Alpha to Omega

I would just like to point out that I have spent the last week being bombarded with emails, phone calls and the like from distressed persons, i.e.: my friends. It has become so bad that I can't even check my email without someone managing to click on my name and write "hey! I'm all excited for no apparent reason! How are you doing?!!!" faster than I can click the "away" button. When I explain that I do not have time for their "New York Conversation”, I get a sense that they are extremely disappointed. This bothers me. Why? Because I am awake and bored tonight and all of you fucking assholes are asleep.

I have an entire album that I do not own playing a loop through my head.

I have to practice my ‘dramatic sigh’.

The comments aren't working...I need to fix that, but my idiocy prevents it.

Officially bored with you...CD

I have nothing to say. I feel overwhelmed by the vast space surrounding me mentally (considering my agorophobia, this is scary) and I really do feel that I have nothing to say. I suppose I could just talk about nothing as an entity in and of itself and then erase this tomorrow when I wake up and discover how brutally awful it is and what a jaded and horrible person I am.

It sounds as though I should be having a mental breakdown, or be overcome by some depressed state, but somehow I'm not. I feel like I'm on a new drug; how can I possibly be content with this nothingness?

Nothing can be better than something. Of course, if I really believed that I wouldn't be writing this. There have been moments, of which I don't wish to speak, when this was true.

When I look back on the last few years of my life and realise that I accomplished nothing and that it means nothing, it makes me realise what I would have or should have done instead and what it will eventually mean. That forces me out of bed, and forces me to do things. People go their entire lives being 'busy' and doing things that are in fact nothing, so maybe that's the reason I don't feel so bad.

Really though, I have nothing to say, and this blather is a waste, acheives nothing and I apologize that you even read it.

It's hockey playoff season. This means that, because I am Canadian, I am expected to converse about the progress of the home team, engage in wearing obnoxiously bright coloured clothing, scream obscenities and tear my hair out when something 'bad' happens, drink bad local beer, repeatedly chant a clever slogan (i.e. Go {insert home team name here} Go! YAAAAY!) in unison with mentally challenged roid-monkeys, and basically (and this is the most intrusive expectation yet) to like it all. It’s asking too much.

The funny thing about conformists is that they are not content with just being their conformist selves. They find it impossible to comprehend how anyone could lead a healthy, normal life without being exactly like everyone else. In other words, they like to proselytize. My first experience with this came in the eighth grade. The principal at my school was a staunch conformist who liked to fancy himself ‘fun’ but ‘professional’ at the same time. This meant he was on a first name basis with all the students and would talk up the parents as well. He wore bad suits. He probably watched a lot of TV and attended church with his wife on Sundays. I knew from the moment I met him two years earlier that I didn’t like him, but I wasn’t really sure why. He tried too hard I guess. My dislike was justified one afternoon as I sat quietly in class (I was always quiet back then. No one liked me because I kept to myself too much and this seemed to them to be some sort of flip off…go figure) writing in my notebook. The aforementioned ‘hands-on’ principal strolled in and started hanging over some of the students shoulders, watching them work (a most irritating practice. Someone tried to do this to me the other day as I sat reading The Brothers Karamazov and I shot them a clear “I’m going to throttle you” look). I was one of these unlucky students, but when he got to me, he not only felt it necessary to breathe on me but also to critique my handwriting (I’ve developed quite a complex about people who breathe too loudly or too close to me. It’s become so bad that I find it enormously stressful to sleep as the inside spoon because the outside spoon might breathe on my shoulder, neck or back. It’s even worse when I have to take public transit to go to work during rush hour. I had the painful experience of encountering a thirty something man the other day who, though we were packed in like sardines, felt that it was somehow to everyone’s advantage to wiggle about incessantly, and that sharing his bad breath and germs with me was somehow to my advantage. I spent the rest of the ride bug-eyed and obsessing about germs and having trouble breathing. I managed to get off before the panic attack set in, but I’m pretty sure if you had asked me what my one greatest wish was at that very moment I would have said “A shower”). This was annoying, and at the time, embarrassing enough, that two days later when he handed me a photocopied page of handwritten letters from a penmanship book (circa 1950 I can imagine), I was astonished at his persistence (my penmanship is not really so bad. Since I stopped trying to write exactly the way they taught me in school, it has suddenly become legible, even attractive). Naturally, I tossed the sheet of paper in the first available garbage receptacle.

