had a bad day again
she said I would not understand
she left a note
and said "i'm sorry, i
had a bad day again"

there's so many things i could be fucking depressed about.
my dad. dave. my conflicting feelings within myself.

the fact that i can't fucking even do any of the things that make me feel better
that i could pretend make me feel better
that i could pretend will make things better
that i could hide behind.

i could pretend people don't fucking care
that i don't care
that i don't care that they care
or that they don't care

but i'm left with knowing the truth
and hating it.

and all i can do is cry.

(i'd rather you not vote on this at all.)

Sometimes I feel like the ex and I will get back together. But now I learned that it was more than a kiss. Is it immature and childish of me to think, "I don't know if I can kiss those lips again without thinking, 'Yup, this is where his tongue and god knows what else went'?"

I feel divided completely in half on that one. Half of me says yes, it's an emotionally immature reaction that fuels your jealousy, a quality of yourself you hate. The other half says that no, there is something to be said about a physical/spiritual purity that two people establish betwixt one another that she has dirtied with someone else's private parts.

But if this purity exists now shattered, should it bother me, noders? Or am I still a kid, learning for the first time that once someone has your heart, she could gangbang the local fire department, and you'd still cry when you heard your song? Throw me a msg if you're not busy downvoting my personal strife (you know who you are, and yes, i hate you too) and share some knowledge with me. Please.

Let's go for some more news commentary.

Apparently a few weeks ago, a helicopter pilot, John S. Sutton, was flying in to pick someone up at their house. Perhaps he was flying in a bit too low, but anyways, one of the neighbours, John Chwaszczewski, became concerned when the helicopter swooped in low over his garage, and then landed in a vacant yard down the street.

"I didn't know what was going on. It damned near took off the roof of my garage. I ran across the street, and the first thing I did was get the number of the helicopter." said Chwaszczewski.

So, when he saw some guy in a suit holding a black briefcase behind a tree, he came to the logical conclusion.

These guys gotta be Terrorists!

And, well since his motto is apparently "Shoot first, and ask questions later," he ran inside grabbed his Assault Rifle, an AR15, and shot at least twice at the helicopter.

"Maybe I overreacted, but I did feel this was terrorism at its utmost"

Excuse me while I pause for a breath.

What the FUCK is wrong with this guy's brain?! I mean, what the hell is the thought process that concludes someone to think "helicopter landing in Williamsburg, Virginia and guys with suits = TERRORISM" I mean, really, it's not something you expect at 8 in the morning, but generally before I try and kill people, I usually make sure I at least see them doing something that looks REMOTELY suspicious.

Fortunately, no one was injured. After the incident, Chwaszczewski, who I will from now on call Mr. Crazy Redneck since it's easier to spell, called the police to report the incident. Apparently he was a bit concerned that he might be in trouble for firing his Assault Rifle in a residential neighbourhood.

Well, he was right about that. That is to say that's at least one of the charges that he's facing. He's looking at charges for interfering with an aircraft, discharging a firearm in a public place, reckless handling of a firearm and assaulting Sutton.

In all, he's looking at a maximum of 8 years in prison, and $10,000 in fines.

Hell, and you guys wonder why we think you're crazy as all fuck. Why the hell anyone would argue that people should be allowed to own weapons like these without proper training, certification, and registration is beyond me. I mean, really. No one complains about making people get driver's licences because it's dangerous, and cars aren't designed specifically to make killing stuff easier.

Letting idiots like these own stuff like this is just asking for trouble. The most important part of owning a lethal weapon is knowing when NOT to use it.

Sources:
www.dailypress.com/news/yahoo/dp-26898sy0jul19.story
www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,4745729%255E401,00.html

Wait... did I just cite my Sources in a freaking DAYLOG? Man, I need to go lay down.

Oh yeah, and Sutton's looking at a misdemeanour count of Recklessly Operating an Aircraft.

Today there's a debate raging in my office. Here's what it is - TOILET PAPER: FOLD VS SCRUNCH. I don't know how it started, but it has certainly become a contentious issue. Everyone has an opinion on it.

The office has become firmly divided. Tomorrow I expect to see people carrying placards which say things like "YOU'LL NEVER GET ANYWHERE BY SCRUNCHING" and "FOLDERS GO HOME". I imagine it will be quite exciting.

Hello.

It's been a while. But I'm back.

I had a journal going on my website for a while, so I stopped writing here. Things got good; things got bad. I finally got into what I thought would be a long term relationship, so I stopped writing in my journal. That relationship ended in January. Since then, things have been very slowly getting worse. Sometimes things improve for a little while, but overall, it seems to be downhill.

