a tree falling in the woods type conundrum

Is it more embarrassing to wear the same outfit to work twice in a row? Or is it more embarrassing for a person that they come in often enough to the restaurant to notice?

Not that I'm wearing the same thing twice......

a nervous tick motion of the head....to the left

Sometimes I really catch myself off guard with my level of immaturity. I had kind of a strange day today. Exam early in the morning after a night spent listening to a friend of mine lambaste me about my attachment to my relationship with N. Admittedly it was more interesting than import substitution industrialization. Possibly my level of maturity is directly correlated to the amount of sleep I get. I made a somewhat stupid comment on Stuart's facebook page about laughing at a student who got a bad mark on an essay - apparently he made her cry. I don't know, I guess it's just my inner asshole rearing her head.

Maybe it's because I myself got a really shitty mark on our last essay too. Been thinking about it a slight bit. Realizing that sometimes it's a better idea NOT to take essay advice from S. I took it for the politics essay too, and in retrospect every time he gives me essay advice I do badly - if anything it is a lesson to stick to my gut instinct when it comes to my own writing. Not that I would blame S at all. I had wanted to do additional research for the Che essay, but he kept telling me that Stuart said that apparently the material we already had was enough and that if I did more research I would get bogged down by other materials, and I went against my better judgement - possibly aided by the fact that a) I'm lazy b) I am having an incredibly hard time focusing lately. Lesson learned - I just still find it incredible that somebody would cry over a freaking mark - as if this had any bearing on who you are as a person. If anything it teaches you to do better next time. Will you remember it 10 years down the line when you're a slave to your children's diapers, etc? No - and this is why I reacted. I mean, Stuart can be very intimidating - I remember asking for an extension, and he replied "No" in a very stern voice, and I felt my cheeks grow red and was absolutely mortified and on the verge of tears. Then I sucked it up and realized that I should just get on with it already. It's not personal. Oh experience.

Dave Knox

http://www.daveknoxart.ca

This is my friend Dave's website, a calling card if you will. I've been a huge fan of him since I was fifteen years old and throughout the years we've had many an adventure together. His drawings have that spark, that crazy life like illusion where things or people jump off the page, and there's always a hint of mischievousness.

bloody sunday

Lazy Sunday my fucking ass. It's 5 in the morning and I'm still sitting here. Spent the night talking to H and listening to Louis C.K. when what I really should have been doing is this STUPID FUCKING ESSAY THAT I HATE. It is so incredibly frustrating, I was at Troy's house the other night trying to get it done and I got about a page and a half into it and then biked home because he was going to bed, and I so wasn't into that.

Men - the ones you're not attracted to think about you exclusively with their dicks and the ones you like are complete and utter cowards. Horseshit. I utterly despise these whingey cunts that seem to permeate my life. (whingey cunts c/o Damien, as if I could ever come up with something so heinously clever) And people wonder why I dislike socializing. Maybe I was never socialized properly as a child.

Back to the problem at hand. This bitch of an essay. I was saying to Troy, it's worse than childbirth is ever going to be, not that I'm itching for it. I get it. I'm an intelligent kid, I can write and be eloquent, but this essay really just has me down in the dumps. It was supposed to be handed in almost three weeks ago, and then Prof let me know I could hand it in this Friday as marks go in on Monday. So what do I do? I don't do it. I don't know why. If someone was sitting behind me with a desert eagle at my temple they would soon be guilty of murder. I am completely incapable of getting this done. So I'm sitting here trying, trying so hard and it's just the most frustrating thing ever. I'm tempted to take my laptop and throw it out my window. A window that will soon be lit up by dawn.

And for what? So that I can email this to Prof, and MAYBE if he's benevolent, MAYBE he'll accept it. And MAYBE I'll get a semi decent mark. Oh it's only worth 30% of the final grade.

What is wrong with me?

It's like some sort of intense fear of failure working against me, driving me towards it.

I've wasted enough time.

the divide

It is inherently frustrating to be the type of person that doesn't let others in easily. So to take initiative and step out of the comfort zone and open the inner social sanctum of my life to new people is more than difficult. It can be downright paralyzing. There's a certain back and forth. It depends on the person, sometimes it's easy, other times it can be downright hard. The worst is when the decision backfires, or feels like it has - to have misjudged the integrity of the subject. Self recrimination being a strong suit - never a good feeling.

New people are hard nuts to crack, half the time it doesn't seem worth it - until it does.

This is a complete juxtaposition to my relationship with H. One of the surprisingly healthier relationships in my life (yes friendship is a relationship). I find that invariably when I'm annoyed with something (or someone) I talk to H about it and get an incredibly simple yet wise answer. Not to mention the almost but not quite cringe worthy level of honesty. It's kind of a shame that neither of us have any sort of interest in each other in the long term, besides as friends. As Damien would say "the boy girl LEGO doesn't fit", except that it probably does, but it's a moot point.

