Foggy Small Head

(16 November 1999, Living Room. 59th and El Cajon Blvd. San Diego.)
Fog at work today. Mist floated into the hanger and (gasp!) stopped operations at Uncle Sam's Canoe Club Airport and Concrete Farm. We (Eddie and I,) were once again screwing with A/C 105's ASDC fixing the wires Ziggy found last week. Beaver asked on his way out the door today if I thought the thing would work and the real answer was as it is now: I don't know. I hope it does, I am getting sick and tired of toiling away on the same aircraft that in all honesty has no business flying let alone continuing to exist as a physical object.

I guess this brings me to the point of why I am pushing (left-handed you know,) this pen across these pages and the underlying reason for creating something of a written record or a personal history for the coming year? There is no point. Nihilism. Nothing from nothing subsequently resulting in a large dose of nothingness. I suppose this comes as a result of regretting not recording more of my last trip to Japan, at the same time it probably wasn't the best idea given where I was going either. A tangent for the reader: If you're reading this then I have no idea where I am going. Don't expect me to give away the ending so fuck directly off. By the way, a large amount of the language will range from mildly to blasphemously offensive. Anyway. These are my perceptions of this second trip. I do not know how many volumes this is going to run aside from this one. Nor do I particularly care. This is reality as I see it around me. I suppose that people might look back on this year and wonder what the fuck it was like, what happened with society. No idea, I am by no stretch of the imagination a sociologist nor am I going to make attempts at clinical definitions of people's problems with each other. This is getting narcissistic, back to the random stream of consciousness.

Fog floats in my head, binds me to my flesh and roots me firmly in reality. I feel like Motoko Kusinagi, "free to expand myself only within boundaries," the bones of my skull forcibly restricting expulsion of my mind into larger pastures. There are times when I wonder about whether or not other people feel this the same way, as if they are cramped inside their own heads. I suppose those willing to undergo something such as trepanation (stupid,) are attempting to alleviate themselves of this restriction. The whole notion of drilling holes in my head seems somewhat: a. Retarded (skull being casing of brain, like drilling holes in the top of your car's oil pan if you ask me.) b. Founded more in the realm of placebo than in actual science.

Education, learning, the great quest to understand a little of everything and actually live as a true latter day 'Renaissance Man,' this is the end goal of all of this I suppose. Any point? Olds chastised me a few weeks ago, essentially calling me a freak for being intelligent (or at least educated,) and that I made him somehow look stupid or at least feel stupid. Whether or not he is stupid is a matter of some conjecture, from outside observation I find him filling some PWC air conditioning job. Standing around outside of some building, scratching his ass while staring at a non-functional piece of equipment and trying desperately to determine the needed excuse to go to lunch. Anyway, he made a point of lecturing me about a man's right to hold down a pointless and somewhat useless job doing absolutely nothing productive. For instance doing nothing all day long except driving a forklift to and fro under the auspices of contributing to some lofty and altruistic goal. This is mainly what the conversation consisted of, a man's right to seek happiness in driving a forklift. Forgive me for being an elitist motherfucker but how in the holy goddamn hell would someone actually be able to reap any manner of enjoyment from something so extremely repetitive with no room for creative or intellectual expansion? Driving around picking things up and then putting them down elsewhere several thousand times a day would lost it's luster after a bit I should think.

This again may have something to do with the complex from which I suffer. My mother used to prattle on incessantly about my becoming a ditch digger or something similarly loathsome (her words,) unless I educated myself. Either that or I would have to be somehow subjected to the process of being educated at the hands of a succession of long winded genius geriatrics intent on imparting some notion of knowledge to not only me but my peers as well. The penalty for not enduring this process was well defined and oft repeated: I would wind up a ditch digger, shoveling dirt for the rest of my life. The scope of such a fate and its effect on a six through nine-year-old psyche I cannot fathom. Obviously it had some effect on me, I didn't wind up spading soil out of a trench. (Wound up an indentured servant, slave to the government instead.) Education played an enormous part in that. Every time I indicated to Mutti that I was bored I could count on another book. First as punishments, later as rewards and now just whenever the hell I feel like reading something, always nose down in a book since I cannot remember. For that experience, the definition of reality and the rule set that it provided I am grateful to both of them. Mutti and Vati did a good job I think trying to turn me into something other than a product of the retard television worshipping goons that I graduated from high school with. I am not sure if the loathing for society came later or if it was a natural reaction to never having been exposed to sufficient popular culture to acquire a taste for the medium. It is strange though to think of how badly I detest things like serial television shows, sitcoms and the now popularized reality television show. Do the people that are on these things understand exactly how ridiculous it is that they look? Or is it some sort of avarice for glory that motivates idiots to stand up and attempt to marry someone they have never met for nothing more than materialism or drive around like assholes for a year? Looking at the screen from this side of the fence, I find the content disgusting and seriously call into question the sanity of anyone who spends more than three hours a day staring at the screen salivating. Then again I spend three to four hours a day staring at a computer monitor and doing nothing more than pecking away at the keys. Does this make me any better? No, just a different set of perspectives and a different addiction. The worn keyboard sitting on my desk is testament to that ideal of pursuing something that although I cannot ever have, I can definitely participate. I need another shrink to deal with all this disjointed anti-social psychosis. At least that's what Olds thinks. Fuck Olds anyhow. I do not think that I like Olds very much; he's sort of an asshole. Then again so am I so it is a wonder that we aren't the best of friends.

