a deadly breakfast combo

'Nuff said.

no inner monologue

A condition worsened by my association with MNS (she's not a disease).

Here's how things went:

I'm sitting in the box office, finalizing a middle-aged woman's order
Woman: I love your tatoo. My daughter is trying to become a tatoo artist. She draws a lot.
IPJ: Really? I would love to be a tatoo artist. It's an interesting experience that would be fun to share with people but, unfortunately I can't draw at all. I'm also very interseted in piercings and body modification. Piercing (her tickets begin to print) would be my alternate choice to tatooing but most of the piercers I've talked to starting piercing things when they were kids, using sewing needles and things like that but I'm not quite that gung-ho on it.
Woman (slightly uncomfortable): Uh huh.
IPJ: I just think it's fun. Both things release endorphines in your body, which make it a pleasureable experience. Here are your tickets. Remember we don't offer refunds or exchanges.
Woman (still uncomfortable): Have a nice life!

When did I become the crazy person? Later on in the day I explained my artistic aesthetic to another patron, complete with recent examples, and how it differs from Rennie Harris' (who has an upcoming show at the theater). This was a long conversation and she wasn't even buying tickets. She just had some general questions. What's wrong with me?

Maybe I'm just lonely.

calming

This is the beginning of the aftermath of the bathroom fiasco:



And a slightly closer view:




Just to the right of the tub is a two foot open pipe sticking straight up out of the floor that lets air into the system and through which a large amount of sludgy brownish-black liquid came spurting out yesterday.

I was in my room reading (playing video games) when I heard an odd bubbling noise outside. It quickly stopped so I didn't think anything of it. A few moments later it started again and I decided that my roommate must be filling a jug of some sort in the bathroom sink, though I was pretty sure he had left an hour ago, I must just not have heard him come back. But this time the noise didn't stop. So I cautiously opened my bedroom door (my bedroom is next to the bathroom and my roommate has the annoying habit of sometimes leaving the bathroom door open when he does his business [if you know what I mean]) and immediately noticed the bathroom waste basket floating in a sea of black with much more on its way.

I was the only one home and had no idea what apartment the super was in so I tried calling my roommate but apparently the only number I have of his in my phone is the landline in our apartment and that didn't do me any good. By this time I was starting to freak out a bit because the sludge just kept coming so I jammed the stopper in the air pipe which did slow things down a little but also made the remaining sludge shoot out at a more pressurized velocity, thus hitting me. I was seriously starting to consider putting on some clothes (did I mention I was still in my underwear and it was around 2 o'clock?), leaving and just pretending that I wasn't home when this happened. Then came a furious knock on the door. I threw on some pants and a shirt and ran to the door and heard a man call "Super" from outside. Thank god.

The sludge finally stopped coming but to achieve that end the workers had to break through my other roommate's closet wall to put a snake into one of the water pipes. Luckily our bathroom is slightly sloped away from the door so none of the liquid went into the rest of the apartment and the rest on the floor of the bathroom was mopped up with our bathmat, which was already getting soggy so why not use it to finish the job.

So that black liquid? Water and rust and lots of it. Then other things happened, including being told the problem was fixed only to have the tub start to fill up on its own again not half an hour later. The upshot is I finally showered at 7PM and this morning our bathroom still smells like rust because a lot of water got behind the sink counter, which we can't move, so we'll probably just have to deal with it.

My roommate did most of the cleaning, which was a nice gesture (I totally volunteered to help) but I'll probably end up cleaning the bathroom again myself anyway because that's what his cleaning was: a gesture.

loss of face

I sometimes long to be a robot. Usually quite literally. But not today. Today I'd like to be a figurative robot. In a society with strict, clear social standards and customs. A society where an insult or slight is unambiguous and has definitive reparations required. Where your emotions and societal customs are so completely entwined you can't tell them apart. Where an accidental snub becomes a slap to your ancestor's face.

I feel like I'm aimlessly floating around in freedom. Uprooted. Can something be uprooted when it was never, well, rooted in the first place?