I had only lived in that town for two years, and would only live there until the end of that year. I hated it, mostly because of the absurdity of the place and the absurdity of the people living there. They were ignorant, and felt their little town to be something special, when it was in fact just a suburban hell with neither the money and class nor the culture they somehow convinced themselves they had. Like so many small cities, the livelihood was a factory that was dangerously close to shutting its doors. Blue-collar strife though, was never apparent, and the kids in my classes would come to class curiously outfitted in brand name clothing and with a ridiculous collection of ‘stuff’, (I don’t like stuff. I prefer to refer to ‘stuff’ as ‘useless shit’). All of the boys played hockey and all of the girls took dance and figure skating lessons. The women walked around like blue blood New Englanders, as did their daughters. The homes were set up very traditionally, with the wives at home eating chocolates (and getting fatter…they were all so fat) and watching soap operas while the husbands paid the credit card (debts) and nursed their mid-life crises with their garage projects. No one in the town liked outsiders, and they would never let me forget that I was weird because I wasn’t obnoxiously popular and ostentatiously (ostentatiously is an ostentatious word) materialistic (a sure sign of discontentment; I find the most materialistic people to be those who either have or have had the least). I can’t think of anything terribly cultural about the place (I don’t think there was an art gallery, and there was only one movie theatre) except that everyone got really excited when a Chinese food restaurant opened up. This was a big deal, as it was very exotic compared to delis and Italian restaurants (I don’t think the Atkins diet would have much success there). This lack of culture was emphasized by the fact that the only thing the community had to bring them together was the junior hockey team, who played in a small rink that was used for public skating in the off-season.

The other day when I was out, passing a bar where the hockey game was playing, I saw a sporty chicken who reminded me a lot of a girl who used to live in that town. She had blonde hair, fake nails, overly cancerous looking tanned skin, and was wearing skintight black pants, a hockey t-shirt balled up so that her midriff was showing, and excessively too much makeup. Normally, I encounter this kind of chickenhead everywhere, and it only elicits a small amount of bile, but this time it produced quite a bit more. This is because the chickenhead was glaring at me with a most distasteful look on her ugly leather coloured face. The reason for this was that I was wearing a skirt and her two little jock chicken boy friends were looking at me and making what I can only assume to be lewd and inappropriate comments. Having had a few (justified) jealous moments (one of these occurred when I met the ‘girlfriend’ of someone I was having an affair with. I hadn’t known of her existence until that moment, but she clearly knew who I was, as did everyone else in the room. My reputation can often precede me, both to my benefit and detriment. I swallowed all pettiness, and, noticing she had almost the same shirt on I did, said lightly “hey, I have that shirt”. She looked at me blankly and answered, “Ya, a lot of people do”, and walked away. I haven’t seen her since, but I will not be swallowing any pettiness when I do, and she will be swallowing her teeth), I had to be taken aback by her complete lack of integrity in the matter. Gouging out her two boys eyes would certainly not be justified, but it would be more justified than giving me the death stare (actually, she wasn’t really capable of this. It looked more like “Oh, my god…you are like, a total tramp”) and muttering voodoo curses under her breath just because I was walking down the street. But, that’s chicken for you.

