is important to her and make it a part of your repertoire.

Once the banns were posted and the words said I found out what real love was:

• Adjusting to sleeping with a blanket snatcher.
• Waking up every morning listening to the symphony of your snores and liking it
• Warming to the idea of (__________) because it was important to you
• Learning when to charge into battle or to surrender the fight (I'm still working on this one)
• Acknowledging that when you quietly clean up after me or do the laundry or any of a number of other things it means "I Love You"
• Realizing you are my best friend as well as my lover
• Knowing that you will always be there 'cause you meant it when you said "Til death do us part."

The years have brought aches and pains, wrinkles, more than a few gray hairs and an increase in girth but those are only superficial. Together we have raised a wonderful daughter and grown together in a deeper love than I would have imagined. We don't share the same politics, taste in music or need to communicate but somehow we have made it work.

...let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another but not make a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

- Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

.

Happy Valentine's Day My Love

Today I'm going to ask my girlfriend to marry me!

Oh what a glorious, glorious day! And she's going to be so happy that I'm doing it on Valentine's day. It is the perfect day to express our love - such a romantic day. I have bought a 24-carat gold engagement ring, and a teddy bear that says "I wuv you". That teddy bear is so cute. I wuv you. She'll love it. She'll wuv it even :) I also bought a dozen roses. Bright red. As bright as our love. I hope she'll say yes.

Yesterday we were arguing about who loves the other more. We were just sitting on the sofa looking into each other's eyes as we often do , and I noticed how perfectly her eyelids shut when she blinks. So I kissed her eyelid and told her how much I love her. She said "I love you more." And that's how the argument started. It was the first argument we ever had. After about 2 minutes of arguing, we called it a tie and made love again. I love her so much!

Before I decided to ask her to marry me I made a list of things I love about her. At some stage I decided that I would stop if I reached 500 things. But of course I couldn't. I did make myself stop at 600, though. I won't write it all here, but here are the first 10:

1. I love the way your hair smells first thing in the morning.
2. I love the dimples in your cheeks when you smile.
3. I love the lines in your forehead when you pretend to frown at me.
4. I love the way you pronounce your 'R's.
5. I love how you warm my nose when I'm cold.
6. I love the way your bellybutton seems to be an endless vortex.
7. I love how you know exactly where the itch is in my back.
8. I love how you paint your fingernails a different colour every week.
9. I love that you match your toenails to your fingernails.
10. I love how sometimes your eyeglasses aren't straight, and I have to straighten them for you.
11. I love the way you lie down on my side, to warm up the bed for me.

I know I said 10, but I couldn't help myself :)

Oh glorious glorious day!

I hear her coming now. I'm going to ask her to marry me!

---

update: the bitch said no. who the fuck does she think she is? I told her I was only joking (which of course I was). it was all just a joke. i wanted to ask her to marry me and then dump her to watch the stupid look on her face. ha ha. who's sorry now, bitch? who's sorry now?

I loved Marjorie with every fibre of my being. She was my first true love. And she loved me back, oh my word did she love me back. I mean, she didn't say anything, but I knew. I could see it in her eyes.

Your first one is always the hardest to get over. Luckily, I never had to get over Marjorie. She will love me forever. She didn't say that, not in those words, but sometimes, you can just tell. When I looked into her eyes, I knew. And that was good enough for me.

I bought her a puppy, once. It died the same day, before I even got a chance to give it to her. So I had it stuffed, and gave it to her anyway. She cried a bit, but I think they were tears of joy. Sometimes the joy was so intense for her, she couldn't bear to look at little Snuffy. I'd find him stuffed into an old suitcase, or in the attic. One time she even threw him out, left him in the bin. Joy can be hard, sometimes, harder than misery.

We didn't live together, me and Marjorie, not at first. She was old fashioned like that, wouldn't even let me into her house. She was so religious, one time she even called the police and had me arrested, so that I wouldn't come into the house and break the sanctity of her womanhood. Even got a restraining order, just in case. She loved me SO MUCH, she was prepared to go through all that, so that I wouldn't be stained by my own sin. But that was Marjorie for you. Always caring. Always loving.

