i have a braincloud and my shirt smells like smoke.

i have a braincloud and my shirt smells like smoke. i'd thought i washed it since i quit, 11 days ago, after 14 years... my longest relationship. but no. smokesmell in your clothes is weird- it's like some time release thing. at first the shirt smelled absolutley normal. but as the day progresses, the smokesmell is getting worse. and worse. and it's not exactly like you can get away from your own shirt if you're at work. i'm trapped in it. drowning in it. smothered by it; it claws its way into my brain and punches it in the face.

oh yeah, the braincloud. it's not actually related to the smoke or lack thereof- it's an independent phenomenon. it clouds my thinking. i suspect the effect is similar to being a zombie, except without the infinite gaping chasm of hunger to consume the fleshes of humanity. it's like if you ask somebody what's really on their mind and they reply "nothing," and mean it literally. it's how i got through high school. you may laugh, but i'm serious. i probably wouldn't have made it without my cozy little personal coma. you see, when you are young and naive and inexperienced in life, the big giant world is a scary place. my braincloud served me well, insulating me from the horrors and violations of a public school education. but as i got older, it became a lot harder to clear the fog. and as a result, anytime i suffer a mental trauma, here comes a howling snowstorm into my skull, blotting out the sunlight. tough day at work. no money. car breaks down. $1,500.00 of dental work. ...breakups. but only a real heartbreaker. i'm currently experiencing a cloud of truly heretofore unknown proportions, really it's a bit scary.

one thing i've found in breakups is that you often may contract "other side of the fence" syndrome. but if you really think about it and remember the truth of the situation you can usually find some kind of evidence trail leading right up to the inevitable present. kind of like csi for your brain. it dosen't really make it better, but it's something to do anyway. and keeping busy is what matters. i had more to say, but my breif burst of clarity is now consumed again in the braincloud.

this is a song about a superhero named tony...

there was a guy that worked here in the office with us for a while; nice guy, name was tony. he was an older gentleman, and had actually come out of retirement to help his company run this job. a few weeks ago, tony didn't show up for work one morning. there was no answer on his cell phone and nobody could find him. the owner of his company (also a good friend of his) finally went by his house and found tony- he had died in his sleep the night before.

it's weird when somebody you actually know dies. i wasn't close to him or anything, but he was one of the only other smokers in the office and we would chit-chat outside somethimes; his cubicle also was basically right next to me. he had been fine the day before. it freaked me out a little when it happened- when you are a young man, it dosen't seem like people die every day (even though they actually do.) i suspect this type of thing only increases in frequency as we get older.

my only experiences with death have been pretty traumatic for me, as i'm sure most are. my grandmother died while i was off finding my fortunes and avidly avoiding my dad's side of the family- i still loved my grandma, though, of course. i hadn't talked to her for years and then when i finally snapped out of it, i found out she had died the year before. my grandfather died of lung cancer when i was 10 or 11; he was one of my favorite people in the world and i took it pretty hard. and at least the scariest was my great grandfather who died when i was like 5 or 6: at his funeral, i wasn't sad or scared, just very curious... i begged mom to let me touch him. she (of course) said "no!", but curiosity got the best of me and i did it anyway. suffice it say that the deep pile shag carpeting gave me such a static charge that when i touched him, i saw the spark jump off my finger. i firmly believe that is the root of my pathological fear of zombies.

but i digress.

the real thing i want to talk about is the dream i had last night, i want to capture it before it turns into gossamer teardrops in the sky. so here goes:

in the office. the atmosphere is a little off, maybe it's the lighting. we seem to be having a party or something, or at least everybody seems in a good mood. there are backgroung conversations going on, and (just like in real life) i'm distracted and not paying attention. i vaguely hear somebody say something about tony, about how he's coming by. i think, wow, that's weird- i thought he was dead. so he walks in... and it's a whirlwind of greetings and "hey there!"s and what not. and i'm standing up because i can't believe it. tony is wearing an oversized maroon t-shirt, and like bermuda shorts or something. his hair is long- past his shoulders long - and he is freakin' tan. he looks exactly like tony would have looked if he suddenly became a rastafarian surfer and moved to the bahamas, instead of a bald, beer-bellied, old, white mid-westerner.

well, ok, not exactly... i notice that his right hand is gone, and half of his forearm... but the arm bone is still there. the actual blackened bones are protruding a full 6"+ past his blackened and grizzled forearm nub. and (in-dream) i say to myself "oh, i see! that must have happened when he almost died." and it all made sense. and then i said "hey, tony!", and went in to shake his hand. and as he turned to face me, i had a horrible realization: oh no... he's going to make me shake his fucking arm-bone! and he did, and it was... sticky. sticky like if you had a huge turkey bone and you had spilled maple syrup on it at some point, and it never really washed off. and then it was over, and the alarm clock was blaring.

it was the blank of times...

life is confusing. i spend too much money. i have agoraphobia and communication issues. i should really stop smoking. hey, hows about a jog, lard-o?

maybe she's right, maybe i need to set some goals, find some things i hate about myself. you know, really become a fixer-upper.

ooh, here's one: i'm not always clever and / or witty. in fact, my ratio of smarmy to dull is probably 1:5, or even 1:7.

why? 'cause life is long. oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. it's weird, i'm not depressed, i'm just... blank. blah. i'm really not sad... i don't know. i have definitely lost a little forward momentum, though. i'm in a funk. how do we fix this funk i'm in? i could probably just go out with a random girl or two, there appear to actually be some options... but start something meaningless with someone only mildy appealing and in the end, always doomed to failure, yet again? lather, rinse, repeat. i don't know, i'm just not in the mood right now. i'm lazy. you know, one thing about true laziness- it takes a real commitment; real, well, effort. you have to actively persue it. you can't just go with the flow, or else some of the time you'll wind up having to do something. oh yeah, there's another one: i'm lazy. and apathetic.

