July 8, 2001

10pm Saturday Watching the Green Mile. Interesting movie.
"To tell the truth Boss, I don't know much of anything. Never have".
I find that ironic, as I think back on the email she sent. You need a healthy dose of dissillusionment-she says to me. I guess so. A dream defered is like a raisin in the sun. Randy is on the way back with Yusa I presume. Wish I had the money to get out of here for while, but it's a big apartment. Wow, good movie. We're all supposed to drive up to Hartford tomorrow for one of Randy's friends kids bday party. Randy and Yusa are gana roll tomorrow (night I hope). I have no such desire. I'm thinking about that 12 rack of Corona's in the fridge, think it's time for one. More later
11:20pm
Randy and Yusa just left, and I finishd the movie. They tried to talk me into going to The Velvet Lounge, a place I think will feature prominently in my future, but not tonight. Turned the TV off, and put on some Cowboy Junkies and lit some candles. Just me an the little woman, E2 (grin). It's nice to be alone tonight, I think. When Randy was in the other room, she says to my in her sing song mix of accents:
"Why don't you come? It nice to have another person, talk talk each other."
I said "Nah, you guys need to get to know each other, spend some time".
"yeah yeah, we talk, you my friend. That talk make you miss each other, I no want to miss."
I can understand that. All too well. That's why I'm here alone. She told us a story of the Lebanese man with five kids, he had no arms. She gave the kids piggy back rides on the plane. Yusa is a Thai stewardess on Royal Jordanian Airlines. It's cool to see Randy with cool chick, he's had some wacked ones. But that was a long time ago.
"And if it's in your powers please, purge the memories of this place" Cowboy Junkies.
I think of Florida, of what I'd be doing right now. The change is nice, needed, but it's going so fast..as I drive around this area, I wonder if two years from now I'll be leaving here, leaving a whole new set of ghosts and demons and screwed up attempts at love, a circle of freaks that I will gather about me, and to run away again. God, who knows.
1:57am
Just did a tarot reading for some girl in Minnesota on alt.com chat. She got a kick out of it. Maybe I should buy a 900 number (lol) Six coronas down and looking hard at number seven. Randy and Yusa aren't back yet..that's right, the bars here in NY stay open till 4 am. Now that's civilization. Played Zelda on my antique NES for a bit, never did beat that game. I love saytrday knights at home.

"So the last time you applied for social assistance was in 1997, then?"

"Yes."

"And that was in Ottawa, correct?"

"Yes."

"Hm... It says you're marked 'NFA' here... You were homeless then?"

"Yes."

...

Toronto leaves more and more of its mark on me with each day that passes. I grow a little more impatient, a little more jaded, a little more concerned about the opinions of others.

Image grows in importance, and conversation is secondary to cool clothes, good connections and wonderfully expensive designer drugs.

When I look at the people around me in this social circle, I think that while perhaps some of them thrive in this environment, others might have a little more in common with me, and would rather be in a coffee shop, at a bus stop, anywhere else, having a bullshit conversation on how to save the world.

...

Nothing else to say.

Such a lovely fucking day, and you're gonna hear about it, like it or not ;)

I spent most of the day as I do any saturday, lounging around on my ass watching movies etc. until about 1 PM (I get up around 6 AM, I know it's odd, but hey, I'm weird). Around 1:30 I get the bright idea to call my girlfriend who I've been dating for approximately 5 months now. We've gotten along beautifully and it's going great, slow, but great.

*Enter short flashback for purposes of having my story make sense*

I had "rescued" her her from her previous asshole boyfriend who fucked a chick in Kansas (who is now with child), and had to drop his full ride, at Kansas State, for football (ain't them jocks geniuses?).

At any rate, I was intentionally taking things slow because she had been with Captain Asswipe for two years, and she wasn't quite ready for anything super serious. After all, it had taken me two months to get her to believe what the jerk did wasn't her fault.

