my parents' friends' 24 y.o. son died. i thought i remembered hearing he was into coke, but it didnt sound like he OD'd, plus i dont think he had that kind of money. when i asked what he died of, my parents said something like "he did drugs!"
is naivete = harmless stupidity?
there was talk his organs got beat to shit by all these drugs he did. it seems unjust and even hard to believe that a 24 y.o. guy would wreck his body enough to die when all these bums downtown seem to live on and on forever. i've met people who have apparently done a lot of drugs and you couldnt tell just looking at them. i havent met any meth heads, that i know, but i hear it really ages you fast. i just saw some pics of this guy that just died and he looked healthy. my parents have met him and apparently he looked fine. his parents are obviously devastated. but they put on a prayer evening for his soul, and a mass at church on sunday... i said i wouldnt have done anything - just bury him and try to forget, because he did it himself, and he did it to his family, and since it was basically an extended suicide, i'm kinda surprised they had a mass for him at church. but someone said, they are his parents after all, so it shouldnt be surprising that they would do this for their son. makes me feel really sorry for them. so they cant help their nature and do what they feel they must for their son. and he apparently couldnt help his nature either, saw it coming, landed in the hospital a few times, there was some rehab effort, but in the end he died. ridiculous. fucked up. the flesh is weak. in some more than others. it's just sad. what a waste. seems like he just couldnt be helped. natural selection seems cruel, but i guess thats how it is. his nature just worked against him in his environment, which had apparently an abundance of things lethal to him. is this selection process leading to a humanity that is "smarter", with stronger will power, and a more robust physiology? i'm sure the race will survive, but the cost of this evolution to all the individuals around the "failing" subsets...

some people scoff at being immersed in stories and say ppl should go out more and experience life for themselves.
some people say reading is where it's at, and surely watching the tube does not lead to anything good. does anybody complain saying others should sit in front of the TV and not go on the computer/intraweb so much? will they complain in the future against more immersive media?
its just a medium. but i suppose each medium is its own message too. marshall mcluhan was cool. cool like fonzi. man i'm brainwashed.
maybe not everything you see on a screen should be measured on the same scale? educational programs versus commercials? but even the edu programs - whose points of view are they representing? who prepped content for you to perceive it in just that specific way? what was their idea of what's right and wrong? did they care if they misrepresented something to some degree if they made some money off it? are they just proliferating some false ideas that they bought at an age when they didnt have the logic faculties to process these ideas as they would now? are they reinforcing ideas that were handed down to them from authoritative sources, without actually experiencing or investigating these themselves? i figure the best lies are the ones closest to the truth.
truth - an ideal. maybe truth should be viewed more relatively - an IF-THEN relationship. under some circumstances, something may be so. under other circumstances, things might be otherwise.
we need better tools to understand the world around us. and inside us. we need to be taught these in school. we need tool-making tools - for new situations. i suppose this might be taking place somewhere already. just want to show support and help spread the meme, if it's out there. it probably is.
drugs - substances that affect our bodies to effect "abnormal" functioning. heroin, pot, alcohol, coffee, tylenol... spicy food? most people probably mean illegal drugs. legality is fickle. throughout times and cultures, things have been both legal and illegal like pot, alcohol in general, gin, opium, coffee... i suppose everything used to be legal when there was no one imposing their will on others as to what they can and cant ingest. gasoline is legal and obviously necessary in our world, but there's some communities where it's also the main intoxicant. what about fasting? Sun Dancing?
people need to be truthfully informed about the risks and benefits of things. people need to be informed about social pressures. people could use help learning about their own psychology - what makes them tick. people need to re-learn to experience and judge for themselves. but also people need to be allowed to make their own decisions, learn through their own mistakes. sometimes people need to be helped, not directed and punished. well, i'm sure some people love being directed and punished, too.

a piece by one of my fave talkers set to some awesome art

sitting outside a starbucks

an obviously homeless and very fucked up looking guy is making his way up the sidewalk with a slow, shuffling walk. he's holding a can of turpentine. he stops to pour some more into a small rag he's holding in his other hand. takes a few more steps, the turpentine dripping from his hand. he then stops to inhale deeply from his rag a few times. turns around and walks into the starbucks. maybe for some paper napkins? stumbles out in a minute and slowly continues on up the hill.