bile and vitriol

hello, and welcome to the dirty truth; the real me. the ugliness beneath the facade. don't get me wrong, i try to be decent person. but everyone has their limits, and i smacked headfirst into mine tonight. first off, you are not subtle when you are drunk. no one is. you think you are, but you're not. so when you are making plans to humor me and "save" my feelings by whispering your plans to your friend to: hang out with me for a few minutes (and only because you fucked up and called me to hang out) and then sneak off and hook up with the dudes you want to fuck after i'm safely away, and you do it right in front of my face, just be aware that I might still fucking be able to hear you. and when those dudes are the default drunk girl "i wanna fuck him soooo bad" guys, it is below sleazy and on to dangerously poor decision making. not to mention stomach-turning. do you think you are special? the only thing I don't know for sure is which one of the pair, but it really doesn't make that big of a difference- I suspect, to me or you. everyone in town has been there. mark my words. everyone has fucked them both. you are just tonight's special treat! hooray for you! you skanky bitch. oh, don't get me wrong, he will happily poke you as long as there isn't someone hotter on tap for the night. or maybe he still would, but only after. the true tragedy is that i think you know all this, and that fills me with such a dark and horrible sadness that I'm not sure if anything is worth living for. i will confess to the sin of jealousy. but there is good in me; and i honestly do want you to have the best. i will admit that maybe i am not the right choice for you. but for you to go all weak at the knees for c jhnsn (names slightly abbreviated to protect the guilty) but then act like for me to touch you innocently on the back is an excruciatingly painful torture, you can go get fucked. i have gone well and beyond the call of friendship with you, and you fucking know it. and i did of my own choice, because we had something more for a time, and it meant something to me- not because i had expectations. but too much is fucking too much. apparently i'm a fucking dolt. good luck with the local cocks, hey, maybe your new nickname can be "doorknob"- cause anyone apprently gets a turn. anyone but the one fucking guy in town that has proven he gives a shit about you. hope you have a great night of fucking. hey, I guess it's not all bad- maybe you'll give him your herpes!

of goldfish and quantum physics

goldfish know how to interact with the world they live in; swimming, mating, excreting, gills continually sucking oxygen from water. but a goldfish would have no frame of reference to consider the world "outside" of the water; such a thing could not be comprehended by the goldfish, even if he were in possession of the mental faculties to ponder such unknowables. he cannot gather information from the other side; his fishly senses being adapted for things aquatic. the realm outside of the water would at best appear to be a two-dimensional plane, with no depth, at rest at the top of the waterworld. imagine then, the utter incomprehensibility, even for a goldfish of einsteinian intelligence, of the manifestation of a human hand reaching into the water to scoop out one of his comrades. the hand would suddenly "appear" into the world, and once seizing its target, steal away with it somewhere totally unknown. more subtle, the intruder and his prey would appear to vanish, from the perception of the fishes, but they would actually only be moving in a direction the fish can't percieve- namely "out." the outside world of air and men, of course, does exist; and has its own rules and physical properties different from the world of goldfishes. this concept can be "scaled up" as it were, to give us humans an abstract insight into the nature of movement in directions other than the three we are familiar with.

i read this example from michio kaku a few years ago and it has helped me grasp some of the delicate natures of our universe. i'm no expert or physicist by any means, but one thing that has always puzzled me (and countless others through the ages, much smarter than me) is the nature of consciousness. a recent struggle with a severe head cold gave me a peculiar idea, one that had never occurred to me. while i was suffering in congested pain, with my head hurting out of all proportion to its physical size, i was struck by a singular thought, that borrows from the goldfish analogy. suppose that consciousness is that part of our physical body that extends into another dimension; another direction that we can't percieve. consider the case of a fish that has been hooked. the pressures, the forces, the dynamics that affect that fish are much larger that he can comprehend. the animal, once free to move in his environment, now is connected by the line to a much larger mass- outside the water. in this way, he is influenced by the the physical properties of this other dimension: the waves rocking the boat, the vibrations through the line, drift from the wind. in such a way, maybe it is that we physically extend into another realm, one that our senses are unable to percieve normally. but because it is a real and physical world, with its own properties, it influences our path, perhaps greatly.

it would be more of a pamphlet

a table full of strangers, eh? nice. damn, i think you've just found the title for my autobiography.

in the cover photo, i'll be the quiet one on the left, in the back.
frowning, but not really meaning it.

so of course everybody's heard the term "friends with benefits" right? ahh, but have you heard of "friends with drawbacks?" i suspect you may know what i'm talkin' bout. or not. anyway, my point was that you seem like an interesting young lady and i would like to hang out sometime mayhaps- but i can't come to the phone right now because i'm experiencing something of a metaphorical car crash happening in super-duper slo mo? or is that metaphysical? either way, it may not be the best time to pick up a passenger.

hey wait, why did i put a question mark back there? and more- is it really metaphorical, or just a simile? what do you want? i haven't slept in three days.

i think i would just rather feel melodramaitic about it. you know how life is not like the the movies, right? you don't get to skip over all the tedious, repetivie and just plain dull moments.
days of the same thing, over and over.
i don't have anything new to to say- i bring no entertainment value. it's like i don't want to call unless i can be mind-blowingly funny and
-super-
-with-
-it-.
this, of course, is idiotic; maybe even lame and selfish. but i have empathetic ocd. i convince myself i'm boring you to tears, whether i am or not. and i don't want to annoy you
(wear out my welcome)...
so instead of just calling and having normal conversation, it fits my world view better to just think you are bored with me, and
i'm a poor, misunderstood guy.