Scars: More Notes on Self Destruction

"You should wear with pride the scars on your skin, they're a map of the adventures and the places you've been"

--Poi Dog Pondering

I have a scar on my left arm. It's about 6 inches long and 1/2 an inch wide. It resembles an earthworm, smooth and rounded with that pale luminous sheen of deep scar tissue. There is another one that surrounds it, a fine white outline of an arrow head or dagger point. I still can't remember which it was supossed to be. I carved them when I was 14.
I used an old pocket knife a friend had given me. The same knife would later be used in an overtly public suicide attempt by a another friend of mine. It wasn't particularly sharp, messy but effective. A shot of rum and the first cut. It broke the skin, a flash of red warmth. The second cut was hot, a little bit deeper. The third fourth fifth and so on were indescribable. It took about ten passes to get down into the muscle tissue. Then I stopped and watched. I used my fingers to pry it open, move things around a bit and see what I looked like, on the inside. Multi colored layers streaked with white, like the steaks on display at the supermarket. Animal meat. Undeniable. Another shot of rum and the second one was begun, for decoration, for the hell of it, for fun. It was very shallow, just enough to assure permanence. The soft shadow of a blade, an edge of steel inscribed in my flesh. Then I wrapped a cloth around it and went to bed. No stitches, no cosmetic surgery to hide who I was, who I am. A scar, the permanent mark of yesterdays pain, reminder of a wound I can still feel on some nights.

A very good day. Had my last day helping out the high school fencing team, then wished them luck on the remainder of their season and went on my way.

Next, had dinner with the parental units and my grandma. Japanese food is yummy!

Now, a solid chunk of noding.

Later tonight, will meet up with my friends and say goodbye before we all head back to college tomorrow.

And later later tonight, PACKING! Whoo!

FROM THE DESK OF CHELSEA CLINTON ARIC JOHNSON

It seems as if all inventions and there purposes piss me off... just gimme a rock. I'll bash you good if you get in my way!


Damned windows!!! Where's linux? Not nearly as brain-damaged, but still not all there.

Woz is scaring me. He is completly losing control of the massive river of email he gets each and every day. I think his brain is melting.

He can join the club.

I'm losing my mind. I think I have obsessive compulsive disorder--or maybe I'm just obsessing. NOTE: I have had compulsive tendencies before and am not trying in any way shape or form to trivialize this disorder

My Motto for the day : Obscurity through Security.

I stayed in Richmond two days too long. Never mind that I had to finish up my projects at work and make a couple of changes to production systems at 0730 EST (necessitating me waking up at 0615 to leave home at 0645 -- damn commutes from parents' house), or that that two days' pay will take care of my rent for one month. The manager across the aisle from my cube has been sick all week, my family has been progressively getting sick for the past week and a half, and now I'm sick. No rest for the weary, though; in order to get my mail and pay bills on time, I have to get back to Blacksburg by the time the post office closes at 1230, meaning that if I allow time to drive thru and get breakfast at the Stuarts Draft McDonalds off Interstate 64, I can leave at 0830 at the absolute latest (3.5 hour drive, and something screwy almost always happens to stretch it out longer than that). So it's another 0615 wake-up call tomorrow. Classes start Monday.

"I've had enough now, I wanna go home."

^ ^ ^ ^ space is the same as time

I was looking through my negative-rated write-ups (approx. 11% of my nodeshare) and found a few failed nodeshell rescues and some cases where a couple NFИs could be collapsed into one write-up. I fixed some and had the others nuked.

hamster dance has been expanded to nearly twice its original size, with information on the real name of the song and how to find remixes on Napster.

