Dead yet? Nah. Not that easy.

For some odd reason, I wonder why, it appears that I open any blog with an excuse that I haven't written for a long time. Good thing I know that no lives, souls or worlds are shattered by my absence on this particular scene.

I was about to open this with "funny how real life gets in the way of writing here", and realized I've already written that on a previous occasion; sucks to have a limited amount of excuses. Boe hoe, as an old online aquaintance would have said. Course, he was belgian, and I'd regard anything a belgian say with a healthy amount of regard - I mean, the waffles are cool, but most anything else coming from Belgium is dubious at the least.

On to the show, and enough with the sidekicks.

If you could see me right now, you'd notice that I'm halfway split between rubbing my temples, and actually writing this stuff. I could write about how I bought a new keyboard, and I'd feel totally disinterested myself; I could write about how my hair color's changed, or how job seems to be perking up in ways I had never anticipated. Hell, I could even write about how I seem to be attracting a certain flair for both deception in games, and how I've written documentation for work that'd make a professional consultant piss his pants in envy;

Neither of it really moves my world. I just keep a straight face, and march onwards. If I'm arrogant enough to think that I can decieve myself (and I am, most of the time), then I can be arrogant enough to think I can keep a mask on for nigh-on most of the time towards anyone else. The irony of delivering myself on a silver platter, online, is not lost to me, but hey - I might have been born in analogue, but I was baptised in digital...I see no better place than here to wonder.

It's awkward, yet not, because I know the chances of anyone reading this are about limited to (most) anyone I know online. Nearly no one I'd need to look in the eyes, knowing that they know what I've been saying here, pretending it's not been stated.

I've been trying to run from it, I realise. I've been trying to cover it up, like a person would cover up a blemish, wear a turtleneck to cover hickeys, or riding a flashy car to hide the lack of bulge in their pants.

I'm ashamed of myself. It seems to damn easy to say on text, and assuming anyone reads this, it means that I didn't buckle and delete the whole thing and go to bed.

I'm not what I should be, I'm not making what I should of what I have. Time's wasting, and I'm cruising along on autopilot. From time to time I rant about this, because I find it more cathartic to kick myself for my lack of personal progress, rather than the fact that I'm probably running my body into (and a select few feet under) the ground within a few decades.

And I keep returning to that question: Why? Why do I need to sit here, about 7 hours until I have to *be* at work, and ponder this, when I should do so when fully awake and coherent?

It's simple; I'm more self-aware when the lights go out. They say beauty is but a lightswitch away, and while being conceited enough to know that I am not physically unattractive, I feel emotionally repugnant. No one wants a broken body, even less want a broken psyche (bear in mind, I *did* avoid the "no one wants a broken heart cliché here - do I get bonus points?).

http://www.lyricstime.com/apollo-440-pain-in-any-language-lyrics.html

Listening to it right now; Apollo 440 - Pain in any language. I find myself, when I should be soaring upwards and making the most of what I have, to be stuck in regret. Again.



I fundamentally believe that for any meaningful relationship (friendship or romantic), that there are three levels;

Intellectual;

Emotional;

Sexual;

Of course, between friends, the latter is rather dubious, but here's my take on it:

For a good aquaintance, you need at least 1 of the three to make it mean anything.

For a close friend, you need two, otherwise it's not that close. While you can be okay friends with someone, if it's only intellectual or emotional, it's still not a close friend. If you fundamentally despise the person for lack of intellect (and we do always look down, don't we?), but value their emotional support, it's not a friendship - then it's a simple case of utilitarism.

...And for a relationship to be something that you'll not only remember, but will change you, you'll need all three. Two of them, and it descends into either friendship, or a fuckbuddy relation, and the plummet begins.

I find myself, once again, at the threshold; evaluating what means something around me, I find that there's a reason that I haven't told my girlfriend, in a long time, that I love her - simply because I'd (even subconsciously) rather not tell a lie, and hurt, than to tell a lie and live with it.

I think they got it right, when the protagonist in the film 300 told the traitor: "I hope you live forever." After all, at the end of the day, you're the one that has to live with yourself. Everything else is just flavortalk.

And that's what it all comes down to. There are things I'll have to tell, look someone I deeply care for into the eyes, and tell them what I feel, and don't, and I'll need to take the fall for it afterwards, simply because I won't lie anymore. I've done enough of it, I've seen people I loved break down from it, I won't do it any more.

