february
#32 February 1.
I don't know what she wants, but I know its not me.
I mean, its never me, is it? That's all I know about women.
A short statement. Whoever they might be looking for,
its not me. They might be looking for someone exactly like
me, but just not me. Anyone but me. Women meet me and
immediately think how much other women would find me attractive
some way or another, but they never do themselves. Funny.
We talked for a very long time, and covered none of the
things we needed to know for our final. So of course we
have to meet again. I have no idea what will happen. She's
very nice, very attractive. But she's intelligent, so obviously
not interested. How many times tonight did I want to
challenge her? How many times did I want to ask her if she
was so sure that she would consider me herself, to prove
that I'm not, as I believe, the God of Rejection. No dice.
Of course I can't ask her. That would be too easy. Much
better to know her for a long time and then ruin a good
friendship by asking her out and then being ashamed to
talk to her again. Anything else... would be impossible.
-Monty
#33 February 2.
I am so fucking sick of seeing the line "Get a life." These people
always seem to think that if someone's life doesn't meet their standards
then they obviously do not have a life. Fuck them. In my opinion anyone
who puts forth this line is an utter idiot with no real conception of
what they condemn others of not having. Maybe we like wallowing in our
angst. Maybe we actually deal with life better by living this way. Does
this ever occur to them? I hate life so much sometimes but I also love
it to death at others. I am so fucking full of angst sometimes but at
others I am at the top of it all. That is the reason I have never seriously
considered killing myself. It's sorta like golf. I keep playing life
for those occasional awesome shots which keep me going.
-Chris
#34 February 3.
Yes folks, you got it. You, your wallets, and your TVs and all your friends
and their TVs and their wallets are slaved, hypnotized, mesmerized and
silently pilfered by good ol' giggling Uncle Adolph once a year just 'cause
he needs to sell you more beer!. For what he and the other beer companies
are able to pull off here, I wouldn't be surprised if he was Bob Dobbs twin
crib-switched brother!!!. Hallelujah! The Super Bowl is truly a Bob-blessed
event. Who else could sucker 70% of America into staring in front of the
goggle box for 10 hours straight while they silently had all the slack
sucked out of their pink little bodies and then sold BACK to them as a
.00000000000000001% solution at 10X the f&^$%^& price!!!!!. And the
best part of it all is YOU PAY HIM TO DO IT!!!!!! YES YOU DO!!!
And you LIKE IT!!!!!. And THEY tell you you like it, and you believe
them!. How else could they sucker you out $550 in freezing parking lot in
an otherwise rusting midwest industrial city just so you can go inside and
freeze your ass off on a cold concrete bench when it was freezing off perfectly
fine outside. But hey!, thats okay, it was totally worth it. Cause now you
can at least pay $10 for a slice of red-colored, plastic-coated bread that
somebody had the brass ones to call pizza and what else??--Yup!, you
guessed it.....BEEEEEEEEERRR!. Don't you feel proud of yourself now?
You've spent over $1.5K just to get to Minneapolis so you can sit in the
cold and drink a cup of uric acid somebody managed to sneak past the health
board as being beer and watch what from this far up in the stadium looks
like a bunch of paint-splattered mice running around on a green, ruled
postage stamp.
So, relax, go back to sleep, just keep buyin' those Doritos and making
Ann Heuser happy, you only have to do this once a year.....so far.......
-Stephen Okay
#35 February 4.
> Everyone knows that being a sports fan is supposed to provide a mix of
> emotions for people who normally don't get the opportunity to
> experience them. I for one think that the SB succeeds completely in
> this regard. I just decide what sort of emotion I want, and pick a
> team to root for accordingly.
Yup...just pick how you want to feel and there will always be somebody there
to sell it to you in many fashion colors. For an additional $20 they'll sell
you the validation you need to believe that you really feel this way.
Get in a group of people who've been similarly pandered to and
had the wool pulled over their eyes and you'd be surprised how real it all
feels.
> Now, if you bite too hard into the SB or any other sports event, you
> find there's nothing there. But if you just swish it around in your
> mouth for a while, you'll find it has a pleasant mouthfeel, and it has
> that lingering aftertaste of emptiness that leaves you immediately
> looking for more.
