fare thee well

lately, i've been feeling more and more as if i've had to censor my musings. i feel as if i'm exposing myself too much to people i don't know well. i don't enjoy this feeling. i know, i know. i shouldn't be bound by the opinions of others. i even preach that selfsame opinion. it's an ideal i've been trying to keep, but i fear that i'm too weak a man to be able to do this. therefore, i shall no longer post regularly on this site. i hope you all had as memorable a journey as i have had.

ps: out of curiosity, i have one request. if you read this regularly, or even erratically, please leave a comment on this entry. thank you, and good night.

i got your valentine right here

valentine's day. yay. or as my friend put it, hallmark day. oh, suck it. valentine's day sucks, and so does everyone who has someone to share today with. more than at any other time of year, i hate the color pink. absolutely hate it. i get the urge to kick people walking around with goopy smiles on their faces. even teresa, bubbly as she is, wouldn't be able to get me to like this accursed day. well, not unless she found me someone to like it with. fucking valentine's day. i need to buy me a lighter so that i can burn any valentine cards sitting out unguarded on random tables.

don't get me wrong. it's not that i don't see how valentine's day would be great for couples. it's just that today is my day to be bitter. bitter that it's not me who's out there buying the cards and flowers and whatnot, with someone special in mind. i shouldn't be sitting here at my computer, blogging. i should be out somewhere with someone i care about, damnit. instead, i go and take my frustrations out on diablo II. i suppose that's one more use that d2 has. thank you chris for buying it for me, so i can sit at my computer being pissed off at demons, instead of being even more pissed off at society.

ihop wtf

a new year. many people associate chinese new year with dragon dances, strings of bright firecrackers, and those funny conical hats that chinese people wear. but not the international house of pancakes! no, ihop has decided to step away from the traditional view of chinese new year. oh, they still have the festive atmosphere and the spirit of philanthropy. but perhaps to discourage the stereotype that chinese new year calls up, they have taken the liberty of renaming the day something completely unrelated: national pancake day! you can even get free pancakes! yay! and if you can't tell i'm being sarcastic. gah! commercialism decided to skip entirely the marketing of a tradition and instead take the day for itself completely and without pretense. fuckers.

*sigh* i really don't have much to say right now. i don't feel like talking. i feel like drowning my woes in some ice cream. i went down to jester store to get some ice cream, since my chunky monkey ran out today. order of the day: homemade vanilla. vijay also pointed out that antone's poboys are incredibly unhealthy. one of them contains ninety-something %dv for fat!

erg. i guess i'll fill my silence with an aim snippet.

Raging Aardvark: you're still with alan?
d r e a m s 2 6: yes sir
Raging Aardvark: awesome. you two are the cutest couple i know
d r e a m s 2 6: aww, thanks!

rhapsody

fencing is getting really interesting now. we're actually learning parries and ripostes. i felt pretty good (if tired) coming out of fencing today, so i spent a long time in the shower afterwards, just letting the steam and the warmth soak into my bones. it's been so long since i've felt warmth. what is warmth? warmth is sitting on the trunk of my car with rose and leo, singing and playing guitar in the middle of the diho parking lot. warmth is giving my kids piggyback rides at camp. warmth is sitting on a couch with leo and cheuck, with june lying on top of us. warmth is.....

Raging Aardvark: i write random snippets of thought and toss them haphazardly at the w^3
Jianwen23: and the w^3 thanks you for it

i arrived at my lab in quite a sour frame of mind. i don't know why. like vonnegut said, we're all bags of chemicals. i did most my lab alone with imbalanced humours. i shared a lab procedure or two with three girls. by the end of the experiment, i was feeling sedated again. calmed. i guess all i needed was some social interaction, so that i'd be back in a societally agreeable mindset again. i have mood swings. no, i got mood swangz.

i used to consider myself a creature of logic. when did i become a creature of emotion? i feel as if i've plunged my hands into the cold waters of life, and some hidden kraken has jerked me into the depths of feeling. i feel like i'm drowning, gasping for air, crying out for help but only managing a weak gurgle. how is it that everyone else learned to swim? why must i lose my hold every time a friend grasps me by the hand to pull me out? i know now that flailing about doesn't help, and have given myself over to the depths.

on the way back, i passed two friends talking outside of jester auditorium. "if i was president, i'd change the constitution so that no one would ever have to do what he didn't want." i remember at the time thinking cynically that such a utopian judicial system would never work. but now....now i only wish that such a world could be possible.