We had our ups and downs, like every other couple. But they just made us stronger. I remember after one argument - can't even remember what it was about - where she was screaming and screaming at me to leave her alone, and I was like "Marjorie, if you're all alone, who will protect you?" That's why I had the knife. For her protection. She had to be kept safe, I mean, there's wackos out there, you know?

But we're over such petty troubles now. Me and Marjorie will be together forever. My current girlfriend doesn't know anything, of course, she wouldn't understand. She wouldn't understand that my love for Marjorie is pure, virginal, holy. I've told her that I keep all my photo equipment in that room, which is why she must never, ever go in there, in case she ruins the chemicals and negatives by accident. The door is triple locked, for safety. I always said I would keep Marjorie safe. And now I am.

I have to go in when Jo is asleep. I wait, making sure that she is fast asleep, then I chloroform her to make sure she won't wake up and disturb me. I pad downstairs, and unlock Marjorie's room. I go in, kiss her gently on her bony forehead, and bask in her love.

The years have not been kind to Marjorie, but for me, appearances mean nothing, not when you have the kind of love that me and Marjorie have. I've had to put broken pieces of mirror into her eye sockets - I light a candle, and make it flicker, the reflected light from the flame dances around and makes it look like her eyes are twinkling at me. I get out the leftovers from yesterday's dinner, take my clothes off, cover myself in The Ointment, and express my love for Marjorie. She doesn't need to do anything back, I wouldn't ask that of her. But I know that she loves me, just as much as I love her.

I can see it in her eyes.

When I was a mere toddler, barely out of diapers, my parents had taken a pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel, the Holy Land. Baha'is are enjoined to undertake at least one such pilgrimage, if they are able, before they die. It's a mystical thing, I think, and kinda understandable, but weird. The only way a Baha'i is allowed to undertake this pilgrimage, however, is by invitation only- the candidate Baha'i must submit an application to the World Center in Haifa, then the World Center makes its approval (I mean, why wouldn't it, if said Baha'i is in good standing with the larger Baha'i community?) and then a date is set.

Mom and Dad got their approval in early 1976, just after my sister had been born. They left me and my older brother behind, in the care of loving friends and family, while they took this journey with my baby sister. There are many fantastic things to see while on pilgrimage, things of historical and religious significance. One such sight is the Tomb of the Bab. It is said that if an earnest prayer is offered at the Tomb, it will be answered with the grace of God. This is not a wishing-well kinda thing. This is prayer, where the person's motivations are selfless.

Dad's prayer was for his children, that they would all find the ones for them, their mates, and marry.

My older brother got married in 1994 to a terrific woman, Dani. Together they have had 3 children- 2 girls and a boy.

My little sister got married in 2000. She and her husband have recently had their first child, a baby girl.

My younger brother is still in his teens, so the jury's still out on that count. But I think he's developing the adequate social skills to achieve such a high honor as matrimony to a special woman some day.

I, nearing the age of thirty-one with no girlfriend in sight and no real prospects surfacing, have never been married. Doesn't look like I ever will be, either. And if I ever do, it'll be rather pointless as I would like to also procreate.

It had come to light, back when I was fifteen years old, that my mother (biological) had had an affair- I am the result of said affair. I am not my dad's son. Well, I am, but only by virtue of the fact that he raised me. I am, however, 100% my FATHER'S son- oh, Lord, am I.

All signs indicate that the God of Abraham, my particular diety-flavor, is of the patriarchal variety. Sons of the Father and all that jazz.

I have half a mind to call my dad up and tell him, in no uncertain terms, that:

1) His prayer has been answered resoundingly.
2) God has a nasty sense of humor.
3) I still believe in God, but dammit, why does blood have to be so damn thick?
4) Y'know, he could have encouraged his wife at the time (my biological mother) to offer up a similar prayer. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

Dammit.

