STFU

Many men have anger management issues because of a social conditioning that doesn't encourage appropriate emotional expression. The only suitable emotion is anger; anger as a response to every situation in society. So when faced with the frustrating, despairing presentation of such trivial psychobabble, they end up fucking shit up.
-Jimmy Kane

Discarded - Lifted

Today, I purchased a young woman's diary from a secondhand store. It's rare that you can find such a thing. Goodwill usually censors all personal items. It's about thirty pages from the year 2000.

I've been skimming through it and I feel as if I was transported 8 years ago. I feel as if I know her. For two dollars, I got to be someone else by learning their fears and hopes and dreams and gossips and laughter and . . .

This is about how I felt when I bought that old, old camera. I feel like a different person behind that lens. I see things differently.

I've been feeling not-myself lately. I think it's my way of escaping the stress of school.

I know it's just another cliche. I just don't know what I'm going to do with it.

Sea Cucumber

These things take planning, but I wasn't prepared for this.

I love the way my eyes swell in the morning, crusted so bad I have to peel them open. I love the bloodshot hopelessness in the worm-like veins. The tears that choke in the corners and the sporadic dilation in the morning sunlight. Like my eyes are rotten grapes bleeding wine.

I love the aching I get in every tired, pulled muscle of my damaged frame. The way my bones crinkle with weight and age. The way my mouth is dry as sand and the way my teeth throb with cavities.

I'm not kidding. It really makes me happy.

I made myself anorexic just last week. For fun. I'm not really concerned that I'm fat, I just want to be disgustingly thin. Like a living skeleton, sucking and smoking thin little cigarettes. I want my bones poking out my back like dragon skin. Like a dead lion, the ribs wrapped in tattered flesh. I want it to hurt to masturbate.

After a big meal of blueberry pancakes and orange juice and bagels with cream cheese and some chocolate bars I use a toothbrush and massage my epiglottis. It's sore and cancerous, but soon my gag reflex is stimulated enough that I puke my guts out, disgorging viscera like a sea cucumber. My salivary glands are swollen and dry. I think some of what I regurgitate is blood, but who knows. That gag reflex feeling is beautiful. I'm pulling myself apart.

I love this.

The brown-red barf swirls down the bowels of the toilet bowl and into oblivion, like this never happened. I feel tired all of a sudden and lay on the tile, focusing in and out on the ceiling light. The sporadic dilation in the florescent sunlight.

Some of the bile splattered on the magazines next to the toilet paper, smearing the ink of a weight loss book. The title screams "LOSE 30 POUNDS IN SIX WEEKS!"

Five more weeks to go.

Miniature

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.
- Rick Polito

I'm on a bus and i feel like i'm going to get decapitated

everyday I would go into an antique shop and every day I would see that head. I rarely found anything worth buying, so some days I would go just to make sure that shrunken head was still there.
7 days a week I would stop by, peek inside and see the head, it's leathery skin glistening, gangrenous and beautiful.
I told others about it. people asked me why i never bought it.
it just had to be there, I suppose. it couldn't be anywhere else.

Dear Barber,
I've been finding the small things that inspire great change. Butterflies and pebbles and sparks.
Your photo album speaks to me and I can't stop looking through every single image.
Until I realize that I've already seen all these. It doesn't matter, it's not my choice.
As each one wants to say to me,
Hello. I am here again.

Heroism

Heroism is simple.

Photo by William Lamson

SAPIENT Pt. I

I was dreaming that I was dreaming. That's the best way to explain it.
No, it was more like being in a movie theater. The lights in my mind were dimmed and a different reel was spinning.
I remember standing, looking down at my girlfriend, Gean, as we inhaled together. I wasn't feeling anything and I wondered what I was doing here in the woods, about to see Pineapple Express a second time. It seemed a waste of time.
Then, with the flutter of our eyelids, down went the houselights. The screen flickered and I had to sit down. And then, I was dreaming that I was dreaming.
I knew I had to write this down, so I pulled my notebook out of my back pocket. It fluttered into my lap like spreading sheets on a clothesline. The flap of wings. I felt my leg falling asleep, from sitting on it weird. This taught me that "Everything Flows to Something" and with a heavy, slow hand I jotted this down.
In the theater of my mind, I felt like I was watching my entire life play out in front of me, in bits and pieces. It was always an illusion and this scared me intensely. I couldn't decide which one was the true reality and I couldn't decide which one I wanted.
I looked to Gean, her eyes red as mine, and she had a knowing smile. She shared the deep pleasure, but I don't think she was as far gone as me. I'd never had such a weird trip. But if my entire life was a dream, that means I was dreaming of her. I kissed her, but it was in slow motion until my lips impacted hers. It was one of the only things that felt real.
The only other reality I could be certain of was my pen against the paper. I didn't want to stop dreaming of Gean so I wrote "WAKE UP" a dozen times, scrawling through time and space to make my point.
The theater was dark and the film blurred at the wrong moments. Everything had that vignette feel.
My head said, this is really happening. Hold her hand. And I did, and it felt real.
We walked and her friends drove us to the movie theater. We sat in the backseat and I laid my head in her lap. They passed to us, but I didn't partake. Gean blew smoke in my ear and I felt like a caterpillar, curling up in her palm.
I knew I was in no condition to be buying movie tickets, so I made Gean do it. But apparently I was conscious enough to find some gift cards in my wallet and hand them to the annoyed cashier.
In the movie theater, things became even weirder. I was convinced I had died, but I wasn't sure which reality was accurate. I resisted coming out of it, because I was curious and lost. I was arguing with a voice in my head that was merely trying to convince me to go back. "I don't want to go back into the dream" I wrote.
I would constantly kiss Gean, to make sure she was real and would stay that way. I would sing to her and tell her I love her, to the point of irritation. I would pause to write down another hectic thought. "My writing is the only thing that feels real."
At one point, I felt that my feet were wrapped in balloons of water, the same kind you'd carry a goldfish with. I dreamt of a field of golden tulips, each with an all-seeing eye gazing at me. They said to me, "I AM WATCHING YOU". I told them, I am worthless. I am a painting. They wouldn't stop watching me.
Then, I discovered that there are three levels of perception: the Me sense, the Dreaming sense and the Gravy sense. The Gravy moniker was just to explain a level of perception I have not reached, nor understand. I don't know what it is really called. I also wrote, I am three people at once.
It seemed illogical to be thinking this way, so I scribbled, "Believe it or not!" and then kept repeating the phrase to myself.
I kept trying to figure out if I had really died or not. I knew I could go back into the reality I'm used to, but if it's fake, what is the point? Looking at Gean, I knew I wanted to love her and if I died, I couldn't "Let out the love."
I was in space, and realized that space is the blackness in my eyes, in my heart. But I asked myself, when am I going back?
I kissed Gean and asked her, "Do this again with me sometime."
She gave me a coy smile and said, "Maybe."
And I went back.

I'm Glad I saw Epic Movie

But I am more glad that I found you.

Guess which one is a joke.

Update for those who jump to conclusions: I posted this because of XKCD, obviously, but my real intention was only to create more content for something that previously didn't exist. I'm not "using" XKCD for advertising (besides not having anything to sell), in a way I am using you, the angry nerds who felt it necessary to search for the same keywords as everyone else. Don't be upset. Or do. I'm honestly enjoying the unnecessary hatred.