zoology

in the zoo:

my cage in the zoo was more fun when i knew there was someone watching me. now i cant tell. i've been hear since the day of the 2004 presidential election. i'm not a politically involved person but i happened to rape my neighbor's cat that dayi wouldn't even call it rape. i think the pleasure went both ways. so then they sent me here: the zoo.

"MOTHERFUCKERS" is what i said. while i was in the zoo i regimented my day so that i could become smarter. i read 3-4 books a week. i learned lots of big words but i forgot them, because it is hard to become smarter in a zoo.

out of the zoo:

i have been released from the zoo and thrown back into the wild. i got a minimum wage job at a grocery store. after several months of paychecks i bought a laptop computer. i no longer read magazines in the bathroom. i hardly even take a good novel or textbook in there anymore. usually it’s my computer that accompanies me to the shitter. we've been together now for i'd say about a little over three years. i hardly go a day without seeing it. we will be announcing our engagement any day soon. then we will spoon and spoon like we have never spooned before.

i go to the faucet and seawater comes out; the same for the drinking fountain in the lobby of my apartment building. i ask a man why it tastes like salt water. he says, "they-do-it-for-real here." hmmm. that's an interesting take on water. i fill a bottle full of the salt water and then tightly turn the cap closed. i will have to show this to someone. someone will marvel at this. perhaps the bank teller will. yes, i am quite certain the bank will love this!

i go to the bank and the teller tells me to give them money. i say that i didn't bring money and just want to talk. they say there is no time to talk, there's only so much sunlight, and they give me a pen to sign my paycheck that i didn't bring.

i go across the street to the grocery store and buy tampons and condoms. as i am in line waiting i also decide to buy a gossip magazine and an eight-pack of peanut butter cups. but i don't have money to pay for the peanut butter cups so i walk out of the store with the tampons, condoms, gossip magazine, and peanut butter cups. as i leave the store, a man says, "hey." he wants to know where i am going. i tell him i don't know. he says i have to pay for the items. i say i did.

Talking Heads

I decided to the listen to the Talking Heads just now. I've always liked them.



That's a lie. When I was a little emo bitch I thought they weren't "catchy" enough and then a couple years later I grew to like them. I always liked "Pyscho Killer." Because it was always catchy. Eventually I grew past just liking music that was strictly catchy.


But I only like this album. Their later stuff is too lame and "new wave" for my taste.

Right now I'm listening to "Book I Read"

I'd show you a youtube video but I don't want to turn off my itunes.

Here are the books I've read or reread in the past week:

Kafka-Metamorphisis
Tao Lin-EEE EEEEE EEEE
Noah Cicero-The Condemned
Nietzsche-Human, All Too Human (only part of this one)
Hemmingway-The Sun Also Rises

Reading is fun.

So are other things.

facebook

facebook statuses are kind of like one sentence blogging

im not sure how i should feel about this aesthetically

i hate putting up a status i do it once a year

random thoughts after reading some nietzsche

being defined as "good" is reserved for the privelaged and/or the powerful

the outcasts (or the "bad") recognize the "evil" of all men

they realize that politeness, civility, pity, manners etc are just detours to this inherent "evil"

this fucks them up mentally and they become disintegrated from society

hence they have no moral compass

hence they are the "bad"

just actions or actions of justice are by their nature self-serving/self-preserving

otherwise why would anyone care about justice

tradition defines standard morality

but we don't even remember how the tradition started in the first place

we respect traditions just because they're so fucking old

someone points out that the logic behind traditional morality is fucked up

the holiness of this tradition is defended on the grounds that it is a miracle

metaphysical

too hard to explain

but really nothing is a miracle

and everything is complicated and conditional

these defenders of traditional morality are in a sense heretics

they are pretending that they know what God wants and they set about to enforce it

hence they are playing God, hence they are heretics

some of these men claim to know the ultimate meaning of existence

this is of course bullshit

but they are charismatic and they get people to blindly follow them

people begin to revere and link themselves to these holy men in order to give meaning to their own lives

jesus is just the most well-known example of this type of holy man

but we should not hate jesus too much

because in ancient times there were a lot of fools who said they were the son of a god

we just need to make sure we don't follow the fools

instead we need to follow ourselves

I sat in the library all day and wrote a paper on the Mafia for my sociology class.