It's not so much that I love her, it's that she's my everything. Every fiber of her being I crave for with every ounce of existence. She is my everything.

I worry about her. Losing her would be the end. Without my everything, I would have nothing. When she drives a little fast, I cry. When she takes that curve at 40 when it says 35 I tense up and pray to every God I've ever heard of that she doesn't lose control, fall into the ditch, and leave a charred corpse to fill the casket. When she runs down the stairs I know that one false step would result in a head-over-heels tumble of despair. I would watch and scream and patch the wounds, as quickly as possible her body even in death must be perfect. When she goes off to work, to guard those evil men in their nine-by-nine cells of imprisonment, I too am imprisoned in a state of worry and panic. I can only rock in the fetal position until I see her safe and sound again. Those bastards will never take her. She is my gun-toting honey. She is my everything.

I miss her. Not just her smile and laugh and long knot-filled hair and her fake gold tooth, I miss her being. I miss the way she burns my toast and I eat it anyway. I miss the splashes of her she leaves on the toilet seat because she refuses to put the seat down. She's one stubborn lover. I miss her yelling for me to "get the FUCK OUT!" when I snack on Cheetos and stare at her sleeping... for hours. I miss the way she never lies and really does call the cops every time I have to break in because she still hasn't given me a key. Damn my baby is one honest sugar. She's my everything.

I still miss her to this day and worry about her. She doesn't come by my cell like she used to. I still massage the bruise she gave me last month. I know she'll be back. This new guard woman doesn't give me the proper beatings like she did. She needs me. She's my everything.

You people do get jokes, right?

Fucking Valentine's Day.

Every year on this date I am surrounded by lovestruck, candy-buying, stuffed-animal-trading faggots and faggotettes necking in their hot rod convertibles or rolling up $5 Hallmark cards for insertion into various erogenous zones and orifices. In, out, in, out, in comes the money from their glamorous college-graduate jobs, out goes the money into their successful pursuits of genital interaction by means of gifts and expensive automobiles.

OH, WOE IS ME, this dawn of my twenty-fourth year. All I have to keep me company is a right hand that I have dressed up as Carrot Top, and a left that is painstakingly replicated from the Jennifer Lopez handpuppet on South Park. Each of them will take turns gently gnawing on my turgid maleness, while I watch the only thing on Lifetime Channel that is remotely entertaining today:

MY SEX-ADDICTED ALCOHOLIC HEROIN ADDICT EX-HUSBAND HAS COME BACK TO KILL ME AND CUISINART MY REMAINS INTO MILKSHAKES WHICH HE WILL THEN FEED TO MY KIDS--BUT NOT TELL THEM THAT THEY ARE DRINKING THEIR MOTHER--BUT ON THE PLUS SIDE, I WILL BE IMMORTALIZED IN THEM BY BEING CONSUMED IN CONJUNCTION WITH FROZEN BLENDED MOCHA-BASED DAIRY PRODUCTS

starring Meredith Baxter Birney, former co-star of Family Ties, only to end up stipulating in her contract that all future television and movie appearances involve her being a battered wife/girlfriend/mannequin that is brought to life and then battered (Mannequin 5: coming Summer 2005!); and/or a psycho mom/girlfriend/housewife a la Serial Mom (starring that thieving hag Kathleen Turner), in which case knife-wielding scenes shall exceed three, and blood spatter shall be minimum four gallons, with an extra $1,500 allocated to the movie budget for a virtually unlimited supply of glycerine drops for the tears, and a studio-provided 8-ball to intensify the wailing, sweating and sobbing that comes with such a movie role.

