The Wasteland

4:09PM - Why I haven't been on AIM

I don't know what you did, Truthchase, but you killed my computer.

You should be ashamed.

2:02PM

I just got cable... and it's killing me.

Dragonball Z
Ruroni Kenshin
Cowboy Bebop...

and now, as we speak, "Karekano" aka His or Her Circumstances.

Nostalgia has creeped up behind me with a fucking knife. Given the events in my life in just the past two weeks; it's like life is either calling me to change my ways or letting me know I'm stuck in the downward spiral.

3:27PM - I am high Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha!

Moving to Osaka City tomorrow. A mix of gleeful anticipation (for the new life) and overwhelming dread (the cost and time constraints of moving all this shit) fill me.

I had to take time out to take this personality quiz, though. When one throws down the gauntlet of the Man of La Mancha, I must take it up. It seems like my friends and I are validated in our mutual assessment of my hopeless ways.

Your result for La Mancha Love Meter...

Don Quixote

You scored 24 quixotic points!

Take La Mancha Love Meter at HelloQuizzy

1:48AM - The perfect comic book movies for Marvel geeks

If these were the results of Norton's influence, the man knows how to work a crowd.

Hey guys,

I just saw The Incredible Hulk movie and thought it was AMAZING. The best part of it though were the allusions, especially the really obscure ones like the "two Canadian hunters" that he might have killed and the fact that the Hulk was headed toward the US even before Banner chose to go home. Is it just me or was the script a cavalcade of fanboy/insider goodness?

I especially loved the references/setups to three other Marvel movies...

I had to geek gush to someone.

Current mood: enthralled

10:48AM - I wish I had a McCain T-shirt...

from 2000 when I was hoping he would beat Bush for the primary. Back when he was the honest, in your face straight shooter. I would have still proudly displayed it, maybe even moreso, after his loss in the primaries as he discussed how dirty the election had gotten as we all watched how the vicious tricks and attack from his fellow party members in the Bush camp knocked him out of the running.

I wish I had gotten a shirt back then, because right now I would take that t-shirt now and use it to wipe my ass. He's become everything he disparaged in 2000. He calls for an attack free election and in the course of a few weeks he attacks Obama on race issues, on schooling, etc. Is it a case of the ends justifying the means or has he turned his back on his old standards? Has his maverick style been crushed by the demands of a corrupt system; has he become hardened and cynical in the face of partisan politics?

Or was he, after all, that honest a guy to begin with?

Maybe I'm just moody or being a reactionary puppet of the media who played kingmaker in the Democratic and Republican primaries, but I think my McCain died somewhere in 2006 if he was ever real at all.

1:01PM

Given my post yesterday, I found this to be a serendepitous (ooh, I love that word) find.

Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...

The Explorer

Take The Steampunk Style Test at HelloQuizzy

3:06PM - A missive from a poseur pseudo-scenester in exile

Right now I'm sitting here at work, listening to the Phantom Frequency. It's my audial touchstone to the scene that I lurked in years ago (wow, has it been years!?) too shy to make too many connections. I met the Reverend Jynxx a half a decade ago back when Mouse started Gawthee (a Goth coffee evening) I didn't say much back then, but I did get his business card. If I ever get back and see you in a bar, remind me that I owe you an alcoholic beverage or two for the musical triage every Tuesday.

You have NO idea how proud I am that Mouse, Jynxx, and the whole Steampunk scene is taking off back home. I had no idea there were so many people out there who were willing it to take it as far as has and it's guys like Forgotten Sister productions that are making little daydreams into entire subcultures.

I remember back in college when I would stay up nights trying to find brass welding goggles online and wondering if I could put prescription lenses in because I didn't think I could wear contacts. Either that or look for either double breasted lab coats (like the kind Dr. Steel is making famous) or double breasted leather bomber jackets ala the Rocketeer or Sky Captain. Ah, those halcyon days when I daydreamed of losing the weight and buying a uniform or having an original made in the fashion of those used in the Napoleonic and Crimean wars. Heck, even up to when I left the US I was trying to find a single brass cog to make a kind of pendant; a little bit of Victoriana. I never did get around to finishing The Difference Engine or Girl Genius.

Last time I was at home, I stopped by the Clockwork Ball and saw Mouse. Though we were/aren't terribly close, it was still good to see her. I wish I had been in a better or more sociable mood coming in, but Ringside has never been to conducive to socializing for me. Between the rather insular nature of goths, my social awkwardness, the shit week in Chapel Hill, and my rage-induced lust for Psychobilly that resulted from that gestalt, I couldn't just slip into the flow.]

