hip to be square

American Psycho - I watch it when I'm horribly stressed out. There's a kind of vicarious relief I get through watching Christian Bale act like an entitled sociopath. Even sociopaths can be incredibly witty. There's some really clever dialogue and a constant self aware mocking of the culture of the 80's. What did people in "Mergers and Acquisitions" do anyway? Or as Patrick (Bateman, and if you don't know that by now why are you here?) liked to call it "Murders and Executions". At the same time, even if Patrick is a sociopath he has this gross appreciation of the more meaningful (supposedly) subtexts of horribly superficial 80's music. He explains part of this to Paul Allen as he gets ready to bash his face in with a very brand new axe. Part of me wonders if there's an off screen visit to a hardware store, the ritual of it -- the premeditation of the death of Paul Allen. Would he be happy? Would he walk down the aisle and fantasize? Would he buy a really expensive axe? (Seems so from the look of the film). Patrick must have OCD. One can tell by his diet, his morning beauty and exercise regimen, but mostly from the way he protects his floors from Allen's blood by taping down the New York Times Style section. I can just see him on his hands and knees making sure that everything is just so. And then I laugh at the idea of him actually doing that, because it seems so antithetical to who he is (the manual labor I mean). But it must just be part of that initial pre-murder frenzy of excitement.

So here is where I stumble -- that axe can do a lot of damage to a human being, as evidenced by the massive quantities of blood leaking from Paul Allen. So how has Patrick not completely chopped up his floor? How is his pretty blonde hardwood still intact? Or has he had parts replaced offscreen?

I do have to say that Paul Allen was kind of a pain in the neck (ho ho) and I'm not sad to see him go.

I know the whole thing is a commentary on how superficial the 80's were, especially on Wall Street in NYC -- but I find it perhaps...unintentionally funny. I mean..."Phil Collin's solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a …narrower way."

Anyway, I have to return some videotapes.

I can't think of a clever title

Having divergent musical tastes can be isolating. Shut up, I'm not whining that I'm so original. I'm whining because I don't know how to share something that I love so vehemently-- that makes my life so worth living--with other people. I think I've invested too much emotion into some of the shit I listen to. But...that's because I've basically felt like a goddamn orphan half my life. That's where I go to gain my equilibrium. Ugh, floodgates.

This always happens when I go see my doc. I get invaded mentally and physically. There was a needle in my arm, that's physical invasion, in case you were wondering. But then there's also the whole talking about why I'm stressed out and not able to sleep thing. Sigh. Pandora's box.

Some days I get out of class, put my headphones on, light a cigarette and just... feel how tired I am. I like to think about it in terms of technology, most people autopilot home. My autopilot corrupted a long time ago and has no proper coordinates. So effectively, every once in a while I stand in the middle of the sidewalk thinking about where the fuck it is that I'm going. I go through a roster in my head of the places I have gone -- having moved a lot, my mind passes by all the apartments in the east end, my mom's house, the apartment in Little Italy and then finally settles on where I am living now. Sometimes I forget and think about how I'm going to walk down to take the College streetcar, and then realize I'm wrong. What the fuck? I'm still not completely unpacked because once again this is a temporary location. It's one thing if you do it out of choice, if it's part of your career. Personally I wouldn't mind living a nomadic lifestyle as part of what I did for a living, but again, there's a certain grounded-ness I would be afforded by an income that would guarantee that I would have a home base. One of my own choosing, that I built for myself.

For me it's not quite a choice, I can't live with my mom and her husband, it's just not possible, for whatever reason.

Yet, right now my home base resides in the sound of my mother's voice and my laptop. Ridiculous, I know. But I have more, I guess I would call it faith for lack of a better word, in technology than I do in people. Or perhaps it's not faith, it's just reliance. Which can be bad in its own ways. Sahira was just reminding me "you also expect people to be more in touch with technology than they are" - a product of the fact that I myself am always plugged in. It's comforting. My inquisitive nature is satisfied by the instant gratification of being part of the wikipedia generation, which in turn pacifies the other unrest.

In a larger sense all of this writing that I'm doing is about trying to understand the human condition. My human condition. The success of most of which has to be based on communication, it has to be. To me the internet is probably one of the greatest catalysts for communication, you know other than actually talking to people in real life and stuff.

Fuck, I have digressed so much. But I think the point is that I've in a way replaced a large part of my life that should be a human component with...well...technology. I fear it's all just filling some horrible whiny Freudian void. Or Jungian. That sounds better.

I have several friends who would argue with me about this and say "no no no, you're horribly social and you have tonnes of friends". I do. But just because people are talking it doesn't mean they're communicating, or that they're listening.

Lately I've been doing a lot of listening. I think it's starting to dawn on me literally right now that maybe that's been bringing me down just a little bit. All the same I feel that in my eternal quest to understand myself better I can't shut the fuck up. Which can alienate everyone.

So sometimes I retreat and I get really otaku like about someone or some band, and it makes me feel a lot better -- it may not be healthy but it works. It's kind of like being in an English class and reading a novel and peeling back the layers of meaning. The stuff I listen to is imbued with so much a) the artists meaning and b) meaning I project on it to deal with my own shit. It's not like I expect people to take away that same experience, but man...sometimes there's just a segment that reaches a part of me that I can't explain and why wouldn't I want to share the awesome with someone else? However, I have yet to meet someone who feels the same way about one or two things I love or at least has that innate understanding for the need of it. Sometimes I wonder if that's asking too much. Probably.

Hey, I'm kind of like a snail now that I think about it.

Snails are cute, maybe I'll leave it at that for now.