Stocking Stuffer

The ducks don't care that it's Christmas. They still smell like shit, and they will still bite each other to get to your flecks of Wonder bread.

I write from a MacBook, my head spinning from the distinct feeling of having suddenly crashed into an alternate universe; I am at the mercy of the wondrous image of outer space that lines my Desktop. I scoured my entire room just to give this beautiful machine a home on my desk. My computer knows everything. I hear my Spanish teacher say "sublime", soo-blee-meh. Hard work good, and hard work fine, but first take care of head.

0400

I don't know how people will define me. Maybe it'll be by the rug burn I gave myself when I acted big, or by the fact that I have my dad's complexion. Maybe people will put me in the dictionary because I like Christmas, and I bruise easily, and I like untangling yarn and rolling it into balls, and I don't know how to get what I want. Maybe they'll flip to page 220 and remember that the lines that end the chapter are possibly my favorites.

Diane stopped me at the door and said, "Since I can't seem to find a way to love you, let me give you the closest chemical equivalent."

She handed me a sandwich bag containing one hit of ecstasy.

This was a painful thing to hear, but it was mostly just disenchanting. I spent the subway ride home wondering if Diane had rehearsed that line. I mean, who says things like that in real life? It almost seemed like she said it on purpose, just so I'd have something interesting to write about at a later date.

Three weeks later, I took that ecstasy at the Bronx Zoo. It didn't do anything to me. The tigers still looked like tigers. But I was back in love with Diane.

Fresh!

Comfortable silences. The movie was like toothpaste, yes; I'm bleeding at the gums because I am right.

Second Nature

I forget sometimes, like trying to remember what the top story of a skyscraper looks like. But I think about looking up into his face in the shower and my muscles part and smile, my stiff spine curls and smiles. I want to get so high that I can pretend I don't exist, floating over a smile like a worn picket fence. I smile like a girlfriend in the mirror, and I spill tea on myself as my house lifts from the ground, hovering, threatening to fly.

So Long Told of the Night So Cold

It is odds and ends that are keeping me warm now: my brother's sweatshirt, a leopard-print blanket, a sunflower barrette my mother threw away. My dog keeps his nose firmly pressed to the dotted line that leads him in beelines. The night is hollowly gothic, dramatically angular, rendered in shades of purple and yellow.

He stops. "This is the place," my dog says, and he definitively shits in a small heap. Wiping his feet briskly, he harmonizes with my blood. The dotted line, weaving between the bricks of the driveway, ends on the doorstep. The front door is unlocked, and everyone who passes through it is going to sleep but me.

Memo on the Elevator

I've been very good. I've been soaking my toothbrush and tongue scraper in hydrogen peroxide and water every night... shit, I've been scraping my tongue.

I deserve this.

Somewhere a King Has No Wife

"If I was painfully honest, I'd come out as bisexual," she said.

I put down my spoon. "Really," I said.

"Oh, don't look so shocked," she said dismissively, oblivious to the difference between shock and surprise. "I like men the most, but I've always been attracted to women." She reached for the pepper shaker and seasoned her salad heavily.

"But if I came out," she continued, "I'd have to change my Facebook. Then I'd be one of those bi girls that everyone hates, and my Catholic-school friends wouldn't speak to me. Also, women might hit on me, and I don't want that."

She chewed pensively, her eyes in zero gravity.

"So it's a good thing you're a fucking liar," I said.

"Yes," she said, spearing a leaf of spinach with her fork, "it's a good thing I'm a fucking liar."

"Your nose is in my soup," I said.

She tilted her head, and seventeen inches away, my meal was liberated.

Johanna

Inexplicably she is old, with skin like honey leather.

"Which one do you regret the most?" I ask.

She responds with silence. I can see her chewing her bottom lip.

"That one?" I suggest, pointing at a skull rendered in ghastly detail on the curve of her waist.

"Nah, I really like that one," she says in a hickory-smoked voice. She thinks or continues to marinate; I can't tell. Then she lifts a stubby finger and places it accusingly on the inside of her wrist.

"This one," she says, and I notice the outline of a circle near her fingertip.

"Why?" I ask.

"I got it to remind me of infinity. I don't like it now. I don't believe in that shit anymore."