Once I got to High School, I encountered the people who tried very hard to separate themselves from the conformists. These were the rebel conformists. They were living on the edge, but the edge of what I’m not quite sure (oblivion, triviality?). You all know these people. They are the ones that walk around with a permanent scowl on their faces and make valiant efforts to object to just about anything anyone says. There are the “I’m so deep and complicated” ones, the “I’m so punk” ones, and then the ones that sit in doped up silence at parties as you attempt to speak to them out of some kind of imagined obligation to be polite (fuck polite, I won’t do it again). The funniest attempt at rejecting conformity though, comes from those chickenheads who constantly say stupid things like “I’m so weird”. Once ‘weird’ becomes an asset to these people, they will make any and every attempt to be ‘weird’ in the most mediocre sense. The only problem is that ‘weird’ doesn’t constitute having a style of their own or an original idea in their heads. All it means is that instead of Tommy Hilfiger, they sometimes wear Roxy, and instead of listening to the bad rap/pop radio station, they listen to the bad rock station and instead of settling down at 24 with a husband, children and little suburban bungalow, they do it at 30.

In conclusion, I hate fucking hockey. Why won’t you all just go away (though, the image of the screaming crews coming from the bar on game night, keeping somebody I know awake, really appeals to me. Ha ha ha…)?

Both are directed at some (all) of the men I've encountered, and more than likely, most of you out there.

Why do you all have futons from Ikea?
Why do you assume that trimming the delicate areas gives you a getoutofjailfreecard in terms of 'manscaping' the rest?

I would really love to know (and I hope that these questions don't give you any fancy ideas about the kind of weekend I've had).
As always, amelioratively (is that even a word) yours...CD.

I sat in a waiting room for four hours today. I arrived at my appointed time of 8 AM, but still, I had to wait for four hours. I don't think I could possibly write something of any value without it containing a plethora of curse words. Such as FUCK. I will, however, tell you about the event that to me defines the kind of day I have had.

I was sitting patiently (considering) in the waiting room, perusing two to five year old editions of The Economist, worrying about China, and starving children, and effectively reproaching myself for my western advantages so as not to feel too bad about things (this is turning into another rant for another day), when I glanced up and saw the nurse that I had spoken to nary two minutes before, reaching for a tissue. She wasn’t looking directly at the box, but I noticed a curious blue line down the vertices of the tissue in question, and was completely dumbfounded when she noticed it and then decided (suddenly and out of nowhere) that she no longer needed the last tissue.

We have all encountered this, of course. Maybe you are that person who leaves the last sliver of brownie in the pan because you have too many important lazy-person things to do. If so, I think you know my feelings on the matter. My only question is what is it that you could possibly have to do that is so important? If blowing your nose is no longer important, and getting a new box of tissues was never important, then what exactly is it that you do? In the nurses case she turned on the radio and listened to bad music (so, so bad...and when Rock the Casbah came on she turned it down) while she did Cosmo quizzes with her nurse friends. I wish it were not so bland and cliché, but unfortunately, it is.

I didn't know what to post today, as I have spent the last 24 hours doped up on perkocet. I needed an easy subject, and I sincerely apologize for the sheer banality of it (But, while we're on the subject, I'll just apologize for all my posts, as they are all fairly innane as well).

I've been asked several times in the last few days to define 'chickenhead'. This is a word that has somehow managed to penetrate (also a good word) my conversations on a fairly regular basis.

I'm not quite sure to begin. Usually when I try to explain the term to someone who is, in fact, a chickenhead themselves, they don't understand what I am trying to say. I will attempt though, to be clear by using examples and imagery.

You are driving down the street when suddenly, out of nowhere, an ugly, obnoxious sports car passes you on the right going a million miles too fast and blaring shitty techno. You may have just encountered a chickenhead.

You know that guy you see every once in awhile who wears white jeans and skintight knit shirts and so much gel in his hair you can almost see your reflection in it? Also a chickenhead.

The female chickenhead can be far more irritating than the male one. This is because, though they don't necessarily have more to prove, they are not as capable of hiding it. These are the girls you see in the middle of February running down the street in high heels and miniskirts towards a lineup to a shitty bar in which they will get wasted on over-priced, watered down drinks, dance (badly) to bad music and end up fucking the first guy that hits on them.

These chickenheads are more prevalent. However, there are different varieties of chickenheads.