Then I went to the mall with my friend to eat Taco Bell. When we were there I commented to her that there was a lot of fat people.

Then we went into Barnes and Nobles and I commented on how that store sucks. They only had two books by Sartre.

They didn't serve toothpaste or paper at the mall.

Today I woke up and brushed my teeth. Usually I don't know brush my teeth after waking up because I know I will be smoking a cigarette within the next hour when I leave my apartment. I don't know why I decided to brush my teeth this morning.

Lately I have felt little concern during the day about what people think of me. Usually they look at me and I feel like vanishing into thin air. I don't want to kill myself but I want to not be there at that exact moment.

After I brushed my teeth I folded my laundry because it was clean from the washer and dryer but I had been too lazy to fold it the night before. Then I went outside and lit a cigarette and began walking towards food.

I still really wish the served toothpaste and paper in restaurants. It would make everything so much easier.

I don't know why I'm writing this I think I should just go to sleep now because I have very few original thoughts and it is making me depressed.

I am doing nothing.

It is a protest of the fact that I am currently living.

You might call it passive resistance.

I hope it hasn't come across in my writing that I hate you and I hate myself, because I do not hate you and I do hate myself. I hate having the freedom to do whatever I want.

Like today, I got up and sat in bed for three hours. Then I went to work. Then I went to school. Then I came home.

Can I be saved?

Ah, yes, I remember. I don't need to be saved. I have the power to save myself. But what does that really mean if I'm going to die seventy years from now?

Or tomorrow.

I know it was murder, but it had to be done. After several minutes Pure Reason disintegrated into dust that is now all over my bed. I am currently brushing it off.

Perhaps it wasn't even a murder. If a man kills another man on the battlefield, it is considered a casualty of war, and not a murder. In a similar way, I was fighting Pure Reason on the battlefield of my being.

I haven't done anything today. I haven't read more than a few pages. I talked about a novel and a couple plays in one of my classes. I talked about fate, and how I don't believe in fate. Except in literary terms.

See, see, there we go. I have no idea what I am talking about. You are probably wondering how many times I will say that before you read it for the last time.

After committing this murder, I feel both guilt and happiness. I am happy that I am free of that never-ceasing voice in my ear. But I feel guilty that I destroyed what took so many milleniums to create. I just found out that milleniums has two "n"'s in it. I was still call it milleniums.

I was talking to some people that I met for dinner today whether a whale could survive in a desert if it had legs. I didn't have Pure Reason around to answer it for me, but I was glad that I got to have humans to answer it instead. They said they didn't know.

Then later that day I got a call from my landlord saying I am going to be evicted at the end of the summer. He didn't disclose his reasons, but he did use the word "proxy." He also might have said something about chance or bad luck. I only believe in the former. After I got off the phone with him I looked up the word "proxy", and was still unsure what he meant. Here's the dictionary entry:

Pronunciation:

\ˈpräk-sē\

Function:

noun

Inflected Form(s):

plural prox·ies

Etymology:

Middle English proxi, procucie, contraction of procuracie, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin procuratia, alteration of Latin procuratio procuration

Date:

15th century

1: the agency, function, or office of a deputy who acts as a substitute for another2 a: authority or power to act for another b: a document giving such authority ; specifically : a power of attorney authorizing a specified person to vote corporate stock3: a person authorized to act for another : procurator

— proxy adjective

As you can tell if you read any of this, the dictionary didn't help much. But I have now deduced that I am not a victim of bad luck but am instead a victim of some coercive, authoritarian activity. Then I looked up both coercive and authoritarian and realized I didn't know what I was talking about.