i remember when they arrived from the east coast, from new brunswick. they had a little, shy, delicate son. i always thought the wife was a bit tall for the husband. i remember when we were camping one time, and my brother and i started building competing towers out of blocks of wood available at the campground for firewood, and the man made me sit on his shoulders and my brother sat on someone else's, so we could build higher. some years later the man's wife left him, and stayed with another man with the same first name (the man in the shades). he never gave her a divorce. he drank himself to death maybe two weeks ago.

write. about something. without bitching? i donno...
the new job is not how i'd hoped it'd be. at times its good. but at times its stressful. different kind of stress though, when ur working for a friend. maybe this is just not the industry for me? but at this time, with 2 kids and a mortgage - a bit late to change. its apparent to me now that a higher "IQ" is not a great match against punctuality and efficiency. i used to think IQ was the true measure of a person. i'm still kinda stuck in that kinda thinking. how to change? maybe just press on with my way of being, and maybe one day i'll shine, and it wont be weird or annoying, but original and cool. but isnt the world littered with ppl who kept on being themselves to the max, but just didnt make it, and burnt out? but maybe i'm too "sensible" to be myself to the max, or better - the sensibility is too much a part of myself to really BE different like that.
Terence McKenna's life sounds like it was cool - sure, it started out with a geeky, awkward childhood, but then he was in college, experimenting with drugs, talking to interesting people, travelling abroad, doing more drugs, studying philosophies, theologies, cultures, taking full advantage of that whole free love thing that was going around then. and then he was back, growing and selling shrooms for a living, starting to write books, going on lecture circuits, doing more drugs, achieving para-messianic dimensions... before succumbing to a brain tumour...
is it better to live (seemingly) that fully but for a bit shorter?
"Take Five" is playing thru my head. i also heard today a tango-y (tangy?) instrumental version of "white rabbit" - funky. weird, but funky.
a lot, if not all interpersonal problems would be avoided if we all really understood and felt, what others mean. but instead we try to translate to one another what we think we think we mean. we dont even understand ourselves.

i'm just a whiny bitch. if i didnt whine so much, i 'd probably cease being a whiny bitch. but then i'd be some psycho that wrecks shit. and that doesnt help anyone, now does it. smot poking is frowned upon here, so i'm getting drunk, but i'm not liking it. whats making things worse is that i ran out of whiskey, so i mixed in some godawful polish potato vodka, and i'm starting to feel queasy. i'm probably gonna have a headache tomorrow. this sucks. i'm apparently not great with stress. i read a funny somewhere sometime to the effect of "being depressed is like being pissed off, but without the energy". sometimes i foray into the energy field. i probably straddle the fence most of the time. whatev. the terrible 2's havent even officially begun, and i've already had enough. this is not good. this is not right. my feet stick out of bed all night. thank you dr. seuss.
i cant keep living like this. this needs to change. i need some sorta drugs. legal, illegal, as long as it helps. its not like this all the time. but when it is it seems like it is. and when things are fine, the shit seems so distant. having a family is no walk in the park. for me, at any rate. having kids is hard work. i didnt understand that. speaking of parks - dealer from across "Crackhead Alley" is back after an extended absence. we were hoping he's been put away for a long while. so he's back, and the very next thing i notice is a cruiser with lights flashing and police tape attached to it, blocking off the exit from "Crackhead Alley" towards the park. turned out later that half the park was cordoned off. some old lady said she heard shots at night. funny coincidence with the dude coming back and the shooting.
ok, i'm falling asleep. gotta go.

havent posted in forever, and now is not the best of times, but whatev. a couple short things:

got a small buzz for half of yesterday from a vitamin B complex pill - weird. more pleasant than the Gingko stone, thats fo' sho'.

