My Braynz

Stuff and Things, Thoughts and Kings

2008-07-10T12:09:00.000-04:00

As I sit today with a puppy curled up next to me, I ponder my future and all things green. I think about houses and cars, sewers and mars and I wonder why we are the things that we are.

I'm sure that in the instance of light and show that to the naked eye the cosmos seems so close. Am I suffocating? Am I really alive. Do I think or does everything seem blue and pink. There I come and here I go and then we dance on the rich sea sand... under glowing red moon.

I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.

2005-03-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.
I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.
I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.
I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.
I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.
I think I'm going mad I really think I'm going mad I really think so.

There are times like now when I wonder to myself if ever I will amount to anything. And then I say to myself, “Self. No, of course not. Because in the cosmic scheme of things, no one ever amounts to much of anything anyway.” Of course when I say this to myself I have to wonder what in the hell it is that I am saying. The cosmic scheme of what things? And what do I mean by “amount to anything?” I suppose that I amount to whatever I do. And for that matter I amount to whatever I think.

Imagine for a moment that the Universe is a closed system just like my mind, which I believe to be, essentially, “the stuff” of my brain (e.g. its matter and configuration and processes and existence in time—a functioning neural network). Now, if the Universe is a closed system then my actions (e.g. what I do) affect only the elements within it. And because my mind is a closed system, what I think effects only the elements within it. So therefore what I amount to is both what I do and what I think since my mind, a closed system, is fully contained with the Universe, another closed system.

Therefore I could simply do nothing but think and amount to a great deal affecting an incredibly complex yet closed system and no one would know it. Of course I could do a great deal of stuff without necessarily too much thought and have very little effect on either the Universe or my mind. Or I could expend a tremendous amount of energy both thinking and doing and still have little effect on the Universe, yet take my toll on my mind. Of course to effect the Universe in any significant way is currently unfathomable. Although as thinking beings we've certainly managed throughout our entire history to do both a lot of thinking and doing, affecting adversely as well positively both of our closed systems, the mind more so than the Universe—we are supreme egoists first before we are anything—just what would it take to actually affect the Universe in any noticeable way?

One cosmically insignificant accident, such as a bunch of planet sized asteroids one day slamming into our planet or, for example, wiping out the solar system, would end any potential I (or any thinking being) might have to affect change to the universe—assuming this were to happen before we found a way to live out in space away from earth.

Dusk

2005-03-08T20:43:00.000-05:00

Can one be content with merely doing or is it that we seek fulfillment, hollow though it might be, by doing so that others might praise us?

Constantly these days I struggle with the feeling that I will accomplish little before I die and I feel as though I am rushing toward it, toward death, and I a feel like I still need to hang on so that I can accomplish something, something wonderful for all to see so that my name will be placed among the rest of those few whose names any child can recall. How foolish a thought is this? And how common a thought in the mind of any man reaching a certain point in life?

Do I continue working for someone else, working among my piers so that (as a mentor) I can help them become better engineers so that perhaps they might also help me to improve... as a designer, and engineer, a human being?

I used to loath contact with people, but not so much anymore. Sometimes when I listen to those with whom I work speak to one another about such happiness in their youth, the conversations inevitably centers around their friends or family. When I, in turn, speak of youth I can recall only the silence of my bedroom. I almost always recall in my mind my ugly shag carpet and how the light in morning would cross the far wall as it coursed its way from morning through evening. Evening was my favorite time, just before the sun had set, because the sun would eventually become an emblazoned burning orange as it was being swallowed by the western horizon, and my room and I would be cast in its deep orange-umber glow as we sat alone together, waiting.

Grand Cycle (or a lot of rambling nonsense)

2004-11-20T00:17:00.000-05:00

Home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason. The back was terrible last Sunday, and I screamed, screamed, screamed in pain, to myself, and I couldn’t lie still. I had to sit up, and days after I kept waking to the feeling that I was drowning, or something. I couldn’t breath, it was awful, and I’d find myself waking up, gasping, choking sometimes, at two in the morning, and I’d turn on my little nightstand light and I’d sit for a while, maybe twenty minutes or so on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor, at my feet, at my shoes a few feet away, then I’d glance outward towards the rest of the room and look about, and all I’d see was the stillness of things and all I’d hear was the god damned air condition clicking on and then eventually off, and I’d hear the occasional strange noise, the house creaking, settling, and then I’d grab whatever book was sitting on the nightstand beside me, and I’d read. I’d read for a half hour sometimes, and then several hours other times, until I could read no longer, and until the breaths I took replenished my tired blood, when I felt as though each gasp of air was not in vain…when I felt that I might survive sleep…might wake up the next morning, although groggy, dizzy, yet alive to face another day, to see my wife, to be once again… to be me. That’s all I asked. For despite whatever depression might accost my mind, whatever physical ailment might attack my body, I still yearned for one more day, for life, for the breathing, in and out, in and out, and to hear my frail heart beating against my soft chest. I yearn always for this feeling, for while death may be imminent, just around the fucking corner, I want to keep breathing, keep feeling, pain and all… I want to keep going, to see what happens next, to feel my lover’s breath once more against my naked body, to traverse the aisles of the supermarket and purchase food… glorious fucking food. I don’t want to die because I know, I feel it in my bones, that there is nothing… nada... nyet… nothing after this fucking life, and so be it. No Heaven or Hell… no Hell, for God’s sake, for while Hell might be the last place you’d wish to find yourself, at least it was something and not nothing. At least there was fire, brimstone, agony… feeling, for fuck sake. There was that. No matter how bad it was, how bad could Hell be compared to an eternity of nothingness, of lifelessness, of listlessness… of void… of never knowing, never wondering, never contemplating… unending darkness, but that doesn’t matter anyway because you’d simply cease to exist and with that ceasing you’d cease to understand, to comprehend, to be conscious. No dreams, no nightmares, no bright white light at the end of that seductive tunnel that pulls you towards it non-stop. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. You would be alone, and you wouldn’t know it. No one would, for everyone else would continue on, grieving, getting over it, meeting new people, other lovers and that would be that. You’d be nothing more than a picture on a mantel, a memory in someone’s failing mind, your few scribblings left behind, perhaps in a trunk in some dusty attic, a house for spiders, and for mold and mildew. Your work, your life, crumbling away, yellowing with time, and that would be that, until someone, some kid, some little girl, might discover a scrap here and there, some bit of wit, some serious sentence, some piece of you, still crying out, yearning to be heard, and then nothing but kindling perhaps, or some cool kind of ancient wrapping paper for some child’s birthday gift, or to the trash where your words, your thoughts, might wind up in a heap, a heap of garbage rotting, disintegrating, like your shell of a body, deep under the dirt, becoming again one with the earth, the universe, pieces, parts, down to the molecule, the proton, disintegrating… down to the electron, the nucleus, the sub-atomic particle… disintegrating, breaking away, fast, onward through the universe, congealing somewhere by some heavy, heavy force of gravity, pulling you back into substance, something, matter, renewed again, into light, heat, energy, matter, hot gases, molten rock…rock forming, lava flowing, cooling gases, water condensing, raining upon another world, ready to begin anew. Ready, ready. The primordial soup, readying itself, barring any catastrophes, and the single celled animals erupt, and then more, and more, growing in a soup green, gray, cloudy, fresh water and minerals, pouring down and in, replenishing, and you grow again, again, and the specter that you once were now hints of tomorrow, the primordial thoughts sparking in your simple cells, your new yet someday ancient DNA, and one day you will grow into something, something small, something potential, something slimy, extracting gas from liquid, oxygen from water perhaps, and then you might eventually crawl upon the land, then back to the water, then back onto the land, which maybe less harsh this time, and you might rest your weary body, your weary legs, appendages, things, under the shade primitive leaves of some kind of primitive tree, trembling as the wind blows and wondering what next to do, and you make your way back to the water, then back out much, much later, more robust, and take to the trees, which are different somehow, different and new, oh the glorious, tall, reverent trees, then back down to the land, then fighting off the insane, deadly creatures, fighting the insane, deadly diseases, believing eventually in spirits, looking up to see the sun and the stars and the moon and ascribing some primal meaning, something ethereal, other worldly, spiritual perhaps, for you have no explanation as you witness the grass growing in the warmth of the sun sometimes, and dying in the dead cold other times, and eventually you sense cycles, patterns… and one day you discover eventually the wondrous thing that is fire, like the sun, but closer, hotter, more effective, and you learn to cook your food, fend off beasts more easily, and eventually make your own clothing to warm you from the elements when fire isn’t around, and you hone little tools of stone, wood and plant at night by the light of your fire, and you carve, and cut, dig and chop, and grow, the intellect growing, too, ever onward, upward, and you fear others who might know more than you so you gather your people and conquer the strangers with your tools, and you take their tools, and you learn, learn, learn, and you become the leader, for you lead your tribe, your small group of followers, mostly inbred kin, towards victory, and while it might not have made sense at first, the spoils… oh the spoils… strange skins, strange vessels, strange tools… strange foods, perhaps preserved, strange images on stone, strangeness all around, and you accept some and discard others and fear yet some other things, for some reason, for no particular reason, you fear and you make up stories of danger, death, gods, spirits, and then you move onward and upward, and civilizations come to pass and with it clothing, and manners, and things, all manner of things, and food is easy to come by and work, too, for now you find yourself employed, wanting more, making more of yourself and you move onward and upward and you find yourself once again drinking the beer, the wine, feeling better and better and poorer and poorer, writing words down onto something, perhaps paper and with a tool, perhaps a pen, perhaps a keyboard, perhaps dictating into something artificial, whatever that means, that might take your very words and transcribe them into the writing of the day, of the age, and then you marry and are happy… And then one day your find yourself home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason…

Christmas List, 2004

2004-11-18T21:30:00.000-05:00

I thought for my first journal entry that I might share my Christmas list. My wife and family insist every year that I provide them with one, and each year it's similar to the last. Only the titles and the names of the authors change (mostly).

1.“Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic” by Anita Burdman Feferman and Solomon Feferman
2.“Faces in the Water” by Janet Frame
3.“Janet Frame” by Janet Frame (autobiography)
4.“Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism” by Susan Jacoby
5.“Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition” by Ian F. Darwin (computer programming)
6.“The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins
7.“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson
8.“Dark Age Ahead” Jane Jacobs
9.“The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell” by Bertrand Russell (note: do not confuse this with his second volume, one that I already possess, “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1914-1944”)
10. “Bertrand Russell: 1921-1970, The Ghost of Madness” by Ray Monk
11. “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
12. “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt
13. “The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set, 3rd Edition” by Donald E. Knuth (list price is $164.99 but can be ordered from Amazon at a 24% savings for a total of $125.39, no including shipping, of course. You might also be able to find a used set at Amazon of via eBay. Also make sure that it is the 3rd edition and not 1st or 2nd edition.)
14. “Daniel Dennett (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)” by Andrew Brook (Editor), Don Ross (Editor)
15. “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath” by Sylvia Plath, Karen V. Kukil (Editor)
16. “Half a Life” by V. S. Naipaul
17. “Fearful Symmetry” by Northrop Frye
18. “Complete Essays of Montaigne” by Michel E. De Montaigne, Translated by Donald M. Frame. Published by Stanford University Press, June 1, 1985.
19. “Samuel Johnson” by Walter Jackson Bate. Published by Counterpoint Press, Jun 1, 1998
20. ”Samuel Johnson: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)” by Donald Greene. Published by Oxford University Press, July 1, 2000.
21. “Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Volume I - The Poetry of Desire (1749 – 1790)” by Nicholas Boyle. Published by Oxford University Press, September 1, 1992.
22. “Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Volume II - Revolution and Renunciation” by Nicholas Boyle. Published by Oxford University Press, July 1, 2003.
23. “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Paperback Classics)” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brooks Atkinson (editor). Published by Modern Library, September 12, 2000.
24. “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II : Within A Budding Grove” by Marcel Proust. Published by Modern Library, November 3, 1998.
25. “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III : The Guermantes Way” by Marcel Proust. Published by Modern Library, November 3, 1998.
26. “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV : Sodom and Gomorrah” by Marcel Proust. Published by Modern Library, February 16, 1999.
27. “In Search of Lost Time, Volume V : The Captive & The Fugitive” by Marcel Proust. Published by Modern Library, February 16, 1999.
28. “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI : Time Regained” by Marcel Proust. Published by Modern Library, February 16, 1999.
29. “Civilization and Its Discontents” by Sigmund Freud. Published by W. W. Norton and Company. Reissue edition, July 1, 1989.

Fear and Self Loathing

2004-09-01T20:31:00.001-04:00

I sit here nearly paralyzed from hopelessness and fear for I know not what to do. I have no clue. I took down as many books of poetry as I could find in my library—I have no order, rhyme or reason to my library—and have intended my study of poetry in order that I might master it and become myself a great poet. Hah! But alas I have lost interest and cannot find it again. It's gone. Somewhere. As if it fell out of my head last night whilst I was sleeping. I am paralyzed, as I've said. I sit here listening to music awaiting my wife to arrive home from work and alas I can do nothing. I cannot read, I cannot write except in this pathetic journal; I have no words of encouragement for myself. I am nothing. I am shit.

Why am I all the time filled with nothing but self loathing? And fear? I used to fear a lot of things. Perhaps it was the medication. Now I am full of disdain for people and for myself. I read the news and I am so much more disgusted with the world than I had been while on medications. When on medications, at least on different medications, I could cope better. Perhaps it was because I was just numb. More numb than I am now. Now, I am not numb. Not really. The current meds (little more than placebos, I think) barely do anything to subdue the mental anguish. I feel more like a raw nerve. Exposed. I want to lash out at people. I snap at Sherri more now than I ever had. Mikhail has upped my topamax and so that has helped a little, I suppose. I think she needs to up it more, though. I think maybe I need to try that welbutrin again. Something. Anything!