Sporty chicken is that girl you see who really wants to be one of the guys and tries very hard to impress them with her beer chugging capabilities and her extensive hockey knowledge. Or, it's that guy who looks at people who engage in 'stupid' activities (stupid being anything that isn't 'active', such as reading a book) as not living their lives to the fullest. Surfer guy and snowboard bunny also fall into this category.

Then, there is college sweater-wearing chicken. These are the least obvious chickenheads, and it is often hard to determine their true colors. In some cases though, these are the girls who feel that they have some sort of moral and educational superiority to you simply because you may enjoy wearing something other than the same smelly sweater every day (this must be the reason they are so angry). Tickets to a Lillith Fair are a dead give away.

I could go on about the other varieties of chicken, but the truth is, the term is chickenhead for a reason. It all tastes the same.

You could be a chickenhead if:

1. Your entire identity hinges on some kind of material asset or image and you feel a constant need to prove this.
2. When you open your mouth to speak, nothing of substance comes out and it sounds like 'braawwwwwwck'.
3. You find people with integrity and artistic ability to be boring.
4. You irritate the fuck out of me.

Hopefully, for those of you who were wondering, that clears things up a bit. If you need further clarification, please let me know.

I was already shocked and appalled that people could ever want to go to sleep so that someone could cut their face open and scrape away sections of flesh and bone, all for purely vain reasons, but now they've made it into a game show. So, I had this idea.

Three contestants live in a house for three weeks while they get to know each other and fight and cry to each other about how ugly they are, all while planning for plastic surgery. The show spends a lot of time interviewing the competitors as they detail what they like and dislike about their faces. They have group sessions, kind of like group therapy, where they vote on the right facial features for each other and cut "the perfect" lips, eyes and boobs out of magazines to make collages of their new bodies. Then, at the end of the three weeks, they are put to sleep and intentionally carved and diced badly. When they reveal the results on live television, the contestant that manages to open her mouth wide enough to scream and can cry real tears wins a new SUV. The catch phrase could be "CAN you smile? You're on Candid Camera!"

I've been thinking that maybe it's because I've never really sat down with someone and talked about the dynamics of what our 'relationship' (please see prior post) should look like. So, with no further ado, this is what I want (I think I will print this and take it with me on my next date).

I meet someone with whom I have a lot of chemistry. We have good dialogue and eventually discuss the dynamics of what we want out of the relationship, such as defining boundaries and sexual preferences (This is important, as having an answer to "what are you into" indicates to me that he is sexually mature and knows what he wants and what he is prepared to give me). We are both satisfied that we can meet each other’s needs and so we proceed to the next step.

On Friday night, I meet him at his apartment. We either go out for dinner or cook (depending on his personal preferences. I don't like to cook for someone unless they really enjoy doing it themselves, and have an appreciation for good food), and then have great sex, preferably all night. We wake up late on Saturday, eat a light breakfast and then go our separate ways. We maintain a friendship that is built on honesty, trust and respect (I have a lot of trouble understanding why when I demand these simple things, people assume that I am high maintenance, or am asking them to marry me). Though we may not see each other often outside of the bedroom, we still find value in getting to know and like each other on a personal level. I feel that, although he may not be my first resort, I could go to him if I were in trouble and him to me.

This may not seem to some of you to be a hard thing to find. I disagree. It is very hard to find, because most people don't discuss what they want prior to engaging in their own separate definitions of a 'casual relationship', or they don't know what they want at all and begin something that ultimately (please forgive the terribly common idiom) they cannot finish. The clash in definition is especially prevalent, as I seem only to encounter men who think that I should just want to have hooker sex with them and then shuffle off the face of the earth until our next appointed time.

I don't think I need to mention that great sex is hard to come by. Sometimes, I get so frustrated with not finding it, that any hint of sexual compatibility has me trying too hard to squeeze it out of them. It’s like when you're on the verge of having an orgasm and it gets stronger and stronger but just never comes.

This entry is badly written, and I apologize. Let me summarize...healthy, honest and vigorous sexual relationship.

