June 6, 2009 (157/365)

5:00am clause. BTW, the rug wasn't exactly pulled out from under me, it was switched with a different, much less comfy rug.

June 5, 2009 (156/365)

Well, this is a nice, comfy rug I'm standing on. ...Expect it to be pulled out from under me tomorrow.

Because ...yaknow... I can't be allowed to be comfy.

June 4, 2009 (155/365)

Some people hear voices. I see visions. It's not "seeing things" really, it's briefly envisioning or imagining myself in a different life... often what I perceive as a happier life (though I sometimes wonder if that's just a "grass is greener" appeal... or not). I've written about this phenomenon before, so I won't go into details about them again. I have so many shortcomings in real life, I think if I were the type to lie, I'd develop an entirely fabricated life filled with amazing, titillating exploits so no one would know the truth. I'd be Commander McBrag.

June 3, 2009 (154/365)

I already react more strongly than most to lies. But it's just intolerable when someone close to me lies.

June 2, 2009 (153/365)

I don't have anything to say tonight that doesn't sound superficial or depressing. I guess I'm just putting in the time to post tonight.

June 1, 2009 (152/365)

I have a dream (the non-sleeping kind). I want to go back in time to the early 90s and go into a busy CompUSA store. There, I tell them to stack up cases of 1 megabyte floppy discs until the accumulated memory equals 32 gigabytes. (I'm guessing that'd be about 75 cases.) Then, amidst the curious stares and whispers, I climb to the top of the piled cases of discs, pull out a 32gb flash drive, hold it high in the air, and declare "this tiny device, which costs only $25, holds as much data as all these discs!" I then smugly leave amidst the furor of gasps and voices raised in shock and disbelief.

Reading that, I really sound like a geek.

May 31, 2009 (151/365)

Do you ever feel like life's pulling a "bait & switch" on you? ...dangling one thing in front of you until you decide to take it, then giving you something you didn't want instead. I feel like I'm at the dangling stage.

May 30, 2009 (150/365)

Dinner, shopping, and light putzing around with K. tonight. I like K., but I always feel like we're not quite clicking on a mental level. It's not about intellect, it's about being in synch. I want to be in synch with her. I also bet she was crazy-fun in her youth. Sorry I missed it.

Hmm. this is starting to smell like the documented minutia of my day. I'm going to have to steer this back onto the road.

May 29, 2009 (149/365)

Sometimes I think I go to movies to live vicariously through the characters in the films. The thought makes me sad. I go to a lot of movies.

May 28, 2009 (148/365)

I hate trying to schedule things with other people. 90% of the time they fall through. Seriously...90% Tonight's plans with 2 people crashed, Saturday's plans have already crashed, and I'm sensing a high probability of crashing for Friday night's plans.

May 27, 2009 (147/365)

Disclaimer: This is my uneducated opinion. I encourage those prone to death threaten to just ignore me.

I'm going to be wildly unpopular in this opinion, but I don't believe that gay couples have a "right" to marry. (Lord, I feel dirty just saying it.) I have absolutely nothing against gays or bisexuals, lord knows I have many friends with those leanings. But my take is that "Marriage" is defined by religion not the political state. (I'm going to use Christianity as the basis for my opinion here since it's the only religion I have any real knowledge of at all.) If the Christian Bible, supposedly the "word of God," states that marriage is between a man and a woman only, that's the end of the matter. No city, state, or country has the ability to overrule the word of God, and no amount of community outcry is likely to get the Big Man to appear and concede (though it would be unprecedentedly cool). I wish this weren't the case, because I believe anyone who seriously wants to should have the right to marry. But my ...nor any of your... desires can't change the facts. God makes the rules. I'm also both amused and appalled at the media and anyone else making the suggestion "Isn't it about time that religion changed to suit the times?" Like it's the decor in the family room that can be refreshed when we're tired of it. Sorry kids, it doesn't work that way.

I'd also like to send out a personal aside to the people of California. You had a giant-ass public vote to decide if gay marriage should be banned, and it was. And then the vote was legally upheld. Twice. Like it or not, I think it's safe to believe that the majority of citizens in CA don't think it should be legal. Y'all can stop shaking your tiny fists in righteous indignation in front of every news camera that will take your picture just because you're not happy with the outcome. You want your gays to be able to marry, change the law, and I'll get right behind you.