This is what I like about her, how she wheezes harmonica through her teeth.

Debaser

Today smelt of Palmolive and darkness. Today sounded like the Pixies.

Here is today:
It is 6:00, 8:00 dark, quiet. A guy my age walks up to the counter. He looks familiar, with chin-length hair, wideset eyes, a beaky nose and a lack of forehead. I'm surprised when he speaks without a Slavic accent.

"Just black tea, please," he says.
"Which type?" I ask.
"I don't know, black."
"We have Chai and English Breakfast in bags."
"English Breakfast, then."
I grab two teabags and start assembling the drink on the counter.
"Do you go to Paly?" he asks. "I think you were in my math class last year."
I squint and place his face.
"Algebra 2, Hawkins?" he follows up.
"Yeah!" I say. "That's right." I grab the cup to fill it, getting another look at him. "Do you still go to Paly?" I ask. "I don't think I see you around much."
He nods. "But I was only here one semester last year."
"Oh, okay." Boiling water and a lid on top, on the counter et voila. He pays; we exchange "See ya"s. I take fifty trips outside to bring out boxes and every time I see him sitting there, smoking and sipping.

Weeds and Roots

A creative dry spell. My eyes feel like milky marbles. There is probably something better than sitting in front of the computer retracing my tracks on Facebook.

Here is today:
I plunge a knife into a tub of cream cheese and bring it back up with a big hefty glob. The more that I look at this glob, the more I understand how badly I want to fling it at something.
Slightly Stoopid is playing and he has decided to snap to the beat.
"Stop snapping," I say.
He continues.
"If you don't stop snapping, I'm going to glob you with cream cheese." Now I have a reason.
He keeps snapping. I'm excited.
"I'll do it," I say.
A few snaps later, I flick my wrist and the glob flies solidly and does something on his shirt, plops, glops, blops, plobs; onomatopoeia escapes me. He exclaims indignantly and tries to wipe it off, eventually making the mess three times worse.
"Let me," I offer. I wet a paper towel and take my time.

Bad
Dirty hair
Zits
Bad clothes
Feeling pretentious
Feeling annoying
Having talked an inordinate amount
Unproductivity (sometimes)

Good
Waking up just before the alarm goes off
Nooks
Honest work for honest pay
Cleanliness

Definition Expansion

Today I encountered an interesting paradox: my day was definitionally bad, but the vibes were good.

1. It is possible to have a bad day with good vibes.
2. However, due to the nature of bad vibes, it is significantly more difficult to have a good day with bad vibes.
3. Bad vibes are worse than a bad day.

Unwrapped

It's Patronus in the air. You wish your heart could beat like this, because they're waving wands up there, spinning in cauldrons with spells in their lungs.

It's run and chase, cause and effect, hide and seek, smiling and sorrow. She tickles her bass and it laughs softly, deeply... underground, through the earth, deeply, anthropologizing, not apologizing, deeply. Jazz gibberish comes from rawness, a geyser, striking oil. Hers is like ribbon, his is like raindrops.

Every blood's beat is a gift to you. You can't ask if you want to know... sorry... don't be.

Winner Time Super Glory Mecha Battle

Team A
Werewolf pirates *
Zombie bassists
10,000 clones of Art Garfunkel
Angry lesbian witches
Razor worms
Parasitic ball of cotton candy
A 14-year-old boy named Thomas who can magically produce Jello at will
The common cold
The Ministry of Magic
My dad
Windex

Team B
Vampire ninjas *
Banshee drag queens
Catholic saints on Harleys
Flesh-eating ants
J-Pop Transformers
30-foot-tall cock and balls
The San Francisco Symphony
Everyone at Lovefest
10 tons of kelp
Skeletons with nunchucks
Acid rainstorms

* Herein lies the Beef

READY
FIGHT

TESS IN THE POURING RAIN

It's indulgent self-abuse and a 20-dollar skirt. It's yellow and spicy and it's like laying on the carpet and looking up. It's eating white pills and white food, soothing. It's being 50 feet tall and gliding with each foot on parallel railroads.

It's living in my frontal lobe. I imagine my brain, swollen with pain.