PM now looks like a proper metanode.

it's a shark not a whale
each thought that falls from my head struggles now, falters as indecision slides in, and, words.. or curves and lines and connections, physical or simple sentences strung together.. i know i am confused, now, in this, life or sleeping through it all to catch moons i'll catch them, later.

it is difficult here and i wonder a lot if i am too alone now. something seems to slip carefully around my neck and tighten just slightly with each passing day, but will it ever be too tight or will it just let go unexpectedly some day or minute or second any second now leaving me to free fall, after being so used to its presence?

it seems so profound sometimes, but i guess it's not, to say the least.. the similarities and the connections, the way one person stares off into space just as another strikes up conversations about clothing or the sun's absence.

i've noticed lately that it is when someone looks too child-like that i am drawn or, at least, enraptured for a time. it is enjoyable in a sadly contrived way to picture each person you meet as an infant, toddler, with glow'y interested eyes scouring floors and.. eating flies.

yes, munching on the little flies... peculiar little humans.
Ahh the day started off rather well. I managed to wake up and leave for school in a matter of 10 minutes. School didn't consist of much. Staring at a book about Anthony Burgess. Ahem. I mean "taking notes". I had a physics test today, and I kicked its punk little ass. I am physics God. The day got more interesting after school.

I picked up a few friends, putzed around a bit, and OFF! we headed to the section of downtown Pittsburgh known as Oakland.

Our whole reason for going down there was to get presale tickets for a rave called Spy vs Spy which is going down tomarrow. The place that is selling the presales is an upstairs/attic-type record store named Hypervinyl. We walk in, and the 2 rooms of the little place were buzzing with DJ types, people hardcore about the music. Out of our group, I was probably the only one that seemed to fit in, due to my phat pants and my dreadlocks. My one friend looked like he stepped out of the 70's, and the other was wearing his varsity letter jacket for soccer. So we inquire about the presales, and the bitchy woman behind the counter (who seemed to be far more elite than us. whatever.) and she says that they sold out, and that more tickets are being printed up right as we speak and they should be here in 45 minutes. Fine we say. So we leave and visit a couple other stores in the area.

Now you see, Oakland is the arty/freaky section of the city. You would think that seeing a kid with dreadlocks would be an everyday thing there (as opposed to at school: see January 9, 2001 and January 10, 2001 for examples of such). Aparrently not. People crusing down the street were goosenecking, causing a traffic slowdown, not to mention the groups of people just hanging out on the sidewalk staring at yours truly. I don't quite like being the center of attention and it was wierd to be a star. Man, I hope I'm never famous.

After visiting a head shop and a clothing store, we headed back to see if the shipment of presales had arrived. They had not. The bitch, I guess was done working. The guy that was now counter jockeying was real cool and fun to talk to. We didn't want to wait any longer (people to do, things to see...) so we left. Before heading out completely, I bought a gift certificate as a present for a friend's birthday party which I was to attend tonight.

After dropping the fellas off, I headed over to the party. The fact that it was a gettogether shindig dealie meant that I had an excuse to use my new camera. Woohoo!@ It was cool being there, I guess. I got to see people I haven't seen in almost a yea and to hang out with them. The big event of the party was that the birthday girl got a cucumber-shaped personal massager. Chasing people around with such a toy is great amusement. Before I left, I got to smoke a clove cigarette. I love these things, I think I just might have to start up a little nicotine habit of my very own. After that, I left the party.

I headed over to a friend's house. We did what we always do; watch tv and make stupid comments. There's some fucked up shit on tv after dark. I watched a show on UPN that was supposed to be a sitcom, but they had this stuffed-animal dog thing that came to life and they treated it like a real character. Somebody was smoking something strong when they came up with that. There was also horse-pulling contests, monster truck racing, a documentary on voodoo, and many, many commercials. At around 12:30, I took a friend home, and dragged my ass to now.

What a great day. Covad had scheduled my DSL appointment from "Sometime between 8am - 12pm". (Imagine if you tried to make an date and said "I'll be there sometime between 4 pm and 8 pm.". I wonder if you would get a yes. But we put up with so much from those wizards who promise high speed connections.

Well I suppose I forgive them, because they came at 9:20 and I was able to chill out for the next several hours, since I had already told my boss I would be gone during the morning.

Meanwhile, I unpacked a box and found a $10 dollar bill. I know, $10 doesn't get you very far nowadays. But it was another good sign for the day.

Finally, I found out that I would not have to work tomorrow (Saturday). Woo-hoo!.

I didn't buy any Michelob Light, but it is still a great combination, this wonderful week and "Friday night".