May 26, 2009 (146/365)

It's amazing and sad how fast something can drop out of the news. Minnesota cancer kid and his mom resurfaced yesterday. They returned home, weren't arrested, and agreed to get the kid the life-saving chemo they'd denied him. Nothing scandalous or "newsworthy" here. Thus, after leading the headlines like a killer on the loose since they left, they're reduced to a barely-mentioned on the 30 minute news cycle. Yeah, nobody cares about that. Media douchebags.

May 25, 2009 (145/365)

I've been directing my writing energy to game preparations tonight. More productive that way. I'll eventually post some of those writings here.

May 24, 2009 (144/365)

I'm a shitheel. I'm also annoyed that I can't expound on that because I never know if people I'd refer to might find this. Yeah, there are a few people I care to spare their feelings.

May 23, 2009 (143/365)

I feel like a cheap streetcorner whore. ...and not in a good way. Apply your own explanation, I'm tired of whining tonight.

May 22, 2009 (142/365)

Huh. Babies are the latest thing in personal defense. Who knew?

Police: Mom used infant son as shield

Shoplifter throws baby at security guard

May 21, 2009 (141/365)

I read some great writing tonight. I know that somewhere out there in eternity, in one of the infinite dimensional me's writes like that. I don't think I'm too many realities away from that one. The desire is often there, the motivation is occasionally there, and I can feel the ability crammed in the back corner of my head somewhere. As with art, I need to pull all the factors together long enough to produce something good.

May 20, 2009 (140/365)

I'm still in Dysfunctional-Land, and unfortunately, I'm tall enough to enjoy all the rides. Having whipped out that clever snark, I've got little more to say. The oldest is frantically talking to himself while working on L's computer. (I can't tell you how thrillingly on edge that makes me.) The middle remains a cute, lazy leech, unobtrusively sucking all the blood she can get. The youngest is out trying to reclaim bits of the pre-graduation night he got screwed out of. The girl is vacillating between passive-aggressive annoyance and hand-wringing fear.

May 19, 2009 (139/365)

And the studio closes for 3 weeks driving another nail in the coffin of my emotional stability. I'm going to end up strung out on the streets begging people for bits of refuse from their pockets for me to trembling-handedly try to make sculpture from only to have it obliterated, as I'm being dragged off by police, while trying to fire it.

May 18, 2009 (138/365)

Such a stressful day. Bickering... arguments as if it's a contest to see who's right. Over things I don't give a shit about in the first place. The tension spring inside me is winding tight again. Life shouldn't be like this.

May 17, 2009 (137/365)

Sayeth the oldest son: "I must be retarded."

...........I have nothing to add.

May 16, 2009 (136/365)

With Chrysler shutting down so many dealerships, expect a huge influx of people going into politics. What other profession is going to allow encourage those kinds of deceptive business practices?

May 15, 2009 (135/365)

I finally tracked down where my secret girlfriend, Diablo Cody, is posting her daily postulations. I'm as giddy as a schoolboy's pants.

May 14, 2009 (134/365)

Nancy Pelosi is a self serving liar, and I'm ashamed that she tacks "Democrat" to the end of her title. I've watched her tapdance like crazy her entire press conference this morning as well as any corrupt politician could. She's frantically trying to cover her ass over whether or not she "knew water boarding was going on at Guantanimo," and she's denying calling anyone a "liar" while in the same breath calling them exactly that. She's an embarrassment and a black eye on the face of the new administration, and she desperately needs to be replaced.

May 13, 2009 (133/365)

The coming week is going to be a trial for me. Deprived of things I want and inundated with things I don't. Be glad I don't own a gun.

May 12, 2009 (132/365)

I'm thinking of mixing friends again. This should end well. ....again.

May 11, 2009 (131/365)

This whole Miss California thing has sure become an unnecessary mess. It's a non-issue really, and I don't understand why everyone's all up in arms and clucking like hens. My two cents (to use the tired cliche):
-She's entitled to her opinion of gay marriage. Just because it's currently unpopular doesn't mean we get to stone her for it. She was asked how she felt about it and she answered honestly. The fact that the question came from a gay gossip columnist was just baiting. It was just bad taste.
-Whether or not she gets to keep her crown should be pretty cut and dried, and I don't know why there's so much hand-wringing going on about it. To participate, she had to have not posed for any nude photos, and she signed a statement declaring as much. The truth, however, is that she did pose for such photos which (now that they've come to light) she claims were shot to try to get a modeling job with Victoria's Secret. There's nothing wrong with that dear, but they exclude you from the pageant. If you had dreams of becoming Miss California and maybe Miss America, you shouldn't have taken them. End of discussion. No crown for you.