Afterwards, at 4pm Eastern, there is another movie starring Meredith Baxter Birney, this one entitled:

I WILL GO PSYCHO AND KILL MY WORKAHOLIC ABUSIVE RAPIST EX-HUSBAND AND SET HIS CAR ABLAZE WITH HIS CORPSE INSIDE IT AND THEN WILL BURN AN EFFIGY OF JUDITH LIGHT, LEST SHE ENCROACH ON MY NEUROTIC BITCH/BATTERED WIFE ROLES -- AND THAT SALLY STRUTHERS BITCH IS NEXT

where she also goes into a fiery rage at a traveling carnival, recalling an incident during her early 30s where she was gangraped by a band of carnies, one of whom sired her first son, Darren, who later changed his own name to Bubblypuff McScragglies. Bubble, as he is known, was adopted at birth by the workaholic abusive rapist ex-husband Stan Hendershot, little-known host of the little-known game show Tic Tac Dough 2004. Stan had a traumatic experience involving being gangraped by carnies as well, and they also took all his G.I. Joes and melted them together in perverted sexual positions.

DUN DUN DUN: Stan's father, Warren Q. Hendershot Esq., was a former carnie gone legit in suburban Philadelphia, but tracked down by his carnies' union, Hotel Carnie-Fornia 7777, where he found out the hard way that you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Warren has a short musical number in Stan's obligatory trauma flashback:

On a dark Kansas high-way,
Cool wind in my hair,
Warm smell of cotton can-DAY
rises up in the a-a-air

Up ahead in the distance,
I saw a big ferris wheel
My head was swimming and my ass grew numb
It needs to sit on some steel!

Welcome to the Hotel Carnie-Fornia!
Such a lovely group! (Such a lovely group!) Kinda smells like poop.
Livin' it up with the Ho-tel-CAR-NIE-FOR-nia!
The roadie wai-ting list (the roadie waiting list!);
was too long for Kii-i-i-IIISS...

etc, etc, etc.

Anyways, the gyst of the story is that Stan finds out on the Maury Povich show that he's not the real father of Bubble, and he and his wife get in a fistfight on camera, with the obligatory face-turning-red-and-devil-incarnate-kinda-shit-starts-happening setup.

Stan lost two of his fingers and one bicep in the ordeal.

He vowed to get a divorce and take everything, right down to the 5,415 Hummel figurines they had jointly purchased on eBay, each with its own name, inventory number and date purchased written on a post-it note and stored in a safe place. Stan's logic was, of course, no fuckin' carnie blood may course through the veins of any resident of my house, you whore! You lied to me! I loved you! I'm gonna make you hurt so bad, physically and emotionally, that they're gonna make a Lifetime movie out of it! RAWR!

And tearful hilarity ensues, filmed on location in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania!

So I shall spend this Valentine's Day smoking Camel Lights, crying for Meredith Baxter Birney, and sipping Haagen-Dazs and beef jerky through a straw after they become too melted to enjoy with silverware.

Furthermore, I shall lament the passing of my libido and my will to live, and to love, because my life has been that of misery, pain and poverty. I shall tell you why now.

My father was a multi-millionaire who lost his vast fortune in a bad oil dealing with some dimwit in Midland, and my mother was a progressive hippie turned poseur trophy-wife, running along for the ride.

See, Father introduced things to her that she will always cherish: Culture, cuisine, and Jack Nicholson-like mindfucks that left her a weeping mass of subservience and wrist-cutting.

Father never wanted children. But when my older sister Starla came along, he fell in love with parenthood. Awww, daddy's little princess. Blah blah blah.

Then came me. In the spring of 1979, my mother found out that Father was sleeping around with the tax accountant, the waitress at the local diner, the realtor, and interestingly enough, the Castro Valley Carnies' Union 3283. He'd brought home some -- viral and bacterial friends to bring some spice to the love life at home.

Momma did what she had to do. She was going to have a son. She would train him to grow up with such contempt for his doofus dad™ that he would one day rise up and explode some people and things, hopefully including her assclown husband, on the way to prison and/or the Holy Shit, You're A Fucking Lunatic Wackjob State Ne'er-Do-Well Pen and Feeding Trough in Chico.

