August 2005 Archives

The band, jackass.

Someone buy me this, please.

"Be Still My Heart" is rad.

UPDATE: God bless the iTunes store. I bought that album I mentioned above. No need to buy it for me. Thanks for considering it, though.

Doors are opening and things are winding down. It is time for a change of pace and a change of scene. I feel that is possible now.

Julie, I think you were right. As for what I was putting out to the universe, I don't know if it answered, but it gave me a couple things, not the least of which was a slap in the face.

"Here. Shut the fuck up and calm the fuck down. There is no rush."

Everything in due time, I suppose, but it's hard not to get caught up in the race of it all sometimes. It happens to the best of us. The lesson I've learned and need to remember is that I don't have to try so hard to be me. I do a goddamn good job of that without even knowing it.

So, thanks. To the universe and, more importantly, my friends and family. Cheers. Here's to learning to just be.

It's 10:30. Time to sleep. This entry has been pre-dated for midnight so that it will be isolated tomorrow. I will, more than likely, want to read this in the morning.

Good night.

Yup. Just one of those days.

I am drinking sleeping time tea. While boiling the water in the microwave, I conducted an experiment purely in the interests of science and not at all because I thought it would be funny. There is no control group so my findings are far from conclusive and will probably remain so as I have no interest in performing any follow-up experiments.

You can already tell this is going to be good.

I weighed myself both before and after pooping. We have a nifty scale that calculates your BMI, which is a very rough indicator of your overall health. Clocking in at 163lbs prior to solid evacuation, someone of my height has a BMI of 24.1 Astoundingly, post-evac, weighing in at 162lbs (Goddamn Jack-in-the-Box) I dropped a solid 1/5 of a point to 23.9.

Just incredible.

Has this ever happened to any of you? You're having a dream and in that dream you have some horribly intense moment or, perhaps, you loose a loved one and begin crying only to awake and find that you really were crying after all. This has happened to me more than once with the most recent incident coming this morning.

Despite my lack of sleep, I have been having rather vivid dreams. The one I had this morning took place in the house I essentially grew up in. The home that, up until February, I had lived in for the last 16 years or so. I was there with someone. I don't remember who, but I know they were female. She talked to me, telling me I could do anything I wanted. She reassured me there was nothing I wasn't capable of, even flight. She told me this in an even tone, not loving nor entirely without emotion. Just matter-of-factly. As if I should have known.

So, I started at the west end of our front yard, ran approximately 20 feet, and lept up into the air. While it seems fantastic, I was not at all surprised to find that I could, in fact, fly. As is often the case with my flying dreams, I did not fly to high for fear of falling, but I did soar fast and low across the sky. Weaving around telephone poles and through the wires hanging from them.

I flew down the street to an intersection where another country road bisects my main street, but before I could go any further the woman called me back. I do not remember what she said, only that she was perhaps worried about me starying too far or that she had something to tell me. Thinking nothing of it, I flew back, landed gracefully, and found she was nowhere insight.

Free from obligations, I decided to take to the skies again. I walked to the west end of the yard again, but as soon as I turned around I found a small car parked right in the spot where I had run to take flight before. The driveway, too, was full of cars. Determined, I tried running the 10 short feet and leaping, but I was only able to float maybe 10 feet up before sliding back down at the same angle I ascended. I even tried running and leaping off the rear bumper of the car that had park on my runway. I managed to only get 20 feet up before sliding back down.

I was frustrated. I had been handed this wonderful gift, this ability no one else had and I was completely unable to use it. There were barriers in my way. Barriers someone or some group of people had put there intentionally. So I did what anyone of us would do in that situation. I yelled out in frustration.

My father came out of the house, out the front door, and walked over to me. He looked around the yard and driveway, surveying what was wrong. Somehow he knew my secret, incredible ability because he turned to me and spoke. As with the woman who called me back, I don't remember exactly what his words were, but I remember the gist of what he said: He was sorry for these barriers and that they would be removed soon by whomever it was that put them there.

And then he held me and I cried.

I cried hard. I cried out my stress and frustration not just from the situation in the dream, but everything in my life. I cried so hard I woke myself up only to find tears on my cheeks. So I continued to cry until I fell back asleep. That was a little less than 2 hours ago and now, in between running this program that takes 2.5 minutes to finish its job, I have been writing this and thinking about what this dream means to me.

So, I have not been sleeping well for a while now. I am just checking in to let you know that last night, while plauged with an effed-up dream, I did get some rest and, while tired, feel better.

Step one. March on.

Tylenol PM is quite possibly the most horrid product on the market. No one, under any circumstances, should be allowed to ingest it. It does not aid sleep in the slightest. It does, as a matter of fact, the exact opposite.

