new year's resolutions

the year is now two thousand and motherfucking two, and i am seriously left wondering after all the confetti has now been cleaned as to what ever happened to nineteen ninety six and all the years that have supposedly occurred since. i'm still living in 1996, humming along to smashing pumkins' 1979, living in virginia, thinking about boys, death, and about what the fuck i want to do with myself.

and so to a little belatedly bring myself into the new millenium with the rest of my brethren, i'm going to make a few changes, i am going to be 2002, at least until it gets to 2003. it is that annual day that is set aside for extensive self-evaluation, which all too frequently degrades into self-loathing. so, we've already established that i'm a bit of linear thinker, and we're just going to succumb to the new year's resolution trend. to quote swingers, "everything that has past is prologue to this - to this fucking moment." today is jan. 1, 2002. i am longer the charlie that i was a mere nineteen hours ago. i am a new man (okay, boy), it's a new year, and i'm trying to convince myself that this moment - that having to buy a new calender - somehow signifies some huge shift in my character, that this date is a red letter day in the history of charlie. the end of chapter 1996, and the beginning of the 2002 chapter, or something like that. it's probably more like watching all the bally fitness center commercials telling me that's it a new year, chance for a new body, join ballys -- have unfortunantly convinced me that this is a good time of year to make resoultions. no, no - any day's a good day for resolutions, but new year's day is a great fucking day for resolutions, and so, i present my new year's resolutions:

i am going to learn to play capoeira-i've always wanted to learn how to play capoeira, but have always been a wimp about embarassing myself in front of people that are both really good at capoeira and are also really hot, and sort of related to that:

i am going to quit being a motherfucking wimp about everything-there are far too many things that i do not do, far too many places i do not go, and far too many people i do not approach because i am a big fat motherfucking chicken. quit being embarrased about lame shit - about any shit - who fucking cares what anyone thinks -- learn to rock out with confidence. there are so many times where i'm like man, i wish would have done that -- why were you such a pussy? for example, cute gay boy that i saw at hollywood 20 in august and was scared to talk to, i still motherfucking remember you, and i still to try to remember exactly why i was so lame, and chickened out, and wouldn't talk to you. and there's a frat boy slogan that says, "it's better to regret the things you have done, than the things you haven't," that i am going to try to adopt. fuck whatever shame i may have about sharing the same motto as our greek youth.

i'm going to stop eating meat again- i was a hardcore vegetarian since freshman year of high school (1996?) and gave it up when i was at new college. i've not eaten meat since i came back to virginia, this seems like a pretty easy one to keep, but i also haven't had a plate of ribs put in front of me yet, so we'll see.

i'm going to laugh whenever i get tense and feel like yelling

i'm going to be nice and quit being so cynical- i already have a very small circle of friends because of my social awkwardness, and so it may be a good idea to stop treating my current friends like shit when i talk to them. and besides, happy people are always a lot more attractive to be around. my first year, rebecca and i were being cynical to kim, and she told us: "people, let's keep the positivity up, and the negativity down!" kim, i'm going to finally try to take your advice.

i'm going to breath slow- it feels so good to slow down my breathing - to just savor the intake, slowly exhaust the air, and feel mellow like yellow

i am going to have a boyfreind - just to have one. i have had to feel like a weirdo too many times in conversations telling people, nope, i've never dated anyone. i have never had a boyfriend. too often, someone will say to me something like, "oh, you know how it is when you first start dating someone..." and i'm like no, actually i have no idea what that's like. i'm a big fat loser who has never dated anyone. yes, i will soon be 21, and will have never dated anyone -- my goal is before i am 21, cause then that's when it starts nearing pathatic.

i'm going to make a banjo and learn how to play it - i've always wanted to make something that they show in the foxfire books, and they show how to make a banjo. so, i'm going to motherfucking make one, or at least on this day of resolution making, i am telling myself that i am going to. and, i just think it would be really cool to know how to play the banjo.

i'm going to learn some greek- after finishing the odyssey and some sophoclean plays, i so want to be able to read all these beautiful texts in the original. this is one of those resoultions that is more of a yeah-one-day-i'm-going-to-do-that, rather than a i'm-going-to-do-that-any-time-in-the-forseeable-future type.

i'm going to quit talking like a fifteen year old girl when i speak to people- whenever i have a conversation with someone or make comments, i hear myself talking like an idiot and can do nothing to change it, because it's sort out of shyness, and sort of out of that's just how i've always talked. um um so then ..... uh yeah and like then he went and like got um like and like i need to quit saying motherfucking like. that word is my albatross (bad analogy, i know) - but, it follows me everywhere. i can never get rid of it, and sometimes i won't even notice it, but then someone like drew geer or amanda bell will tell me how funny they think it is when i talk in class since just about every other word i say is like. so, yeah, that's one of the resoultions that we are going to like actually follow through on.

i'm going to write more often - just because.

i'm going to get abs- i have always wanted a tight stomach with abs, but have loved my ben and jerrys and sitting on my ass too much to do anything about it. perhaps, those bally ads have had an effect on me, and perhaps i am mystified by dominant body images in the media, but whatever, i really am going to start doing sit-ups and jog more often so i can get rid some of the flub. as much as i do love my belly, i think i would love a tight stomach even more.

