And...

...I need a damn haircut!

Shake it Off

That last entry sure was dumb. I guess I just got it in my head that I wanted to go out with some people this weekend and when it didn't happen I felt this burning loneliness tinged with anger. The fact is that I've spent plenty of weekends mostly alone in my life. And I'm still here. Today I decided to snap myself out of it and it hasn't been completely easy. I'm still not totally snapped out of it, but a lot more out of it than at this time yesterday. I took myself out for breakfast at a local diner where I started reading "When We Were Orphans" by Kazuo Ishiguro. I've previously read "Remains of the Day" and I have to say that I believe Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors. His style is subdued but its calmness is despite all kinds of other ideas swirling around the characters. The protagonists in both novels share this overarching sense of duty to which they sacrifice their personal lives. It is a theme that I can relate to. The only problem is that since the style is so measured, I sometimes get a little tired so I have to get up and walk around outside for a while. Maybe that is an indication that I need to start getting a little bit of exercise.

Well, I got a phone call so I lost my train of thought so I'll leave it at that.

Bullshit Weekend

Now, I've never been king number one cool social guy or anything, but I wonder what's happened to me since I moved to Eugene almost a year ago. I've never had as hard a time connecting with people as I have since I've lived here. At least, not during my adult life. I'm not a social retard and I'm able to carry on conversations with all kinds of people but I don't understand why I don't have any real friends. Sure, there are some people who I can hang out with and talk to relatively comfortably but that's not really enough for me. I can't have a series of mere acquaintances but no real friends. This weekend is what's getting to me. I've called basically everyone I know to try and get something going but here I sit at my computer without having been able to get in touch with anyone. And I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed that I have to call people to try and have a social interaction and I'm unbelievably annoyed and more than a little hurt that nobody calls me to hang out. I keep up my happy face and talk to people but still nothing. I haven't been able to get into any type of regular friendships with anyone. I've been trying but it doesn't seem to be working. I don't think any of my friends mean anything by not calling me which almost makes it worse because it seems to confirm my fear that people don't really care about me.

Piss on this feeling. I know it is a stupid bullshit temporary feeling but that doesn't make it any less real for me right now. I've been making social progress and I know this isn't permanent but it gets tiring. I'm sick of having no social life. Whatever. I just need to keep trying. I'm done.

Some Pictures

I walked around Eugene today and took some pictures. Here are some results:

Other than that, a pretty crappy day.

Oops

Wow, I need to get to bed. I guess class is probably out of the question in the morning. Oh well.

Honey Bucket

This is the view outside of my living room window at the moment. As I've previously mentioned, I live in an alley. Actually, to be precise, I live at the intersection of a major and a minor alley. The minor alley is being paved this week (hopefully not too much longer) so I've been dealing with people cutting concrete and operating backhoes right outside my window. And I guess the workers have to have a place to let loose their bladders and bowels. And that place is right outside my living room window. It doesn't smell as bad as it could. I can only guess what the smell will be like if the project lasts a long time. Oh please, be efficient city contractors. For my sake.

I went with a friend and her boyfriend to see "Wedding Crashers" tonight. I quite enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for living vicariously through the sleeziness of others. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sappy ending but it is a movie and people need to be redeemed...I guess.

I don't have a lot more to say. I'm kind of tired but not quite ready to go to bed. I thought that I had an entry in me but I seem to have been mistaken. Such is life.

Weekend tomorrow! Parrrrrty! Or not.

So...Hot...

...no, not a girl, me. And not because I'm attractive, my profile picture is a giant inflatable crab on top of a building, afterall. And that's an improvement! No, I am hot because it is fucking hot up in this beast. I just have to nap for a bit. Later on tonight, I'm going to a friend's house to watch "Shaun of the Dead." That'll be nice. Now, onto my nap.

What Time is It?

I had an enjoyable evening. First off, I had a test in my damn-ass physics class. As I told my friend, I like to call physics "p-hys." It just sounds a little cooler. I have no idea how the test went, I could have passed or failed. No idea. That probably means I didn't get an A. One rarely gets an A when one thinks one may have failed. Rarely, but not never. Maybe this is just a rare day.

It actually was a rare day because around 8:30 I met up with a friend at a coffee shop where we drank a little coffee, but more interestingly we smoked his hookah. It was quite a pleasant experience. He mixed pinapple and jasmine shisha which is what the tobacco is called. There are a couple of things that I really liked about it. One was the ritual. Unlike smoking a cigarette, there is a large apparatus that must be prepared before one smokes so the experience is heightened by said preparation. The second big thing that I liked was that the smoke lasts a long time. I love to smoke and smoking cigarette after cigarette often winds up being a less than enjoyable experience. A hookah, on the other hand has mild smoke that one can enjoy for a hell of a lot longer than one cigarette.

