you know, as much as i like ice cream, and chocolate, i just have this thing where i'm not a big fan of chocolate ice cream. it has a funny taste. but, it's still ice cream. yeah.

i have a new favorite movie EVAR.

donnie darko.

i just painted. if you can call it painting if you don't use a paintbrush. it makes cleanup easy if you only use a fork, a knife, a spoon and a chopstick to put paint on canvas. it also produces something that may or may not be allowed to pose as "art". i think it's a statement on modern art - meta-art if you will. art about art, instead of art about life. yes.

weee, i feel pretentious now.

so i figured out my mom's ulterior motives in making such an awesome dinner last night (gazpacho, shrimp with lemon basil butter sauce, and parfait): she wants me to cook tonight. i'm so not a cook. so i'm making all i know how: sushi. and i'm attempting tempura. we'll see how that works out. also making edamame. and i might go out and see if i can find some green tea ice cream but i'm not sure. i'm also trying to decide if it's worth driving all the way to grapevine for sushi ginger or if i should just do without. hmmm... decisions decisions.

man. why the hell am i so hungry? i actually ate lunch. i don't understand how i can be more hungry for having eaten 6 shrimp and a banana and several cheez-its than for having eaten nothing at all since breakfast, like i do most days.

i'm having another hot day. i just feel good today. i'm also unable to stop thinking about sex 24/7. maybe there's a correllation.

i wish i were at burning man.

well kids, the rampant sexual frustration has returned.

i just watched amelie. that's SUCH a cute movie. i'm left with this gooey feeling in my insides. mmmm. it's not often that i really, really enjoy a love story, but that one just turns my innards to goo. <3

well, i was trying to paint a self-portrait from life - but that didn't work out. and then i decided to try to sketch myself first - but that didn't work either. my mom then came in and started taking pictures of me, but i got all self-conscious about being photographed and deleted them all and now the urge to paint has completely evaporated. i guess i'll try again tomorrow. bleh.

i went to the mall and i got 3 shirts and a pair of yoga pants for $40 and a pair of steve madden shoes for $30. woohoo!

confucius say, man with holes in pockets feel cocky all day.

retarded msn compatibility match basically just cracks me up. i love how perfectly i don't fit my zodiac sign.

Capricorn & Sagittarius
They share values like ambition, success, friendship, and intellectual discussion. But the Sagittarian is optimistic, whereas Capricorn is a pessimist. The former works because he or she must to finance travel, recreation, and leisure activities; the latter could spend his or her life at the office. Soon the Capricorn becomes irritated with Sagittarian glibness, which interferes with concentration. And the latter simply realizes he or she is bored! They may travel together for a time, for each is an independent spirit. But they don't understand each other.

kevin: um, yeah, the clitoris, that's uh, hold on
kevin: www.google.com?search=clitoris

i am having a pretty intense falafel craving right now. must... eat... falafel...

bleorgh.

bleh, i'm up much too early today. i got up at 10. that's just... wrongsauce, especially when i was up until like 1am on the phone. today, however, i'm probably goign to finish that damn painting i've been working on for the last couple days (expect pictures soon!) so that's good. meh.

so i have this assignment from my shrink, she wants me to journal for the first 30 minutes of each day. just whatever comes to mind. i haven't been doing it. but recently the first 30 minutes (and sometimes even more) of my day have been highly inappropriate thoughts that don't really need to be written down, much less where anyone else can read them.

and she keeps trying to convince me i have this "false self" that's basically getting in the way of things i want to do. i don't buy it.

Plants, expecially the psychoactive vines and fungi, had a great deal to teach humanity; in fact, if humanity hoped to evolve rapidly enough to eep philosophically apace with its technological advances, the expeditions and postverbal insights provided by psychotropic vegetation might well be its only salvation.
-Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs And All

i just realized that three of my last four posts were made in sexual frustration. and that i haven't posted anything worthwhile in between those posts. that's kind of funny.

wow, i'm kinda horny right now. goddammit.

i think i've figured out my problem. i'm a disappointed idealist.

my mind refuses to remove itself from the gutter today. this is bad.