Because

I woke up gently five minutes before my alarm went off. I wrote down a strange quote from my dream, put a raincoat on and went into the rain and the dark at 6:30 to walk a geriatric husky that does not belong to me, listening to Abbey Road. These good vibes are very persistent.

House

It's very easy to kill. Where I am now, I could kill myself or my little brother without much difficulty. As humans are usually tempted by what's easy, it's surprising that murder doesn't happen more often.

I Love You

How good can they be, that they find the black veins wrapped around my spine? That they hook their nails under my ribs and take me swimming in whiskey? How good can they be?

The Next Generation

I can't tell if they think what they do is normal or not. These Trekkies, zipping into their uniforms, gluing on their Latex, painting on their makeup, practicing their Klingon.

The video is, predictably, horrifying. I never needed to know about the Star Trek-themed dentistry clinic, but the video takes me there with a pointed finger. This is a study of sociology, a trip to the zoo.

A man's face fills the screen. A dark shock of fake curls explodes from his scalp, and his magenta-smeared lips frame yellowed teeth forsaken by orthrodonture. He explains his costume: he is dressed not as the astronaut that appeared briefly in a single episode, but that astronaut's wife.

Studying his fat features, I realize he looks vaguely like the man who was playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter the last time I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I tell myself I really shouldn't be surprised.

Tick

Ohh, sixteen is dangerous. I can imagine the hormones cackling and riding a hellhorse, whipping it with a cat o' nine tails.

I'm thinking sex, thinking sex, thinking sex sex sex. I'm not thinking sleazy sex; I'm thinking punk sex, crazy yeah yeah yeah sex, flesh-ripping. I'm thinking Karen O's noises and bright colors.

Hey, eCreeps. Why don't you find me and fuck me?

Barbed Wire Floss Hour

I want someone to eat out of my hand. I would like to put a long nail between your eyes and hang you on my wall. I want to flirt with imperfection, make out with it. I'm gobbling up diamonds of things that I don't understand, but that understand me.

I should have bought the 5-buck labelmaker I saw. I need labels, the short strips of thick blue tape that arrange things in a single-file line for execution. I need names. Someone get me names.

Why So Weary

September feels old even when it's new. There's something lavender-colored about it, like worn calico cloth.

Honestly, September, I'm sorry. Is there something I'm missing?

Let's Harmonize on the "Mmmmm"s

I'm almost very proud of this one trait I have. "Vibes" is the most simple, ridiculous, stupidly stoned way to describe these feelings that I detect so clearly, but lo! my Birkenstocks give me good vibrations, and eating processed cheese gives me bad vibrations. It's unequivocal.

Of course, this sense of "good" that's formed is exactly like "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. There's the looming sense that it's so stupid as to be really excellent, but there's also the possibility that it could simply be epic, excellent of its own accord. Mmm, bop-bop.

Climaxxx

Something Great is imminent. I feel like a great luminescent moon is shining somewhere in my life and its light is getting brighter as I approach it.

I feel like loose ends will be tied or trimmed. I feel like everything will drop into place and make sense. I feel strength and success. The moon shines from January; I can feel all that white light beaming from the middle of my senior year.

I'm more excited than I could probably ever articulate appropriately.

The bottom... feels So much better than the top.

Loop-de-loop and nauseous curve;
roller coaster, never tamed.
Your feet tell tales of twisted nerve;
Reflexology, here to serve.
Sever the legs that made you lame,
murder the damsel of idiot's fame.

Super Sweet

Sixteen is as good as childhood gets, I suppose. Sixteen is nice when you're fifteen, but I haven't been fifteen in a long time. Sixteen is too little too late.

Driving Kills Everybody

Driver's education programs are here to tell you that you are stupid and that everything you could possibly do in a car is dangerous.


On that note, I am proud to launch my new anti-drug campaign, which I owe entirely to my recent education.

Trypanophobia (Requiem)

I'm looking at the crooks of my elbows and I'm building my life around my phobia and it's going to be dandy.

I will never do heroin.
I will never develop diabetes.
I'm going to pass up vaccines and blood tests but that's all right because I will never be sick, ever.

You're not putting anything into my veins. I'm running away from my fears and I'm taking my veins with me and why don't you just fucking try to catch me.