I dreamt last night, about as cliché as it gets, that I was standing on the Copenhagen central plaza. Around me were people I knew, and I saw their faces looking at me in wonder. I dreamt that wings unfolded behind me, and feathers littered the ground as I took off. I remember the vague feeling of melancholy of leaving something I cared for, but soaring towards the sun like an Icarus prior to the fall, the sun beckoned, and smiled. In that dream, I knew that towards the sun was what I once had felt, the taste bittersweet on my tongue and in my veins, and while the pull on my heart's strings was palpatable, I rose, because I knew that the joy ahead would justify it. I remember muttering the words "If you love me, you'd want to see me smile." as the sun shone brighter than ever;

and I opened my eyes.

Reality's light was not bright enough to bask in, its shadows not dark enough to hide in; its reality ultimately unyielding to my dreams.

But, sitting here now, looking out the window, the sun's rising, and its light is radiant. The sun's reflecting on the windows across the street in a reddish hue, and for once, I take strength from the sun.

*chuckles*

Reading back on the past few paragraphs, I don't fully remember writing them, but my mother once told me that when I was writing, or making music, that I seemed almost glowing. I'm certain she was exaggerating, as is any parent, but I can't help to think that we all have a gift for doing something; and when doing it, we glow from the inside.

My glows just tend to go like fireworks these days, largely because there is nothing to tend to the flame; no one can eternally keep their own flame burning. We keep it on a wake-flame, waiting for a justification to flare up, and shine on the world. We all hope that our flame will warm ourselves, and the most of idealistic hope their flame will warm, and guide the path for others.

Is there any more beautiful way to become blind, than by the luminescence of a shining day star?

It...hurts to do this emotional rollercoaster, and I get reminded of whby I rarely write. I once had, if not a future ahead of me as a writer, but at least the prospect of becoming a reasonable prose productionist; I found, as I learned the sharp edges of life, that if you get too involved in what you write, you start feeling it on yourself. I do so now; projecting myself onto a virtual avatar of myself, writing late, writing drunk, to pretend that this here is not me. It is, and that is why any post that's worth spending the morning awake for, is worth feeling for me.

Me me me me me. As they say, the concept of weblog is egoism, after all, did we not take the 'we' out of weblog? (Yes, the accurate reader will spot that as a rip-off from userfriendly.org)

Anyone who reads blogs do so because they want a free in on someone else's life. I read other's blogs, and I sympathize. If they write well, I'll even drop my grammer fascist mask and read it with an open mind.

If they write something that touches me, I'd bleed with them if it came to that, as long as I am in front of the screen.

And that will be one of my last points; as long as we're in front of the screen.

Blogs are for pouring out one's heart onto the net, wrapped in ironic distance so that no one ever gets too close. Write something while your tears are blurring your vision, and you'll be lucky to get a "That really sucks, man" response. Behind the screen, we're all safe, snug, and immortally anonymous.

Fuck that. Over the past week+, some thinga have been set into motion for me. What I once thought was safely hidden away, far from my mind, has come to surface. I've nearly spayed myself trying to fit in, and pretending to be comfortable. That's not going to work. I'm not normal, so why bother trying to be it.

I owe almost all to a few, a little to many, and the rest deserves a twisted smile, nothing more.

I'm not going to stick to life with 2 out of 3.

And unlike Nietzche, I refuse to spend my entire life mourning over the inability to change my life. I've been blessed, I'll shine, and I will forge a path where there is none. I'll stumble, fall, curse and cry, I'll wish I was dead at times, wish others were dead moreso, I'll wish I chose a different way, but in the end, on my tombstone, I don't want the words "If only he'd had the courage..." to be written on it.

After all, we'll all stumble and get dirt on our hands, but in the low light of candles, we admire each other's scars.

You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly

Still as true as when I read it the first time.

Broken, bloodied, Bacardi bottle

Things tend to pile up, and I try to get them out of my head in due time, but that time seems somewhat lacking. This will be a bit of a rehash of some things that have been crossing my mind over the past week, get some perspective on things.

Possibly the thing that's left me with the most sadness and disgust over the world recently happened late last week.

I had been out drinking with two colleagues, had a rather good evening so far. After going to a few bars (and finding them all crowded beyond the point where entering the bar would be possible), we decide to wander around for a while. Still pleasantly drunk, but also increasingly tired, we were looking for that last stop place for a few beers and calling it a night. Doing so, we passed Copenhagen's courthouse. It lies around fifty meters from a plaza, bustling with people, impressive architecture that really does give one the feeling of being small. The front pylons somewhat obscuring the stairs up to those heavy, wooden doors. The entrance gives the impression of an alcove, which adds to the overall feeling.