i'm going to daydream more often- my lack of social interaction since i have come home has made me realize how much fun daydreaming can be. i can be riding on the metro, thinking my own horrible, dirty thoughts, and no one on the metro knows my dirty little secret. i am just normal boy riding metro. it's like not cleaning yourself after sex and going about your day. having dried semen on my chest under my shirt, while talking to people. my dirty little secret that no one knows. yeah yeah just keep more secrets in general. it makes me feel special to have secrets - that i am not just absorbed into some universal consciousness (possibly pop culture?), that i retain something for just me, my little daydreams.

i'm going to smooch jimmy fallon

year end list making mania

i just got back from the movie theater with my uncle. we saw vanilla sky. so so painful - two plus hours that went by so slowly. this movie is so bad news. lamest plot in the motherfucking world

and since it is the end of the year - that time for looking back and making lists, i present the stinkiest movies of 2001:
5. american pie 2
4. vanilla sky
3. rat race
2. AI
1. planet of the apes

i've seen so many stinkers this year. my end of summer daily routine was to steal some wine with bonnie, sneak into hollywood 20, get drunk, and watch movie after movie. and since hollywood 20 does not always play the best cinema, i have seen so so many horrible movies this year. why are so many stinkers produced and distributed -- how does all this crap get released?

and since it is end of year listmaking time and all, i guess i should also list my favorite movies of the year; the ones that weren't total crap:
5. ghost world
4. moulin rouge
3. the royal tenenbaums
2. amelie
1. mullholand drive

and inspired by oneblackbird's wrap-up of her year, i thought for my own sake i would do the same since the year seems like a big blur, where nothing at all happened. this is for my own benefit to prove to myself that i did not sleep and drink my way through all of 2001 - that it did have its moments.

jan- dort room floods, end up living in the dort lounge with six other people for a month, and it turns out to be my favorite and most fun living situation ever.

feb- i hooked up with a boy for the last time.

mar- i fall in love with paul outka and walt whitman, and decide i should be a lit. major

apr- okay, maybe some parts of the year were nothing but a blur of drunken nights

may- i did meat beat. i walked on stilts in shane's circus, which was fun cause i got to practice at the hot boys house and play with lindsey montanna and becky. so many people i looked up to in a you're the fucking shit way, graduated or planned to depart sarasota: maggie, kim, gabe, jeff, cody, and of course the montanna sisters

june- i had a birthday, and i fell in love with eastern market. worked at an organic market, did some telemarketing, and learned the difference between a cucumber and a zuchinni. oh, and i masturbated on tape for pay, and was supposed to do a sex video, but it never happened.

july- i went to wet, a gay male strip club, with my best friend from high school. fell in love with virginia summers.

august- drive down to fl, move into house, fall in love with arbor mist and begin the aforementioned drunken stupor of a month. me and bonnie go on stealing sprees - looting albies, publix, pier 1, barnes and noble, etc.

sept- a plane crashed into the pentagon, i cried and screamed, thinking that my mom had died. she didn't.

oct- i get me and bonnie banned from barnes and noble for making false returns. i decide i hate new college, and need to get away for a while and decide to go to ny for spring semester.

nov- i took lots of naked pics of people for lush.

dec- i became way too obsessed with cute first year mark, failed to make out with him, and then i packed up all my shit, drove home to va, failed to gain employment, and watched way too many bad movies on cable. oh, and at the end of december i was real derivative and made a recapping of my year list.

and be sure to tune in for tomorrow's installment of the trite diaries: my new year's resolutions

the relatives have arrived

i had wrote about a paragraph about the calm before the storm. but just erased it, the storm has just sort of started. i was going on about how i was savoring these last moments of solitude before my relatives got here. but the first wave just came in the door. my mom and sister left to pick up the back end of the storm. and they are going to be here for another week or so.

but they have arrived. and screaming children now abound. it may be a while before i post again.

i am without a bed for about a week, resigned to sleep on the floor with the rest of my cousins. that is what i will miss the most, is my method of escape is no longer an option. i can longer flee to my room to escape the madness.

becky, rebecca, and i vs. the snotty shoe salesman

today started at eight goddamn thirty in the morning. i woke up after about four hours of sleep, so that i could drive my dad back out to manasas with my mom. fucking shit, how do i not realize when i go to bed and still have my contacts in? i peeled the contacts off of my pained eyeballs as soon as i woke up. everything was foggy, especially lamps, and my eyes were in such pain. after i got out of the shower, my vision had still yet to revert to its normal non-blurred state. i put on my glasses, put some food in my belly, and set off for manasas driving my dad in his car as my mom followed in the minivan. my dad kept nodding off throughout the drive, but would wake up to scream, "charlie, watch out," as he made that suction noise with his mouth that people make when they are the passenger and the driver keeps on almost hitting the car ahead of them. and the reason, that there were these incidents of almost ramming cars, is not because i'm a bad driver (okay, well maybe) but i could not see so great. my eyes were still in extreme pain. aisde from his hisses at our occasional near collisions, the drive was super pretty. the drive was through areas that were not overdevloped and had tons of open space and trees and the occasional farm, and it so made me wish i lived there so i could run around in the woods all day.