As If The Sun Shone Out Her Arse

I watch stupid movies, and what hits me like a splinter every time is how passionate the characters are. It's not even romantic passion rather than passion for something, the passion that drives their life, that they'll leap over any obstacle to follow.

I can't find that anywhere. The best candidate for my passion would be writing, but writing has always been like pooping for me. I get really agitated when I can't write, but otherwise it's just something that happens naturally.

My life is really great, but I should try to fall in love before I die.

Hermaphrodite

My friend decreed that Bend It Like Beckham is the quintessential chick flick. I disagreed with him, having Legally Blonde in mind, but almost revoked that statement after having watched it again last night. It was somewhere between getting all teary when Jess's dad defended her dreams and swooning when she and the coach finally kissed that I began to doubt myself.

And yet I found myself getting more high with each gunshot and explosion in Live Free or Die Hard, overwhelmed by euphoric bliss when a police car and helicopter collided in midair.

I remember an episode of House with someone like me on it. House could fix me if I wanted him to.

Nine at Night

She is everything I am not, and she is about to beat me at canasta.

She rearranges her cards and prepares for my execution, looking up from her hand at my apprehensive face. "Sorry," she says, "but I'm too drunk not to smile," and she puts on a small, perfectly satisfied smile.

"How much have you had to drink? Like, how many shots?" I ask.

She lets out an exhale and puts down her cards.
"Well," she says, looking up as she thinks, "I had a G and T with dinner..." She puts up two fingers.
"...wine..." Three fingers.
"...a margarita..." Four fingers.
"...wait, two margaritas..." Five fingers.
"...I think I took a vodka shot at some point..."Six fingers.
"...more wine..." Seven fingers.
"...and then this," she says, gesturing to her drink on the table, "is another G and T."
She looks down at her fingers and smiles a different smile. "Nine shots," she says, looking back up at me, and picks her hand back up.

What I know about nine shots is kissing my best friend and puking twice into a Tupperware. I give up trying to calculate how many points are counting against me as I watch her deftly begin to lay down her cards.

She shows me red canastas, nary a wild card in sight, pure and true.

There You Go

I'm kind of drunk now and I was high earlier and my teenage summer is grand, rich, teeming with possibility.

I'm putting a terrible metaphor for why I've never liked alcohol together in my head. I've always felt like being high on weed was like growing a pair of weak stubby wings, whereas being drunk is like falling into a hole. I'm guessing now that what matters is what you find in the hole.

My Little Dream Book is Put to the Test

J.D. and Elliot of Scrubs sit, fully clothed in doctors' garb, on my toilet. They are talking.

J.D. then fiddles with his nether regions for a bit before relinquishing a bloody tampon. He holds it up by its tail to examine it. Two drops of brownish blood fall onto the linoleum tiles.

Elliot wrinkles her nose. "Gross," she says.

J.D. laughs. "Yeah," he says, and puts it in the toilet.

After they have left, a hand wipes away the blood on the floor with toilet paper.

Love Sweet Love

The movie left me sick, my flesh saturated with disease. It was sweet like marshmallow and honey sandwiches, like brown sugar milkshakes, like cotton candy topped with chocolate syrup; it left me staring into the eyes of a diabetic coma.

Sugar is like that. You will crave it and fill yourself to the brim with it again and again until you're left with your insides rotting, obese and wondering how all that ugliness fit under your skin.

Diabetics have to wear special shoes; they have to accomodate their disease up from the very soles of their feet.

Hook

I spent a couple of hours making a bag today and it looks like shit. That's what amazes me about crafting; no matter how long you spend making something, it always has the potential to look like shit.

I had never appreciated Pulp Fiction more than when I watched it today. There were some points at which I was overwhelmed by its genius (one of these was not when someone said two different things during two different scenes featuring the same event).

Can you imagine Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in high school?
God, I bet they were nerdy.

Here is a poem that could very easily be about a closeted gay relationship, but isn't.