She was a smart cookie. She replaced the tube of spermicidal lubricant with a can of whipped cream whose label was altered to read:

"Fluff-E-Goo Pasteurized Whipped Topping
^ and Spermicide!!!"

It worked, and a week into the New Year, out I came!

Well! Father was none too pleased, but went along with it, because kids can improve your status as a wealthy businessman! All the while, he knew that I was a tool of his destruction, and kept a close eye on me.

You were a thorn in my side too, old man.

A messy divorce came about after Father's bankruptcy at the hands of his business associate, whom he only referred to as Jorge. We were subsequently kicked out on the street with only the clothes on our backs and the Mercedes that had been put in the cat's name to prevent seizure.

The IRS got most of the clothes off of our backs, my piggy bank, and extracted Mother and Starla's sanity juices to pay off the remaining balance on the marital estate.

Two weeks later, we received a letter from the IRS:

SNUGGLIES BOOGAARD, Feline
1420 GHETTO AVE APT 111
HAYWARD CA 94541

Dear SNUGGLIES BOOGAARD,

We have issued you a Social Security Number: 952-08-0462. You have hereby been granted American citizenship and taxpayer status despite your non-human status. Congratulations!

Because you have benefited your entire life from the Boogaard marital estate, you are, in fact, part of the Boogaard marital estate, including all property. When you open this letter, a small chip embedded in the envelope glue will summon a local towing company to the spot where your 1976 MERCEDES BENZ 4-DR is parked, and liquidate it to pay off your newly established tax liability.

Sincerely Yours,

AMANDA RIOS
Internal Revenue Service Seizures and Figurative Sodomy

P.S. Your kitty collar is ours too, to be melted down into metal for IRS envelope summoning chips. Because it is no longer your property. Yoink!

None of us would ever be the same.

With their sanity juices gone, Mother and Starla were, from that day on, faithless and violent predators with a fierce hatred of the "Y" chromosome and anything it represented.

Many of our family meals consisted of vegetables such as zucchini, carrots and cucumbers, sliced and diced so thinly that they became juice, dribbled from the cutting board into our drink glasses on the kitchen floor. Mother had an ongoing lesbian love affair with Janis Ian and Gloria Steinem, who came over to the apartment while we were in school. I found a poster hung up in my bedroom that read:

MEN: The 'WHY?!?' Chromosome!

Despite Mother's growing celebrity status, things became tougher for the Boogaard family. Snugglies had to get a night job at 7-11, and was gunned down during a late-night Funyuns heist a few weeks in. I found myself increasingly despondent and depressed, despite the super-intelligent brain development I was seeing as the result of my daily glass of vegetable puree.

Daddy had moved in with a Carrows waitress named Moniqua. The realtor, a close family friend (the same strain of Hepatitis that we all had contracted by birth and/or cheating scumbag husbands) died of ass cancer from too much cigarette smoking. See, when it gets bad enough to where you can't smoke through your mouth or your tracheotomy hole anymore, you should just stop.

As the years went by, Daddy was fit for a spiked collar and leash, and got "MONIQUA'S BITCH" tattooed on his left buttock. We visited from time to time, and were luckily spared time in Moniqua's Marital Chocolate Dungeon. Moniqua let Starla and I know, all the while, that their daddy belonged to MONIQUA from that point on.

Daddy changed his name to Mr. Moniqua shortly thereafter, and Mother decided it was time for a change.

With her last drop of sanity juice, she got high with Gloria and listened to John Denver for four hours. They decided that it would be best if we moved across the country somewhere and started over.

No sooner had we unpacked our things than things gone worse than they were before.

In between driving rugged Jeep vehicles, wrestling wild wolves in the Rockies, and skiing to our hearts' content, I was in trouble with the law.

Starla had taken a liking to using me as a punching bag. One afternoon, we had been in an argument over the color to varnish our old coffee table. We decided it would be fun to wrestle me in the front yard, in plain view of the neighbors, and beat me to a bloody pulp.

