Two computer geeks sit across from each other in a crowded deli, one has a mustache and the other has the kind of smirk on his face that can’t be controlled.

“The thing is,” says the one with the smirk,” I wouldn’t have acted the way I did around her if you hadn’t told me you liked her.”

“You’re an asshole.” Says the guy with the mustache.

“I’m serious, human relations are so weird, I was deliberately acting aloof around her so you would seem like a nice guy. Usually I’m pawing and fawning like an idiot when they’re that pretty.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Says the guy with the mustache, his sternness at odds with the comical amount of mayonnaise in his mustache.

“And then at the Christmas party she starts flirting with me like crazy. I’m sorry man, but girls who look like that get to make all the decisions. We’re all just witless mules waiting to answer to their whims. I mean what am I supposed to do?”

“For starters you can choke on your tongue.” Responds the man with the mustache.

I don’t have anything to do at work and I sit in a really high traffic spot. So, everyone can see I’m not doing much of anything all day. Today I drew uninspired doodles of anxious people on post its. If they’re not gonna give me any work to do they at least could have stuck me in a cubicle. Then at least I could pretend I was busy, but no, I’m right in the middle of all the action. Everyone else has work to do so they’re all pretty unreceptive to my weird jokes. The lack of affirmation makes me resort to ever-more childish antics until I end up embarrassed. Then I sit there silently listening to Adam Carolla on my Ipod, I like that guy a lot, I tend to enjoy the loudmouth-types, the ones who say audacious things without feeling any shame. I like Adam Carolla, John Kricfalusi, and Ben Weasel; I live vicariously thru their self-assuredness. I daydreamed a lot today about having magical power over 18 year old girls, they would be defenseless against my charms for the entirety of their eighteenth year. The day they turned 19 though my spell would be over and they’d be left to decide for themselves: is this guy worth a damn or have I lost my mind? I imagine it would be sad as hell ‘cuz invariably they’d all leave me after I’d grown attached. Until one day maybe one of them would stay on for her nineteenth year, of her own free will no less. What a treat that would be and then her twentieth, twenty first and twenty second years would follow with any luck. If this failed to happen at least I could continue spending my days and years in the company of charming young women at the doorstep to adulthood. Oh people would talk, they’d say, “that creepy old buzzard has some kind of a scam going, he’s not charming, handsome or even polite.” Let them talk I’d say, the men would all be jealous and the girls would all scornfully mock and pity me, but what a life I’d lead! As years progressed and my body grew tired and old, I’d yearn for the girl who'd love me past her magic-induced year of devotion. I’d have less and less in common with the youth and one day I would die, essentially alone save for a beautiful young girl I’d known for less than a year.

I used to read this blog and feel sorry for the anonymous people behind all the moaning contributions about the elusiveness of love. I thought, 'you only have to be open to it and to work hard on being lovable'. Now my heart is vapor. I want to tear it out of my chest and give it to a bum. When I talk to people I feel like the mouth of a terrible cave. And all I have to look forward to is to joining you.

Oct 29th 2005(unedited for your reading pleasure)

I forewent Ellie O's party this evening in lieu of a night with Meg Ryan and Billy Chrystal.  You might say that time spent alone watching romantic comedies is a little on the self-important side of the sadness spectrum.  But, let's be realistic, that's the side you want to stay on 'cuz the other side is where all the fatalities occur.  I did a bit of drawing today but my hands were lazy and my mind was soft.  

I should be able to spring back from rejection with alacrity, reminding myself of my enormous creativity and unparalleled charisma.  But, until I shape said enormous creativity into tangible matter and/or display said charisma to appropriate audiences, love will remain elusive.  

You know, you really do have these high hopes when you sit down to write.  You think to yourself, "this time, this time I'm gonna nail it."  But alas, ambiguity takes control-as she always does- reminding you that you really know very little and any moments of clarity you may have are just annoying little glitches that seem like answers but are really just questions masquerading thru the fancy dress party in your mind.  Whew! Not the hottest rant I've ever been on but I've had worse audiences, the type that just sit there, mouths agape, looking around for an escape route;  surveying the crowd for someone normal to interact with.  Someone less intense, less hostile, less self-obsessed.  Less is more.    

From the note book

I love snow that goes up

When I see you the music changes

A bum steels
Your bike wheels

Prophet Offit

That part of my pie chart is a Pac Man

The mountain is unknowable - it is my experience with it that makes it something.

"He just sits there mute until someone hints at something depressing or awful and suddenly he lights up like a Christmas tree and wants to tell everybody about how terribly sad it all is."

Who brings the light to those
who need to know their shadows?

