[Kingzjester]

I felt like reviving this thread started long, long ago on Ye Olde Forym. I don't endorse diaries - instead, when I feel particularly blah, I write pages upon pages of letters to friends and I seldom send them. If I do, that is because I liked the rhetoric of the letter and thought some passages were clever. I also tend to solve all my problems while writing these, or at least free myself of the worry by passing it to somebody else to ponder. A deep breath, and here we go...



I am, like most my friends, an abstract-minded fuck. I tend to lock myself in this warm and fuzzy nook of my contemplation and ponder - about the meaning of life and love and chivalry and justice and good and evil and the nonexistent hereafter... I think a lot and I am petrified of my mortality, afraid to do anything, bored easily, disturbed on some fundamental level by nine out of ten people I meet in my daily commute through being. You know what really sucks? Two fellows I could've hung out with in a different age, Plato and Aristotle, didn't have the same feeling of utter despair and helplessness in the face of the world at large that we face. If they didn't like Athens, they were free to leave, go to Sparta. Go to Tesalonika, Macedonia, Korfu, Crete... just drop whatever they were doing and go on to the next best thing. There were no scientific mindfuckers employed by vast institutions set up to homogenize the flock - mindfucking was pretty much trial and error back then. There were no schools one could go through to learn how to efficiently fuck up perfectly healthy minds. There was no system, no machine. There was no civilization-shattering interconnectedness and no guy was so überspecialized to be perfectly useless outside of his narrow field. What are we gonna do with all the tort lawyers, web designers, and professional sub-polar scuba divers when some BIG SHIT strikes down upon the motorways, energy grids and communication satellites of the west with great vengeance and furious anger? It is hard to feel useful when you are one blind cog in the elephantine corporation, rather than when your survival depended only on your labor, your brains, and to a lesser extent the Rain & Game Deities.

To transcend the machine, or not to transcend the machine? That is a futile question...

Within it I feel useless, yet able... Powerfully versatile - a Postmodernist Renaissance Man - yet underappreciated and unchallenged... Coherent and charming and keen, yet socially inept and misunderstood, automatically written off as a glorified asshole... My ambition burns like magnesium for a few days, or weeks, or months - but whimsically dies out before I have accomplished anything. I want to be a genius, yet my portfolio contains nothing to merit that label. I'm some sort of an artist, you know, but art is intrinsically useless, and my personality dictates that I be bothered by uselessness. A kooky paradox? I am a big, fat cocktail of incongruities. Learning nothing from my professors, teachers, instructors, I wonder what I'm doing at this school. The university offers practically no technique training (not that I really need it, I am better at technique than 95% of the artists I personally know) but the local art scene is magnificently avant-garde... and I have yet to check it out in person... It is a sign of how deep in the rut Texas is nowadays: the art scene is actually good.

It would be great if I could swallow everything I am told, if I could go to the church and be saved, if I could listen to the TV and immediately run out to buy the newest panacea it offers, if I could just talk endlessly about cars and women and the fucking Superbowl, yet...

I don't see the light at the end of my tunnel. I feel as if I am digging deeper and deeper in search of my own personal sun - though I know there isn't one. At the end of the day I have to create it myself... but I am not creating it; what is the point? To create one's own sun would be Art - and Art is impractical, useless...

I am paraphrasing Plato's allegory of the cave through a loupe of a scientist, mixing it as I go with an allegory of my own, and that is a big aesthetic no-no. I wouldn't have a problem with art's uselessness if only artist at large were people who lived in the World of Ideas. The truth is that most of them are hedonists who merely want to be fabulous, and so end up being all form and no substance. I can't stand fabulous artists with fabulously elaborate bullshit explanations for their art. If most are like that (and such has been my observation of the visual arts field), it brings into question the validity of using these works of art to 'relieve oneself from the itch of being'. How can we infuse it with meaning when it was created by just another phony clown whose goal in life is to be fabulous?

