Day Twenty Eight: My List

A friend said he has an addictive personality, and I wondered if I did too. A study by Florida State University, and reported by the New York Times finds that there are several ''significant personality factors'' that can contribute to addiction:

- Impulsive behavior, difficulty in delaying gratification, an antisocial personality and a disposition toward sensation seeking.

- A high value on nonconformity combined with a weak commitment to the goals for achievement valued by the society.

- A sense of social alienation and a general tolerance for deviance.

- A sense of heightened stress. This may help explain why adolescence and other stressful transition periods are often associated with the most severe drug and alcohol problems.

Let me put it in my own way. All I care about anymore is new experiences, new flavors, meeting new people, smelling new blood. A new kind of purity.

I'm not worried or upset and I'm not gonna bat an eye. It's almost as if the study proposes this kind of attitude is a bad thing. I'm happy with who I am. Who knows, maybe I'll even grow out of it. Maybe being me is just a "phase".

I was reading Hitler quotes yesterday. Why not. My favorite quote from him (besides the "kill everybody" one) is "Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized." So if you know me, you know what I did. I painted a landscape according to this color scheme. Many people believe Hitler to be the most evil man in history, and maybe, but doesn't it feel great to break whatever rules he makes. A new kind of purity.

I'm excited for school. Not the school parts tho. Those are far from my mind. I'm excited for all the amazing things I will be doing this year. I'm really happy about it. Nothing's gonna stop me.

I explored a thunderstorm today and met the girl my grandma is trying to hook me up with. We'll be good friends, sure. But nothing more.

Day Twenty Four: Love Keeps

Got my photos back, the expired film ones. They didn't turn out as exciting as I imagined, but some of them did become really surreal and cool.

The one at the top I chose because, look at that sky. Look at the house and how creepy it looks, yet the colors aren't dark. It may look realistic, but this photo is very, very fake and not on purpose. It tried to be real.

The house has been there as long as I can remember. It used to belong to a woman named Connie Strand who tried to turn her house into a community center, but no one supported her idea. She lost half a million dollars and her house was taken by the bank.

When I was ten, my father was reading Ayn Rand. He explained the arguments to me, and for the most part, I agreed with them. I asked my dad if I could read the books, and he said to wait until I was 18. When my friend Aaron gave me a copy of Anthem in May, I knew it couldn't have been better timing. Exactly eight years ago, I'm fulfilling my own prophecies.

But I can't read it. I can't get past the first five pages. It tortures me. I like fiction about dystopia, sure, but I can't stand the type where individuality is crushed. I hated the Giver and I couldn't start 1984 for the same reason. But I adore V for Vendetta and similar stories, where individuality is not, and cannot be sacrificed.

Part of the reason is I already feel like we exist under a totalitarian regime. I mean, the U.S. government is the most powerful and expensive government in history. It's bigger than the Nazis and it's bigger than the USSR. We spy on our citizens and have concentration camps and we build walls just like they did. How is this different? Oh yeah, we're the good guys.

So I did not and will not completely fulfill my goal, but I learned some things about myself in the process, so all is well. I've been reading poetic, sad, fantastic surrealism and my heart is at peace.

I read an entire archive of arguments between a young man and his girlfriend. It's one sided, so whether she is a bitch or not, the guy's faults are a footnote. My first thought was, I totally understand. Wasn't one or two of my ex's exactly like that? My second thought was, Love keeps no record of wrongs.

One step forward. . .

I've been dreaming, about stupid things. Anyone I respect would think I was making a mistake. I wonder if they can appreciate the beauty in a dream, even one I don't plan on acting on. There's two. The first, is I want to buy a car and drive back to Phoenix. It's about 3,000 miles and would cost a fortune and it would take forever and people already miss me, so it probably won't happen. I'll take that return ticket home. But can't you imagine?

The other, I told to enough people and I don't feel like sharing anymore.

Requiem for a Dream

16 Sep 2007

Current mood: I am Jack’s Addled Addictive Enthusiasm

I really suck at writing reviews. Possibly because I am always late on what is great.
I was going to write a review of the movie Requiem for a Dream. The movie came out seven years ago. I just watched it tonight. No matter how well I write, it won't give anyone the incentive to see it, it won't interest anyone, it's patently irrelevant.

So screw it. Let's talk about me.

The only interesting thing I did today was walk around downtown for a while. It was kind of a trip. I listened to music, so I wasn't paying attention and nearly was hit by a car more than once. I kept seeing people I thought I recognized, but wasn't sure. Their faces blurred up against the windows of cars, laughing at me, or eyes on the road. That man who played with fire, not so popular now. And the soundtrack was just poetic enough, the way in film, towards the ending when they do a big silent montage of all the characters with sad music playing in the background. You know what I mean.

I began to feel paranoid. I tried to get lost, but it wasn't working. I get so weird around large groups of people.

One the way back, a storm cloud was covering the sun just right that the light sung out over the edges and you could literally see the prisms, shining out for miles and miles and miles. The eyelashes of the sun.

It was a peaceful moment for me and I felt amazing. I felt like dying young and smoking and living life to death.

The movie? It was kind of like that.
It made me ache deep inside at times, similar to being heartbroken, realizing your past is behind you and dead . . .
It made me want a girl who I can into real trouble with. . .

Not many things I know of can do that to me. . .

Stoopid Girls

06 Sep 2007

Stoopid Girls Dear Stoopid Girls, Here is some prose I found on the internet. Live and Learn. Scientific Fact 8: Your Internet Girlfriend Has Body Image Issues It took her three months to send you a picture when you started dating. You finally saw her, smiling sheepishly, in a photo attached to an email with the subject line "SORRY THAT I'M SO FAT..." No matter how many times you told her she was beautiful she would always object, insisting that if you saw her in real life you would run the other way. Why not meet, you suggested, so that she could see how untrue that was. She was radiant when she picked you up at the airport, a thousand times more beautiful than in the pictures. Her hands shook when you hugged and she apologized for being nervous. A few months later she confessed that she was shaking because she hadn't eaten for nearly three days before you arrived so that she wouldn't look bloated. On her 26th birthday she shrieked when you tried to take a picture of her blowing out the candles. They were carefully arranged on top of a bowl of fruit salad because she doesn't eat cake. You weren't allowed to grab her ass when you fucked or to run your hand along the inside of her thighs. Cellulite. Next week when you leave her she'll cry so much that she will almost choke. You'll walk out anyway because you're tired of tuna for dinner and sex with the lights off. She'll whimper between sobs that she knew she didn't deserve you, she knew you were too good for someone like her, that she's hideous. One day she will meet someone who agrees, someone who will hit her just like her first boyfriend did. http://scientificfacts.livejournal.com/?skip=10