and so another year has passed. happy new year. i feel like i've only become more of a disappointment. there are so many things i wanted to do, wanted to say this year. but i've never gotten the courage to do, to say them. i feel myself reaching out superficially and drawing my heart of hearts deep within my shell. i've become angrier and more pathetic. i remember talking to teresa on the ride back up to austin on sunday. family is so important to her. she's so tightly bonded with her family. me, i don't feel tied to my family that much.

people to call today:
- mom and dad
- grandma and grandpa
- chris

maybe this year i'll call chris more often, instead of just waiting for him to call me. i wonder what he's doing......

and so another year has passed, and i'm still single. i didn't think it would be any different, a year ago. is it wrong for me, a male in american society, to say that this isn't what i want? i'm not talking about gettin' me a woman and some nookie. i'm talking about a a meaningful relationship. is that so wrong, to want to have someone care about you, to have someone to think of in class when the prof is droning on? why is it so impermissible to state this in public? everyone wants to be loved. most people are just too damn hard up to admit it outright.

webquizaholic

yeah, right

"it's 215 right now, so i'll set the alarm to 245. should be done scanning for viruses by then." i wake up at six: cold, groggy, and with odd, sharp pains in my elbows. my contacts are screaming at me, "what have you done, you fool!" the dream is still running through my head.

well, there really isn't a coherent story i can remember, now that i've taken out my contacts and went to the bathroom. i remember playing an rpg where my party was fighting my way down to hell, and met up with a family that was trying to escape their house, which was the doorway to hell. they joined the party, and we started journeying down three levels to get to hell. but it was wierd. the three levels were yards. yards with two 12' x 12' holes cut out in the center, to let light into the next level. the holes had stone walls built around them. and as we journeyed downward, more and more it wasn't the party on the playstation journeying down, but it was me, with my dad down there.

and there was a dog, my yellow-haired dog. must have been about two or three. of course it was my dog, since this was my house. i led him with my dad up to ground level, skritching him behind his ears every once in a while. i remember a great contentness, just scratching him. (maybe this part of my dream stems from my guilt in not paying enough attention to my — technically my brother's — dog when she was still alive?) when we got to the top level, we left him in the back yard.

scene change. i was pissed. pissed at how stupid my dad is. because he always finds the stupidest things to criticize when he's like this. and he just can't admit that he's wrong. chris was there, as my little brother. he was playing that rpg from before on the playstation while we were preparing for some big dinner-thing. he was trying to ignore me screaming at dad. dad was telling me, in his haughty, don't-question-me tone that i had failed to sweep up the dust on the carpet. and so i yelled back at him in chinese, with much exaggeration of tone and gester, "how was i supposed to know that you didn't want me to vacuum it up like before?" he curtly replied that i wasn't to get any of my favorite dish tonight at the feast. i stomped off and slammed the door to my room, while shouting "look at me, i can take away your material things!

that's when i woke up. i was surprised to see a wedge of light sitting contentedly in the doorway from michael and vijay's room into the bathroom. i peeked in, ready to say, "you're still up?" but vijay wasn't back yet from shana's, and mike was asleep on his bed amongst his books. cute. and now i'm typing away, probably disturbing joe while he tries to get some quality rest.

i really need to sleep more regularly. i've had about three hours a night this weekend. i woke up this morning, ready for the drive to austin. i took shotgun to teresa's drive, and allen and daniel and their friend were in the back. i fell asleep once on the drive up, and that was only for a few minutes, but i still felt guilty when i woke up. besides that, i stayed up, making conversation with teresa. when i got back, i found joe sleeping, vijay playing maximo, and michael just woken. i shed my luggage and promptly fell asleep on my unmade bed.

when i woke up, i had a dinner of chinese leftovers. they (mike, vijay, joe, and weber) were watching robocop in the other room. i elected against joining them. i talked to jen online instead. i also found this. when teresa called me up, it was around 11 already. "hey, i got a craving for apple pie a la mode." she picked me up and drove to denny's. we studied. we talked. the waiter was cordial, but he probably resented us using denny's as a library. it took an hour and a half between when we finished our buffalo chicken strips to when he brought us our apple pies. when we came back, around two, that's when i started scanning.

from sachin's profile:
Here's to cheating, stealing, fighting, and drinking.
If you cheat, may you cheat death.
If you steal, may you steal a woman's heart.
If you fight, may you fight for a brother.
And if you drink, may you drink with me.