That or I felt like a git for wearing a kimono to a Victorian ball.

(as an aside, thank you Jynxx. Now I can't help but think of Wookie Orgasms now)

My regret is that by the time I get home it will either have passed as a fad or that I'll look like some "newb". I don't know if a the Steam equivalent for "baby bat" has been coined nor do I hope it will; the one thing about the goth scene that always galled me is the preening.

Ah well, if that's the case, there is always Raygun Gothic, Pulp Punk, and/or Cabaret. I've always preferred tuxedos and bomber jackets to frock coats and vests anyway; they're far more comfortable and accessible.

The fact that I'm even thinking of such vapid shit as fashion and posturing kind of turns my stomach-- that and the far more than lukewarm Red Bull that's keeping me awake at "work".

BTW, Jynxx, what were the Android Lust, Kidney Thieves, and Birthday Massacre songs you played around 2:20?

Current mood: exanimate

3:37AM - Upon Confessions of Love

(I am typing this on a friend's Powerbook. I love the way Safari renders everything. It is so crisp and clean.)

A few of you know that I read/have been reading "The Game". I put it aside because it made me sick to my stomache. However, it has gotten me to think critically of relationship and romance dynamics. One man mentioned in the book, "Juggler" is a pick up artist who preaches the gospel of honesty in relationships: his method is just to talk to people and his books/posts are all about learning to communicate through emotive language and body language. Honest, pure, casual- I like his style.

Anyway, to the subject; I've also read the work of one David D'Angelo. In particular the "10 Mistakes Men Make with Women" and why it happens that when "nice guy" friends tell a female friend they like them things just don't go wrong but hideously wrong. How a simple confession of either your true feelings from the start or the ones you developed over the years not only result in people not getting together but can put a pall on friendships and actually cause them to break up or twist because the woman's respect for the male is lessened and makes them less attracted to the male in question.

This "truth" caused me to write a certain person; those familiar with my musings can guess with great ease as to who this person is because I wrote an EXHAUSTIVE review of the moment of my confession. The letter was my attempt to jackhammer a friendship; to say I realize* I fucked up but that I refuse to apologize* for speaking the the truth. I also said that I wasn't going to continue emailing her when my responses come the next day and hers come two to three weeks down the road. I told her I was angry at the situation and not her; though I guess I should have been more explicit that I was trying to cut my ties with her.

i felt bad for this. Good for this. Odd about this.

I got an answer a few hours ago. She said she wasn't off-put and she, unusually, put keep in touch in her closing.
She even mentioned my upcoming birthday, a fact I thought she might have forgotten and a fact she would only know because I told her I remember her birthday in part because it is so close to mine.

I have no idea how to respond to this.

In the past, I have confessed my feelings three times. Once, I got a no and to this day the person I told it to claims I never told her and does not remember. The second one was an outright no and I couldn't accept it as such until the person got married, and the third was never said but because of the former it came out muddled and muddied and led to a relationship that lasted for all of 12 hours.

One of you here even got the prototype "subtle" message a long time ago; one that you either masterfully side-stepped or that was so passive assertive that you didn't catch it.

With this in mind, I can find truth in DeAngelo's words. Viewing my past relationships with men and women in the past, I can see some validity in the PUA schema; the alpha posturing and use of negs to push other guys around and to push yourself up in front of others, the usefulness of neg hits (though when I did it, it was gentle ragging because she was a bud, it made her blush cutely, and I'm like a three year old at times- if I like you I'll kick you in the shin to prove I don't like you to myself and don't want your cooties). the backfiring of being too eager to please, buying gifts, the allure of being aloof and uninterested, etc.

However, RN's response either seems to be a denial of this or simply trying to salvage a friendship- I can't tell which. In the past my best friends have told me one thing over and over; women lie. I don't like such misogynist statements and sweeping generalizations*. However, I know that if a friendship is at stake, I will lie to not hurt a person's feelings or to make them feel unwanted or unwelcome.

So... I'll be spending a few hours today, off and on, trying to figure out how to respond to this email if I even do.
If women are so good at reading subtlety; it shouldn't be too terribly rude- my intent was between the lines and glaringly so.**



NOTES:

* - since I'm using my friend's Apple, and he is from Australia, every time I used a word with a "z" in it, i got a misspelling mark. I find this ridiculously funny

** - If I'm to take the Pick Up Artist philosophy seriously, this email showing my soft underbelly has TOTALLY marred any sense of sexual attraction or respect I have with any of my female readership. In any case, I consider it a win; on the chance you aren't put off, then the bastards are wrong. If you are, then that's less people I need to concern myself with since "those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter" and if you think Im a pussy for admitting my humanity, you can CHOKE ON A DICK and I was wrong for having any sort of love, even in the most platonic and fraternal of way, for you..