Glorp has a way of doing that to you. Its their way of making sure you'll
come back for more next year. And isn't that pink color wonderful???
-Stephen Okay
#36 February 5.
My company is the perfect place for the corporate-climbing dweeb who
just went to school to make money. The sort of person "Future's So
Bright" is about. And that ain't me -- the attitude of productivity
being secondary to politics is driving me nuts. The only thing I
really want with the money is to get out of debt; buy my eventual
freedom. Student loans are like indentured servitude, but without a
specific owner.
With the time overhead of living my life, such as it is, I'm left with
maybe two free hours a night. And never having more than two hours to
rub together at a time doesn't even loan itself well to reading a
novel, let alone any more ambitious projects.
After five months, there's still no one in the area I'm familiar
enough with to just call up and hang out with. For all its flaws, I
tell you, at least it was a lot easier to meet people in college.
I think I'll get myself entirely out of debt and then finally off
myself. Just to be that way.
Yeah, maybe this is more whining than angstful. Oh well -- sucks to be
you reading this shit -- I'm too tired to do it right. Good night and
pleasant dreams.
-Zed
#37 February 6.
> I once heard a blues singer say that there are only
> three types of blues:
> 1) The "I ain't got no money" blues
> 2) The "I ain't got no woman" blues
> (obviously politically uncorrect)
> 3) The "I ain't got no money and I ain't got no woman" blues.
I think nearly everyone posting to this group has type 3 blues. It's
also known as life.
And if you redefine type 2 as a specific case of "I ain't got no
Significant Other" blues then you can describe the same situation and be
politically correct, and you've got the blues for all occasions.
-kilroy
#38 February 7.
I have one single thing to say:
ARRGH!!!!!!!! Why the hell does life suck so much? Just why does the
existence of every living thing on this planet have to be marred by the
fact that even though we have consciousness to feel and love and laugh,
this is all rendered useless by the fact that we all feel shit, are
unloved and are laughed at.
What supreme twist of a distant uncaring diety or the blind
rumbling mill of fate could cause this situation? And the worst of this
thing, the very worst thing about it is that every single person I know
seems to think that they are happy, that everyone else is happy and that
I, I who has seen as others here seen to have seen, am at fault. I am
silently despised or pitied in a detached way by these people. Why
should I care. I see that they will be dust in a comically short period
of time, as I will.
Damn fate, damn god, damn everyone, damn the blind and the
uncaring. Damn them all.
I am very bitter at this point.
-Andrew Murdoch
#39 February 8.
I think it's about time we introduce a new word (well, two to be
more precise) denoting the sacred state of complete meaninglessness: 'The
existential vacuum'. Our home was given name by Austrian psychiatrist
Viktor Frankl and he describes people in this state thus: "They have a
feeling of complete meaninglessness of their lives. They are tormented by a
feeling of inner emptiness, absolute emptiness; they are caught in a situation I
have named 'The existential vacuum'". Even generally happy and content sheep
experience this in the shape of the "Sunday neurosis" (a Frankl word again), the
depression that attack quite a few people Sunday afternoon when they suddenly
realize the complete meaninglessness of being. Douglas Adams has a very good
description of this in "Life, the Universe and Everything" wherein he describes
an immortal being: 'In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope
with, and a terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you
know that you've already had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that
however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never
actually read it, or use the revolutionarily new pruning technique it describes,
and that as you stare at the clocks the hands will move relentlessly on to four
o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.'
-Steven Snedker
#40 February 9.
It is very hard to live without values. Life becomes confusing, meaningless and
disconnected if everything is equally good, or equally bad. The first step in
the direction of a meaning with it all is to find out what values one associates
with, and what values one disassociates with. Find out what you want to do with
your allotted years. It's not easy, and living in a society where economy is
the only yardstick that has any significance in the debate doesn't make it any
easier... The quality of an individuals life measured in number of TV's in a
household (!). I can't recall that I have ever heard my massa or any of my fellow
workers say anything other than 'If we maximize the export, and minimize the
import and you work well, and don't make too much off a fuss about problems that
doesn't really exist, we will all be happy'. Parents, the school and mass media
has learnt us that work is the real meaning of life, and as we work our fingers
to the bone earning money, we don't really have the time to think about it all.