I imagined summer:
drawing our initials in wet cement,
flowers in pinks and yellows and reds

but the harsh light of the sun still offends, so we
sit and grow mold in the shadows,
watching our reflections in each other’s eyes

he took my hand and it was
chivalry,
formality

Big Fuckin' Deal

You see a lot of interesting people at BFD. Pierced people, dyed people, naive people, jaded people, old people, fat people sitting and smoking on the lawn with their bellies in their laps. However, you see the most of people in tight pants. I saw tight pants in a rainbow of colors, a whole scale of rips and tears.

I laid in the grass amidst plastic cups and wrappers and Bacardi bottles and bottles filled with cigarette butts, and I remember thinking, looking up into the stars while Social Distortion played: "This is fun, but also kind of horrifying."

Reflex

The end is near. The end of an era, of infinite time under constant supervision. Finity is approaching.

It's not approaching me, but it's descending on people one year older than me and I can see it swallow them from here. It envelops them in a smoky vortex and casts a glance to me out the corner of its eye.

Hey, it says to me, smiling a little.
You like this?
This will happen to you soon.

NBP To You From Me, <3

the future is white bright and loud:
im strting 2-b smthrd, stop me before I become
my mother, I find comfort in
cold cookies/
warm wombs

pastries...
good people, I guess,
climb to the top of the cake make
snow angels in the vanilla frosting.
I know we wouldn't. my brother is killing
my mother, I find comfort in
cold cookies/
warm wombs

Oh, Me

Walking the Bay to Breakers somewhat restored my faith in humanity. The fact that thousands of people could all be so happy together was such a nice surprise. Everyone was having fun and getting along with one another; it was wonderful.

Then someone stole my bike today and my faith in humanity went down the crapper.

Stealing from someone can only ever be malicious or grossly inconsiderate. What an awful thing to do.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I am a cat person. Dogs do not make sense to me. I understand cats; they make sense to me. Crocheting also makes sense to me. I was meant to be an old maid from the minute I was born.

I dislike confronting physics material that I don't understand. I understand alcohol somewhat; I understand weed significantly more. My point being: The extent to which I like something is directly proportional to how much I understand it.

But let me introduce the contrary. Take, for example, the White Stripes. I barely understand the White Stripes, and yet I like them very much.

So now I have no point whatsoever.

I won a Spanish award today.

Gin and Gin

The reunions of my mother's family have predominantly involved cold beaches and card games and alcohol. This one was no exception.

My grandparents had been told of one of their closest friend's death the morning of the day we arrived, so my grandma went through crying spells and my grandpa went on a bender.

"I've had too much to drink, Bugsy," he said, using his pet name for me and my mother. He put an arm around my shoulder.

"I lost my best friend in the world today," he said with new treble in his voice. He looked down at me. "You knew Sarky," he distantly said.

I did not know Sarky. I nodded.

He looked back ahead of him, eyes glassy. "But tomorrow's a new day," he said flatly. He took a slug of his gin and set it on the counter.

"C'mere, Ivy," he said, motioning to my cousin. He wrapped his arm around her and squeezed us tightly, looking down at us. "I think I have the prettiest granddaughters in the world."

Apple?

There is absolutely nothing else to be said about the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. Pirates 3 was great in every way that it should have been great. I really don't care about what made it bad. It's wonderfully simple.

Keith Richards is indisputably the coolest man I can think of; seeing him as a pirate was overwhelmingly cool. I was drowning in cool, choking on the cool filling up my lungs. You must be ready.

While I was in the theater, I got this strange feeling, like a pining to go on a date. A movie date - I wanted to do the whole awkward progression into contact and sheepish smiles and grabbing during scary parts and kissing. It was spontaneous and unwarranted, interrupting my normal craving for a mature relationship.

I wonder if I've been wasting my high-school years. Maybe all this time, I should have been making out with people I hardly knew while zombies sought brains on the silver screen.

I think it's too late now.

Free Spin

Finking about fings, but not actually doing those fings.

My grandparents are here. When my grandparents come, we play a lot of card games and my grandpa watches a lot of TV and my grandma cleans everything. I realize that I really don't identify with my grandparents at all, which is understandable but a little sad.

Here is a poem. It's not about me, because I don't like it when anyone calls me on the telephone.

I like it when you call me on the telephone;
I'll make all these colors in your voice my own, and
my heart is only small, like a berry not quite ripe,
but we could share it if you'd like

Q: Are plantar warts cool?
A: No.