On the Prowl...CD

I've been noticing lately the alarming rate at which myself and the people around me are swearing up and down that they want things they in fact do not want at all. Am I wrong when I say we all want someone to pet us and say "It's all going to be alright"? Am I wrong when I say we all want someone to touch us the way we want to be touched? I doubt it, and yet, we're all insisting that we want a no-strings-attached kind of relationship in which no one exerts any kind of human emotion. This is all fine when you find someone who is useless and stupid and could only ever offer you a ride and a bed to sleep in on drunken Saturday nights. Most of the time, these are the kinds of people I encounter. But, every so often, it seems divine providence wants to fuck with my plans for Warholian Indifference, and tell the sucker centres in my brain partial to spiritual fanaticism that "something more is going on here". This isn't a problem; I'm the type to over-react initially and then get bored and move on. But, somehow within the slim percentage of a chance that I find someone I actually give a shit about, there is another slim percentage of a chance that they may actually be interesting, and feel the same way about me. I hate this entry so far, but if you really think I'm the type to go to the movies and cry over something Sandra Bullock did or said to some average looking guy then keep reading.

Case in point (and not a personal one), after a terrible experience with her last boyfriend, my friend Scarlet wanted only someone interesting to spend time with, and to take things very slowly in all fields. So, when she met Timmy she was overjoyed. He didn't kiss her until their second date, and seemed all up for getting to know her properly. He called her all the time, and they could often be seen gallivanting about, doing whatever it is that they did. At some point (about a month into all this, I believe) Timmy got weird. It took some coaxing to get Timmy to admit that he wasn't interested in a committed relationship. Scarlet could only laugh, citing the fact that he was the one who had phoned her every day, sometimes twice a day, for the past month. At this point he claimed that she had "spooked him" (I believe those were his actual words). So, I was left wondering, as was Scarlet, whether or not the poor boy was not actually just afraid of his own emotions, i.e. Did little Timmy spook himself?

This is a familiar story, I know, but the rate at which it seems to be happening around me makes me wonder if we are all not just afraid of being emotional. I haven't quite found the balance between robotron and histrionic myself (ah, who are we kidding, I'm as crazy as a fucking southern preacher), but it seems that everyone I know is either nuts or hiding behind some stone faced facade, which isn't healthy either. What are we all so afraid of? Past experiences are no excuse, we all have them, and they all suck. The problem is that because we don't know what we want, can't properly communicate it, or are afraid of becoming emotionally attached to another human being (god forbid), we end up hurting ourselves and others as well.

I think another part of the problem is the hang-ups people seem to have over labelling things. My definition of ‘friend’ for instance is quite different from some people I know, who seem to think that a friend is just anyone you’ve ever had a pint with or a casual conversation on the phone. These people are not my friends; they are friendly acquaintances. So, if I’m going to have a ‘just friends’ kind of sexual relationship with this type of person, I’m bound to feel a little neglected and the other person is bound to ask me (with a fair amount of annoyance in his voice) why I’m acting like we’re in a relationship. We are in a relationship. I hate that the word has come to have intense romantic connotations. Go buy a dictionary; you have a ‘relationship’ with your mother too. Most of the time, people don’t enter into something with the intention of tying the other person down for the rest of their lives, or asking them to tether themselves with a ankle-bracelet that will monitor their every move. Most of the time, they just want the other person to give a shit.

In my case, I usually end up being accused of getting too emotionally involved. I do apologize to these people, and try to refrain from suggesting that maybe they want to believe my soul burns for them, when in fact all I want is sex and someone with good friend potential. In this type of situation, we both end up being frustrated and pissing on something that could have been a lot of fun.

In Timmy and Scarlet’s case, we have two people who are attracted to each other, but so committed to fitting into the formulas and pie charts and bullshit they’ve set up for themselves that in the end everything is just mucked up. Everything ends, usually. If it is going to end, why not just flow with it in the meantime?

I really hate this entry. I really hate it, and I might get in trouble for it, but hey, fuck off...I'm entitled to react to things however I want to.