But my anger needs to be directed somewhere. I am out of cigarettes, and that makes me despair, and I don't like feeling as if I am in despair. Maybe I do just have bad luck. I don't hear anyone telling me otherwise. I think I am prepared to live the rest of my life with bad luck. Maybe. Or I might kill myself.

But if I have bad luck was it through chance or through fate? It must be through fate. And I don't believe in fate. I can remember being a child and not believing in fate. There is no bad luck, and if there is it is through chance.

I am almost done brushing the dust off my bed. I am sure there will be little specks that I can't see that will still be there and possibly infect me, but I am ready to move on to life without Pure Reason.

Before I went to bed I wrote a eulogy for Pure Reason. You cannot read it.

It is impossible to completely forget that one exists. You can drink one beer, you can drink twenty beers, you can get in the most insane drug-induced delirium, but your existence will still be weighing you down. Or it might not even act as a weight, it might instead act more as a itch on your back that you cannot seem to reach. And you get drunk and fleetingly forget that it is there, but then the drinks will wear off, and you will remember that it is there.

I got very drunk last night. Today when I woke up there was a part of my back that was very itchy, but I couldn't scratch it. After several hours I began to find pleasure in the itch, and now I am in love with it. But my love will surely fade.

I am beginning to think that I am incapable of becoming romantically involved with the opposite sex. It is not a matter of attraction, I like to look at women. Rather, it seems to be connected to my excessive thirst for love. I would prefer to be strapped down to a bed and made love to, rather than having to always hold something back.

No, no, these are just excuses. I'm probably filled with much more hate than love. I don't really know what I'm talking about. This itch is really killing me. I squirm around in my chair, trying to imagine what it would be like to truly scratch this itch.

I have been laying my bed all day. I haven't eaten since yesterday. It is almost dinnertime. I did nothing today.

I can't find my water bottle. It should be right by my bed, but it's missing.

I dig my head into the pillow and then I jump out of bed, throw open the blinds, and snap into action. I sit back down on the bed to reward myself for getting out of bed.

The water in the shower is hot and comes down with force. That is just how I like it. I pee in the shower.

Drying myself off afterwards, I look in the mirror. I am trying to grow out a beard. Looking at myself in the mirror, I realize that I am really a disgusting person. Physically, morally, intellectually, emotionally disgusting. The ugliness I see in myself causes me to feel proud that I am not one of the beautiful, blind masses. I am an ugly young man who is unique.

Actually, there are no beautiful, blind masses. We are all ugly, and we are all unique. But I am more ugly and more unique.

Once again, I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Oh yes, I was looking at myself in the mirror and discovered that I was disgusting and ugly. Then I put on some clothes, but they are dirty because I haven't done my laundry in weeks. And I only have a limited amount of clothes.

"You should really get on that," says Pure Reason.

I turn angrily towards Pure Reason. My eyes have a look of intense sparkling hatred in them. I take a spoon from my desk and begin stabbing Pure Reason with it.

"Have mercy on me, please," says Pure Reason.

"But mercy is emotional, and you taught me to rely on rationality."

"Well, I was wrong."

I continue stabbing Pure Reason for several more minutes and eventually its eyes close and it stops struggling.

As I remove the spoon from Pure Reason's body, I realize that the blinds were open that entire time. My eyes dart towards the apartment building across the street, afraid that some soul has witnessed me committing this murder. Fortunately, everyone seems to be going about their own personal matters. Or murders.

A woman watering her flowers notices me looking out my window. I turn away.

With so many absurd reasons to despair, there is no wonder there is so much hate in the world. Our fear of death, our anger at death, it all has to be funneled somewhere. And I hate it.