turns out outrageous comedian Louis de Funès was born in France, but his parents were from Seville. they just moved to France because their parents were opposed to their marriage.
here's a sample of his genius - the real shit starts ~40 seconds into it.
i first became aware of and intrigued by hallucinogens when i was a young boy, while watching a movie starring de Funès, where at some point de Funès' character ends up in some kinda hospital. while chilling in the hospital garden with many different patients, he somehow gets his meds mixed up with someone else's or something, and ends up dosing himself with some kinda hallucinogen. he doesnt seem to display any symptoms, until, to his utter surprise, he sees all the oranges fall off an orange tree, almost at once. followed by all the oranges jumping back up onto the tree! his jaw drops. all of a sudden he sees all the women in the garden walking around in their bikinis or naked. that's all i remember. i didnt know what was happening until my mom told me the pills he ate made him see that stuff. i was captivated by the idea.


turns out "Naked Lunch" was a bunch of manuscripts boiled down into a book long before it became a movie. they were written by William Burroughs while in Tangiers, and the drug use, homosexuality, writing, etc were all very much part of his life there - he just weirded them up a bit. having read about Burroughs has detracted from my fondness for the movie, which i'm yet to see sober and straight, but does provide some depth i guess. he has been quoted as saying: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death...". Joan was his wife. the fucked up thing is, he was the one who shot her dead while playing a drunken game of William Tell in Mexico. Burroughs was a really fucked up guy. i was gonna say troubled, but i chose fucked up, because he was.

as if all this death wasnt enough...

... Albert Hofmann - the creator/discoverer of LSD died, almost a month ago. but at least I find consolation in that he's had a very full life - he was 102 years old. he was reportedly a great chemist, made big pharma lotsa money in "straight" drugs. in addition to discovering the psycho-active effects of LSD, he was also the first person to synthesize psilocybin - the psychoactive substance naturally found in "magic" psilocybe mushrooms.

an icon of a man. i'd like to try to honour him next "Bicycle Day" and go for a ride with the local heads. weird, this year's "Bicycle Day" was 10 days before his death. i wonder - had his death been slow, if he knew he was dying, would he have opted to go out accompanied by his "Problem Child", like Aldous Huxley ..?

while walking thru walmart today, i noticed ash-trays for sale, and i wondered - if pot was legal here, or maybe "when" its legal here, will they sell cheap bongs and grinders from china and stuff? probably. i mean, they used to sell opium in the sears catalogue.

buddy came around with his elise today - nice :)
phx says she saw ppl rubber-necking as they passed. he asked me if i wanted to take it for a drive, but somehow i didnt feel like it was the right time or something, so i turned the offer down. hope it comes around again - preferably when "the time is right" :)

Created by OnePlusYou

fully back

so i'm fully back - work is still crazy, rains like a motherfucker, i'm depressed and tired and wishing for a toke while getting nothing done, and phx works her ass off and finally gets depressed too - life officially sucks again - fucking wonderful. its just all bullshit - happiness is some abstract concept, almost within arms reach when fucked up on something, anything. fuck everything.

finished listening to "a scanner darkly" by philip k dick - wild ride, but somewhat somber. especially when in the epilogue the author divulges that some of the characters were based on some friends of his, then talks about how he and people he hung out with during the 60's all did a lot of drugs, then started realising how it was fucking them up, and how reluctant they were to stop. he concludes with a list of his friends that ended up committing suicide, and/or suffering irreversible brain/nervous sytem damage.
now i'm listening to "the man in the high castle" - so far its pretty cool.

bought a Saltskär bafroom cabinet at ikea - i thaught it had a cool pattern on the glass, so it wasnt all frosted, but kinda looked like, i donno - cool. for some reason i thought a few times what the pattern looked like - and i was drifting somewhere around the idea of broken up ice like on a river or lake, but still covered with snow. i mounted the damn thing, later had a shower, and as i dried myself off glancing at it, it finally dawned on me that it must be a city map! there's a few places in sweden named Saltskär, but most of them have no roads, and none of them seem to match up with this map. yes, i looked obsessively. for 2 days. not much of an obsession i guess. but i still wonder. maybe i should just give up and follow phx' advice and just email the designers and get it right from the source.