Ethics and G. E. Moore

2004-05-21T23:56:00.000-04:00

I’ve learned today from Moore that in ethics, ‘good’ is indefinable, but what is good can be defined, e.g. pleasure is good. But pleasure is also indefinable. But something like ‘chocolate is good,’ is a definition about chocolate, good describing the sensation. Yet still we cannot define good, although we know what it is—well, I would think that Hitler, somehow, didn’t understand ‘good’ in any sense.

This has led me to think about other things that cannot be defined, but that define other things, such as pleasure. For example, the massage was pleasurable. We can define a massage, yet we cannot define pleasure. So there are words that, like atoms, are basic units of definition. ‘Quality’ is another word. Quality can be used to define a certain property of some thing. In this case a quality seems to be synonymous with property. But when you use quality in the following way, “This item has quality,” or “That extremely flawed diamond lacks the quality of this flawless one.” What then is quality in this sense? It describes a grade of excellence, but then what is excellence?

If Ethics has to do with what is ‘good,’ then it must also have to deal with what is not good, or what is ‘bad.’ Again we know something is bad when we experience it, but how do we define bad?

Idealism, Realism and G. E. Moore

2004-05-21T23:54:00.000-04:00

I read G. E. Moore’s Refutation of Idealism. I’m almost certain that his assertions are a refutation of Idealism as I understand it. But the text is dense and sometimes I got lost and couldn’t tell whether or not he had convinced himself. Idealism, as I see it distilled to its essence, is the phrase, which I had to learn, esse est percipi, or to be is to be perceived or experienced. Essentially, nothing exists that hasn’t been perceived. Thus Idealists, I think, believe in an ultimate Self, or perceiver, which is where a God or something metaphysical comes to play. Which is why an Idealist can meet someone who he’s never met because something greater has already perceived this new someone.

Now, I could be all wrong here, but this is my take on it. Now, I probably need to go back and read Moore’s refutation. While it made some sense as I read, I didn’t study or read it well enough because now I forget its essence. I think what he was partially saying was that there is an intractable connection between the perceived and the perceiver such that the perceived need be perceived in order to be. Yet things continue to be (and I’m sure his argument went to kind of prove this) after I’ve stopped perceiving it (e.g. I look skyward and perceive the color blue. I close my eyes and only perceive in my mind the memory of the color blue. When I open my eyes a moment later, the blue shall still be there even though I stopped perceiving it). Now, here is where I get wishy-washy in my thoughts and I need further study because I think I might have misunderstood some of Moore’s fundamental points.

Professors, Ph.D.s and Friends

2004-05-09T01:48:00.000-04:00

Although I am not a television freak, I do watch a few regular shows, including some sitcoms, and tonight is the night that they’re showing the Friends final episode. It’s two hours long and it’s supposed to be very good. Apparently this will be one of the most watched programs in history. Apparently commercials spots were going for two million a pop? Maybe more, can’t recall. Anyway, two hours of my time this evening will be wasted in front of the television, and of course if Sherri has anything to say about it I’ll also be watching the season finale of E.R.

I wrote an email message to a professor (the head, I think) of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh to tell him that I was interested in pursuing an advanced degree in philosophy. I asked if I should get an undergraduate degree and then try graduate school or just take the GREs and go to graduate school directly. He told me the following, which I thought was an interesting idea:

"I think the best plan is to begin part time with one or two upper division philosophy courses. You will be able to assess your needs and plans from your work in those classes. Your work will also give you a basis to apply to graduate programs.

Good luck,
Michael Perloff"

Anyway, I might look into this. I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to go back to school, get a Ph.D., work in academe, maybe research. I like to sit and think and to write and what better job than to be a tenured professor at a university somewhere. Not sure about the teaching, but then that’s where graduate students come in.

Reading his email I began to think about the kinds of work I might do in these classes that would help me decide on various graduate programs. I suppose he was saying simply that if you like it and can do it well enough then you can probably get in to a graduate program. I don’t know. I have no confidence. I know I will never go back to school and it will be my biggest regret. I am an idiot.

Ever Growing Medicine Cabinet

2004-05-06T11:04:00.000-04:00

I’ve noticed that as I grow older, and perhaps this is a general truth about people in modern societies, my medicine cabinet grows fatter. When I was young and living on my own I had toothpaste, a toothbrush and a bottle of aspirin, maybe some cold medicine, and that was it. Now, however, I need two medicine cabinets and space in cabinets under the sinks of two of my bathroom to hold all the stuff my wife and I need.

Just for me I have a plethora of prescription medicine: one for my high blood pressure, one for acid reflux, three for depression, one for social anxiety and to help me sleep in the evenings, and one to help me have sex with my wife because the others, while they help my depression, keep me from getting an erection.

There is also the non-prescription medications such as cold medicines (plural), flu medicines, allergy medicines, medicines for diarrhea, medicines for constipation, stuff for heartburn, stuff for gas, and of course one that does it all. We also have cough medicine and just in case the cold and the flu medicines don’t do the trick.

Also as I age I’ve noticed various problems with dry, cracked skin and so I have lotions and potions and petroleum jelly products and moisturizers of all sorts. I also have stuff to fight foot and nail fungus and painful anal itch.

For my mouth I have, of course, mouth wash and plaque remover, toothpaste and whitening strips, several toothbrushes, toothpicks and of course the much neglected dental floss.

As for grooming there are the various and sundry instruments. have a beard trimmer and an electric razor, a n electric nose hair trimmer and an electric eyebrow trimmer (my wife’s idea). I have tow nail clippers and finger nail clippers and cuticle tools and little scissors, the function of which I have no clue. I also have several hair brushes, both my wife’s, actually, and I use one of them. I think I have hair gel and hair spray that at one point seemed necessary as did the original bottle of Polo my wife bought me four years ago and that that I still possess. I also keep several bottles of spray cleaner for my glasses.

Free Thinking

2004-05-05T07:49:00.000-04:00

There is a book I’d like to get entitled “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,” by Susan Jacoby. The title is good, she’s a talented writer and was once nominated for the Pulitzer. From an interview, here are Jocoby’s words when asked what is a freethinker.

"Freethinker and freethought are terms that date from the end of the 17th century. Freethinker basically meant someone who did not believe in the received word of the bible or the authority of religion. Freethinkers have often been described as people who didn't believe in God, but it's more accurate to see freethought as a kind of a broad continuum, ranging from those who really didn't believe in God at all to deists who believed in a God who set the universe in motion but afterwards didn't take an active role in the affairs of men."

By the end of the 19th century, freethinkers even included liberal Protestant denominations and Unitarians. Even though they believed in God and in some form of Christianity, they did not believe in any hierarchy of religion. So there was a spectrum of people in the freethought community, but all were opposed to the religious orthodoxies of their day.

Because I am an atheist and language regarding young earth science, creationism and dogmatic Catholicism drives me up a fucking wall, I like to read about things I believe in, which is nothing. Well, I believe in nature and all that surrounds me and the sense data, the sense experiences that I, myself, experience. I believe thought and freedom to think for oneself is vastly more important than any religious dogma. Sure, if in thinking and exploring and in question I come to believe that creationism and young earth science are true and that Darwinian evolution, no matter the immense amount of proof we’ve found to validate it, is false, than so be it. I will still question my assumptions, still try to understand the world, the universe, etc. I would hate to think that a God who created us would create us in such a way that seemed antithetical to free thought.

But if there is a god, then he seems to have given us the choice to believe, to not think, or to think and not believe, or to think and believe, etc. Any combination is possible. I suppose he gave us this “free will” to be who we are. And I ought to embrace those who believe the complete opposite of what I believe. And I do. Well, I try. If I could read somewhere (and I’m sure there are sources) the science behind young earth science and creationism and see that it is empirical, that there is physical evidence for it, then I would be very much happy to embrace it, but also, like nature herself, to scrutinize the data and the results. I mean, to believe in something wholeheartedly that you would die to protect it seems foolish. Of course there are a lot of suicide bombers killing themselves and people simply for this reason. Perhaps the moment just before they press the button they think to themselves just how silly it all is. Perhaps a moment of clarity enters their fogged, brainwashed mind and for an instant they see life and somehow realize the answer to everything. But still, the button gets pressed, for what else is there to do?

Speaking of buttons and bombers, I wonder if there is a mechanism in the bomb that is strapped to the moron carrying it that allows someone to remotely detonate it. The reason I ask is simply because what would happen if the bomber got cold feet? I suppose being in a car some safe distance away keeps you distanced from the reality of the mothers and the children and the men and young women that you’re bomber is about to wipe out in an instant. Being distanced, detached, etc., would make it easier to push the plunger, don’t you think?

I downloaded and was playing the demo of Unreal Tournament 2004. It has a third person view which helps keep me from getting motion sickness. I was doing pretty good after a while. I was playing some AI characters. The action is so fast, though, that at times I didn’t know what was going on. One moment I’m being shot at, and the next one of my AI buddies gets me out of trouble by shooting the AI enemy that had me in its sights. Cool stuff. Of course you sit and play all day because once you make a kill the character killed can resurrect himself. It’s like instant gratification, over and over and over.

Sherri is bringing back subs from Subway. I get my usual BMT and she gets, I think, the cold cut trio, or something like that. Anyway, I’m hungry, but on these fucking meds, I am always hungry.

On Writing

2004-04-26T02:04:00.000-04:00

There is a certain lack of style that seems prevalent in general journalism these days. I even sense it in creative non-fiction writers who write essays, for example. I’ve even noticed it, albeit in small amounts, in the works of David Sedaris, which annoyed the hell out of me because I hadn’t expected it. I guess with word processing its easy to write and keep what you write and to not think about how what you write will sound before actually writing. It’s as if we’re now simply used to pulling down our mental pants and just shitting whatever is in us onto whatever is under us.

Now, I don’t recall specific writers except perhaps Martin Amis, who have such a unique and beautiful style when they write that I wonder if more people who actually write are simply ignoring them. I suppose even in E. B. White’s days, he was unique among writers. And then there is H. L. Mencken. I often wonder what White thought about Mencken.

Of course I’m no literary critic. Either I like something or I don’t, and I seem to never be able to say just exactly what it is that I like or dislike. I suppose I think in general terms. If a piece flows smoothly and sounds elegant to my ear, then I like it. Well, I like how it was written. Then I judge the content. But I’ve read some pieces that have been horribly written (mostly by academics who seem prone, if not actually forced, to write in such a way) where the content was very good, thought provoking in fact, if you could stick with the prose, which tends to be difficult. But I suppose that those types of writers are expected to write in such a way because their peers expect a certain level of dryness to be achieved before it can be considered “well written” and authoritative.

Horrible words

2004-04-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

I've recently been reading in various online magazines the words filmic and filmically (the adverb form) instead of the once, more dramatic, cinematic and cinematically. Why do we have to have such an ugly word as filmic and why are we doing away with cinematic? It seems that people who write today, the young, I suppose, have no ear for words and interrelationships therein. Certainly there is no sense of style any longer. Where are all the E. B. Whites?

Random stuff

2004-04-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

8:40 PM
The peacekeeping rages onward, Americans and Arabians trying to help one another as well as kill one another. I hate hearing about hostages and I hate hearing about Americans dying while trying to help people who appear to need it.

10:49 PM
Sometimes I imagine that I am young and am over there as a soldier or perhaps an officer. I imagine myself either fighting or designing strategies for urban warfare. I know it would scare the fucking hell out of me, but I imagine being there helping the Iraqis that need help. But then I get this sense from reading the papers and online news sites that they don’t want our help. There is certainly a number of them who don’t because they keep firing rocket propelled grenades, and strapping TNT around kids and sending them to where the coalition soldiers are.

Fundamentalism is to blame, partly I imagine. Blindly following someone who spouts dogma, perhaps even warped dogma to suit his own needs. I suppose leaders, especially those who seem to us to be evil, have an agenda and so they bend reality and scripture to fulfill that agenda. I hear about how the Islamic religion is a peaceful religion and in fact there is apparently no where within the Islamic “bible” that mentions the inferiority of women and the subsequent treatment—as if they were not human. I could be wrong, and probably am, but if this is true then you have to wonder just what did some woman some many centuries ago do to some leader? Castrate him with a hunting knife? That would piss me off, of course.

I don’t really know what fundamentalism is. I mean, it does seem apparent. Yet is the fundamental part of a thing its base, its foundation? So isn’t fundamentalism just getting back to basics? I then don’t believe that there is fundamentally anything wrong with fundamentalism. It’s how the base or foundation of the Islamic religion (for example) is interpreted. But then, if some holy leader (or evil bastard, we like to say) reinterprets the scripture, or the foundation of his religion to suit his agenda, would it not then just be called progressivism rather than fundamentalism? To reinterpret is to put a ‘new’ spin on something, or so I would imagine.

Variety Hours

2004-04-04T22:27:00.000-04:00

12:45 a.m.

It’s late again, or early if you prefer. I am up and not so very tired. Sherri was in a very bad way today. She had been on Zoloft for her depression (her rheumatoid arthritis doctor prescribed it for her) and she seemed to be fine, but this week the doctor took her off it because we want to try to get pregnant again. Today she was like a zombie, almost. She was depressed most of the day, and she cried this evening as we lied in bed together. I spent all day with her helping to do things around the house, and it helped a little. We even played a game of scrabble and a number of rounds of an online game called Lexibox (a word game). I hope she feels better tomorrow—she has to work a long shift, though. She’s taking off next Sunday. She thought my mother would be celebrating her birthday then. But we’re doing it Saturday. So Sherri and I will spend Easter together, and alone, and with a ham… because of my sister’s husband we all have to suffer through every fucking holiday meal with a pork roast… not that my father does it badly. In fact he does make it quite well, but it’s all the time, without change. Anyway, we’ve already made plans. We’ll go to the store at some point to buy a small ham, some sliced pineapple, cloves (but I think we have these) and brown sugar (which we also might have). I haven’t had ham in so long (well, you know, leg of ham) for a holiday meal that I can barely remember what it tastes like.