Walking past it, we halfway noticed three men arguing inside the alcove, but being tired and drunk, we didn't notice immediately. We managed to walk about ten-fifteen meters past before we realized they weren't arguing as such. Two of the guys were assaulting the last guy.

I remember us walking slower, and eventually stopping to turn around, trying to find out what to do; making decisions while drunk goes a bit slower, and when faced with violence, most of us hesitate.

I've always thought I was strong enough in my conviction to do the right thing, and I still try to be, but it was hard to actually do anything. Violence in films can be awesome, coreographed to beauty, impressive and touching, but violence in reality is ugly, brutal and frightening.

Time stretched, so I reckon it can't have been more than perhaps ten seconds before we actually walked back, but it felt like a long time.

The two assaulters noticed us, and evidently tried to decide what to do. One of them grabbed the shoulder of his friend, and yelled "are you trying to roll him?!", or something similar to that, and the other guy seemed to shake off his bloodlust somewhat, and they lurched off.

The victim staggered to his feet, and began to lurch away. It didn't strike me until afterwards that perhaps he was afraid of us, that we would continue the beating of him.

It was a homeless guy, judging by the looks of him, and in the alcove, we found empty beer bottles...and a broken Bacardi Breezer bottle. With a smear of blood on its side, which was the perfect explanation for the pool of blood that was seeping down the stairs of the courthouse. The bastards had not just set themselves content with beating up on a homeless man, whose only crime was simply to not have run away fast enough, in fact I wouldn't at all be surprised if he was asleep when they accosted him; they had also decided to crack a bottle on his head. When he staggered away from us, he was holding his head, and slipping from side to side.

In some way, that Bacardi Breezer bottle embodied the epitome of excess and decadence, the drink of rich kids, the "have-all" type of people who wear designer clothes that costs enough to feed a homeless for a month, and they decided to use it on a guy, whose life is hard enough already. It makes me sick.

Two assaulters.
One victim.
No chance.

I remember that when I came home that night, and thought about it, it did make me cry. Not because of the unpleasantness of the situation, but more from the sheer amount of insult to my sense of justice this was; beating on a hobo, on the steps to the courthouse, I don't think it could have been a more pathetic show of what's happening around us.

And I felt awful about the knowledge that if we had come by merely a minute earlier, it wouldn't have happened. If we haden't stopped at a bar earlier, or haden't spent a minute discussing where to go next, hell, even if we had just walked a bit faster, there wouldn't have been that god-damn broken Bacardi Breezer bottle staring at me with blood on it.

I should have reacted faster, more decisively, but I hesitated. Drunkeness can only account for so much. Even so, to justify it all, I tell myself that at least we prevented them from really going to town on him, and possibly beating him into a coma. That us showing up prevented things from getting even worse...But I still can't shake the feeling that I could have done more, and better.

...Still can't shake the feeling that I didn't live up to the obligation of doing the right thing, and doing enough of it.

In some bizarre way, I hope I'll get the chance to do it right another time, I don't wish to witness violence, but I do hope that I get a chance to redeem myself in that way, to do the *right* thing and knowing it was what was needed, to save someone. If I can't save a person's soul - which I have learned, painfully - then at least I can perhaps save their body. I've been given a conscience, the ability to know right from wrong, and the responsebility that comes with that, is to not hesitate to help another in need.

I just hope to do better another time.

Added more webcomics

Yah. Nothing important, just added a few more webcomics to the list. Haven't even done any facelifting on the page, but it's probably just as well - leave it to me to find the magical color combination that'll cause epilepsy in healthy people, heh.

A return to the pen

So, yeah, it's been a long time. As usual, a lot of my waking hours spent working (oh, the angst!), the remainder spent trying to make up for working, by relaxing, carousing, waking up the next day with a mild headache, and going to work again.

I've heard thatthe brain needs, every week, about 36 hours, or just shy of, to recuperate. Hence the entire need for two consecutive days off from work, and all. I'm beginning to find some sense in the notion, as I've come to see that I never really relax anymore. Barring illness and just under a week of vacation (which, as the observant reader will notice, was anything but relaxing to me), it's been around 3 months now for me with no two consecutive days of off-time. It leads to some things that are not entirely fortunate; one in particular being the carousing part.

