year end list making mania

i just got back from the movie theater with my uncle. we saw vanilla sky. so so painful - two plus hours that went by so slowly. this movie is so bad news. lamest plot in the motherfucking world

and since it is the end of the year - that time for looking back and making lists, i present the stinkiest movies of 2001:
5. american pie 2
4. vanilla sky
3. rat race
2. AI
1. planet of the apes

i've seen so many stinkers this year. my end of summer daily routine was to steal some wine with bonnie, sneak into hollywood 20, get drunk, and watch movie after movie. and since hollywood 20 does not always play the best cinema, i have seen so so many horrible movies this year. why are so many stinkers produced and distributed -- how does all this crap get released?

and since it is end of year listmaking time and all, i guess i should also list my favorite movies of the year; the ones that weren't total crap:
5. ghost world
4. moulin rouge
3. the royal tenenbaums
2. amelie
1. mullholand drive

and inspired by oneblackbird's wrap-up of her year, i thought for my own sake i would do the same since the year seems like a big blur, where nothing at all happened. this is for my own benefit to prove to myself that i did not sleep and drink my way through all of 2001 - that it did have its moments.

jan- dort room floods, end up living in the dort lounge with six other people for a month, and it turns out to be my favorite and most fun living situation ever.

feb- i hooked up with a boy for the last time.

mar- i fall in love with paul outka and walt whitman, and decide i should be a lit. major

apr- okay, maybe some parts of the year were nothing but a blur of drunken nights

may- i did meat beat. i walked on stilts in shane's circus, which was fun cause i got to practice at the hot boys house and play with lindsey montanna and becky. so many people i looked up to in a you're the fucking shit way, graduated or planned to depart sarasota: maggie, kim, gabe, jeff, cody, and of course the montanna sisters

june- i had a birthday, and i fell in love with eastern market. worked at an organic market, did some telemarketing, and learned the difference between a cucumber and a zuchinni. oh, and i masturbated on tape for pay, and was supposed to do a sex video, but it never happened.

july- i went to wet, a gay male strip club, with my best friend from high school. fell in love with virginia summers.

august- drive down to fl, move into house, fall in love with arbor mist and begin the aforementioned drunken stupor of a month. me and bonnie go on stealing sprees - looting albies, publix, pier 1, barnes and noble, etc.

sept- a plane crashed into the pentagon, i cried and screamed, thinking that my mom had died. she didn't.

oct- i get me and bonnie banned from barnes and noble for making false returns. i decide i hate new college, and need to get away for a while and decide to go to ny for spring semester.

nov- i took lots of naked pics of people for lush.

dec- i became way too obsessed with cute first year mark, failed to make out with him, and then i packed up all my shit, drove home to va, failed to gain employment, and watched way too many bad movies on cable. oh, and at the end of december i was real derivative and made a recapping of my year list.

and be sure to tune in for tomorrow's installment of the trite diaries: my new year's resolutions

the relatives have arrived

i had wrote about a paragraph about the calm before the storm. but just erased it, the storm has just sort of started. i was going on about how i was savoring these last moments of solitude before my relatives got here. but the first wave just came in the door. my mom and sister left to pick up the back end of the storm. and they are going to be here for another week or so.

but they have arrived. and screaming children now abound. it may be a while before i post again.

i am without a bed for about a week, resigned to sleep on the floor with the rest of my cousins. that is what i will miss the most, is my method of escape is no longer an option. i can longer flee to my room to escape the madness.

becky, rebecca, and i vs. the snotty shoe salesman

today started at eight goddamn thirty in the morning. i woke up after about four hours of sleep, so that i could drive my dad back out to manasas with my mom. fucking shit, how do i not realize when i go to bed and still have my contacts in? i peeled the contacts off of my pained eyeballs as soon as i woke up. everything was foggy, especially lamps, and my eyes were in such pain. after i got out of the shower, my vision had still yet to revert to its normal non-blurred state. i put on my glasses, put some food in my belly, and set off for manasas driving my dad in his car as my mom followed in the minivan. my dad kept nodding off throughout the drive, but would wake up to scream, "charlie, watch out," as he made that suction noise with his mouth that people make when they are the passenger and the driver keeps on almost hitting the car ahead of them. and the reason, that there were these incidents of almost ramming cars, is not because i'm a bad driver (okay, well maybe) but i could not see so great. my eyes were still in extreme pain. aisde from his hisses at our occasional near collisions, the drive was super pretty. the drive was through areas that were not overdevloped and had tons of open space and trees and the occasional farm, and it so made me wish i lived there so i could run around in the woods all day.

we dropped my dad and his car off, and then it was my turn to be the passenger. riding in my mom's minivan, spacing out, daydreaming about how cool it would be to be a farmer. i then got home and there was a message from becky with a return number this time. i was so excited, i kicked my sister offline and called becky. she was in maryland visiting relatives, and so we decided to meet halfway in dc at the mall. we met at the moonrock in the air and space museum. air and space was so insane and wild. i was waiting for becky to arrive at the moonrock and i must have been pushed out of the way at least ten times by huge scary throngs of tourists and loud children. becky finally arrived. it was only about a five minute wait, but it felt so long with all the hecticness surrouding me. and i was somewhat sick and definitly tired from my lack of sleep, and so the dynamic energy surrounding me was somewhat overwhelming. she showed up, we touched the moonrock, and made our way to the national gallery.

i hate having to entertain people that come to visit dc. that is probably, without a doubt, my least favorite thing to do. i am so bad at it, and people always expect me to show them an exciting time. i may live right outside dc, but my social activities consist of going to multiplexes and eating at suburban denny's and ihop's. it's especially frustrating trying to entertain people who, when asked, "okay so what do you want to do in dc?" respond, "i don't know, what to do you want to do?" motherfuck, you're the one that is visiting this city, i have seen everything eight thousand times and then some, don't ask me what i want to do, for the love of god, motherfucking answer the question!

but, this is the converstaion, becky and i had for way too long today:
-so, what do you want to do?
-i don't know. what do you want to do?
-i don't know. what do you want to do?

ad infinitum, with the occasional pause for the repsondant to ponder the question before regurgitating it yet again.

the national gallery was not all that fun. for some reason, i can never really have a meaningful experience at an art museum when i go with someone else. i love going by myself to museums so i can just stroll around and sit in rooms forever, and rush through other rooms that just seem blah. i went to the museums all the time over the summer, i would hike across dc from my job in eastern market when i got off work, eat some of the food i yanked from work, and wander around the nat'l gallery and hirshorn for hours and hours. but, whenever i go with someone else to an art museum it just turns into this awful, elaborate charade, wherein i pretend to be looking at the painting. oh wait, don't leave this one yet. stand and stare just a little longer. okay, on to the next one. oh, now stand in front of this one, put some serious look on your face. you do not want to look like a philistine. okay, that was a good amount of staring time right there.

and it was even more of a charade because becky did not seem interested at all, and was doing the exact same thing. and she very obviously did not want to be doing the tourist thing wandering around museums -- she wanted me to take her around and do fun city things. but guess what, i am big loser and do not do fun city things. i do fun sit on my ass at home things.

becky, bored with my company, asks me where rebecca is. what's she doing? i take the hint, and get excited because rebecca will be just as bad with ideas as me. and, i don't know why i didn't think to call her earlier. but we call rebecca, and tell her to meet us at kramerbooks in dupont circle.

so, we get there way before her, and wander around doing the same pretend to be thinking act that we had done in the art museum. we picked up books we had no interest in reading, read the back covers, and talked to each other about nonsense. we sat down in the cafe, finally too bored waiting for rebecca, and were about to resign ourselves to order food when, oh thank god, rebecca arrives.

rebecca used her magical ability that she has to infect other people with her abundant, positive energy (which unsurprising pointed out), and both me and becky perked up a lot, got exicited, decided to leave kramerbooks and fast. we wandered down conneticut ave., becky now shifting to rebecca with her "so, what do you want to do?" line of questioning. rebecca played the exact same role i had played two hours earlier, saying "i don't know, you're the one visiting, what do you want to do?" are you getting tired of hearing that, yet? imagine how tired i was of it, and yet we still had no plan of action.

so, we stop in "the other corportate coffee chain," xando, and at first are worried because there are no open tables. there was a heated porch area that no one was sitting in, but the chairs were not big and plushy. so becky thought we should just move some of the big plushy chairs out on the porch. i did not think this was such a good idea. the place is filled with uptight, hot gay men, and old, serious seeming couples. so, i fled to the other side of the store as rebecca and becky started to move one of the chairs. however, they cowered quickly as some old lady gave them an i-may-be-sixty-but-i'm-gonna-kick-yo'-ass stare. and then, magically there was a table open with big plushy chairs. we sat in the big plushy chairs, drank coffee, and gossiped for a good good while.