It seems to me that most people have an approach to their own lives like: 'If
we all keep very quiet, it might go away and leave us unharmed, and we might
even get a nice house along the way'. Well, "#¤%&|*! them.
-Steven Snedker
#41 February 10.
"Why am I here"?
To imitate the earthworms. Food in the one end, shit out the other. 70 years
of shit if you're not faulty. You might even get the chance to create other
earthworms who can take over when you die. But it doesn't really matter if you
just die, there are billions of other earthworms to continue. If you want to see
it any other way, you will have to use your imagination. But you are already
using it so nothing's wrong with that.
> "What is my purpose"?
You haven't got one. You are a free man. Congratulations.
You may despair.
- Steven Snedker
#42 February 11.
Isn't it nice the way that people tend to forget that all solvable
problems are meaningless, until their solvable problems have
been temporarily solved?
Kill myself, or live as a [burden on/productive member of] society?
Left shoe on first, or right shoe? Sitting or standing? Who cares?
I retract a statement I made earlier. Being fantastically rich,
studly, and in all ways successful (and extremely charitable, too, for
good measure and to fend off the it-is-what-you-do-for-others-that-gives-
life-meaning-ists) is not a disqualification from this group, as long as
it means nothing to you.
Snedker says we're free. Free!!?
The lid is off, you're free! Fly like a fruitcake let loose of its
tin! A whole world awaits--can you pull yourself a little
smaller?
-Eric Boesch
#43 February 12.
Just remember that women hate ALL men, not just you. They pretend to like
the ones that they see they can get material gain from.
-Frederick J. Polsky
#44 February 13.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Leave me alone
I want to die.
-The winner of the Angst Poetry Contest at Carleton College
#45 February 14.
And the truth shall not make you free- just uncomfortable.
-Tod Mikuriya
#46 February 15.
'Because you gave no answer,
I hope you get cancer,
and that the pricks
you fancy, treat you
like shit, and may you
get a terminal disease.'
-John P. Doherty
#47 February 16.
WORD ASSOCIATION POEM
Valentines Day Massacre
Roses Thorns
Hearts Blood
Cards Bad Hand
Boxed Candy Boxed in Head
Love A LIE! A Stinking LIE! We're ALONE! All of
us are alone! We enter the world alone and we
die alone! There is no LOVE! Everyone spends
their whole life looking out for number one and
never really gives DAMN about anyone else!
LOVE? Don't make me laugh! It's just a LIE
so that people have an excuse for wanting SEX!
LOVE? A cultural ILLUSION that wreaks more
PAIN than joy! Oh, yeah, sure I keep trying,
but WHAT'S THE POINT? I'm chasing the
IMPOSSIBLE! It's all just PAIN! PAIN! PAIN!
WHEN WILL I STOP LYING TO MYSELF!
-Reverend Smeagol
#48 February 17.
I used to have dreams that my parents were really psychologists engaged in
an experiment on me that would eventually be done and get rid of me. In the
dream, my father tries to bury me in the backyard, and when I try to claw
my way to the surface as he is piling dirt on me, he hits me with the shovel
repeatedly until I wake up.
My head still hurts to this day.
-Scott Graves
#49 February 18.
"Amor vincit omnia, not" [Latin for "Love conquers all, not"]
Well, love hath conquered me many times. When it is done conquering,
it stomps on my bleeding carcass, kicks me in the nose, rips my arms
off, knee-es me in the balls, takes a chain-saw to my heart, twists
my brain around its little finger, and throws me to the frozen tundra,
where I await the coming of the ice-weasels.
And I come back for more...
-gezelter
#50 February 19.
oh ghod. it's been another one of those times when i can't get to sleep
without crying myself into exhaustion first. i can't stop thinking about
how worthless i am, and i feel like such a weakling for needing someone to
tell me that i'm not. so i have a degree. i want someone to celebrate it
for me. i told my mother and i got a "that's nice dear", and then an abrupt
subject change. i want someone to tell me i've done a great thing. hell,
i'm through college with no institutional loans or grants. i've worked
2-4 jobs every semester and my gpa is respectable. but worst of all, i feel
like a fool and a weakling for needing the attention, needing someone to
tell me "i done good". i've cried so much in the last few weeks. it's more
than just being unemployed. i can get a cheezy job somewhere. it's that i
feel like a waste of time and resources. and they were all my own.
i know that i should be able to tell myself that i've done well, that i
shouldn't need someone else's approval. but knowing that makes it even more
difficult to stop crying. my dogs are wonderin what's wrong. the funny noises
i'm making confuse them. but at least i tire myself out so that i can go
to sleep without the whirlwind of terror whipping through my brain.
i'm tired in the daytime, but i can't sleep at night...