I caught your radio waves
I caught your radio waves
Will you take a string
Say you string me along
Say you string me along
Say inertia creeps
Inertia creeps and she comes

i keep listening to this song... i'm really enjoying it today for some reason. <3

1 week until the time schedule comes out and i can see if my classes will work out. yay. it's getting damn close to the start of school, and i'm getting all excited. yay.

ok time for more blue october lyrics. this time - Balance Beam, from Consent to Treatment.

I haven't been quite the same,
so sure the story of my life would never change
But in a bright-eyed way, she rinsed out the soap in my eyes,
and wrote a song that I'm about to sing

She's a magnetic girl
That I hardly even know
So this is not another love song
Just a list of things that I should know,
and everyone should know
That...

1. You gotta take it kinda slowly
2. You gotta hurry up and make your move
3. You gotta tell her that she's pretty

and 4. You gotta be the perfect gentelman
When you shake the walls, you gotta make 'em bend
You gotta show her that
She's the balance beam
and I keep falling all around her fairy tale

We took a walk in the rain.
I suggested, she confessed:
"There's a heart nearby to cast the shame."
Stay cool but I'm giddy like a school boy
You gotta handle with care: This is not a toy
Then gradually we touched
And though our clothes were wet, we sat and smiled
I never thought I'd smile so much
The first kiss always says the most

1. You gotta take it kinda slowly
2. You gotta hurry up and make your move
3. You gotta tell her that she's pretty

and 4. You gotta be the perfect gentelman
When you shake the walls, you gotta make 'em bend
You gotta show her that
She's the balance beam
and I keep falling all around her fairy tale

the rodeo was interesting. i had a massive allergy attack followed by the first asthma episode in years. what fun. it was interesting though, watching people ride bulls. you gotta wonder - what sick fuck woke up one morning and said, "I know! we should take a really pissed-off bull, tie a rope around it so that the rope whacks the bull in the privates, and then see if a dude can stay on the bull (only using one hand to hold on mind you) for 8 seconds! Yeah!!"

hicks are weird.

i'm going to the goddamn rodeo today. the rodeo. what the fuck?!??

so i watched waking life last night. that was a good (but definitely strange) movie. i should probably watch it again, and really pay attention this time. it really makes you think though, about how do you know what's a dream and what's reality? i mean, when i'm awake i'm positive it's reality, but i rarely question whether i'm dreaming or not while i am dreaming. i had a few minutes of lucidity last night, but i don't remember whether i was able to do anything with it or not. the premise of the movie is that this guy is dreaming, and he keeps waking up - into another dream - and he seems to get stuck in a loop like that. false awakening after false awakening. i've been there before, but it's usually the same dream over and over, not different scenes like it was in the movie. it's pretty torturous, especially once you figure out what's happening.

so while we were watching the movie i came up with the idea of collective dreaming - where people that aren't necessarily geographically together come together during their dreams and dream the same thing. i know that's a theme from most new age philosophy and stuff, astral projection, etc, but it really would be awesome if it worked. like virtual reality to the nth degree. so anyway someone mentioned the point - how do you know it doesn't happen? maybe it's not a conscious choice that you can make, to dream with someone, but how do you know that you've never dreamed about a person and that person dreams the same dream about you, at the same time? so it theoretically *could* happen. but, if it did, would it just be amazing coincidence, or would it be some sort of telepathic communication? objectively, dreams are just the firing of neurons within your brain, and have no basis outside the body (or outside the brain for that matter). but then again, what are we but moving molecules, firing neurotransmitters, ion balances, complex organic compounds, etc, moving at random? what the hell sort of free will can an overglorified chemical reaction have?