during this gossip session, i kept checking out the guys in xando and feeling so so inadequate. this was definitly not the new college bar of hotness. this was the real world bar of hotness, and these guys were so motherfucking hot. at new college, i think jeffery and andrew (somewhat) are super hot gay boys. but then, i go to dupont and see super hot not boys. super hot men. i was in people watching heaven at xando.

anyways, after xando, guess what converstaion we had again? i'm going to assume you're reasonably intelligent and guessed correctly and spare you another rehash of the conversation. anyways, we aruged about what to do until we decided to go see a movie. as we're walking to the movie theater, becky decides to stop in this gay male shoe store, for what reason i do not know. it's this little snobby boutique type store and the salesman just stood in the store with his arms crossed just looking straight ahead, like do not dare come into my shoe store. he was your bitchy self-absorbed gay male stereotype. becky asked how much a pair of shoes was. cross-armed, still looking straight ahead, he responds:
-blah blah blah forty.
-forty?
-one four-tee, said so snotty in a way that annunciated every syllable for becky's deaf ears.

he was super dickhead, and we left the store and trash talked him and conspired evil things to do to him. we get to the theater and the movie starts at 6:30. it is about five, so we have an hour and half to kill.

yep, the what do you want to do conversation reared its head again, and we thought we'd escape the cold and snotty gay shoe salesmen and go to olsson's bookstore. we wandered around inside the store for a good forever, me and rebecca bored silly after half an hour, and we wanted to leave to walk around. becky is cold and protests. we veto by leaving her in the store, to follow us out, putting the discussion to an end.

we pass an office building with one of those circular, swirly doors where you push your way in. (does anyone know what type of door this is? i know there's a term for it, and it is driving me crazy.) so we pushed ourselves around in this door, going around in circles as a security guard sat in the lobby. we then decided to make it a little more fun, and i held tight on to the door once i was outside, making becky stuck in the circle, in between the outside and the inside. then i let free of my hold on the door and becky escaped. then i went through the circle door and rebecca tried to lock me in, but i had already gotten halfway outside the door. then this is where the real trouble starts. me and becky go through together and rebecca tries to lock us both in pushing the door in front of us towards us, and we were trying to get out, pushing our door away from us, towards her. well, the two doors broke, no longer at a ninety degree angle from each other, instead they are pressing against each other. me and becky, fearful for our very lives, push out with all of our might. and the three of us hightail it down the street, so so worried that the security guard is going to chase us and arrest us.

a couple of blocks away from the scene of the crime, we start walking, and are feeling safe enough to laugh wildly about the broken door. made giddy by our destruction, our inadvertent act of domestic terrorism, we release a stream of succesive laughs into the chilly air, interuppted only by the occasional proud rehashing of our act to each other. ha-ha's hurled at the frosty air. come on cold, we'll kick your ass with the warmth of our laughter. a battle of sorts. next day headline reading: cold ko'ed by laughter in first round. it was that wonderful laughter that is unstoppable, emitting from deep within the belly - the type you almost choke on. and it's just a so so pure emotive release. so more pure than any other expressed emotion. with a total disregard for inhibitons. just a wild laughter to express a joyous state. no no no. not to express the joyous state. the laughter is the joyous state. there is no mediating force. just pure gut.

anyways, still with a half hour or so to kill before the movie starts, we go to yet another bookstore: books a million. this bookstore, the huge corporate one, was the best yet, because it had big comfy chairs to lounge in, and because we could steal from it since it was not a local independent. we plopped down in the chairs by the magazines, reading through all the newest glossies. becky found some brad pitt stickers in teen cosmo or something, how fucking cool is that? these stickers are so groovy. they're all these pictures of brad, and one of the stickers (one which i put on my shoe) says "i love brad" in this really cool retro font.

and this month's flaunt comes with a little baggie of buttons. one says flaunt. one says diesel (the lame button). and the other one is a motherfucking button with brad pitt on it. dude, it is the coolest button ever. we each yanked a bag of buttons and wore our brad button as we made our way to the movie theater. we get there at 6:15 all excited, go up to the window to buy tickets, and are told:

-one ticket for the 7:30 showing, is that it?
-no, no. we want tickets to the 6:30.
-that show's sold out, would you like tickets to the 7:30?
-yeah (said very fatalistically)

so, we were back to that same conversation again, and kicking ourselves for not buying tickets when we were at the theater earlier to check the showtimes. but we wander around dupont again, passing the snotty shoe saleman, and decide that it is time to inflict trauma. so, we decide we are going to stare him down, imitating him in front of the store's glass windows with our arms crossed and just looking very snotty.

we're appoaching the shoe store. we keep approaching it. we're walking in front of it. we are walking past it.

we all chickend out at first, but we turn around and me and rebecca stare into the store, i quickly turn around, very scared about the shoe dude's possible reaction and instead stare at rebecca as she attempts to stare at shoe dude. but she keeps laughing, and we continue our staring game for a while, but he goes into the back of the store and fails to even notice our antics. with time to kill and feeling freezing cold we duck into yet another bookstore. the more things change, the more things stay the same. right back to square one: we spend a half hour or so wandering around kramerbooks. becky asks the time. 7:17. so, we bolt to the theater, take our seats, and watch the royal tanenbaums, which was very decent, so much better than anderson's earlier two films (of which, i was not such a big fan). but this movie was really on point, and yeah yeah ha-ha good deep from the belly type funny in parts. and it had bill murray, even though it was just a tiny, dramatic role -- bill murray is definitly one of my favorite actors -- he's so fucking yee-hah. plus the soundtrack was all these awesome folk songs, and so it was defintily one of the better movies i have seen this year.

we then boarded the metro, worn out from the cold, the bookstores, the what do you want to do conversations, and snotty shoe salesmen. we all rode together until metro center, at which point becky continued on the red line. me and rebecca hugged becky good-bye, and waited for our transfers. we talked some more while waiting, deciding that we are going to try to get jobs at pirg. rebecca's going to call tomorrow. i showed off my brad pitt sticker to her some more. and then my yellow line to huntington came. i said bye to rebecca as she waited for her train to come. i boarded the metro very happy, thinking about what a good day it had been, and started petting my brad pitt sticker to entertain myself on the metro ride home.

oswald was a patsy

for the past few days, my throat has been getting closer and closer to sickness. i can feel it coming, and have been doing everything possible to prevent it. taking echinacea, vitamin c, cough syrup, and whatnot. it's going to hit, though, it still feels somewhat yucky. and it feels especially yucky when i first wake up. i so don't want to get sick, but i'm about to resign myself to it, so that that way i can get sick, and then get better, instead of prolonging this just being almost on the verge of sick, with a slightly yucky throat, forever.

today, after waking up feeling yucky, i went on a little consumerist outing to hunt for good after christmas specials at ikea with my mom and sister. i got some fun stuff to bring to ny, but wandering through ikea, i kept on being like fuck shit, i left that in florida. oh, and that too. i left a really fun quilt in florida. but, i bought this really cool four foot tall candle holder for only ten bucks. me and bonnie had been looking for one in fl, but they were all like fifty bucks or some insane price. and buying that, made me realize that i should have yanked a few candles from our fl house, since we stole like eight million. i think the only thing that i did remember to bring home from fl is this super fancy wine opener that i stole from williams-sonoma. (sorry bonnie, i brought it home with me, if you hadn't already noticed).

we then waited in line with our swedish furniture products for seriously about an hour, which was soo painful. i hate having to wait in lines. we then left for home, and 95 south was at a complete standstill, so we spent another good hour on 95, which normally would have been beyond painful, but was bearable and even enjoyable today since it was right when the sun was setting, and everything was looking like king midas had been there. the sun was at that point on the horizion where everything takes on that mellow gold color. so i stared at the golden pines as we slowly crawled by them, and sang along to all the songs on 107.3, my mom's adult contemporary station that was on.

i then came back from ikea and checked our voicemail. a message from becky!!! "charlie q. this is becky. i'm in dc. i don't know the number here. i'll call you back." i was sort of excited about seeing becky, but also sort of annoyed because it seems a little too becky for her to not warn me that she's coming but to just call. anyways, bo-bo becky did not call be back, and so i plowed through some more of the odyssey, ate some tomato soup, and am now about to start watching jfk, which is one of my favorite movies that i watch all the time. this movie has made me such a conspiracy nut about everything, i won't even go into all my theories here, since there is no way to say them without sounding paranoid. but anyways, the movie's red hot. oliver stone is so the man.