something unpredictable

i got up this morning and drove to barnes and noble. they didn't find my rio. damn. off to chinese school. we sit around a while, waiting for leo to show up. when he finally does, we (june, cheuck, leo, and i) pile into my car and drive off. while on the beltway feeder approaching westheimer, it happens. i was in the right lane, matching speed with traffic, when i see a police car parked in some driveway. i hit the brakes, but it's too late. as i pass him, i see him pull out and turn on the lights. me? but i braked. the other traffic was going faster than me now. me? is that possible? i couldn't believe it. but he followed me as i turned onto westheimer. i pulled into an abortive driveway, and awaited my doom. speeding, 18 miles over the limit, and an expired registration. thank you officer.

and we continue. the next three minutes of driving is rather sullen. but i am determined not to let it bother me, not to dampen the mood. so we start laughing again. cheuck cringes as we pass HEB: he used to work there. regarding cleaning restrooms, he exclaims, "i don't understand how you get shit on the ceiling." the galleria is flurry of tilt and animagic and gamestop. we meet up with robert at the ice rink. structure. june required we sit down on the leather sofa, leo to my left and cheuck to my right, so that she could lay on top of us. i started poking her fob mark and belly button, and then i discovered her shoes. they have zippers! zipping shoes! how cool is that? somehow, june dragged us, her entourage of boys, into victoria secret. i got sprayed with some perfume. gah. it was time to go to chinese school.

set up for the dance. becky and teresa and kevin, among other people, arrive. hugs for the girls, a joyful "hey, sup man?" for kevin. teresa teaches me a few swing moves. it's about then that i discover that teresa and becky have zip shoes too! aaahhhhhh! zip shoes! hehe. june is the only one that really dances the whole time. it's your typical asian high school party. no one is dancing. robert and leo and june and i talked for a good while. after everything is put away, we talk to the dj. he is an alumnus of ut. in fact, he started the anime club. and he went to e3 last year! aaaaahhhh! okay. i'm calm.

leo and june and i went to ihop. i spent sixteen dollars there on a hearty meal and a sizable tip. the waiter was nice, and the company was excellent. we talked about music, life, regret, and the rest. at one point, i remember saying, "you know, my weekend sucked. i lost my mp3 player and i got a ticket. but y'know....i still enjoyed it a lot."

thanks, guys.

two quiet postulations

darian disappeared today at the cys party, and we found out later that he had filled two classrooms' chalkboards with thoughts. june copied them down and mailed them to me. here they are:

Sometimes, I feel as if the world doesn't care. Maybe it's just random encounters that you have every day with passers-by on the street. Or rather, the random encounters that you fail to have every day with passers-by on the street. Day in and day out, we pass each other between classes, at work, on the way to Randall's. It doesn't take much effort or time to give someone else a smile, a friendly word, even just an encouraging nod. And sometimes, it's all the other person needs. How often have you had a bad day at work or school, just one of those days that you just feel like screaming or crying or punching something? You wish you could just have a hug from your girlfriend, but she broke up with you last week. Or maybe she's too swamped with work to talk today. Either way, you feel as if you've got no one to turn to, no one who cares. Yeah, we've all had days like that. We've all felt that pang of loneliness bite deep into our souls like winter. It's those days that we just can't stand. But what about the guy you pass every day on the second floor? Or the coffee vendor at the kiosk down the street? What about their bad days? Isn't it enough that we are all human, to give her a kind word? We enter this world and leave this world alone. In the time between, let's look after each other.
~darian

Have you ever stared death in the face? I'm not talking about watching someone as their last minutes in a hospital bed slip through her fingers, one....by....one. I'm talking about facing your own mortality, feeling its clammy breath upon your neck. Have you ever considered throwing everything away and saying a judicious farewell to....well, existance? You know that people are just plain mean. The justice that you knew existed as a child has long ago ceased to exist. You've had your search for meaning, but it led you....here. To despair. To your own mortality. What's it all for? Naught? Oblivion? No. I reject that answer. I can't accept it. We laugh and cry and scream together. Alone. Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves that no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise, we are never alone. To live is to be surrounded by others. The boyfriend that you broke up with last year still thinks of you. You had a falling out with your sister, but she wishes so badly that it wasn't so. I used to ask myself, why can't the world just leave me be? But now I know that there's just too many people that care for that to ever happen.
~darian