May 10, 2009 (130/365)

Me, who has only nightmares when I sleep, would most of the time rather be asleep than awake. That says something.

May 9, 2009 (129/365)

[erases a bunch of "my life" stuff that isn't important to anyone but me.] V. was the only thing that kept me from feeling like the world was having a good ol' time without me tonight. I hate the growing feeling that I'm orbiting everyone else's lives instead of having people orbit mine. May is turning into a fluid, action packed month. Oh, yay.

May 8, 2009 (128/365)

Just pretend I whined about something and go elsewhere. No one reads this anyway.

May 7, 2009 (127/365)

Typical day-after-comedown-day. I hate them. They make me want to... change my life for the worse. In better news, I wasn't left alone holding the bag at work. I still feel like an idiot.

May 6, 2009 (126/365)

5:00am clause.

May 5, 2009 (125/365)

They're probably not going to be too keen on my "I told you so" regarding making me come in and be functional and accurate at ass:o'clock in the morning.

May 4, 2009 (124/365)

It would be so nice to have someone who was into my art. Not just approving of it or enjoying the result but sincerely interested in the process. Someone who'd want to just watch in amazement while I work. N. used to say she felt that way, but she was never anything more than an online phantom in a nonexistent world.

May 3, 2009 (123/365)

It's so weird and unexpected, after having a nice day at the art show, to have one of those "stare at the wall" nights. Feels like I'm crashing.

May 2, 2009 (122/365)

1/3 the way through the year.

May 1, 2009 (121/365)

I know what people with deadlines are like. They put off and procrastinate until it's too late to actually meet the deadline, then it's the panicked scramble and half-assed rush to get done. This leaves those who count on them meeting that deadline (in today's case, me) swinging in the wind and being danced about cleaning up multiple, spuratically-discovered mistakes that wouldn't have been made if they'd properly managed their time to begin with. And in my case, it's not like these deadlines are an unexpected surprise to them... They come along at regularly spaced, scheduled intervals. If it's just a matter of not having enough time or manpower, that can be dealt with, but that's seldom the case. There's just no excuse for willing incompetence.

April 30, 2009 (120/365)

Did something with L. tonight that I haven't done in a while. I was reminded how much doing it with another L. long ago made me smile.

April 29, 2009 (119/365)

Frightening Realization: It's disturbing that most of the things that keep me stable are things I can't get regularly.

April 28, 2009 (118/365)

Want is a frigid, sadistic bitch, and I'd kick the living piss out of her if I could.

April 27, 2009 (117/365)

You can look at the menu but you just can’t eat
You can feel the cushions but you can’t have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool but you can’t have a swim
You can feel the punishment but you can’t commit the sin
And you want her and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame

No One Is To Blame - Howard Jones

April 26, 2009 (116/365)

I'm inventing a new word/title: Soul-Ally. V. is mine.

April 25, 2009 (115/365)

I've felt like I belonged somewhere else all day, but I don't really know where that might be. It's an "out of place" feeling. Like I'm someone other than who I am. I've been thinking about multiple personality disorder lately and wondering if I might be headed for something like that. I realize it's a detrimental condition, but I wonder sometimes if it might not be nice.

April 24, 2009 (114/365)

Give her red hair, and Ali Larter might make a decent Mary Jane Watson-Parker in the Spider-Man movies. I think my preferred actress is still Charisma Carpenter. Kirsten Dunst is just not good in the role.

April 23, 2009 (113/365)

My carefully planned presentations always degenerate into oral ramblings. I hate it when I do that.

April 22, 2009 (112/365)

It's unsettling and/or unfulfilling to be creative and not like the things you end up making.

April 21, 2009 (111/365)

I wish Z. was right and I could be paid for what I'm best at. It's sexual discrimination really.

April 20, 2009 (110/365)

I love waking you up from your nap. Because in that barely awake, reality-hasn't-sunk-in-yet state, you smile like you're still in love with me. It makes me cry.

April 19, 2009 (109/365)

Last night ended exactly as I feared it would. Road to Hell... good intentions...

April 18, 2009 (108/365)

Having friends who are "users"* is really a drain on my ego. They make more than casual contact only when they need something from me (which I always accommodate), and when getting together is important to me but not them, they bail out at the 11th hour 100% of the time. It's infuriating because it hurts and sad because I consider them my friends and get slapped in the face with the realization that we don't consider each other friends on the same level. Their excuses may be legitimate or not, but because the situation is important to me and not them, they don't bother making preparations/adjustments to their schedules to make it. If I didn't so desperately need people to help me keep my emotional balance, I'd [deletes something unnecessarily rude, instead choosing] just distance myself.