then after reinforcing my conspiracy theories, i'll have to go nighty night since i have to wake up at eight fucking o'clock in the morning to drive my dad back out to manasas with my mom. he can't drive himself because he can not stay awake for ten minutes without nodding off.

tsk is no saint nick

i just finished watching sixteen candles, which has made me feel so so good and makes me want a cute boy to smooch like jake. my sister got the movie for x-mas, and i was far more excited than she was because i had just been thinking about going to blockbuster to rent a bunch of john hughes movies. this one i had never seen for some reason because whenever i go to blockbuster with a hankering for an eighties movie, i always end up renting pretty in pink or better off dead. and this one's pretty damn good, except its so so not pc. there are all these horrible asian jokes in the movie. an exchange student is called a chinaman and his motherfucking name is dumb duck dong or something real offensive. and in addition, a gong is played whenever he enters the scene. other than that, the movie was so fucking good and had that remarkable ability that all eighties teen movies seem to have to make me feel so so good, and to make me want some cute person to do stupid things for to try to win them over. and i always end up wanting someone to dramatically kiss while some new wave song starts blaring as the camera pans out. and me and said unattainable cute boy kiss without inhibition in the middle of the street or some such place as the closing credits start to roll.

that would be so so nice. but daydreams aside, my actual day was pretty damn good, too. me and my sister woke up at eight something, woke up our parents, and started opening presents. there's something about christmas day in our family where we still act like we're eight and wake up so early. i seriously woke up at six and was like nope, too early, my mom will shoot me. my sister told me that she woke up at six thirty and went back to bed, and then finally at eight thirty after being awake in bed for a while, i checked to see if my sister was up. and she was just lying awake in bed, too. she jumped up when she saw that i was awake, and we proceeded to wake up our parents, and then sprinted to the tree.

i got a bunch of cd's and books that i had wanted, so i was excited about that. i did not get one bad cd. one is normally a conservative estimate for how many bad cd's i get. last x-mas, i got a john secada cd and a creed one. this year, there was none of that nonsense. i also recieved cash from relatives, which made me so so happy since i was so so broke. and even though, i ask my mom every christmas and birthday, please do not buy me any clothes, she once again bought me some clothes that can be categorized as god-awful, and which will be placed in the bottom of my dresser with the rest of their jailed comrades.

we then ate brunch, and i pigged out, and afterwards fell asleep reading the odyssey. i woke up read some more, and then watched tv with my family.

like mike sanderson, i also watched snl reruns on comedy central today. and they had a recent episode on with jimmy fallon (my boyfriend, in case you didn't know) and the castmember i hate so so much: chris kattan. chris is so goddamn obnoxious because he thinks loud = funny, and so he's always cringe-inducing loud. his most obnoxious recurring role is mango. i cringe everytime this skit comes on. i motherfucking hate mango and was just thinking that when i was watching it today, about how much i wish i could throw tomatos at chris kattan.

and then later in the day, i'm playing around on the internet reading peoples' oljs. and i read mike sandersons, and lo and behold, what does this boy say about mango: "A Saturday Night Live sketch, in which “Mango” returns home for Christmas, is what I imagine it’s like when Charlie goes home for break. Charlie even looks and acts like the Mango, with the same shill, annoying shriek."

ahhh, say it is not so. this really distressed me. for some reason, it always distresses me when someone makes an observation about their perceptions of me and it is totally not aligned with how i (mis?)percieve myself. i have hated chris kattan for so long, thinking he's so loud and abrasive, and tsk thinks i "look and act" like him. oh, this was the only not so hot part of my day, which forced me to rethink my perceptions of myself, and maybe i need to not be so shrill if someone is thinking i resemble mango.

anyways, i have wasted too much time just now, giving thought to chris kattan. so, instead i will talk about jimmy. oh, mister fallon, how i love you, let me count the ways: you're not chris kattan. you have super cute brown hair. when you play shy, you bite your thumb, and it looks so so dreamy. you're funny as hell. you can play the guitar. and you're motherfucking jimmy fallon, cutest castmember ever.

if anyone doesn't watch snl, i must encourage you to watch it religiously. if you do not know who jimmy fallon is you are so missing out. this boy is so red hot. in the episode they showed today, he was in this skit, where he was a new jersey trashy high school student videotaping himself at school. and he kept on making out with his girlfriend. let me tell how jealous/envious i was during this part: so so jealous. dude, this part made me want jimmy so bad. it made me want to make out with anyone so bad. i don't know what is wrong with me, but today i just keep on finding myself longing to french some cute boy. when odysseus slept with circe, i ascended into la-la land and daydreamt i was just making out bigtime with random cute boy. and then, there were also the aforemetioned incidents of snl and sixteen candles, where i just was overcome with this yearning to have someone to smooch.

but, no one wants to smooch chris kattan, well maybe some people do, but these are not people that anyone would want to smooch - they're called psycho. chris katan is so obnoxious. but, i guess being compared to chris kattan is better than being compared to horatio sanz, or one of the really bobo cast members.

oh, and back to the subject of jimmy fallon: i have plans for this boy. i am going to become his #1 stalker when i am in ny. i have my saturday nights already planned, i am going to wait outside of nbc studios with all the other snl geeks for the cast members to leave, and i am going to motherfucking tackle jimmy. jimmy will be mine. oh yes, he will be mine.

t'was the night before christmas

sometimes i like seeing people from high school. sometimes i don't. it's pretty much dependent on what the situation is. tonight's situation was church, and i did not enjoy having to interact with people from high school.

i went to christmas eve mass tonight with my mom and sister. bless me father for i have sinned, it has been years and years since my last confession. the sin: i attended catholic mass tonight, even though i do not believe at all. and sin of sin, i ate the body. i took communion even though i thought about not taking it and thought about all the moral and ethical ramifications involved. yet i still took it, because i would have been too embarassed to sit there while everyone else got up to take it. there are my principles right fucking there - bending to the will of whatever the group imperatives are.

i felt so guilty when i took communion and the guy that placed it in my palm looked deep into my eyes saying, "the body of christ." his hand so so slowly placed it into my left palm, and his eyes looked questioningly at me, as if he somehow knew that i should not be recieving communion, and he was going slow to give me a chance to redeem myself. but i ignored the chance given to me to pass it up and uttered "amen." the wafer was then placed in my left palm and i put it in my mouth with my right hand.

and of course, besides me going to church and feeling weird about that, we of course had to sit right behind some people from my high school class: nora and phil koerner. they were both my sort of friends - the type that you say hi to when you see and make small talk with, but never actually really do anything with them. it, of course, could not have been one of the other some thousand people from my high school that i never talked to. and so, i had to engage in some more horrid small talk with the koerners, but luckily it's a solemn catholic church and only so much small talk is acceptable. thank god i wasn't raised baptist or some other real social faith. after mass though, i dashed out quickly so i wouldn't have to converse anymore with them.

i also saw john roebella from my class sitting at the front of the church, and boy this kid has gotten like ten times hotter. super hot in the athletic way, he's a little gymnast boy, and all hot and super white. he was part of that group known as "the cool kids" in high school. and so to entertain myself during mass, and to get my mind off of how little principle i had to be there in church, i daydreamed about john. and i somehow thought that this could be my penance: to tune out whatever this preist was saying, and to have wild gay sex fantasies to attempt to balance the gay is wrong attitude of catholicism. john, i absolved my self of my sins with you. up there on the altar sucking what i imagined to be your beautiful, big dick. and my conscience was then clean.

archie bunker makes me want to uh-uh-uh

entry #2:
nick at nite is so goddamn good sometimes. they play an hour of all in the family, followed by an hour of cheers, followed by an hour of family ties. what more could one ever want? okay, maybe some people might want more, and you might even call these people normal, but the last few nights i have desired nothing more and have spent my nights on the couch watching reruns on nick at nite.

my car is ka-poot. the radiator is busted, and so now i have no convenient method of transportation. i could always take the bus and metro, but that would involve getting off my ass. i have had no desire to call any one of my friends to see how they are doing, and to see if they want to do something. rather, i wake up around noon, play on the internet, eat some food, read some of the odyessy, go jogging, then settle in for some good ol' archie bunker, sam malone, and alex p. keaton. oh yeah.