I stayed outside and licked my wounds while Starla and Mother went inside and played another game: Indoors Wrestling Involving Heavy Projectiles And Throwing Them!

It was so much fun that the neighbors took it upon themselves to call the police! Friendly Officer Mayberry showed up at my front step and promptly carried me away for the heinous crime I had committed: Provocation of Damsel to Beat Shit Out Of, a misdemeanor. I was sentenced to eight hours' community service, giving foot massages to and doing chores for the residents of the Littleton Lazy-Ass Retired Folks Community.

That'll teach me for having a wang.

Mother became the lead singer of The TurboDykes, a death metal band out of Denver, with such hits as Lorena Had The Right Idea:

MEN ARE SCUM
MEN ARE SCUM
THEY SHOULD ONLY LIVE TO SERVE ME
CUT OFF THEIR DICKS
AFTER FREEZING THEIR SPERM
PUT THEM TO WORK IN PRISON CAMPS AND CONCEIVE TURKEY-BASTER CHILDREN
RAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

The rest is a blur until now, when I find myself incapable of loving or being loved, but perfectly capable of engineering vagina-bots, dressing up my hands, and jacking off violently to Lifetime Channel movies while stuffing my face with coma-inducing amounts of ice cream and candy hearts.

One pastime I have is to sand away the cutesy lovey-dovey messages on the hearts and use an X-Acto knife to carve in new messages, such as:

• I will imprison you with my vagina


• Suffer for my hot pussy!


• Make me your bitch, you vixen


• Sanity juices are for losers

I also have a poorly edited VHS of Disney's The Lion King, where one song has been edited:

You'll have no pe-niiis, for the rest of your daaaaYS..
It's a problem freeeee -- philosopheeee --
VA-GI-INA DEN-TATA!@#$

..I blame it on society.

On Valentine's Day, I found myself without a significant other, but that was okay, and this daylog isn't about that.

I cloistered myself in the campus center and worked on homework for three hours so I wouldn't have the Internet to distract me from getting any work done, but this daylog certainly isn't about that. I didn't even want to do that damn homework, you sure don't want to hear about it.

The Macalester Gaming Society threw its monthly techno/industrial/rock/funk/metal/whatever the fuck our talented and crazy DJs want to play quote-unquote "gamer dance," and that's what this daylog is about, mostly.

The audio system was shot. Whoever had been in there before us had apparently done something terrible to it and it hadn't been fixed. My esteemed roommate, who was one of our three DJs and also in charge of setup, had to borrow people's own personal musical instrument amplifiers to pipe the sound to the speakers. Even then, he blew out my guitar amp (although this daylog isn't about that) and in the end, the entire dance sounded like it had been run through a distortion pedal. Oh, that sound. There was nothing anyone could have done without advance warning, but it was crippling. Many of the regulars sat in the back and, as far as I can tell, grumbled about the sound the whole time; although I'm probably being unfair to them, I have to say that they didn't do much for the vibe.

As much as real honest-to-God vanity on my part frightens me, this daylog is, in the end, about me. I knew that my roommate had poured a significant portion of his heart and soul into this dance, as he does for each and every one of them. He had said to me earlier in the day, "I really, really hope the dance today goes well," and I went to the dance and heard kkkhkhknksksknkkhksk and sat in the back for a while listening to people who ordinarily would have been the most vivacious dancers complain about the sound.

---

Let me mention my history concerning dancing. Sometime in high school I realized that dancing made me acutely uncomfortable, so much so that a dancing-oriented situation made me sick to my stomach at a party at one point. For a while, I was all right with this. Dancing just wasn't my thing.

I first started to become uneasy about this state of affairs when I came to college with my then girlfriend and she discovered, via the aforementioned gamer dances, that she loved dancing. I went to a couple of them, felt really awkward, and left, and because I had always looked up to my girlfriend (perhaps one of many major reasons we're not together anymore is that I always felt that in some way she was better than me, but let's not go into that), I began to feel that maybe my aversion to dancing was not just an inconvenience but a reflection on some fundamental aspect of my character. This was not a thought that comforted me in my moments of self-reflection during my first couple years of college.