-rachel j. perkins
#51 February 20.
.... He told of how he couldn't handle it anymore, how he thought
nothing would get any better, and how he sat on his bed, crying, cutting into his
wrists. He looked at a picture of himself and two friends from a team he was on.
He looked. he could only find one reason to keep going, and that was for his
one friend in the photo.
Things just got worse. His former girlfriend had been raped, he felt alone.
He tried again. He slashed his wrists, and was bleeding, but then he stopped,
and thought about his friend, and crying, patched himself up.
When he got to school, he couldn't hide the scars from his friends. They tried
to get him to talk to the guidance counselor, etc. His old girlfriend saw the
scars, showed him her wrists, and said, "Now we match."
he couldn't take it. he couldn't take knowing that he was that girl's only
support, that his life seemed hopeless, that it seemed like it would never get
better, just keep crushing him again and again. he was sobbing, and he cut his
wrists one last time. he laid there, but couldn't get his friend from the
photograph out of his mind. His one friend. The only thing he had to live for.
He went to the bathroom and bandaged up his wrists.
-Saul Hudson
#52 February 21.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's
opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
-Oscar Wilde
#53 February 22.
10:20
Arrive home. Stand in parking lot staring at the building where the cute
redhead lives. Flash for a second on the thought of sharing some time with
her. Stare up at the sky. It's clearing up. Yep, definitely a boring
night at hand.
10:30
Stare at first foot again. Consider staring at the wall. Think of how
I could be at work getting ahead on the next week.
10:40
Wonder if it's just me, or if it's Tucson. Unable to decide what is wrong
with Tucson, I come to the unpleasant alternative decision.
10:50
Consider going to bed. Wonder if I can even remember how to cry.
-Xibo, "Am I dying, am I dead."
#54 February 23.
I had an idea though....make a pact with yourself: Agree to kill
yourself on (say) your fortieth birthday...you can work 'til you're
around thirty then leave and spend 10 years enjoying the money...or take
a loan from the bank...travel...see the world...it is beautiful where it
hasn't been fucked up...come here and have lunch with me...and at forty
having spent time enjoying the best years of your life...you end...
-Lucifuge
#55 February 24.
The purpose of life is accepting the fact that life doesn't have a
purpose. There are no reasons. You live to live then die.
-Lucifuge
#56 February 25.
You live for the hell of it.
Sometimes.
Seldom.
Actually, almost never.
-Steven Snedker
#57 February 26.
Funerals should be on rainy days.
-Jesper Lauridsen
#58 February 27.
There is no reason to assume that someone else is judging you as to the
meaning in your life. It's up to you to give meaning to it. Also, having a
meaningful life is not dependent on religion or faith - it depends on doing
what you want to accomplish, or trying to. For a start, I think it would be a
good thing to do what you get pleasure from doing - or is mental and physical
feedback something to be ignored and dismissed as meaningless?
-Norrish
#59 February 28.
I AM NOT BORED BY MY WORK AND MY LIFE IS NOT GOING TO HELL.
THAT MY LIFE WAS BAD BEFORE, AND HAS BEEN GETTING WORSE FOR A LONG
TIME MEANS NOTHING.
IT IS ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN.
And women? Sure, I haven't boggled any of them with my limitless
charms this year, or this decade for that matter, but that's just
because I haven't met Miss Right yet.
THOSE OF THE OPPOSITE SEX DO NOT HATE ME.
Even if I have made no attempts at impressing anyone, and completing
the bare minimum red tape of life seems not merely tedious but an
impossibly huge task,
and
I DO NOT GET HEADACHES THINKING ABOUT MY MISERABLE LIFE AND DISEASED
PERSONALITY.
There.
I FEEL BETTER NOW.
Well. How has it worked for you so far? But the real test hasn't
come yet. Now go out and tackle life head-on.
-Eric Boesch