i know i'm having a good day when i look at my arms and hands and see red, blue, purple, green, and white, and when i clean out from under my fingernails and i see greenish bluish purplish gray.

i just painted my first-ever self-portrait. it rules. i might post it but nobody commented about my other painting and that hurt my feelings and now i'm feeling defensive about my work.

i'm having one of those days where i look in the mirror and think, "goddamn, you one fine looking motherfucker."

i like days like that.

rrrrawr. i'm in a decent mood today. not manic, not depressed. not too bad, yo. in other news, i'm allergic to morning. seriously. and i think the roofers are just about done roofing the house behind us, yay! so i can sunbathe in peace this afternoon without having to worry about getting leered at. not that being leered at *really* bothers me, since it is from afar, and it's kind of reassuring to know that strangers think you look good in a bikini, but there's just something ever so slightly unsettling about having roofers stare at you. oh well. di hoom di hoom, di bork bork bork. that's my swedish chef impression. that's fun to say. bork bork. i'm bork bored as fuck. ye know how it goes.

i got cheez-its.

it's official: i'm insane. i've spent the last hour perusing such websites as the UW computer science graduate admissions page, the Berkeley equivalent of the same page, and the gre page. am i seriously thinking about grad school? i can't tell. would i rather just coterm at stanford? i don't know. do i really want to dedicate another two years of my life to academia? how should i know? could i really get into either of those programs? who knows. but - would i want to live in seattle or berkeley? hell yes. do i want to avoid the real world for a few more years, and not have to worry about the shitty job market for product designers right now? certainly. could i eat the GRE for lunch? probably (i hear there's a high correlation with SAT scores).

arrrrrr. maybe i'll just go commandeer a boat in the west indies and make a life of plundering and pillaging. yo ho ho.

yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. went and saw pirates of the carribbean with andy, lauren, mulholland and gina last night. good entertainment. johnny depp is my hero. he's the best pirate EVARRRRRRR. orlando bloom is a pretty good pirate too. though it should have been rated arrrrrrrr because of all the booty! there is nothing better than swashbuckling. everyone should learn how to swashbuckle. is that even a verb? what the fuck does it mean? hmmmmm....

according to dictionary.com:

swashbuckling

adj : flamboyantly adventurous [syn: swaggering] n : flamboyantly reckless and boastful behavior

sweeeeet. or should i say "arrrrrrrrr."

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

we can act if we want to
if we don't nobody will
you can act real rude and totally removed
and i can act like an imbecile

<3 men without hats

things making me happy today:
-prescription refills (i know, the little things)
-sun-dried tomato and basil tortillas
-diet mountain dew
-cheez-its
-secret plots with people from washington
-james joyce
-friendster
-the fact that it's less than a month until i go to school
-my blue october cd (i know i'm obsessive)
-sunshine

a couple of weeks ago, as i sat in the doctor's office waiting (and waiting) to see her, i read a poster on the wall that was one of those "101 ways to have a fulfilling life" or some crap like that, you know what i mean. how to be happy or whatever. anyway, one of the tips for having a better life was "avoid negative people."

yeah, fuck you too. "negative people" are people too. they have feelings. they don't necessarily want to feel the way they do, and avoiding them will just make them feel worse. imagine how i felt reading that on one of those bullshit posters, suffering from an anxiety attack, waiting to see my general practicioner and talk about depression. i was on the verge of tears as the nurse left to go get the doctor, i didn't need to be reading that fucking bullshit. maybe "be kind to people." or "try to understand everyone and their motives." no, people that you deem to be negative are to be avoided like the plague, because they just generally suck. they're not worth your time.

