angst calendar for january

january

#1 January 1.
"Son, I just want you to know: life is a black sucking vortex of anguish and despair, filled with brief moments of false hope and empty joy all the while dragging you inevitably closer to final, absolute and eternal death."
"Thanks, Dad..."

#2 January 2.

THE WHOLE YEAR SUCKS
January's cold and dark. That sucks, right through until
February, when it's my birthday, which always sucks. Then
March is usually windy, but even if it's not, it sucks.
April suck she will, invariably, and
May may or may not suck much, but it sucks nevertheless.
June, for some reason I don't know why, sucks too.
July is bright and full of suck, while
August is nice but will suck you by the time it's over, and
September succinctly sucks.
October is full of spirits that go suck in the night, whereas
November sucks the very pith from the bowels of your empty, wretched soul.
December sucks, just when you thought you could be sucked no more.

-John Quill Taylor

#3 January 3.
Sometimes I am foolish enough to indulge in a little nostalgia for those poigna nt days of my youth. But such strolls down memory lane only serve by way of co ntrast to exacerbate the already unbearable level of my current pain.
When I start to think about the next ten years, I begin to black out.
-John A. Johnson

#4 January 4.
Reasons for/against life

for | against ----------------------------+-------------------------- | easier just to die | | future is just like past - | why prolong it | | every day passes like the last, | minute by minute, nothing happens, | why drag on for rest of life? | | why work merely to survive? | | save time - death inevitable | | might be forced to use an IBM PC | at some point in the future.. |
-Mike Marsden

#5 January 5.
"Hello there--"
"Do I know you?"
"Well, no, I just thought I'd introd--"
"Why are you talking to me?"
"Look, I'm just trying to be friendly--"
"Why me? Why are you bothering me? Please go away."

Life? This isn't life. It can't possibly count as life.
-Xibo

#6 January 6.
"What is the meaning of life"?
"What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything"?
"Why am I here"?
"What is my purpose"?

The answer to these questions, which have been puzzling philosophers for many millenia, is quite simple.
We are here to die.
We are born, we are educated, we work our fingers to the bone earning money, then we snuff it. All of us. We all die sooner or later, so why do we spend so much effort on the intervening steps? It is because the human mind is unable to consider the fact that it is all futile, that we are wasting our time, that there is no purpose to existence.
So, why live? No reason whatsoever. Except that we lack the courage to finish that which is worthless. We are frightened of death- but why? There is no reason.
-Mike Mars

#7 January 7.
Why live?
To be humiliated, pestered, bothered, abused, to suffer, to be in pain, to be sad and depressed, to get sick, to grow old, to watch yourself decay with the years, to eat cafeteria food, to be stressed, repressed, compressed, supressed, constipated, infected and defected.
And to go to school.
-Ivelisse Atiles

#8 January 8.
The only thing that keeps me from the oblivion after a thoroughly pointless existence is the meager personal enjoyment I can scratch from the opressive shithole that we live in. This is a personal thing. If I accidentally cheered you up, let me say this: I really don't care about a single thing that dosen't directly pertain to my life. Why should I? Nothing really matters in the scheme of things, for there IS NO SCHEME OF THINGS!
I couldn't care less how you feel, for the only thing you can get out of a pointless universe is a twisted sense of PERSONAL enjoyment. You go ahead and kill yourself. NOW. I doubt it will have any effect on my enjoyment of life. I figure that life can only provide so much entertainment, after which it becomes a huge wasteland of BOREDOM. But as long as you might be able to claw out a tiny shred of pleasure, why not get a little blood under your nails? Then axe it.
I derive pleasure by bitching at you. Were I dead, I could not. Fuck you.
If life is pointless, what's the point of killing yourself? What's the point of NOT killing yourself? There ain't none, buckaroo! I think it's your fault for being the one who cheered up, not mine for saying what I did. I AM NEVER DEPRESSED. There is no depression. There is only boredom.
-Peter A. Kemmer

#9 January 9.
Life is pointless,
Death is pointless,
only SPAM has meaning.