I was supposed to be driving my father to the hospital on Monday for knee surgery, but he’s been taking an anti-inflammatory and says that they are working fine and so he decided to not go in for the surgery. This is a very dumb thing to do, but he must have his reasons. Of course he, my mother, sister and brother-in-law are supposed to be heading down to Disney World in July. My father, unless he gets the surgery and the physical therapy afterwards, will not last long walking around that place. He’ll be completely miserable, which of course will make my mother miserable as well as my sister, which in turn will make Tom (brother-in-law) miserable and the whole vacation will be shot. But for some reason he won’t go through with the surgery. It seems that when it comes to the Clancy’s and vacation, something is always going wrong. Had he decided to go through with the surgery, some other tragedy would rear its head and cause them to have a miserable time. Then again, maybe it was only when I was young and going along with them that these tragedies happened. Maybe I was the one who made everyone miserable? Could very well be. In fact, I have little doubt.

3:28 PM

I once mentioned to somebody, perhaps my brother or sister or both, or it could have been an acquaintance from work, that my favorite moon in our solar system by far had to be Io because of its color and its surface violence (I went on to explain the active volcanoes on its surface). The response I remember getting was, “I didn’t know that you were supposed to have a favorite moon.” Or something like that. I seem to recall afterwards a feeling of being absolutely alone, even though I was among people—this happens a lot anyway, and so I learn to deal with it.

8:54 PM

I took a nap again and woke up just about a half hour ago. This damned medication I am taking for depression is wearing thin. As soon as my new insurance is worked out I need to see the shrink and have her get me off of some of it.

My thought scatter like cock-a-roaches when the light goes on. I stop to think about something, grab any thought a-fleetin’, but to no avail… when I sit to write I got nothin’, nothin’, not a fucking thing. But the music helps soothe the soul. So I play some music that I got on my PC. It soothes pretty good.

The Darkness, a relatively new band (to me, anyway), has an interesting tune out that I was able to download from iTunes with a code from a bottlecap of diet pepsi. The song is “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” It’s strange. The singer has this poppy sound that goes from tenor to soprano in an instant… It’s like he’s singing and then someone grabs and squeezes his balls right in the middle and up goes the octave! Makes for some interesting music.

I sit here and look around my room and see all of my books and think to myself that this is my life. When I die, other people will look about my room and see my books and think how sad, this was his entire world. There are worlds in every book, but none are mine. I want my world to be out there among the worlds of the rest of them. I want to be of those writers who are of the world. I want to be able to go out into the world unafraid and to finally live. To have a chance to meet wonderful people. To not feel hatred and fear toward humanity. Any world I would create now would be a very lonely, empty world. Perhaps it would be a claustrophobic world, the entirety of it narrated by a person sitting alone in a one roomed apartment.

Animals in Iraq

2004-04-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

Horrible, horrible, horrible… I imagine this happens, but to have seen it on film.

"FALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 - An enraged mob attacked a group of foreign contractors here today, shooting four people to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Three of the victims were identified as Americans, a State Department spokesman, Lou Fintor, said today, adding that work was continuing to identify the nationality of the fourth."

I saw those animals (Iraqi men) pulling the charred bodies from the car and mutilating them with shovels, dragging them along the street and then hanging the bodies from the top of a bridge nearby. Amazing the fury that one feels inside, like me right now. Since a lot of it was caught on film I can’t imagine nothing being done. If I were the military I would mount a full assault on the people of the town nearby. Gather up all men and match faces to faces on film, then just shoot them in the head. No, we don’t do that. We cannot sink to that level, but how can we let this crap happen and let it go unpunished?

My main question is why the hell don’t we just pull on out of there and let internal struggle straighten out the problem. Let neighboring countries move in and do their thing. We got Sadam out of there and took with him a lot of his officers, killed his sons, etc. Now just move on out. Don’t let anymore people die. When they want our help, let them ask for it.

Becoming a Narcoleptic

2004-04-02T17:02:00.000-05:00

This damned depakote is turning me into a narcoleptic. For some reason when I wake up in the morning, which is very hard to do, I eat my breakfast, check out my email and then start falling asleep at my desk, at which point I sort of stagger off to my bed, undress and fall into it. And I don’t sleep, not really. I’m kind of in and out of reality. I dream, but I’m certain that I am mostly awake. It’s kind of like I am resting, but not quite asleep. And I toss and turn a lot, which is something that doesn’t help. I figure that maybe I didn’t get enough sleep during the night, but shit, I seem to sleep well, and for at least eight hours. What’s odd, too, is that I take the medicine at 6:00 along with my effexor and I feel fine until late when I take my Seroquel, which is when I go to bed. I am beginning to think that it’s not simply the depakote, but a reaction I am experiencing from the mixture of Seroquel and depakote. Man, this all sucks. I want out of all this medication!

Tomorrow I am meeting at Peter’s Place a fellow named Mick who is a recruiter in Pittsburgh for a recruiting firm called Sapphire. Anyway, we’re meeting one another at 1:00—I apparently get a free lunch, but I probably won’t order anything. Or maybe just a salad.

Up Late, Story Idea, Still Unemployed

2004-04-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

Up late again. Usually I sit up and read until 2:30, sometimes 3:00, then take my Seroquel and head to bed. I am currently reading Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” so far a very good read. I want to read more Henry Miller. I’ve only read Tropic of Cancer and one titled “The Books in My Life.”

Sometimes strange thoughts come to me. Like I was sitting here earlier, could have been yesterday, although I am fairly certain it was earlier while I was in the bathroom, in agony, shitting fire from the rear (for what reason I know not—could have been the pizza from last night). I was staring intently at a clock that an old friend, Rick, bought me for Christmas. It’s a clock embedded in a porcelain scene of a lighthouse in Maine, which is on a rocky ridge with billowy clouds in the sky. But I began thinking of a story in the second person, which I normally don’t like, but then it seemed kind of neat. I then began to rethink it in the third person and then the first person. Second and thirds sounded the best to me. Here goes:

It was dark out, near midnight and it was damp from the rain. A fog was rolling in from the coast and up ahead some distance away over a hill you could see the pulsing light of a working lighthouse. You’re walking up a gravel road surrounded by woods on either side and you’re wet and shivering and strange thoughts accost your mind. You’re wondering how you came to be wandering. You remember having stopped in a diner to get in out of the rain, but that was hours ago and you used a dollar to buy a coffee.

You pull your collar up closer to your neck as you feel the wind pick up and the chill air cut across your face and neck. You’re wearing a black woolen cap and torn black gloves. Your coat is old and worn. You hear something behind you. A car coming up the road from the distance, you think. You look behind you and see light dancing about the fog and you’re gripped with fear. So much so that you freeze and watch as the light comes closer. You cannot see the headlights yet, but the light cutting through and bouncing around in the fog seems to be getting brighter. You look to either side of the road and see only the trees that are at the edge and you’re not sure if there is a drop, but you jump to your right and grab onto a tree and slide down and realize that your lying almost vertically on wet dirt and decay, holding onto a root or perhaps the bottom of the trunk of a young sapling and you realize you’re covered in bush, but if you let go you might plummet a hundred feet. Who knows?

10:17 PM

I find it amusing, and this hasn’t happened recently, but rather just popped into my head, that when the simple minded hear something that sounds vaguely interesting coming from, say, a song you’re playing or some line from a book (something you might consider entertaining at best), they call it deep and say things like, “You like all that deep stuff.” At which point I raise an eyebrow and say, “Huh? Deep? Like the ocean?” I just don’t understand some people. Perhaps these peoples’ apparent shallowness is too deep for me to comprehend. Perhaps I am the simpleton. Well, look at my words, my works. Very simple. Nothing astonishing or earth shattering, just thoughts, random and dull.

Sometimes I shake and I noticed that I sometimes speak aloud (a mumble, or my lips move) the words that I am thinking. Sherri noticed a few times but I played dumb. So, perhaps the madness is slowly coming… in bits and pieces my minds are fracturing further. I don’t know.

I was thinking that I ought to try to discover the nature of the universe, perhaps divine some answers by steeping my brain solely in the pursuit of mastering the game of GO. And why not? Fuck it all. I’ll become a professional Go player. I’ll write a Go playing program that’ll beat a 10 dan player, and why the hell not? Get me that million dollar prize! It’s a plan, stan.

Book recommendation by Dmitriy. Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and “Three Friends.” Sounds good to me. Perhaps next time I make it out to the used book store I’ll score it lucky. Last time I didn’t find much of anything. But that’s how it goes when you take a chance at the Half-Price. It’s hit or miss. And then you wander around all day in a dumb stupor, a melancholy haze of misty blue, some green and red thrown in for the hell of it. Everything sucks until you get back to your pad and sit your ass into your well worn reading chair and face the shelves of books and then all seems right with the world.

Odds and Ends

2004-03-28T16:58:00.000-05:00

Since I’ve been unemployed, now for a little over a week, I’ve been trying to write some pieces, essays on the state of affairs of our economy and how high tech jobs are moving overseas to places like India. But my writing seems just awful anymore. I look at it while writing and think it’s pretty damned good, but truthfully it’s all mostly trite bullshit. I don’t know what’s going on, not really. I read some pieces online and in trade journals about India and overseas outsourcing and I got nervous and wondered if I’ll ever be able to find work again. So I thought I might try my hand at writing. Maybe get into some big magazine somewhere. I wouldn’t mind writing like David Sedaris. He’s damned good. Maybe I should stick with introspection and fiction. Deep thoughts, struggling to make a name for myself. All the while living poorly, my wife and I, scraping for scraps. She working overtime, me writing on fragments of paper with stubs of pencils, sharpening the points with my finger nails, pulling away bits of the pencil wood, staining my already stained and greasy fingers with pencil lead, my beard getting longer and greyer, the hovel (a small apartment) cold in winter, hot as hell in summer, cheap plumbing, rusty water, a fridge that barely works and is rarely filled. Oh the life of the struggling artist. My god, what I would shrink to, how I would appear. Madness lurking around the corner, under my desk, in my beard… ha ha… laughing at me this madness, threatening to take over, to come to the surface of my frail mind, and then split me, fracture my personality into little shards, bits and pieces. Christ what a mess.

11:29 PM

I believe that no social problem can be solved. I believe that there are partial solutions to a given social problem, but not ever a single, universal solution.

The problem of bigotry. Unless we can send out some kind of mind ray that turns everyone into a joy-filled, non-hateful, loving and caring person, there will exist intolerance. But is tolerance always the correct thing? Should we have to “tolerate” something? Does not toleration imply some pressure we’re forced to not give in to? And if so, what pressure is this? Is it entirely learned? I can certainly say that my mother holds prejudices about lesbians and gay men and I’m pretty sure about black people, although she seems to admit that she likes the black people in the Virgin Islands, a place where my father often goes on business. She says that aren’t the same as blacks in the United States. Now, having grown up with this you’d think that I would also hold prejudices. But I neither tolerate blacks nor am I prejudiced. For one, there is nothing to tolerate. They are human beings. I am a human being. I have nothing against them and in fact there is no them, there is only we, us, all. I hold no prejudice either. I don’t know why, but it could be that, unlike my mother, I grew up in a community consisting almost completely of white people. Whenever a new student would enter my school, whether Indian, Black, Chinese (essentially, not Caucasian/White) I would be always intrigued and curious. Even today I am still drawn to people who hail from places not anywhere near where I live. I’ve made friends with Russians, Indians, Greeks, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese (I think), and have made acquaintances with two fellows from Mexico (when I worked at SmartOps). Oh, and also I made acquaintances with a fellow named Kaare at SmartOps, who is from Norway.

It’s very odd, but in all of the jobs I’ve had as a software developer, I think that I’ve only worked with one black person and she was fresh out of college. She was a junior programmer, with some attitude, who didn’t like me too much, even though I recommended her highly after my interview with her (I somehow intimidated her during the interview, but not intentionally). And as I suspected she turned out to be a good employee and very smart. I am surprised, however, to not have seen more black people in technical positions, well at least in a software engineering capacity. I don’t know why.

But to get back to some original point I was attempting to make, unless everyone thinks as I do and possesses those qualities I mention above, we’ll never really have a society free from bigotry and prejudice. And of course there are partial solutions. But these won’t work for everyone. There are people who just hate and there is little anyone can do about it. Hate for hate’s sake. And I don’t mean serial killers or shit like that, but people who hate, period. Like those people who seem completely delusional who think that anyone except a born and bred “white man” from the U.S.A., is worthless and only good when dead. What’s funny is that they seem to all forget that their own heritage doesn’t stem from these lands originally. But from somewhere deep in the heart of what one might call Africa. Stupid men who don’t rationalize but rather use sheer hateful emotion and incredibly twisted interpretations of the bible cannot ever know peace in themselves or out in the world. It must be a horrible existence.

Unemployed Again

2004-03-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

I am once again unemployed. I was working for Netspoke as an independent contractor for the past five months and doing quite well. I got the chance to work from home each day and to collaborate with Andrew remotely. But after completing the project, the Archive Viewer, and having it successfully released to our customers, all new development had been put on hold and so I was no longer needed. Jake called to give me the news, but he did say that he hoped tat sometime in the future they could call on me to help again, moonlight, as it were. I said that I had no problem with that and so we parted, over the phone, on friendly terms.

I have been preoccupied, mentally, these past few days. I’ve been distant, and Sherri has noticed and is worried. We’ve been trying to have a baby. This evening I couldn’t keep an erection but we did manage to make love the last night and a number of time early in the week and the week before. We’re hoping that she’s pregnant this time around…we’ve been using the fertility monitor, which helped out the first time she got pregnant. I don’t let on, but I am very worried about Sherri getting pregnant again. I would certainly hate for her to have to go through the horrendous physical and emotional pain of miscarriage. For me it was bad enough, and while I was with her at all times, I couldn’t imagine the pain, even though I could see it on her face or in her crumpled body as she lay on a hospital gurney in a fetal position, the cramps coming every minute or so.

I am fairly certain that I qualify for unemployment compensation. I’ve spoken now with two people from the PA unemployment compensation department. The first time I called to talk with someone who turned out to be a very nice gentleman. The second was a rather pleasant speaking woman who called me today to get some details that apparently the fellow I spoke with the day before had forgotten to ask me about. Anyway, after answering her questions she said that the computer indicated that I was indeed eligible. Of course with my luck it might turn out completely opposite. We shall see.