There is a mosquito buzzing around me right now and I can't kill it. Shite!

So anyway, smoking hookah is great. It is relaxing. The smoke tastes good and is smooth. And another cool aspect is that it is communal. So yeah, thumbs up to hookah.

After hookah time, we got a six pack and drank a few beers each. I didn't really know this guy too well before we hang out tonight, but we had a really nice conversation. I'll be happy to add him to my short list of friends. I guess that's about that. A good night was had. And I have to go to stupid shit class in eight hours. I guess I'd better get to sleep...soon.

Fleas, That's Right.

Damn, the flea that I saw seems to have a few friends. I guess I need to bomb the shit outta this place. I have no idea where they came from but I guess that isn't really important. Now I just need to figure out where to send them, and I think I know where; straight to HELLLLLLL! You mofos are all gonna die something wicked. You hear that?

On another note, I have a test tomorrow. Ahh, thermodynamics, I barely know you. You seem to think that I've been listening this past week, but really all that's been going through my head when you've been talking is, "I can't wait until this is over so I can pick my nose in peace." But now I'm being tested and all I can do at the moment is not go to bed. That means I'll be writing a couple more sentences about absolutely nothing, particularly nada, but I'll also be exploring zilch and if time allows oblivion. So, nada. What can I say about nada...well, I guess there isn't much to say. Onto zilch...where does this word come from? I imagine it is probably an adoption from Yiddish as are so many of our more whacky words. Oh wait, I'm going to go look it up...brb...from dictionary.com:

zilch Slang
n.

1. Zero; nothing.
2. A person regarded as being insignificant; a nonentity.


adj.

Amounting to nothing; nil: “Business was zilch” (New York).


[Perhaps from alteration of z(ero) + (n)il.]

Well, looks like I may have been wrong. I'm not afraid to admit to my mistakes, especially when they are so trivial. And as long as the subject is unimportant mistakes, I'll admit them 24/7/365(6). That's right, I won't even take a day off during leap year.

And now onto oblivion...oh, I'm sorry, I guess we've run out of time. That really was a good subject too. Well, maybe next time.

Fleas?!?

How in the hell do I have fleas here? I don't have an animal living with me anymore! Hopefully the one that I found on my leg is just an aberration and I got it from outside. We'll see. I'm not a hairy person so it isn't so likely they'll thrive on me. What a crock of shit.

Sunday for a While Longer

What can I say? The last week has been an interesting one in that I've done as much to avoid any responsibilities that I possibly can. Somehow I've been able to get everything done that I need to but with a minimum of effort. I feel as if, when I work on my obligations, I'm in some sort of trance in which I'm able to work and think but after which I have little to no recollection of working or thinking. I guess you could say that the memories are like those of a long night of drinking. Sure, you remember most of it although some things are a bit fuzzy and everything seems a little less real than it should. That's how I feel about my first week of my second physics class. I'd be nervous about the first test on Tuesday, but I don't think I care enough to be nervous. I'll do ok, I'm sure. I'm retaining the information but can't recall it unless in a classroom or while doing homework. I guess I'm subconciously compartmentalizing school and other tasks which I currently deem unpleasant. But what does that mean for the rest of my life? I'm not exactly sure about that. I enjoy playing video games but my ass eventually gets tired. I enjoy meeting new people but my fake smile and anecdotes eventually get tired. I enjoy drinking but my liver eventually gets tired. I enjoy blogging but my fingers and anecdotes eventually get tired. I enjoy listening to talk radio but my ears eventually get tired...

The point is that even though I'm doing a lot better than I was doing a month or two ago, I'm starting to feel inadequate in other parts of my life. Ha ha, that's a perfect opening for a penis joke but I'm not going to indulge that kind of thinking around here...mainly because I can't think of anything particularly funny about making jokes about my own penis. And this is about where I remember that someone I know probably actually still checks this and then I feel like a total idiot for writing this stuff, but I won't delete it from the little blogger textbox because this is what having a blog is all about. Stupid-ass shit.