Well, carousing is a strong word, but it does sound better than social drinking with friends and colleagues; and besides, I generally have a good time anyway. It's just...it does get to me, a bit. That I seem to, along with those I work with, seem to rebel against not having a proper weekend to party in, so we take to pseudo-partying on weekdays. I wonder if it's the first step of initiation into the "rest of the world" club, that I hear gathers in bars on fridays to complain about their job?

Heh. I don't have any significant complains about my job, I feel alright about it, I feel welcome and I know I do a good piece of work there. The trust I'm given there inspires me to better myself, raise the bar and ultimately, inspire those around me. Not because I'm an example, but because I want others to feel valued and confident as well.

I just wonder if I pace myself too much; that I'm burning myself out this way. I'm still in one piece, but I've stopped and thought more frequently over the last month. Go figure, with the weird things that's happened and all, but still. I don't feel as stalwart anymore.

Retrogradation 2/2

Main Entry:
lapse
Part of Speech:
noun 3
Definition:
backsliding
Synonyms:
decadence, declension, decline, degeneration, descent, deterioration, devolution, drop, fall, recession, regression, relapse, retrogradation, retrogression

...You're treading a path I cannot follow you on...

So I'm online. All is well.

Except it's not.

In fact, things are about as entirely not well as they could be. Parts of it are of my responsebility, probably a majority of it. I've tired, though, to do the right things, and be the person I think anyone should strive for; Not a saint by any sense, but what I'd expect of anyone, to be a sensible person, acting by ideals governed by common sense and compassion.

Good intentions won't do the trick, though. And fuck for that. Just like neither compassion nor common sense will save anyone. Funny how hard that is for me to learn.

As last post implied, I'd like to belive it all started when my hard disk died. I can't say it was a sign of fate, rather a sign of "Fuck you, let's take what you've created, and kill it so you can't get it again!" - I hate the gods of irony and foresight, and if said deities are watching, here's a message to you; I hope you rot in your afterlife, you sadist parentfuckers. Melt in a fucking bonfire, and have a sidedish of pox, served lovingly witha special of terminal, spinal infection; I promise I'll be serving it for you in whatever afterlife awaits for petty gods of fickle fate and spite. Trust me, I'll do it a lot better than you when you're gone, bitches.

Now, that aside;

So it all started back then. My computer got back up and running. Things were supposed to be looking up, right? They were indeed.
My computer got back up and running late last thursday, and that's about the time where things started going really, really wrong.

Before I continue, I feel I must stress; This blog is purely egoistic. I write about myself, and only in vague terms refer to those around me. This is intentional, mildly to protect those that affect my life (writing them out of the wtory where I can avoid it), mostly because I don't feel tossing names on people I care for will improve this anyway. If you're reading this, chances are you're doing so because you for some reason want to know what's going on inside, and outside my head, not whom I spend my time with. That is *not* meant to belittle those that make my everyday worthwhile. It's simply because you have your own blogs where you can write about stuff I'm not part of anyway. And because I care about you enough to not drag your names down through my quagmire. Believe it or not, I'm doing it for you, not against you.

Below, I will make an exception, however, because I can't write about the past week without including it.

Friday comes, and I struggle myself to work much too early for my sensitivities. There was a friday bar (yay, first friday of each month!), and subsequently, I was looking forward to celebrating a friday evening for the first time in about two months. I've had a nasty tendency to have 14-22 shifts on fridays, which anyone'll tell you, lays a dampener on any party enthusiasm thereafter.

So, friday. Yay. Work until 18, get noticeably drunk at the company party, move party on to a local pub. Get more drunk. Colleagues old and new are there, things are fine, it's going to be one hell of an evening, tomorrow's work be damned.

Well, I was right. One hell of an evening, and tomorrow's work be damned both. Just...not entirely in the way I had envisioned it.



Text message isn't from someone I know. Not being a celbrity, getting text messages from unknown people always surprises me.

It's apparantly from my girlfriend's mother, at least what I read in the message.

By here, it's rather important to briefly explain that, on thursday, the 'Ungdomshuset' (Youth house) in inner Copenhagen had finally been stormed by the danish police. A seven year old strife over ownership rights was finally solved by (neccesary) means of official intervention. The place has, for over 20 years, been a gathering place for punk, alternative and generic misfit socializing. I've been there a few times. I didn't feel welcome, or fit in. Regardless, there is a major legal hassle as to whether the legal rights for clearing the building (where the ground, after tearing the place down, is owned by a secterian, christian cult of no little infamy)...So yeah...the youth's rebelling, and people are spilling into Denmark to support the cause.