With the money I’ll make getting unemployment I can certainly pay the household payment. Sherri’s pay will have to go toward the car and other expenses, and she doesn’t really get much money. I’ve been trying to write some software on my own, some useful things that I might be able to sell online. But I’m not sure yet. I’ve also been tossing around ideas for essays and articles—but although I have this overwhelming desire to become a successful writer, I get blocked the minute I try to think about what it is that I want to write. It’s really fucked up.

To save money, we were thinking about dropping the cable (or just getting the standard cable) and going to DSL (a phone-line alternative to Cable) for our internet hookup. DSL is a lot cheaper than the digital cable. And although Sherri and I enjoy the various channels that only digital television provides, basic cable will gives us the main channels at least and besides, I do more reading or working on this PC than I do actually watching television. I just feel bad for Sherri who really enjoys the television. Still, although we got the complete cable package, I can say that we really only ever use 15, maybe 20% of the thing. What use we get from cable television certainly doesn’t seem to justify the ridiculous cost.

Rock and Roll Evolution

2004-03-14T16:54:00.000-05:00

There was a distinct evolution between the rock and roll of the 80’s through the modern, alternative rock of the 90’s, which has come of age in the early 21st century. No doubt because my mind works in a vastly different way, I am probably stating the absurdly obvious, but I think it is interesting to note some of the differences that I’ve noticed.

In the rock and roll in which I grew up to love and then, unfortunately, to grow out of, there is a distinct point within a song’s progression when the lead guitar becomes the blaring center, perhaps once, or like, for example, Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, twice. Even with Metallica today we can here the remnants of the at one time, universal rock and roll, lead riffs set down by the maestro guitarist (axe wielder).

I’ve noticed that with “alternative” rock, which seems to now have become mainstream and no longer an alternative but rather the de-facto rock and roll standard, the guitar lead riffs have been pushed back and enveloped by the melody and harmony. You can still hear the lead riff, but it has now joined the ranks of the once inferior rhythm section, or might we say that the rhythm section has been moved up to a place of honor with the lead guitarist? In any case, I see it as not only a change in style, but a social change. The very grain of the “kids” who form new bands today seem to drive this lack of inter-band ego. [the mind wanders and goes off into infinity…this tangent is now lost… I hope it didn’t mean anything too important…someday, perhaps, I shall return.]

Living Poor

2004-03-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

I feel like I am living poor. My wife is now managing all the finances and any mention of money (like may I have some to buy a book) is often met with a scowl and a lecture. It’s gotten to the point that if I want to purchase music online, I have to wait until she’s has had a pepsi whose cap contains a secret code, redeemable at iTunes. Well, that’s not too bad. I now have two purchased songs in my library now (live version of Pink Floyd’s “On the Turning Away,” and Nickelback’s “Someday,” from their Long Road album).

Last weekend, or perhaps the weekend before, Sherri allowed me to go to the half price book store where I purchased six used books (all in good condition). It actually felt good to buy books again and I suppose there is some feeling of accomplishment if you can go for a while spending no money in order to pay off bills and then be rewarded for your perseverance. Still, I feel as though she treats me like a child. Perhaps she is correct in doing so. I don’t know. But sometime it gets annoying.

Set Theory

2003-12-09T01:07:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been studying set theory, but unfortunately the symbols do not show up in HTML so I don't know how to post here my findings and thoughts on the subject.

Life After Death and a Hi IQ

2003-12-09T01:04:00.000-05:00

Although there is no evidence either way to suggest that there is life after death, I certainly believe that there is not. Of course this is simply a belief, which is perhaps just as valid as someone’s belief in heaven, reincarnation, ethereal plains, etc. One thing is certain from observation and that is that if there is life after death, if something of ourselves persists beyond it, it’s certainly an existence that requires none of the treasure with which we’ve buried our Pharaohs, nor the terracotta armies built to protect our dead emperors. It certainly doesn’t require the clothing on our backs, or the hair on our heads or the very brain within our skulls. Perhaps life after death is a place or a time or a state that requires only our consciousness, our pure thought.

Is this place where our consciousness goes a place of free will and universal enlightenment, or is it a trap, our minds ensnared, buried in darkness forever, deprived of all senses, consciousness without embodiment, no input or output, only our lifetime of thoughts and memories to relive time and again for an eternity? I don’t know what frightens me more, the thought of death itself or what might come after it.

Regardless, it is a question that is particularly interesting to contemplate I suppose.

The other day I was searching around the internet for puzzles and came across a site that advertised a number of very difficult IQ tests. I found a link from that page to a list of what are called Hi IQ societies, which are societies such as Mensa (a society that I used to dream that I could get into). I found a link to a society from that page called the International Hi IQ Society which had a number of tests you could take online, and for free. So I took one of the tests and scored a 150 and was immediately invited to become a member—you can apparently only become a member by scoring in the top 95%. I joined for a lifetime fee of $79.95, and I am going to apparently receive a certificate, a t-shirt, etc. And I must say that thus far the discussion groups have no been boring nor has their online journal. It does seem like a legitimate society for smart people, and now I’m doing all that I can to keep my head from swelling any larger than it already is. I just wish it had a catchy name like Mensa, which to me is like the ultimate Hi IQ society to join, if you can pass their test, which is proctored by a member of Mensa and which costs $30.00 to take.

Work, Sculpture, the Mind and What is Mathematics?

2003-12-05T16:53:00.000-05:00

Up late again, but tomorrow I have to work. I don’t have to go into the office, but I need to work on a Qt client on top of the Microsoft RTC stuff. On Wednesday I have to go into the office to discuss some ideas on how we’ll accomplish streaming of archived conferences. It should be very interesting. Well actually, it probably won’t be so interesting. I’m just skeptical, of course, but I’d rather be working on the RTC stuff and leave the rest of the archive player to Andrew. He thinks that my design was unnecessarily complex. I kind of like the ideas I put into it. But then I tend to think too abstractly perhaps for my own good. Of course I apparently don’t think abstractly enough to be a mathematician or logician.

I’ve been getting a hankering to sculpt. Not clay sculpture, but rather just material sculpture. Like pieces of wood and stone, for example. Or metal. Perhaps even polymer clay—make little creatures and things for Sherri. I should have stuck with the polymer clay for her, but for some reason I became discouraged. For one, I have no permanent work place to do any art or craft. Maybe when the basement is finally finished I can have a corner with a drawing board, some tables, etc.

I often wish that I could find a way to make my mind young and nimble, like a child’s, so that I could absorb such concepts as mathematics, logic, and geometry. Alas, but as I age so does my mind and while I tend to read a lot and to think as much as I can, nothing original ever comes to mind and I feel as though my brain is decaying faster with each passing day. Brain decay… brain decay.

I’ve ordered a number of gifts for Sherri from QVC. I also purchased her favorite perfume which Kaufman’s no longer sells (you can still get it online at discount places). I need to get her a card, too. I should do this sometime this week when I’m out. I have to go to the shrink as usual this Tuesday so maybe when I’m picking up my medications I can also get her a card. There is a Hallmark next to the to Giant Eagle where I get my prescriptions filled, which is at Donaldson’s Crossroads.

Wouldn’t it suck if you found out that the sports you love, such as, say, Football, were all scams? You know, like WWF wrestling, for example. Where the outcomes are decided by the wealthy elite seasons before the games are ever played. Man, what suckers we’d be then, eh?

What is mathematics? I have a book with this very title sitting on a book shelf just above me on my computer table’s hutch. I attempted to read it thinking it might enlighten me. But, I was more confused about what mathematics is after trying to read it than before I’d started. Am I just stupid? Yes, I think so. There are times when I really think that I am.

Christmas Lights and Fragmented Mind

2003-11-30T11:33:00.000-05:00

Up late again… I’ve been staying awake past midnight almost every night since I had started this working at home as a consultant/telecommuter. Its not so bad, except that on some mornings, after I wake up around nine o’clock, I feel like taking a nap an hour later. I’m not sure if it’s the breakfast I eat or if it’s the Celebrex and the Metoprolol (for my high blood pressure) that makes me sleepy. Personally I think that it could be that I don’t sleep well or long enough, although I seem to sleep more soundly, especially since I’ve been taking Seroquel.

My interest keep changing on me. One minute I am extremely interested in reading about Neural Networks, and the next its symbolic logic. And then I’m off reading about ways of representing graphs in software. At times I work on my web site putting up my writings or creating a new page or playing around with .NET and C#. I discovered that there is a free version of SQL Server (a personal version, if you like) that comes with the .NET framework. Actually I downloaded it from MSDN not knowing this. But still, its really cool.

Some time back I installed MySQL because I wanted to have a database engine to play with and so that I could write applications which, anymore, require some kind of database. I created, in fact, a guestbook application that I host on my site. So far only a few of my friends and Sherri have signed it. I cannot seem to draw traffic to my site, but that’s okay. I’m still hosting it locally over dynamic DNS with very narrow upload bandwidth. I’m trying to talk my wife into letting me get the professional cable modem service with five static IP addresses.

Spent the day with Sherri putting up lights outside around the porch, the front door and the banister. Then attempted once again to get the seventh row of our Christmas tree, which has the lights built into the damned thing, working. Its interesting . There are eight branches. Four are lit and four aren’t. There is a fuse within the plug, but the fuses are fine. I replaced every bulb on the dark branches with perfectly good lights, but couldn’t get it to work. So my last thought is that there is a short in one of the sockets. I haven’t gone back yet to examine the sockets. I might do that tomorrow. Our backup plan is to string a small set of white lights around the four branches and thread an extension chord up through the tree. This should work just fine until I can figure out how to fix the damned thing.

Sherri and I also drove to the mall tonight to use her gift certificate that she and the other employees won for their house coming in second for the gardening and decorating competition they have each year. She also bought me the expansion game to Dungeon Siege for Christmas. She also wants to buy me a graphics tablet, something I’ve been saying I’ve been wanting. But I keep telling her that I don’t want it for Christmas. I just want us to save money so that we can finish paying the bills. I think its for the best, personally. All I want, really, are some books and that game she bought me and that would be just fine with me.

I’ve been wearing a light Fall jacket instead of my heavy winter coat, even in the current weather which has been cold and snowy, and now I think I have a cold. I’ve taken some cold medicine and some Tylenol for my headache, but Sherri yelled at me when I told her. Earlier while we were out putting up the lights she kept yelling at me to go get a heavier coat lest I catch a cold. Did I listen? Hell no. And yes, I am a friggen idiot.

My Christmas List: 2003

2003-11-30T01:20:00.000-05:00

Books:

“Bertrand Russell: 1921 – 1970, The Ghost of Madness,” by Ray Monk. 592 pp. Published by Free Press, March 2001. ISBN: 0-743212-15-0

“Autobiography of Bertrand Russell.” Published by Little Brown & Company, January 1968 (a hardcover edition has been reissued and is currently in print).

“Benjamin Franklin: Writings.” 1605 pp. Published by Library of America, September 1987. ISBN: 0-940450-29-1

“James Thurber: Writings and Drawings.” 1004 pp. Published by Library of America, October 1996. ISBN: 1-883011-22-1

“Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose.” 1380 pp. Published by Library of America, May 1982. ISBN: 0-940450-02-X

“William Faulkner: Novels 1936-1940.” 1117 pp. Published by Library of America, June 1990. ISBN: 0-940450-55-0

“Robert Lowell: Collected Poems.” Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter. 1200 pp. Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, June 2003. ISBN: 0-374126-17-8

“The Executioner’s Song,” by Norman Mailer. 1072 pp. Published by Vintage Books, May 1998. ISBN: 0-375700-81-1

“A Farwell to Arms,” by Ernest Hemingway. 336 pp. Published by Scribner, reprint edition (June 1995) ISBN: 0-684801-46-9

“Nothing Like the Sun,” by Anthony Burgess. 234 pp. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, reissue edition (December 1996). ISBN: 0-393315-07-X

“Appointment in Samarra,” by John O’Hara. 272 pp. Published by Vintage Books, July 8, 2003. ISBN: 0-375719-20-2

“Parallel and Distributed Programming Using C++,” by Cameron Hughes and Tracey Hughes. 600 pp. Published by Addison -Wesley Publishing Company, August 29, 2003. ISBN: 0-131013-76-9

“Applied C++: Techniques for Building Better Software,” by Philip Romanik and Amy Muntz. 352 pp. Published by Addison -Wesley Publishing Company, May 2, 2003. ISBN: 0-321108-94-9

“C++ Network Programming, Volume 2: Systematic Reuse with ACE and Frameworks,” by Douglas C. Schmidt and Stephen D. Huston. 384 pp. Published by Addison -Wesley Publishing Company, October 29, 2002. ISBN: 0-201795-25-6

“Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,” by Bertrand Russell. 208 pp. Published by Dover Publications, October 1993. ISBN: 0-486277-24-0

“The Thief’s Journal,” by Jean Genet. 268 pp. Published by Grove Press, reissue edition, October 1987. ISBN: 0-802130-14-3

“Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq,” by Tariq Ali. 224 pp. Published by Verso Books, November 2003. ISBN: 1-859845-83-5

“The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.” 3984 pp. Published by Oxford Press, 5th Edition, September 2002. ISBN: 0-198604-57-2

“Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family,” by Thomas Mann. 784 pp. Published by Knopf, October 1994. ISBN: 0-679417-37-0

“Collected Fictions,” by Jorge Luis Borges. 565 pp. Published by Penguin USA, September 1999. ISBN: 0-140286-80-2

“Selected Non-Fictions,” by Jorge Luis Borges. 576 pp. Published by Penguin USA, October 2000. ISBN: 0-140290-11-7

“The Rings of Saturn,” by W. G. Sebald. 296 pp. Published by New Directions Publishing, April 1, 1999. ISBN: 0-811214-13-3

“Infinite Jest,” by David Foster Wallace. 1088 pp. Published by Back Bay Books, February 1997. ISBN: 0-316921-17-3

“Franz Kafka: A Biography,” by Max Brod. Published by DaCapo Press, September 1995. ISBN: 0-306806-70-3

“Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-1976,” By Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. 758 pp. Published by Simon & Shuster, December 13, 2000. ISBN: 0-684873-15-X

“Kingdom of Fear : Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century,” by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. 384 pp. Published by Simon & Shuster, January 7, 2003. ISBN: 0-684873-23-0

“Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga,” by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. 288 pp. Published by Balantine Books, September 1996. ISBN: 0-345410-08-4

Computer Games:

Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, published by Activision

Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring, published by Sierra Entertainment

Miscellaneous (reductio ad absurdum):

A gift certificate to Borders Books.

