september
#244 September 1.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire.
The other is to gain it.
-George Bernard Shaw
I was looking for a job, and then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable
now.
-The Smiths, "Heaven knows I'm miserable now"
Marry, and you'll regret it. Marry not, and you'll regret it.
Any which way but win.
-Clint Eastwood quoting Soeren Kierkegaard and vice-versa
#245 September 2.
i'll never get a decent job
this thing with the ex is just a 'weak moment'
i'll never get out of debt
i'll never find anyone to love
i'll always be runner up
i'll never find happiness
because i'm not good enough
i'm a social misfit
i'll never get what i want
cos i don't know how to get it
nothing will ever go right
cos i always fuck it up
cos i am a fuckup
ignorant, deaf, blind and dumb
i just want to beat myself
until i go numb
or put a glock to my head
and pull the trigger
nothing will ever go right for me
just fuckup after fuckup
nothing's ever right
everything's wrong
somebody help
please
urg!
-Malcolm Diallo Moore
#246 September 3.
Something goes awry with Democracy of the hundred millions. In the
Athens of old, one man's anger could shift the stride of the entire
populace. Today, your chances of dying in a car crash on your way to
vote are ten times greater than your chances of making a difference in a
national election with said vote. Somewhere, in the foggy realms
between orders of magnitude, human will has left the process.
-Curious of All Natures
#247 September 4.
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that
lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of
the grace of tragedy.
-Steven Weinberg
#248 September 5.
If enough people told enough people to put their heads under trucks, I'm
sure they would do so. I wonder why no-one has thought of doing that?
-Noel Coward
#249 September 6.
A woman who doesn't know me and who hasn't talked to me, has no basis upon which
it would reasonable (to me) to ask me out rather than some guy who is
in better shape, dresses better, etc. I'm not saying she should wait around;
that's stupid, and doesn't indicate a great deal of self-confidence anyhow.
I'm saying that if she asks me out ("desperation" was sort of an
exaggeration) she seems less desirable to me because she's indicating that
she doesn't feel desirable to guys who are better looking than me.
Is this still completely neurotic? Yes.
-Paul Callahan
"To most anxious persons the use of the head, the wits, the ability to be
ever on the alert, to apprehend danger and lurking forces of destruction, are
the very bases of such meager security as they possess."
-Wolff's Headache and Other Head Pain, Fourth Edition_
#250 September 7.
some days you wake up and everything is dull, like you're looking at
the world with dirty saran wrap over your eyes. like your contact
lenses are fogged and you can't get them to clear, everything just
feels hazy and indistinct, you know there are true things out there
but damned if you can get them in focus.
-sine
#251 September 8.
> One of the best things that I ever read long ago was something or other that
> said ALL of our perceptions are illusion. We are creatures incapable of
> knowing objective absolute reality (if indeed it even exists!)
> So if our life is really an illusion, why not make that a HAPPY illusion?
Shit, why not make yourself Superman while you're at it? Or Jesus? "I don't
like the color of the sky--I think it will be pink today."
A little philosophy is a dangerous thing. Most of the people that I know who
are miserable most of the time are miserable because of things that happened to
them in the past, usually during childhood, or are depressed because of
chemical imbalances in their brains. Telling them that the former might have
been an illusion denotes a stunning lack of empathy, and suggesting that they
wish away the latter is purest fantasy.
-Tom Dennis
#252 September 9.
> I personally believe this to be true. I agree with the existentialists
> who say that we create our own reality. We have this terrible freedom
> to determine our own existence (as in INNER existence). If we perceive
> the world to be a miserable place, it is because we CHOOSE to view it
> that way.
Choosing not to be miserable is not the same thing as choosing rocky road ice
cream instead of fudge ripple, Jack, yet you make it sound just as simple.
> Life has pressures, no doubt about it, but that's the nature of life.
> Why dwell on the negative? What's the point? Does it benefit you?
> (Sometimes, in some perverse way, it does.)
Sometimes working through your problems is a better way of dealing with the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, rather than sweeping it under the rug
and pretending it didn't exist.
-Tom Dennis
#253 September 10.
[anecdote about 20-year-old "girl" with CP deleted]
If there's one thing that I can stand less than a "Young Abe Lincoln" story,
it's a "Helen Keller" story. Physical and/or sensory disabilities are not the
most potent authors of misery, no matter how much the "temporarily abled" want
to pity those who have them.
I sincerely hope and pray that your position in your high school does not
require or even encourage you to counsel students who are having a rough time
of things.
-Tom Dennis
#254 September 11.
I am so sick of living here in heterogeneity-ville, USA. Everyone here
looks the same, and talks the same, and acts the same and listens to
the same music. The little pieces of rebellion in their lives are all
the same. They have all lived lives of quiet non-desperation. They
think visiting their parents is an enjoyable thing to do. They live in
their little worlds and look at me funny if I try to talk to them.