we dropped my dad and his car off, and then it was my turn to be the passenger. riding in my mom's minivan, spacing out, daydreaming about how cool it would be to be a farmer. i then got home and there was a message from becky with a return number this time. i was so excited, i kicked my sister offline and called becky. she was in maryland visiting relatives, and so we decided to meet halfway in dc at the mall. we met at the moonrock in the air and space museum. air and space was so insane and wild. i was waiting for becky to arrive at the moonrock and i must have been pushed out of the way at least ten times by huge scary throngs of tourists and loud children. becky finally arrived. it was only about a five minute wait, but it felt so long with all the hecticness surrouding me. and i was somewhat sick and definitly tired from my lack of sleep, and so the dynamic energy surrounding me was somewhat overwhelming. she showed up, we touched the moonrock, and made our way to the national gallery.

i hate having to entertain people that come to visit dc. that is probably, without a doubt, my least favorite thing to do. i am so bad at it, and people always expect me to show them an exciting time. i may live right outside dc, but my social activities consist of going to multiplexes and eating at suburban denny's and ihop's. it's especially frustrating trying to entertain people who, when asked, "okay so what do you want to do in dc?" respond, "i don't know, what to do you want to do?" motherfuck, you're the one that is visiting this city, i have seen everything eight thousand times and then some, don't ask me what i want to do, for the love of god, motherfucking answer the question!

but, this is the converstaion, becky and i had for way too long today:
-so, what do you want to do?
-i don't know. what do you want to do?
-i don't know. what do you want to do?

ad infinitum, with the occasional pause for the repsondant to ponder the question before regurgitating it yet again.

the national gallery was not all that fun. for some reason, i can never really have a meaningful experience at an art museum when i go with someone else. i love going by myself to museums so i can just stroll around and sit in rooms forever, and rush through other rooms that just seem blah. i went to the museums all the time over the summer, i would hike across dc from my job in eastern market when i got off work, eat some of the food i yanked from work, and wander around the nat'l gallery and hirshorn for hours and hours. but, whenever i go with someone else to an art museum it just turns into this awful, elaborate charade, wherein i pretend to be looking at the painting. oh wait, don't leave this one yet. stand and stare just a little longer. okay, on to the next one. oh, now stand in front of this one, put some serious look on your face. you do not want to look like a philistine. okay, that was a good amount of staring time right there.

and it was even more of a charade because becky did not seem interested at all, and was doing the exact same thing. and she very obviously did not want to be doing the tourist thing wandering around museums -- she wanted me to take her around and do fun city things. but guess what, i am big loser and do not do fun city things. i do fun sit on my ass at home things.

becky, bored with my company, asks me where rebecca is. what's she doing? i take the hint, and get excited because rebecca will be just as bad with ideas as me. and, i don't know why i didn't think to call her earlier. but we call rebecca, and tell her to meet us at kramerbooks in dupont circle.

so, we get there way before her, and wander around doing the same pretend to be thinking act that we had done in the art museum. we picked up books we had no interest in reading, read the back covers, and talked to each other about nonsense. we sat down in the cafe, finally too bored waiting for rebecca, and were about to resign ourselves to order food when, oh thank god, rebecca arrives.

rebecca used her magical ability that she has to infect other people with her abundant, positive energy (which unsurprising pointed out), and both me and becky perked up a lot, got exicited, decided to leave kramerbooks and fast. we wandered down conneticut ave., becky now shifting to rebecca with her "so, what do you want to do?" line of questioning. rebecca played the exact same role i had played two hours earlier, saying "i don't know, you're the one visiting, what do you want to do?" are you getting tired of hearing that, yet? imagine how tired i was of it, and yet we still had no plan of action.

so, we stop in "the other corportate coffee chain," xando, and at first are worried because there are no open tables. there was a heated porch area that no one was sitting in, but the chairs were not big and plushy. so becky thought we should just move some of the big plushy chairs out on the porch. i did not think this was such a good idea. the place is filled with uptight, hot gay men, and old, serious seeming couples. so, i fled to the other side of the store as rebecca and becky started to move one of the chairs. however, they cowered quickly as some old lady gave them an i-may-be-sixty-but-i'm-gonna-kick-yo'-ass stare. and then, magically there was a table open with big plushy chairs. we sat in the big plushy chairs, drank coffee, and gossiped for a good good while.

during this gossip session, i kept checking out the guys in xando and feeling so so inadequate. this was definitly not the new college bar of hotness. this was the real world bar of hotness, and these guys were so motherfucking hot. at new college, i think jeffery and andrew (somewhat) are super hot gay boys. but then, i go to dupont and see super hot not boys. super hot men. i was in people watching heaven at xando.

