june
#152 June 1.
I find the world very grotesque and absurd. Sometimes it's funny, but most of
the time it's pretty damn depressing.
-Neugamme
#153 June 2.
On the very brief spasms of employment that I had in the past it always seemed
to me there were moments of the day when I would realize that I was here working
with people that I despised and I had to talk to these horrible people and ask
them what they did yesterday. And I would have to report to a boss that I
couldn't stand and when you're in that position - which is the absolute basis of
"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" you realize that you're actually spending your
entire life with people that you do not like - which was incredibly
distressing.
-Morrissey
#154 June 3.
The school system offers me to do stuff I'm not interested in, and the work
system offers me to do stuff I'm not interested in. It's a no win situation, and
I'm going to hell in slow-motion.
-Neugamme
#155 June 4.
I often recount tales of total morbidity, but I can't remember the old
rolling in the hay bit, out in the countryside sketching horses or whatever. I
can simply remember being in very dark streets, penniless.
-Morrissey
#156 June 5.
so what's the fucking point? do i really want to spend the rest of my
life in the past, grasping at memories to reassure me about the
future? how much of a future can you have when you immerse yourself
in the past? yeah, i had an adolescence that's very hard for me to
think about and hard for people to hear about. i've had more than my
share of shit. i survived. that's nice; do i get a cookie?
-sine
#157 June 6.
> The person I thought most likely to succeed in life had opened
> her veins in a bathtub when she was 16.
But she did succeed. She figured out what's going on, and took
the Best Way Out.
By contrast, I'm twice the age she was when took her Life Option
and all I'm doing is listening to Al Jourgensen scream about his
drug addiction ("just one more fix!!!") and writing messages to
other depressed computer geeks. Is this an improvement?
-Eric Murray
#158 June 7.
The true failure is the inability to kill oneself.
BTW, I've had a healthy, working, satisfying relationship for years,
and the universe is still a uncaring place, life is still completely
meaningless, and the human race seems to be successful at destroying
itself than anything else.
-Duke Robillard
#159 June 8.
I go to the bathroom. I look in the mirror. The woman who stares back at
me looks frighteningly like my mother, all gussied up in a silk dress, hair
"done," earrings dangling down her neck. I remember when I was a child
thinking she looked so beautiful when she got all dressed up to go out, and
thinking how nice a change it must be for her from the usual grind of
tending to her home and her brood. And now as I look in the mirror I
think, oh shit, look what I have become. It used to be that *going out*
was a part of *life*. Now it has become something apart from *life*. And
why??? Because I am OLD!!
-Mary Hall Ross
#160 June 9.
So, life is meaningless, I'm just a chemical engine, and I'm completely
alone in the universe. Why do I bother? Why get out of bed in the
morning? (Or afternoon, or evening, or whatever.)
I guess I just fool myself most of the time, that even though it doesn't
matter on a grand scale, I can contrive some importance for somethings.
For example, I'd rather live in a house than in a cardboard box. This
means I need a job. Preferably one that doesn't leave me bitter and
exhausted at the end of the day. So I have to go to college. Etc.
Fooling myself is also why I allow myself to find importance in a search
for an SO. Even though it doesn't fundamentally change my aloneness in
the universe, I can talk to her and she can talk to me, and we can cuddle,
and we *feel* a little less alone.
-nathan marsh
#161 June 10.
it is pointless. there is no reason to go on. there is no reason to
live, except to be utterly perverse and basically say "in your face"
to a universe that doesn't give a fuck anyway. i happen to get off on
doing that.
-sine
#162 June 11.
I'm twenty-five, and was a virgin until I was twenty-four. I lost my
virginity in a one-night stand with a woman I haven't seen since and have no
desire to see. The only reason I slept with her was because I couldn't stand
being a virgin.