Apple iPod 10 or 20 gigabyte model MP3 Music Player

A do-it-yourself, at-home liposuction and lobotomy kit.

The inspiration to write the great, universal, human novel.

A complete understanding of the calculus.

Getting Published!

2003-11-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

Finally I am getting published. More to come on that. :-)

A New Essay

2003-11-22T00:08:00.000-05:00

The following is a piece that I wrote in this journal but that I finally copied and pasted into an essay I called “The Million Dollar Idea.” I put it up on my web site for anyone to read. Let’s see what happens, eh?

I live in a neighborhood far from the city near cows and pastures and old farm houses. The neighborhood is filled with little children and big children and mothers and fathers, dogs, cats, wild rabbits and birds. There are toys and bicycles, swing sets, pools and trampolines, and a gas grille on every deck. I live in suburbia where in the night sky the starts always seem to shine bright, where you can hear the bark of a dog probably a mile away and where you can sit out on your porch at night in the summer and be lulled to sleep by the millions of crickets serenading one another.

The other day while standing on my second floor landing and peering out of our large foyer window at part of suburbia (for I tend to do a lot of peering when I’m in mid thought) I noticed something interesting about he neighbor’s driveway across the street. The children there were nowhere to be seen, but on their driveway were colorful chalk renderings of snowmen, complete with scarves and hats and button noses.

The chalk drawings seemed suspiciously similar, and perhaps too perfect, and so I wondered just how they went about creating them. And then a word popped into my head (a word that, had my wife not been a scrapbooking fanatic, mind you, would never have done any popping in my head or anywhere else): stencil. And so, as my brain is wont to do, I began to obsess over the ideas that flowed in and out and back in again; reality ceased momentarily and, at some point, I found myself at the top of the stairs leading down to the first floor and I appeared (or imagined I had) as if I were about to take a swan dive. I came to in time to stop myself from breaking my neck and then ran downstairs and did a jig around the center kitchen isle and sang a silly song and my wife, who was standing over the sink rinsing out a dish, must have thought me completely mad.

Sidewalk stencils, I cried. It was a million dollar idea, I thought over and over. Sidewalk stencils! Sidewalk stencils! Sidewalk stencils! In the time that these words had popped into my head until I made my way down to the kitchen, I had already thought up five designs, packaging, artwork and a sales pitches. As I chanted sidewalk stencils it finally dawned on my wife and she finally understood what I was babbling about and so she, too, took to doing a jig with me, circling the center kitchen isle and singing a silly song. What a thought, I thought. A million dollar thought. And she and I hugged and we strolled over to the family room to tell our cockatiel, Sammie, who, preening his feathers from his behind, appeared to not share in our enthusiasm at all, but rather looked up once, in what was undoubtedly his look of annoyance, as if to tell us to go mind our own business.

Shortly after our shenanigans my wife and I plopped down on the couch to rest, and as I sat there next to her thinking about what I would do with all that money, my wife looked over at me and asked if I had bothered to search on the web for this particular sort of thing before going ape like I had. Of course I’d completely forgotten in the excitement of dreaming up what I’d imagined to be a completely unique idea. With all the other million dollar ideas that I’d had that turned out to have already been thought out, built up and marketed by someone else, I don’t know why I didn’t first try to find a reference to something like it on the internet. I really don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. Perhaps its just the joy of thinking about something you’ve never seen or thought of before. Or perhaps its just that I’m an idiot.

Anyway, as you might imagine, feeling somewhat deflated, I gingerly sauntered up the stairs, ambled into my office, plopped myself in front of my PC and, for five minutes, stared at my computer screen trying to get up the courage to be disappointed. I typed in the words “Sidewalk Stencil,” and wouldn’t you know it. A company called Cadaco had already marketed the idea. What’s worse is that I found myself staring at the very thing that I’d imagined only a short time before, almost exactly as I had pictured it, packaging, size, colors and all. The only thing that didn’t spring to mind were the Care Bears, the particular theme of these Sidewalk Stencils. But given time, boy, I bet I would have thought of that, too.

Although its still painful for me to think about the death of our unborn child, its getting a little easier to bear. Of course I’ve been obsessing more over food and Sherri thinks its because I am more depressed now. The medication I take helps, I’m sure, but there is no medication I don’t think would help completely.

I’ve been tossing around ideas for a name for a software company. I want to start my own and so I thought I might as well give it a shot. “Theory X” is the latest one that has tickled my nads, but of course feelings like these are ephemeral. Tomorrow it may seem completely ridiculous. How about “Dark Matter Software.” Hmm.. Suburban Software? Software of Suburbia? How about ADD Software (ADD as in attention deficit disorder). Radio Daze, Purple Salamander, Yellow Roses. Olde Chaps Software.

I submitted my latest piece, The Million Dollar Idea, to “New Works Review.” We’ll see what happens. I’m excited, though, that INTHEFRAY.COM wants to publish my piece called “A Society of Cards.” Neither publication pays, but what can you do. Exposure is the thing that’s most important. All my essays of late have been biographic and claustrophobic, which I use to mean that they don’t stray in content very far from my own little work—think E. B. White and his talk about the death of his pig.

Deep Thoughts in an Ocean of Anguish or The Night and the Beer

2003-11-16T01:27:00.000-05:00

The night and beer keep the thoughts from flowing. The fingers just typing, nothing intelligible, nothing worth the reading, just tapping away, slapping, in fact, at the plastic keys, picking blackheads and popping pimples that form on the nose. Not knowing why, at this point in my life, I still get acne. Why I’m still finding puss in the pores of my poor nose. Perhaps it’s because Sherri picks at the nose, introducing dirt and other nasty things. Perhaps it’s the nerves, or the terrible eating habits that have been fostered in the past eight months. Perhaps it’s some strange, near mid-life sort of thing. Perhaps no one will ever know.

Dreading work, as I always do, not because of the work itself, or the people with whom I share the office and the bandwidth and the network, no. Dreading work simply because of the drive. The long haul. Many chances along the way for some terrible tragedy to befall me.

Often paranoid, hardly ever right, wishing I were stoned, sometimes craving the cocaine, missing the little pills, too. The painkillers, the oxycodone, the hydrocodone, the whatever. Hell, codeine would be fine. Take the pain away, take the paranoia away, make me sleep well at night, make me not fear the reaper, make me not worry about my love, or the future, or the little sounds of the house as it settles. Getting to know the house and the neighborhood and wondering why the fuck we moved so far away. Sittin on the couch and typing, no television to occupy and to rot the brain, pop those little cells from the radiation, the messages transmitted from tv tube to the eye socket and into the brain, wasting it away like boulders in the sandstorms—slowly but eventually, turning to
pebbles those large, proud rocks.

Were not the boulders merely pieces of the mountain? Were not these rocks merely pieces of the boulder? Are not these pepples just pieces of the rock? And isn’t the sand tiny pieces of each pebble? Then, is not not sand merely the pebble? Are not the pebbles merely the rock? Are not the rocks merely the boulder? Are not the boulders merely the mountain? Are we not just the sand of the universe? Are we not the universe itself?

Deep thoughts in an ocean of anguish and pain and suffering. Looking upward for enlightenment and seeing only the dark. Looking around for wonderment and seeing only the ordinary, the dull, the same old shit.

Do you stare up at the stars in the sky and wonder about the worlds that might surround each of them? Do you wonder what each world that surrounds each sun might be like? Do you wonder if someone from some world around some sun is looking up at you and wondering the same thing?

When I look out at the world and notice it not looking back, I wonder just what the hell it is that I’m doing here, what the fuck it’s all about. I wonder, while I suck down a beer and whack off a bit just what the hell it all means. And then I cum, and I run out of beer, and all is fine.

On the Death of our Unborn Child...Continued

2003-11-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

Today is a little better. Sherri began writing a letter to our unborn child. We both believe that it had grown and lived inside her for three months before it gave up its struggle. It turns out that the sack in which it was growing was just too low in Sherri’s uterus and so it just couldn’t survive. The letter she was writing took her most of the day. She said that she was inspired to write something after reading my previous journal entry. I thought that what I wrote was too dry and journalistic. I’d been thinking about writing something personal as well. But she sat down to write in her little notebook that she always writes in, although its usually for writing pieces that will go in her scrapbooks. I think she might be planning to put the letter in a scrapbook page dedicated to our lost one.

Sherri and I would often talk to the fetus in the evening. I would lay on the bed with my head near her stomach. Sometimes we’d sing to it. I would always kiss Sherri and the baby (Sherri’s stomach) goodbye in the morning before I’d head to work. Being self-employed and now working from home I hadn’t been doing that so early. But Sherri would make sure that before she’d head to work that I would kiss and talk to her stomach, which I like doing.

Its very easy for me to cry when I read her letter and when I think about these other things. Sherri was going to write for her Christmas list that each person buy her a children’s book because I had said, being the bibliophile that I am, that I wanted to build our child its own library. That would have been very nice, I thought.

She wants to try again when we can, and so do I, but right now its too hard to think about such a thing. Sherri was in more pain with the cramping yesterday than she had ever been in her life. She began cramping at 7:00 yesterday morning. And as it got worse I decided to call her gynecologist’s office. She was supposed to be scheduled for her DNC today, but I knew that Sherri couldn’t wait.

The nurse to whom I spoke asked me to bring her in at 11:00. We thought that we needed to bring her to outpatient surgery, so we took an elevator and walked there, slowly—she had to stop several times. I wanted to get a wheelchair, but we didn’t know if we could just take one and there was no staff around to help us. We were told shortly after we got to the outpatient surgery center that she needed to go to the gynecologist’s office several floors down. Fortunately the nurse at the center called someone, a very nice woman, to bring up a wheel chair. We made it to the gynecologist’s office and finally we were admitted and then we had, eventually, after a Dr. Rankin examined her, to head back to the outpatient surgery center.

All this time no one had given her anything for the pain and it was growing worse and she was crying and when she did go to the bathroom a lot of blood was coming out from her vagina—apparently the miscarriage was in full swing.

Finally we got a bed in the outpatient surgery area, but she wound up laying there for a half hour as people came in and out to do things (take blood, EKG, etc.) but nothing for the pain. With each cramp she doubled over to the side and I just held her hand and rubbed her back. I didn’t know if I had been helping but she said she was very glad I’d been there. Where else would I be? Its my wife! I keep telling her this.

When she was wheeled back to be prepped for the DNC, an asshole of an anesthesiologist refused to give her anything for the pain because she didn’t sign some paper that she had never been given. Eventually a female anesthesiologist who saw her crying her eyes out from the pain and the contractions gave her something. The women nurses and all were very kind and understanding. All the gynecologists at St. Clair hospital are men, it seems. And after this experience she’s going to find a female gynecologist, and one that probably works out of a hospital near here (Washington or Canonsburg).

I had to sit in the outpatient surgery waiting rooms (there are two, one for in-surgery where the doctors come back to tell you how the procedure went, and another where you sit and wait for your loved one to recover) for a total of three hours before I could go back to see her. I thought that she had some reaction to the anesthesia or something. But no, she’d been awake for almost an hour as I sat out there waiting. What a fucking crock. I was getting fed up and with all the stuff she told me about it made me even angrier. I suggested to Sherri that we write a letter to the hospital, copying it, of course, to the gynecological unit there, to tell them how bad a situation it was for us. At some point while we were trying to make it to the outpatient center the second time, we had to stop and register and these old men, who were volunteers, were looking at her and each other and saying that she didn’t have an appointment all the time sherri was buckled over in a wheelchair while I was attempting to register her by speaking with some woman who kept telling me over and over that no one called her. I kept saying I don’t care, she need to get to outpatient. Sherri looked up at one of the old guys who were complaining about the lack of appointment and said, “I’m having a miscarriage. I don’t need an appointment for one of those!” This of course sobered up the old gentlemen and one of them took her post-haste to the outpatient center. I followed there shortly after my dealing with that woman.

I can’t believe the lack of communication and the lack of proper procedures for handling such situations. Its appalling. But a letter I shall write. Well, at least that’s the intention.

On The Death of Our Unborn Child

2003-11-15T14:00:00.000-05:00

Today Sherri and I spent the afternoon between doctors to find out why she had begun to bleed again only two weeks after we’d seen the gynecologist, who told us things looked good. She lost the baby. And it has been killing us. I’ve not shed so many tears in such a long time.

I keep thinking over and over about all the cute things Sherri would say and how we’d talk to the baby at night as we lied in bed together. And every week we would read another chapter from a book we’d been reading which is sectioned by weeks and what you’d be experiencing during each of them. I kept imagining the big, goofy stork we were going to rent and put out in the front lawn in May when the baby was due.

I also keep thinking back to the first scare she had when she’d been spot bleeding. She said that she had been talking to baby and telling it that it needed to stay and be with us, but if it had to go that was okay, too. It was loved by mommy and daddy and we didn’t want to see it suffer.

I kept imagining my baby, my wife, sitting on the couch at work all alone having to deal with the fear and speaking to baby life this between sobs and tears and its just too much for me to take. I cried then, but I cry now so much more. All I wanted was to give my wife the one thing she every really wanted. And now that’s gone.

Yes, we’ll try again, and we have to be strong to get through this, but right now it doesn’t feel like we will. Yet we have to. I cannot lose my wife and she cannot (and will not) lose me.

We are profoundly sad but I find that its comforting that we find comfort in one another. We’ve not been apart this entire time and we’ve cried together and we’ve hugged and kissed and have talked at length, and of course we’ve been crying together and crying some more. Its very hard to think about things. We’d imagined that this Christmas she’d be round with child and that it would be a wonderful thing to be pregnant for the Holliday.