You may have guessed by now that my night last night after I left you was somewhat disappointing. I was drunk and I had a girl, and then I was sober and I didn't have a girl. Well then I found another girl, but she is my friend and not my enemy. I wish America was like Europe, where (so I hear) alcohol is as cheap as water and anyone can drink it anywhere. It would prevent me from becoming sober.

Enough of this though, there are more important things to discuss. I need to get drunk as soon as possible. I want to forget I exist.

"Ah," says Pure Reason, "But that will lead you down the road of apathy and nihilism."

"I don't care. Nothing matters," I say.

And I don't, and it doesn't. Well, I do, and it does. I value personal responsibility as one of the most important qualities a human must have. Because if one cannot be responsible for their own behavior on a consistent basis then they might as well not exist.

I might as well not exist.

Yes, yes, I see the problems such an absolute stance can create. Obviously there needs to be some breathing room for reality. Personal responsibility is imperative, but one can also not be expected to be completely conscious of such a task at all times. I believe if one can reflect back on the previous day just once every day, then they will have a much greater chance of exhibiting better personal responsibility in the future.

You might wonder what I mean by all this. I often wonder the same thing.

Last night I smoked a pack of cigarettes in a span of four hours. Some might say this was not responsible. I can retort that I like to smoke and I don't see how it's hurting anyone else. And it really isn't. It may not be responsible for my health, but it is my life and I get to choose. As long as I don't blow the smoke in someone else's face, there really is no problem. I am ultimately the one who is responsible for my health, but my actions cannot be considered irresponsible because they don't have bad effects on other people.

But perhaps I should go blow smoke in other people's face. I need to assert myself. Stop living such a passive life. I walk downstairs and out into the street. The janitorial staff is sitting on the stoop again, smoking cigarettes. I light one up and blow the smoke towards an old lady janitor's face. She looks up at me. I guess smokers don't really care if you blow smoke in their face.

As I step down from the stoop and onto the sidewalk I realize I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm kind of hungry. Heck, since last night didn't turn out how I had hoped, I think I am going to go eat some toothpaste or paper.

I walk several blocks to the paper store. As I enter a clerk comes up to me with a big pathetic smile on his face. Kind of like a chimpanzee.

"What can I get for you today," he says.

"I don't know. I just really have a craving for some paper."

"Ah, so you really want to write or draw or something?"

"Yeah, something like that," I say.

"Well, which is it, writing or drawing?"

"Neither," I say.

I walk out of the paper store.

Why is it that whenever you walk into a store these days there's so many options but also so few options at the same time.

As I walk out of the store I see the girl who I had hoped to spend the night with last night. She doesn't notice me. I want to scream at her how she made me look like a fool, and stab her thousands of times in the chest and back. No, just the chest. I need to be straightforward.

Instead, I pretend like I don't see her, and begin walking the opposite way down the street. Best to avoid confrontation. No, no confrontation is good, especially when it is cathartic. But if I went over and started confronting her it would not be cathartic, it would be pathetic.

I want to go get drunk and forget I exist.

I don't eat because I am depressed, and I am depressed because I don't eat. My favorite foods are paper and toothpaste, but I haven't eaten them since I was a boy. It seems I like to inadvertently deprive myself of those things that give me pleasure.

I don't know why I am writing this. No one will care, and I don't care that they don't care. Perhaps it is just for me, so that I can have something to look back on in my old age. If I ever grow to be old.

I think I am going to kill myself before then, though. I probably want to kill myself even more so than before I started taking these anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. They make me feel fine, while Pure Reason tells me I'm not fine.

I lied earlier when I said I don't care if you read this. It was just a lie, a test to see if you would continue reading. And you did. Congratulations. Or perhaps you just skipped down to this line and now you feel like you've missed something. You haven't.

My main purpose in writing this is so that I can prove to the world that I have a big penis. Or at least one that is big enough to be cut off.

Pure Reason says, "Anything will a length and width and height can be cut. And everything has a length and width and height. So your penis can be cut off."

"Yes, but I need to prove it to the world."