I'm now on four medications. I'm taking Paxil for OCD/Social Anxiety, Toprol for high blood pressure, Tricor for high triglycerides (>1000mg/dL), and Provigil to keep me from falling asleep at work.

I've been lonely. I've got a couple of personal ads on the web. Some have no responses, others have a few dozen responses. Most of the people who respond start out well enough, but then our email exchanges slow and then finally stop. I have yet to meet anyone in my area online, who I could at least meet in person.

I miss the feeling that I had in my last relationship when I thought I was loved. I miss that feeling more than anything. I thought that I was #1 to at least one person out of the 6 billion people on this infinitesimally small sphere in a rural corner of a mediocre galaxy that sits alone in an enormous void of space.

I guess our galaxy isn't much unlike me. Sure there are others nearby, but none come close enough to have a significant effect on me.

I don't want to be a 30 year old virgin. I want to have kids well before I'm over the hill. I want to find that source of inspiration that will let me unleash my energy and creativity, while serving all of her desires. But I can see it already. I'm 26 years old now, and I just don't connect with most people, no matter how hard I try.

I've been starting to do some unhealthy things to my body. One time I ran out of Paxil and scratched my arm all up in my depression. It's healed over now, but there are some traces of the scars. I've put myself on a 700-calorie per day diet, which I've been on for two weeks and I've lost about 15 pounds already. I know that's unhealthy, but I really don't care at this point. Though I don't look overweight, I always assume that's what turns women off about me before I even open my mouth and stick my foot in it.

More recently, I've been spending too much time considering what kind of drugs aren't as bad as the others. I've already tried a couple of things that have questionable legality, but I am not satisfied. I don't get that feeling. Yet. When I tell myself that "yet", it scares me. I'm afraid of what I might do to myself if I go down that path. Other than my lonliness, I've got a pretty decent life right now. I make decent money, I live in a nice apartment in South Florida, my roomates are great people, and I've got most of the gadgets that I've always wanted. However, I'd give it all up in a moment for that warm-blanket feeling of significance.

Tonight I have insomnia again, so I thought I'd come back here to e2 to share my thoughts. I remember the comfort I had the last time I was here. Sharing my personal thoughts with people who don't know me helped me a lot then, maybe it'll help again.

Thank you for reading.

Let me review my boring summer so far. What have I done?

...

Hmm...Can't think of anything. I have wasted my entire summer doing absolutely nothing. I am bored as hell. What is there to do? Well, I do some noding here on E2. I look around, find interesting stuff to read.

But it's getting harder and harder to go online, due to my new found love...Tennis 2K2. Let me tell you, that game is awesome. I've spent nearly my entire summer playing that game.

Still, I feel that my summer is going to waste. I've recently rekindled my obsession with Emily Dickinson. Damn, she wrote some badass poetry, to say the least. Still, I try to read, but can't. I'm just too lazy.

I came back from Orlando the other day. It was a long four hour drive. It was pretty cool. No Disney World though. It was more of a religious thing, called a "jamaat."

I can't wait for August 28, 2002. My first day of college. There's really nothing else to do this summer but to anticipate the start of school.

She baked me a cake.

She brought it to my room around 4PM yesterday, and I ate some. It was yummy chocolate with fudge on it. We sat around in my room for a while, watched some Strawberry Clock on Newgrounds, and then went to physics.

After physics we walked around the city, got some food, and then went back to my place.

It was, after all, the night of the champagne soiree. Only 2 bottles were consumed, and some of that was spilled all over - some on the bed; some elsewhere.

More time well-spent. Entertaining, heightening, intimate.

I guess I should go shower now.

She baked me a cake.

No one has ever baked me a cake, other than my mother.

She baked me a cake.

Taking trips down Memory Lane has never been my thing. So, when my sister called me into the other room to show me picture of my former boyfriend and me, I was not a very happy woman.

This picture of us was taken in December of 1998. He had surprised me and come for a visit to celebrate Christmas with us.

That was a very happy time. That was then and this is now.

I'm the only one in my family not fond what I call "I remember when" Boulevard. I love my family very much, but alike in this respect we are not.

It's always been my belief that you can't move forward while holding onto the past.

While I'll always wish my former boyfriend well, my sister and other family members can go through the old pictures. I live in the present and plan for the future.

My wedding is nine weeks away.

I'm not sure why this realization hit me so hard today. My fiancee and I have been planning this for well over five months now, and we are mere inches away from having everything complete. But, for some reason, sitting at my desk today, it became more tangible than it ever had been.

I'd been fortunate in that I haven't really had a hard-core case of the cold feet yet. I think that I'd only been subject to the pre-wedding jitters that everyone gets at this point in the game. Today was entirely different. Today, worries that I didn't even know existed in my head started crawling around and reeking havoc on everything I had thought about this wedding.