The wind is kicking up very fiercely outside. I can hear it pass my window and at times rush against it, like a punch. Its supposed to be bad this evening…rain and then snow. And its supposed to snow tomorrow and I think Friday. Sherri has taken off work next week so starting tomorrow she’ll be at home with me. She’s going to have a DNC scheduled for early Friday morning. We were so upset by all the news that we’d forgotten to ask the doctor if he could prescribe something for her cramps, which come and go, but are painful. I think her father will bring her some tomorrow when he comes over. Its going to suck for her to have to wait an entire day with what still feels like a tiny child within her womb before she can have the DNC, which will, no doubt, be traumatic. They are going to put her under, and I’ll of course be driving her home. I imagine that they would prescribe some sort of pain medication. I don’t know. I do know that I could certainly use some for this terrible headache I’ve gotten from the worry and the crying and the anguish I’ve been feeling. I wish I still drank because I would have bought a fifth of something on my way home from the hospital. But, for Sherri’s sake as well as for the sake of my liver, I am glad that I no longer drink.

2003-11-14T18:26:00.000-05:00

test

2003-11-14T16:34:00.000-05:00

I sit here drinking wine and wiping my nose, suffering from snot, moisture, wretched irritation, I feel it dripping, running, hell, my nose, I feel it like so few do. And I drink the wine, and I listen to the music and I wonder about things past, present and future, and still the snot keeps rolling out the nostrils, onto my tight purple shirt (revealing entirely too much), streaking like little flecks of yellow and gray scales from a dead fish, some silver, too, and it’s all disgusting, and I’ve given up on the handkerchief, and the tissue and the fucking slice of toilet paper, wrinkled, thin, awaiting ass, not nose, and what the hell do I do?

I find a sleeve, and I find the neck of my shirt, and the palm of my hand, and I wipe, with furious abandon I wipe, wipe, wipe, until the nose is raw and the appendage, the hand, glistens with nose shit, glistens and is lustrous with ill-gotten gold, but no gold I want, and I wipe the purple shirt and the faded blue shorts, and each becomes luminous with streaks and I don’t know why I do such things…just to clean the nose, the face, for comfort, and that’s it.

Hell, I don’t know how to behave in polite society, either, and I wouldn’t even begin to contemplate doing so. But I know how to behave in my little office with my little keyboard on my little chair typing away, buzzed on cheap wine, listening to cheap music—hell it was free, for fuck sake—and feeling the back, the kidneys, the spine, tortured and riddled with funny pain, from rhyme, from fucking alcohol and drugs, fucking tortured and there is little left but the eyeglasses hanging limply from my nose, the watch that doesn’t keep time very well, the old wedding ring, lacking luster, diamonds having been hocked eons ago (a shell of 14k gold, and little else, and worth even less) and my nose itches again, but not for the nasal spray, rather for the coca leaf, the blood of animal, fresh kill, like the scent of popcorn and musk on the side of a road cruising along we were in the twilight, the moon behind us and we were smoking cigars and cigarettes and it was good, all good, and then the end came near, the end, as always, the end presented itself, in full bloom, like the autumn mums, crisp yellow, gold, red, pink, orange, all sorts of strong, vibrant colors, accosting yet soothing, like a warm bath and a cool breeze through the half opened, shy windows—ought they to be happy or angry? I don’t know, I don’t care. I never cared. Thus is the Aquarian…uncaring, except for his silly, solemn pleasures, and the gold, the gold, the fingers of gold, and nothing more…

2003-11-14T15:07:00.000-05:00

Free-range ramblin'

Home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason. The back was terrible last Sunday, and I screamed, screamed, screamed in pain, to myself, and I couldn’t lie still. I had to sit up, and days after I kept waking to the feeling that I was drowning, or something. I couldn’t breath, it was awful, and I’d find myself waking up, gasping, choking sometimes, at two in the morning, and I’d turn on my little nightstand light and I’d sit for a while, maybe twenty minutes or so on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor, at my feet, at my shoes a few feet away, then I’d glance outward towards the rest of the room and look about, and all I’d see was the stillness of things and all I’d hear was the god damned air condition clicking on and then eventually off, and I’d hear the occasional strange noise, the house creaking, settling, and then I’d grab whatever book was sitting on the nightstand beside me, and I’d read. I’d read for a half hour sometimes, and then several hours other times, until I could read no longer, and until the breaths I took replenished my tired blood, when I felt as though each gasp of air was not in vain…when I felt that I might survive sleep…might wake up the next morning, although groggy, dizzy, yet alive to face another day, to see my wife, to be once again… to be me. That’s all I asked. For despite whatever depression might accost my mind, whatever physical ailment might attack my body, I still yearned for one more day, for life, for the breathing, in and out, in and out, and to hear my frail heart beating against my soft chest. I yearn always for this feeling, for while death may be imminent, just around the fucking corner, I want to keep breathing, keep feeling, pain and all… I want to keep going, to see what happens next, to feel my lover’s breath once more against my naked body, to traverse the aisles of the supermarket and purchase food… glorious fucking food. I don’t want to die because I know, I feel it in my bones, that there is nothing… nada... nyet… nothing after this fucking life, and so be it. No Heaven or Hell… no Hell, for God’s sake, for while Hell might be the last place you’d wish to find yourself, at least it was something and not nothing. At least there was fire, brimstone, agony… feeling, for fuck sake. There was that. No matter how bad it was, how bad could Hell be compared to an eternity of nothingness, of lifelessness, of listlessness… of void… of never knowing, never wondering, never contemplating… unending darkness, but that doesn’t matter anyway because you’d simply cease to exist and with that ceasing you’d cease to understand, to comprehend, to be conscious. No dreams, no nightmares, no bright white light at the end of that seductive tunnel that pulls you towards it non-stop. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. You would be alone, and you wouldn’t know it. No one would, for everyone else would continue on, grieving, getting over it, meeting new people, other lovers and that would be that. You’d be nothing more than a picture on a mantel, a memory in someone’s failing mind, your few scribblings left behind, perhaps in a trunk in some dusty attic, a house for spiders, and for mold and mildew. Your work, your life, crumbling away, yellowing with time, and that would be that, until someone, some kid, some little girl, might discover a scrap here and there, some bit of wit, some serious sentence, some piece of you, still crying out, yearning to be heard, and then nothing but kindling perhaps, or some cool kind of ancient wrapping paper for some child’s birthday, or to the trash where your words, your thoughts, might wind up in a heap, a heap of garbage rotting, disintegrating, like your shell of a body, deep under the dirt, becoming again one with the earth, the universe, pieces, parts, down to the molecule, the proton, disintegrating… down to the electron, the nucleus, the sub-atomic particle… disintegrating, breaking away, fast, onward through the universe, congealing somewhere by some heavy, heavy force of gravity, pulling you back into substance, something, matter, renewed again, into light, heat, energy, matter, hot gases, molten rock…rock forming, lava flowing, cooling gases, water condensing, raining upon another world, ready to begin anew. Ready, ready. The primordial soup, readying itself, barring any catastrophes, and the single celled animals erupt, and then more, and more, growing in a soup green, gray, cloudy, fresh water and minerals, pouring down and in, replenishing, and you grow again, again, and the specter that you once were now hints of tomorrow, the primordial thoughts sparking in your simple cells, your new yet someday ancient DNA, and one day you will grow into something, something small, something potential, something slimy, extracting gas from liquid, oxygen from water perhaps, and then you might eventually crawl upon the land, then back to the water, then back onto the land, which maybe less harsh this time, and you might rest your weary body, your weary legs, appendages, things, under the shade primitive leaves of some kind of primitive tree, trembling as the wind blows and wondering what next to do, and you make your way back to the water, then back out much, much later, more robust, and take to the trees, which are different somehow, different and new, oh the glorious, tall, reverent trees, then back down to the land, then fighting off the insane, deadly creatures, fighting the insane, deadly diseases, believing eventually in spirits, looking up to see the sun and the stars and the moon and ascribing some primal meaning, something ethereal, other worldly, spiritual perhaps, for you have no explanation as you witness the grass growing in the warmth of the sun sometimes, and dying in the dead cold other times, and eventually you sense cycles, patterns… and one day you discover eventually the wondrous thing that is fire, like the sun, but closer, hotter, more effective, and you learn to cook your food, fend of beasts more easily, and eventually make your own clothing to warm you from the elements when fire isn’t around, and you hone little tools of stone, wood and plant at night by the light of your fire, and you carve, and cut, dig and chop, and grow, the intellect growing, too, ever onward, upward, and you fear others who might know more than you so you gather your people and conquer the strangers with your tools, and you take their tools, and you learn, learn, learn, and you become the leader, for you lead your tribe, your small group of followers, mostly inbred kin, towards victory, and while it might not have made sense at first, the spoils… oh the spoils… strange skins, strange vessels, strange tools… strange foods, perhaps preserved, strange images on stone, strangeness all around, and you accept some and discard others and fear yet some other things, for some reason, for no particular reason, you fear and you make up stories of danger, death, gods, spirits, and then you move onward and upward, and civilizations come to pass and with it clothing, and manners, and things, all manner of things, and food is easy to come by and work, too, for now you find yourself employed, wanting more, making more of yourself and you move onward and upward and you find yourself once again drinking the beer, the wine, feeling better and better and poorer and poorer, writing words down onto something, perhaps paper and with a tool, perhaps a pen, perhaps a keyboard, perhaps dictating into something artificial, whatever that means, that might take your very words and transcribe them into the writing of the day, of the age, and then you marry and are happy… And then one day your find yourself home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason…

2003-11-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

Worked today but got little joy from it. I find this project I’m working on now tedious and lacking in stimulation. I want to be doing more. Something else. But I cannot for the life of me figure out what. My mind seems to be in a constant haze—I hear a high pitched, far off, buzz in my ears, way back in my mind somewhere. I don’t know. I imagine that it’s the medication. Perhaps its simply tinnitus, which can also be caused by medication. Or maybe I was dropped when I was a child. Perhaps I landed on my head, flattened it a bit, rolled the brain around in its juices as it settled lopsided and now I’m forever in need of something, like a mind that can comprehend things.

I sometimes wonder if software user documentation is necessary. If a piece of software, some application, were written well, would there ever be a need for user’s guides? Also, design documentation. Why are there so many kinds of documents to explain the design of some system?

As a hard core user and programmer for many years, I’ve rarely ever bothered reading user guides or even installation documentation. I’ve written my share of these over the years, but then I would hope that they’d been written in such a way that would draw one to continue reading beyond the title and copyright notice.

When learning about a software system when I go to work for some company, I find it sometimes useful to read through documentation, but often times, if there is any, its out of date and in desperate need of rewriting anyway, even if it is current. Looking through the code, which can be overwhelming I admit, often helps a programmer to understand the structure and the logic of the system more so than the documentation, but then I keep wondering, because its still time consuming to read through code, if there isn’t away to come up with some kind of system for documenting the design of a system that, when glanced at, becomes completely clear to the one doing the glancing.

Today I discovered on the back of my right ear a pimple beneath the surface of the skin and it has been growing larger, although still it doesn’t feel like its reached the surface, and its growing more painful, possibly because I keep touching it and squeezing it and pressing it. I also have one like it, but smaller, on the bottom tip of my nose, and that one really hurts when I touch it.

Rob and I used to write a lot about the books we’ve read and the games we’ve been playing, even after his child was born. But lately I’ve done the writing and he only sometimes responds (in brief) and I find that to be a shame, for although we’re not as close as we used to be, I still found our occasional emails to be fulfilling in a way. Stimulating. I don’t get that much anyway, especially now that I’m working from home. My wife isn’t into serious, intellectual discussions. I find this disappointing, but I knew what I was getting into when we began dating. She has many other qualities that draw me to her. There are the weekly discussions with Dr. Stewart Johnson, but we only talk about feelings and my horrible past and the fact that I have few friends and no one with whom I can have any sort of intellectual conversation. So I write here in this journal, but not very intellectually, and I keep thinking I ought to save that sort of thinking for all the novels, the great, great novels that I’m destined to write. How pathetic to think this, but I do sometimes feel that its only a matter of time before the inspiration falls upon me like some brilliant light shining through the heavens. I mean, hell, what am I waiting for? If its inspiration (and yes, I have been inspired a number of times to write or even paint or sketch things) I’m waiting for then I will probably never get anything written.

I used to think that my misery, my depression, before the medication came along, was worth it… that it was fuel for my imagination, dark though it may have been. Now I feel more numb than anything and while I have this voracious appetite to read, and read, and read, I cannot seem to get an appetite to do much else.

One of the things I want to do is come up with an idea for some kind of software solution to some kind of problem. I want to start a software company. But then I don’t know anyone and often these things are best begun by more than one person, preferably friends or at least colleagues of some sort. Maybe some kind of hardware product, like an inexpensive camera attachment for microscopes that can be hooked into a computer. Or maybe a completely computer controlled microscope—just put the slide into the thing and watch the microcosm appear before you’re very eyes in brilliant color.

Sometimes I wish I had become a research scientist of some sort so I could just sit in my lab or wander about the field conducting experiments and making notes in a bounded journal. I often thought about becoming an archaeologist—I’ve had that dream since I was a child just out of grade school and heading into middle school. I remember even making my own clay from flour—it was a kind of dough that would harden. And I sculpted tools and little people and created an entire archaeological dig site with little bones in the earth. I think I used soil from the back yard and I painted the tools and the people with some water based paints. I think I got a good grade on it, but I don’t recall. I do remember not being too happy with it because the dough wasn’t easy to shape—I should really have used modeling clay, but there was a handout given by the teacher with a list of crafty things we could use or make to help us do our projects and instead of going out to buy clay my parents thought (or perhaps it was just me) that making it myself would be better. I vaguely recall my mother helping me make the dough, but then I could be wrong. It was a long time ago, and unlike my wife with her almost infallible memory, I cannot recall a great many things from childhood. Perhaps if I sat down and meditated on it a while things would come back to me as they do when I’m between consciousness and sleep.

