life is beautiful, so is this fissure set from last night with more high school scene girls giggling and laughing than i care to write any more about:

http://cityoftraitors.net/mp3/Fissure/020207.mp3

how appropriate that on the winter solstice i was struck with a left-right-left of intense loneliness, what could possibly be influenza, and extreme situational ennui.  of course i had to work on the longest night of the year; i don't think i saw sunlight for two or three days because of it.  i woke up that morning (whenever that was; presently, my days just blend into one another) with sore joints and a fever, and my physical condition only degenerated from there.  as for being lonely, well, i have only seen one person outside of work in the past three days.  i'm neither a mindless socialite nor a hermit, but it's good to have a friend every once in awhile, and they've been few and far between these days; maybe they're just asleep.  yeah, that's it.  the malaise results from my frustration with my current situation.  maybe it will improve, but cutting myself off from the world hasn't been fun so far.  yeah, i get paid well working the night shift, and it will enable me to save up a ton of money for when i eventually up and move...but goddamn if i can do this for six to eight more months.  mental toughness?  hard to preserve when the multitudes of hours of mindless work pile up.  at least big grocery store chain pays for my descent into the maelstrom.  poe only got tuberculosis.  and immortality.  i guess there's still time for me yet.  my arrive-home-feed-cats-consume-beer-and-bagels-watch-movie routine has only barely kept me going.  i'll continue.

i managed to spend less than $150 for all of my christmas gifts.  well done.  of course, most of my friends are getting 6-packs of fine beer.  my most expensive gifts were criterion dvds, and with the existence of deepdiscountdvd, those weren't bad.  i also bought myself a few things because i felt like i deserved them: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, infinite jest, and kafka on the shore, all of which i plan to read in january.  my goal for 2007 is to read 50 books and watch 300 films.  with all the free time i will have, this should be easily achieved.  it's also incredibly entertaining to keep a log of such consumption, which i have started and plan on maintaining throughout the next year and beyond.

now i'm going go drink a beer and eat a bagel and lose myself in the wonderful words of thomas pynchon.

working nights has made it impossible for me to get a healthy amount of sleep.  i get off work, drink a beer, write, and try to fall asleep by 9:30 a.m.  this generally works.  what doesn't work, however, is my attempt to sleep until 5:30 p.m.  eight hours of sleep would be nice, although i don't really mind the manic, coked-out feeling i get after consuming six cups of straight black coffee while stocking the shelves with dog food and paper goods--it improves my writing.  today i woke up at 2:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, no matter how hard i tried.  whiskey didn't help; it merely increased my cognizance of the fact that there was no more rest for me.  i used this time to finish norwegian wood.  my third time through the book, it made me weep when i was finished.  such a beautiful story, so well written and translated, such an (in)appropriate ending...i hate leaving it, but i can't read it over and over forever.  the way that murakami can express even the simplest of thoughts astounds me, and it bums me out to know that i will never be able to write about love and solitude in quite the manner he does.

morgan and i went out for groceries tonight.  i searched for "nori" and couldn't find it, so i bought seaweed instead.  turns out that nori is seaweed.  good guess.  i'm going to wrap some cucumbers with it and bathe them in soy sauce.  apparently this is a gustatorial treat in japan, but i've never been too fond of cucumbers.  we'll see how that goes.  downed a couple of xingus and did some packing; it's only 13 days until i have to vacate my current residence, and there is much work to be done.

there is much to be said about the difficult pursuit for balance between solitude and sanity.  i'm trying.  it's not easy.

daniel johnston taught me how how to fly and jump off buildings, and i do this every evening

i goddamn hate internet explorer. but when a dumbass finally comes to and realize that people are probably leeching his or her internets and puts a password on his or her wireless connection, effectively ending one's reign of free internets usage, one must waste copious amounts of time in a computer lab. good-bye, huge photo-blog post.

i have spent much of my time at work thinking about burning, mutilating, nuking bridges; i go home, drink a few beers, sleep for a few hours, and wake up wanting to build, build, build. the bridge is destroyed and rebuilt daily, but i'm not the one performing the acts of annihilation and regeneration. i spend half my time thinking about writing. the other half is spent in wanderlust among two avenues of wonderment: (1) what is the point of what i am writing? and (2) should i even bother? i continue to bother, for the rewards for my work will be immense, whether or not they contain any aspects of tangibility. i have recently been plagued by an intense bout of narcissism; while i am the best at pretty much everything i do--with small exceptions involving the maintenance of roommates and girlfriends--i hope this temporary façade of intellectual machismo fades away. it's probably exhausting to some.

beer pong is not "cool." neither are huge parties nor bars. lately, the best times for me have involved one or two close friends; activities have included spacebaggin', movie viewing, record spinning, being patrons of fine beer, and discussing our various arts. the worst times for me have involved bars and/or large social events involving alcohol and people my age. "whoa dude i haven't seen you since high school." yeah, there's a reason for that. time spent by myself has been both a curse and a blessing. the damning: i analyze, rehearse, think about fires that i should just let die, and it drives me batty. The life-affirming: i have watched an average of 1.5 films per day over the past few weeks; i have read page after page of wonderful literature; i have lived a thousand lives vicariously through the music of tom waits and harry nilsson and frank zappa and the beach boys and john cale; and i have created, spawned, generated, birthed, brought into this world several pieces of visual art. i'm proud of that.

cruel world, i beseech thee: chart me a course for smooth sailing through choppy waters.

i bask in confusion, but one thing keeps becoming more and more evident: i need to leave tennessee.

i will still probably wind up in knoxville, though.  oh well.

two finals down.  got a 98 on the first, and the second of which i probably did well enough to preserve my A for the course.  one more decent grade, and it's a 4.0 for me this semester.  then it's six to eight months of hibernation, writing, painting, and bathing in art in between bouts of working and coaching soccer.  i'm ready.