A guy comes into a barbershop and says, "What's fast? I'm double parked".
"A mohawk," the barber says.
"Sounds good," says the man.

If you try to control your face to show honesty it becomes transparent, so it is just as clear when honesty is projected through it.

Surrender your pride from the battle it's fighting so you can put it in charge of being capable of change.

Superficial and essential are sometimes interchangeable, such as in, desire, rhythm, beauty, etc. (especially where the body is concerned).

We need the darkness to know the difference

My eyes do what all eyes do
and go where all eyes go
I've only been where I have been
and know but what I know

"When the world is beautiful"

When objects animate to defy you what you are seeing is a reflection of yourself.

Blue sun on a black horse

Put yourself in the service of something bigger than yourself and stop trying to climb on top of it

Oh creature of my commanding
I am grateful for your understanding
I am not the peak of this pole
Oh creature you are not my own

For the edge of the world I am making
And with me - you're coming
But oh Creature I am not staying

October 20 2004:

Even before I opened my eyes this morning I felt doomed. It was already 8:45. I wondered why Laura hadn’t called. I looked around for my phone, thinking it must be stuffed in the recesses of my pants or jacket where I couldn’t hear it, but it was sitting on the computer desk on the other side of the room. I knew I hadn’t missed her call then because I had been hitting the snooze button since 7:30. It was too late to take Lili to school anyway, and seeing as Laura hadn’t called I assumed all was well enough and I might as well get right the hell back to bed, which is when the phone rang. I remember the conversation only vaguely better than I remember the dream it proceeded – which had something to do with the grave mishandling of a time machine – but it went more or less as follows:

“Good morning Laura,” I didn’t even look at the phone – she’s the only one who would ever have cause to call me at this hour.
Half asleep she croaked, “Are you still asleep?”
“Mhm.”
“Me too – what the hell happened?”
“I dunno,” I said.
“Should I meet you at the store?”
“Hell no,” I said, “I gotta go to work.” Then she made some feeble sounds of dissapointment and we hung up. I fell immediately back to sleep and continued swatting my alarm clock until 10:30 – already an hour late for work – at which point I called in and said I would be late.

I worried all the way to work and told myself that some days start out like this and end much better. I wasn’t thinking about Lili or about missing work. I was still ruminating over the familiar sense of doom I had awoken with. I was doomed not to understand what anyone was saying or what they wanted from me today, I was doomed not to get a phone call or even a passing thought from Erin, I was especially doomed to want one despite my abounding denial of the fact, and moreover I was doomed to worry about and curse myself for it – all of it – and to bewail foolishly over the days when I had it.

I should interject here. I felt this way late last night too, and the night before, and mostly every night for the last good solid couple of months. This is not so troubling in itself because I have felt this way more or less consistently for years - spotted here and there with periods of relief lasting sometimes hours, sometimes weeks. I had a good couple of months towards the end of last summer. Anyway, so last night I got stoned with Hernan and watched a real piece of shit we rented from Moon Boy and then this morning bid Hernan happy trails as he was leaving for a week to visit his parents in Calgary. When I got into bed I began going over how to fix things up a little, and I thought it would be a really good idea to start this daily journal writing crap again. I opened my eyes, looked across the room at my computer and said out loud, “Journal! Journal! Journal! Journal!” so I wouldn’t forget. I thought if I was constantly being forced to remember my days I might begin to find them amusing again. So that’s what this is about. I think it’s working because it reads so far like I’m writing to a third party. That’s good. The eye in the sky – that’s who I lived for in those days when I say I had it, and was happy. (I know better than to derive any real hope from this little reprieve. It’s possible to force a kind of happiness over yourself for a stretch, but when one day you hit your wife you can’t blame it on the six months of snow you also said you loved.)

No one cared that I was late, except Dianna, who is a cold, spiteful shadow of a person with nothing else to care about. She didn’t say anything, even though I was a full 45 minutes later than I said I would be when I called. She just glared at me as I wheeled my bike past the front counter and disappeared out the back door to get coffee. At about eleven I put on a big show like I was finally getting to it, and went and hid in the dark room where by fortunate circumstance no one can bother me without knocking first. I turned on the CBC, ate a cinnamon bun and went right back to sleep on the dark room floor. I think it was getting close to noon when Dianna finally knocked and yelled, “Dan!”
“Just a minute,” I chirped, and before opening the door picked up a photo off the counter I could have been working on. “Yes?” I said, pulling the door open. She’s one of those people who’s face is so heavy with dissatisfaction you you want to lunge out and catch it before it hits the floor. She looked right at me – she’s always looks right at you like she’s trying to make a point.
“Molly Wood is coming into look at another proof in the next couple of hours so you better get to it,” she said. “She’s only in town for a few hours and she needs to see it.” I smiled right at her like this was good news and pushed the door shut again without a word.