I like to sleep, and I think now about that very moment I mentioned, the time between consciousness and sleep, where your mind begins to wander, images flowing easily within your mind, thinking about the past, the future, made up things. I often think about work or people I know or even something about the past. Even I think about the books I’m reading, the stories I’ve been ingesting like a very hungry man who has just discovered, as he walked in from the scorching heat of a summer day, a surprise banquet in his honor. A feast placed before his starving eyes. Where to start? Where to begin the feasting? The berries or the beef?

I ought really to write stories about me. I am pathetic after all. I could call my novel The Idiot, Take II. Or the Pathetic, Boring Fool of a Human. Or why not just The End, a book that contains just one blank page between its covers and no others.

My thoughts are like cockroaches… as soon as I turn on the light to see them they scatter. I literally mean that. I could be out and talking with my family or with sherri and something might be said that pisses me off or really makes me think and damned if I cannot shut off the flow of stuff coming into my head. The very thoughts! Sometimes I think in prose and wish I had a wireless connection from my brain to my pc, or at the very least a pad and a pencil and training in short hand. I suppose I really ought to just take advantage of those times when my mind is open, fresh, oozing with thought and idea and consciousness. But sometimes its all I can do to move as my mind just reels through things. Sometimes I stare for a long time at a wall or the floor or close my eyes and think, think, think! Glorious thought! Why does she play coy with me? Why does she hide only to tease me when I’m not looking?

I sometimes read reviews of novels or short stories or essays or even non-fiction books and I sit in awe at the ideas and the words that I see about these things. I think to myself that I’ve read this story, and I couldn’t even begin to write a review like the one I was reading. All I’d have to say is, hmmm… neat story. I liked it. What the hell is that? Then you have these guys, younger than me, intellects, scholars, writing amazing things about the works that they’ve read, drawing conclusions, connecting dots where I didn’t even know there were dots to connect. Am I that stupid? Maybe. I sometimes think that I ought to be writer simply because I could never review or edit another’s work.

My problem is that I do not press myself, challenge myself, push myself to any kind of limit, physical or mental. I just amble through life, like water through a river, taking the path of least resistance and following my fancy. I read when I want to, stop when it gets difficult, write when I want to, stop when it gets difficult, start exercising when I want to, stop when it gets difficult. I am defined by my own laziness. I am ashamed at times and now I have a child coming into the world, assuming things go well with the pregnancy, and as much as I sit here and think that I will be the model father, imagine myself going to great lengths to educate my child, to make him/her a thinker, smart, a lover of words, of ideas and of truth, I come to realize that I will certainly do no such thing after all. I can see myself sitting on the sofa in front of the television too tired to do much of anything, extremely overweight and the child jumping on me, crawling all around, asking me to come and play in the yard, to toss the ball, to read to him, etc., until one day as my pathetic influence grabs hold of his tiny, precious mind, and he suddenly stops bothering me, crawls up onto the sofa, and just sits and stares at the tube, just like his old man, dipping his hand over and over into a greasy bowl of potato chips and sucking down a coca cola.

2003-11-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

My mind has been riddled with haze and mud and all manner of smoke and fog. I try to think each day of doing something grand, but I need to realize that if I just do something, anything for myself, then I will have accomplished something, even small. I suppose that I can say that I’ve been teaching myself .NET programming and C#, although I haven’t done much in the last few days. I’ve been trying to design a web site, but it seems so difficult. I just need to stick with something simple. I wanted to put up a web log, but I don’t know about that. I think, rather, that I would just like to put up a site espousing my programming skills and that I am for hire. My resume, too, I could add.

I’ve been reading about the philosophy of mind, in small chunks, mind you. I’ve been trying to understand Descartes’ dualism. Essentially there is matter, external which extends (has dimension) and then there is mind, whose attribute is thought and has no dimension, takes no space. I think I’ve captured this. Not sure. But there is a problem dealing with causality. How can something with no physicality cause the body, a physical object, to do something. The example used is of some unwary person sitting down upon a tack placed on his chair by some miscreant. He sense pain (the mind) which causes him to want to jump up out of the chair (the mind again), which then cause him, physically, to jump out of the chair.

Then there is the thought about parallelism. Essentially set in motion in parallel are both thought and action. When the mind senses pain the body in parallel jumps or reacts because it had been set in motion to do just that. Then enter God and his hand in it, and then it all gets messed up. Apparently he, being a third kind of substance, not mind or physical body, keeps these two things in synch because that is his nature.

It is interesting that our minds can perceive objects in some sense. I can see an apple, for example, but I do not perceive the inside of it until I bite into it or cut it open. I can taste the apple once I’ve bitten into it, yet I cannot see how it will taste. I can hear the crunch it makes, assuming its not soft and mealy, yet I cannot see the crunch, but I can feel it with my mouth, in a sense. I can smell and taste the apple as I eat it, and I disregard the core and the seeds and the stem. I feel the apple in my hand before I bite into it and I feel its weight and its coolness and its smooth texture. Once I’ve done all of these things, looking from every angle, feeling all there is to possibly feel, taste all there is to taste, smell and hear all there is to hear, have I experienced the apple completely? No, for I’ve tossed aside parts of it. Also, the nature of an apple. A housing for seeds. Food for animals. If I do not plant the seeds I will not have experienced part of its nature.

I suppose, given this example, I can only perceive so much about any object and thus I don’t believe that I can fully perceive an object and so my perception of an object can then be considered (in part or in whole?) subjective and I might further add that my perception of an object and thus my experience of it is unique from that of someone else. Or can I say that, given the same object—imagine the apple again—and two people experiencing the object, do we both share the same experience?

Imagine that I am standing with my wife looking at the apple on the table. Both she and I can take turns holding, feeling and smelling the apple and perhaps, in the end, we could have experienced the very same thing, although chances are that each of us might, should we set about separately to write our experience with the apple, come up with different tales. I might have felt a soft spot that she missed, and she might have noticed a richer, deeper color of red in some spots where I might have perceived its color being mostly uniform, and then there is smell. I might have detected a slightly sweeter smell than she. Our senses then come into play for my olfactory senses might be keener and her visual senses might be better than mine, or at least her attention to detail might be better, despite the fact that each of use had been given, say, five minutes a piece to experience the apple without eating it or in any way disturbing it other than holding it.

So, I believe then that neither she (my wife) nor I have really experienced the same apple. But then what is an apple? What is an object?

Today I went in to work. I go there every Monday. Had two meetings. One with Tim regarding RTC (Microsoft’s Real Time Communications framework) and the general developers meeting. I then pretty much did nothing but read news and various other things on the web. I still count it as a full day’s work. And I’ll probably make up the time with real work anyway. But I keep wondering why it is that I have to go in at all. Actually I don’t mind going in. It keeps it real. If you stay away too long things begin to atrophy, or so I’d imagine. But then each day I am in touch with Andrew via instant message. So in a sense I am there. Its just that those who work in the office don’t have to endure my ugly, bloated presence.

I feel that the medication, the Effexor, is having a negative effect on me. I don’t get depressed much, which is nice. But I think it keeps me from thinking. I want to think about all kinds of things. When I wasn’t on the Effexor I used to have all sorts of interesting thoughts, but the problem was that I’d have too many at once and couldn’t concentrate. I suppose this is what Mona, my psychiatrist, calls racing thoughts. I like my racing thoughts and my daydreaming. But then I suppose I like not being depressed. I also don’t like the anxiety, but my social anxiety doesn’t seem to be completely cured.

I’m still reading Dickens. I’m almost finished with the book, but for some reason I’ve just been too tired during the day (I suppose I just don’t sleep well enough at night what with the goddamned weight I’m putting on—sleep apnia, here I come again!). My concentration has been for shit. And now here early Tuesday morning, almost 1:00 a.m., I’m typing and not so very tired. But today I had one hell of a headache. I mean it was one of those bad ones like I have a month ago. It began while I was at work and worsened as I drove home. I took some Tylenol which didn’t take affect until several hours later. I still feel it lingering way in the background. Not so much a pain as a threat. But I’ll be in bed soon—I just took my Seroquel and it should hit in about a half hour. Sometimes it takes an hour.

Scissors are interesting to me. I don’t know why I say this but they are. I have a small pair on my desk. And now I am wondering about their origin. From whence came the scissor? I know not! Perhaps a poem or an ode or a ditty to the scissor.

From what little I’ve gained in a five minute search on the net I’ve discovered that they go back as far as the fourteenth century BCE as well as the third century, B.C., in Egypt. Apparently these showed some Greek influence in the decoration. Pinking shears were invented and patented in 1893 by Louise Austin of Whatcom, Washington. Pinking means “to decorate with a perforated pattern.” Which would explain the scalloped edges that these tend to have—my wife is into scrapbooking and apparently scalloped edged paper is all the rage, although no doubt these were invented for working with fabric.

2003-11-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

I found a site called dynDns, or dynamic DNS, that allows me to host a website from my own PC. Unfortunately the upload (from my PC to someone else’s) is slow, only 56kbps (or so). I only have the personal cable modem account with a dynamic IP address and a slow uplink. Downloads to my PC, of course, scream

Anyway, a small program runs in the background and if my IP address changes, which it tends to do whenever I shut down the cable modem or something, it will publish the new IP to dynDns, and thus people can still access my site. Let me do a screen scrape and place my first attempt within these pages here.

So far its simply for fun. I am using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and C# to build a functional web site. So far though I’ve simply used it to build HTML and to add a simple calendar web control onto the page. I have only one link, and that is Language, which points to the SIL organization (something I looked up quickly just to check it out). I know nothing about SIL, but it’s an organization dedicated in some way to language-based development (here is the site: www.sil.org).

Under useful stuff I was going to have some Java clocks showing times around the world and a link to lock weather (a cookie would be stored on the local system containing the user’s Zip code—this should help me learn about cookies).

I wanted to develop a message board (I know, there are thousands out there), but to learn more about C# programming and to get familiar with MySQL (a somewhat free SQL database server) I thought it would be nice to toss together a configurable, easy to use and implement message board. Also I wanted to try throwing together a Blog (web-log) web application so that I could easily have it show my log (this log) in some way. Not sure how I’d do it. Perhaps I could use some Microsoft Word programming APIs, although I have no idea how.

I’m also thinking about building some Web Services and client apps (I have a sample in one of my books for playing blackjack where the game logic is on the remote web site as a service and a simple Windows client GUI uses it to play a game against a virtual dealer).

Anyway, time for bed.

2003-11-03T11:52:00.000-05:00

So far working from home is pretty good, although I do find that I put in more time than I am being paid for. But sometimes I get bored and find that I wander back in to the code to fix a few bugs here and there or to write some tools for testing or debugging.

My paycheck finally arrived today. Sherri is out of sorts because the checks won’t necessarily be regular. We were used to me getting direct deposit on the 15th and the last day of every month, but now I get them as soon as they can cut them. I send in my invoice on the 15th and the last day of the month.

Still reading The Old Curiosity Shop, but I’m ¾ through it. It’s a dense read and almost 600 pages long, and I’ve not been devoting as much time to it as I should. But I will finish it, I hope this weekend. Not sure what to tackle next. Something good, though. Or I might venture back into philosophy for a while, read some Hegel maybe.

2003-10-11T12:48:00.000-04:00

Today the whole family met at our house and we traveled out to a farm called Springhouse in 84 PA where we’ve gone every year for the last several years to pick pumpkins and enjoy a lazy hay ride.

Sherri and I each got a pumpkin from the fields… we were in shorts, though, and while comfortable in the unseasonable heat, we did get attacked at times by small bugs and thorny brush. But still, we had fun. We even attempted to walk their corn field maze, but we wound up taking a wrong turn and found ourselves back at the entrance a few minutes later.

It was too warm and a bit uncomfortable so we decided that with all the walking and the pumpkin picking we ought to not try the maze again and so headed back to the tractor and our pumpkins and our bale of hay upon which we sat our tired rumps. When we returned to the farm house we loaded the pumpkins in Sherri’s car and then we all headed out to eat at a new Red Lobster restaurant that had recently been built near the Cracker Barrel and the Super Walmart in Washington, PA.

The waitress seemed upset over something and wasn’t particularly pleasant and this only won her from us a ten percent tip, which might have still been too generous. Still, I paid no attention since these sorts of things don’t concern me, but also because I tend to feel embarrassed at my families picking and scrutinizing…I keep thinking the waitress might walk by and begin a fight—I’ve had it done to me once, and I hadn’t really even been the one complaining, so I suppose I’m a little “gun shy.” Of course its that I just hate any kind of confrontation. Still, as long as there is good food in front of me, I am happy and would rather think and talk about something else entirely. Yet, I could have used a few refills of my iced tea—Michael, in fact, ventured to the bar and asked the bartender for refills.

For dinner Sherri ordered the two dozen shrimp special and like an idiot I ordered for she and I as an appetizer the coconut shrimp. Sherri mentioned earlier in the day when we’d been talking about going to Red Lobster that she wanted the coconut shrimp. Of course she meant as one dozen of her two dozen special, not as an appetizer. So I had apparently “shrimped her” almost to death! But I did tell her that she couldn’t get these shrimp as part of the deal since they are only offered on the appetizer menu. Anyway she had one, I had one and we passed the rest around to all who were interested in trying one.

I got skewered lobster tails with broiled scallops over a bed of rice pilaf. All of it was very good and, in fact, was a little too much for me, but as I’m wont to do, I ate everything. Well, I couldn’t eat all of the rice, which was supposed to have simply been a side dish, but I managed the shellfish, a salad, and a “cheddar-bay biscuit,” one of their specialties. My father had the mahi-mahi, which was something I’d originally had in mind, but I’m a sucker for lobster and although certainly not the best lobster around, it is probably the most convenient place to get it. Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy their meal even though the service left little to be desired.