and i daydream. oh, how i daydream. i've been daydreaming so much about boys recently. thinking of travis ralston from middle school and how he called me fag all the time and beat my ass. and how i used to masturbate all the time to thoughts of how hot he was - its all about those semi-masochistic seventh-grade fantasies. thinking of how hot all the people were who treated you like shit. travis ralston. uh-uh-uh.

thinking of shane riley, who i have not thought of in quite a while. for real, i have not had fantasies about him since last spring. this is a long time to people that knew me my first two years at new college when every other sentence i said was about shane. but for some reason, my lack of social interaction has resparked my love of shane. and last night i had super good dreams about the doctor, and today i was thinking how sad it is that i may never see him again, since he is graduating this jan., and oh god what if i never get to see him again. he really is, for me, the most beautiful boy ever. i have been recalling just about every interaction i've ever had with shane and just shivering with delight at the memories of mister riley.

watching all in the family and loving archie bunker for all his spunk, and realizing that archie's facial expressions are way too close to those that drew geer makes when i talk to him. those patronizing expressions archie gives to edith are so close to the patronizing looks i would get from drew when i would drunkenly try to get him to make out with me. and so watching nick at nite has made me start to daydream about drew geer and how super cute he is.

and i'm going to alter an anna-maria phrase to decribe beautiful beautiful drew. when i talked to anna-maria about boys a year or so ago, she dropped the best phrase ever, one that still has not left my lexicon: "that keith bentele look-at-you-looking-at-me look." and drew has mastered that look so well and gives it to me all the motherfucking time whenever i excitedly approach him.

and an old usher song says "you make me wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh, you make wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh" and that is what i keep singing right now thinking about drew. i, of course, forget about the line that the uh-uh's really just lead up to: "that you make me wanna leave the one i'm with, and start a new relationship." i just keep saying, "drew, you make me wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh!!" cause of course i cannot leave the one i'm with, since there is no one i'm with. the only person i can leave is archie bunker and my fun nick at nite reruns.

and i don't even know if i would want to do that since archie's so great. he just told some mustachioed punk: "ain't you got a little class to go with that moustache." i just want to uh-uh-uh and daydream about boys.

and the cue card says applaud now

my dad keeps nodding off. he is sitting at the dining room table attempting to read the newspaper. his head slowly descends to rest on top of the newspaper, lies there for a minute or five completely knocked out until some noise startles him, he then lifts his head and starts reading the newspaper and the cycle begins again. and it repeats itself again and again.

he came to stay at my mom's house last night for christmas. he normally lives out in manasas. my parents have been seperated for almost two years now, but every now and then when me and my sister come home, he will come over and spend a couple days at our house, sleeping on the futon in the basement. and so, last night he came over to stay at our house for christmas.

last night, he fell asleep within an hour of coming here. the chemo treatment and all the drugs he is on for his lung cancer make him so dopey and tired. he kept on coming upstairs to snack on some food and would always mumble something half-sensical and i would be like "what?" and he would repeat himself, and i would respond with a i-don't-know-what-the-hell-you-are-saying-you-crazy-old-man stare. he is so doped up from his treatment that he has the hardest time staying awake (this is why he is now passed out on the dining room table), and talks in slurred sentances. he is ageing super rapidly.

last night when he came upstairs for a snack, he looked at the tv to see what i was watching. his head started to tilt forward, actually his whole body did, and his mouth was wide open and he stared at the tv half-awake. i wanted to take pictures of him in this state, but he probably would have been upset and i would have felt somewhat sleazy about utilizing his dying condition for some notion of art.

he has that wearied look that you see in all those wpa photos. his exhausted condition also reminds me so much of all the photos that i see now of old beleagured russians for whom the promises of capitalism never materialized, and they see young moscow capitalists living it up, and they just look so disheartened and broken. they never recieved the promised beneifts from the transition to capitalism.

that's sort of how i look at my dad. somedays he just looks utterly broken, and to continue this russian analogy, it was the promises of being a young american that never materialized for him. he arrived in new york on the eve of 1970 from chile and was going to be an american. disposable income, loud music, fast cars, cigarettes, and all the hamburgers one's heart desires. he loves rock music. he still does, except he is so unhip about the new bands and thinks that creed is a great rock band. it sort of makes cringe. but, when i was a kid, he was always jamming out to his acid rock and was always going to concerts. and for some reason, i tie his smoking to this love of american youth culture. the cigarettes that joe camel tempted america with, the cigarettes that everyone and their mom used to smoke. everyone in my family quit them in the late 80's when they realized that they were no longer kids - when they gave up on rock and roll and started listening to adult contemporary. my dad was not "too old." he listened to his hard rock stations super loud, and told me that i was too old for telling him to turn it down. me, being so so embarassed whenever he would drop me off at school or some other place and that someone i knew would hear my dad's loud music blaring.

and now my mom, who quit smoking when my dad wouldn't, is healthy, is not asleep on the dining room table right now, and who will still be alive in august, serves as my dad's path not taken. i still have not come to terms with my dad's impending death, if one cannot already tell that by my detached attitude in this entry. it still does not seem real. something about it seems awry. like i'm watching the scene, or maybe that i'm in it, but yet still aware that it is a scene. that there's a studio audience reacting to moments in the scene, even though their reactions are obviously out of place. sort of like the flinstones (the cartoon, not the movie), with how they always had fake studio audience laughter whenever fred stubbed his toe or something. there seems to be that same sort of forced reaction, or conditioned response, to this situation.

all i know for sure is that my dad is asleep on the dining room table at five something in the afternoon. that before he fell asleep, he had just woke up saying "i coulda swore it was sometime in the morning." and my mom responded casually, "nope. afternoon." and that i don't know how i feel.

you want catharsis bitch? you fucking got it!

some people are really close with their siblings and consider them good friends. sometimes i envy these people. but, other times i really love the intense, often violent relationship me and my sister have.

my sister jamie came home from college last night and probably within an hour, we were engaged in a heated battle, shouting each other down over something petty, and threatening to beat the other's face in. we really love each other, and often we can go to the store like normal siblings and have fun, but oh how quickly things can change and oh how extreme that change will be. there is just some deep deep tension and frustration that lies between us, and the slightest thing can ruin the delicate balance that normally keeps our tension in check. when some slight remark is made or when someone fails to put something back in the fridge, oh boy, our ugly sides come out in full force as we trade punches, screaming for the world to hear how much we hate each other.

jamie and i are such rage-filled animals. it will honestly be mustard or something that one of us left on the counter. the guilty party will be sitting on the couch, watching tv, and consuming some food product with the said mustard as a condiment. then the other person will say, hey put this mustard away. in a minute, will be the conditioned response. and from there, it always somehow escalates to loud aggresive yelling and often hitting.

my sister is getting more and more tough, when we were little she used to be far more easier to boss around and would usually give in when i started shouting. now she is all about yelling even louder than me and hitting even harder. this morning, we were going to go to hecht's since they were still hiring winter help and apply. i woke up at noon to jamie telling me to get up, it's noon, why are you still asleep? i said fifteen more minutes. no, said my sister. except what she really said was NNOOOO!!!! (this is an instance where lowercase letters really do fail to accurately portray the situation. sometimes capital letters do have their benefits.)

but anyways, i said: yes, leave me alone, i am going back to sleep. jamie, the maniac kept yelling for me to get up. and then she picked up my alarm clock and starting banging it against my dresser, i guess to wake me up or something. i yelled at her to stop it. and of course, she starts banging it even more violently until my alarm clock breaks into a few pieces. [if this were fiction, this would be an instance of really blatant, bad symbolism, but whatever, it really happened.] at this point she left my room, probably very scared that i would retaliate with hard punches. her intent was also probably not to break my alarm clock, but she and i both get very aggressive with each other and always end up producing a result that was unintended. for example, over thanksgiving break, jamie was singing really loudly, which she always does, and it always pisses the fuck out of me. i get that reaction you get when you accidently scratch a really tight polyester fabric -- how you just recoil. my sister's singing just does that to me, it drives me fucking crazy. so, i yelled at her to stop, she starts singing louder, and i start throwing small things at her that are near me. i throw a big pen at her, and it lands in a way and in a spot that ends up giving her a bloody nose. i felt like shit and quit yelling, and sort of quietly escaped the situation so she wouldn't beat me down -- sort of like her reaction after she broke my alarm clock this morning.

well anyways, i was sort of glad she broke the alarm clock because it wasn't even really broken, i put it back together pretty easily later in the day, but it meant that she left me alone and i got to sleep sleep sleep for a good nother hour.