anyways, after xando, guess what converstaion we had again? i'm going to assume you're reasonably intelligent and guessed correctly and spare you another rehash of the conversation. anyways, we aruged about what to do until we decided to go see a movie. as we're walking to the movie theater, becky decides to stop in this gay male shoe store, for what reason i do not know. it's this little snobby boutique type store and the salesman just stood in the store with his arms crossed just looking straight ahead, like do not dare come into my shoe store. he was your bitchy self-absorbed gay male stereotype. becky asked how much a pair of shoes was. cross-armed, still looking straight ahead, he responds:
-blah blah blah forty.
-forty?
-one four-tee, said so snotty in a way that annunciated every syllable for becky's deaf ears.

he was super dickhead, and we left the store and trash talked him and conspired evil things to do to him. we get to the theater and the movie starts at 6:30. it is about five, so we have an hour and half to kill.

yep, the what do you want to do conversation reared its head again, and we thought we'd escape the cold and snotty gay shoe salesmen and go to olsson's bookstore. we wandered around inside the store for a good forever, me and rebecca bored silly after half an hour, and we wanted to leave to walk around. becky is cold and protests. we veto by leaving her in the store, to follow us out, putting the discussion to an end.

we pass an office building with one of those circular, swirly doors where you push your way in. (does anyone know what type of door this is? i know there's a term for it, and it is driving me crazy.) so we pushed ourselves around in this door, going around in circles as a security guard sat in the lobby. we then decided to make it a little more fun, and i held tight on to the door once i was outside, making becky stuck in the circle, in between the outside and the inside. then i let free of my hold on the door and becky escaped. then i went through the circle door and rebecca tried to lock me in, but i had already gotten halfway outside the door. then this is where the real trouble starts. me and becky go through together and rebecca tries to lock us both in pushing the door in front of us towards us, and we were trying to get out, pushing our door away from us, towards her. well, the two doors broke, no longer at a ninety degree angle from each other, instead they are pressing against each other. me and becky, fearful for our very lives, push out with all of our might. and the three of us hightail it down the street, so so worried that the security guard is going to chase us and arrest us.

a couple of blocks away from the scene of the crime, we start walking, and are feeling safe enough to laugh wildly about the broken door. made giddy by our destruction, our inadvertent act of domestic terrorism, we release a stream of succesive laughs into the chilly air, interuppted only by the occasional proud rehashing of our act to each other. ha-ha's hurled at the frosty air. come on cold, we'll kick your ass with the warmth of our laughter. a battle of sorts. next day headline reading: cold ko'ed by laughter in first round. it was that wonderful laughter that is unstoppable, emitting from deep within the belly - the type you almost choke on. and it's just a so so pure emotive release. so more pure than any other expressed emotion. with a total disregard for inhibitons. just a wild laughter to express a joyous state. no no no. not to express the joyous state. the laughter is the joyous state. there is no mediating force. just pure gut.

anyways, still with a half hour or so to kill before the movie starts, we go to yet another bookstore: books a million. this bookstore, the huge corporate one, was the best yet, because it had big comfy chairs to lounge in, and because we could steal from it since it was not a local independent. we plopped down in the chairs by the magazines, reading through all the newest glossies. becky found some brad pitt stickers in teen cosmo or something, how fucking cool is that? these stickers are so groovy. they're all these pictures of brad, and one of the stickers (one which i put on my shoe) says "i love brad" in this really cool retro font.

and this month's flaunt comes with a little baggie of buttons. one says flaunt. one says diesel (the lame button). and the other one is a motherfucking button with brad pitt on it. dude, it is the coolest button ever. we each yanked a bag of buttons and wore our brad button as we made our way to the movie theater. we get there at 6:15 all excited, go up to the window to buy tickets, and are told:

-one ticket for the 7:30 showing, is that it?
-no, no. we want tickets to the 6:30.
-that show's sold out, would you like tickets to the 7:30?
-yeah (said very fatalistically)

so, we were back to that same conversation again, and kicking ourselves for not buying tickets when we were at the theater earlier to check the showtimes. but we wander around dupont again, passing the snotty shoe saleman, and decide that it is time to inflict trauma. so, we decide we are going to stare him down, imitating him in front of the store's glass windows with our arms crossed and just looking very snotty.

we're appoaching the shoe store. we keep approaching it. we're walking in front of it. we are walking past it.

we all chickend out at first, but we turn around and me and rebecca stare into the store, i quickly turn around, very scared about the shoe dude's possible reaction and instead stare at rebecca as she attempts to stare at shoe dude. but she keeps laughing, and we continue our staring game for a while, but he goes into the back of the store and fails to even notice our antics. with time to kill and feeling freezing cold we duck into yet another bookstore. the more things change, the more things stay the same. right back to square one: we spend a half hour or so wandering around kramerbooks. becky asks the time. 7:17. so, we bolt to the theater, take our seats, and watch the royal tanenbaums, which was very decent, so much better than anderson's earlier two films (of which, i was not such a big fan). but this movie was really on point, and yeah yeah ha-ha good deep from the belly type funny in parts. and it had bill murray, even though it was just a tiny, dramatic role -- bill murray is definitly one of my favorite actors -- he's so fucking yee-hah. plus the soundtrack was all these awesome folk songs, and so it was defintily one of the better movies i have seen this year.