The beginning of a three-day weekend. When my supervisor asks me what I did on times off, my reply is usually along the lines of "I caught up on my lost sleep", but I haven't had more than a nap yet. I'm on a borrowed Windows box (yecch!), and to do my personal work, I've had to install an old Win32 build of wget and translate one of my scripts into a batch file and remove manually the Unix newlines that don't seem to have a happy home in Notepad. That out of the way, my weekend stuff is to officially begin, but I'm too sleepy to go on. It isn't really the weekend until sunrise anyway.

r.m.p legend The Christopher Currie is doing his Friday night radio show right now, and he's at the tail end of his Gentle Giant A-to-Z, playing every track from every album, in alphabetical order, seeming to take special relish in telling the audience how awful/dreadful/stupid the selections from the latter albums are. He's right, too; they're B-A-D -- in the late 70's, GG, perhaps on the advice of their accountant and record company, "experimented" with the sounds of American arena rock and radio-friendly short songs with conventional verses and choruses, even, on Civilian, enlisting Lee Abrams, the US radio consultant who helped homogenize freeform radio into AOR, and thus shape modern commercial hit radio.

But it's nice to hear the relatively old stuff, like "Peel the Paint" (see, we're past the middle of the alphabet!), and countless songs whose names I no longer remember. When I was a freshman in college, I bought some of their early long-before-the-sellout LPs, after being unimpressed during high school (first reactions to GG were/are usually boredom or irritation), and was blown away by the musicianship and inventiveness -- an idiosyncratic blend of jazz, folk, and classical elements via the medium and technology of rock (sort of a British Mothers minus, deliberately, the humor and satire, plus they could -- and sometimes did -- sing like a church choir, unlike Uncle Frank, who sang like a church dungeon), which pretty much doomed them to cult status and the aforementioned desperate grab for the hearts and minds of American radio-programming consultants (it worked for Genesis, after all). Ironically, Derek Shulman, one of the three brothers who co-founded the band, became a VP at PolyGram, furthering the careers of countless bands who had the musical ambition of a plate of turnips, and subsequently sold like hotcakes. Go figure. I always imagined some sort of Ghost of Gigs Past coming to haunt him in his California mansion, making him revisit some famed GG concert in Zurich in 1972 until tears welled up in his eyes and he woke up screaming mea culpas. Didn't happen, AFAIK. Oh well.

Bedtime.

I learned two lessons tonight. The first is to avoid drinking four Red Bulls in an hour. Even a respectable tolerance to caffeine from chugging pots of superstrong java couldn't prepare me for the shocked loopiness that resulted. In the middle of the club, my better judgement went sproing...it was like being drunk without the slurring and staggering.

I also learned not to ask too many questions of my boyfriend. At one point during the caffeine-high, a skanky twink in clothes too tight for his anorexic frame swished up and gave Wayne a hug, speaking in the ear farthest from me and ignoring my presence entirely. No mean feat, considering I was in Wayne's lap at the time. Under normal circumstances, that would be my cue to take sudden interest in the dance floor or teasing drunk people, leaving them to chat and grilling Wayne later. In my ultraperky state, I whirled around and locked eyes with the twink. "Hello. Who are you?" He blinked, surprised, and told me his name which I did not honestly intend to remember and do not. I continued, "I see. How nice to meet you. How exactly do you know one another?" Yes, it was forward and rude of me, but Karma was on her toes and punished me swiftly as he replied, "We slept together...how do YOU know him?" I expected a lame answer, fabricated and insincere, and his blunt reply left me speechless for several moments, the only words coming to my lips being "Congratulations."

Congratulations? Sheesh. No more Red Bull for me....I'm cut off.

Deeahblita: i'm getting descriptively uncreative
Deeahblita: pretty sky :)
Deeahblita: it is *so* beautiful!
W0NK0DSANE: LOL. Yes, descriptively uncreative.
Deeahblita: /me bites you hard
W0NK0DSANE: /me shivers and trembles, shucks and jives, dances around and smiles. I hope it left a bruise.