Here We Go (Or Not)

I would rather do many things than fill out my senior profile right now. I can't even put a pen to it. I'm worried I'll break out in a rash if I even try to squeeze myself into the lines they've provided for me.

Q: Would it be good to find the peer review that is vital to a decent recommendation letter from my advisor?
A: Yes.

Gray Matter

I can imagine my brain in my head right now, red and ropy like scar tissue or overchewed gum. My brother dicked around with my Magnetic Poetry box and I nearly blew out the circuiting in my brain with panic sweat. I'm so exhausted.

Jesus. I just looked at a picture of one of my old schoolmates and he looked like a smoky old movie star. It was his jawline and his suitjacket, both so sharp. I feel like I just got spun around in my chair really fast. It took me so off guard.

Panic So Charming, What the Fuck Style

I'm losing my shit. I'm awaiting an in-class essay tomorrow like I was going to have my leg removed by axe 1/4" at a time. I'm running away from homework assignments like they were scorpions.

Watch me eat shit and lose straight As in these last four weeks. Watch it happen.

Moo

I worry that I might be the worst type of vegetarian, the one without any sort of drive or principle. I stopped eating meat some two years ago because I don't really like meat. I dislike it because of what makes it obvious that it's flesh - gristle, bones, etc. - and I know that eating animals is essentially unethical, but I haven't been able to get myself to believe it yet. I probably wouldn't feel any moral repercussions in eating a thick hamburger right now, even as its pink juices flowed down my chin.

I've stranded myself here on the Great Cosmic Boca Burger with no purpose. I feel like a tool.

We the Beige

there must be a flaw in the simple life,
he said, like falling on your own knife
or something like that -

he is using my tweezers to pry the safety off of his lighter and we are rebels,
daredevils; we are dangerous.

Negative Nancy

One night, I was trying to fall asleep to no avail. I lay in bed for a long time before sitting up suddenly, turning on the light and writing down a list of the things I hate. I went right to sleep afterwards. I figured any blog is incomplete without a list of things that the blogger hates.

1. Chalkboards
2. Pigeons
3. The smell of tar
4. Yearbook pictures
5. Licorice-flavored jellybeans
6. People reading over my shoulder
7. Chapstick that's been rolled out of its tube a lot
8. Humans
9. Awful grammar
10. Fluorescent lights
11. The mega-player-hater who has taken the time to remove all the flyers publicizing a tiny shitty literary magazine
12. Mayonnaise
13. Dry skin
14. High-schoolers wearing college sweatshirts
15. Those painful zits that lurk under your skin
16. Referring to someone as "we" (e.g. "Well, how are we doing today?")
17. Wide-ruled binder paper
18. Being interrupted while in the shower

Check back for updates if you actually care about what I hate.

No More Acid for the Japanese

I'm just sitting here with my PS2 controller, watching my video game alter ego roll over canned coffees and organ monkeys and toilet paper and croissants and lipsticks and superglue and water pistols and mah-jongg pieces and mice and newspapers and bottles of detergent, and in the back of my head, like a dull pulse, is a constant "What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck."

The game is called Katamari Damacy and it's epic. It's a monument in the history of nonsense, a glorious nod to lysergic acid diethylamide, and it's probably nothing else.

Here is its premise.

You are the son of the King of the Cosmos (let's not even get into how he's dressed). This King has managed to knock all of the stars out of the sky, and you need to replace them. You do this by rolling up stuff with a sticky ball, which the King then shoots into the sky.

That's it, and it's baffling me.

My problem is that I can't really believe that the game exists. The nonsense is astronomical (no bad pun intended) and I can't believe that it could ever be harnessed, coming to life in a little disc. It's making my eyes cross.

I'm about to roll down the biggest fucking pants in the universe with my little sticky psychedelic crisis, and all I can do is hope that, against all odds, it doesn't snowball.

Polar Bear on the Rocks

It's hot. No, it's fucking hot.
It's May and this doesn't feel right.

I'm waiting for my cat to die. I'm waiting for the heat to choke her, to cook her little body, for her breath to stop rising and falling underneath her black fur.

It's too hot.