Lately I've been thinking about some of my past friendships that have ended. And they didn't end well. They usually weren't so much a "we don't have anything in common anymore" but a "you cause me pain" type of ending. At the time I placed most of the blame on the other person (though reserved a bit for myself). Now I'm questioning the past. It's time to fess up; I'm quick to end a relationship. I'm always prepared to call it quits. Snub me again and it's over. A friend once told me that no matter what I did he would always be there for me.
A standard response might be: "Thank you."
Mine? "What if I killed your mother?"

The point? (A little rambly, but I'm getting there.) If we existed in the society I described my indignation and subsequent termination of a friendship would be sanctioned by custom. But until that happens I'll just continue to be considered a jerk.



In other news my vocabulary is seriously lacking.

I'm mostly posting this so I can use it elsewhere. And because I think it's great.

karma?

Do you believe that if you could have done something for a person but you didn't and that person couldn't hold anything against you because they didn't even know that you could have done this thing for them in the first place that your own semi-selfishness will make the world a worse place? Do you believe other people are better than you? Or are they just as bad but won't admit it (not that I'm admitting it either)? Do you believe in karma?

I'm undecided.

driving me...

I still have six more hours of work to go and I'm starting to freak out because shouldn't I be doing something productive with my time and I've already read my daily stuff from the internet and how am I going to fill six hours?

On another note my roommate left our front door open last night when she came home around 10:30. Not just unlocked, but actually open about a foot. Luckily I was having trouble sleeping and went to the kitchen to get some water, whereupon I closed and locked the door. My roommate was fast asleep in her room. Isn't that great? She's so trusting. Damn my cynical, fearful attitude. Why can't I be like her and just invite people into our home while we're asleep?

She apparently has a problem with doors. I already had to have a talk with her about leaving the refrigerator door open.

symbols and metaphor, I don't get them

Right now I'm reading The Courage to Create by Rollo May. Though I think some of his examples encompass a narrow view of art, he does make some interesting points. On Marianna's suggestion I'm going to explore my thoughts in relationship to his writings. It's this whole critical thinking kick I'm trying to get into, though it may be a bit circuitous. Let's see what happens.

Each person experiences reality differently. Understanding another person's experiences is difficult and often dull (I'll come back to address the dullness aspect later). This is not a discussion of a person's political or moral beliefs but of how each person actually experiences reality. How does a person makes sense of and bring order to their world? If we could experience another's order would we perceive it as illogical, pessimistic, irrational, beautiful? How can we experience another person's reality? Art is the medium, the language through which a person may reveal their world. The artist is able to translate his experiences, his personal world, into an idea outside of himself. This idea reflects the artist's subconscious, unconscious and conscious view of the world. Through art the spectator is offered an encounter with the artist's world. May talks a lot about having an encounter with art. The more intense the encounter the better we are able to perceive the artist's world.

I am enormously intrigued by the idea of perception and thought. This is the basis of my own art. I love art that pulls me into an unfamiliar world, art that offers an alternate reality. I strongly believe (I came up with this idea in college and it still sticks with me, who knew?) that if an artist is completely committed to their performance and understands the reality of the world they've created then the audience, no matter how perplexed they may be, will be engaged. If the artist is honest in their world view and strives to accurately portray that view the spectator will be engaged. Or at least, I would be engaged. And that's the point of my art, to give my perceptions life in a way I find fascinating. Of course, the hope is that other people will also find the result interesting but that can't be the goal. It is when we dismiss our world view that art falls flat.

Okay, that's what I have for now.

You know those times when you feel like your depression is really just brought on with your own thinking and really it's pretty pathetic but you just don't know how to interact with people and it just doesn't seem worth it to even try even though that's totally selfish and then you just kind of sink a little deeper because you are being so selfish and why did you even go out in the first place when you could have just stayed at home and furthered the development of your fantasy world where things are okay and it doesn't matter that you're never good enough or, to be more accurate, the best, and aren't you really just depressed because you don't have anything else to hold onto, though when you think about it you really do kind of hate your life and you think about calling people but everyone you know has their own problems so you try to call the most "stable" person you can think of but they don't answer so you call the next most "stable" person but they don't answer either and then you realize that depression can just feed other depression so you don't know who to talk to and your talking to anyone else would just be so self-centered and why can't you just be happy for other people for once and forget about yourself and your own damn problems and you notice that you're starting to do things similar to things that someone you used to be friends with did and when he did them you found them really frustrating and you wanted to tell him to just fix his frickin' life already but now you're doing the same thing and then you go home and write some ridiculous passive thing in a public blog that's probably also annoying and stupid?