On the day of the clearing, a demonstration was arranged. A peaceful demonstration, showing the dissatisfaction and disappointment with the city council's failure to solve the situation.

The demonstration gathered over 1200 people.

Of those, my girlfriend was one of.

As police deemed the demonstration getting too close to the then sealed-off building, they decided to dissolve the demonstration, as is their right.

Some people reacted unfavorably to this, and showed their dissatisfaction by means of propelled ballistics. Well, fucking rocks, what'd you expect?

The police reacted predictably harshly to it. And arrested over 70 people. Of which, the stone throwers were not present.

Over 70 peaceful demonstrators were arrested brutally by the police, for simply being in a demonstration that turned violent, that they could not get out of, even if they had heard the police formally calling to dissolve the demonstration. And if they had heard it, there was nowhere to go, the police had already boxed them in.

The stone throwers got away, to pillage another day. The nonviolent ones? Got put into strips, and arrested.

She was one of them. She would not even be fucking able to LIFT a stone, much less able to, nor willing to, throw it.

She was put into strips and detained for over 24 hours. She was deprived of any personal belongings apart from her clothes, including her anxiety-depressant medicine. She was put in a cell alongside 20 teenagers who had done nothing wrong.

She was put before a judge, just *over* 24 hours later (danish law states that you shall be placed before a judge *inside* 24 hours), having been in strips for a third of that timeShe haden't slept, nor properly eaten, and was about to collapse. In my mind I see her detained, crying and reaching out for me, and I'm not there, I didn't even know she was detained. I went about my job and everyday like nothing was wrong.

I get to the pub at around 22.30; I get set up with a beer and start preparing for a hefty night.
At 23.10, I realize I've recieved a text message. Previously, apparantly someone from hidden number has tried calling me. I check the text message, beer in one hand.

Reading the message, it tells me it's from her mother. It tells me she's just been released from detainment, and that she is coming home.

It asks me to do what I can to be there.

I almost make it there before her.

I make quick goodbyes to my colleagues who look bewildered, apparantly I am, in spite of being an emotional person, usually composed enough not make a scene.

I don't. I read the message, and turn to walk out.

I almost make it before her.

I arrive, reasonably drunk but with an adrenaline level that sobers me surprisingly; I remember guiding the taxi driver as good as any GPS system would hope for.

She's there. I can hear her crying from already before I open the door; not the "I scraped my knee" kind of crying either. She's crying like there is no curing the pain.

I never had a chance to prepare for it, either, drunk or not.

She's there. Crying. She's holding something. I can't really make out what it is.

I get into her apartment, and slip off coat and satchel and try to get my bearings, the warmth of the apartment making my glasses fog. I can't fucking see what she's holding.

But she's rocking back and forth.

I know it's not medically possible, but I would daresay that adrenaline will make you sober faster than anything else. Fear, panic and helplessness, incidentally, causes adrenaline production.

I span the two meters between us in a heartbeat, and find her cradling one of her rats.

...And it's not moving.

That, is about the point where things start splintering inside me. I may understand some of emotions, I may even understand how to curb sadness, but I am not experienced enough in this, I am not educated in this, I am neither sober nor strong enough to help her.

One of her pet rats had died while she was being detained for participating in a peaceful demonstration.

I know how petty and insignificant it seems in the grand scheme, but at that moment the dead rat was what broke my resolve. I simply could not take it.

I managed to get her to wrap the rat in cloth and place it somewhere cold, I got her, shivering and sobbing to bed, I excused myself to the kitchen, saying I was going to call her parents and let them know I was there, taking care of her. I even did complete the call.

And then it came apart. The alcohol, the worry, the sadness, the feeling of insufficience, the dead rat, the anger and the feeling of suddenly having gone an entirely other way than I had meant to, all came down over me, and I began choking on my breath.

I wasn't prepared, and in my egoism, I didn't feel it was fair. I could not do anything to make things better at that time, and when I started seeing clearly again, over ten minutes had passed.

I got her to bed, and called in to my teamleader, telling him in short terms that I'd simply not be showing up for work the next day.

Gradually, over the next day, she got better, a night's sleep helped. Food helped as well. Funny how grief and fear just needs tangible countermeasures to be kept in check.