-David William Crook

#10 January 10.
As I grow older, I grow weary of the little tricks people play on themselves to convince themselves that they are useful and important. Gravity is useful and important. Time is useful and important. Nature, in a way, is useful and important. Humans are useless parasites and ought to be extincted.
-the krill, yes I too am useless and unimportant

#11 January 11.
> Cutting your arms will take you approx 8 hours....
Eight hours is wimpy, how about EIGHTY YEARS !?!
Here's a particularly sick and depraved way to do it: prolong your life as long as possible, run it out to the max, don't smoke or drink, screw prostitutes or shoot dope -- that might make it too easy, too quick. Naw, go for the ultimate slow dive, it's better than a grenade in the headrest I mean your friends can film this long cruel process WITH IMPUNITY and what's more it's COMPLETELY UNSTOPPABLE. Historically this method has had a 100% success rate so you never feel embarassed or stupid hanging out with your arms taped up. Best part is the moralizing buttheads cant stop you.
-Cliff Neighbors

#12 January 12.
Anxiety Attack
O god am I depressed; this always happens to me when I'm sitting at the terminal avoiding serious work and I think O my God! I'm wasting away my life which has no meaning anyway and why does it always rain when I don't have work but whenever I see a bright blue sky full of fluffy white clouds it's on my way to a deserted basket case of a mall half an hour away to sell shoes to gullible people and God is there hope for the Human Race (note the dramatic capitals) when people like this walk the Earth? I hate my job I hate school I hate this network I hate myself O God everyone hates me NO NO NO!!! the walls are closing in I can't breathe I'm going to go INSANE!!!!!!!!!!
There, I feel much better now.
Anxiously yours,
-Chris Castiglione

#13 January 13.
Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.
-Dorothy Parker

#14 January 14.
I close my eyes, death creeps upon me
for of life I can no longer see
Drowning further into darkness, blackness captures me.
Life to me was simply no good;
I could no longer stand the pain of living;
Death was all that mattered to me.
I wished it upon myself day after day;
To me there was simply just no other way.
I tried for years, I really tried hard,
but all it proved was that this weak figure was meant to die.
Night after nigh I lay crying in my room,
thinking of ways to pass the lonely days ahead of me
that I knew I'd never be able to face.
Nobody is me. They will never replace the lovely smile
that once rested upon my face, my eyes that once
used to shine are dull and red.
Death to me is all that lies in my head. I can't
think of another way for me to go on.
I tried to live my life for so long, but things only got worse, not better. This is the only solution to my problem; you see, it's one I chose to use even if it is a permanent one; it's better than none. I chose this one, it's best for me. I close my eyes and death
is all I see.
-M. Look

#15 January 15.
I gave up Usenet for a couple months. I don't suppose anyone missed me.
It happened on a balmy June day as I walked along a North Carolina beach, watching dead and dying things get bashed against rocks in step with the cosmic dance. It hit me: "Hell, I'm having fun, and I haven't read news for days." I resolved that when I got back to dreary Baltimore I'd find better uses for my time than reading Usenet.
You figure that when you leave for a while, some things will change. Not so. All the groups have the same set of regulars as before, repeating the same things they have always said. The threads remain the same. Witness, for example, the great debate about why female-folk can't seem to clue in to how wonderful alt.angst guys really are, and why the thread really doesn't belong in alt.angst, anyway, but should be left to the losers in soc.singles.
Worst of all, I am faced with the realization that Usenet went on in my absence. Perhaps not a single reader thought "Paul's not here; what do I do now?" I was not welcomed back when I made my first posting. No one said "Thank God you're here! Our group was at the brink of the abyss, and you've come to save it." Just the thought that Usenet could have an independent existence without me is bad enough, but I get the distinct impression that my absence didn't even slow it down.
Alas, for a messiah without a following.
-Paul Callahan

#16 January 16.
There is a need within us all to be close to other human beings. We all fear to be close to others, therefore we distance ourselves, either literally, or by using false selves so we don't have to really deal with each other. Herein lies true angst.
-Christopher Strom