hecht's ending up not even happening because on our way there, my car broke down. luckily it happened right in front of texaco, and so i just steered my car into the gas station with its remaining power. we then walked home from the gas station together and had a really awesome conversation like normal, close siblings do. we both had the same anxiety about walking down this main road where we would have doubtless been passed by many people we knew, so we cut through a construction site and walked back home down small roads. this removed our anxiety and freed us to laugh, me to walk funny, her to sing, and us to have a nice sibling moment, free of yelling and punching at least until we got home.

a marriage proposal

conan, i love you. i can still remember when our relationship first started around 9th grade, and i would try staying up till 12:30 every night to watch your show with the volume turned down super low so my parents wouldn't here. conan, we started off when i still thought 12:30 was late.(bending down on one knee, of course)
conan, i've loved you since the day we met, so many years ago. will you marry me?

constructing a linear life

today, i slept until noon on an air matress in the basement curling up in my blanket, trying to stay warm. my whole extended family had left for the zoo about two hours earlier. i claimed i was feeling real sick so i wouldn't have to go to the zoo with then, and also so i could sleep in and masturbate in near privacy. and i also was feeling sick. but definitly not real sick. just slightly - my throat is still in that state of somewhat sickness; of kind of yuckiness -- i totally could have gotten out of bed and gone to the zoo but playing hooky is always fun. there are no opportunities to play hooky at college - no mom to pretend to be sick to, so i take advantage of these chances to play hookey whenever they come up.*******

i feel like way too often, i have started my entries off detailing what i do in the morning, moving chronologically through the rest of my day. does this mean i'm a linear thinker and boring? maybe, but maybe i also don't care.

*******

a bit of dialogue that just occured between me and my cousin, chelsey:
-this jacket's kind of small.
-whatever. [as i try to keep typing, and ignore her]
-where did you get it?
-[should i tell the truth? yeah, okay-] rue 21.
-rue 21? that's why. i wasn't going to say anything, but it's kind of girly.
-okay...
and she then mumble mumbles something about me being girly.

snl's over and so it's late-night infomercial time, and i will briefly play the salesdude role: i just brushed my teeth tonight with my relatives toothpaste that they brought. and it was so so good. it's tom's of maine children's toothpaste and it's strawberry flavored. i feel sort of weird about brushing my teeth with a toothpaste that is sweet. it seems that it should be minty flavored, but the strawberry toothpaste tastes so good, it makes me feel like i'm four or something, being naughty, and not brushing my teeth before going to bed. sugary sweet, but it prevents cavities, how cool is that shit? why didn't my parents by us this toothpaste when we were kids? i wonder if this toothpaste even existed when i was a kid. kids today [i know i sound like an eighty year old man now] have all the coolest shit. when i go to my cousin's houses, i'm amazed by how rad the latest toys and video games are.

snl was a repeat tonight, but i was stil so so excited, because it is this one with the skit where jimmy fallon is shirtless. he's shirtless in a hot tub. r. e. d. h. o. t. red motherfucking hot. jimmy fallon is so going to be boyfriend when i get to ny. wynona rider, if you're even still dating jimmy fallon (i haven't been that up on the celeb gossip - sorry e.t.), you better watch out.

last night, me and all my cousins had fun slumber party late night talk until we were touched by mister sandman. and i just listened to the most surreal conversation before i started writing this. we were all downstairs in the basement watching snl, and my bobo cousin said that mad tv was better than snl, my sister was not going to stand for this type of libel, accepted the challenge to a duel and defended snl by introducing a series of wonderfully funny analogies tailored to the teeny bopper set of my cousins to say that snl was the motherfucking shit:
-if snl were seventeen magazine, mad tv would be tiger beat. if snl were express, mad tv would be rave. [and it went on and on, with all the pop culture references your justin timberlake loving hearts could ever desire.]

i kind of want to go brush my teeth again. that tom's strawberry toothpaste is seventeen; is express; is the motherfucking shit; is jimmy redhot fallon. it is not my air mattress. my air mattress is mad tv; is tiger beat; is rave; is chris kattan. it is not my bed. oh, how i love my bed and am counting the days down until i can again curl up in it, masturbate freely in the middle of the night, stay up as late as i want reading. the only thing that i think i will slightly miss is the teeny bopper late night pillow talk. oh, and i'll miss that strawberry toothpaste, because having my bed back will mean that my relatives will have left with their cool toothpaste.

who needs fingernails

my right thumb is still in pain. eariler today after climbing old rag, i looked down at my thumb and realized that there was dried blood by my thumbnail. wow, i cut myself climbing over a rock or something, i had thought. but no, that would be too normal an explanation. what had really happened is that i had bit my thumbnail so short, chewing on it, that my thumb had started to bleed.

this morning after picking rebecca up for our little adventure, we gossiped and gossiped about people from new college that she had not seen in a while. we did this while driving around all of dc, trying and trying to get to brian hughes motherfucking house. what should have been a fifteen-twenty minute drive took in excess of an hour, as rebecca showed for the umpteenth time that she is the worst navigator in the world and i demonstrated my miraculous ability to just realize i need to make a turn right after we pass the street that we need to turn on. anyways, while taking our little sightseeing tour of dc, rebecca and i also talked about how it might be a weird day, conversation-wise with brian hughes since neither us had really ever talked to him that much. but, we were still very excited about our day with brian hughes.

however our excitement could not prevent our prediction of a lack of steam in conversation from occuring. shortly, the so what have you been doing over break formalities were exhausted, and it looked as if it were about to occur right then. but save! we could always talk about school, so we asked him about school shit for a brief while. however, that conversation puttered out pretty quickly too. this is probably the point at which i started nervously chewing on my thumbnail to somehow make up for the lack of conversation.

the entire trip, me and rebecca asked him about school, his family, and his friends. those were the only topics which our pathatic brains could think of to talk to him about. so, you're friends with x right? do you have any gossip about x? how's x doing? subsitute x for all of brian's friends and you will have something pretty similar to a transcript of our conversation during the hike.

i don't know why it was so hard to talk to brian at times today but it so was. there were long stretches of silence that i filled by thinking: "okay, what can i ask him? no, don't ask about school anymore! or anymore questions about his friends! c'mon charlie you can do this, just think of some normal question to ask him." after we dropped brian back off at his house, rebecca said she had the exact same conversation with herself during parts of the hike.

to think of things to talk to brian about, i started to think about what i would talk to just rebecca about, and i realized it consisted of mainly gossip: trash-talking someone i hated, telling her about my crushes, and just general gossip about who's smooching who. and for some reason, i just could not talk about these things in front of brian -- i thought that he would have thought i was petty or something, and he just seems above fun trash talking. i don't know. but anyways, brian hughes is still super cute and nice, i just wish i did not have such a hard time talking to him, however for this reason today i decided that maybe i don't have a crush on him anymore - that i just think he's a super rad person. something maybe like that.

anyways, these occasional lapses in conversation were not the hike. the hike was gorgeous views, the occasional trip over a rock, swishing through leaves, super windy weather, huge motherfucking boulders of rocks, leaveless trees, and countless other things that i will not even attempt to describe since i am tired as fuck and it will invariably end up sounding cheesy as fuck.

and there's still a bunch of dried blood under my thumbnail.

press 1 for yes and 3 for no

i am so upset right now. the reason for this is that i am not allowed to work at borders because i was unable to pass this rehiring test that i've already taken and passed twice the other times i worked at borders. how the fuck did i not pass this test? it is this stupid stanton survey, that is like ten minutes long and consists of five million variations of the same fucking question: is it okay to steal?

even though i steal a lot, i'm not a complete fucking moron and am not going to respond yes to that question to a place that is considering hiring me. i took the stupid survey about two weeks ago now at borders and i had been wondering why it was taking them so long to tell me when i could come into work. how in the hell is this possible? the only possible thing i can think of is that i pressed the wrong buttons. i took it in someone's cubicle over the phone, half paying attention and reading all the comics tacked to this person's cubicle while the questions were being read by this stupid automated system.

you know how those automated things take ten years to say a fucking question and you're like uh-huh uh-huh get to the fucking part where i can push a button. and for the whole time 1 was yes and 3 was no on the phone pad. maybe i got them mixed up i don't know. but regardless, my inability to pass this motherfucking test is making feel slightly dumb.

would you steal from your employer if you wouldn't get caught?
3

would you report a fellow employee you witnessed stealing?
1

is it all right to take just a little bit of change from the cash register?
3

are you a fucking idiot for somehow not being able to pass this stupid test?
1

in other news, hunter college did not have me on file and registration started sunday, which means that i have missed the first four days of registration. they are now just fixing this problem and i should be able to register by tomorrow, and of course i'm sure every single class i want to take will be full by that point. and my grandma is coming to visit my family tonight. and, i still haven't found a place for me and nikki to live in ny. i am going to call a bunch of listings right now. and oh, i so don't even want to tell my mom why i can not work at borders, she is going to think that i am grade a dumb.