*A user in this respect is not drug related but someone who bases social interaction with others on what they can do for them, essentially, using them. It's not malicious, that's just how they're wired.

April 17, 2009 (107/365)

My fucking psyche.... I've been so beaten down for so long that the mere thought of something good happening to me scares me. When I have mental images of good things happening to me, I flinch like I've been burned. I can't dare allow myself to become hopeful or enjoy the ideas for even a moment. That way lies pain and disappointment. Always.

Pretty fucked up, huh.

April 16, 2009 (106/365)

I can feel myself screaming just below the surface tonight. The impulse is there, but I'm always able to hold it down. Still, I can visualize it and hear it in my head. It's born of frustration. When you stand on railroad tracks, you know you'll eventually get hit by a train.... yet I keep stepping onto the tracks hoping for something good will come of it. Am I crazy?

April 15, 2009 (105/365)

Wow, there's a strong pressure in my ears tonight, and they're ringing. It's off-putting.

No.... no, I've got nothing else tonight.

April 14, 2009 (104/365)

I can feel "bad" nipping at the edges of my psyche again tonight. I think it's because I have so many things I need to get done soon and so many more I want to do (in many cases, want to do instead). I am making a sincere effort on one of those many fronts tonight. I've needed to get this book laid out for too long, but let the little graphic stumbling blocks stall me.

I've also realized in the past couple days that I'm having to sensor what I write here because it's an open blog, and I don't want some people reading some things that may be on my mind. It has the pang of restriction.

March 13, 2009 (103/365)

When those little voices inside your head start talking to you, listen to them. Especially when they tell you to stay home and work, or watch TV, or pick lint out of your navel instead of going to visit someone you'd like to see but who the little voices say will only bring a string of circumstances the likes of which would make the Keystone Cops cringe in disbelief.

Lesson learned, little voice, lesson learned.

April 12, 2009 (102/365)

I realized something today. I dread holidays... with a neck-sweat-trickling passion. And it's because on the holidays I'm expected to trek the 3.5 hours downstate to visit my family. Today was once again time for the reaffirming that I'm the disappointing freak of the family. ... the misguided son ...the irresponsible sibling ...the useless father. They never really say it, but it's written on their faces and between the lines of their smalltalk.

I used to like holidays.

April 11, 2009 (101/365)

Special circumstances here. I was out til 3:00am and had to get up at 7:00am. No writey.

April 10, 2009 (100/365)

I'm really not handling late nights very well.

April 9, 2009 (99/365)

Tomorrow will be my first day back at the magazine since they quartered my hours (same as all the other "casual" workers, except the 4 unlucky bastards who got canned). It's a little like going to a social function that you know a freshly-ex'ed girlfriend is going to be at. Uncomfortable. Not that I didn't know this was coming. Even before the sales department started coming up short, I realized this was a print publication and was therefore 99% likely to be doomed. (In the roshambo of publishing, Internet beats Paper.) The Powers That Be have, unfortunately, hastened its demise by not fully understanding what it is they're printing. If this were any other magazine, what they did would make financial sense. They cut production from biweekly to roughly monthly or even bimonthly. The detail not fully appreciated is the fact that this is a nursing placement magazine (interspersed with light articles) instead of some normal special interest-rag. No hospital nor doctor's office is going to want to pay to run an ad that no one's going to see for a month when they have an open job now. Counter-intuitive as it might sound, what they needed to do was bump the book to a weekly, print one national issue (they currently print a dozen regional versions), lower the price of ads, and pump the fact that we're showing more ads more often now. Did they consult me? No. If they had, I'd have grown the largest, brassiest pair of balls in the house... I'd have told them to publish more, not less, and that they needed to pay me more for my scintillating insights.

April 8, 2009 (98/365)

Watched some old episodes of Pushing Daisies tonight. It continues to amaze and infuriate me over how the American TV-watching audience shuns quality programming in favor of what they've seen a million times. Pushing Daisies was one of the most brilliant shows I've ever seen on TV. It was equally hailed by "critics," yet the average TV watching zombie didn't take the time to "get it," viewership quickly sank, and the network got nervous and killed it even before all their finished episodes had aired. They're finally showing the last 3 episodes this summer.... on Saturdays at 9pm. There is no worse air time. Insult to injury. The same thing is now happening to the new show, Kings, which is also fresh, interesting, and well made.... everything viewers fear. They'd rather have season 105 of Law & Order: Creative Intent or the inexplicably bad but intellectually unthreatening Knight Rider.