That relationship ended a couple months into my sophomore year and in the throes of self-pity or something I wrote an impassioned and rather childish diatribe against dancing in my web journal. (A web journal! How teenage and angsty! Yeah, shut the fuck up.) As I recall, it was more about how uncomfortable dancing made me than about dancing itself, or about the people who did it, but nevertheless I think it bothered a lot of people that I felt that way. Part of my point, I think, was that it bothered me too.

Later that year, with nothing to prove, I went to a gamer dance and sat in the sidelines watching people dance and feeling increasingly conflicted until finally I said "fuck it" and started to, well, sort of dance. I mean, I didn't know how to dance, of course, so I have to confess that my style was largely Dance Dance Revolution-inspired. And I didn't stretch, so I was hella sore the next day. But the point is that I danced, and I had a good time, and it was like a wall had been torn down in my mind.

Dancing still isn't my favorite thing. I don't go to clubs. I don't, in fact, even go to dances that aren't populated mostly by my friends. But now I know that someday maybe I will, and moreover I might even enjoy it. At least I won't throw up. I mean, I probably won't.

---

Back to the present, I guess there's not much to tell without seeming overly self-congratulatory, but I am proud of myself, dammit, and I've wanted to put fingers to keyboard again on the matter of my aversion to dancing for a long time. By the end of Valentine's Night, I had taken a flying leap onto one of my friends, danced like a monkey and a robot and some kind of squid or something (not at the same time), slapped at least one of my male friends' asses (if you knew how much ass-slapping I suffered at the hands of said friends, you would know how justified it was), and bumped butts with one of them after he shouted "ASS TO ASS!" in the middle of a song.

It was a hell of a time, and overall the dance went over really well. I don't know that I would have gotten away with that kind of shit at any other dance. And, after the fact that the sets were excellent, I like to believe that my antics played a part in the positive vibe that the dance had in spite of the sound quality.

As is traditional at gamer dances, each of the DJs chose one dancer whose dancing they liked during their set and awarded them a copy of their set; they also collectively chose one person as "Best of Show" who would receive a copy of all three sets. That night, I was "best of show" for the first time. That I was awarded the prize was not as valuable to me as the fact that I felt I had earned it. My roommate called it the "Life Is Good" prize due to my exuberance and the salmon sweatshirt I sometimes wear with that phrase on it; I hope some of my other nodes here indicate that he could not have paid me a higher compliment.

I remember feeling the toilet rim like a cold kiss pressed against my face. The smell crawls up my nose, and my stomach wraps itself around my spine. Most of a bottle of cheap champagne wants to make its way out.
I wrap my arms around my porcelain god and pray.

Happy twenty-first birthday, Jen.

I hadn't planned to spend my evening locked in a tender embrace with my toilet. I swear.

My morning started off with a message from my ex.
An hour or so of talking to him, and I forgot my resolution to spend the day sober.
He never mentioned the fact that today would have been our anniversary.

Erika and Hilary take me out to the Hoot Owl, the only real bar in town. I'm greeted at the door by a drunken round of "Happy birthday!" and a bottle of booze.
I down it all in about three hours.

I remember staggering back to my room after trying to choke down part of a pizza roll Erika had made me eat. It's the first solid food I've had in about 16 hours. I have a vague feeling I'm going to regret that.

I inch my way over to my room, so very glad I left the door unlocked. My clothes fly off as soon as the door shuts.
It's too hot in here.

My meds are waiting for me, somewhere on the disaster area that is my desk. I know I should take them when the first IM comes. A friend, wishing me a happy birthday. My fingers fumble at the keyboard.
My head throbs as I watch the screen. I race out of my room half-dressed as the room starts to spin.

...

I wake up the next morning naked. My meds are on my desk, an accusation staring me in the face. Isn't it wonderful to be a legal adult?