Current mood: confused

Current music: The Pogues - Love You To The End

7:02PM - A Puzzle of the Flesh

Very few of you know I've been reading Neil Strauss's The Game. If you haven't read it, just hang around Richard or Godwin for a while; their philosophy's and Alpha Male postures give you a good hint on what the meta-narrative is about.

Ever since I started reading this book, I've felt a change come over me. The biblically minded would say it was the pall of immorality and the sickly sweet stench of temptation that looms ahead of me. Others would say it's the psychological shock of being shown that everything you stand for is nought but smoke and mirrors; a handful of Victorian traditions that are as meaningful as wadded up newspaper. That maybe it's fear and vanity less than a sense of duty or propriety that holds me to what little remains of my original integrity.

It erodes my faith in people and my faith in faith, what little there was left anyways. One of you once complained about how "nice guys" bitch and moan about how it's always the jerks who get the girl. You say it's a matter of confidence. This book, if it's premise and results are valid, runs oddly with and against that. It says that it's confidence, bravado, posturing, objectification, and cunning that win the day. The alpha male, the dominant.

Pick up artists sneer at the nice guys and their arts don't just work on the barfly. Even the so called more sophisticate members of the "fairer sex". Lawyers, doctors, business women, artists.. it doesnt matter. Nor does commitment. Though they are not always successful in their thefts Pick Up Artists do work some of their best work on established couples. Most of those in relationships usually go back to their boyfriends, they do sow their oats with the PUA first.

How can I trust ANYONE if all people are so shallow, even those who think they are so above it all?

The more I try to be social, the more of myself I have to amputate with the cold cruel knives of expectation, vulgarity, and derision. Whether this is self mutilation or a grim surgery depends on your morality. Is it liberating or am I killing myself?

I started swearing to not be the stick in the mud in the crowd. Sloughed off my chivalry layer by layer like a dog with mange.

Chivalry is a joke. Knights weren't pure, they were aristocratic thugs and vandals. Chivalry was white wash on the past and a standard built around noblesse oblige, chauvinism, and PR.

Maybe it is all just flesh. Maybe morality is a crutch. Civility a tool rather than an ideal.
The screeching ape is all that is; society but a garish illusion. Wigs on chimps.

And don't spout any religious crap at me either. I've studied them all for so long. They too are brutish, ugly, and just as base but with different notes to their dischordant harmonies.

It's so tempting, so alluring. To let it all go. The guilt, the love, the mourning of tarnished ideals, the loss of integrity, the struggle to maintain a semblance of honor, the shell of humanity.

I just wish I had the balls to leap into that gulf and let the cold, piercing hate wash over me so that I might use the world with sociopathic impunity and drift through life as cold and cruel as a January wind.

Current mood: searing contempt

Current music: The Hellbound Heart - Hellraiser soundtrack

12:12PM - Aces, baby! Aces!

117 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Current mood: mellow

2:15AM - A Trip Down Memory Crevasse

"God damned, what a bummer."
- Dr. Gonzo, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

On my way to indulge that 42nd LJ post meme that's going around (btw, here it is http://knightfall.livejournal.com/11053.html and it bodes Bodhisattva-esque levels of bliss in my future. A rarity really, finding a diamond like this in the minefield of my college era postings.) I uncovered some old postings.

Dire postings.

Things that, coincidentally enough, were talked about with one of the co-experiencers little more than an hour ago. Rereading those words; typed in the throes of self-pity, rage, and bale; took me back to those dark days. The anonymous posts, the deceptions, the rifts still felt to this day echoed hollow within me- staining the reconciliation I felt just a bit earlier.

In the course of meandering away from those grave words, I found more, the drama unfolding through time in parallax view. Before it, the optimism and ecstasy of the coming graduation mingled with dreams that would ultimately find themselves stillborn. In the aftermath; shaken naivety, snide vitriol, bitter acceptance.

From then on I read my crude scribblings about such topics as impending graduation, the terrors of my brush with Islamic apologetics, the dissolution of my parent's marriage, the quick and sure spiral back into the depression I thought I had beaten long ago.


Not the most pleasant of bedtime reading; especially given the circumstances as of late. Couple this with horrifically melodramatic tone of it all and... well, a miserable collection of misery.

So, now I shall end this post the opposite the way I came into writing it: no longer filled with the milk of human kindness that comes from reconciliation and aglow with a trip to the gym. Instead, I fight back yawns; dejected, pensive, and mournful of dreams deferred...