It all boils down to me having one of those days. I just can't force myself to get out of the bed and carry through The Project on which I've based my very self-respect (rest assured, it has nothing to do with revolutions or anarchy). I also have a novel in a drawer of my bedside table that I just cannot finish - I am a mediocre writer and I've been shuffling around clauses and imagery in the first fifty pages (which I wrote in a week) for six months before I abandoned the story a few months ago. I have read one and a half book in the past six months - which is singularly pathetic for me. I've been writing an in-depth article for the Church, on-and-off for a semester now. Just looked through the 100ish index cards of notes I collected and I can't find the stack with my sources. I suck...



... Sadly enough, I am never suicidal. That would be kinda fun from time to time... I just whine. I'd like to think of it as 'complaining' - 'complaining' sounds better than 'whining'... but when you think about it, it is all the same bovine guano. I mindfuck myself into a corner's corner when I am lonely and then I whine...

I just noticed a crazy thing. What an epiphany! All my depressed harangues since the fourth grade sound exactly the same.

[twifkak]

Dear Communal Diary,

I responded to the following comment:

Originally Posted by Kingzjester

What are we gonna do with all the tort lawyers, web designers, and professional sub-polar scuba divers when some BIG SHIT strikes down upon the motorways, energy grids and communication satellites of the west with great vengeance and furious anger?

With the following:

Originally Posted by me

Not to mention philosophers. What are they gonna do, contemplate the animals into killing themselves for us?

edit: Just so you don't think I'm an evil bitch, this is empathy through counterpoint.

But Trep told me that comments weren't allowed, and gave me a little upset-smiley-guy. It's certainly not worth typing a whole new thread over, and I don't really like deleting stuff (as I've discussed before), so I'm not sure what to do.

OK, so for some vaguely diaretic stuff, I'm pathetic, and I build my ego by pretending I have the solution to everybody's problems but mine. That said, I do genuinely like to try to solve other's problems, and they usually are gotten to before mine.

Yours truly,
Devin

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Twif, this is supposed to be a communal diary thread, with diary entries only. Save your comments and start a 'Comments On The Communal Diary Thread' thread.

[remixor]

This isn't a diary entry per se (I may get around to one later when I'm less exhausted), but I will say that I can relate to Kingz' post in many ways.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Fine, I'll join in then. I went through the same crap years ago. I gradually* realized that it was worthless trying to change the world, and thus begun the lifelong process of changing my world.

*key word

And Kingz, you think too fucking much.

[GreenJeanz]

Hmm, where shall I begin, where shall I begin!
Maybe I think too much like certain other people. I probably do. I have an answer to everything but none of them are good. Yes, indeed, they're all bad. "Get a job, GJ." I can't get a job, I don't have a car or a drivers license. "Get a license." I can't get a license. I don't have a GED. "Get a GED." I can't get a GED if nobody takes me to get one. I'm so. very. fucked. Please god, save me! Ahem.
Also, angst is not fun. I am tired of stupid fucks who think I complain for attention and not out of any genuine pain. Of course I want attention. Everyone in pain wants and needs attention. It is human. There is a difference between being an attention whore and being lonely. I have never said a single sad word as anything but a cry for help, to let people know I'm not feeling as I should and that I need support.
Also, I'm a bitter cunt, I realized. I get bitter over seeing other people happy. It's not fun because on top of the involuntary, sad, bitter response I feel bad for just the emotion! Argh. It's like being in a merry-go-round. Made of shit.
I also rarely say cunt but this is appropriate somehow. It fits. And I have nothing against vaginas. I own one(Fully licensed!).
It says hello.

[Wormsie]

Originally Posted by Kingzjester

I don't see the light at the end of my tunnel. I feel as if I am digging deeper and deeper in search of my own personal sun - though I know there isn't one. At the end of the day I have to create it myself... but I am not creating it; what is the point? To create one's own sun would be Art - and Art is impractical, useless...

It makes fine desktop wallpapers.

Kingz: The only major difference between us is that my IQ is 65. (Really, it is.) And I'm suicidal... and I can't paint.

As I have an hour free time I might start writing as well, just for company.

Well...

Uhm...

It's a fine weather outside. Or actually it isn't. It's raining. Well, depends if you like raid. But I don't. SO from my viewpoint, it's a bad cold weather outside.