I wonder if the little things that she does that annoy me will build up over time. I worry about our intimacy deflating to a point beyond repair. I worry about one of us getting sick and passing away, leaving the other in a state of isolated despair. And of course, as must cross the mind of any person about to get married, I worry about fidelity, about the breaking of the commitment I'm about to announce to the entire world.

This is the single highest level of fear I've ever felt. I want everything to be okay, to be in my control, so I don't have to worry anymore. I don't want to afraid to love her every day for the rest of my life. I hate this sensation, and I can't get it out of my head no matter what I try.

The marriages that I have as ready examples do little to encourage a sense of hope. My parents had more than one shotgun at their wedding, and have been together for the last twenty-five years because they were too poor and too settled to change their lives so drastically. In fact, going back as many generations as I can recall, I cannot come up with a single marriage that was the result of two people loving each other, and wanting to share their lives for eternity. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but my childhood is surrounded by poor examples of living the married, loving life. From what I remember of my childhood, I thought that a man got married when he was done living, and had given up hope of all else. That thought still horrifies me.

I don't want to be afraid to tell my fiancee that I love her so much that I don't want anything to come between us. I don't want to be afraid to go in front of everyone I hold dear and admit that I want to share every second of my life with this woman, no matter how many ways the world my try to make it otherwise. I don't want to sit at my desk at work and be terrorized by my own thoughts.

I love her. I want to be an example to people like me; marriages can be loving and careful and wonderful, and there is no reason to worry. I want to prove everything that I know is wrong, and that I can succeed where others have failed. I want my wedding to prove that when I say love, I mean that; when I say forever, I mean that. I will do whatever it takes to live up to every word that I say. My wedding is in nine weeks. Today, it crossed the line from fantasy to reality. I'm scared. I'm hopeful. The universe makes my head hurt.

The sun is setting,
But what is this feeling?
This itch I feel is so hard to explain.
Am I happy that night is coming?
Or scared that day is no more,
	That it may never come back?
It's so much like you, and
I am confused.  Do I want you to stay
Or do I wish you would never come back?
I am not sure…
Or maybe what confuses me the most,
	is your inability to choose.
Is that why I hate sunset so much?
Or do I love it for its moment of indecision?
The death of day, 
       the birth of night

Good-bye light
       hello darkness.

Maybe this isn't goodbye dear….
	Maybe it is simply hello mistermed. 


Shall I be the man and walk away?
E'en when my being is screaming?
Shall I wait for you, to find me…
	When eventually you realize
		Realize everything you've missed.
Maybe we were wrong - maybe.  

Is it worth it?
Shunning me that is…
Maybe if you were the man you think you are,
You would walk away and 
	Quit Stringing Me On.

I wrote this about a year ago. It is about me and my boy friend at the times break up. Enjoy.

I'm in crazy back-from-vacation-must-catch-up mode, but I wanted to scribble a quick note here. Angela and I drove to Las Vegas Thursday evening to meet up with my dad and stepmom and my little sisters (ages 14 and 15, turning with every tick of the second hand into WOMEN for God's sake) who were in town for my dad's fighter squadron reunion. We got back yesterday afternoon.

I'll spare you all the details, but I have to tell you that if you want to visit a real old school Vegas institution, eat at Battista's Hole in the Wall Italian restaurant, just behind the Barbary Coast and across from Bally's. It's dark and cluttered, has big leather (leatherette?) booths, and a little old man with an accordion wanders around playing old tunes. It hasn't changed since I visited it twenty years ago; you half expect to turn around and see Dean Martin digging into a plate of ravioli. It ain't cheap -- the dinners are at least $17.95 each, if you share they charge you an additional $7, the child portions are $8 -- but the food is great and comes with wine (the red wine was surprisingly good), salad, and garlic bread. Afterward we walked to the Bellagio hotel and ate gelato and gazed in awe and reverence at its splendor.

Here's the other thing I have to tell you, and that is that although Vegas can be a real son of a bitch, sometimes it will grant you moments of pure grace. When Angela and I got in the elevator at the parking garage of the Flamingo hotel and headed down toward the casino, the new JXL mix of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" started playing over the sound system.

Elvis, with the drum and bass cranked up like crazy. Playing in the Flamingo, the spot where modern Las Vegas was born back in the 1940s. When the doors opened, you know we walked in like we were there to rob the place, man.

I went to see Vida Blue this evening with Ryan. It was the first of a very good set of concerts coming into town this week -- tomorrow is Alejandro Escovedo and Thursday is John Mayer with Guster opening.