we then boarded the metro, worn out from the cold, the bookstores, the what do you want to do conversations, and snotty shoe salesmen. we all rode together until metro center, at which point becky continued on the red line. me and rebecca hugged becky good-bye, and waited for our transfers. we talked some more while waiting, deciding that we are going to try to get jobs at pirg. rebecca's going to call tomorrow. i showed off my brad pitt sticker to her some more. and then my yellow line to huntington came. i said bye to rebecca as she waited for her train to come. i boarded the metro very happy, thinking about what a good day it had been, and started petting my brad pitt sticker to entertain myself on the metro ride home.

oswald was a patsy

for the past few days, my throat has been getting closer and closer to sickness. i can feel it coming, and have been doing everything possible to prevent it. taking echinacea, vitamin c, cough syrup, and whatnot. it's going to hit, though, it still feels somewhat yucky. and it feels especially yucky when i first wake up. i so don't want to get sick, but i'm about to resign myself to it, so that that way i can get sick, and then get better, instead of prolonging this just being almost on the verge of sick, with a slightly yucky throat, forever.

today, after waking up feeling yucky, i went on a little consumerist outing to hunt for good after christmas specials at ikea with my mom and sister. i got some fun stuff to bring to ny, but wandering through ikea, i kept on being like fuck shit, i left that in florida. oh, and that too. i left a really fun quilt in florida. but, i bought this really cool four foot tall candle holder for only ten bucks. me and bonnie had been looking for one in fl, but they were all like fifty bucks or some insane price. and buying that, made me realize that i should have yanked a few candles from our fl house, since we stole like eight million. i think the only thing that i did remember to bring home from fl is this super fancy wine opener that i stole from williams-sonoma. (sorry bonnie, i brought it home with me, if you hadn't already noticed).

we then waited in line with our swedish furniture products for seriously about an hour, which was soo painful. i hate having to wait in lines. we then left for home, and 95 south was at a complete standstill, so we spent another good hour on 95, which normally would have been beyond painful, but was bearable and even enjoyable today since it was right when the sun was setting, and everything was looking like king midas had been there. the sun was at that point on the horizion where everything takes on that mellow gold color. so i stared at the golden pines as we slowly crawled by them, and sang along to all the songs on 107.3, my mom's adult contemporary station that was on.

i then came back from ikea and checked our voicemail. a message from becky!!! "charlie q. this is becky. i'm in dc. i don't know the number here. i'll call you back." i was sort of excited about seeing becky, but also sort of annoyed because it seems a little too becky for her to not warn me that she's coming but to just call. anyways, bo-bo becky did not call be back, and so i plowed through some more of the odyssey, ate some tomato soup, and am now about to start watching jfk, which is one of my favorite movies that i watch all the time. this movie has made me such a conspiracy nut about everything, i won't even go into all my theories here, since there is no way to say them without sounding paranoid. but anyways, the movie's red hot. oliver stone is so the man.

then after reinforcing my conspiracy theories, i'll have to go nighty night since i have to wake up at eight fucking o'clock in the morning to drive my dad back out to manasas with my mom. he can't drive himself because he can not stay awake for ten minutes without nodding off.

tsk is no saint nick

i just finished watching sixteen candles, which has made me feel so so good and makes me want a cute boy to smooch like jake. my sister got the movie for x-mas, and i was far more excited than she was because i had just been thinking about going to blockbuster to rent a bunch of john hughes movies. this one i had never seen for some reason because whenever i go to blockbuster with a hankering for an eighties movie, i always end up renting pretty in pink or better off dead. and this one's pretty damn good, except its so so not pc. there are all these horrible asian jokes in the movie. an exchange student is called a chinaman and his motherfucking name is dumb duck dong or something real offensive. and in addition, a gong is played whenever he enters the scene. other than that, the movie was so fucking good and had that remarkable ability that all eighties teen movies seem to have to make me feel so so good, and to make me want some cute person to do stupid things for to try to win them over. and i always end up wanting someone to dramatically kiss while some new wave song starts blaring as the camera pans out. and me and said unattainable cute boy kiss without inhibition in the middle of the street or some such place as the closing credits start to roll.

that would be so so nice. but daydreams aside, my actual day was pretty damn good, too. me and my sister woke up at eight something, woke up our parents, and started opening presents. there's something about christmas day in our family where we still act like we're eight and wake up so early. i seriously woke up at six and was like nope, too early, my mom will shoot me. my sister told me that she woke up at six thirty and went back to bed, and then finally at eight thirty after being awake in bed for a while, i checked to see if my sister was up. and she was just lying awake in bed, too. she jumped up when she saw that i was awake, and we proceeded to wake up our parents, and then sprinted to the tree.

i got a bunch of cd's and books that i had wanted, so i was excited about that. i did not get one bad cd. one is normally a conservative estimate for how many bad cd's i get. last x-mas, i got a john secada cd and a creed one. this year, there was none of that nonsense. i also recieved cash from relatives, which made me so so happy since i was so so broke. and even though, i ask my mom every christmas and birthday, please do not buy me any clothes, she once again bought me some clothes that can be categorized as god-awful, and which will be placed in the bottom of my dresser with the rest of their jailed comrades.