Something strange has happened to me. I used to have 0 concentration, but I still managed to get high grades from exams: guessing, luck, intuition - believe it or not. Now I somehow have even worse concentration, and it shows. I got 7- form physics (scale from 4- to 10+ where 10+ is the best), and just an hour ago I had a Swedish test, which also went rather badly. We had to write an essay about how we like newspapers. I had to guess half of the words and structures. English tests probably went relatively well, but German didn't.

I have no idea about Finnish. We had to write two Finnish scribble-dribble things that aren't really called essays but I just can't remember the word right now. Composition, I think it was, actually. So replace those earlier "essays" with "composition". Yes, two Finnish essays, no, compositions. The other one was about mobile phone designers, whom I of course decided to hate. The other one was about young people not taking part in politics, and of course the only working approach was to hate everyone mentioned in the source texts as well.

But why is it so hard for me to work? It's because I want out of this godforsaken place, and I want my own life with real people. The only people I meet daily are my parents, an cows, although they really aren't peole...

The second reason is that I just keep thinking that whatever I do is stupid, it's hard to learn anything.

The third reason just proves that I have completely lost my sense of reality. Ah, well. That's normal, I hear.

So I won't actually say anything more about the third reason. The excitement continues!! But if someone guesses the third reason, please tell me. Perferably PM.

I have a good reason to believe that I'm a psycopath. I had eight out of ten characteristics of a psycopath. I'll post the list here some day. The only use of being a psycopath would be manipulating people, but I can't seem to be able to do that! A very useless psycopath, I am, I am.

[Tom_K]

Dear Diary,

Today I am contemplating the fallacies associated with being overtly sensitive to facial nuance.

The guy sitting across from me pops his head up over my monitor, so close that he resembles an oversized bobbing caricature that grandmother might abandon to the position of eternal fare-thee-well in the back window of her Caprice Classic.
"I watched Happy Gilmore last night, it was awesome."
I know he's not a moron, and I shouldn't begrudge his little happiness at having watched Adam Sandler swing a golf club and attempt melee with Bob Barker. But his face did this little twitch thing as he was talking, an involuntary Eyes Without a Face that was ghastly. Then I think he is a moron, because he hasn't wiped away that white gook that can form at the corners of your mouth when you talk too much about Happy Gilmore and ignore the benefits of a washcloth and mirror.

Then another guy who sits to my left begins his daily dissertation as to why he knows so much about everything and why no one will ever really appreciate just how much he does know because there’s no earthly frame of reference that would appropriately convey his wealth of knowledge.

Of course I'd assumed he was a moron some time ago and he's nice enough to daily confirm this suspicion by telling me cheat codes for the Dreamcast I don't own, and how if I ever did get one and why didn't I because it's the greatest, I would never have to get online to get cheat codes because he would always be there to provide them for me and suddenly there is a glint in the corner of his eye that I think could be a real tear. A tear of excitement and eager anticipation at the thought of me actually owning a Dreamcast and coming to him of my own volition for advice.

Do it, do it! His eyes say. Validate my worth as a human sacrifice to the Dreamcast milieu.

[twifkak]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

And Kingz, you think too fucking much.

Don't listen to him, Kingz.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Oh, he should, Twif, he should. I went through exactly the same thing he did. Basically I got out more often, listened to my friends' philosophies more rather than my own (it pays to not be full of oneself 24/7), fell in love, got into cognac, Onyx cigars, Caribbean cuisine (cooking it as well as eating it), Ethiopian dinners out, and Ayn Rand (worst case scenario), and moved to another city, got my heart violently broken, became sick, witnessed the death of my beloved Siamese cat, got fired from my job, moved back, and picked up from there.

At 23 I wanted to change the world. At 37 I have created, through blood, sweat, and tears, my own formidable world. This is what the university can never teach you.

EDIT: The point of this is that I avoided eating away at myself in a vacuum, and practically forced myself to live out loud. What happened was far worse than I imagined, but at least I wasn't wasting away under my bed.

[twifkak]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

EDIT: The point of this is that I avoided eating away at myself in a vacuum, and practically forced myself to live out loud. What happened was far worse than I imagined, but at least I wasn't wasting away under my bed.