I was under the impression that she liked me a fair bit as it was she who first asked me out, and not the other way around. We went on a few spectacular dates and otherwise just talked alot on AIM and on the phone. It was sort of a long distance thing, me being 45 minutes away at the university. We talked every day in the morning and before bed, for hours on end. She even said she loved me....

*End flashback*

/me breaks out a nice Zippo and a cuban...

Well, after all that, what do I have the pleasure of hearing today when I call her? Her pleasant voice? Her mother saying she isn't home? No. I get her DATE, picking up the phone. He hands it to her, and she attempts to explain to me that she never REALLY loved me, she only wanted to be friends from the start and thought I had understood that, silly me. And to top it off, this new blood is ALSO a jock, just like every other asshole that ever hurt her (maybe it really IS her fault).

/me takes a long drag from the cuban

I shouldn't have been so naive as to think a hot woman would fall for a nerd like me in the first place (oh yeah, forgot to mention - she's a swimsuit model).

I guess it's just you, me, and my computer now comrade... I'll just drown my sorrows in noding....

I notice a soft-link asking What would you be doing of the internet didn't exist?. I suppose I'd be watching TV or writing in a journal.

Anyhow, back to the diversion at hand. Today I put together a Select Comfort bed I recently bought. It seems to be very comfortable...I'll know more later tonight. I had been sleeping on an air mattress. I took quite a while to get around to getting a bed...why, I'm not sure. But I decided to get a good one. My grandma has one, and when I visited her I tried it out, it seemed very comfortable, and she swears by it. We'll see!

I've been reading Stephen King's most recent work, Dreamcatcher. It is interesting, but some parts were a little hard to follow. My favorites are still Firestarter and The Stand.

Instead of waiting out on my photography work to be finished until Monday, I went out to a darkroom to make a few prints for my final assignment.

Around 3:30 PM, I went to ABC No Rio in the Lower East Side of New York City for their darkroom. The darkroom's equipment was slightly different from the stuff I used in Brooklyn College, but I was a quick learner. Okay, the print development took more time but it's still good.

The only pictures I worked on derived from one picture I took last week in the Times Square - it's a picture of a blonde woman, and she's sitting on a bench. It's a picture of her looking to her left, and I took the picture behind her. In front of her is the platform for the northbound trains. The crowd waiting for the northbound trains is in front of her, but it's way blurry because of the depth of field.

Afterwards, I went out for dinner at the Café Edison - I had Matzoh Ball Soup. The soup made later in the day is better because of fresher balls... Uh, I mean balls of matzoh.

Later, I moved on to seeing Memento. I saw the film with the goons of Something Awful last week on Video CD.

I'm planning to get my prints back after work on Sunday. I'll leave work early, and then I can get to Rivington St. and back to ABC No Rio.

The tax year has passed in Australia (the financial tax year ended on June 30th, 2001) and I will have to complete a tax return for the first time ever this year. This is the first year that I have been working instead of relying on my parents for financial support.

My financial advisers are probably not going to be too happy with the extra amount of paperwork I'm going to land them with this coming week, but I intend to tell them that I ended up making more money trading options on the stockmarket than in practising medicine as an intern (houseofficer, first year resident, whatever) just out of medical school.

---

It's now been a few weeks since I broke up with my first girlfriend (again). This time had far more finality to it. It's sad when relationships don't work but life has to go on. Also, it's not as if there has been a long list of young, single, good looking girls knocking on my door asking for my attention.
(Yes, MK, I know you read what I node)

Will be going away next month to visit Singapore, Holland and England. Travelling alone. *sigh*.

---

In the finance department, anyone interested should have a gander at http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~netking/prognost.htm - in today's market I reckon we're now approaching point 16. Stock bulls beware!

Another week, another eviction on Big Brother.

Christina is out. It wasn't a real surprise for many people as the press deemed her "too ordinary" to win from the start. Now only Sara-Marie, Ben and Blair remain. The Sydney newspaper today claimed that Sara-Marie will win, and that Blair will be close behind, and I have to agree. Not that I watch it or anything ;)

Speaking of Big Brother, the last Big Brother Uncut was a special of all the Big Brother shows from around the world. There was a lot of debauchery in the European shows, including sex and masturbation on air ! The couple having "relations" in the toilet and another couple together on the top bunk in full view of the camera was revolutionary for us boring Aussie viewers. All we saw of our gang was cuddling and a "dancing doona". Wow. Aren't we sexually adventurous...