The rest of my day was just as mindless. I printed a bunch of shitty photos of a White Spot and had lunch with Matt. We ate free burger’s and fries courtesy of our ludicrously unhappy friends who work the burger joint down at the market. (Keith says he stares down at the deep fat fryer all day and thinks about melting his face off in it.) I didn’t bring them any fruit today like I like to do, but between Matt and I we tipped them about five bucks. Hernan called me from just over Kelowna, he said, to ask me to pick up his sunglasses for him, which he left at Benny’s Market this morning on his way to the airport. I'd forgotten he was leaving so told him, “Why don’t you get them your fucking self?” to which he became frustrated for having to explain. “Aren’t you not supposed to use your phone on an airplane?” I asked, “Doesn’t it fuck up the signals or something?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t.” I was sure he was wrong so I didn’t argue the point and got the hell off the phone. On the way home I thought of an obvious thing I was doing wrong with my life and had the idea to write it down. I thought I should continue to make a list of these things (I have already cataloged a few) and I should pin it to my door. When I got in I hauled my typewriter out into the middle of the kitchen floor and wrote:


BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE! REMEMBER TO:

- LOOK THEM IN THE EYE

- REMEMBER WHAT IS HAPPENING

These were the two things I had already noted. I couldn’t remember the new one and eventually gave up, stuck the incomplete list to the door and went to return that shitty video to Moon Boy down the street.

I was beckoned by the glow of John, Dave and Grae’s living room window next door to Moon Boy’s and went inside to complain some more. I don’t feel so bad complaining to them because it's probably the only thing we could do competently as a team. When I came in they were watching a hockey rerun and John was all antsy. We watched the game for a little while and talked about I don’t even know what, and then I just came out with it. “I think I hate her,” I said. They both laughed right away, which made me feel a little better, and then John said, “The Unicorn?” I said yes and then I said I hated myself too.
“The difference between you and me is,” John said, “when I get depressed I blame everyone else for being uninteresting.” Then Dave drove us all over the city looking for a slurpee machine that worked. He took us to the Shell station way up on Clark and 12th because he said the quality of the ones at the 7-11 down the street has been slipping. But he only drinks cola slurpees and the Pepsi one was turned off at the Shell station so we had to go Main and 15th. I ate a doughnut and then we drove home.

This has been somewhat uplifting.

Waitressing

The bartender keeps telling me to squish my breasts together and put them on the counter and he'll get my drinks quicker. Its funny at first (sort of...) but it becomes clear this is a truth around here. Its my second shift and all the waitresses keep giving me their ugly bits of wisdom; how to smile, offer water to the girls, remember what liquor is premium or select, ring in items and which tables are liable to walk out without paying, what clothes get more tips and how to BE NICE. I really don't want to be nice, I want to be mean. I don't like the way people are watching me, evaluating me, waiting for me to fuck up. Waiting to talk about me, a performer. I'm not a performer, yet here I am performing a stupid fucked up function. Slathered in fake. Absorbed in disgust.

blah

I’m such an incredibly irrational person.  I mean, say for instance there’s a girl in my life and there appears to be some kind of mutual attraction.  Immediately in this situation I start thinking one of two things; I either think, holy shit, I better think of some way to make this girl want to be with me forever, or I start to think of ways to extricate myself from this situation so I never have to go thru the agony of talking to this person ever again.  Sometimes I think these things in such close proximity of each other I feel like a schizophrenic person.  To say I’m not casual is an incredible understatement.  It’s important to add here that I start thinking these things well before I’ve kissed this girl or had any sort of discussion as to how either of us is feeling.  I flip flop wildly between thinking I’m way too nuts for such a wonderful girl, to thinking, oh my god, I can’t handle listening to this neurotic person try to impress me with how smart she is.  People talk about fear of commitment as if it’s a bad thing.  That is totally insane, especially for a person like me; you see, I don’t choose who my dating partners are, I don’t see a nice looking girl and walk over to her and strike up a conversation, buy her a drink and have her write her number on my hand in ball point pen.  No, I have to jump in there when a girl is still confused by my erratic, bullshit behavior, and hope I can keep her sort of interested while at the same time not scaring the shit out of her.  My fear of commitment is one of the only rational fears I have;  I’m terrified of bed bugs, my boss, the cops, teenagers and cab drivers-- the list could go on and on.  And always at the top of my list is pretty girls, but even when things seem to be going well with a girl, I’m hugely suspicious of myself and this other person.  And for good reason.  This is potentially someone I’m going to be spending the majority of my time with.  It’s not like I’m interviewing someone to do my taxes once a year or to be my dental hygienist.  This person cannot annoy me; it’s not an option.  And god knows I’m annoying; and inconsiderate; and jealous, ill tempered and out of shape.  Somehow still, I occasionally find myself in a position where a girl briefly considers spending her free time with me in a romantic capacity.  First of all, the bravery of these women alone is commendable, but that on top of it they have to face my mindless, insecure, self-hating scrutiny is enough to drive a man insane.    