#17 January 17.
"Goodbye cruel world
I'm leaving you today
Goodbye,
Goodbye,
Goodbye.
Goodbye all you people
There's nothing you can say
To make me change my mind,
Goodbye."
-Pink Floyd
"And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"

#18 January 18.
How often do I see it, the lonely man, trying to make his life just a bit less lonely, stumbling into new, scary territory, risking embarassment and social ostracization, watch him fail miserably, get labeled as yet another person who "merely wants to get laid" (which is, by the way, evil, unless you follow the proper mating ritual, which these males would never do, since they recognize it for what it is: stupid) and since all males who "merely want to get laid" are probably just potential sources of date rape, or whiny depedency, or one-night-stands, or other previous bad experiences the woman has had, she drops the guy quick & hard, and he runs back to his deep, dark hole, to hide from the world for several months, sometimes years, till he slowly build up courage for the day when he can go through all of this shit again.
And the one thing that really makes me wonder, that sends an occasional shiver down my spine, is what in the world ever happens to these people. Do they all commit suicide, or what? Live out their lives in terror?
-Xibo

#19 January 19.
First or late any intelligent man reflecting on his life will find that out mortality is the most important and basic thing. Everything else should come after this consciusness. It is wrong to believe in art or in the power of our ridicolous intelligence: our wisdom is just able to reflect and to become bent over his own misbalance. First or late any intelligent man reflecting on life will consider death closely and will conclude that It is the true goal of our existence, not terrifying but indeed very consoling.
So suicide will not apper as a flight or the following of the weak spirit but a rational choice of the fairsighted.
-David Vincenzetti

#20 January 20.
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell.
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle--
Would you kindly direct me to hell ?
-Dorothy Parker

#21 January 21.
This is my official notice of intent to resign from any further pursuit of ever finding a mate. I will now go with much too little sleep, eat way too little, drink too much coffee, smoke too many cigarettes, and work myself to death in a real short timespan.
-Frederick J. Polsky

#22 January 22.
I fucking hate emotions more than anything else in this world. I hate what they make you feel and even more what they make you do. If there is anything that could make my life more enjoyable it would be the ability to turn my goddam emotions off and on at will.
-Chris

#23 January 23.
So, you think the average American is so superficial it makes you sick huh?? Well this attitude makes me very angry and .... wait a moment ......"Wheel of Fortune" just came on......later!
-Martin Stuczynski
you forgot the smiley
:):):):):):):):):):)):
-Alex Bunker

#24 January 24.
There is no hope.
-Eric Murray
In this game, the winner is also the loser, and the judge's decisions are final

#25 January 25.
# Geez, guys, why don't you throw yourselves under a truck or something
# if you feel that way. Yes, life is hard and can be quite painful--I'd
# say I've experienced more than my fair share of that.

Well, of course, most of us did kill ourselves already, but you'll never hear from THEM, as they're dead.
The rest of us don't know better, I guess.
# I know I'm very open to flames here, but I hope I've made somebody
# think.
Yes, I'm always made to think after a mere 10 lines of text. Like I've never heard those streams of thought anywhere before, like it's totally new, like the world REALLY IZ A K00L PLACE TO LIVE, D00D-- DID YOU SEE DAT OLD LADY THAT GOT HIT BY A CAR? WOW, SHE WAS REALLY SMASHED UP! LIKE TREES AND ROCKS AND INFINITI, MIXED WITH BLODD AN BRANE JUICE
Xibo
we all have a biff inside