... and overly dramatic, needlessly wordy posts on livejournal.

Your somnocompositorily,
Kfall

Current mood: sleepy

10:54PM - A political loyalty question

What does it say about me, as a person, that

* in an Obama vs. McCain race, I would vote Obama and
* in a Clinton vs. McCain race, I would vote "No Confidence" and then double my search for overseas internships and graduate schools?

(Oh, and if anyone wants to tear into my defectionary posing, I have sound rationales outside of ; it's not about chauvinism.)

9:56AM - Attention Raven

Attention Raven. You know, the person I know from Dark Wine and Roses. Chris's hunny bunny.

I saw the post about you being busy and the picture of the cake, but I'm on a crap computer that takes forever to render anything and am SEVERELY behind schedule so I couldn't read it all.

I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU FROM JAPAN. Please email me your address so I can mail it to you. It's not a formal scroll, but I hope you will like it nonetheless. I leave the US early on the 6th, so please get me your contact info before then.

My email is control.technocracy@gmail.com.

Hope you and yours are doing well and to hear from you soon.

Chris, I know you're friended to my journal too. Please pass this word along to Raven if you read it first.

Ben

9:54AM - I had to play this.

8:57AM - It took 16 years to say it

"I've been loving you a long time, down all the years down all the days.
I cried at all your troubles, smiled at your pretty little ways."

I sit here typing this post in an apartment on the East Side.

That's right, I'm in New York. Yay! I saw the Pogues on St. Pats and it was good. Missed Alchemy Mondays, but I guess if I get into Columbia, then I might be able to enjoy that upon my return.

Though I'm not in a very yay mood. I'm in the equivalent of what feels like an emotional hangover. I finally told Ms. R N how I feel, and... it went ok. I think she thinks I meant in the past tense. Either that or this was truly a smooth reception. No blushing. No reaction much more than a thank you.

This could also be due to the broken way I presented her my confession. I had put it off as long as I could, so as not to put her on the spot in a crowded restaurant, but as we were about to part ways, I had to tell her. Tell her about 16 years of a crush, about how she inspired me to be better than I am. My guiding light, my Beatrice, my Dulcinea. I didn't actually use that latter part of poetic language, my fear was too complete and sobering.

If you don't know who RN is, then well you weren't there in the beginning of my UNC days. Either that, or the ValerieQuinn and Amy imbruglios have obscured the former with their social awkwardness and intensity. RN is a person I have known for 16 years, and in some ways could be seen as one of my oldest distant friends. I met her in middle school were I first realized she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. She was brilliant, tactful, and sophisticated..

My eyes are watering; I can't tell if that's the cat dander (thanks Willis) or some pent up emotions that are the true side of this morning's deadpan alert. The itchy nose makes me think the former.

Where was I? She was the first Degrassi moment I ever had; I wanted to ask her to dance at the 8th grade promenade, but I was to chicken shit to do so. Then, as if on cue, one of my good friends, ER, came to me and asked for my advice. He wanted to ask her to dance and didn't have the nerve. I told him to do it, that this was a once and a lifetime chance and that he should have no regrets about not doing it. He did. I think he danced with her too...

I guess that was my first martyr fetish moment too.

I thought high school would be a new beginning for me. Being a magnet student at my middle school, I figured I would only see a handful of people from my former awkward days as pauper among the privledged. It was a new beginning; I came across as tough, cynical, scary in some regards (many thought me mad), and ... well, there was a rumor I was gay too. That might have affected the scary part since I do come from the bible belt.

My peace was shattered though when, dressed in my blue AFJROTC uniform (one that RN remembered, not so oddly enough) and looking like a fat blueberry, I saw HER again at an academic competition. It became a monthly ritual of dread and hope that my school would be matched against Reynolds or at a tournament where, though I looked like a tool, I could see her again if not talk to her.

College was going to be my grand rebirth from the shame of my past. Those of you reading this are hopefully sensing the irony in this; you saw me at my worst (except you Mouse, you got the post-Rich Fifer me). I never did turn around; lose the weight, lose the fear, gain the social acumen. Nor did I free myself of that gilded prison.

I still vividly remember that fell moment. I was sitting with COUP, chatting as best as I could in my shyness with a few when I noticed something, a ghost, out of the corner of my eye. The Blue and White, the UNC campus magazine, had set up a table beside us. Their staffers were there, hawking their wares and among them was her. Time had only refined her; the cute adolescent had become a stunning woman. We smiled, we said hello, and I probably wet myself.. at least spiritually. One more chance, one more chance...