She still twitches and grips my hand panically when a police car drives by. She still stares around her, looking for escape when she hears a siren far away. She is like a frightened animal, in spite of all her civilisation, and I don't blame her; but my sympathy does not lessen my anger, my sadness.

For I feel, that even now, proud and frightened as she stands, she has started down a path I cannot follow.

I can't protect her against the police. I can't protect her against the injustice, the bending of rules, or the cruel punishment that the police metes out off-screen.

I'm here, and I've built my entire life on the single principle that I would protect those I care for, from evil. And now I can't.

And that's when the anger kicks in.

When did I suddenly become the victim? When did the police lock me up for no reason? When was I slammed against a wall and forced into strips for something I had no part of?

I wasn't and yet I feel that it should rather have been me instead. Not because I want to be a martyr, or because I feel it'd better anything, but just to keep that one, vulnerable soul from the callousness of the state I live in.

...But she chose this path. I will respect that. She did not choose violence, but she chose, last night, to go to ground 69, the erstwhile pile of rubble that marks the last bits of the Youth house.

She's choosing her path.

And I see her walking in a direction that I can't follow.

So I stand here at the crossroad, and come to terms with that this is something I may not be able to abide with, that what I've already felt as a possible lack of emotion and devotion was indeed simply caring, not loving, and that now she's going a different path than me.

The seperation hurts, and I miss that part of her that won't be coming back now; and I am angry at her - WHY did she have to do this? Why should it have had to happen? Why should all this worry, fear and protectiveness all come tumbling down?

And at last, the question that keeps me up, when I try to sleep, cliché as it may be;

Did I comfort her because I love her, or because I worried for her?

What kind of person am I, regardless of the outcome? Can I even look myself in the eyes now, and say that I love?

I've stopped asking, because the answer frightens me more than the silence.

Retrogradation; Deterioration; regression; fall; lapse.

Retrogradation 1/2

ret·ro·gra·da·tion Pronunciation[re-troh-grey-dey-shuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.
backward movement.
2.
decline or deterioration.


Well, it's been a while since I've put to word my life here.

I'm sure it'll enjoy some of my beloved readers to know that I've been away longer than I probably should have, things have tended to whisker me away from the world of electronicae, unfortunately.

As it goes; we need to look back a few weeks, to when what I by now regard as a new chapter in my life started.

It all started with a hard disk head crash. By now, I've realized that apparantly I have a borderline unearthly ability to force my hard drives to die on me; I'm sure there could be written and wrought much speculation on these apparant powers; sadly I can't will them into existance, they apparantly only manifest themselves when physically most inconvenient, and moreover, only in a degree where complete hard drive death is certain.

It all started with the death of a hard drive that I of course had no fucking backup from - being this, the fourth headcrash I've had, one'd have fucking thought I'd have the care to make backups in due time. Not so, not least from my physical inability to do so. No secondary hard drive, no DVD burner. No easy out, and no solution. And obviously, no happy ending.

Well, so the disk died on me, which is, what, a week and a half ago. The first day was spent trying to ascertain the problem's extent, was it a fan making that weird noise? Nope. Smothered them, one by one, didn't stop the noise, and obviously the fact that my PC wasn't booting.
Loose S-ATA cable? Nope. Swapped that one for a new, no difference.
Ah! Unplugging the hard disk made the weird noise stop.

Oh, fuck.

From there on, it went downhill, as you may be able to tell.

That week was intended to be my week off from work (which it was), and a week of relaxation and gathering my senses (which it wasn't). The same evening (wednesday), I had a friend order 2 x 320 gig disks, to run in RAID-1 subsequently. For those not technologically inclined, it just means that one disk will constantly mirror the primary disk's data, meaning that in the case of a disk death (again), I should still have a backup disk...that I'd then swap for the primary disk, hoping that a replacement disk would get there in time to backup the backup.

Order goes out; 2 x 320 gig disks, a fan for the disks (to lower the temperature, hopefully extending their apparantly all too fragile lease on life in my hands), a DVD writer, and a proper headset (because god knows, I need proper sound...and fucking loud, too).

Final order comes down to;
320 gig disk x2
Disk fan x1
DVD writer x 1
Medusa 5.1 ProGamer USB headset x 1 (yeah, programer, cos I...like, uh, live off off internet gaming)

Ordered wednesday. ordered in time for them to ship it for the next day, so my hopes as high as my naïvety figured that I should have my box back up in 2 days, tops.

You know me well enough already, and given that I'm writing this, now, that obviously did not happen.