Section 1

The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can develop and express ideas within the time it takes some people to poop. You should, therefore, take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely.

Assignment: Does human life have any significance on a cosmic or metaphysical scale? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this gigantically complicated issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

Men of the Hour

They were great, but noticeably unanimated (or just overshadowed in that department by Be Your Own Pet).

The British fog was so thick I couldn't understand a word the lead said.

Love it.

I Can Almost Feel My Nerves Fraying

Over the course of my life, my inner gears have become tightly wound to the point of my teetering on the brink of total malfunction. Two friends and I had some drinks at my house Friday, and not even my Salty Dog (grapefruit juice and vodka, in a glass with a salted rim) could loosen the knot of my paranoia. I predict that I'm either going to leash out and become a total menace the instant I leave home, or I'm going to die of high blood pressure before I turn sixteen.

On an unrelated note, we proceeded to see 300 tipsy, which was a really excellent idea.

Greetings from the Coffin

I surprised myself by feeling exactly like a vampire today. I had this urge to slink into the dark, and I was starting to really enjoy the idea of sticking my teeth into someone's neck and sucking out their warm blood.

Blood blood blood. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Something in the way it flows beneath the skin.

Scissors

I trimmed my bangs unevenly. I did it hastily, with too much faith in my hair-cutting skills. I don't care too much, but my mom will. She has a reputation to uphold, I suspect.

Here's a dilemma I've been facing: so long as it's not life-threatening or crippling, I really don't think self-mutilation is all that heinous, and I feel like I'm missing something. A good friend revealed recently that she'd been tempted to cut herself, and I told her that to do so would be bad but I couldn't put my finger on the reason why. The best reason I could think of is that she'd regret the scars later.

At the ARC (a ca de mic re source cen ter), there is one nice ARC lady who is small and soft-spoken and has a quaint, notably eccentric sense of fashion. I remember once when she was looking for a test I had to take, her calico sleeve rode up and I saw the yellowy scars of violent cuts ravaging her forearm and thick on the inside of her elbow. It was fascinating.

Maybe I Need Glasses

No place ever seems the same to me. Somehow, the places I know acquire totally different atmospheres every time I visit them. Maybe I'm not seeing clearly. Maybe I have metaphorical cataracts.

For example, tonight, I feel like a stranger in my room and the rest of my house is flatly depressing. Just sitting here at my computer, I feel so out of place that my skin is prickling. I can't help but wonder if it's because I've just moved my computer into my room, and I haven't had my computer in my room since the ninth grade.

My only solution is to go to sleep and hope I wake up somewhere else.

Photogenia

I am ridiculously unphotogenic. I'm not unattractive; unfortunately, the way my life on film has been going, it seems as though history is going to remember me as a fat ho with a face like a stretched-out asshole.

I had a small breakdown on Sunday; I wrote pages of profane gibberish and destroyed a magic marker cap with my teeth. It was interesting but predictable.

I hope I don't become hateful and depressive. I have some depression running in my family.

The Representative of Generation iPod Speaks

My iTunes library somehow got wiped out, which has sent me into BLOOD-BOILING PANIC. It still exists on my iPod, but knowing I can't back it up makes me really jittery and motherly around my iPod. This worries me. I realize I would probably bite my own arm off if all of my music got lost, and I kind of feel like a crack baby.

Promenade

Prom was not lame.

That's a contradiction in terms. Prom is lame by definition; anything involving teenagers putting on formalwear and dancing badly can't be anything else.

Despite this, prom was actually a rather fun time. It was a sea of rented tuxes and jewel-colored polyester dresses and unflattering fits and rhinestones (I even saw two tiaras) and "Omigod you look fabulous"es and awkward chaperones and stupid dancing and cheesy photos, but it was, against any sort of logic, a rather fun time. The food and music and location were good, and it is pretty fun to do something over-the-top like prom with good friends. The glamour of such an indulgence is thrilling in a way that's kind of silly.

So long as you don't take it too seriously, there's fun to be had at prom, I discovered. That would be the key point to take away from this entry, by the way.

