After several hours of abject self-hatred and black depression I attempted to sleep, which resulted in me perking up and feeling like a glass of milk and some Wodehouse. I haven’d had rapid-cycling moods like this since the Old Therapy Days. Nostalgie de la bleue, peut-etre?

[A priest passes by outside, intoning THERE IS NO SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CHURCH]

I’m as crazy as THREE German Expressionists!

I wonder how cats in the wild get their chins scratched?

When I was asleep for a short time an hour ago, I had a dream in computer logic. In the dream I was writing a Perl program that opened a file and sorted it into two columns, writing it out to a socket. But I felt the parser opening the file line by line and arranging the columns, as though I was kneading bread or combing the cat. This isn’t the first time that’s happened, either.

This week has been a naked lunch, every piece of food on every fork exposed.

A couple of fresh strawberries, cold from the fridge, excuses a lot of things in life.

I rarely say this, but I had too much caffeine today. Two big mugs of coffee at home. Later, when I was feeling better (called in sick from work today due to my serotonin hell), I went to D’s and had a large iced coffee and a refill. That’s the strongest thing they sell. Finally, for odd social reasons, I ended up at Ruba where I had a double espresso. WHY did I get a double?

My arms hurt and I’m hearing a buzz in the air, literally. It’s an ok temporary antidepressant, I guess. I have that feeling right now that I’m clutching a rope while looking down at boiling lava. Maybe that’s why my arms hurt.

There was a whole lot of talk about sex tonight. I felt like Charlie Brown in the Halloween special, where after everyone talks about the candy they got he says “I got a rock” every time. I’ve thrown my kick at too many vanishing footballs in the last ten years. Fuck you, Lucy.

In the old days when I got really down and lonely like this, I’d drive way way out into the desert, maybe all the way to Blythe or really deep into Inyo/Kern. The rushing air and the emptiness and the moon over some big stark jagged mountains were easy on the soul. I never want to do that alone again, ever. Someone come with me next time.

I’ve never really had anyone to take impromptu road trips with, or sit around on the floor arguing about music all night with, or just to hang out with arm in arm all day and be comfortable. No one’s ever particularly wanted to share that kind of closeness with me. When people say they want to be intimate with me, they really just want to be entertained and then disappear, at least so far. It’s discouraging.

You all might want to put cones around this thing and drive around it for the next few if you don’t want to see some bloody corpses. I’m getting more and more confessional every day. I literally have nothing and no one to lose.

Now we see as through a glass, darkly. But soon we will see face to face.

I have always had a crush on someone or other. So far none of my crushes have been good ideas. Wonder if that’ll ever change?

I hereby start the theory that the Loch Ness Monster makes a sound that is identical to the opening of the Rolling Stones’ classic hit “Sympathy for the Devil”. Including the bongos.

If I could be a cartoon character I’d be Binky from Matt Groening’s Life in Hell because I am, already. No LJ quiz is necessary.

I’m a pretty angry person a lot of the time, but I haven’t been physically violent since I got jumped by a bum in 1995. The mere suggestion of violence leaves me twitchy and unbalanced for a week or so. Even violence in movies makes me feel like I’m the one who got beaten up.

I’ve seen a big plane crash and a suicide, both before adulthood. I still like airplanes and I’m still against suicide.

When people tell me I should do X or Y or Z about the problems I’m so worked up about, I get upset. Sometimes this is just because advice is generically upsetting. Also, quite often they’re suggesting consolation prizes of various kinds instead of actual happiness. “People like you sometimes make do with this prosthesis!” or “Sometimes hapless losers in your position go to a special kind of meeting in a rehab facility and receive binders full of information on how to be mediocre!” I call this Special Olympics Gold Medal Syndrome. I hate broken shit, mediocre stuff, and all the other consolations given out to losers. This is, in fact, nasty snobbery on my part, and also a fine defense against actually fixing anything. I’m rather proud of it, as one might be proud of a particularly outstanding goiter.

When I’ve read a long book, I write in the same style as that writer for a while afterwards, sometimes for months. It’s like garlic sweating out.

We live as we dream, alone.

Occasionally the contradictions, impossibilities, and disastrous limitations of my life all line up and point at me like accusing fingers and I completely freak out. This is one of those times. How is it that I get up every day and do this?

When I’ve once again noticed that my whole life is a huge freaking wreck and I spout off about it, people are nice and try to tell me the good things about me. These are always the things about me that make other people happy, like a good waiter would. Glad to be of service. Would rather have an actual life, like you. There may well be many people with tidy rooms, pleasant mates, and empty lives. I’d take that deal about now.

I’m that guy that every woman thinks would be great for someone else to date. The hypocrisy is almost worst than the rejection. Almost.

If I took out a #2 pencil and wrote down the specifics of my current life as a short paragraph on a nice clean new legal pad I would then immediately shoot myself in the head. Keep pencils away from me.

It’s odd how I can simultaneously be having a pleasant conversation with friends, be entertaining, listen attentively and tell stories, and still at the same time feel that terrible yawning hellpit of self-hatred inside me. They’re faking it, they’re tolerating me, when I’m not around they shake their heads and say “poor guy, I wish he’d get it but there’s no way”.

I think I’ll probably be alone until the day I die. There hasn’t been much evidence to the contrary throughout my adult life. I wonder how one makes a bargain with that?

I refuse to be romantically self-indulgent about it. Bad news is just bad news, like shit on your shoe or a slough of toxic chemicals.

Cross-posted to found_objects:

Does Lee Greenwood do a version of the Wedding March?

Swensen’s is now a franchise owned by http://www.yogenfruz.com/ who apparently owns all ice cream everywhere.

Someone went and found out a lot about the fate of Farrell’s. The Selective Service thing is interesting. Happy birthday to YOU, soldier.

I miss ice cream parlors. It was a neat part of my childhood. Now they just have places where you can buy ice cream and sit on a small hard plastic seat. Not the same.

Make sure you’re ready for BOSS DAY on Thursday.

My boss is actually a nice guy. To the point where he’d be horrified by Boss Day. I bet a lot of you aren’t that lucky.

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20031011/frontpage/121390.shtml

this one should be good.

From tony_laetrile!