The next 6 days were spent trying to reach the sender, the danish postal service, blowing money on internet cafés, and alcohol when the burden of offline-ness became too strong. I managed to meet up with aquaintances and friends, loved ones and whatnot in the meanwhile. Outsiders might say it was good for me. Fuck them. I needed to be online, and no amount of enjoyable socializing would in the end substitute for it. Well, admitted, it did for periods of time, but getting home reminded me of what needed to be done. In particular due to my TV and PS2.

I don't think I've mentioned the special relationship I share with my TV and PS2.

No, it's nothing physical, you perverse bastards.

In short, about half a year ago, my TV started dieing on me. As death comes, it comes slowly and unobtrusively, letting you get used to the signs of its coming without noticing it.

First, the colors die, bit by bit. That is, periodically, my TV insists that it is indeed a black and white TV. It'll revert itself after some time, cursing, and complimentary baby offerings. Like I said, the passing of a venerable, but malevolent being. It demands sacrifices and frustration before it is sated to a level where it'll bestow upon me colors. Heretic motherfucker, one day that TV will end its days with a stake through its blackened&whitened heart. And I shall laugh. Until I recall that means no TV, no PS2.

PS2? Well, I might not have that one with me for as long as I would have liked. It's dieing. Like the TV. Like a fucking emo kid on livejournal. Bit by bit. Load time is exploding, disks accepted are dwindling. I won't get into why I actually care for the PS2, but leave it, I'd prefer it wasn't like this. Wishing for things being different, however, is the epitome of futility. It's slipping through my fingers, and no amount of neither screaming, beseeching or violence will turn it around. Fucking dieing on me.

So, I had a PC that was. I have a TV that's slipping away. And a PS2 that, irrespectively of the TV, may or may not work. I am, beyond doubt, displaying my powers of the entropy touch. Just a fucking pity I only can do it on inanimate objects...of own possession. Fucking superpowers, never work entirely like intended.

Short of the long, or long of the short, whichever you prefer, in the end I got things reinstated, working, and now I'm just waiting for something else to die, that's within my reach. I thank whatever god may or may not be listening for the fact that this power only extends to inanimage objects, and myself. Least, that way, I'll be able to keep it inside. Just like the rest.

So yah. I'm online from home, music playing (suitably loud), beer at ready (suitably cold), cigarettes inside reach (suitable...cigarette'ish?). And writing. Suitably...moody?

This was part one. All the technicals. I think I, mostly, managed to keep emotions out of this. I'll amend for that in what is to follow.

Heroes...Who needs God when you've got me?

It happens rarely, that something truly sweeps my legs away under me; my jabs about how I feel jaded may even have some truth to them. Usually, if it happens, it's something life-changing, an entirely new outlook on life or similar, but apparantly, less can suffice.

A few days ago, I was introduced to a series. TV-series of all things, something I've never had any realy interest in. I considered tv-series the pacifier for the dimwitted, which I admit is a rather unwarranted attitude.

The series was called Heroes. 15 episodes of each 45 minutes, give or take. I've chomped through all 15 now. Record speed at that, but then again I never was good at limiting myself once I found a new indulgence.

The series revolves around something that instantly reminded me of the game settings Aberrant; normal people who discover they are developing supernatural powers, and struggling to come to terms with it. From the empathic cop, to the super-regenerating cheerleader outcast, pretty much all aspects and walks of life. It could so easily, ever so easily have become shallow and trite, but instead something developed in this series. I admit I was both tired and marginally drunk when I saw the first three episodes, but even so I honestly felt it touched me, somehow. I came to care for the characters, care for the plot, appreciate the story I was being told.

It made me think of old role playing sessions, things I miss doing. Everyone should have the chance to be a hero at some point, if just for a few hours, or even minutes.

By comparison, I don't think my life qualifies as heroic. Today as an example; top achievement today was to buy an expensive electric shaver, and a mildly excessive amount of energy drinks I've recently fallen for. Hey, they're cheap, taste alright, and apart from that, they alledgedly contain both Guarana and caffeine. Score.

Not epic, though. I very much doubt I could pass the snot in my head off as epic, unless it started glowing - in which case I'd label it radioactive and try to sell it to terrorists or somesuch.

Returning to the matter at hand;

The title of this blog, the latter part is a quote from the series.

I rarely say this, and those who know me know it to be true, it's very rare that I find something that moves me enough to start trying to peddle it to others. Fundamentally, I think everyone should make their own choice to find things...but this is going to be the exception.