Deeahblita: at the heart of a valley between apartment buildings in the bronx rises a fiery pink glow from the sky. It teases the sleep from the blue in the sky, and brings to an early morning blush. For that moment of silence when you get lost in the emotional warmth, you could swear that hollow noise is the sun rumblingspeedingRISING to it's place above the earth
Deeahblita: The sky lightens to the color of daydreams, that gentle blue that reminds us of a summer twilight..
Deeahblita: where serenity and passion meet, lies a delicate piece of infinite sky that shows the love and harmony between day and night, the sun and the moon, the God and the Goddess
Deeahblita: You feel the earth yawn and stretch and sway in it's morning ritual
Deeahblita: The sunrise is never intrusive

W0NK0DSANE: OK. Not uncreative. Comment withdrawn.
W0NK0DSANE: Sorry about delay, am in process of removing Eddie forehead scar.
Deeahblita: That's fine, you're giving me my daylog here :)
W0NK0DSANE: LOL
W0NK0DSANE: /me is a male muse?
W0NK0DSANE: /me tries to look noble or something.

Deeahblita: The sky is swept in brilliant colours, the vibrant orange and pink and gold...and there you see an image in the sky! The clouds...they appear to form something...it reads...e2.... You scream out - "yes! YES! It's Meant to Be! I've found the key to life! E2!"

Deeahblita: Wonko, do you think I should change the ending?
W0NK0DSANE: Drop the E2 at the very end.
Deeahblita: Sorry, I got a bit empassioned :)
W0NK0DSANE: Heheh. impassioned is good, there is a place for repetition, but I think without the last E2, it is better.
Deeahblita: it's im not em?
W0NK0DSANE: I think, yes.
W0NK0DSANE: Both appear to be correct.
Deeahblita: /me had rush the ending of the story..the sky is still pink and rising very slowly..heh


Later on that day...

W0NK0DSANE: LOL. Lookit that. A whole buncha my hard fought writing in there.
W0NK0DSANE: Little plagiarist.
W0NK0DSANE: :snickers and hides:
Deeahblita: /me grins
Deeahblita: so spank me. sheesh
W0NK0DSANE: Are you asking me to reward bad behavior? Heh.

W0NK0DSANE: Footprints read my talents page and didn't believe I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.
W0NK0DSANE: I can usually manage two knots per stem, actually.
W0NK0DSANE: Once I got three.
Deeahblita: does this mean you give good head?
W0NK0DSANE: I am not untalented at cunnilingus.
W0NK0DSANE: well, there's a difference beteween "not untalented" and two knots in one stem, IMHO
W0NK0DSANE: I am also naturally humble. :falls out of chair laughing at himself:

Yay! I don’t need a root canal!

For the last two weeks, I’ve had a nagging pain which I thought was a toothache. It wasn’t very serious, more of a dull ache in the background, but serious enough to make me seriously concerned. I was planning on going in for a checkup, but the pain was getting worse and worse, and I finally went in for a check up today.

Lesson number one in the mind’s powers of self delusion: If you believe strongly enough, you can make it happen. This is how voodoo works – if the victim believes they are going to die as a result of a curse, then they end up making themselves expire out of sheer faith. And if you take it to the extreme of scientific imaginings, you have the humans in The Culture novels of Iain M. Banks (I was reading Excession in the dentist’s lobby), humans who after millennia of genetic manipulation have near total control over their own bodies, down to the cellular level. So my mind was imaging all kinds of nasty things - cavities, abscesses, the whirring sound of dental drills, root canals, exploding teeth – and I worked myself up into a general state of paranoia.

In any case, over the last week I have been miserable and acted like a general asshole. The toothache, the paranoia, soreness of overdoing it at racquetball, the chaos at work, the tasks piling up which I’ve procrastinated, and a growing cold all contributed to my overall shitty well-being. Now it turns out that it was all about the cold. It seems my teeth, other than being overdue for a good scrubbing, are a-ok. It wasn’t a toothache after all, but some serious sinus pain. The pain’s still there, but it just seemed to melt away at the good news.

So I feel a hell of a lot better, and to celebrate I bought a new shirt on the way home. That and some Tylenol sinus medication. This pain is still a pain, so this weekend I’m not going to push it. Noding, drugs, and sleep, not necessarily in that order.

Today’s Poetry In Motion at poetry.com:

weed-grown Indians remember
rotted poplars and
along juniper fences
pirates chortle crossing delicious stumps
found between nettles

There I wept

I looked at the label, and it proclaimed Sage! Jasmine! SOY! Well, perhaps not quite like that. Maybe I'll start at the beginning.

