[ ...can't get the stink out / it's been hanging around for days... ]

Our Scene: a casual portrait of the liberal-arts-debauchery-amidst-natural-splendor of Haverfest, as exemplified by the crowd in front of Lloyd 10s.

Myself: twenty feet down the path, murmuring brokenly along to "Mother" (played at the actual maximum volume of my MP3 player: 40) through Yet Another Fucking Cigarette, trying not to be too visibly pathetic.

...but why bother, really, if it's actually the case?

Exhibit A: this very same self-serving, emotionally-indulgent entry. With this public display of overblown wretchedness, I officially forfeit my right to turn up my nose and scoff at the LiveJournaling masses and their histrionic poetry, their woefully-predictable taste in music, and their degenerating excuse for written English: in spite of my phenomenal taste in music, implacable self-restraint with regards to poetry (and indeed, self-expression in most potentially-attacked forms...ah, the cowardice of the critic), and borderline-pretentious writing (at best, really), I, in this archived moment, bereft of perspective, am not a shred better than they are, not an iota more worthwhile a human being.

Amanda: "How does it feel to be better than everyone else at almost everything?"
Myself: "...worthless. Absolutely worthless."

********

These five empty cigarette boxes are, well, recent. I can't date them all, but it's a safe guess to say that they're all from within 3-4 weeks of now. Given that the unopened sixth is already more than half-done, it's reasonable to estimate the number of cigarettes I've smoked in the past month at over 100, in spite of how many I've gladly given away. Monetarily, that amounts to $38.76 spent "committing honorable suicide," as it were (as always, reference points up for grabs). That would have easily covered a trip to New York City, a non-trivial irony, given the Relationship Circumstances amidst these packs, these hundred-odd self-mutilative prayers for Change and Self-Improvement.

Here's where I break a rule and talk about more than just the pictures in and of themselves: the hollow Haverfest, the days of desperate, unnecessary sleep and nights of procrastinatory solitude, the literal scores of missed classes, the chain-smoking, the uncountable sticks of sugarless gum and cough drops, the hyper-organized music collection, and the blaring headphones exemplify (among other things) my Avoidance, my chief flaw, my route of flight to some washed-out Elsewhere. Barring today's work on my thesis and a few negligible spots of work, I haven't touched my life in weeks, a cycle most vicious indeed. I struggle to return to the worst mess I've ever faced, to break habits scratched deep into an exhausted psyche, to stay above water, to Finish and walk away relieved, if nothing else...

...to Just Keep Fucking Breathing.

I'm Sorry.

Music: David Bowie - Conversation Piece.

"...and my essays lying scattered on the floor / fulfill their needs just by being there / and my hands shake, my head hurts, my voice sticks inside my throat / I am invisible and dumb, and no-one will recall me / and I can't see the water through the tears in my eyes..."

...naturally, I'm not crying. You know The Story.

[ lest we forget the tale of the bandroom organ... ]

Fuck you, it's ours, we shoved it into the teensy fucking backseat of Rosemary's car in the fucking rain after some band called Ariel Pink shouldered us out of a fucking concert, it's ours, fuck you.



By all accounts, this picture should not exist. This organ has no business being successfully confined within the volume available to it. And yet, its presence in the backseat of the car would directly contradict all we consider sensible. Note that Lewis' presence fails to preclude that of the organ, the skinny fuck.

Sentimental, but true: I love this fucking band.

Music: Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood. The very stylistic opposite of music I enjoy, but simply amazing enough to warrant my respect and appreciation.

"Drink up, dreamers / you're running dry."

[ coming soon to a recycle bin near you! ]

I congratulate you, Katherine Cheng, for taking The Worst Picture of me that exists in a digital format. Not even Jenn's macro-mode shot of just my greasy, enormous nose matches this in terms of being as monumentally unflattering when humor wasn't the picture's original intent.



The former titleholder is featured below:



Note, if you will, the single hair prominently featured at the edge of the sunlit strip of grease along my nose. A wonderfully-terrible picture indeed, but simply not awful enough to hold on.

Music: Pink Floyd - See Emily Play.

[ hello, indeed ]

In this age of superboredom and hypermediocrity (name the reference, kids!), one Jane Avakov suggested (nay, demanded) that I install Google's "Hello" pic-chat program, which has a quick-update feature that allows for photoblogging with the relative ease and identical aesthetic to an AOL chatroom; it falls to me to ensure that this new picblog (created for the occasion in a fit of why-the-fuck-not) doesn't fall into the same mire of inanity. I mean, it doesn't even allow for the inclusion of line-breaks: you hit enter, and there the fucker is, sitting on your external representation of yourself. Photo. Caption. DONE.

Pfegh. Hardly.

The idea is to create a more momentary, impulsive space that's less text-driven (and thus prone to my odd brand of avoidant perfectionism) and more snapshot-like. We'll see how long it goes without something deliberately appalling (e.g., Goatse), since I'm so fucking hilarious.

...and now, viewers of The Daily Show and troglodytes alike, your moment of Zen:



"...say simply, very simply, with hope: good morning."

-Maya Angelou, Inaugural Poem.

Composed for and read at Bill Clinton's Inauguration in 1993, and (more salient in my memory) played in the introduction to the version of Microsoft Encarta '95 that came with my first non-DOS computer, of all fucking things.

Yep, hardly any text at all. Off to a fine start, I see.

Music: U2 - Running To Stand Still.