I deeply, deeply hate you people.

April 7, 2009 (97/365)

I'm a little sick and tired of the forced balancing of my life. I've endured it for as long as I can remember. Whenever something good happens in my life, something equally bad has to follow it up almost immediately. I had such good things happening around me a few days ago, and today it's time to pay the piper. I fucking hate you, Fate. If you had physical embodiment, I'd kick your fucking teeth in.

April 6, 2009 (96/365)

Classic "bad thing" about depression: A day like today when everyone around me is happy and being nice to me, and I'm still down and can barely motivate myself to leave the house. Days like today, I miss out on life.

Depression... whine... blah blah blah. Days like today I actually hope no one reads this blog.

April 5, 2009 (95/365)

It saddened me today to realize that everything in the world boils down to money (et al). Courts place a dollar value on "pain and suffering." Cigarette and pharmaceutical companies use the estimated payout in court of lives lost through their products when determining if a product is profitable to produce. This all came to mind, while watching a show about WWII, from a simple urge to express thanks to war veterans and the realization that personal gratitude carries no value any more. Much like a person's promise or sworn oath, it has no meaning any more.

Fuck you, you greedy, unscrupulous world.

April 4, 2009 (94/365)

I'm evoking the "didn't get home til 5am" clause.

April 3, 2009 (93/365)

I promised no minutia of my life, so I'll keep this brief. Layoffs at work today. My hours quartered. I'm not much in the mood to write. In fact I'm not sure I'm in the mood to continue this blog. We'll see.

April 2, 2009 (92/365)

Work was overwhelming. Didn't bother writing.

April 1, 2009 (91/365)

Sign me up for a Stepford wife. I want that perfect, custom-made girl, and no one's enough for me tonight. It's not their fault, I'm just a whiny fuck. I'm also tired of being a whiny fuck. I'm tired of writing here night after night about my negative feelings. ...oh, poor me.

March 31, 2009 (90/365)

This just in: People are strange. I wish I was of a better frame of mind to appreciate it.

March 30, 2009 (89/365)

Tried to explain to K. tonight what happened to me on Friday and why it's effected me the way it has. I don't think I was able to make him understand, maybe because I'm not sure I fully understand it myself. He applied the same logic that I tried to, but it just doesn't fix anything. All I know is that I'm not going to be able to just "get back to normal." I'm changed. I'll either evolve into someone I haven't been, or I can try to be what I was. But if I go that route, knowing what I know... having experienced what I have, the "old me" will be damaged inside. The story of Pandora probably applies here, but her box wasn't opened by accident.

March 29, 2009 (88/365)

2 days out from the "big awakening" and I'm still fucked up. Part of my brain is trying to push my psyche back to the way it used to be. The other part is telling me how naive and pointless that is. I feel insignificant and ineffective, and I wonder if I need to change myself fundamentally to be the person I want... the person I thought I was. I just don't want to feel like I did Friday night again.

March 28, 2009 (87/365)

Post-traumatic stress. What am I supposed to be?

March 27, (86/365)

Just the right combination of emotional switches inside my head and circumstances outside my head tripped last night and I'm traumatized. I feel ridiculous and fake. People who probably know better would tell me I shouldn't, but I do. I thought I was just climbing out of a social hole; if this fucks that up, I'm going to be pissed.

March 26, 2009 (85/365)

I forgot what I was going to write about tonight. Dammit.

The studio closes for 10 days for spring break starting tomorrow. Someone needs to take away my shoelaces.

March 25, 2009 (84/365) 2

AIG buzzkill claims first victim.

Jake DeSantis, an executive VP at AIG whines that he's being causelessly villified and is taking his ball and bat (and giant paycheck) and going home. With the party over, all the cheese puffs eaten, hookers passed out on the living room rug, mom's good china broken, and the cops banging on the door, it seems like the job is just no fun any more. Poor guy. Well, at least he'll get one last giant tax write-off since he's giving his own personal $750,000 bonus to charity.

Um, no. We'll be wanting that back, thanks.

Douchebag.

March 25, 2009 (84/365)

Good Idea/Bad Idea.
Good idea: Commercial glass installer wants to drum up repeat business.
Bad idea: Doing it by driving by the customers' stores at night and throwing rocks through their windows.
(The sad details.)
On an intellectually-similar note, two girls in the studio last night were trying to decide if the Great Depression happened during the 60's or the 70's.