"Everyone already knows."

I know. And who asked this asshole, Pure Reason, anyway. Before the month is over I am going to kill Pure Reason. I already killed its cousin, Common Sense, several years ago.

I am starting to feel hungry. But I don't want to eat. A mouthful of toothpaste with a big glass of water sounds good. Or a big long scroll of paper with ink all over it.

Tonight I might dance. I hate dancing. But if I am drunk and there is a girl then I will dance. And each of those qualifications will hopefully be met. But therein lies the problem. So much of my life relies on hope. And with hope there comes worry and fear, because one is afraid their hopes won't be met.

I hope that one day I will no longer have to hope anymore. That there will be permanent peace and tranquility.

Who am I fooling? There will never be peace and tranquility. Man is constantly at war. At no point in human history has there not been violence. Our very existence as humans opposes peace and tranquility.

"Peace and tranquility." What a blind hope. What a cliche. It would be better to proclaim, "War and tension." That would be a much better motto. I think I will take it as my own.

Okay, enough of this. I am going to go get something to eat.

No, no. I am not going to eat.

First I am going to smoke a cigarette.

I walk out of my apartment building and onto the street. As I light my cigarette, I notice the janitorial stuff is already sitting on the stoop smoking. I walk past them.

It is lukewarm and cloudy. The Internet said there is a 25 percent chance of rain. I didn't put on a raincoat. I don't even own a raincoat.

Walking to the nearby cafeteria, the streets are barren. I see several different people. They are all walking separate ways.

I walk into the cafe and order some fish. When I woke up today I felt guilty for eating meat. I once was a vegetarian for six months because of my guilt. But for some reason I don't feel as guilty eating fish. I put lots of tartar sauce on my fish.

Pure Reason says, "That cannot be healthy."

I sigh. As I take bites I scrap off most of the tartar sauce beforehand.

I'm drinking grape juice. I don't drink pop anymore because it makes me feel weird. Maybe not weird, but not fine.

I finish my meal and order some more fish. I cut the new piece of fish in half and get up and leave.

I need more cigarettes. I walk to the nearby gas station but they are closed for renovation. The other gas station is a ten or fifteen minute walk away. I give up and head back towards my apartment.

Maybe I will do some school work. No, no. It is my day off real work, and I don't want to have to do school work. I want to enjoy myself. I think of toothpaste and paper. The very thought of them makes my penis move. I put my hands down my pants and feel my small, I mean, my big penis. It is so big that I don't know which part of it to hold.

But I give up whatever that was all about, and pick up my bass guitar. I write a simple little song during a five minute period, and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Then I return to my computer. I no longer read magazines in the bathroom. I hardly even take a good novel or textbook in there anymore. Usually its my computer that accompanies me to the shitter. I've been together now for i'd say about a little over a year. I hardly go a day without seeing it. We will be announcing our engagement any day soon. Then we will spoon and spoon like we have never spooned before.

I go to the faucet and sea water comes out. The same for the drinking fountain in the lobby. I ask a man why it tastes like salt water.

He says that "they-do-it-for-real here."

Hmmm. That's an interesting take on water. I fill a bottle full of the salt water and then tightly turn the cap closed. I will have to show this to someone. Someone will marvel at this. Perhaps the bank teller will. Yes, i am quite certain the bank will love this!

I go to the bank and the teller tells me to give them money. I say that I didn't bring money and just want to talk. They say there is no time to talk, there's only so much sunlight, and they give me a pen to sign my paycheck that I didn't bring.

I go across the street to the grocery store and buy tampons and condoms. As I am in line waiting I also decide to buy a gossip magazine and an eight-pack of peanut butter cups. But I don't have money to pay for the peanut butter cups so I walk out of the store with the tampons, condoms, gossip magazine, and peanut butter cups.

As I leave the store, a man says, "Hey."

He wants to know where I am going. I tell him I don't know. He says I have to pay for the items. I say I did.