I went on the recommendation of Jason from PATF. He's a Phishead, and said it would be great. I was a little skeptical however because I had never been to a jam-band event before.

I really liked the opening band - The Slip. They had the long instrumental and heavy percussion attributes of a jam band but also had a more rock twinge to add to the mix.

As for Vida Blue? I was somewhat disappointed, because they seemed to be lacking something. I think the problem was the minimalist make-up of their trio (keyboards, drums, and bass). They needed something more, perhaps a guitar or horn. I was impressed with the talents of Page McConell, but generally a keyboard doesn't cut it as a lead instrument. You have to be as talented as Jimmy Smith to pull that off, and that is a mighty tall order.

I also really enjoyed observing the other people there. They all seemed to be jam band veterans. I particularly enjoyed watching the white rastafarians dance. The dancing was the same regardless if a up or down tempo song was being played; it was almost as if the music wasn't really necessary.

So in the end it was interesting, but not something really moved me.

battle of attrition

weill in japan: day 21

We're losing people.

As the third week of classes continues, the absence rate has started to rise. Particularly in the dorms, a cold is now going around. I'll get it eventually. Also, the early start time of classes is still a problem: I'm pretty much certain that most of us aren't getting nearly enough sleep every night. Folks like me who are in homestays have an even earlier start, as we have to take public transit to the campus every day.

Yesterday's adventure in Odaiba caught up to me in a big way today. I got maybe 4 1/4 hours of sleep before dragging myself out of bed, into the shower, into new clothes, and out the door. There was enough time for me to treat myself to a large cup of iced coffee and a muffin from a local coffee shop (cost: ¥550, or about $4.70) to give me enough energy to make it through at least the first 2 1/2 hours of class. I nearly fell asleep near the end of classes, but made it to the end intact.

The situation looks pretty bad in class. Everyone's showing a severe lack of energy, for all the reasons above compounded with the general boredom of the material. One classmate told me that he plans to start cutting classes because the dull material could very well be causing us to lose Japanese proficiency. People are starting to arrive later, myself included. The classes have a fairly strict attendance and on-time policy, so that's a bad habit to be getting into.

Today was pretty much shot after class. When I arrived home, I felt terrible and took a few hours to lie down and rest. Even afterwards, I didn't have much of an appetite -- although the dinner of curry rice and cold fish didn't help any. I've tried curry a few times while here, but I can't convince myself to like it. With luck, I'll get a decent amount of sleep tonight to get back on track tomorrow.

the technology gods smile

I was pretty steamed yesterday about how the on-campus Macs ate the contents of my little USB memory device. After reformatting the device and restoring the contents, I decided to try again today. Everything worked better today: the firewall didn't block my binary FTP upload, all my files opened seamlessly, and I was able to make all my revisions. The Japanese version of Office 2001 for Mac is excellent, handling features like furigana (pronunciation guides) that the U.S. version can't do. I don't understand why Microsoft didn't add these capabilities to the English-language version, as they did in Office 2000 and Office XP for Windows. Guess I'll enjoy it while I can.

tidbits

There are few foods that can't be saved by enough soy sauce or Tabasco. This applies mostly to the "food" served in the on-campus dining hall, and I don't think my stomach could handle the consequences of using those sauces on curry.

My hands have been killing me. I think I should cut down on the Taiko no Tatsujin 3: all that recoil from hitting the drums hampered my performance severely today

I've heard three songs from Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix on television. "Beautiful Love" (?) was used on a commercial for The Yen Shop, the "Lupin" theme is heard on the third-generation anime made in the late '70s but still aired today, and "Swing It" played in the background of a variety show for reasons I can't quite understand.

I'm up to 14.6 Coke Points. Bottles and cans have one point each, while vending machine paper cups have either 0.6 or 0.8 points on them. With 20 points, I can enter a lottery to win a super-slim digital camera and MP3 player. Sweet.

Time for sleep.

No matter what happens you will always be special to me:

Because no matter how harsh your words are, I know you don't mean it.

Because you know that I'll always be there for you.

Because I know that you know.

Because I can talk to you without saying one word.

Because no matter what I say, you understand.

Because we can stand there not saying a word, and yet we're having silent conversations.

Because when you're around I feel safe and secure.

Because when you're around I feel warm.

Because I feel your embrace for days and weeks afterwards.

Because a hug from you is the best thing I have ever felt

Because a hug from you is one of the best feelings I will ever experience.

Because, just because...

bella, bella, che dorme con la luna ed i giochi con la pioggia, con il mare e la luna ha occhi della bellezza pura...

Come here, lean your head on me, brighten my life with the sound of your voice and the color of your smile.