That's good advice, but I'm not really one to take others' words on that kind of advice, and have had to find that out for myself. I suspect Kingz is the same way, but I guess I should've said more than, "Don't listen to him." edit: Also, I don't think it's fair to imply that his thinking is completely worthless (let alone detrimental). It's the lack of balance that's at issue.

OK, so I'm derailing this thread, and will post another short entry later in an attempt to rerail it.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Meh, I need to post my entry too, but it ain't lunch hour yet .

[Kingzjester]

You're wrong Trep. I am not much like you. I am not in the least susceptible to cognac, Onyx cigars, Caribbean and Ethiopian food, the opinions of others, and heartbreak. I am rather cold, curt and reserved, I don't trust my feelings and I am thoroughly misanthropic - Molière wrote about me. I don't get swept off my feet, I don't get deep into relationships that won't go anywhere, I don't get connected with people who are harmful for me, and I can identify rotten people after a short conversation. It would be nice to change the world, but I am perfectly aware that I would have to expend about 80% of its population in the process - for which I am ready. I would also have to be powerful - which I am not.

I just want to be independent, I don't want to be told what to do or what to think, I want to live outside of the platonic cave without the array of self-righteous people telling me I am wrong to be out there, that I should be more like them, that I should face the wall like everybody else. I don't want the throng of bland lamers from an art class to attack me in unison because I say what I think without much pomp, ceremony, or concern for others' feelings - I wouldn't mind it if they were reasonable in their attacks, but they seldom are. They just attack me like a flock of leukocytes...

I don't know how to address my need for my art to be useful... It has to serve some purpose... and yet not have a message. Art that has a message tends to be crappy art... unless the message pisses the lamers off. I am too damn general.

BTW, Tom, that was beautiful.

[James]

for all diary entries, thoughts, musings hopes and dreams - go here - http://aranolorion.deviantart.com/

[twifkak]

Kingz... You act as if being told and nudged and suggested at means that you're being brainwashed. I don't think that's true, and the fact that you're able to talk about it means you have at least semblance of individuality, even if you're "programmed" to Rage Against the Machine. Besides, individuality is not merit in itself.

And the "I don't get connected with people who are harmful for me" attitude is one I'm quite familiar with, and not necessarily as healthy as it sounds. Sometimes it means you're letting things harm you without realizing it (kinda like me not running a virus scanner because I think I know what I'm doing -- 'll burn me in the ass eventually), and sometimes it means you're cutting off potentially valuable assets on the basis that they have the potential to be harmful. It's impossible to stop thinking, but I might suggest to get a little less "paradigm-based" about your thinking.

(How'd I do? )

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Kingzjester

I just want to be independent.....

Isn't that what I just told you about myself, Mr. Agony? Go live a life of incessant silent rebellion and perpetual middlefingerisms for ten years as I did and then come back and tell me I'm wrong. The details are not what's important, or are you purposely distracting yourself from truths by focusing on the details? During all that span of time I lived my life on my own terms and enjoyed it and suffered from it and actually nearly died because of it, all while faithfully recording it in my diary, expressing it in my artmaking, staying true to it. All this time very few people understood me, least of all my family:



I never swallowed everything I was told, I was never saved in church, I never watch TV and buy the newest panacea. I don't need dead philosophers telling me what's good and not when I've found out first hand on my own. Even Plato had to stop thinking every now and then just to go f@#k little greek boys.

Wanna know what my problem is? I listen to myself too deeply, to faithfully. That's what 'they' insinuate. They use 'their criteria' when judging me, they use 'their logic' when trying to explain me, they use 'their marketing tools' when they become my apologist. I have nothing to be sorry for. And I have the scars to prove that.

[Royal Fool]

Dear Diary,

Today was a boring and useless day like so many others that came before it. I had an art class that's actually about nothing more than cutting out a sheet of paper in various shapes and pasting it on another sheet of paper. Utterly pointless. And the teacher also talks and moves horribly slow, almost as if he overdozed on his medication.

I think a lot. Hard to put into words, especially when it's not my first language. (Although English kinda is, considering how I've been heavily exposed to it since I was 5 years old) I think about the mortality of others and myself, and just how pitiful we all are. I'm usually very moody, which might be the reason people avoid me. I'd get out more, but I don't have any real-life friends anymore (My only 'friend' left me because I had other plans and couldn't be at his graduation, so he decided to shut me out forever), and I don't do parties. I'm very shy so I don't talk to people I'd like to know better, and then before I know it they're gone again.