...then again, i just watched blade runner, and i'm guessing it was the first time i watched it straight, because i think i finally got it, and liked it, and found out where this sound byte from one of paul oakenfold's albums is (just before the "piledriver" i think), and it turns out the movie was based on philip k dick's "do androids dream of electric sheep?"

and in other news, i'm thinking that if humanity survives long enough, with enough ppl living at once, we'll end up having all the possible human conditions occurring somewhere around the world, at once. if its possible - it will eventually happen. no matter if its right or wrong. nature doesnt have a moral code. so we can look forward to wellbeing increasing together with suffering. there will be more crime, because there will be more people. but there will also be more people living well. but then there's economy. depleting resources. that'll tip the balances in favor of suffering.

bah, its 4:20. am. i should really get to sleep.

feeling pretty shitty lately. i dont think that gingko shit is good for me. sometimes it makes me feel a bit dizzy, slow and stupid - kinda like a stone, but without the pleasure. i should read up on it and probably quit it. maybe my moods have been rubbing off at work, because benzino has been having some hardcore hissy fits. i can tell he's pissed off, but he just wont talk. i think he's been hanging out with girls way too much. i think he said most of his friends are girls - no benefits tho. i donno.
totally losing grip on the work situation. benzino is now de facto running the site, and i'm the helper. except i'm also like a consultant. i like that part of it. i could chalk most of it up to seasonal affective disorder or something, and the recent cold temperatures. the closing in of christmas. the crappy situation on my account. the unfinished side jobs, people calling about new ones. i dont wanna do anything but listen to my stories and watch movies. and boogie. she's so cute. but sometimes she drives us up the wall. most often me.
i just wanna be a spectator for a while. an extended while. get stoned and enjoy. go to sleep when i burn out.
looks like i'm actually gonna have to read some books. count zero and monalisa overdrive are apparently not available in audio format. it might look weird for people to see me there, just sitting at the site. maybe if i went and read it on my coffee breaks at the starbucks...
pattern recognition was really cool. now i just started listening to virtual light, but its somehow different. i think i should do some kinda course that would improve my information extraction from spoken word. i really wanted to use the word 'aural' though... :)
that and speed reading. if i could speed up my reading speed, maybe reading books would be a more plausible activity for my tight schedule. as i perceive it.
i should go. my parents are waiting for me. i said i could install an outside outlet for their christmas lights. this is gonna be interesting.

i'm trying out a new drug - gingko biloba - see if that expands my horizons... :)

"...dude, its like totally not a drug, man, its an herb, and like the man says: "whats from the earth is of the greatest worth.""

driving up from oregon was fucking fucktarded - slow spots everywhere, humble folks without temptation ( which i kept thinking was "homophobes without temptation" until benzino corrected me), then the snow and sleet, trucks passing my slow ass, spraying the goddam sleet all over the windshield so i couldnt see anything, then accidents and jack-knifed semi's turning the I-5 into a friggin' parking lot back-to-back-to friggin' back, so we didnt get home till 2 am or so. even on the way down there was a few serious bog-downs, one of which turned out to be a friggin' burning minivan on the side of the highway! the heat was very noticeable even thru the closed windows. kinda reminded me of the treasure island show they used to have in vegas - really surprising how much you felt the heat of the explosions from such a distance. too bad they killed it.

listening to another story by william gibson - "pattern recognition". still having the same problem with the density of information sometimes - the dude packs so much info into a phrase, i cant do anything else while listening to it. well, i do anyways, cause i mostly listen while driving, but i often regret it because i miss stuff at times and have to rewind if i can. was happy to hear that the main character dislikes those square-toed shoes - i dont like them either! was happy for a moment in knowing that i'm not alone in this, until it dawned on me that, after all, it is a fictitious character. hrrumpf...
it was cool to find out that gibson lives around these parts. wonder if i'll ever run into him while doing a service call. might already have, before i knew who it was... i also just found out the other day that tom selleck - the dude that played magnum - also apparently lives around these parts! i was also surprised to find that apparently he is NOT gay.

i was really miffed today at the apparent disappeareance (hehe :D) of free wifi at coffee places around where i worked. i had to drive down a back alley to where i thought there used to be a weak signal as barely detected from a little coffee place before, opened my laptop, and found a weak-ass connection - free! kept my fingers crossed that the battery would last long enough for me to go to hotmail, login, attach my time sheet and email it to my office so i could get paid tomorrow! :O to my relief, it showed that it went thru... :)
felt like a bit of a back-alley techno-cowboy though - what a rush! :)

ok - gats ta git to sleep. shower first.