Bleach for the gene pool, stat!

March 24, 2009 (83/365)

Pictures are of unusual importance to me lately. The photo shoot with V. turned out quite well and made her happy. And tonight L. sent me pictures of my work with her on Saturday which made me quite happy. (Her too, I'm pleased to say.)

March 23, (82/365)

I'm so fucking jealous of V. and Z. I could cry. They're perfect for each other. They live life. Life lives me. No, I'm not making any sense. That's probably for the best.

March 22, 2009 (81/365)

Line for a future poem:

She's a playground, and I have skinned knees.

March 21, 2009 (80/365)

ok, I get one other caviate: I'm also not going to post if I don't get home til 6:00 am.

....Christ, I'm too old for that shit.

March 20, 2009 (79/365)

I'm a paradox. I'm a bad person who cares too much about other people. I want things. And there are things that I would do if I were alone in the world, yet I don't do them because of the caring for others. I end up angry either way.

March 19, 2009 (78/365)

A brief visual:

Young children, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, crying hysterically, as helpless children do. They would tug at your heartstrings.... if they weren't also frantically tearing someone apart like frenzied sharks.

I creeped myself out.

March 18, 2009 (77/365)

(I would have posted this last night but couldn't figure out for the life of me why the page wouldn't load. I thought there was a problem with my cable connection. This morning I remembered I'd turned off my javascript last night thinking it was interfering with some pages I was looking at. I forgot to turn it back on. Dopey me.)


Nancy Grace and her ilk are pissing me off. She's not a reporter or even a news anchor, she's a grandstanding sensationmonger. She spends hours ...hours... on the biggest news network in the world, harping on the minutia of the latest hot child abduction case. She trots out any tiny detail, legitimate or solid as smoke, and shoves it under the magnifying glass of the cameras until it appears crucially important. It's not just the media sensationalism that grinds my gears (we've been barely-tolerating that since Geraldo Revera crawled from the slime), it's that she, and all the others like her, seem driven to "break the case." Like it's her job to investigate ongoing cases above and beyond the proper authorities. She rails like a televangelist at how the authorities aren't jumping at the same shadows she is. While poor, poor little [insert name of currently missing child here] goes unfound or unavenged. Well she'll step up and champion that child because, obviously, no one else is.

These are headlines from her CNN-hosted web page today:
-"Breaking details in the Caylee murder case: Prosecutors release e-mails and videos to the tot mom's defense team. What evidence do they hold? Will these videos be released to the media? Nancy Grace has the latest developments at 8 & 10 P.M. ET."
-"LATEST: 7 PM ET - WESH is reporting the owner of the land where Caylee Anthony's remains were discovered [has put it up for sale.]."

In a similar vein, Headline New's afternoon host, Mike Galanos, yesterday announced that they would interview some politician or corporate board member and "get a confession out of them." For these people it's not about news any more, it's about breaking the case. Listen you delusional, self-important windbags, let's leave the investigating to the people who should be doing it and get back to reporting the news instead of trying to make it.

And unless Nancy Grace feels like going to the training academy and joining the FBI she needs to leave the "investigating" to the professionals and devote her efforts to something more suitable to her obvious skills, like shilling products on the Home Shopping Network.

March 17, 2009 (76/365)

Was out very late enjoying "chaos day" with V. and her friends. Saw her new house. Got to exercise skills I haven't used in a year. Boy did that feel good.

Tired. Bed.

March 16, 2009 (75/365)

I wish I didn't have a headache tonight, I'd feel like writing more. I'm going to devote what little capacity I have left tonight to making notes for the Champions game reboot. No, I don't expect anyone to know what that means.

March 15, 2009 (74/365)

J. got a wake up call this year, and I'd probably feel bad for her if I wasn't the alarm clock. One year ago last Christmas, she was in the hospital with a fairly serious, weight-related condition. I supported her, encouraged, helped directly where I could, and played cheerleader. To no avail. She didn't care enough to make the necessary changes. (Sure she "cared," but her weight didn't change significantly. So draw your own conclusions.) One year later (this past Christmas) she was back in the hospital with related ailments, this time even more severe. This time, after another month in the hospital, she's taken aback by my standoffishness. I have a hard enough time bringing myself to take action without being slapped in the face by the feelings of futility and pointlessness. For Christ's sake, her life is threatened because she can't drum up enough motivation to lose weight. Why should I try harder than she's willing to... again. If I can't motivate her enough to fix her life, she needs to find someone who can. .....or let herself continue deteriorating due to "fear" and ambivalence. Just don't be mad at me for my lack of enthusiasm.