Yeah, I never feel like that either.

Sincerity

You are a person who deserves to live happily, as all people do.

Something is wrong with the grammar in that sentence. What I mean to say is that you, being a person, deserve to live happily because all people deserve to live happily. I'm not saying that all people actually do live happily but the sentence can certainly read that way. What'a a better but still succinct way to say that? More to come as I figure out what sincerity means.

Dying Brain Cells

in my apartment
"Damn, this underwear keeps riding my asscrack. I'll just pluck it out...oh wait, I'm wearing a thong."

at work
"I've only been here for 2 1/2 hours. Why am I so hungry already? Oh right, Emer'gen-C for breakfast."

on the crosstown bus, heading west
"I'm glad I bought this."
waiting for the train
"Is this what I meant to buy? I think I bought the wrong thing."
on the crosstown bus, heading east
"I totally bought the wrong thing. I even thought about how I might be buying the wrong thing but I was sure I wasn't."
at the store
"I bought the right thing after all."
waiting for the bus
"God it's hot."
on the crosstown bus, heading west
"Why am I so hungry? Oh right, Gatorade for breakfast."
waiting for the train
"I should've been home by now."
at home after opening the purchase thereby cancelling any sort of refund
"I didn't even need to buy this. I had one in my closet."

walking downtown
"What was I just thinking about?"

A More Interesting Life

I just had a hot, sticky, sweaty (it was frickin' 98 degrees out) midday dream where I was in a sort of virtual reality movie that was weird and kinda dark but so very lovely. I was walking through this sort of shop when the director came into the movie with me. I turned to her and said, "This is one of my favorite things. I love it every time I see it." And then I started crying because I was so glad something so wonderful existed. I then woke up and realized that that movie doesn't exist after all. I got a little sad not only because it doesn't exist but because I sure haven't seen much art lately that's so good it makes me cry, particularly not my own. Art is always so much better in my head.

Just like any other person, I was having a discussion about grammar the other day with a friend of mine. We were talking about grammar pet peeves. One of his was the phrase "whether or not" since you don't need the "or not" part because the word "whether" already implies one thing or another. I recognize that "whether or not" or "whether or no" is also an idiom but it seems like one that's a bit suspect in its grammar. I was in total agreement with him and kept nodding my head while secretly thinking, "I need to remember to stop saying that." That brings to mind a little game that I think of just about every time I see or hear the words "weather" or "whether." And here it is:

What's the phrase shown below?

wheather

And then that puzzle brings to mind this one, again with the same question:

What's the phrase shown below?

ualls
now

I'm pretty sure I couldn't figure these out when I first read them and just looked at the answers. Of course, it didn't help that the answers were on the opposite page. Out of the four people who might be reading this (Ida, Laugher, Caustic and maybe Liz) I bet one of them even knows where I first encountered those puzzles. And she's probably annoyed that I, and not she, has the book.

And now I should clean my room. A task I am doing my best to put off as I'm already literally dripping sweat and all I've been doing is sitting on the couch. But I just realized that I can listen to wait wait...don't tell me! while I clean and that makes things much more fun. Better than a spoonful of sugar. I already have two rotten teeth.

Euphatastic

Frontbottom*

A friend of mine told me that one. It's now one of my favorites. Try it out, it's pretty fun to say. And almost disgustingly explicit in the image it brings.

*bagina

Criminals Represent!

I keep seeing those annoying True ads on myspace (and those more annoying gay.com and manhunt ads) so I finally clicked on one. I mean, maybe I really will meet some guy I can spray with a garden hose while we're in our underwear out in some public garden where everyone can see us. Doesn't that sound dreamy? We'll be every so happy. It's worth a shot.

One week free! Okay.

Disclaimer:

If you're a convicted criminal and True finds out that you still registered they can just boot you out leaving you emotionally distraught and of course, alone. That certainly doesn't seem fair. I mean, it also says that you can't be married and representing yourself as single and I'll go with that. But come on, criminals need love too. I mean, maybe they were convicted of like, selling drugs or something and I actually want to meet them, cause you know, I need a hook up (in so many ways).