Is it possible to outgrow your own brain? Even now I feel it, the restriction of the inside of my skull holding my brain in place and preventing it from moving outside of where it is now. Inside the realm of science fiction, what would be the result of sticking your brain in a giant tank and allowing it to grow and float as it pleased? Would you and your brain be happier floating about on a gossamer wing, suspended in over-oxygenated blood, or would it need to be confined to a snug fitting and easily portable case as is the situation now? Given that the tank could be wired to some kind of link to the outside world so that it could still receive inputs and not wind up something out of 'Johnny Get Your Gun.' (Which is to say the very least an extremely disconcerting piece of fiction. It has just occurred to me that the more I think about it the closer I get to wondering if I am having some sort of Ghost in the Shell inspired psychotic episode.) Where does the soul reside anyway? Tied to the flesh or radiating outwards in an immeasurable field? (Tangent: What is the approximated radiated energy from a human brain? What form, etc. Would it be possible to, via some sort of feedback amplification, radiate more power or dampen these emissions via some sort of modulated RF? Methinks the Central Intelligence Agency has already tried this and I am wasting my goddamn time. Need Pop Tarts, Shredded Wheat and Laundry Detergent. I also need a girlfriend and a life. I cannot believe that I am sitting here thinking about mucking about inside someone's head by pointing ray guns at them, then I spit out grocery lists in the margin. Eat, shit, and die. Much better with the commas.)

Honestly what is it that holds such an attraction for me in taking everything that I can lay my hands on apart? I have to know how it works; I must understand the object or system in question. More than that I have to be able to understand it on such a level that I can imagine it going through whatever invisible process that it goes through. Like the fatigue-induced hallucinations in AVA(A1) I can see these things. As insane as that sounds I can actually see the shit working. Watch it long enough and I can feel it, as if an extension of my own physical self. The aircraft and I are like this, existing in a symbiosis with each other. I am not sure how it is that I am able to do the things that I am with the plane; it is parts of id so real that I am almost taste them. I wonder in the dark little moments what it is going to be like to live beyond the machine. To let it go into the uncertain trust of something gone beyond where I am now. I most certainly shall very much miss these planes, my errant haze gray four-bladed children.

People just don't have the same attraction, they want more and are capable of far too much duplicity to be trusted in the same way. Latent and I (I fear,) share this bond as brothers more than either of us care to admit. Probably ought to ask him some time. Miss the bro a great deal, more than I care to admit here. It would be nice though, not to be judged and have someone there to wander with. I think the fear of betrayal might wind up being overcome by a simple bright hatred of solitude. I am certain about that, I do not like being alone all of the time despite the advantages of not having to feel responsible or deal with someone else's stress. Actually, it may be slightly worse than that.

The Mentor was right that they don't want anything other than a little trust, a little electricity, and that you don't do anything as stupid as wire a 1553A Data Bus off kilter. In return they (the machines,) pour forth a rapidly updated stream of data that you can fiddle with to your heart's content.

Honestly at times I wonder very seriously if there is some hope for someone like me, if I can be 'saved' and maintain some semblance of a normal relationship with another human being. Have the trust reciprocated with without fear or suspicion of betrayal. Never again. This is what I insist, swear, pledge to or keep as a personal mantra to ward off the little nagging remainders of the past. It does not change the undeniable fact that I am indeed human. I possess physical form on the same level of six billion other spongy bags of carbon-based life forms called humans except with one major distinction. I do not feel at all human. Perception is essentially reality. Only biology ties me to the being that I am. Throughout ranges a varied and bizarre gambit that is simultaneously without form and extremely restrictive in nature. Somehow I sincerely doubt that there is ever going to be any kind of serious interruption in this solitude, self-imposed or not. Typically women don't go for the dark geek, they want the large brutal man who pounds in nails with his forehead (almost said penis, that would be going a little far with the satire,) and can crush cars with a concentrated stare. Christ, back to thinking about Sarah again.