do you ever have days when you just don't feel like facing the outside for all the money in the world? yeah. i can't tell if i'm depressed today, or if i'm just numb. i think that's it. i don't give a shit about this planet or the people on it right now, i wish everything would just go away and let me sit here and stare at nothing. i really shouldn't let little things dictate my mood so violently but really they do. things that should be nothing work their way under my skin and make me not sad, but uncaring. like my sister fucking blasting the white stripes so loud that there is not a room in the house that is sanctuary from their ear-trauma causing noise that they call music. like never having any email that i care about reading. like painting something that i'm really proud of and having the response from everyone be "oh, that's nice" if they say anything at all. like finishing a book and not knowing what's going to happen to the character in it. retarded shit. stupid little shit that makes me not so much angry, or sad, as just not happy. i don't give a fuck about anything right now.

tell me you care. tell me that i matter to you. tell me that the world isn't as devoid of feeling as it feels right now. give me a reason to feel.

i think i need a hug.

here it is!!!

yay! i just painted a new masterpiece. i'm gonna try to get a picture of it up today... stay tuned.

dreary, dreary day. it's dark and rainy. i rather like it though.

i've listened to nothing in my car except for the new blue october cd whenever i'm driving, and it seems like every time i hear it from the beginning to the end it gets better. it isn't an okay cd with one good song - it's an excellent cd with lots of good songs. go out and buy it. now.

bleh.

last night's blue october show was an absolute triumph. amazing. anyway, here's a rundown of the evening.

andy and i left about 7, drove into dallas, found the place, waited in line. we learned firsthand that "doors open at 8" is always, always a lie. i think the line started moving around 8:15, not too bad, actually. we were in within a couple of minutes, since we were close to the beginning of the line. the gypsy tea room ballroom is a big open space with a stage, and a bar right smack dab in the middle. that was kind of annoying, you'd think they'd put it off in one corner, but there was still plenty of room. we situated ourselves not too far from the stage, but far enough to keep from being crowded while the opening bands were playing.

first up was far star, your average generic local rock band. nothing spectacular, but talented guys to be sure. then, after a lengthy setup period and sound check (i didn't know they could take that long, but whatever) tripp fontaine came out. these guys absolutely rocked. british haircuts, glam-rock pretension, some good music. the lead singer was an excellent performer, and the band was entertaining overall. good stuff.

then, after another setup and sound check (duh)... out came BLUE OCTOBER. fuckin' awesome. they played some stuff from their older album (consent to treatment) first, highlighted by an EXCELLENT version of independently happy (probably my favorite BO song ever). the thing that makes blue october so good is that they're not just generic rock. they have a fuckin electric violin. i think that ownz. anyway, after several older songs they launched into the stuff from history for sale, the cd that the show was a release party for, and which they handed out free at the door. Fuck yeah. (it's an awesome cd by the way, go out and buy it.) a lot of good moving songs. they don't sing about nothing. it's good. they played "calling you" about 2/3 of the way through their set, that song is awesome. the only thing i don't like about it is that it doesn't have that real blue october feel to it - the essence of the band is sort of missing. it's way generic. there's no violin, the lyrics don't have the feel to them that a lot of their other songs do. a lot of their songs have these lines that just kind of run on and use really big words and sound just a little off, but excellent in their own way. calling you doesn't really have that. but it's definitely got the sound to be a radio smash, and hopefully that'll get the boys' (and girl's) feet in the proverbial door. (yeah. the bassist that plays with them live is a chick. i don't think she's on the cd though. but still.)

the first song they played for the encore was "2am lovesick", which i'd almost forgotten about. i have it on my computer but i hadn't heard it in ages. it's an awesome song. "i walk like a burned-out porn star/with aching feet for a car/my buddy had a baby with a girl named Star/makes me appreciate how the little things are." a clever song. it's ancient, it's been around since like 1997. i think only a few people in the room cheered when he announced he was going to play it. i flipped out. made me feel hardkore.