Fear kept me from her again though. We made it a monthly event to meet at Lenoir and get a cup of coffee. I hated coffee, but for her I would drink that horrible burnt ichor. There was small talk. There were pauses. It was hell.

I enlisted ValerieQuinn for help, she had met RN long before at a camp in the past. This was when Val was just that hot girl in COUP in mind, before the insanity of deferred puberty struck in latter years. You know, the black envelope days. I cannot remember what came of those meetings except a comradery that in the face of the Amy event became something more passionate, more ultimate awkward for me. But I shall not opine about those dark, foolish days. This is not the chronicle for that.

As senior year came around, my battered psyche was not to be at rest. Still in that vicious hurricane of incestuous COUP romance I found that my eidolon had also signed on for the Honors INTS thesis class. We would be seeing each other rather regularly until I dropped out and decided to go it alone with Professor White (who it seems I have snubbed in past days, which was not my intention) By this time RN had become a beacon on some distant shore, one I would never reach but one to serve as a lighthouse for my ambition. A platonic ideal of universal human completeness that every scholar athlete should strive for. I ONCE sent her an anonymous love letter through one of those faddish email sites one Valentines Day. I confessed to it later but claimed it was a lark, a joke.

We parted ways at a movie. I cannot tell to this day if it was a date or simply two friends who went to go see "Man on the Moon." I have never watched that film since, it is stained with the psychic stench of wasted opportunities. She went to Spain, I became an itenerant living off of credit and minimum wage jobs. As time wore on, the threads of fate never wore thin. The warp and weave just took more abstract features. She went to Columbia and took the program I had been eyeing as I left UNC. I kept in contact with a yearly ritual I started at UNC, a birthday card sent every year. In the distance, it became email instead of paper as it does to this day.

Where to from now, man? Physically, I will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an hour. In my head though, I will be lost in thought or trying to lose myself in the art. Yesterday I shed not a single tear. I laughed. There was no heartbreak, no begging or pleading. We were still friends and the words were said. Dismissed as jetlagged folly or believed and gracefully thanked, I don't know, but the words were said and the silence was a resounding "no".

However, the moment still haunts me with a.. whiteness. It's the only word I can use to describe this feeling. An emotional white out that isnt peace (or if it is, I am so unused to it it feels odd). It's not a dire, gloomy discomfort either. Maybe it's the ambience of this place, this city. Maybe the fact I'm no longer in my Nihonjin Neverland and that I was rejected is a one-two punch of reality that has shaken me free from a 22 year old Quixotic dream. Time to grow up, you're getting older and it's time to set the past aside. A prelude to me finally accepting responsibility and placing aside my solipsistic ignorance of time and actually living life with a new awareness of my real situation.

Or... it's just calm before the storm and on some rainy Osaka night, when I'm alone and pouring over a Japanese textbook or a pile of papers that need to be graded, I'll cry. A long pent up wail will escape my lips as I mourn the loss of days gone by, opportunities missed, chances that never were, and my ignorance of not knowing which is which because I had not the mettle to try.

"You're the measure of my dreams, the measure of my dreams."

Current mood: awake

Current music: the hiss of steam, the honk of horns, and nigh indescribable music of memory

6:49PM - At this time next week, I'll be in Manhattan. Hot.

I'm coming home, home being the United States, for a few weeks.

If you are in the New York or Durham areas and want to chill with me, let me know and I'll get back to you about where we can meet.

9:43AM

12:59PM - DC - Bruce Wayne = No more of my money

http://blog.mygeeklife.net/articles/2007/11/10/the-death-of-batman-if-marvel-told-dc-to-jump-off-a-bridge-would-they-do-it/

This would be the worst case of copycatting one-up-manship I have ever seen come from this or any part of the entertainment industry.

If they do this, I will never buy another DC Comic and try my best to never buy anything licensed by them ever again. The guy who writes that issue will be blackballed by me, no matter who he writes for.

I hope that goes for a lot of you and other fans out there as well. DC's Infinte Crisis was confusing, stupid, and an attempt to extort money out of readers who wanted to understand the mess. Killing Bruce Wayne just to push pulp would be the ultimate betrayal of the readerships trust and the greatest show of corporate greed and inappreciation of their fans. A strong boycott of DC and Warner Brothers after such a slap in the face, if it pushes them into the red, should be a warning to the entire industry to cut this shit out.

9:20AM - I <3 Dragoon

I kept waiting for him to show in 8-bit Theater, hoping beyond hope he would.

And then he did. And he beat up Black Mage. A lot. 

It was great.

And here, his crowning moment.

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=080228

Choom!

10:24PM

See you in March.