Stupid fucking drawings for your stupid fucking eyes.

I had a daydream today about putting on an art show.  I’d call it, “stupid fucking drawings for your stupid fucking eyes.”  It would be full of drawings done when I’m high and it could be accompanied with writing I’ve done in my most desperate and volatile times.  In my dream I become the toast of the town.   The reality however is quite different; I drew for pleasure for the first time in months  yesterday.  I went to my local blenz café and was shocked by my inability to draw a satisfactory street scene.  My lines were unconfident and there was a real clinical look to everything.  Not to mention the complete lack of style displayed.  And I don’t mean style in the superficial, egotistical sense of the word; I’ve long since abandoned my teenaged dreams of having a recognizable “personal style.”  When I say style I mean flavor, I want to draw like a professional but I also want it to have nuanced little graphic cheats and for everything to appear effortless and organic.  Even when I’m drawing something as mundane as a street corner, I’d like for there to be a unified visual statement in the drawing.  It’s fine if the statement is a stolen one too,  I’m not proud. Writing about art is STUPID.  I tried to make up for the lack of life in my street drawings by throwing in the usual cast of cartoon mainstays, these are usually bunnies with pig noses, turtles, sexy girls who kind of look like they have down syndrome and cute witches and clowns.  None of these old favorites succeeded in making me feel like I was worth a damn.   As I was drawing I became more and more interested in the conversation of the old men sitting next to me, from what I could gather these three old guys were bachelors and they were gossiping about their friend who had recently scored with a much younger philipino woman.  I started to feel lonely enough that I wanted them to talk to me, but also, anxious enough that I didn’t want to have to brave whatever confusion the generation gap might cause.  One of the old guys did talk to me for a second, he kind of apologized for flicking cigarette ash in my direction and for some inexplicable reason my reaction was also to apologize.  I may be the meekest human being on the face of the planet.

Two middle aged men are playing Scrabble. One of them puts down the word “wont”. “That’s a contraction,” the other one says.
“It’s not won’t, it’s wont,” the first retorts, “which is a word.”
“Oh yeah? An English word?!” says the other.
“Yes, and English word,” says the perpetrator.
“Well I never heard of it,” the other says, “Why don’t you use it in a sentence.”
“Easter island had poured its collective genius into the construction and manufacture of hundreds of equally phenomenal bois parlants, or “talking boards,” as 19th century scholars were wont to call them.”

The futility of it all.

At the wedding the other night they sat me right next to this guy who's dating the girl i spend most days daydreaming about. Talking to him politely and amicably felt like i was selling myself out. I would have preferred to thrash him around intellectually and make him feel small and insignificant but instead i asked him about his work and joked with him about the groom's family. I actually had a pretty pleasant time at the wedding all things considered. I talked to Stan about manufacturing personalities we can be proud of, being honest while also being funny and our ongoing struggles with self-confidence. When I was leaving I made the awful mistake of hugging the girl whose beauty and charm haunts my sleep. She looked at me sort of apologetically and hugged me lovingly, I rested my head sadly against her neck and felt the warmth of her body against mine.

What it is to be cool.