I want to get a drivers license, but I have this weird phobia; I always think I will have an accident, which hastily discourages me from getting one.

I despise people that can't show respect or manners to others. I also hate it when people talk when they really should just shut up. This world is full of pompous know-it-alls. I know stuff, but I rarely showcase it to total strangers just to draw attention to myself.

Now that I read over this stuff that I wrote, it doesn't sound all that important or interesting. So I'll just stop here.

[twifkak]

Uninteresting anecdote time: I had one thing to do today. Actually, it was assigned late yesterday, but I decided I'd slack off and finish it early the next day.

Well, I got in late, took awhile to wake up, and then did it in about 30 minutes. I went to hand it to the bossman, but he wasn't there. I decided to wait to try again, 'cause it was getting close to lunch, my boss's meetings are generally long, and my little lunch group doesn't wait. After lunch, I noticed that I completely missed half of the task, so I went and did that. Probably took 15 minutes. I went to his office, and he wasn't there, so I went back and sat at my desk. At around 2PM I remember that I have a job outside of the forums, and so I try once more. Not there, but at this point, I start avoiding it, because it's getting late in the day and I don't want to look like I've been procrastinating (which I have, of course -- this is boring 5h17 they give me). So now I'm stuck in this endless cylce thing. He's off work now, so that means I have to wait until tomorrow.

And I'm not much more productive outside of work, scarily.

[Garyos]

Dear Diary

It's past midnight, and I'm sitting in my room in front of my computer. Which I do most of the time.

I'll be turning 18 in 18 days, I've got half a year left of school, and the world ahead of me. I imagine that I've got the talent and the brains to accomplish pretty much anything I want to do with my life (whatever THAT is. This is complicated.)

The big problem is that I can also see myself one year in the future, (or three years, for that matter,) sitting in the same room, in front of the same computer, and NOT MINDING IT AT ALL. Which isn't really a problem for me. Maybe. Fuck.


(NOTE: I'm NOT depressed or anything like that. Just frustrated with myself.)

[Kingzjester]

Originally Posted by twifkak

Kingz... You act as if being told and nudged and suggested at means that you're being brainwashed. I don't think that's true, and the fact that you're able to talk about it means you have at least semblance of individuality, even if you're "programmed" to Rage Against the Machine. Besides, individuality is not merit in itself.

I know a whole lot of people who get ultimatums from their parents in matter of behavior, church-going, manner of thinking - you need to have a very strong cerebral cortex to resist that sort of 'nudging' and 'suggesting'. Fortunately I don't get that from my folks, but I do get it from pretty much everyone else. Why are people bothered by my refusal to abide by their rules? Just let me be. I don't care about their decorum, why should they want me to behave in any particular way? Oh, and let's not talk about 'individuality' - we'll start sounding like some Disney movie from hell. The second part of what you said I can't understand. If the girl I am dating is a leech, uses me, and such, I will flip her off - even if I love her. I've done it. Still bothers me at times. Same is true with 'friends'.

Paradigms are cool, man, don't shun paradigms.

Trep: Mr. Agony is too fucked up a label for me, dude. I don't agonize over anything.

So you're saying I am wrong to want to be left alone to my own devices and my own thoughts? That I should somehow learn to appreciate the idiots for their brilliant idiocy and learn to coexist? Or are you saying that I should stop thinking and 'just do it' - whatever 'it' may be? 'It' means relax, perhaps? Or should I form my own little circle and ignore those outside it? Perhaps you're saying that silent rebellion is wrong?

I have no clue what you're saying. Your point really has nothing to do with the whole panharangue that started this; it was an informative pamphlet, rather than a statement of planned action. I ultimately don't want to change the world. I am perfectly aware that the world is comprised of a bunch of idiots immune to reason. That is why, to change the world, I would need to slaughter most of them. Since that is very implausible, I have settled on giving up on the masses. Fuck them. They could at least be grateful to my good will (i.e. me sparing their lives), and leave me and my homies alone.