I'm some type of divine freak to them, and though they find me valuable
from an entertainment point of view, they have no common ground with me.
I'm sick of not having anyone to be crazy with. I'm tired of having to run
up my LD phone bill just to have a conversation that doesn't require an
hour of backgoruond for each sentence because my life is so fucking
foreign that there's no frame of reference.
-Jenny
#255 September 12.
But now it seems like I'll never make up for the time I lost & time keeps
slipping away from me, faster and faster, and at the end of each day I
haven't done what I wanted to do - and after a year and a half in grad
school, I haven't done anything I'm proud of, and after nearly 30 years
on this planet, I've done nothing but destroy everything I've touched.
I want to go back & be 14 again, and see if maybe this time I can live my
life properly - I feel so old, and I didn't do anything. And soon I'll be
dead, and I won't have done anything.
And all I can do is keep smiling and pretend to be normal & work all the
time, but then I stop & think about how much I'm not doing, and then
I start thinking about that, and how I'm screwing up my life by not
getting more done, and I get so depressed that I can't do anything, and
then I get even more behind.
And today is my wedding anniversary. The divorce trial is March 20. Yet
another milestone in the failures of my life.
-Jenny
#256 September 13.
I go to clubs, because I don't want to be alone forever and ever and
ever and ever and ever. If you can't relate to this feeling, you're
probably lost.
As for getting to know a person's personality before making any judgements,
let me tell you, just YOU go to a club and try it. TRY IT.
Not that it matters anyway; almost all women who go to the clubs I frequent,
are desirable. A few are not; but hell, when there are 50 chicks that appeal
to you and 20 that don't, and you know nothing else about them personally,
why the hell NOT concentrate on one of the 50.
Not like it matters anyway, because no matter who I choose, it all
leads to nothing, regardless. Fuckin' depressing, lemme tell ya.
-Xibo
#257 September 14.
> some days you wake up and everything is dull, like you're looking at
> the world with dirty saran wrap over your eyes.
That is the most terrible feeling I have experienced. Wondering if life
will seem real and powerful again. It gets less and less so as
I age. I am past my prime in many ways, and must prepare for undeniable
decline. Unfortunately, I have found a drug that makes everything
come back. The world, my mind come into focus. Everything is clear and
magical as it is in so many pleasant memories. Knowing it can never last.
-Scott Hanson This has been a recording.
#258 September 15.
my mother's friend is on the floor screaming, and her fiance is in a somewhat
compromising position. he jumps up and says "thanks, pat, for getting her drunk
again!"
now i believe it. my mother starts crying and whining about this is their last
time, she's going on a slim fast diet, boo boo this, boo boo that, meanwhile,
the fiance is packing his bags saying he doesn't want to deal with the friend
anymoore.
-Malcolm Moore
#259 September 16.
so i finally hit the sack...notice that I said hit the sack. Gettin
sleep was an entirely different story. I started looking back at all
the horrible things and unlove and sadness i've been experiencing, the
fact that i feel like i'm a total failure, there's no light at the end
of the tunnel, i'm not connecting with anybody, damn this bed is hott!
so i stick my cool rod out and continue thinkin...continue beating
myself...so-o much unlove. so-o much hostility. so-o much rejection.
And I know there are things about myself i must change. the thing is
I don't know how. I don't know how to adapt. i keep playing snippets
of songs that I know will make me cry in my head, wishing i was
someplace else, doing something else with somebody else.
-Malcolm Moore
#260 September 17.
I picture Mom and Dad and the mortuary attendant, with their mouths open
and smiling. I imagine circling their tongues with a red crayon, and I
wait to fall asleep.
-Dribble
#261 September 18.
I picture Mom and Dad and the mortuary attendant, with their mouths open
and smiling. I imagine circling their tongues with a red crayon, and I
wait to fall asleep.
-Dribble
#262 September 19.
Panic/anxiety attacks are very common. It can come in situations with stress,
but it can also jump out to get you from a clear sky. It starts with a feeling
that something is wrong, like nausea, dizzyness or strange colours. Then it hits
you, you suddendly get very afraid and the adrenalin rushes in. You might throw
up or get an even more distorted sight or start to hyperventilate. You'll go
weak in your knees and tremble, that's for sure. If you have an ulcer, it might
start to hurt real bad.
After some time it passes (perhaps because you've got away from the stuff that
caused it). And you can stumble on, fearing the next one, always checking your
senses to see if you're about to go mad.
-Neugamme
#263 September 20.
Joe was a very funny kid. Not only was he fat, and nobody liked him, his
parents also had a divorce. After the divorce he got afraid of handles. Not that
he really was afraid of them, he just wouldn't touch them. Every time he had to
open a door or a window he'd pull his hand into his sleeve and open the door or
window with his sleeve between his hand and the handle. Some of the funny guys
in the class found out, and started to make fun of him.