we then ate brunch, and i pigged out, and afterwards fell asleep reading the odyssey. i woke up read some more, and then watched tv with my family.

like mike sanderson, i also watched snl reruns on comedy central today. and they had a recent episode on with jimmy fallon (my boyfriend, in case you didn't know) and the castmember i hate so so much: chris kattan. chris is so goddamn obnoxious because he thinks loud = funny, and so he's always cringe-inducing loud. his most obnoxious recurring role is mango. i cringe everytime this skit comes on. i motherfucking hate mango and was just thinking that when i was watching it today, about how much i wish i could throw tomatos at chris kattan.

and then later in the day, i'm playing around on the internet reading peoples' oljs. and i read mike sandersons, and lo and behold, what does this boy say about mango: "A Saturday Night Live sketch, in which “Mango” returns home for Christmas, is what I imagine it’s like when Charlie goes home for break. Charlie even looks and acts like the Mango, with the same shill, annoying shriek."

ahhh, say it is not so. this really distressed me. for some reason, it always distresses me when someone makes an observation about their perceptions of me and it is totally not aligned with how i (mis?)percieve myself. i have hated chris kattan for so long, thinking he's so loud and abrasive, and tsk thinks i "look and act" like him. oh, this was the only not so hot part of my day, which forced me to rethink my perceptions of myself, and maybe i need to not be so shrill if someone is thinking i resemble mango.

anyways, i have wasted too much time just now, giving thought to chris kattan. so, instead i will talk about jimmy. oh, mister fallon, how i love you, let me count the ways: you're not chris kattan. you have super cute brown hair. when you play shy, you bite your thumb, and it looks so so dreamy. you're funny as hell. you can play the guitar. and you're motherfucking jimmy fallon, cutest castmember ever.

if anyone doesn't watch snl, i must encourage you to watch it religiously. if you do not know who jimmy fallon is you are so missing out. this boy is so red hot. in the episode they showed today, he was in this skit, where he was a new jersey trashy high school student videotaping himself at school. and he kept on making out with his girlfriend. let me tell how jealous/envious i was during this part: so so jealous. dude, this part made me want jimmy so bad. it made me want to make out with anyone so bad. i don't know what is wrong with me, but today i just keep on finding myself longing to french some cute boy. when odysseus slept with circe, i ascended into la-la land and daydreamt i was just making out bigtime with random cute boy. and then, there were also the aforemetioned incidents of snl and sixteen candles, where i just was overcome with this yearning to have someone to smooch.

but, no one wants to smooch chris kattan, well maybe some people do, but these are not people that anyone would want to smooch - they're called psycho. chris katan is so obnoxious. but, i guess being compared to chris kattan is better than being compared to horatio sanz, or one of the really bobo cast members.

oh, and back to the subject of jimmy fallon: i have plans for this boy. i am going to become his #1 stalker when i am in ny. i have my saturday nights already planned, i am going to wait outside of nbc studios with all the other snl geeks for the cast members to leave, and i am going to motherfucking tackle jimmy. jimmy will be mine. oh yes, he will be mine.

t'was the night before christmas

sometimes i like seeing people from high school. sometimes i don't. it's pretty much dependent on what the situation is. tonight's situation was church, and i did not enjoy having to interact with people from high school.

i went to christmas eve mass tonight with my mom and sister. bless me father for i have sinned, it has been years and years since my last confession. the sin: i attended catholic mass tonight, even though i do not believe at all. and sin of sin, i ate the body. i took communion even though i thought about not taking it and thought about all the moral and ethical ramifications involved. yet i still took it, because i would have been too embarassed to sit there while everyone else got up to take it. there are my principles right fucking there - bending to the will of whatever the group imperatives are.

i felt so guilty when i took communion and the guy that placed it in my palm looked deep into my eyes saying, "the body of christ." his hand so so slowly placed it into my left palm, and his eyes looked questioningly at me, as if he somehow knew that i should not be recieving communion, and he was going slow to give me a chance to redeem myself. but i ignored the chance given to me to pass it up and uttered "amen." the wafer was then placed in my left palm and i put it in my mouth with my right hand.

and of course, besides me going to church and feeling weird about that, we of course had to sit right behind some people from my high school class: nora and phil koerner. they were both my sort of friends - the type that you say hi to when you see and make small talk with, but never actually really do anything with them. it, of course, could not have been one of the other some thousand people from my high school that i never talked to. and so, i had to engage in some more horrid small talk with the koerners, but luckily it's a solemn catholic church and only so much small talk is acceptable. thank god i wasn't raised baptist or some other real social faith. after mass though, i dashed out quickly so i wouldn't have to converse anymore with them.

i also saw john roebella from my class sitting at the front of the church, and boy this kid has gotten like ten times hotter. super hot in the athletic way, he's a little gymnast boy, and all hot and super white. he was part of that group known as "the cool kids" in high school. and so to entertain myself during mass, and to get my mind off of how little principle i had to be there in church, i daydreamed about john. and i somehow thought that this could be my penance: to tune out whatever this preist was saying, and to have wild gay sex fantasies to attempt to balance the gay is wrong attitude of catholicism. john, i absolved my self of my sins with you. up there on the altar sucking what i imagined to be your beautiful, big dick. and my conscience was then clean.