I have not gotten a decent night's sleep in the better part of two weeks. So, in hopes of securing a single day of work this week where I might get in before 9:30AM, I took two Tylenol PM caplets last night. What followed was so completely unlike sleep and, at the same not, not completely akin to being awake.

I woke up roughly every 45 minutes. This is just a guess, however, since I was so delerious I couldn't find my cell phone to check the time. For reference, the cell phone was lying next to me in bed (where a girlfriend might be if I had one...I find sleeping with technology more comfortable). In between these fabulous bouts of near-insanity, I managed to get something approximating sleep.

I say it was approximately sleep because the dreams I had ensured I did not rest well in the slightest. The list of dreams include:

• Getting back together with an ex even though I knew I didn't want to


• Sailing an 18th century whaling ship (or what I thought I whaling ship would look like, it was probably a trade ship or something)


• Crashing said whaling ship and swimming to shore where 50 or so Civil War soldiers, a few from both sides, had set up cheesy pup tents next to markers which stated where certain Allied forces landed on that beach in WW2


• Something about running away from some kind of beast in a city park


• Visiting old high school friends who lived in a Colonial-era house, columns and all, located immediately behind an apartment complex one of my ex's lived in

Listen. I'm as confused as you are. The Civil War soldiers on the beach with WW2 era markers denoting various landing points (Omaha Beach, Nebraska Beach, etc...) is bewildering. There was some kind of weird escape thing, too, since I think that beach was part of an island that had a resort on it. I'm pretty sure the resort was destroyed by a dinosaur. Maybe T-Rex. Might have been aliens or the Illuminati or a secret goverment organization, though. I don't really remember now. But there was definitely a resort that was destoyed by something.

So, I took Tylenol PM to get sleep and what do I have to show for it? A night's worth of shitty sleep, delerious episodes between insane dreams. Now I'm at work. I feel as rested as I have in the past two weeks, but that wasn't really the point. I wanted to feel like I'd gotten more sleep. Not the same amount with craziness in there.

So, to recap, never fucking take Tylenol PM!

I have a week's worth of Cornish pasties in the freezer and another week-and-a-half's worth of ingredients ready to rock. There's a new cheesecake experiment in the oven right now. My legs are killing me, but damn, is it going to be worth it.

Mmmmm. Beef and pork cornish pasty. Chicken pesto cornish pastiy. Butterscotch & chocolate layered cheesecake.

Mmmm. Scrubs.

This entry started off epic, but I deleted it. Not on accident. On purpose. It got to big and, when I realized how much I'd written, I'd forgotten what I wanted to write about in the first place. I'll have to explore that epic post at some later date, but, for now, I give you this.

I love Scrubs. I love it because the charcters have depth, the use of interior monologue is clever, and it's got to be one of the funniest things I've seen. My favorite episode deals with relationships. Four separate ones, each of them with their own issues and in different places. I have not had much actual relationship experience, but the experince I have had points to this episode has being as true-to-life as TV will ever get to capturing it.

I highly recommend watching it. Just the one episode would be fine. I would upload it here, but I don't want to get my ass sued. So, instead, I will tell you that it is on the second DVD of Season One. It is entitled "My Bed Banter and Beyond." I have found the script available online here. Read it. Watch it.

Goddamn that episode kills me every time.

I never realized how much I disliked house-sitting. When you're 17 it's great because you more than likely live with your parents and can't wait to get out of the house. Six years later and all you want to do when you get off work is go home to a place you're familiar with and leave it at that.

I hate it here. :)

Last week someone asked me what I look for in a mate. It was a fairly harmless question so I answered it. The list, for lack of a better word, is not very long and the items found on it are not that fantastic. They are simple things, but things I have seen in few people. I then said that in light of my previous romantic relationships, I refuse to compromise my expectations any more. Upon hearing this list and my position regarding it, the inquisitor commented that 'That's an awful lot to expect from someone else' and maybe I'm not the best person in the world for having such high expectations. But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is I believed them.

For days I couldn't sleep. When I did managed to drift it was only out of sheer exhaustion and lasted no more than an hour without interruption. I went over the conversation again and again in my head. I had been living with these expectations for quite a while. Was it possible I wasn't a good person because of it? Worse yet, had I somehow glossed over the fabled "One" we're all looking for? It hit me hard. This was something I was proud of and now, I thought, maybe it wasn't such a good thing after all.

Maybe it's alright to settle. No one's perfect, right? I mean, how can you expect someone else to be something they're not? How can I, with my own faults and issues, demand excellence from someone else? I mean, I could choose to be with someone who's good, but not great, but even that idea scared me. That scared me more than having ridiculous expectations. That scared me more than being alone.