there's something that i can't quite explain
i'm so in love with you
you'll never take that away
and if i said it a hundred times before
expect a thousand more
you'll never take that away

expect me to be calling you to see
if you're okay when i'm not around
asking if you love me
i love the way you make it sound
calling you to see
do i try too hard to make you smile
to make us smile

and i will keep calling you to see
if you're sleeping are you dreaming
if you're dreaming are you dreaming of me?
i can't believe you actually picked me

i thought the world had lost its sway (it's so hard sometimes)
then i fell in love with you (then came you)
and you took that away (it's not so difficult
the world is not so difficult)

you take away the old, show me the new
i feel like i can fly when i stand next to you
so while i'm on this phone
a hundred miles from home
i'll take the words you gave
and send them back to you

i only want to see
if you're okay when i'm not around
asking if you love me
i love the way you make it sound
calling you to see
do i try too hard to make you smile
to make us smile

i will keep calling you to see
if you're sleeping are you dreaming
if you're dreaming are you dreaming of me?
i can't believe you actually picked me

...good goddamn song. i love cute love songs. well, i guess that's understandable. <3

Hey, don't write yourself off yet.
It's only in your head you feel left out or
Looked down on.
Just try your best, try everything you can.
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
when you're away.
It just takes some time,
little girl you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything everything will be just fine,
everything everything will be all right.
Hey, you know they're all the same.
You know you're doing better on your own,
so don't buy in.
Live right now.
Yeah, just be yourself.
It doesn't matter if it's good enough
for someone else.
It just takes some time,
little girl you're in the middle
of the ride.
Everything everything will be just fine,
everything everything will be all right.
It just takes some time,
little girl you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything everything will be just fine,
everything everything will be all right.
Hey, don't write yourself off yet.
It's only in your head you feel left out or
Looked down on.
Just do your best,
do everything you can.
And don't you worry what the bitter hearts
are gonna say.
It just takes some time,
little girl you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything everything will be just fine,
everything everything will be all right.
It just takes some time, little girl
you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything everything will be just fine,
everything everything will be all right.

hey, i know it's trite, but i just heard this song on the radio, and it kind of hits home for me right now. overplayed, maybe, but a good damn song. <3

blue october tonight!!!! yayyyy! i'm so pumped.

library books! weeeee! time for bathing suit, beach towel, diet mountain dew, and poolside reading. now the question is, finish trainspotting, or start the princess bride, or dubliners? or something else? hmmmm... maybe library books should be read inside, and i should finish trainspotting outside, where it might get wet and crinkled.

yummy, books. i considered checking out finnegan's wake in an effort to find books that will last me more than a day, but after reading two pages of it (yes, it took me about 15 minutes) i decided that that's a book you can't really check out from the library and expect to be done with in two weeks. that and you can't just pick it up and casually read it, you have to get hella into it, even more so than trainspotting. so, no stream-of-consciousness irishmen for me today, just scottish dudes who say "cunt" a lot.

duuuuuuuuude. i'm the #2 google result for a search on "good fucking."

lol.

i've noticed something with all the books i've been reading in the past couple of weeks. a good book really infects your subconscious. when you're reading (or have just finished) a really good book, you find yourself thinking like the main character. so right now i'm reading trainspotting, so i'm observing the world through the eyes of heroin addicts with an almost unintelligible scottish dialect. (not to mention experiencing yet another example of "the book is way better than the movie even though i saw the movie first.") it's kind of amusing. i won't attempt to recreate it, but i will say that that's one book that you really have to let absorb into your skin in order to read it, because if you don't, you won't understand one goddamn word they're saying. but on the other hand, i find myself needing to take breaks every so often so that their world doesn't fucking take me over. it's a really compelling book. and i think it'll take me more than a day or two to digest. (yay!) this is important because books have been lasting me an average of a day apiece recently, and i'm not going to be able to afford the habit, even from recycled books in denton. well, i guess there is the library, but for some reason i generally prefer paperbacks. they seem more personal. there's something about the feel of a paperback, and the way you feel like you can digest the book, rather than just read it. if i'm reading a hardback, i want the pages to stay crisp, and the spine to stay unbent. if i'm reading a paperback, i crease the spine, i don't mind if my fingers make the pages warp, and i don't cry if i spill my mountain dew on the text. it's a more interactive reading process that way. it's the same way with used books. when i buy books from barnes and noble, they're sacred. i paid fourteen goddamn dollars for that book, it's gonna stay nice. if i buy a book from say, half price books, or recycled, then it's already been consumed, and i feel like the coffee stains and dog-ears add to the story. and i can add my own without feeling guilty.