And thus I take one more step towards complete isolation.

March 14, 2009 (73/365)

I've been sorting through the gigantic mess of my music files. Music has always been unusually significant to me. I associate almost every song with a particular time or situation and more often than not they conjure up feelings and emotions from that time/place. Many of them... from happier times... make me feel good. If I was smart (and felt like slogging through literally thousands of songs), I'd collect all of those to use as some kind of music therapy.

March 13, 2009 (72/365)

I have a tendency to put off writing these pearls of wisdom until very late when I'm too tired to remember anything profound that I thought of earlier in the day. This is such a day.

March 12, 2009 (71/365)

I'm getting petty in my old age. I wanted to rain self-righteous vengeance down on some no-name student douchebag in the studio tonight the likes of which would make the authors of the Bible crap their pants. Not that the assbasket didn't deserve it, but I would have gone waaaay across some personal boundaries just to make myself feel better.

Fuck, it would have felt good for about two and a half seconds.

March 11, 2009 (70/365)

It feels really pointless saying this, but I'm in a weird place tonight. While, in typical depression-induced fashion, I've gotten absolutely nothing accomplished today, I've made attempts tonight to organize my thoughts in hopes of pushing forward towards.... something. Over the years I've compiled quite a long list of writing ideas. I look at them every days ...the bits and pieces of novels or short stories or scripts... in the hopes another piece of one will fall out of my foggy brain. There's some excellent and original concepts here. I've also just put the old 80's flick, Into The Night, in the DVD player like I used to back when I wrote into the wee hours of the night. The whole evening feels like I've laid all the ingredients for a cake out on the table, looked at them, and said to them, "ok, go!" I feel like, in my own dysfunctional way though, I am trying.

Oh, and the WebMD page for Wellbutrin sits there and sings to me like a Siren, promising me the answers to all my troubles.

March 10, 2009 (69/365)

L. is such a good girl. She works so hard, for long hours, and without complaint. Saving lives is a normal part of her daily work routine, and I can't imagine doing the things she does, but she's one of the best in the world at it. Most people have a gift for something ... a knack, a natural talent for it... whatever you want to call it. Most spend their lives looking for it. She's found hers. She makes me proud every day. At home, she works diligently, and even though she makes mistakes sometimes, she always has me in mind. We've had our rough spots now and then but always work through them. Even so, we're frequently out of synch these days. It makes me unhappy. I've grown more worried lately that I'm not good enough, and that's a dangerous mental place to be. I want to do something to make her life better, but right now I can't think of anything except removing me from it ...and she's made it very clear she believes that would not make it better. I disagree, but I would never put her through such pain. Still, I wish I could do something for her.

March 9, 2009 (68/365)

How in the world did I end up being in a family again? I mean it in the traditional sense: husband, wife, children. Of course, L. and I aren't married, and her children are not my own; but all of us hopping in the car to go to dinner... and my having to step in when little J. isn't getting the point his mother is trying to make gives me the creeps. I know for everyone else out there, "family" is a warm fuzzy thing that makes them happy. That's not how I feel about it. (Or maybe it's that I consider other people my "family" ...the ones I feel that comfort with... and not the people I'm related to.) I'm a terrible family member and a terrible parent. I'm not at all comfortable being in that role (as history has certainly proven). I've gone out of my way in life (an understatement) to protect others from this shortcoming in myself. Yet here I am and have been for years.

March 8, 2009 (67/365)

Depression is inconvenient. Even so, I'm apparently not going to do anything about it, since every medication causes reduced sexual interest.

....and I'm not going to stand for that. [cue rimshot]

March 7, 2009 (66/365)

Saw Watchmen today. Really liked it. As with any movie-izing of a novel, a lot of stuff got left on the floor, including the specifics of the endings, though it remains intact in concept (for reasons I think I agree with). Another surprise is the realization of the serious amount of coin they must have paid the Motion Picture Association of America to get that R rating because, seriously, that thing's WAY into NC17-land. Aside form Dr. Manhattan's glowing blue bits hanging out all over the place, there's a fairly graphic sex scene as well as extremely graphic splodey-people.

All that said, be prepared for the world to declare it a disappointment though. Anyone going in who hasn't read the novels (ie, 90% of the movie's audience) are going in expecting to see a sooperheero movie and are going to be angrily disappointed by the lack of action-packing. It's a fucking drama about costumed vigilantes, you assholes. You want mindless action, go rent X-men 3 again.