For days on end, these questions ran through my head. Work provided some respite, but the doubt was always there. Was I really a bad person? After all the work I'd done and how much I realized that I am a great person and really loved myself for that, I'd had my core shaken by a simple statement that something I believe in was not right.

For over a week I struggled with it and for over a week the answer was so obvious I overlooked it: the inquisitor is a jerk. I do not have extremely high expectations, just expectations the inquisitor could not possibly meet and, rather than accept that and move on, they decided to drag me down with them and I let it happen. Never again.

Ultimately, this is the conclusion I have come to: I am tired of doubting myself. It produces nothing but more work for myself. I am only human and, as such, I am allowed to make mistakes, to not be okay all the time, to have seemingly ridiculous expectations, and to like who I am. The uninitiated will see it as arrogance and egocentric behavior. They will label me, deny me behind my back, and remain static. I will not. I will take this step forward and embrace it. I will fall again and pick myself up.

Another chapter in an evolving manifesto. Props to the group. You know who you are.

The stache is gone for various reasons. It may return sometime in the future, but, for now, an ode to my stache.

Farewell faire stache,
Tis life's cruel irony,
That ye should shine so bright,
Only to be so roughly snuffed out

So, for the future, always be sure to kind of pat yourself down before you jump into a pool fully clothed. I mean, I thought I had taken everything important out of my pockets, but, in the middle of forming up for what was undoubtedly the world's sexiest cannonball, I remembered, "Shit...I still have my cell phone in my pocket." It was a great BBQ.

I'm pretty sure I accomplished my mission of having everyone at said BBQ question my sexual orientation. And, even if I didn't, damn did I have a good time making drinks.

Afterwards, Jennifer, Jason and I went to the city to find adventure. Some choice quotes from the evening include:

Jen: "If I were wearing a tank top you guys would've lost me in here."

*after having gotten in on the guest list, we leave after 20 minutes* Jen: "I don't have time for this place. If I'm going to party, I'm going to do it right!"

Matt: "We don't have to go here."
Jason: "You want to go here don't you?"
Matt: "Yeah, but it's no big deal if we don't."
*two hot industrial girls walk by*
Matt: "...let's go. I'm paying for us to get in."

Matt: "Hugo grows weary!"

Matt: "Dammit! I wanted to get chili-cheese fries!"

So, this movie fucking sucks. Pretentious and artsy in all the wrong ways. But there was one line of dialogue I liked.

SPOILER
One of the characters cheats on the other. The cheater is explaining what happened when the other says something I've felt. Something I actually understand. And I'd quote it exactly, but the movie sucks so much ass I'd rather just guess from memory rather than watch the part to get it down exactly. The one whose been cheated on says, "I see you standing there and I hear the words you're saying, but they sound like they're coming from a stranger."

Ain't that the fuckin' truth.

You read it correctly. I am writing a comic. It started as a joke, a play on classic comic convention. It still has those elements to it, but in writing character descriptions (motivations, physical characteristics, etc...) I found out the characters are a lot deeper than I anticipated.

So much so that as I discussed it with friends yesterday I found out more and more that this isn't a lame story about the world's worst comic book heroes. It is, in fact, about me. That scared me because, now, I have to write and finish the story because there's more at stake than just telling a story. It's about self-revelation.

Once I finish, I am going to get this thing published. No two ways about it. It is going to happen. And I'm scared to death because a piece of me (and a large one at that) is going to be visible to a lot of people. A lot of stuff I have to come to terms with and admit will be in there.

And, you know what? I'm more scared of admitting it to people I do know. I could give a fuck what the people I don't know think, even though they'll be the one's praising my incredible storytelling skills.

Because I am that fucking good and it is going to happen. :)

I need sleep.

Lots.

No more creativity for now.

Sleep.

Nothing seems right.

First things first. Joshua, you are not allowed to make any Dune references. I know this entry's title sucks. Moving on...

I just sent two character descriptions to my artist. I have started work on a comic book. I do not know how to feel about this. I am excited and scared. I think this is normal. Depending on how things go, I may or may not post the artwork. We shall see.

Outside of that, something is wrong. I feel ill and tired. It is only 10PM. I am worried.

Good night. Let us hope I can finish the other 3 character descriptions. From there, the book writes itself.

UPDATE
11:30PM: I cannot sleep.

It turns out antibiotics don't just kill bad bacteria. They kill good bacteria too. As a result, I have had an "upset stomach" (read: gross poo) for the better part of a month.

The cure? Yogurt. Go figure.