It was at the age of thirteen that I decided it might be nice to have a
girlfriend. I still think it might be nice, and I still have not had one. I
first kissed a woman at nineteen. Before the woman I slept with, I had kissed
three women in all. None of these three were interested in getting involved
after our first encounter.
#163 June 12.
The fact that no one seemed interested in me was the main burden. I often felt
like a freak. I had absolutely no idea how people made the transition from
being friends to being involved. I tried asking some friends about it to see if
they could inform me. I read *How to Make Love to a Woman*. I tried as best I
could to figure out why it was that I was one of the few who had never been in a
relationship.
In college it was the feeling that something was wrong with me and the
feeling that I was missing out that depressed me the most.
#164 June 13.
One summer I stayed on campus to take a few classes and met this woman Sarah.
We seemed to be getting along quite well: she asked me to an outdoor jazz
festival, she made me a crayon drawing, and so forth. I wanted to start a
relationship with her rather than just be friends, and as far as I could tell
there was a good chance she was interested in me. Such situations for me are
very tense and anxious; I get all infatuated with the woman and preoccupied and
very scared. So one night when we were hanging out at my place I tried to kiss
her; my heart was pounding harder than it ever does. She lowered her head,
stopping me; she was noticeably embarrassed. She asked if we could just keep
talking, and so I complied. I did not know of anything else to do. After she
left that night I was terribly depressed. I went wondering in the rain for
awhile and eventually came home and went to bed. We remained friends for
awhile, and eventually I went through the same cycle with someone else.
I did not know what to do in order to actually get involved with someone.
There were a few woman whom I seemed to have good friendships with. We talked
long and at ease, and spent time together. These women did not want to get
involved either. So I kept getting older.
#165 June 14.
The fact that no one was willing and that I was getting into a smaller and
smaller group of adult virgins was the main concern, especially since I saw
people around me meet for the first time and in a matter of hours end up
sleeping together. Again, not only was I lonely but I also felt that there was
something seriously wrong with me.
Never having had a girlfriend is a burden to me. I can get on with my life
for long stretches and forget about it, but sooner or later I get lonely or I
get interested in some woman and then I once again have to try to get involved.
And I have yet to succeed.
I guess it's the fact that no one has ever been in love with me, no one has
ever told me that she loved me, which is hard to deal with.
Now that I've had sex, I actually don't get as depressed. I don't have to
worry about never doing it now that I have. Nevertheless, it wasn't much of a
first experience. I wish it had been with a girlfriend.
Anyway, growing up inexperienced has had a profound effect on me. I hope
the other fellow doesn't have all the doubts and anxieties that I do. I think
the single life can really suck. I get very lonely and very frustrated. I get
angry at women for rejecting me as much as they have. I don't know what the
current trouble is, but I can't even get a first date anymore.
#166 June 15.
If I were twenty again, with the experience I have now, I might still have a
chance to improve my situation.
I feel that even if I finally meet some woman and develop a happy, fulfilling
relationship, I'll still never know exactly what it's like to have those sort of
awkward, inexperienced, adolescent romances that other people remember fondly
and joke about.
Please, nobody tell me that they're not so great anyway, or whatever. The
point is that I'm missing a piece of shared experience, and there's not
a *damn* thing I can do about it at my age.
-Paul Callahan
#167 June 16.
Trust me, the first time I got a Ken doll and changed his clothes, I
had a Colossal Brain Dump because he was not equipped like my little
brother at all. I knew Bubba was the rule and Ken was the exception.
So, it is terribly unfair to men to have women conditioned to love
plastic men without penises. This goes a long way towards explaining
the immense wealth of Michael Jackson and not his brother Jermaine.
Kids are stupid and their toys teach them things. Parents who are harried
and rush into Toys R Plastic grab stuff the kids have seen on TV and pay
it no mind. So, the girls are learning to be materialistic mall rats
selecting men with no penises and boys are learning to be serial killers
with lightning reflexes and a large array of armaments.