she sure could sing

-SUPER BOTTOM Young, smooth WM w. a hot, tight, clean butt. Joey, (703) 486-XXXX
-STARVING STUDENT 22, smooth, clean-cut, 5'9'', 143#, defined build, versatile. Likes older guys. Out only. (703)887-XXXX

super lazy day # far past the point of keeping track:
today i woke up bright and early at two in the afternoon, sat around in my pjs watching crap on mtv and half-heartedly masturbating out of boredom to the blur that was the tv since i had still yet to put my contacts in and take a shower. my mom came home from work and commented/bitched about how i was still in my pajamas. usually i am able to manage to at least make it look like i have been up for a while before my mom comes home from work. the fact that i was still groggy and attired in pjs and had no desire to change at all made me realize how fucking lazy i was. i thought to myself how i had no plans to do anything and so why bother getting dressed if it's already five in the afternoon.

however, my sense of shame won over my desire to be lazy and i got dressed and decided that i should go buy my family x-mas presents. that that would be my outing for the day. when i am at home in va, there are seriously days in which i don't even leave the house, sometimes stretches of days. georgie bush, you need not worry. i am america united in this time of crisis. i sit on my ass all motherfucking day, watching tv, and only take trips out of the house to buy shit. w, aren't you proud? i am the couch potato. i am the consumer. i am america. god bless.

so, being the patriotic citizen i am, i go to borders and buy my family x-mas presents. this is really bad and probably not in the x-mas spirit (however, it may have been in the american one), but i bought my family presents that i want. i figure that once they get tired of them, or even before they do if they are taking too goddamn long, i will read the books or listen to the cd's, and effectively repossess them.

after i went to borders, i checked my bank account, and i now have $1.89 to my name. this has made me realize that i need a job badly. there's this new manager at borders, and he's being totally bobo and keeps saying he has to call me back. tomorrow morning, inspired my destitute status, i'm going to call him up and be like "look dude, what time do you want me to come in?" and we'll see how well that all works (or more likely, how it does not).

after checking my bank account, i lied down on my bedroom floor and read the free gay weekly that i picked up at borders. i listened to this gram parsons album, and kept getting up to skip it back to "she" since i don't have a helpful repeat button on my stereo. i went to the classifieds/personals section right away since the personals are always my favorite part of any paper. it's all these assorted characters trying to put themselves into 50 abbreviated words or less, plus they somehow mange to verbalize what exactly they are looking for in a partner. i don't know, i always find them real fascinating to read, and sometimes sort of want to reply to the cute, funny ones, but always chicken out exclaiming, for god sakes, it's a personal, you are not so pathatic that you are going to start responding to personals. but one day, i'll be brave and reply.

however, today my attention was not so much on the personals ads as it was on the escort listings. there were pages of all these little escort listings. all of these men trying to market themselves as young boys, smooth, skinny, and all that shit. and i daydreamed about being an "escort".

listening to "she" over and over again, and planning on how once i get to ny, i am going to make a go at being a ho. i am definitly not a man, i'm much more a boy, so i figure i could advertise as young and skinny, maybe. i might have to get a little bit more in shape and lose some of my fun pudge, but i really want to do this. i feel like nikki would kill me if i was an in-call ho, but i think it would be so much fun. getting paid to meet all these weird, maybe creepy, maybe deviant people and to get it on with them and then to never talk to them again. to be in my own private idaho, so to speak. but, i have all these questions too, i kind of want to call one of these listed escorts and be like, um i have a couple of questions. i wonder how fast they would hang up. but, i wonder if the "escorts" ever have any violent/scary tricks. and i wonder how much they get paid, and i wonder if it's awkward when he's getting dressed, and oh i so want to do it. i'm going to have to check out the gay weekly in ny and see if they have lots of little escort ads.

i lay there on my back daydreaming, the next song starts, goddamn i wish i had a repeat button. get up change song back. lie back down again on my worn bedroom carpet, daydream about being a hooker for another three or so minutes before i have to get back up to switch the song again.

feed me seymour

i love food. but even more so, i love eating food.

so, it gets real interesting when there is not much food to be found in the kitchen. usually, two possible things happen: 1.) that i am too lazy, and just sit on my ass slightly hungry, or 2.) that meals get real "creative."

the first thing had been happening for a while, with me surviving off of cheerios. the second thing always will eventually happen, a person can only be so hungry and continue to eat only cheerios.

the past two days, i have been making fried onion dishes. i am obsessed with onions. they are by far my favorite vegetable. but, i used up all of our onions during my little onion binge, and so today i had to get creative again.

i have been saying that there is nothing in my kitchen. that's a lie. what is more accurate, is that there is nothing in my kitchen that i want to eat and that is quick to make. so i find myself making weird food combinations, and eating the things in the cabinet that i have no idea when they were bought, or more importantly, why they were. marshmellows, weird canned fruit, and peanut butter contatiners that seem to have been always almost empty.

today i feasted off of cheerios, of course. i then made a huge thing of instant mashed potatos, flavoring it with bbq sauce. it made me super tired after eating those mmm mmm good potatos, but i was still feeling the piggy bug and so ate way too old pickles with some cream cheese that was about to expire.

and, then i was stuffed and tired, yet i wanted more more more. i felt so much like that plant in little shop of horrors screaming feed me seymour, feed me! my fridge however is not rick moranis, and did not heed my commands. i lied down on the couch watched some simpsons and realized that i was so about to fall asleep. then a random realization struck me. fuck shit i left my coffemaker in florida. oh, how i loved that coffemaker, why the fuck don't we have one in our house, i so want a nice big pot of coffee right now. this means i'm going to have to buy another coffemaker, i will not be able to live without one in ny. hell, i cannot live without one now. maybe i'll take a trip up to the thrift store and see if they have any that don't look too grungy.

why a fake x-mas tree would never do

my family got a christmas tree this morning.our house is now consumed by that smell of winter and of pine and of a sense of peace, that it is christmas time and everything is okay, and even more importantly, that everything is going to be okay. that pine smell IS christmas. it feels like christmas time for real now. some scents just have that power to induce certain feelings and certain memories. that christmas tree smell is one of them.

"when i was young, and we didn't care..."

feeling really good right now. listening to the cranberries, and not feeling guilty about how unhip it is, because i'm not around any new college people right now. since i have come home, i have refallen in love with all of the music i listened to in high school. the radio, when it is on, is always on the alt-rock station i listened to in high school, and i swear to god, they have the exact same motherfucking playlist save for a few new songs. it's all old green day, nirvana, cranberries of course, live, old dmb, smashing pumpkins, sublime, and so many others that draw to the suface from somefuckingwhere the wonderful feelings of comfort and memories of a time when i was an even bigger geek than i am now. and a john melloncamp quote seems all to appropriate here to express these feelings of high school nostalgia, and to also offer irrefutable proof of how big a geek i am to actually quote cougar boy: "hold on to sixteen as long as you can, changes come around real soon, make us woman and man."

the other things that are adding to my state of bliss right now are:
-i am now offically done with school work

-nikki is for sure going to live in ny with me. or so she says, and she sounds the most serious she has sounded yet, which is enough for me to believe her. and so, i have been wasting time looking at village voice classifieds and tomorrow i'm going to call some of them

-the gray sky took a vacation today, and the sky was this wicked wicked gorgeous blue. i looked out my window as i was waking up, so so excited to see such a bright blue filling the sky, and just wanted to go outside and bike and play and have that beautiful color be the background to my day. to be a part of the scene with the blue, to be its buddy and play with it. i'm never this excited about the sky in sarasota, even though it is a beautiful blue all the fucking time. the long stretches of gray in va make the blue's appearance seem all the more special. it's like that person who works at your favorite restaurant, and you're like man, you must love working here since you can eat good food all the time. and they have a blah response and they say the food's not that great, since they can have it whenever they want. and living in florida is sort of like being the person that works at that really good restaurant. you lose appreciation for the blue skies, cause they're always there.