Matt and I were on a trip to the grocery store. I had the usual stuff on my list, bread, ham, carrots, celery, etc. While we were over by the vegetable section, Matt saw "Click-it" soy snacks. They had this dumb computer-ish packaging that was supposed to make them young and hip or something. Matt really wanted some. (We've been indoctrinated with all the Lesbians! Monkeys! Soy! stuff.)

Christ, what are we going to do with soy snacks? Certainly not eat them. I suppose they'd be good for amusement value, but they can amuse us at the grocery store, I thought. I'm not spending money on something just because it's soy.

Famous last words (err, thoughts?) right?

I had to get some conditioner while we were there. I had been thinking that I wanted to get some of that Herbal Essences stuff, since I had tried it and my parents' over the holidays, and I really liked how it made my hair feel. I got to the conditioner section, and started looking for the one my mom had had.

There were a bunch of different kinds of conditioner, and I couldn't seem to find the one my mom had had, so I just started looking for which ever would be best. There were two for 'normal' hair, so I read the labels. One had chamomile and some other stuff in it, but the other was made with Sage, Jasmine, and Soy protein. How could I not buy it? Incidentally, it works really well. WTF? Soy is good for something after all.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I met this girl on SparkMatch. I spoke to her on there. I talked to her on msn messenger. Then there were text messages. Then she called me, and we talked for hours.

Then I agreed to meet her, in town, today. At the time, it looked like we were going to get on fantastically, since the conversations were often very suggestive...

I hadn't taken into account the fact that I might not like how she looked.

I hate to be superficial. Curvy girls do indeed rule this planet, but she was a little too curvy. No stranger to a fish supper. And she didn't smile much. I'm a sucker for a sexy smile.

Nevertheless, I went along with things, and hung out with her in town for a few hours, and we eventually ended up outside the BSM shop. She stopped to send someone an sms. And then one to me, asking if I was ever going to make a move or should she just go for it.

I said that in front of a shop window was a little odd.

So we went to Central Station instead, and talked a wee bit more. And then she asked me again if I was going to make a move. I said I'm never confident enough for that. So she kissed me.

I'm not entirely sure what I've let myself in for. Thoughts of handcuffs and chocolate body paint are nice, but is there any point in a relationship when I'm not physically attracted to her? I'm not entirely sure how to get myself out of it, and instead find a lazy arts student at the union or something like that.

I started texting Hannah with my predicament...

keep looking baby, she's out there
somewhere, stressing
over some bastard
of a guy, wondering when
she's ever going to find
you Ü

Motivational friends rule.

12:44am

Not a very useful or productive day. I woke up at around 2 in the afternoon, watched a movie on my computer, wasted some time on the net, and then went to the gym for 2 hours. I got back home, still bored, so I decided to go practice some pool, so I took a shower and headed over to the pool hall. It was very busy, so I skipped it. I picked up chinese food and went back home. Now I'm watching some TLC specials on air traffic control and flight 800.

My mood is taking a turn down again. I called Sara's cell phone and got her voice mail as I always do. I left her a short message that went something like "Just wondering what you're up to, give me a call if you're not busy". I guess she was busy or maybe she won't check it until tomorrow. Oh well.

While I was out wandering around before picking up food, I stopped by the movie theatre to see what was playing and I came across some friends of a friend who I barely knew. They offered for me to tag along, but I don't really know them very well and they weren't sure what they were doing anyway, so I declined.

My brother is out with some of his co-workers probably visiting some clubs or something. I'm really bored and feeling so damned sick of having nothing to do. I spend all week waiting for the weekend, and here it is and my free time is useless.

I went to perpetual dream theory's last show tonight. oh wow, what an amazing show.

in the afternoon I went over to my boy's haus for his dad's birthday supper. mmm, what a good supper. mmm, what a good family. I like them a whole lot. joe's brother ben is in PDT, and he was tinkering with (as in, disassembling and rewiring) his amp to make it distort more. cool! we all brought noisemakers with us. I brought pennywhistles, tom brought an enormous conch shell (which sounds an E flat, we discovered), and joe brought a trumpet. ben taught him how to play it in the back of Blunt Brothers, while wearing the superhero cape (yes, yes, the very one whose construction I detailed here) I made him for christmas.