i want to curl up under a blanket or a rock and make the world go away

yay, andy just called me and he's going to pick up tickets for blue october! yay yay! i'm so excited.

hung out with nathan and charles and company last night, that was fun. we watched south park. i'd never seen the movie before. highly entertaining. "shut your fucking face, uncle fucker!" mmm, such high-class humor. i think it has the record for most swear words per minute of any movie ever made. and charles made brownies, and they were YUMMIFEROUS, and we had them with ice cream and whipped cream on top. not that squirty whipped cream either, like real, bonafide, whipped cream. literally. charles cuts no corners when he cooks, none of this wussy brownie mix shit, those were from scratch. it was soooo good.

so it's another do-nothing day, i guess. can't complain, really. i'm almost halfway through memoirs of a geisha which is a really good book. i'm thoroughly enjoying it. this is after having plowed through two and a half tom robbins novels, one chuck palahniuk book, and catcher in the rye (twice in a row. i was so depressed that day that i didn't feel like finishing the damn book, so when i read the last page, i turned back to the first page and read the whole fucking thing another time. in one sitting.) in the last week and a half. prolific enough, i guess. i like reading, it's so nice to actually have time to do it.

i keep thinking that i need digitals of my paintings. it's unfortunate that i don't have any except for the one i just did with me, otherwise i'd use my dad's camera and take pictures. but tim has 3, and jamie has one, and the rest are in storage... though i suppose they both have cameras... hmm. i also get the feeling that i'm going to be going through a lot of canvas this summer... but i haven't the foggiest what i'm going to do with the stuff i do this summer. sell it on ebay? i wonder if anyone would pay for it. heh. and it's hardly worth transporting back to school, since i already have two 24x36's and a 36x48 (and a 9x12, i think... no, yeah, i like that one. oh, and a 12x12. jesus. plus all my stuff from art 60 that i like, that i might want to hang. damnit. i need a fucking storage locker, or a personal gallery or something.) that i want to hang in my room, plus my matrix poster, my faithless poster, a couple of other posters, a bunch of party fliers, and all that other miscellaneous shit that i like having on my walls... and i don't have all that much wall space to begin with. meh, i'll figure it out when i get there... decorating my room is going to be so much fun. it'll be nice to have a space of my own, so i don't have to worry about infringing upon my roommates' wall space.

ladies and gentlemen... my thought process. slightly censored.

i just realized something - september will come. and so will october. it's just a matter of taking it one day at a time.

and sleeping in. sleeping in makes days pass quicker.

yay! i bought paints. and canvas. and i painted. and it makes me happy.

i love acrylics. they're so vibrant and fun to play with. my paintings almost always turn out to be some experiment in pushing paint around a canvas, but i like them that way. any semblance of reality is purely accidental. it's almost primordial. the painting i'm half-done with right now has this part that looks kind of like it's underwater, and it's pretty awesome. but the problem is, once i recognize that it resembles reality, if i make an effort to continue that resemblance, i just fuck everything up. so i usually just move to another part of the canvas and paint a huge red blob. or purple blob. or green blob. i love blobs.

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

it's august. july is over. i think this is a good thing, because it means that september and october are just that much closer. i'm a fan of the fall... it is to the academic year what spring is to the calendar year: a fresh slate.

i'm depressed again today. i guess my body has gotten over the shock of having 37.5mg of effexor in it, and now it needs more, or something. blehh. maybe i'll feel consistently better after they up the dose on me on monday...