-i just played on the playground for about two hours with my four year old cousin who came with her family to visit my aunt who just had a baby boy named conner, which i think is a pretty dorky name. but whatever, i played on the playground and forgot that i was 20, without a job and without a fucking clue what i'm doing with my life. those concerns were lost to the diziness and the queasy stomach feeling i got from spinning my cousin around, and swinging so high that i swear i could have touched the sky if i could just have pushed myself an inch further. just an inch. but, i couldn't -- i was pushing myself as far as i could go on that fucking swing, swinging and swinging like i was ten years old and still trying to swing higher than the boy next to me. however, my gaining of a quite a bit of weight since i was ten made the swingset start to shake, which had me a bit worried, and so even though i wanted to touch the sky, i didn't want to knock over this swingset. touching the sky would have to wait for another day and a more sturdy swingset. then these two other kids came and played with us. and this little seven year old boy had this need for adoration that all little kids seem to have, and i wonder if this is just something american kids have. look at me. look at me. watch me do a jump off of the swing. i bet you can't jump higher than me. and of course, i had to squash this little surge of what would be a future case of egomania. and i showed him who could fucking jump higher off of the swing. i showed him that he was not the god of tag. and i showed him who could do a better handstand. but, of course, it was all in the spirit of good fun, not of seeing how much better you are, but instead seeing how much you and the other people can push yourselves. how far can one go before they scrape their knee and gash their elbow. and i thought of how i need to carry that playground mentality of reckless abandon over to my everyday life. to see how high i can swing. to fucking scrape myself, and then to get up, clean it, and to keep fucking jumping off of shit.

-and another reason that i'm feeling good is since i am now done with my work, i am lifting my self-imposed house arrest. and i am going to hang out with rebecca tonight, which will be so nice, since i have not seen her in forever, since whenever it was she came down to visit, it all seems like a lifetime ago. but yeah, i'll see her, and i'm making plans to hang out with my good old geeky comrades from the high school struggle.

get in my belly

-molly's in labor right now, she's doing real good, and the baby should be born in a couple of hours
-...

my uncle just called all excited to tell my family that my mom's sister who lives in dc, is about to give birth. of course, i am the only one home and so he tells me all about it, even though he really wants to talk to my mom, but he's happy to tell the news to anyone. the thrill of being the town-crier, of being privy to information before anyone else and being in charge of dissemination. my uncle's high with this thrill, and also probably high off the thought that he will soon be a parent. my mom is in alabama, or if her flight has left already, she's in the air somewhere between alabama and here. in a few hours, i have to pick her up from the airport, at which point she will be very excited by this news and talk to me forever about it and may even end up going to visit my aunt.

in a couple of hours, i will have another cousin, there will be a new human being existent. that all seems so wild and fantastical -- this entire process of life coming into the world. i wonder how my aunt is feeling with a person inside her belly, and i wonder how she'll feel in a couple of hours when her belly is deflated and there is some brand new person in her arms, that she pushed out of her vagina. this is one of the few reasons that i think it would be super-cool to be a woman. i really want to be pregnant, and be a god of sorts by bringing life into the world. if i only had a uterus.

these thoughts are so not the type i need to be thinking right now. i have still yet to figure out what the hell i am going to write this faulkner paper about, and i still have to go to the airport, and then i will have to listen to my mom babble excitedly about my aunt.

fuck this paper. i just want to daydream that i am a pregnant male like ah-nold in that oh so bad movie that i cannot even recall the name of. but, it was sooo bad. so probably not a pregnant male like ah-nold, after all. maybe i'll just daydream about being a pregnant female.

"elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me"

okay, what is up with salon folks? normally, it is pretty damn progressive and covers stories from different perspectives, but these last two days have made me pissed as hell. today's top story is an anit-arafat piece of bullshit, and yesterday they had some columnist babbling about how we need to cut off ties with palestinians and just basically nuke them. i really love salon, but i really hate israel even more, and so salon's coverage as of late is pissing the fuck out of me. and i was about to write a letter to the editor about the lopsided coverage but i decided against it cause i didn't want to waste paper-writing time looking for statisitcs and dates about all the far too numerous atrocities committed by israel against the palestinians. dude, i really do try to be a pacifist, but i would so like to see sharon get his fucking head blown off, and i would so love it if the us would just be awesome and bomb the fuck out of israel, and let palestinians have all the control they want over the land that was stolen from them by motherfucking western europe and the us so that they could absolve themselves of holocaust guilt. and i know it's really horrible that i have all this rage towards israel, but the fucking way the situation is portrayed in the news makes me want to throw shit. a couple israelis killed in a suicide bombing. big news, with a isn't this terrorism horrible slant. countless palestinans killed in retaliation, forced out of areas occupied near jewish settlements, restricted from traveling outside of whatever atomized chunk of "palestine" they live in. inside of the motherfucking paper, with a fair and just retaliation slant. mothefuck that shit.

and i really am not an anti-semite, i just hate israel. i get very angry about such things that i have no control over, and that seem so so unjust.

okay, but i thought i would rant here to save me a little bit of time since here i don't have to worry about citing facts and shit. and very soon i will write a real entry based in actual experience. i feel like a bigoted zealot or something with these last two entries: yesterdays about how much i hate fags, and today's about how much i hate israel.

really i'm not that serious in either case. these are not statements that i would vocalize to another person. here it's okay, cause it's a diary and i can bitch like rush or someone, and not give a shit, cause we'll all read each others shit and then never talk about it when we do talk. its something we are aware of, but act like we're not, and yeah so whatever.

anyways, i swear this is the last polticized entry for a good whiles. i am worried that i am pissing people off immensely and that people will secretly hate me, and think that i'm some horrible person. and also these are kind of boring entries, and far too easy to write.

right now, i am on page six of my language and politics paper. i am tired as hell and so so want to snuggle up in my cold bed under my warm blanket and get goosebumps from my cold sheets. but i have told myself that i am not going to bed until i finish this paper, since tomorrow i have to write that stupid faulkner paper.

i have just realized the joy of paper writing. i used to approach papers very seriously and with an oh dear god i have a fucking paper due attitude, and would feel like it was such a chore. but now, i have discovered the i don't give a shit, i ain't gonna unsat the class for a smartass paper approach - i take the paper as not seriously as one can take a paper and add as many pop references to it as i possibly can. the paper i wrote a couple of days ago for postcolonial lit, had the line "motherfuck him and john wayne" after every 3 or 4 paragraphs. the title of my language and politics paper is "meow meow meow: heath and his capitalist fat catesque dismissal of ideology" for god sakes. and i have managed to fit in totally random references to the cranberries, to gym culture, and to the sound of music. i am thinking about approaching my faulkner paper as a challenge, wherein i think of really random things beforehand and somehow insert them into my paper. the things i have thought of so far are: boogie nights, john waters, prince, snickers, and the chiquita banana lady. i don't know if i'll actually follow through with my plan of action, since out of all of my professors, i think dimino would be the least receptive towards my who gives a fuck style of writing.

the obligatory gay identity entry

i am at home, and already acting like it. this is far far too soon considering i just got home yesterday. but, i already see myself falling into the routine of doing jack shit. i woke up at eleven something this morning, casually went down to borders and took the stupid rehiring test, came home, settled comfortably into the couch, gorged myself on english muffins and clementines, and fell under the trance of mister mtv. what a productive day, right?

i watched carson and company all motherfucking day even though there is so much shit that i want to do now that i am at home. there are so many exhibits that i want to see, so many friends i want to hang out with at ihop, and so many shows that i want go to. i didn’t stay home all day because i think carson’s dreamy or because i was lazy about doing any of these aforementioned things - no, i would have hopped at the opportunity to get out of the house. however, i have placed myself under house arrest until i finish these two papers that are due on friday (a faulkner paper and a language and politics one). and guess how much work i have done on both of these papers?

sadly, you guessed correctly. “sadly” because one, it is true and also because two, it means that your perceptions of me as a lazy motherfucker are all too accurate. i have yet to even think about either paper. papers schmapers. i have three more days.

but, yeah, today i was a bit of a tv junkie. i just got finished watching queer as folk. has anyone seen this motherfucking show? why in the hell is it so bad? is it really that bad, or is it just me thinking its bad because of all of my issues with representation of gays and this thing that we will call gay culture?

bob mizer, i motherfucking hate you. and you too bruce weber, even though you are just being derivative. it is all mizer’s fault that gay erotica is nothing but a glorification of whiteness. mizer and weber with your stupid white models, and their big silly grins, and their even bigger shoulders, and their being set amidst american nature – you two fags have conflated whiteness with americanness. and it’s these fucking images that every fag in america gets off to.

queer as folk has the same slightly racist, definitely elitist notion of male beauty that you two knuckleheads created. i am so embarrassed that i used to be obsessed with your photos bruce, (and photo buffs, feel free to stone me here), and even more so that you were my favorite “photographer” for so long. oh, all the foibles of being a closeted gay youth are all starting to come back.