Hard Drive

My biggest fear, aside from mind-readers and syringes and being trapped in a cage with a big crazy bird, is that someone will examine my computer. I would forever regret someone discovering every inane detail I search on Google, all the pictures of people I don't know that I look at on Facebook, and especially all the words I look up in the dictionary. I use a lot of words that I don't know the exact meaning of, and I look them up compulsively later. It would be like exposing a big ruse.

"No," I'd plead. "I really am that smart. Please."

Woe, Woe, Woe is Me, Me, Me

I'm getting sick of my face. I can't find anything new about it, which is boring, and I get a little more pissed off whenever I see it. Oh god, prom pictures are going to kill me, with my stupid smiling face over and over and over again. Maybe I'll disfigure myself to ease my boredom.

I've also been hearing my name everywhere for a while. I hear Tess Tess Tess Tess Tess spiking people's conversation, popping out from corners and shadows. Tess the Paranoid Egomaniac... that's going to look great on my gravestone.

I realized recently that most of my thoughts aren't worth thinking, which was horribly depressing. My life seems hopeless right now - not particularly depressing, but hopeless. I feel like I'm swimming in milk.

This entry reminds me of a zit filled with shit.

Scene from a Bad Movie #1

My friend and I had met a friendly Muse fanatic at the concert, whom we were talking to when a tall asshole shoved his way in front of us.

"Dick," my friend muttered, rubbing the place on her arm that he had just elbowed.

"That's hard to do if you're not mean," I said; we were packt like sardines in a crushd tin box.

"Or if you don't have a great excuse," our new acquaintance added.

"Yeah... it probably helps to fake a terminal disease or something, like, 'Excuse me, I have cancer'," I said, laughing.

"Totally," the girl said, "You know, I did that when I actually had cancer, and no one believed me."

At this point, God could have either given up on his joke on me or melted me into the floor, but unfortunately, he did neither.

Bigger and Better Things

I went to a Muse concert with my friend yesterday. I'm not crazy about Muse, but my friend is and it was a good time just to see her spellbound by the music of her favorite band making the hem of her pants shake. They do play well live, though. They were spacey. The lead looked like an alien wearing the skin of an emo kid.

If you asked God, I'm sure he'd tell you that he made concerts and marijuana for each other. This was a concert I would have loved to be high at, but my friend is so chaste and opposed to drug use that I would have been disgusted with myself. It was her first concert, too - I don't mean to equate her to a child, but being high there would have been wrong for the same reasons.

I'm always impressed by how primal rock concerts are. The air is so thick with sex, drugs and rock that if you breathe it, you're almost sure to get pregnant with a little monster that makes you want to sweat and scream and trip and fuck. Then you're pushed back out into your stale life and the fetus hiding inside you dries up and dies quietly, fatally malnourished.

On a note that's only somewhat seperate: I want to drop acid, I want to drop acid, I want to drop acid.

Future Development

I had been meaning to see my first Woody Allen movie for a while, in a kind of halfhearted apathetic way. I was impressed when I did, both by its being better than I had expected and by its impossibility. The problem isn't in the premise, it's in the effortless replacement of a handsome, seductive character in the lead role with a scrawny, bespectacled, easily nauseated one. It's like a sloppy cut-and-paste job.

After thinking for a while, I realized that Woody Allen created a persona less of a single character than one of a couple: the inexplicable "Beauty and the Geek". He's done more for this relationship than any man or woman this Earth has ever seen, and by God, he's gotten away with it. I can't believe it.

Unfortunately for you, you knew all of this already and just wasted your time.

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

I would feel a lot better about busting my ass looking for the perfect shoes to match my prom dress if I wasn't so sure that prom was going to be stunningly lame. I'm sure that this's a conspiracy between my two X chromosomes to keep me scouring the corners of the earth until I find them. I should start looking under rocks.

The Wild and Wonderful World of Blogging

I am Tess and I now officially contribute to the b l o g s p h e r e. I'm sorry.

Journals are good for me to keep because otherwise all my ridiculous thoughts build up in my head like a swelling zit, which is a simile I'd rather not conclude for several reasons. A blog is a step up because I feel like someone is paying attention to my oozing, which I guess is kind of like extra-strength acne medication.

Proactiv for the soul. Whatever.

Let's see how long I stick to this. I suggest someone starts a bet.