One day our teacher had found him crying outside the school. The funny
sidekicks to the popular guys had probably been giving him an extra hard time.
The teacher told us that Joe had some difficulties, and that we should be nice
to him. He told us that Joe wasn't afraid of handles, but was afraid that
something horrible would happen if he touched one. He also had to touch other
things a certain number of times for it to "feel right".
Joe didn't come to school for the next days. He didn't come much of the
remaining year, either. And didn't continue in senior high.
As I understand from a friend of friend who knew his mother he got over it
by watching lots of tv and by drinking many beers.
Later I also got over my neurosis.
-Neugamme
#264 September 21.
Ulcers are common and hurt very much. At times your stomach is burning, and
you cannot find a position where it doesn't hurt. Other times you feel very
hungry. The pain can get so intense that you can feel it in your back.
And you're so afraid that the expensive medicine isn't enough, that they'll
have to operate. And the shitting black blood part is not nice at all either.
Alchohol makes it worse, so you'll have more than a hard time if you cannot
sleep either. You'll just lie there wondering if your stomach will burst or
you'll go mad first. You think that it'll be horrible, but at least then you'll
get some help. A man can break his arm and get instant help, but he can go on
being severly depressed and neurotic for 20 years without any help.
-Neugamme
#265 September 22.
So, what's it like when you start to doubt reality? Unpleasant.
You can suddendly get panic attacks which are horrible. Then the eerie feeling
that reality doesn't exist, coupled with the inevitable depression is very
painful. It starts with the feeling that your percepcion and consciousness is
somehow out of tune, like a concussion of the brain. This can last very long,
and in periods of frequent feelings of reality-breakdown you come to distrust
your senses, often checking them to see if they're giving you the right input.
Sleep is a big problem, and so are the books of Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw
Lem. You begin to fear Wittgenstein, and spend long stretches of time watching
your hand, uncertain if it's yours. And who you are that own the hand. Am I a
person that can look at a hand, and use it, or is it my hand? What does exist
mean, and do I do it? Does the universe exist? Alone.
-Neugamme
#266 September 23.
Some nights I would find myself roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and
eating handfuls of sand - this was in the middle of the night when the sky was
so clear tha tI could see the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it,
seemed almost lunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyfish back to the
house and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, while Evelyn slept, and what
I didn't eat of it I fed to the chow.
-Bret Easton Ellis, "American Psycho"
#267 September 24.
He sat up and looked out the window. "I have to leave you. I want a
divorce," he said.
"Not now," I said. "We can talk about what's upsetting you when we get
home from the doctor, but I'm really excited about the ultrasound. Aren't
you excited?"
He looked more sick than excited. One of my pregnancy books talked about
that, men getting cold feet at the last minute. It said that almost all
of them turn out to be fine fathers and they just need a little reassurance.
[...]
"I need a divorce. We should have never gotten married."
I had thought that off and on during the ten years that we'd been married,
but in a strange way it didn't seem important to me. I had told a younger
friend that week that neither of us had made the best choice, but we'd
simply bonded to each other and now it was our life.
"It's a bit late for that, after ten years when I'm seven months pregnant,
don't you think?"
"Yes, it is. I'm sorry. I should have told you years ago when I first
figured it out."
-Dawn
#268 September 25.
I don't remember what I said, if I had started screaming yet. He rolled his
eyes and gave me a look of disgust. "Come on. I have a new apartment, a
new job, a new life. You ought to learn how to take care of yourself."
I think I started screaming and he left, but all I remember for sure
was running to the bathroom and throwing up.
-Dawn
#269 September 26.
i do want to find a hole to hide in. i'm so sick and tired of my life
and the shape that it's in.. sleeping all the time sounds nice in
comparison. at least dreams are fairly interesting, unlike the same
old life, day after pointless day after pointless day...
some say i'm talented, but i don't see what that gets me. i'm too
insane, and can't conform in the slightest to any expectations of
me. the moment someone expects me to be brilliant, i'll immediately
act dumb. the moment someone expects me to follow the rules, i'll
break them all. the moment someone expects me to achieve in life,
i'll fail miserably.
i wish i could just find a hole to hide, and then have someone
fill it in with dirt.
afterall, it's pretty much pointless, anyway.
even if my life weren't pointless in itself.
damn, i want a .45 so bad.
-jason downs
#270 September 27.
Thus the volunteer minister, in the tradition of this new world religion, is a
leader who brings greater freedom to people so that they may go out and free
others, happier all in their understanding of themselves and life itself, and in
the pleasure and accomplishments of living.
-From "The Volunteer Minister's Handbook" by Elron Hubbard
#271 September 28.
I got a "No" every time I asked.
#272 September 29.
And I asked "Can I lose more self-respect?"
And my boss said "See you tomorrow."
#273 September 30.
I stand here with gold in my pockets.
Are they unaware of it?
Do they think it's shit?
Are they complete arseholes?