-Elaine Richards
#168 June 17.
so we live our lives as attempts to impose control and order on a
world that won't give up any. our lives are a search for edges; we
want boundaries and handles. if we can figure out where we stop and
reality starts, we'll have a lever with which we can move at least our
part of the world. finding boundaries gives us the power to expand or
contract them at will. rules, hierarchies, governments -- all these
artificial layers of definition give us edges we can rearrange. and as
we play with them, we can forget about the basic wildness and chaos
that surrounds us. most people engross themselves in the game and
devote lifetimes to piling up counters, fiddling with obscure
regulations, or making up good reasons why they're not succeeding.
it's a pleasant distraction, and who's to say it's not a superior way
of life? they get rewards pleasing to them, live with a sense of
purpose and die with a sense of accomplishment.
-sine
#169 June 18.
people who see beyond the surface aren't so lucky. rejecting
conventional notions of boundaries leaves one wondering who does have
control of reality, which leads to the problem at the core of angst:
no evidence exists that anyone does. all the interactions of all the
people who've ever existed have created this chemical reaction and
we're all helpless as we watch it proceed to equilibrium. and people
keep throwing new things into the mix and trying to change the lab
conditions, but it's just inexorably going onward and no one knows if
we'll have a miracle potion or a high explosive when it's done. but
it's not the uncertainty that tears at our souls, it's the drifting
helplessness and the realization that all we can do is wait.
so the reconciliation between personal and universal angst. the
personal is merely a reflection of the global. the situation-specific
fear and pain and anxiety expressed here so often are merely
reports of individual battles in a larger war.
-sine
#170 June 19.
The idea that there is a real, intellectually based angst, which
develops out of literary and philosophical movements, and which is
somehow more authentic and pure an angst than one based on emotional
dissatisfaction with the conditions of an individual's life...
...strikes me as elitist bullshit.
Qualitative comparison of angst?
Give me a fucking break.
Not to invalidate Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Beckett et al., but
they aren't inherently purer in their angst than anybody on alt.angst
who shares their frustration that (they're virgins/they hate their job/
life sucks/fill in your angst) with us.
-Ron Hogan
#171 June 20.
> Why bother?
Instant and profound answer;
Why not?
It's not like you have something better to do.
-Lucifuge
The Lord is my Shepherd............................but I'm not a Sheep
#172 June 21.
I'm pretty sure existence is meaningless. Once you give up
superstition (or religion or whatever), there seems to be a
straightforward logical progression to the conclusion that you're just
a chemical machine. A machine that spends its time reacting in ways
that, evolutionarily speaking, tend to cause the generation of more,
similar chemical machines. The Universe doesn't care. God is an
invention to help change the behaviour of said machines in ways that
will increase the population.
This is all very logical, and doesn't require any leap of faith, or
any belief in something that we don't understand currently. This
makes it incredibly attractive, intellectually. Unfortunately, it's
also incredibly depressing.
This is the source of angst, in the sense meant by the people who
created the term--the existentialists and nihilists of the last half
of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. This is the feeling
that all of Godot's characters have. This is what causes the Sickness
Unto Death.
-Duke Robillard
#173 June 22.
so i embrace the void
it is my only lover
it sucks up my secrets
and silences my troubles
yes, i fear the void
but i can cry no longer
so i return to the void
and let it take me
take me
take me
-Vance Haemmerle
#174 June 23.
Is this the ultimate example of a pathetic waste of protoplasm?
-Stephen Okay
#175 June 24.
My mood usually tries very hard to drag my opinions about objective reality
with it, and it always does to some extent, but my mood has seesawed so many
times that I'm getting pretty immune to it. Still I can't recommend being
intellectually detached from your moods, along with it I've become detached from
everything else, like my fingers and external motivations, too, being reasonable
and moderate is a horrible thing, it takes too much time and there is little use
in it.
-Eric Boesch
#176 June 25.