i fucking hate bums. but i just thought - what if there's just a number of bums that are simply ruining things for people who actually might have got down on their luck and need some help, but are otherwise 'normal'. is there actually justification for these bums to live on the street and beg and steal? should i feel sorry and try to help any of them? and how? i should read up on this - there's probably been some kinda research and studies done on the matter. i wonder if anyone's done a project where they'd start from the ground up, as it were. start off with no money or anything, knowing nobody in the city. how would they do? would it be possible for them to get food, shelter, a job, an appartment, a car - move on up, like the jeffersons? how long would it take? of course it would be easier on the individual if he or she came from a 'normal' home, had no drug problems, no mental problems, their life was 'normal' up until that point. but i posit that it would still yield very valuable insight into the problem. a point to start from, a piece of the puzzle solved. then maybe the drug piece of the puzzle could be solved - how to get the bum off the drugs and into a position where the previous 'contestant' started. then follow the dude's path, hopefully learning from his mistakes. of course that might not easily apply to someone who's abusing whatever they're abusing because of a psychological problem, but that would be the next step to study, wouldnt it. i'd call it "the bum project" :)
then have an expose on the tele - so that people would know whether to give money to the bum, or the oraganisation that would help the bum better, or not to give money at all but instead form death squads and purge the streets and back alleys until they're clean. i wonder if any city has ever successfully dealt away with their bum problem... and how...

i havent posted forever, and just felt like doing it again after reading other ppl's blogs for a while. i keep seeing evidence of me being much more into "intake" of the world around me rather than any kind of creative activity.
phx is asleep - i presume. she's been having lots of trouble sleeping again recently. i still wanted to look at mortgage rates out there, and answer a buddy's email, thanking him for all the info on buying a place. and i wanted to answer my bro's email he sent me - 2 emails actually - but only pics in them. he went to azerbaijan again to visit his wife - they seem happy :) i'm worrying a bit about him - he was never into any kinds of drugs, but it seems since he moved across the mountains he's experienced some substances that i never have and would be reluctant to because, well, people turn into junkies and die from them. i dont know how much he liked those things, how much if at all he still does them, how much he's educated himself about them. maybe i should send him a couple links to erowid.org.
when he was in town a few days ago because he had a lay-over here on his way to azerbaijan, he mentioned something about how he felt all excited but like speedy, licking his gums as if he just snorted. this was relating to his general state of excitation about the trip, but the question keeps gnawing at me - why the fuck would he know that? it doesnt completely consume me, but it keeps popping up. i guess it bugs me enough, because last night i had a dream where he was telling me all about G. he used to know nothing about drugs, and he didnt care about them at all. if he were only the type to educate himself about this kinda shit. if he was getting into psychedelics, i wouldnt bat an eye, maybe i'd smile. people dont die off that. dont become junkies. dont spend big money on it. they usually have enriching experiences. at worst, they become burnouts after years and years of really beating their brains. people on uppers keep chasing the fleeting high, run outta money, steal, fuck up their bodies, probably eventually die. people on downers keep trying to get a little better every time, ruining their life and the lives of those around them in the process. until they OD.
maybe i'm seeing all black because its late at night. but i sure hope my little bro doesnt fuck it up for himself...

i just saw "Desperado" - what a stupid movie. there's some cool-ish stuff in it, but i still dont get what the fuck was supposed to be happening. oh well.
i guess i feel like life sucks when whatever happens makes me feel crappy, especially when there's a couple of those things. emotions suck. those bad ones. wish i could turn those bad ones off and just logically figure things out. because i do like those good ones, just hate the bad ones. i guess its kinda like a drug - when u choose to live with one, theres good things and bad things attached. but i guess emotions are a kinda "logic" thats hardwired into us. there is no meaning to life - it just is. we're here - guess might as well do something with it. i keep thinking of getting stoned, but cant avoid thinking that a stoned lifestyle is not all that either - the memory problems, the mood swings after, the logic errors. a friend of mine recently said that life is as you perceive it, and thats all that matters. but just because a problem is not bothering you, doesnt mean that the problem is not there. just fucking problems everywhere. i dont even know what the fuck i'm saying

wow - this is different

these guys must have been blotter artists in the 60's

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