So, why write it? Because I spent last Sunday musing over how no one but me could possibly “get” the depth and momentousness of Ok Computer until they had two security guards standing outside the heavy metal door of a safe room with pink walls stained with who-knows-what-but-I-can-imagine, the hardest mattress I’ve ever encountered, and fluorescent lights that had me on the edge of some bad thoughts, all while being filmed by a conspicuous black globe hanging from the ceiling. That is why, and it wasn’t any one thing that put me in there, it was years and years of not knowing what to demand of others, and therefore never having it fulfilled.

Mostly though, I have been dwelling on this issue and have been very pissed off about being accused of demanding something that I in fact do not want, and seeing everyone around me get hurt in similar circumstances. I would also appreciate any comments/personal experiences/opinions (if you think I am wrong, please let me know), even though personal experiences all start to sound the same.

On a happier note, I had some ideas…new entry.

I’ve never had much appreciation for the word “Blog”. I assume that my illiteracy must play a key role in this and that I simply don’t understand the process whereby expressions, abbreviations and aliases become accepted words in the English language. Frankly, it annoys me. Creating a word like “Blog” really only saves you writing two extra letters and it makes for an obnoxious sounding word that is really just a grating communicative assault. I think I will have to see what Chomsky says about these types of “words”.

In the meantime, here are some random thoughts on the word “Blog”.

The first thing I think of when I hear the word Blog is Blah. This is a reflexive facial expression/emotion/sound that I generate when someone says to me “I have a blog, here’s the address” because I know that I’m in for an art-opening type of experience in which the person I’m speaking to (in all fairness to myself and others like me) should have their pants labelled “Insert Hand Here”. I have the same reaction when someone tries to get me to visit their web-site. Now that I have my own Blog, and intend to insert my hands “there” quite often, I feel that it is my duty to be much more sympathetic to my fellow “Bloggers” (another terrible word). I have yet to be entirely convincing when doing this.

The second thing “Blog” conjures is a primordial swamp, overgrown with Spanish moss, steaming and sweating up the surrounding environment, in which slither creatures long thought extinct, until you venture to the bar on a Saturday night, pissed off and on a mission from hell.

The third thing I have to say about “Blog”, and this is in keeping with the previous paragraph, is “Blog you motherblogger”. This is an important passage for anyone who knows me personally, or is lucky (?) enough to encounter me in any context. I think it is important to define intentions and boundaries in a relationship. Don’t blog with me, or I will blog you back (In some cases I may use pseudonyms when speaking about certain people. In other cases I may use someones real name). I don’t think this is particularly mauvaise foi (in Bad Faith), because even though vengeance is undoubtedly a major motivation in most peoples pursuit of fame, money, and sex, I have no use for the first two, nor the third as a means of flaunting or trophying about (I can make up expressions too, damn it). Therefore, I think it is safe to say that my intentions are purely masturbatory.

In this world of social chaos and mayhem, I find myself drawn to the world of "Un"reality. This is much to the displeasure of a certain snotty part of me that subscribes to the stereotype that people who communicate over the internet are either life's rejects or insane. However, I find that due to people's strange and oftentimes tiresome reaction to me in person, it is much easier to express myself effectively on an alternative medium. It is also easier for me to get any sort of genuine attentiveness to the actual opinions coming out of my mouth. What this means is that I am open to stories, questions, and general shooting of the proverbial shit. So, in the unlikely event that anyone would like to respond to my blogging, please send all fan mail and/or cult offerings to critical_darling@hotmail.com. Please note, I do not bother with attachments, so don't bother sending them.

Please be aware that I find the concept of cyber shorthand to be unbearably irritating. I also find the fact that people with decent educational backgrounds have been writing to me using the following example phrasing "Your a dumbass", "alot of donuts", "i am a jackass" and "what a stupid boi" sincerely offensive. Please refrain from writing in idiot, I don't speak that language (I am not sadistic enough to hold typos against you).