Of note - Siberian Divide by Mastodon has a sequence that sounds like it's been lifted from 46&2 and it's the collaborative song of Mastodon and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Like a perfect mesh of the best worlds.

birthday

MJK b. April 17/1964.

Your voice makes me feel at home.

Octahedron

Release date: June 23/2009 - first single "Since We've Been Wrong".

Pure naked unadulterated want and happiness.

now get in the ground

Here laid to rest is our love ever longed....

Told K it was over today, she was happy for me. It's been long enough, you're being put in the ground for good, I hope. Something that was coincidentally celebrated with old man drinks and cake with fondant.

Been thinking about this epic epicry Adrian and I are embarking on in May at the Opera House. So many experiences there. Some of the best ones too. Seeing A Perfect Circle with Pigmy Love Circus, catching Danny Carey's drumstick. Danny Carey, other than Thomas Pridgen is the most impressively proficient drummer in the world. Possibly one of the best in history, other than Buddy Rich who was a Jazz legend. I just remember catching the drumstick and being completely ecstatic, then later on he came outside and was about seven feet tall and smelled really nice. It was surreal, here on a street in Toronto was the drummer from a band that has set the bar (for me) in excellence, consistency, creativity, and whatever else one would equate with being absolutely priceless. Seeing Tool for the first time in my life was completely indescribable, but I digress. My topic was the Opera House. This is also where I saw the band Ours, from New Jersey. I don't think they exist any more but their lead singer Jimmy Gnecco is surely doing solo work. His voice is incredibly strong and Jeff Buckley-ish but with its own inherent wonder.

Both of these concerts I went to with Karis - the Ours one was funny because I met this guy Tom who I completely didn't know did not like girls, but it was fun - he and this girl Lesia were from Brampton or something and he had this huge bag of fortune cookies and we just destroyed it - it was a great show and Jimmy Gnecco was about six inches away from my face. This is what I love about Toronto, you meet friendly people everywhere, and about the Opera House, it's completely intimate. At one point I was literally inches from Maynard James Keenan and James Iha, how amazing is that? Needless to say this Mastodon concert is something I will be looking forward to. Then there's Porcupine Tree in September, ah old British guys. Reminds me of when I went to see King Crimson at Massey Hall by myself.

Hm, I see a pattern emerging here - a progressive rock pattern.

Continuing in the vein of awesome I'm trying to figure out this trip I will be taking soon. I've hammered down what I should take and am just waiting for a big cheque to come in the mail so I can book my ticket but I have to talk to J first. The bugger decided to take off to Stockholm for Easter, are you back yet? (Did I just break the fourth wall!?) I think instead of taking the train everywhere I will try to hit up unkie Peter for a friends and family pass to Sky Europe. I have to be back before the parents want to go on vacation which means possibly excising Switzerland from the trip - but that's okay, maybe I'll do it next year before Russia. Sleep beckons, and I have to pick up my bicycle tomorrow, excellent.

things that make Rella happy

fast cars

the smell of leather

hardcover books

particle accelerators

CERN

Cayce Pollard

Tito's systema/protocol

cinelli bike frames/supercorsa

string theory

notation

Mastodon

Cedric and Omar

Spent the travel time post session watching videos. Absolutely enamored of the complete lack of inhibition of this whole cadre of men. So completely bitten by what they're doing, lost in the poetry of their movement. The envy I feel over their ability to be fulfilled by this love of what they do. So prolific too.

Hey, I wonder if Adrian is back from Arizona Bay - and I wonder if he'd want to get into Systema with me because kickboxing is so last year, heh. And on that note - someone just got two tickets to see Mastodon at the Opera House - how did I suddenly become a metal fan? This must have something to do with Metalocalypse. Things seem to be coming together, and the bike should be fixed by tomorrow, and then there's the Project Runway Canada (season 2) viewing party after that. I'm really hoping Jessica wins, her collection is fresh and solid, and it will be great to watch it with her and celebrate her birthday......now to figure out what to wear......

it paved a wave of distance between the syntax error

This weekend seemed to devolve into just a fullness of rockband playing. Which nobody can really complain about because it's just so much darned fun. So we formed a new outfit, Dave, G and I - A Tribe Called Band. How original. S and I have two other ones, but he didn't bring the XBOX like he was supposed to - anyway the point is, we had to play this one song by Coheed and Cambria whom I have never listened to. Turns out they are somewhat decent, well at least the one song is. This man I dated in my formative years - I don't know if I should call him a man because really he still seems like a boy to me - turned out to really like them. I remember having a conversation with him several years ago where he urged me to listen to them and I didn't because as I remember it, Ang seemed to have semi bad taste in music. So I wiki'd - and apparently one of the bands they were influenced by were At The Drive In. Mind you Coheed and Cambria sound like a minstrel progressive band - which is attractive in its own right.