In the end, I didn't sign up. Besides, that username you have to choose sticks with you forever; that's a lot of pressure.

Miss Hannigan

Is your bladder ever so full and you have to go to the bathroom so bad that your teeth start to tingle? No? Are you sure? It's just me?

And if you figure out the sloppy link between the title of this post and the body I'll, I dunno, give you a piece of chocolate?

Or if you come up with a pretty good one that wasn't what I was thinking I'll give you a piece of better chocolate.

on second thought

I'm on my coworker's computer right now. I noticed a previous wait list Word document from March on the desktop and wondered if I had been the one who saved it. So I opened it up, looked at the names and thought, "Is that my handwriting?"

Oh dear

Bored at home the other day I excitedly thought, "I know what I'll do! I'll continue reading Atlas Shrugged because I'm really getting into it and it makes me mad about injustice and stuff even though I'm not really sure what sort of injustice I'm mad about but that's what's making it great plus Ayn Rand is smart and I need to be doing something that makes me feel in some way attached to intelligence." But then I thought, "Wait a second, I have the entire show tonight to read, I should really watch TV now. I mean, I can read any old time, books are portable, but I can only watch television at home." I see where my priorities are beginning to lie. So much for being smart.

Existential (I learned that in 9th grade)

On the train ride home the other night I was once again listening to Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 (thank you Marianna). His music is freakin' beautiful man. It makes me feel like I'm in a transdimensional train that I have to keep riding until I reach some sort of personal epiphany revealing the true depth of my soul and the other riders each carry a unique message to help me along the way ("I fucked that bitch" or "You're all sinners. You're all gonna die.") except for I finally realize that I'm really already dead and drifting through my own version of the afterlife and oh my god, I'm at 181st street already, I need to get off. I guess it was just the New York subway after all. But that's how that CD makes me feel.

In other great artist news Francois Ozon is now officially one of my favourite (spelled the European way, ooh la la) directors. It seems like every project he works on is fantastic. The things I've seen of his I've either loved or at least very much enjoyed. After watching one of his films yesterday I started wondering if Ozon was gay because the boys in his films are always hot but then I remembered that the women he uses are also hot so maybe he just really likes attractive people. He's pretty good looking himself. They're also all European. I'm just saying.

Failed with an F

A woman just came to my window and asked me where they should go for rehearsals. I was about to ask her what rehearsals she was referring to until I noticed Sting standing behind her. Yes, the artist Sting. There's a benefit tonight at the theater in which Sting and his "beautiful wife" (that's taken directly from an ad I've seen) are performing. Now, I'm not usually one to much care about someone else's fame but come on, Sting? That's pretty great. I calmly informed the woman where she could enter the theater and they promptly left. When they walked out the door I realized I was pretty giddy and that I had also missed an opportunity to do...something. That's probably why I missed it, I couldn't think of anything to do, I still can't. Who was that woman anyway? His beautiful wife? She was indeed pretty.

Books=Love

"You read books to escape from life." This was said to me one day in a semi-accusatory fashion. I was arguing the opinion that many gay men (but this applies to everyone, it's just that we were discussing gay men) constantly go to clubs to relieve their minds from thought, to flee reality. My friend had that quote as a retort. He declared that I used reading as a way to avoid social interaction. That's true. But as I was waiting for the train last night I realized that in a lot of ways books are much better than people. I'm not necessarily avoiding people, I'm just choosing the more interesting of the two options. I've read a lot of books I like and some I think highly enough of to actually own and plan on keeping for the rest of my life. There aren't many people I can say that about. It's not that I dislike people, I like my friends, I like my family, it's just that books often offer so much more than the random human exchange. A good book is a much better friend than some person I might talk to at a bar. A book absorbs you into its world, a world of insight, subtly and profound thought. A world of humor and fantasy. It's all in your hand and you can adapt it to youself. Some people I know will just never understand me, we get along fine but we lack that easy exchange that signifies a lasting friendship. If I'm not interested in a book it goes back on the shelf, no hesitations, people on the other hand don't like it when you just walk away from them. Maybe I'll change my mind when everyone starts wearing dust jackets. Trend setting.