March 6, 2009 (65/365)

I talk to myself all the time. Looking at this blog, which no one else reads (and seriously, who would?), I think maybe the only thing more pathetic would be writing to myself. If this o pinion doesn't change, I'm going to stop doing this. I blogged before, you know, a few years ago. The only one or two people who read it, I talked to regularly anyway so decided to give up the blog. Pathetic as it was, I had more of a reason to write then... why in the world would I continue now?

March 5, 2009 (64/365)

Another late production night. I'm tired. I wish I had something interesting to say, but I don't. I'm sadly bemused by the people who display such surprise/panic/disbelief that our print magazine is generating less and less income. 99% of all print periodicals will be down the shitter in the next several years, and a nursing placement rag certainly isn't going to make the cut. It effects me, of course, and I'm sad to see it happen, but I at least know what that oncoming light is while I stand on these railroad tracks.

March 4, 2009 (63/365)

Dinner with K. tonight. He's writing a book on how to write screenplays for Hollywood. We talked at length on the content and theory of the book and the nature of screenwriting. It wasn't combative nor cooperative, but my role was providing perspective and alternate theories to explore. I could tell I was making him consider what it was he was writing rather than just assume he had it right the first time. (He may or may not have, but now he's thinking about it.) It reminded me very much of my days as a roleplaying game editor. It was a fulfilling feeling and made me realize I miss that job terribly. It's a shame the bottom dropped out of the gaming industry years ago. The circumstances at that time were ideal, of course, but I think I'd enjoy getting back into it. I also wonder if there's a market out there for a "writing assistant" ... not a co-writer or post-writing editor, but someone to keep a writer in check during the writing process.

March 3, 2009 (62/365)

Posting late. This falls under the clause of "unable to post" as the cable was out yesterday.

It wouldn't have been a very nice post last night anyway. I was foot-stompin' mad at the studio's student aides, who decided to move a piece I'd loaded into the bisque kiln myself. I put it in the kiln myself because the glaze treatment was delicate, and I didn't want some bonehead running his grubby fingers all over the surface of it and fucking it up. ....which is exactly what they did. Now the surface is ruined and had to be taken off completely, and I don't know if it's even possible to reapply it.

Goddammit.

March 2, 2009 (61/365)

Introspection: I was listening to 80s music tonight, and it reminded me there was a time when I didn't have depression. 19 years of nightmares aside, I've only been depressed for about 8 or 9 years now. My personal philosophy has always been "if my body can't take care of itself, it deserves what it gets." It's kept me away from doctors for about 40 years. It's also been a fairly successful philosophy. Tonight I weakened. Tonight I'm almost ready to get help, and I feel guilty for that... and it makes me feel a little like a failure. But I'm just so tired of it. It also dawned on me that the philosophy might not be the only thing that's kept me from seeking help. I think it's possible that I may sometimes use the depression as an excuse to not accomplish some things that I really do want to but am afraid to face (or face the results of). If I were to suddenly lose the depression, I'd lose the excuse.

March 1, 2009 (60/365)

R. came over tonight, and conversation turned (as it always does) to how we should have our own television network. Granted, our ideas are unorthodox but they're also groundbreaking. And with TV viewership gradually dropping off every year, our plan would help shore up the industry. The networks would benefit from listening to us. Sadly, of course, no network will ever hear us let alone listen to us. Just let it be known that we have a plan.

February 28, 2009 (59/365)

Courtesy and honor are dead, and I mourn them every time I go out in public. I think we should change our name to The Entitled States of America. I swear, almost every person in this entire country apparently feels they have the right to be aggressive, rude, and discourteous. It's ok for them to suddenly change lanes in front of you without warning as long as they make sure you have time to hit the brakes without hitting them. The sidewalks and store isles are theirs and their mewling crotchfruit's and doddering senile elderlumps' to fill from side to side as they meander oblivious to the fact that other people would like to walk past them. Jumping in line is ok as long as it gets you your Jujubees a whole 45 seconds before the 2 people you would have had to wait for had you gone to the end of the line (and we won't even talk about long lines that some people may have waited hours in).

In the 20 minutes it takes me to get from inside my nice, safe house to the isle I need in the store, I've gone from being in a decent mood to filled with enough righteous rage to belt some clueless fucktard in the face. It makes me feel like I have only 2 options in life: Never leave my house again, or get myself an automatic weapon and start rebalancing society one exploding head at a time.

goddammitIhatepeople.