I read a salon.com article earlier today about this nanny in new york who was fired by her employer because of the things she wrote in her blog. Also, the employer imagined a whole hell of a lot more than she'd also written. Which makes me wonder sometimes. I feel like the internet brings a lot of people together, often people who would never meet. And there is a weird intimacy that happens between people online. But when you get down to it, the internet, blogs, message boards, instant messaging, they are all ways in which people put on masks for others and even more for themselves. We are still in a time of novelty for the internet. People are willing to bare much of themselves for the outside world. And I can understand that pretty well, but what happens when things that are only meant for oneself and complete strangers are stumbled upon and read by those close to us? It seems ridiculous that we would allow some random person who finds our blogs through search results should know more about one's life than the people closest to that one. But somehow it seems even more ridiculous the other way around. And I think that may be why my blog has been languishing. Because I have barely anything to write that I would want those close to me to read. Maybe it is just because I want to put up a happy and brave facade. I can't do that so well when I expose myself to people who know me. I don't know where I'm going with this. Nowhere good, I think. Especially since I've been feeling so good lately. No, I'm going to stop this thought train before it is too late.

I'll close with this little anecdote...

When I first moved into my apartment, I often heard the sounds of sex coming from an apartment accross my alley. They've been absent for a while but I didn't really notice until recently when a baby's crying began emanating from the same window. Tonight, I heard the couple having sex. That was the first time I can remember hearing them fucking since well before the baby came along. Good for them.

Phuck Fysics!

I'm sick of physics. I don't fucking care about how many light bulbs it takes to warm up a wall in order to transfer some fucking amount of heat through said wall and into the next goddamn room. Who gives a fucking shit!?! Fuck physics...right in, um...uh...some fucking place.

I Wanna Be a Supermodel

Things are starting to get interesting. My former studio teacher is to be designing a house on the coast and he'd like to hire me to work on model building for him. This much I've known for a while but things have been up in the air. He emailed me the other day and things look like they are going to happen in the near future. I don't know exactly what's going on yet, but he wants to pay me $18/hr! That's $10.75 more per hour than I make at my crap-ass cafeteria job which, coincidentally, is over for now meaning that I have no income. I'm very lucky to have people from whom I can get money in emergencies. I think I'll be having an emergency soon.

I'm taking physics right now. My final exam is on Friday. I'm not happy about that but I think it is good that it is coming soon. Things have been getting steadily more difficult in the last week. We first dealt with one dimensional motion, then two dimensional, then circular motion which was starting to get a bit on the weird site. Now we are talking about radial motion with torque and all kinds of other less straight forward concepts. All I can say about physics is that I'm glad it is curved and I'm glad I don't have to take it graded.

Templates, Dammit!

In order to help facilitate a renewed interest in my blog, I decided to change the template. Little did I know that none of the stock templates would work with some of my content. Blah. I guess I'll have to create a new one for myself. That's not so bad, I guess. Time to attempt to learn the blogger tags again. Sigh.

Fine!

OK, fine! I'll write a damn blog entry. I actually forgot about this thing for a while. It isn't really as if I'd ever paid all that much attention to it, but I guess I lost interest during spring term of school. It seems that I can't ever really string anything mildly interesting together. Usually an entry would be something like, "I don't really have anything to say." Surely riveting material. But lately, I've been less busy than any time in the previous year and I've become increasingly agitated. Something must be done. This website isn't the answer to whatever it is that is causing me to feel poorly, but it certainly can't be one of the reasons for my feelings. That would have required me to have been posting to it at some point in the last month.

There is a dog barking/whining in some apartment in my alley. Yes, that's right, alley. I don't live on a street. A peculiarity of Eugene is that nearly every block is bisected by an alley which has addresses and lots of people living in it. I don't know if this is common in many cities, but as one who grew up in and around Portland, it is not normal for me. When I first decided to move into my apartment, I thought it was kind of shady. I've been proven both right and wrong in that regard. See, it is shady and there are lots of people who suck living around here, but there are also plenty of people who are just students or who don't sell drugs so I guess there is a balance. A ying and yang. A certain symmetrical beauty. My property management company, on the other hand, was forged from pure evil by Satan himself. I've had an unusual number of confrontations with my property management company that have left me shocked by their lack of professionalism. I won't go into the past, but rather detail the current issue.

I re-signed my lease for the next year. I decided that moving is too much of a hassle and it is much too expensive for me right now. I signed it a month ago and the new lease starts in September when my rent increases by five dollars a month. I paid my rent a week ago and the check went through just as usual. What is unusual though is that I got a 72 hour eviction notice saying that I owe them FIVE DOLLARS! Those dumb motherfuckers are threatening eviction over five dollars that I don't even owe them. What in the name of Shit do they think they are doing? I should have learned by now but it seems every once in a while they'll shock me. One thing that I'll take from my experiences with this company of morons; if the majority of the workers have perms, heavy eyeliner, and orange skin, don't rent from them.