Grad school was as bad as I feared it might be, but dropping out seems
to have gone better than I thought it could, it seems like a bit of a
waste that I spent so much time worrying about it. It does make it
that much more obvious that I'll end up an irrelevant insignificant
speck, but what the hell, I knew that already, at least I'll probably
be a speck with a little bit of money, not that that ought to be
consolation. Planning to be nothing, I think, is better than
planning to be God; for one thing, there are a lot more nothings than
there are Gods; if you're going to be nothing, then the worthless
project you're on now means a lot more. I don't know which is more
distracting, God-fantasies or Hell-fantasies; I just hope screwing up
won't bother me so extremely next time, and perhaps by expecting to be
zero, I can at least avoid one of the two sorts of useless fantasies:
if I expected to be God, then reality would force me to consider the
opposite type of fantasy as well.
-Eric Boesch
#177 June 26.
At this point I would like to point out that I have almost certainly
learned nothing useful from any of this, as will be proven the next
time I'm in a similar situation, and whatever I resolve to do I will
not do. This is not a reverse psychology gimmick; it has been true
every time. All that getting older means to me right now is acting
increasingly foolish as I supposedly get wiser; people who see how I
act give simplistic advice, saying things I knew ten years ago, and
even _felt_ ten years ago, though I don't feel it any more. Now I
think this downward-heading perhaps CAN last through a full lifetime.
-Eric Boesch
#178 June 27.
Bored silly again. I won't work because that would be starting
something new and I'm not finished with what I was doing already, which
is nothing. Been true almost all of the last few months, annoyingly.
In debt. Night outside. Light on inside to make the outside darker.
Do I go outside? Do I figure out a way to get work done again? Do I go
bike riding and see if that permits me to slow down enough to start
again? Do I go bike riding in the morning and hope that it allows me to
start again when there's a whole day available for it? But the day will
be over again after the first class so it doesn't matter.
-Eric Boesch
#179 June 28.
First I can't bear thinking about what I'm supposed to do, then I can't bear
thinking about tricks to get around that problem, on and on until there's no
thought of decisions at all, just doing what I want, and what I want to do is
useless, hiding out.
I can imagine being utterly useless in a decade or two -- it's not a big
step. Other people would have every reason to doubt I'd have a decent
excuse to be useless, and I doubt it too. I could probably persuade
people that I really am weird and not just deficient, but the only thing
that I clearly am is lazy. In fact I'm already almost useless and it's
just taking a while for my bank account and grades and job to find out.
-Eric Boesch
#180 June 29.
So can anyone describe how one survives after you've felt unbearably old
for so long? There are actual adults here, right? Do you have an
answer? I doubt I can have one. When I'm in a good mood I have nothing
useful to tell myself when I'm not.
I'm still more or less headed towards failure, but still not
irretrievably. I could fix it. I could get the rest of my evil evil
evil homework in, and meanwhile get that project done, and get my job's
work done and get a better job. And then just (?) one more quarter and
I'd be out of this hole.
... if! A very tired, very forgetful, unstable person like myself
getting all those things done in a row? Don't bet on it! Bet heavily
against it.
Old, old, old. Not old, not old, not old. Stupid. Not really.
Too tired and lazy to live. No argument. Too defenseless against
real life to live. No argument.
#181 June 30.
Nothing that has me doing nothing.
Not suddenly nothing. Not completely nothing. See friends, see friends
some more, looks like things are improving, cheer up, get some work
done, cheer down, stop working. New self-delusion (or not a delusion,
but I give it up, regardless), I work some, stop working. I guess that
sort of thing has been happening for a long time but it doesn't stop any
more. No more self-delusions. No habits at all. My new try at getting
up in the morning (using an electric timer as a radio) has predictably
stopped working. I just sleep through it, mostly, or perhaps I get up
and then go back to bed fifteen minutes later. Sometimes I actually
make it to class, but the number of steps involved in the process, all
of them very unreliable, is immense.
-Eric Boesch