Non-sequitur, why did I never notice that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is left handed? I've seen him in concert so many times and it didn't equate until I watched a video online.

Back to our regular programming. So this whole Rock Band thing led me to a youtube search of some of the songs that one plays in this game. And here is my nugget of the day: why do people in bands defined by specific genres always dress the part? See this makes me want to start a black metal band and then dress like a professor of literature. It kills me that supposed artists accede to the unspoken universal rules of genre image.

day of the baphomets

I wonder how long it is going to take Darth Vader to realize that I changed the wallpaper on his computer to an image of Red Son (alternate universe Superman - if he had landed in Russia instead of the U.S.) from a random windows beach scene. The image of Red Son is great because instead of the "S" he has a hammer and sickle on his chest, and Darth hates communism.

We had an interesting conversation today, and by interesting I mean banal. He told me I'm not allowed to have people of "color" in the house. And he specifically meant "black" people. Somehow he heard that my friend G was over - I think my brother told him, and he got hilariously angry! "I can never leave my house because.....". It's so pathetically absurd...I don't even know what to say.

I do not under any circumstances understand what my mother sees in this neanderthal. She's still incredibly attractive for her age, as evidenced by the gorgeous men who walk into her office and offer to take her out to dinner - forward thinking, upright citizen type men, who would be a better example for my half brother to look up to than this...trash. Bygones.

Wow, my train of thought is completely lost. I was sitting in the shower today and had all these great conceptual ideas to think about and hash out here and now they're all gone.

Ah....yes....I was feeling kind of sad about where my life is going right now. Lately I've been feeling awfully mediocre, it happens when the majority of the people in your life can be described as pretty damn brilliant, or just ridiculously intelligent. It doesn't help when some of them are also professors, but on some level that's more comforting because they just have so much more experience in general. It makes me think this direction I'm heading in is somewhat boring and useless...when really I could be doing something incredibly exciting like theoretical physics or becoming a surgeon, now that I've gotten over my reaction to gushing blood and viscera. But it almost feels like it is too late. Time to eat some cheesecake G left.

I'm in that nothing hour

When everything is quiet and the music coming from the headphones is soft and melancholy. There are crickets in its background and I'm pissing away the time I have - thinking about essays which should have been done yesteryear. I'm cold and warm at once. My eyes are tired and underlined by shadow but the synapses keep firing. Will they let me rest?

I'm eccentric. Deal with it.

The Tibor character asked me if I was insane because I was moving boxes out of the garage a few minutes ago. Y'know - first he complains I've left the boxes in the garage too long (since December) and then when I physically start moving them he complains that it's too late at night. What a maroon. See and now he's gone and spoilt the theme of the night for me. I find it more amusing than anything anyhow. So I have been opening these boxes - I think I've waited this long from a mixture of laziness and my inability to deal with the fact that I live here now - I find it quite clever of myself to have packed all the Russian authors in one box - heh, how pretentious.

I think I did this with the express hope that I would laugh at myself when I finally got to putting things away. I must tap my former self on the back for this, looking forward to try to make myself happy - even if only subconsciously. I found an old love letter/poem that I typed up on the antique typewriter I brought the bastard for his birthday from Bratislava. It weighed fifty five and three eights of my love and I carted it all the way from Europe and didn't take it with me when I moved. Because I'm a good person...or something. But I stole the strobe light.

So..this thing I have been thinking about for the past day or two. Mash and I went to see Andrew Bird at the Queen Elizabeth theater down by the Beemo field. It was terribly rainy and annoying to get there. But was it ever worth it. Andrew Bird is one of those people that if you knew them in real life and wasn't a musician etc., you would probably really hate them because of how effortlessly brilliant and amazing they were. This is me just guessing though. Obviously he has had to work really hard to get where he is. Studying classical music and violin in the Suzuki method (which is somewhat controversial) since the age of four - he's had quite a bit of practice. Thirty one years later he's this magical/folksy/avant garde violinist and vocalist. Amazing live, proficient in many stringed instruments.... The thing I love most about him is that he can create a wall of sound with just his violin looped over and over, and did I mention that one of his uncanny abilities is his whistle? Not *a* whistle, *he* whistles. All in all the rain and wind and annoying people talking on the streetcar were absolutely worth the nearly two hour performance that Mash and I experienced. He also had great rapport with the audience, some friendly heckling really tickled him. What I most noticed was how effortless everything he did seemed. This probably means it's anything but easy, however the way he gestured and seemed to think of things off the top of his head - this man is obviously incredibly intelligent (oh come now, he has a song named Scythian Empires, and it's about how he started doodling in class when he was in grade eight and how he became obsessed with the Scythians). Oh, he also likes to sing about biology and physics and the game "Operation". Needless to say his lyrics are witty and it was an enjoyable show.

huh

I'm all dressed and ready to go to school, but I'm also completely immobile. Maybe I'm just too tired.