archie bunker makes me want to uh-uh-uh

entry #2:
nick at nite is so goddamn good sometimes. they play an hour of all in the family, followed by an hour of cheers, followed by an hour of family ties. what more could one ever want? okay, maybe some people might want more, and you might even call these people normal, but the last few nights i have desired nothing more and have spent my nights on the couch watching reruns on nick at nite.

my car is ka-poot. the radiator is busted, and so now i have no convenient method of transportation. i could always take the bus and metro, but that would involve getting off my ass. i have had no desire to call any one of my friends to see how they are doing, and to see if they want to do something. rather, i wake up around noon, play on the internet, eat some food, read some of the odyessy, go jogging, then settle in for some good ol' archie bunker, sam malone, and alex p. keaton. oh yeah.

and i daydream. oh, how i daydream. i've been daydreaming so much about boys recently. thinking of travis ralston from middle school and how he called me fag all the time and beat my ass. and how i used to masturbate all the time to thoughts of how hot he was - its all about those semi-masochistic seventh-grade fantasies. thinking of how hot all the people were who treated you like shit. travis ralston. uh-uh-uh.

thinking of shane riley, who i have not thought of in quite a while. for real, i have not had fantasies about him since last spring. this is a long time to people that knew me my first two years at new college when every other sentence i said was about shane. but for some reason, my lack of social interaction has resparked my love of shane. and last night i had super good dreams about the doctor, and today i was thinking how sad it is that i may never see him again, since he is graduating this jan., and oh god what if i never get to see him again. he really is, for me, the most beautiful boy ever. i have been recalling just about every interaction i've ever had with shane and just shivering with delight at the memories of mister riley.

watching all in the family and loving archie bunker for all his spunk, and realizing that archie's facial expressions are way too close to those that drew geer makes when i talk to him. those patronizing expressions archie gives to edith are so close to the patronizing looks i would get from drew when i would drunkenly try to get him to make out with me. and so watching nick at nite has made me start to daydream about drew geer and how super cute he is.

and i'm going to alter an anna-maria phrase to decribe beautiful beautiful drew. when i talked to anna-maria about boys a year or so ago, she dropped the best phrase ever, one that still has not left my lexicon: "that keith bentele look-at-you-looking-at-me look." and drew has mastered that look so well and gives it to me all the motherfucking time whenever i excitedly approach him.

and an old usher song says "you make me wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh, you make wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh" and that is what i keep singing right now thinking about drew. i, of course, forget about the line that the uh-uh's really just lead up to: "that you make me wanna leave the one i'm with, and start a new relationship." i just keep saying, "drew, you make me wanna uh-uh-uh uh-uh!!" cause of course i cannot leave the one i'm with, since there is no one i'm with. the only person i can leave is archie bunker and my fun nick at nite reruns.

and i don't even know if i would want to do that since archie's so great. he just told some mustachioed punk: "ain't you got a little class to go with that moustache." i just want to uh-uh-uh and daydream about boys.

and the cue card says applaud now

my dad keeps nodding off. he is sitting at the dining room table attempting to read the newspaper. his head slowly descends to rest on top of the newspaper, lies there for a minute or five completely knocked out until some noise startles him, he then lifts his head and starts reading the newspaper and the cycle begins again. and it repeats itself again and again.

he came to stay at my mom's house last night for christmas. he normally lives out in manasas. my parents have been seperated for almost two years now, but every now and then when me and my sister come home, he will come over and spend a couple days at our house, sleeping on the futon in the basement. and so, last night he came over to stay at our house for christmas.

last night, he fell asleep within an hour of coming here. the chemo treatment and all the drugs he is on for his lung cancer make him so dopey and tired. he kept on coming upstairs to snack on some food and would always mumble something half-sensical and i would be like "what?" and he would repeat himself, and i would respond with a i-don't-know-what-the-hell-you-are-saying-you-crazy-old-man stare. he is so doped up from his treatment that he has the hardest time staying awake (this is why he is now passed out on the dining room table), and talks in slurred sentances. he is ageing super rapidly.

last night when he came upstairs for a snack, he looked at the tv to see what i was watching. his head started to tilt forward, actually his whole body did, and his mouth was wide open and he stared at the tv half-awake. i wanted to take pictures of him in this state, but he probably would have been upset and i would have felt somewhat sleazy about utilizing his dying condition for some notion of art.

he has that wearied look that you see in all those wpa photos. his exhausted condition also reminds me so much of all the photos that i see now of old beleagured russians for whom the promises of capitalism never materialized, and they see young moscow capitalists living it up, and they just look so disheartened and broken. they never recieved the promised beneifts from the transition to capitalism.