I sometimes make the mistake of doing drugs. This weekend for example we rode our bikes to the beach in the blistering heat and ate Stan’s brownies. He said, “brownies are a good time,” I knew they wouldn’t be but I did them because we were making a day of it; who am I to interrupt the natural flow of a Sunday? Long before the drugs took effect, my brain started to stress about what could potentially happen to me. For someone as completely uncool as me, I spend an awful lot of time considering what it is to be cool. Coolness is a precarious blend of self-assuredness, casual detachment, wit and charm; it is the sum of all the qualities I’ve failed to cultivate, and to be totally honest, I hate it because I ain’t it. My own inability to be cool is one thing, but witnessing my close friends try -and fail phenomenally- at being cool is particularly punishing to my senses. Especially when I’m growing higher by the minute. I love Stan dearly but he sure can be an ass; I’m quite certain that rudeness and mean-spiritedness are never cool characteristics anyway. Imagine if you can, a pleasant and attractive woman in her early twenties approaching you on the beach, she’s talking on her phone loudly and happily. There is a quality in her voice that’s mildly reminiscent of girls in high school who finish each sentence with an upward inflection, each sentence then sounding something like a question. Certainly though it’s not the thing to notice about this girl: she’s got lustrous blond curls, a cute face and a very pleasant round quality that’s arguably preferable to her skinnier beach equivalents. You can imagine then how shocked I was to hear Stan blatantly mock this girl’s phone conversation. It wasn’t just one or two cutting remarks under his breath either. It was really quite malicious, he imitated each thing she said with the hammiest bopper voice he could muster. Andrew and I exchanged pained expressions as we ushered our condescending (and decidedly uncool) friend down the beach to a shadier spot. Here we could really melt into the sand without getting sun burnt. This is where my all too familiar feelings of stoned paranoia started to show their ugly head. It’s usually at these times Andrew likes to pound home his feigned belief that the effects of marijuana are universally agreeable and anyone who says otherwise is participating in a humiliating form of self-important theatrics. This always succeeds in making the feelings worse even though I’m on to his trick. We eventually decided to go for a swim. The tide was really far out and it felt a bit like Laurence of Arabia journeying northward to destroy the Ottoman Empire. When we finally reached the water, truly, I was high.

Border Police: Lettuce Unit.

I haven't ridden my bike even once since I've been home, sorry. Your lettuce caused me no small amount of stress at the border too, they pulled us over into their little panic room(I'm pretty sure it's 'cuz i couldn't look the guy in the eye) and asked us all sorts of questions, "why Idaho? I was there a few weeks ago and there's nothing there!"-- said the woman. They searched the car and got quite caught up on Stan's gin seng. They weren't too worried about the lettuce though. When the guy asked if there were any pointy needles or anything I burst out with, "there's some lettuce!" This made Stan and Oliver laugh which made me even more nervous, 'cuz i thought maybe they'd think we were high.

Snowball

Little Nettie Yule was minding her business one sunny, Spring day, in the playroom of her home in Kansas City, Missouri. She needed some quiet time away from her younger sister Ethel who was being particularly bothersome that day.

Nettie was not interested in playing with dolls like all the other girls her age. She was far more interested in animals. Her parents, not at all interested in taking on the responsibility of a dog or cat, had just a week before brought home two hamsters, one for each of their little girls.

Nettie and Ethel were delighted with their new hairy, little friends. Nettie especially. She named her hamster Bear, for bears were her very favourite type of animal and she had been terribly disappointed when she did not receive a bear for Christmas a few months before.

Ethel named her hamster Snowball. Within a few days though, Ethel became disenchanted with poor Snowball who was much smaller than Bear. To little Ethel, Snowball seemed downright lazy. She couldn't understand why Bear was always running on the wheel while Snowball just slept in the corner of the cage.

On this day, Nettie, in an attempt for peace and quiet decided to sneak off to the playroom where the hamster cage was. She wanted to play with Bear and Snowball.

She approached the hamster cage with a spring in her step but as she got closer she stopped short. Something didn't appear right. Bear was sleeping in the corner that Snowball was usually in but Snowball was nowhere to be found. Nettie looked closer. She opened the cage and poked at Bear with her finger. Bear stirred. It was then that Nettie noticed there was some blood on the Aspen bedding of the cage. She looked Bear over. There was some blood on his mouth and on his tiny left paw.

It was then that Ethel burst through the door of the playroom singing "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". She may have only be five and three quarters but she knew just how to push her sister's buttons.

Ethel stopped singing when it appeared that Nettie was not about to pay her a lick of attention. Nettie was just sitting there solemnly, staring into the cage.

Ethel rushed up to join her sister's side and peered into the cage. "Where's Snowball?" Ethel asked. Nettie didn't answer. "WHERE'S MY SNOWBALL?" Ethel wailed. Nettie looked at her sister very seriously and put her hands on Ethel's little shoulders. "I'm afraid it looks like Bear might have eaten Snowball." Her lip quivered and a single tear rolled down her pink, shining cheek.

Ethel just stared at her. There was no readable emotion written on the little girl's face. She turned back to the open cage, reached in and plucked the sleeping Bear up. She held him in Nettie's face and said loudly, "FINE, this is my hamster, Snowball!"

"But!" Nettie jumped up, wild eyed. She was frantic. "You didn't even like Snowball. Yoooouuu never played with her! I loooove Bear! Give him back please!"

Ethel looked at her sister coldly and said, "No" as she turned her back and walked confidently out of the room.

I had a nightmare about this blog last night.