Sherri was very cute this afternoon. She’s been coming up with these cute things to write about in her scrap books. For instance, today she was saying how she wanted to write to our unborn child that he/she has been on its first hayride and had picked its first pumpkins with mommy and daddy. I thought this was endearing, and of course I did not point out the fact that until the child is born, it really isn’t doing these things with us. Well, until, at least, it forms more in the womb when, I have read, it can learn and remember things such as music, voices, etc. Still, I loved that Sherri said these things. It is such things as these that make me fall in love with her over and over.

Haven’t yet continued with my story or the paper I was writing on pointers in C++, but I have been thinking about each. Mostly I’ve been thinking about the direction of the story, but recently I’ve just been obsessed again with reading and I’m really into Mailer’s book, “The Naked and the Dead,” and have been reading it every night. One thing that excites me about working from home is the fact that I can read more often—until the baby comes, that is. I suppose that the time I save driving to and from work I can use to either work extra hours or get in each evening one or two more good hours of reading.

I feel that my reading is probably the best education that I can afford for learning how to write well, especially if I do bother to read good writing (although I am dubious, I do like to think that going to school to learn about literature and writing would probably be the best thing for me).

For my self-education I’ve used Bloom’s books as guides to what would be considered excellent fiction and thus as a meter for what to read. As for nonfiction I tend to wing it; I love essays and philosophy (popular, but sometimes technical philosophy, if written well, I can enjoy) and biography, something new for me. I am choosey about the biographies, of course, preferring to read about men (and women) who have in some way contributed to science or philosophy or literature. I suppose I like to read about geniuses, or those who’ve displayed some bit of genius in their work. I wouldn’t mind reading a good biography on each of these: Pollack, Renoir, Picasso, De Kooning, Frankenthaler… or even Duchamp or Diebenkorn.

I love art, but I suppose I love to think about creating art. I seem, these days at least, to be too lazy or, really, too timid to try my hand again, although a few months back I did have for a while a small section of our unfinished basement set up as a studio. And I did create an abstract piece that I like, but that Sherri doesn’t and certainly doesn’t wish to have displayed on any of our walls.

I can’t blame her, though. It doesn’t go with any of the décor and it is a bit wild, I suppose. Perhaps when I have a decent space to myself—hey, I’m still thinking that one day I’ll write a great novel or create some great piece of software and make it big—I will be able to hang whatever pieces I want and to have the kind of library (built-in maple book shelves from floor to ceiling!) that I want. But then I don’t need these things, so if I never realize them then while I might be slightly disappointed it wouldn’t necessarily ruin my life. I live to live and I make the best of it through the depression as well as the rare happiness, the love and the hate and of course the thought of our unborn child and my fears of it.

I am frightened and I don’t know what to do as a father. I suppose I’ll try my best to be a good father. A good daddy to the little one. I hope we don’t screw up the kid or kids should we have more than one. Sherri and I, unlike my parents, do not fight so heatedly, and if we do fight at all its very rare, mostly because I give in and let her win. Mostly I tease, which I shouldn’t. Sometimes I get cranky and might snap but I never stay mad and I tend to apologize over and over for snapping. Of course sometimes Sherri gets on my nerves, but probably not nearly as bad as I get on hers.

I feel bad for her at times because, as she points out, I am “high maintenance.” I’m never quite sure what that phrase means, although I have used it myself on occasion. I suppose it just means that in order to make a relationship work (any relationship), the higher the maintenance the harder one works at tolerating the other person’s annoyances, which are subjective at best. For example, my snoring bothers the hell out of Sherri, but had I met and married a deaf woman, my snoring would be meaningless to the relationship—yes, extreme, but nonetheless valid.

2003-07-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

Ideas coalesce, congeal, become something almost solid, something from little threads of almost nothing but whispers of the imagination, the ideas and the images, the imaginings of the mind, of the soul, no fear of death sometimes, no fear of anything, merely the joy of thinking of imagining of living in your own thoughts, the worlds you create, the places you conjure, the creatures into which you breathe your very life, the solace you feel in your imaginary world, all of it keeping you company in an otherwise lonely and pathetically dull reality

2003-07-23T14:27:00.000-04:00

Dense fog warning this morning, people walking, driving, bussing it to work in a fog, in the fog, their minds all a fog, all drugged, all buzzed, caffeine, nicotine, codein, whatever. In a fog, their brains, their minds, the road ahead and behind, not seeing, only sensing, only feeling, drowsy, weary, sad, apprehensive, lonely in the fog, with each other on the street car, on the bus, unable to read the novel, the magazine, the back of a book of matches, worrying if the driver can see, worrying if they’ll make it to the grind, make it to the machine, all cogs, wheels, sprockets, springs in the big machine, the big foggy, confused and sad machine.

2003-07-23T14:26:00.001-04:00

Up all night playing games, drinking vodka, popping a few pills, unable to sleep, now tired, almost ready to pass out at my desk, the eyelids as heavy as lead sheets, but the coffee—more stimulants—helps a little, but the exhaustion seems to be winning and all I want to do is go back home and sleep some more, but tonight, when I arrive at my place, I’ll probably be unable to sleep and instead want to play games and drink vodka and, were there any left, pop a few pills. But perhaps this evening shall be more eventful, perhaps a thought, a spark of genius will overcome me and I’ll write the great novel or perhaps compose the great symphony or even concoct the perfect meal or maybe make the sweetest love or perhaps think the grandest thought, and then I could sit and wonder, idly, happily, beer in hand, at the grand accomplishment of my grand mind, and oh the shit just keeps getting deeper and deeper, it does.

2003-07-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Very little sleep on oxycodone, riding the day on a coffee buzz, feel like slipping away to the bathroom to sleep a little sleep, toilet paper rolls for pillows, cover myself with the magazines and newspapers adorning the stall. Or perhaps crawl under my desk, wad up my outer shirt and sleep a little while longer. Or drink some more coffee, making the buzz worse and then have a banana. Maybe the potassium will do me good. Who knows? Not sure what bananas are good for anyway, except for eating and making the unwary masses slip and fall on their asses. Of course I never understood how you couldn’t see something as bright yellow as a banana peel lying on the ground in front of you. But then it takes an absent minded moron like myself to pull such a stunt as this—just knocking on wood for luck because so far it hasn’t yet happened to me.

2003-07-23T14:25:00.000-04:00

Watching the shard of light surrounded by shadow crawl slowly across the flat, smooth face of a distant building. Spooning with pita bread some spicy pepper hummus and chewing thoughtfully, mouth with slight, almost painful, burning sensation, but delighting in the pain and the flavor of pita and chickpeas. Compiling code in the background and swallowing spring water from a plastic cup, it chases the spicy breakfast, pushing it down to the pit of the stomach where the morning hunger is satiated. The phone rings and it’s Sherri, my love, my life, my everything, called to yell at me because I’d set her clock, not the alarm, by mistake, and when she awoke saw that it was after nine o’clock when in fact it was merely 7:45, and she was angry and tired, but relieved that she’d gotten up in plenty of time for work and breakfast and schmoozing with her caged cockatiel. And listening to the busses and cars and motorcycles race through the streets five stories below, and the honking of horns and police sirens and rushing ambulances and the occasional fire truck, and the pigeons perching on the window sill, cooing and shitting and delighting in the warmth of the stone beneath them as they groom their feathers and think simple thoughts of bread crumbs and worms and bums in the alley.

2003-07-23T14:24:00.000-04:00

Belching baked tofu in the morning, tasting the memory of garlic and herb, almost feeling the half-digested protein in your stomach, and you wonder if this shit is really as healthy as its supposed to be, and you remember reading somewhere a study, oriental men in Hawaii who ate so much tofu a week had, it was discovered during postmortems, a shrinkage in the size of their brain and also, maybe, something about early onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia, and you keep thinking that maybe all the soy milk you drink and the tofu you eat is causing the lapses in thought and in creativity, and you wonder if you should just go back to eating dead cow on a bun, or the legs and wings of dead birds, and, although at first the thought sickens you, you’re taken back and remember the cool times you had when younger with friends in high school going through the fast-food drive-thrus in a borrowed car, getting fries and shakes and burgers and cruising the park, secretly looking for barefoot girls sitting on the hoods of muscle cars, maybe even in bikini tops and you remember being so very horny and so very shy and so very self-conscious, and the acne and the greasy hair and the glasses—no girl would ever sleep with you or even talk to you. But the dreams and the fantasies, always the fantasies that could keep you going for almost an hour in the shower if it weren’t for father screaming about gas and water bills and having to someday put your sorry ass through college because, god-damnit, you were going to get the chance he never had—not have to worry about the scrimping here and there to save a buck, making sacrifices, spending many days on the road, week after week, frightened mother at home always worrying if she’ll ever see your father again, wondering what she’ll do if something happened. And you delighted in those times when he’d be gone, even for just a single night, and you were the man of the house, but you still got the slap in the face for fighting with brother, with sister, you should know better being the oldest, got to lead by example, got to be the big brother, the helpful brother, the one who helps with the homework or the chores or the cooking and the cleaning of the dishes and you yearned to get the hell out of there, yearned to be on your own, some day, when you could drive, you’d drive and stay out and make up some excuse and it wouldn’t matter what the punishment was for it was never so bad, and the freedom, the punishment was every bit worth the freedom, even just a little freedom, a few hours gone, playing guitar, badly, in a garage band that would never go anywhere, but it didn’t matter because that was life. Go to school, hang out with friends, eat your dinner, do the homework, play guitar, steal a bottle of booze from your father’s liquor cabinet, puke in your buddy’s shack, never invited again, but you were drunker and cooler than the rest, even with your breakfast and lunch all over your pants, but you cleaned yourself with the wet snow and coolly put a cigarette between your lips, lit it, and asked for the bottle back with a stupid, drunk grin, and you never thought that someday you’d become that alcoholic, that smoker of weed, that snorter of cocaine, oh the cocaine, the pot, the booze, the seduction of corruption, the freeing of the mind, the wasting away of the body and the soul, hocking your stuff (guitar, television, stereos, whatever) for a few hundred bucks towards an eight ball of blow. Hey, it’s the communal spirit that it fosters, hanging out at your dealer’s pad, chatting with the other addicts, just as educated, sophisticated some of them, other’s were sluts and whores and then there was the businessman and the lawyer and the girl who sucked your dick for a few bumps on the bullet and a couple’a joints, but the dealer, man, he was cool, an old black fellow with the education of a fifth grader, used to run ‘shine in Tennessee in the 40s and 50s, never got caught, now he’s got “support your local police” stickers on the back of his shiny white mini-van that he uses to tote around his grandchildren, and he’s got everyone fooled except for us addicts and then, after the visit and the socializing and getting free blow and pot from the man if he was in a good mood and stoned himself and felt like sharing, back to your own pad, roommate next to you, and both of you light it up and jam guitar and play computer games and think that it will never get any better than this and the night goes on and the buzz gets better and you never think about the coming down, figuring it’s hours away yet, so just one more bump, roll a juice joint, light some frosted flakes, suck down the sweet, sweet smoke from your porcelain bong, choke a little, laugh a little, the mushroom cloud blossoming in your mind, opening it to the possibilities, closing it to reality, and you feel alright and you feel just fine and you can’t stop talking about the small shit which seems so goddamned important, and then your buddy heads off to his room, having gone beyond the point, his eyes fluttering, heart racing, flush, feelin’ ill, and you feel it too, but you need to stay up, do a little more, jerk off to porn that you download from the net, wasting away the minutes, the hours, well past bedtime, gotta work the next day—it’s only Monday, you think to yourself, over and over—gotta get to bed, and you finally crash in your own room and you lay your head on the pillow an you shake and you toss and turn, and you take sleeping pills or hit the bong five more times, anything to help you sleep but it takes hours, exactly 2 hours, 30 minutes, before you can actually fall asleep, always 2 hours and 30 minutes, and you never knew why that was, perhaps a few minutes’ variation from night to night, but approximately it’s always the same. And the paranoia sets in and you know you’ll never wake in time for work and you think someone’s out on the porch, someone with a camera just waiting to take pictures, to call the cops, to alert the feds to the debauchery and use of controlled substances; it doesn’t help that you watched two hours of various police reality stories on the 5” color tv that you had to borrow from someone because everything you owned, you remember, is sitting in the pawn shop waiting to be retrieved, and miraculously you always manage to make the payment, to keep your stuff locked up safe, and every once in a while you’ll rescue it from storage and feel a little okay about everything and swear that you’ll never do it again, that you won’t drink, you won’t smoke, you won’t partake of the “recreational” drugs, that this is it, this is the last time, you got your stuff and all is right, and then the day approaches evening and the excitement begins to set in and your body begins the cravings and you gotta go after work, first to the bar for several beers with your buddy, then a call to the man. Is he home? Does he got anything? White, green, code words to be used at the bar on the cell phone. Obvious to you and you think also to anyone in earshot, but your buddy does this each night after work. “Hey dude, what’s up? White? Green? Hey, you wan’ us to pick you up some lottery tickets?” The man always liked that, he loved playing the numbers, the pick three numbers and each night, after weighing our dope he’d check out the numbers, 7:55 every night, and write the pick for the day down in his little black notebook next to the date. We think that was all he ever wrote, that and checks to his kids, and grandkids and the few bill collectors, and his rent.

2003-07-23T14:23:00.000-04:00

The crystal candy bowl sitting in patient expectation on a desk across from me, waiting for someone with a sweet tooth to fondle its crystal lid, to scoop from its belly some tasty morsels of hardened sugar, or perhaps sweet, soft, gooey chocolates, waiting for someone, anyone, to make it feel as if it was there to serve some purpose, to make it feel as though it has a reason to be, to be understood by anyone who might even think about sucking down some sour tangerines or chocolate temptations or little green mints. I wonder if the bowl ever contemplates from whence its bounty comes? That the small candy store around the corner had been holding its stash until someone buys a bag or two of mixed delights and places them carelessly in its belly, unable to even taste the candy but knowing only that what it has to offer makes those who visit it happy as when they were children visiting a candy store for the very first time.

2003-07-22T09:36:00.000-04:00

Stream of conscious writing is a beautiful form of free writing that serves to get the ideas flowing and to losen the mind, and sometimes, if you're lucky, something good can be picked, like ripe fruit, from the dense fields of brush and weed.