i look around, i look around. i see a lot of new faces.

[laughter]

shut up! which means a lot of you have been breakin the first two rules of fight club. man, i see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. i see all this potential, and i see it squandered. god damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit that we don't need. we're the middle children of history, man: no purpose or place. we have no great war, no great depression. our great war is a spiritual war. our great depression is our lives. we've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. but we won't; and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very, very pissed off.

like half your mouth got taken out.

i never really had a problem because of leaving
but everything reminds me of him this evening

so if i seem a little out of it, sorry
but why should i lie?
everything reminds me of her

the spin of the earth impaled a silhouette of the sun on the steeple
and i got to hear the same sermon all the time now from you people
why are you staring into outer space, crying?
just because you came across it, and lost it

everything reminds me of her
everything reminds me of her
everything reminds me of her



elliott smith - everything reminds me of her, my song of the day.

and again, for possibly the thousandth time:
yokwe, big nate. amo te.

can God make a rock so big, that even he can't lift it? … what if that's the wrong question? i wonder if the right question is, can God create a puzzle so difficult, a riddle so complex, that even he can't solve it? what if that's us? maybe a problem like this is God's way of doing to us a little of what we do to him.

a: everything in moderation.

b: except moderation itself.

a: would that be meta-moderation?

Thank Heaven! the crisis—
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length—
But no matter!—I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead—
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

[...]
(edgar allan poe, 'for annie')


unlike some certain lucky/skilled people i know, the results for me are in the air. i'll certainly survive failure, should it come to that; we're nothing if not utterly adaptable. what i might not survive is the interminable six- to eight-week waiting period between being examined and receiving the results. they'll arrive just in time for the christmas season to start getting really, really annoying (i.e. still weeks before christmas actually arrives), so the other thing i might not survive is having to divulge the results (and, by extension, having to explain just what in the hell an actuary does, for the n-thousandth time) to each family member i have. at least twice each.


downers:
fog
sinuses
actual downers

uppers:
kleenex
firefly
invader zim
plastic superheroes

(TED your once-proud phoenix will tremble before the onslaught of my shiny new veteran hypersonic superman and kingdom come shazam!, she would do well to turn tail and run)

(with respect to the preceding entry)

if they mess with us
if we think they might mess with us
if we say they might mess with us
if we think we need a war
we need a war

(fischerspooner)