that's sort of how i look at my dad. somedays he just looks utterly broken, and to continue this russian analogy, it was the promises of being a young american that never materialized for him. he arrived in new york on the eve of 1970 from chile and was going to be an american. disposable income, loud music, fast cars, cigarettes, and all the hamburgers one's heart desires. he loves rock music. he still does, except he is so unhip about the new bands and thinks that creed is a great rock band. it sort of makes cringe. but, when i was a kid, he was always jamming out to his acid rock and was always going to concerts. and for some reason, i tie his smoking to this love of american youth culture. the cigarettes that joe camel tempted america with, the cigarettes that everyone and their mom used to smoke. everyone in my family quit them in the late 80's when they realized that they were no longer kids - when they gave up on rock and roll and started listening to adult contemporary. my dad was not "too old." he listened to his hard rock stations super loud, and told me that i was too old for telling him to turn it down. me, being so so embarassed whenever he would drop me off at school or some other place and that someone i knew would hear my dad's loud music blaring.

and now my mom, who quit smoking when my dad wouldn't, is healthy, is not asleep on the dining room table right now, and who will still be alive in august, serves as my dad's path not taken. i still have not come to terms with my dad's impending death, if one cannot already tell that by my detached attitude in this entry. it still does not seem real. something about it seems awry. like i'm watching the scene, or maybe that i'm in it, but yet still aware that it is a scene. that there's a studio audience reacting to moments in the scene, even though their reactions are obviously out of place. sort of like the flinstones (the cartoon, not the movie), with how they always had fake studio audience laughter whenever fred stubbed his toe or something. there seems to be that same sort of forced reaction, or conditioned response, to this situation.

all i know for sure is that my dad is asleep on the dining room table at five something in the afternoon. that before he fell asleep, he had just woke up saying "i coulda swore it was sometime in the morning." and my mom responded casually, "nope. afternoon." and that i don't know how i feel.

you want catharsis bitch? you fucking got it!

some people are really close with their siblings and consider them good friends. sometimes i envy these people. but, other times i really love the intense, often violent relationship me and my sister have.

my sister jamie came home from college last night and probably within an hour, we were engaged in a heated battle, shouting each other down over something petty, and threatening to beat the other's face in. we really love each other, and often we can go to the store like normal siblings and have fun, but oh how quickly things can change and oh how extreme that change will be. there is just some deep deep tension and frustration that lies between us, and the slightest thing can ruin the delicate balance that normally keeps our tension in check. when some slight remark is made or when someone fails to put something back in the fridge, oh boy, our ugly sides come out in full force as we trade punches, screaming for the world to hear how much we hate each other.

jamie and i are such rage-filled animals. it will honestly be mustard or something that one of us left on the counter. the guilty party will be sitting on the couch, watching tv, and consuming some food product with the said mustard as a condiment. then the other person will say, hey put this mustard away. in a minute, will be the conditioned response. and from there, it always somehow escalates to loud aggresive yelling and often hitting.

my sister is getting more and more tough, when we were little she used to be far more easier to boss around and would usually give in when i started shouting. now she is all about yelling even louder than me and hitting even harder. this morning, we were going to go to hecht's since they were still hiring winter help and apply. i woke up at noon to jamie telling me to get up, it's noon, why are you still asleep? i said fifteen more minutes. no, said my sister. except what she really said was NNOOOO!!!! (this is an instance where lowercase letters really do fail to accurately portray the situation. sometimes capital letters do have their benefits.)

but anyways, i said: yes, leave me alone, i am going back to sleep. jamie, the maniac kept yelling for me to get up. and then she picked up my alarm clock and starting banging it against my dresser, i guess to wake me up or something. i yelled at her to stop it. and of course, she starts banging it even more violently until my alarm clock breaks into a few pieces. [if this were fiction, this would be an instance of really blatant, bad symbolism, but whatever, it really happened.] at this point she left my room, probably very scared that i would retaliate with hard punches. her intent was also probably not to break my alarm clock, but she and i both get very aggressive with each other and always end up producing a result that was unintended. for example, over thanksgiving break, jamie was singing really loudly, which she always does, and it always pisses the fuck out of me. i get that reaction you get when you accidently scratch a really tight polyester fabric -- how you just recoil. my sister's singing just does that to me, it drives me fucking crazy. so, i yelled at her to stop, she starts singing louder, and i start throwing small things at her that are near me. i throw a big pen at her, and it lands in a way and in a spot that ends up giving her a bloody nose. i felt like shit and quit yelling, and sort of quietly escaped the situation so she wouldn't beat me down -- sort of like her reaction after she broke my alarm clock this morning.

well anyways, i was sort of glad she broke the alarm clock because it wasn't even really broken, i put it back together pretty easily later in the day, but it meant that she left me alone and i got to sleep sleep sleep for a good nother hour.

hecht's ending up not even happening because on our way there, my car broke down. luckily it happened right in front of texaco, and so i just steered my car into the gas station with its remaining power. we then walked home from the gas station together and had a really awesome conversation like normal, close siblings do. we both had the same anxiety about walking down this main road where we would have doubtless been passed by many people we knew, so we cut through a construction site and walked back home down small roads. this removed our anxiety and freed us to laugh, me to walk funny, her to sing, and us to have a nice sibling moment, free of yelling and punching at least until we got home.