i thought i had heard good things about queer as folk, but i cannot recall where, but let me tell you what – this show sucks big fat fucking dick, okay? it’s about a bunch of ripped, young white guys who are very much enmeshed in this gay culture that makes me cringe. and dude, i’m just going to say it right now, so that that way, you can keep your fucking analysis to your goddamn self: yes, i have issues with masculinity, big time. i’m very concerned sometimes about appearing too feminine, and yes, i also know that i do not do the best job of trying not to appear feminine. whatever.

these are the biggest fucking fags ever that are on this show. what the fuck? i have never worn a black lycra shirt in my goddamn life, and i would consider eating my own shit before i would ever consider wearing one. and then there are all these gay club scenes, with bjs being given left and right and bad gay house blaring. dude, who lives this life? not i. i do not like green eggs and ham, i do not like them, sam i am. i do not like the faggot life, i do not like it, gun i am.

i feel like jerry falwell or some such asshole whenever i go on my little tirade about how much i hate gay culture. falwell says degenerates. i’ll be a little more rational, and admit, i just do not understand. the whole gay culture thing seems so foreign to me. i watch queer as folk, and i’m like dude, what the hell is this?

but, then again, this is probably just me trying to assert some shred of masculinity. i began to think: am i part of the dominant gay culture? ahh, i am. it made me so sad. i’m gay, i said to myself, as if i had just fucking come to this realization.

my first year at nc, michael jones told me that i was flaming. from anyone i would have been upset by that comment but probably would not have remembered it nearly three years later. but from michael jones, oh boy. if mister jones, a pretty flaming boy called me flaming, then oh god, yes i must be part of this gaggy gay culture.

let’s see what other faggy apsects of my life are there? i sometimes really like pop music. i know all the words to just about every madonna song (but, i know all the words to just about any song, so does that negate the madonna thing? i don’t even like madonna, in fact i sort of hate her.) i do like to dance, though (but, i have never gone to a gay club, is that okay?). and i do get aroused by bruce weber photos. i know, i need to accept it: i’m a fag, quit trying to rationalize it. and if all that were not proof enough, i thought of whom my close friends were/are. they are all girls. all of my friends have always been girls. i’ve always had a circle of fag-hags that i was friends with. i don’t know why this is, i just have trouble connecting with most males, and i really have tried to cultivate male friendships to try to add some gender balance to my life, but it has never worked. i never can manage to establish a lasting friendship with a male.

okay, blah – i’m real embarrassed that i’ve babbled all this nonsense about “being gay”, and may end up deleting it.

basically, my original point though, was that i’m a lazy motherfucker who watched bad tv all motherfucking day.

kerouac was a fucking liar

i just got out of the shower about five minutes ago. i had to take a shower to wash the fucking pee smell off of me from my not so great roadtrip. i am convinced that the fun of roadtrips is completely dependent upon who you are riding with -- and if you are riding with no one, well it is not much fun. it is a hellacious two day trip, wherein you find out how many fucking games you can possibly play to keep yourself from passing out, veering into traffic, and dying a horrible, bloody death.

basically it gets pretty fucking boring, and especially so when it is gray and drizzling the entire way, and your windshield wipers don't even work. and since you're an idiot and forgot you were driving north where there's actually seasons, you wore a fucking t-shirt and so you want to spend as little time outside of the heated car as possible. which also means that, yes folks, i ignored the countless pleas from pedro, and for the first time ever on the fl. to va. drive, did not even stop at the oh so campy south of the border.

i stopped for gas and that was about it. i didn't end up leaving sarasota until about four in the afternoon yesterday. the first part of the drive was decent -- the drizzling had yet to start, i was still excited about the idea of a long drive, and the landscape entertained my thoughts for a while. then the sun set. i have the worst night vision ever, and it started to drizzle outside making it even harder to see since my wipers don't work, yet i trudged on until about midnight at which point i could safely drive no more.

i stayed in the seediest hotel ever, but that is probably to be expected from a hotel that only costs $28 a night. i was not tired to the point where i could fall asleep, i was just tired in the sense that i did not want to have to squint to see through the one area of my windshield that actually gets wiped, and realize that i was about to hit yet another car. so i called it a night, checked into the carolina lodge, entered my wood-panled motel room, turned on the tv and lied down in bed.

it was a night not spent by me writing a road journal, reading books, or doing some even semi-beatish thing. no, it was spent by me watching wwf on mtv and masturbating to the sight of these grotesque embodiements of a hulking masculinity, slamming each other around and yelling ridicolous grrr statements at each other. i wasn't so much getting off at the sight of stone cold or the rock or some other lame-o, but rather to the recollection of how much i used to love wwf when i was a little kid, and i thought that even back then i most have been gay to have been so into these overpuffed males gropping each other. or maybe not gay, but definitly looking at these versions of males in a they're so cool, that's what i want to be like kind of way.

and little sidenote- i don't know how many other people used to be wwf fans when they were kids, but ric flair is back, and he still says whooo! after every six or seven words. i kind of would like to go around and talk to people i don't know like at the mall or something, and talk like ric flair, and to just say whoo! after every sentance. for some reason, i think it would be lots of fun.

after my little wwf jackoff session, i became thoughougly disinterested in anything that was on, and at that point fell asleep.

i woke up at 11, hit the road, and motherfuck, yes it was still drizzling, and so it was still an annoying drive.

today's drive was, however, a lot more fun than yesterday's. to keep myself awake, i played the gossip game with myself, telling myself all of the new college gossip that i could think of. that was fun for a while, and it's being mentioned here for two reasons. 1.) that i was pretty goddamm bored, and starting to develop cabin fever. and 2.) okay, maybe nikki and bonnie were right - the game made me think of how much i wish i would've tried to talk to marky mark on saturday nite. what would have been the fucking harm of being rejected one more time - i was leaving the next day -- why was i such a pussy?

besides this game, i played sing-along with every song on the radio that i knew even just a couple of lines from. i also played the license plate game. and of course, the always entertaining, stare into the other cars around me and talk about what type of life they lead game.

so at 4:11, i finally saw the welcome to virginia sign, and i was so excited that i decided that i was not stopping again until i reached alexandria, and was home sweet home. keep in my mind that virginia's a big state, and takes about three and a half hours to drive through on 95.

the drive through virginia was so exciting even though it looks just like the carolinas, it just felt so much better to be within these constructed boundries called virginia. i was nearing home and feeling so so good to be in va -- that and i found the 10,000 maniacs unplugged tape which always makes me feel so wonderful. (and fuck you if you're smuggly laughing, i like my adult contemporary -- don't say shit about 10,000 maniacs, they're fucking awesome.)

so i'm singing along with natalie, i'm fifty miles from my house and i have to pee so fucking bad. i say no, hold it charlie, fucking hold it, remember we are not stopping till we get home. twenty miles later i decide i'm going to be a little creative. hey, jim carrey peed in a bottle while driving in dumb and dumber, and i think i've even heard real people talk about it -- so i assumed that it was not such a bad idea. oh, how wrong i was. so first of all, i am trying to undo my pants while driving my bobo car that has the worst alignment ever. so while doing this, i hear a honk, and i realize i'm about to run someone off the road. problem #2 involved with trying to pee while driving: after i took down my pants, i got hard, and so i had to be like oh no no no, please cut that out, i so need to pee. problem #3: once i get soft, i get fucking pee-shy for some reason and cannot make myself pee into this empty gatorade bottle, even though i am about to fucking wet myself. i literally have to force myself to pee, grunting little squirts of pee out of me into this empty gatorade bottle. okay, then i start to pee and i don't know what the hell happened. i don't know if the bottle was not at a vertical enough angle, or what. rembember it is dark, drizzling, my windshield wipers don't work, and i am still technically driving -- so my mind was not solely on watching the pee bottle. but soon, i smell that fucking urine smell and i'm like oh fuck shit and then i can feel it on the seat. so, i stop peeing, cap this stupid gatorade bottle, pull my pants up, and put the map book between the wet seat and my ass.

i get home, and thank fucking god no one is home to smell my urine smell, and so i quickly take a shower, and spray smelly shit on the car seat. and then i chide myself for thinking that this was possible just because i saw jim carrey do it in a movie. chiding myself, i too too clearly hear and see jack nicholson in the shining, saying "its okay, he saw it on the television" (which ps, is far a creepier line than the oft-quoted ones: "here's johnny" and "red rum")