we pile in to the table in front of the stage with our friends and fellow PDT fan club members (seanni and pseudo_intellectual among 'em), and the show starts. oh oh oh... maybe it just seemed extra super good because I knew it was the last show, but wow, what an extra super good show. wow wow wow. Ben had quit the band earlier, but since it was their last show, hooked up with them again. He's good. He's amazing. He made his feedback sound like a flute playing. He rocks up and down the town. Gordon is amazing. He sings so well now. Eryn is amazing. Todd was groovy. Sean was.. oh sean is special. Sean is the drummer and he's got enough charisma for three or four dozen front men. Gordon writes all sorts of songs in bizarre time signatures, and sean eats them up like candy as far as I can tell. I am so happy and lucky that I have such wonderful and talented friends.

Back before PDT there was a band called casa del sol who sang a song about BC Transit, which is more or less my favourite song ever. Eryn won't sing it 'cause it's embarassing. Every show I ask if she knows any songs about buses. Today me and ben and gordon conspire to play it anyhow. After the last song, Real..

ohh.. that was such a good song.. what a rocking send-off.

anyway, afterwards we asked if eryn knew any songs about buses. "No!" she says, laughing. "I don't know any songs about buses!" So I get on stage and gord and ben start playing and I start singing the bus song. Heehee. That was so much fun. I asn't as nervous as I thought I would be, but then I was playing for my friends. I know they love me. Or maybe that made it harder; I didn't care about the strangers at farther away tables. Whatever, whatever.

I was so bounce bounce bounce after. The lundervilles gave me a ride home after and they came in and had tea in my apartment. After they left I turned off all the lights and watched them leave, sleepy joe jumping over barriers and ben's cape glittering in the night. I love them.

my cats are fighting again. erghh. I hope it's just susie being grumpy after coming back from a teeth cleaning, because if she's still fighting next week I'll have to take her back to the SPCA. Oh, I hope not. At least if I do she'll be healthier than whan she started. Sigh.

Leah in Germany - 13 Jan 2001

Saturday was a lovely day. I woke up in the morning and had a nice bath. While taking the bath, I realized that something was not quite right. It took me a minute to put my finger on it. Then it came to me in a flash: no matter how much hot water you seem to use, it never runs out and gets cold. This seemed strange to me. For a while I was thinking that perhaps the German people in Nuremberg had some kind of superior water heator technology. I certainly had not noticed this trend in Pfaffenhofen. After some research into the matter, Marc informed me that it is not just superior radiator technology. In fact, there is a heat exchange that runs through the city of Nuremberg. The hot water used for cooling the power plant is piped throught the city through this huge heat exchange, which basically means anyone on this system has unlimited hot water. What a great deal!

I took off in the afternoon with Marc in hopes of accomplishing many goals. First, we went to grab coffee and some sort of snack, so that we would be able to make it until lunch. After that, I wanted to buy food, so I went grocery shopping. It is a bad idea to buy food when you are hungry, that is for sure. I bought: a green pepper, tomatoes, oranges, apples, dried apricots, bread, cheese, pretzels, coffee, and chocolate. Then we dropped it all off at the apartment and I grabbed my money. We went to the train station, which is conveniently located quite close to the company flat, to buy a ticket for me to use to go the Bamberg with Michael Radziej (a network guy at SuSE) the next day. I had to change my money first, so I exchanged 200 more USD for DM's. After all of that, we headed off to try and find Mario, to go to lunch, so we were off to the red-light district! Mario, unfortunately, was not at home when we got there, so we went to eat without him. We ate at a strange German fish place. (I didn't feel so good after the fish.) We went walking around Nuremberg and saw the nice cathedral, and the castle (or part of it). There is really quite a nice view from the top of the castle. I want to live in one of the towers . . .

After roaming around for a bit, I still wasn't feeling that great, so I went home for a while and took a nice nap, had a bath, ate some salz sticks, and read my book. I found out about the earthquake in Central America, when I turned on the news waiting for Marc to stop by for Supper. I am a little worried, because I have some friends down in El Salvador and Guatemala. I have no way to get in contact with them, so I just have to hope they are okay, or still in Indiana on vacation.

Marc finally showed up, and we went to a nice Italian place for dinner. I was feeling a lot better at that point, and the food was quite good.

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