Apparently Australian schools have been having a lot of trouble with kids voting other kids out of their friendship groups a la Big Brother, The Weakest Link, and Survivor. Being the ostracised odd one out was never that stylish for me...

In other news, I'm in Tamworth with Dad and Renee, and am getting very snappish. There's only so much "do you want something to eat?" from Dad and "can you loan me some money?" from arkaem I can handle. I've been hanging around waiting to hear if I have a job interview, but I can't be bothered waiting here anymore, so it's back to Newcastle tomorrow. Or, as the lady at the booking centre said, "It leaves at 4:50 am. In the morning. Tonight. Well, tomorrow. Morning". Righto. Got it.

Whilst I've been wasting my life in good old Tamworth for a week I've not done much. I went out twice and danced up a storm with arkaem and her pals. I only saw two people I know from high school and they were both people I didn't really talk to back then, so I didn't want to go over and start a conversation with two almost-strangers. I was pretty disappointed with the lack of Tamworth High School ex-student participation in the Friday/Saturday night tradition of everyone going to the one nightclub in town, but hey. At least I didn't have to avoid anyone I don't like.

So it's back to Newcastle, where I have to start actively looking for a job, dammit. But it's so much easier to sit at home and wait for a mystery boss to ring and say "Melanie! I have the perfect job for you! We'll have the limo there in ten minutes!". Then I'd have to get out of my stinky pyjamas and have a shower and find my work shoes. It's a nice dream, anyway.

Have a good week, everybody!

    Today is Saundra Lee's birthday, she is turning 15. On this day, 15 years ago, the beautiful, brilliant, hilarious Saundra Lee, the girl that has made me my happiest and my most miserable, was born into this world. She is the girl that taught me not to care. She's the one that reminded me that it is my life, and that everything else is secondary to being the person I want to be. Saundra showed me so many things about life, but she did it in her own cynical, fantastically ambiguous way. I know that as long as I live, I'll never again meet someone as refreshing as she is. 

    Birthday...I Need A Gift.

    Being the unconventional girl that she is, she deserves unconventional gifts. Being the anti-commercial, broke, socialist-on-a-soap-box that I am, she will be getting a home made unconventional gift.

Flashback to this afternoon: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    And there I was sitting in my room, thinking about all the things one could possibly create for unique bastard like Saundra. Pushing my creative drive wholly into the task at hand, I came up with several terrific yet unfeasible gift ideas. A rubber....maybe a yellow.....Ha! A magnetic......Damn.

Off to the shower.

    Letting the water run over me, I was reminded of the Eiffel Tower. Shut up, I don't why know either. Ha! Out of the shower I went, to find material for...for a...miniature Eiffel Tower. What did I need...Hmm... Something sticky...Duct Tape! Several dozen uniform pieces of thin sticks...no...Q-Tips! I read your book, you magnificent bastard!

    Check. One Eiffel Tower. What else.

    Looking about my room for ideas, I sez to myself, STV I sez, "What the Hell Would Jesus Want." Then it all came to me:

• The 1998 Fall Preview TV Guide
• 54 Shakey's pizza prize tickets
• The CD jacket to Michael Jackson's 1997 release Blood on the Dance Floor
• A rather large nail
• A working wooden robot that says "Sex Machine"
• And of course, the coup de grâce, The Q-Tip Eiffel Tower.

Today, ... was a little odd.