#26 January 26.
I find it severely depressing that I can't always enjoy life even though it _is_ completely meaningless. Humankind is merely a bunch of frenetic bits of protoplasm, busily killing other bits of protoplasm so they can pass their own genes on and make still more bits of protoplasm. We're an eddy in a random backcurrent of the stream of evolution. There's no reason for humankind to exist, and certainly no reason for any particular bit to exist or not.
Once you beleive that, it's realy hard to get very excited about humankind. Maybe after we kill ourselves off, the next critter to develop too much intelligence for it's own good will be a species of ant, or tiger, or cockroaches. If we don't nuke 'em all before our own species expires.
Most days I can forget that there's no purpose to life and enjoy whatever I'm doing, riding my motorcycle at excessive speed, playing obnoxious music at excessive volume, or going to downtown Palo Alto with my punk girlfriend (hi!) and watch the yuppies watching us. But every so often that big black cloud sort of sneaks up on me and pins me down. That's when I crawl over to alt.angst to whimper for a while, and flame the shit out of whining college boys who beleive "that cherished myth- that falling in love magically solves every problem you're ever had." (Jello Biafra, "Mate, Spawn and Die" an excellent albeit temporary cure for depression.)
-Eric Murray

#27 January 27.
I'd just like to tell everyone that, as I'm typing this, I'm fucking this girl I just met (you can imagine the position). Now, this girl is beeeeeaaautiful, and she and I would just like to express our disdain at this time for you pathetic alt.angsters who couldn't get laid if you were eggs in a hen's distended uterus.
Well, since her back is to the screen, I'd just like to tell everyone how I'm going to treat her like shit, so that she can go to some guy like most of you, who she'll talk to platonically about how bad I treat her, while all the while the guy she's talking to is desiring her madly, but, being the sensitive alt.angst type he is, is afraid to say anything. Then, having worked out her frustrations talking to the poor, sensitive alt.angst type, she'll come back to me for some more good sex, and I'll treat her like shit again.
Life's good.
Love,
-Brad Baillod

#28 January 28.

Angst: Realizing that even good advice is resented by the hearer, and the teller hated.
-Malcolm L. Carlock

#29 January 29.
Teen angst is something that results when you realize that the whole world is screwed up and you only have a few useful years to do anything about it before you get sucked into being a part of why its so messed up. Post-teenage angst is that hopelessness that you feel when you realize you wasted your only chance to change your miserable little corner of the universe on keg parties and chasing after females that rejected you anyways, and now you've been sucked into the whole machine and must grind out your remaining years as another redundant cog that perpetuates the whole thing.
-Stephen J. Okay

#30 January 30.
It's so easy in our society to manufacture happiness and convince people that they're happy when they're really not. You're never supposed to be sad or show distress or angst, that would disturb others and make them think, rather than having them trudge along blindly buying everything you can sell them. With so much stuff out there claiming to be real and offer contentment, it's hard to know when you really are happy, and when you're just being anesthetized.
But at least you know for sure when you hurt. At least you can trust pain. You *KNOW* when somebody's stomping on you.
I'm not a masochist(although some will undoubtedly say that I am), just somebody who prefers to live in the real world, instead of some corp-generated,packaged, synthesized pseudo-reality that people keep trying to shove down my throat.
For me angst is a part of reality that most people don't want to face. They just want to be left alone, anethestized. I'd much rather prefer to be awake...
-Stephen Okay
"Welcome to the Politically Correct States of America. Please turn your mind in to the nearest oppressed minority pressure group. It will be returned to you once we've decided what you can think"

#31 January 31.
The point I was trying to make is that post-teenage angst is the sense that you wasted your one and only chance to change the world, or at least your section of it on trivial things and now there's nothing you can do about it. You wasted your rebellious and socially awake years on sheer lawlessness and undirected rebellion and when you finally got around to channelling that anger and energy into something useful, its too late!!...they're forcing you to go off to college and get a career that you'll slave at for the next 2-3 decades and trying to force you into being part of the machine....
But IS that the whole point of everything?? Is that ALL that there is to do? Why should I HAVE to feel like I'm missing something just because I don't have a whole bunch of ankle-biters running around in a suburban house that I owe some bank my life for?
Do you have to get married and owe sombody $450K just to be happy? Not IMHO. I may be angstful and depressed at times, but I think I'm actually happier this way that if I were one amongst the masses.
If being a drone is what success in the game is all about, I for one am not playing! I refuse to perpetuate the crap that is constantly being handed from the previous generation to their successors on the one to succeed me.
-Stephen Okay

february

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