I guess it was partially because I didn't eat/drink anything for 12+ hours. Why? Religious fast. Fasts. hmm. They might sharpen the mind, but probably not in a way that is very conductive to conventional thought. Makes for very "interesting" thoughts:

• I have no idea what it's like to be deaf. I can't even imagine it. This might mean little to you, but this is the first thing I've ever failed to imagine at all. (Usually, I can day/night-dream about anything in crytal-clear vividness. Even how it would impact my daily life.) But I cannot imagine what it's like to live in a world without sound.
• Thoughts about telekenisis, and general mind-over-matter. Like: how is it done? what areas of the brain does it use? what does the user's mind feel? if it even entropically feasable? where does the energy for the movement come from? is there some kind of massive trade-off, or is the energy drawn from some kind of external source?
• How would I smell like after not bathing for 9 days, and not washing my clothes for 3 weeks? (yes, I know. I said it was bizzare).

Hmm. This is fast approaching the class of text you'll-regret-it-in-the-morning. Oddly enough, it's gonna technically be morning in about 25 minutes ;-)

My ADSL went down today for some inexplicable reason. My roommate, the tech-head in the house, has no idea what Tel-ASS is doing. It might have something to do with the fact that he called to question our latest bill, in which we were charged the ADSL fee, GST and PST not one, not two, but three times for June.

I have re-discovered the joys of dial-up. My computer has a 56K modem that I have not used since I bought it several months ago, but now, with the modem-that-came-with-the-Compaq and my parents' unlimited dial-in account, I am discovering that my modem is about the same speed as my ADSL.

I spent the day with Pseudo_Intellectual and Yam and various other people helping a friend's parents move furniture from their living room as they are about to renovate their living room. Our friend's sister is going into grade 11 next September and she is worrying about how many scholarships she can get for university in two years. She's so dedicated, I hope she won't burn out before she gets a chance to learn how much fun university is.

Met Bosco today, she's an artist, a real one, and a nice person. She's a bit obssessive, and it has an outlet in her work - she brought slides, I brought photos of my art car to show her. Good to meet an artist, and hopefully we will grow to become friends.

Met with a new sponsee this afternoon, that went very well. I have no gaydar whatsoever. I was so sure she was a lesbian, and she seems to be straight as they come. How arrogant I can be! Not important to me if she isn't, just thought she was gay and I had some one else to relate to about that issue.

And G. called me tonight, as I was preparing for D&D. We talked for quite a while - and she wants to be my friend, something she has said in the past, but I didn't believe. I am happy with that, and am looking forward to developing a friendship with her. I'm so glad it's over! She's much too old for me, she reminds me so much of M.

In Imperium Galactica 2, I've defeated the Godan Kingdom which was attacking my north-east borders. I now share a border with the Shinari Republic, but they'd think twice before they'd offend the mighty Krakhen Empire (that's me). I've made contact with the Solarian Federation (filthy humans) and the Cheblon clans and the Iberon Empire are busy fighting each other but it is only a matter of time before they tangle with my southern border. A looming threat is the Toulen Empire who is probably in my south-east but their homeworlds have not been located thus far.

ALSO:
Walked around the city and looked at the sights. Read novels by Dennis Cooper and Agatha Christie. Bought the Avalanches LP. Listened to that LP and thought about this and that. Also bought Haruki Murakami's novel "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". In it, the narrator's cat goes missing. He has time to go look for it because he's a house-husband. He thinks about his life, which has been pretty uneventful until now. While wandering around the neighborhood he meets a 16 year-old recuperating from a scooter accident in which her boyfriend died. There's an abandoned house nearby which brought bad luck to everyone who lived in it. The narrator meets a veteran who tells him about his experiences in Manchuria and Mongolia during the 1930s occupation and World War II. During which a Japanese Intelligence agent got skinned alive by a Russian soldier. The vet tells the narrator that the Russians threw him down an abandoned well in the Mongolian desert to die, but he escaped. The narrator gets cryptic phone calls from a mysterious woman. He goes & sits in the bottom of a dry well to think better. He goes in and out of dream worlds through the well's walls. The narrator's wife leaves him and kills her brother. The narrator has an affair with the sister of a medium who helps him find the lost cat. The 16 year-old decides not to go back to school but takes a job in a wig-making factory near the mountains. Life, of a different kind, goes on.