You have a chance to stumble upon Heroes, seize the chance. Stock up your fridge, lock the door, and immerse yourself into a world that's as fascinating and promising as it is grim and bleak at times.

It's a form of relief; I doubt anyone has not at several times wished they had special powers, and the ability to do right the things wronged...Doing the right thing, and dreaming of it seems to be an awfully reoccurring theme for me. Yay for reality escaping, I guess.

Minor modifications

Nothing big or world-changing this time around, just a little update;

I've added the possibility of anonymous comments, after a bit of whining from Alex.

I've added a links section. Nothing massive, just a few things I usually go through.

Also, added a picture. Just...because I felt the place needed a little bit of that as well.

I'll probably fiddle around with some more things later, but for now, this'll do.

Valentine's day massacred

Ok ok, so it's no longer Valentine's day. Bite me.

It's a good example of something I once found endearing, romantic and a perfect day to reaffirm one's feelings. Before that, it was a day I found a source of immense loneliness, which may or may not have had something to do with me being single, angsty and teenager, but I digress.

I remember thinking that day was potentially better than both christmas, new year's and my birthday, all included - naturally, barring that one birthday that went horribly awry, but that's a story for another time.

Fuck. I keep sidetracking myself. Yay for lack of focus. I blame life in general, customer in specific, and anyone else than me in particular. That's the ticket, surely.

So, yeah. Valentine's day. Albeit that the very concept of it has been thoroughly reamed by corporate greed, it's a nice thought. Except, of course, for those that are alone on the day. For those, it's not really a lot of fun at all, unless they adopt either spite or ignorance. It's hardly fair, and god knows I'm sure there's a lot of people feeling pressured on the day, when affirmations of affection are no longer voluntary but mandatory, it kind of defeats the purpose...and with massive commercial hearts leaning on you from every side, it becomes something to struggle through, rather than revel in. My take is that our current brand of reality is simply too egoistic and rushed for this sort of thing to work. I mean, just look at what's happened to christmas.

I wonder if I've become too cynical for Valentine's day. Too old, too grizzled, like it's happened with christmas, that by now is just another chore to fulfill to a satisfying degree...whether it's because I simply will not let commercialism nutt in my mouth, and expect me to swallow, or if it's an earnest lack of emotion that dictates it for me.

I feel oddly defiant in the face of it. Maybe make a day dedicated to hating people would get my attention a bit better, and of course, I'd love to see the Colgate-smiles glaring from newspaper ads, not smiling but frowning, grinning, and wishing me a horrible day.

"Happy hatred day. May your face melt, your house burn down, and your significant other run off with your best friend, fucker. ps, fuck you thoroughly."
Whatever they'd sell me with that ad, I'd buy without hesitation.

Then again, it's a lot easier displaying negative emotions than positive ones. You're a lot less vulnerable that way. Maybe that's another reason for my Valentine's day scepticism. I don't feel like letting complete strangers see me smile. I dunno if it's because I think they haven't earned it, or because it leaves them knowing I have something to lose (whether or not I actually do). It's not only more natural, but also seems more gratifying to just grin and cok my eyebrow. Fuck'em, let them earn the right to see me smile if they want it.

So yeah. Valentine's day. What of it?
it's like an extra twist of the knife, ending a phone conversation, an email, or a text message with "Happy Valentine's day".

I don't believe in new year's resolves, for the same reason; you want to do something right and good, you don't need a fricking' title for a day to do so. Turn of a year? Who cares. Any actions, change or whatever needs to come from genuine motivation.

Moving further from the point, isn't there something fundamentally wrong when you need to know what day it is to promise yourself or others to be a better person?

Then again, I stop and wonder again, maybe it's not the commercialism, and maybe it's not even me being too jaded for it. After all, if I didn't care at all, why the hell would I spend time writing about it? Maybe I just lack a proper conduit. Perhaps that'd make it more obvious.

Ahwell. Until I figure things out better, I'll just praise myself happy that Valentine's day has been utterly sliced up from my side anyway. I guess I can put away the heart-shaped scalpel away now, and feel all good about myself. I've done my share.

Screw you, Valentine's day. You're nothing but memories coated in commercialism anyway.

Beaten to death with CAT-5

Or so I fantasize.

This'll be reasonably brief, since I am still at work.

The stream of calls, the lamenting wails of despair, have calmed down for now.

I'm left hating not my job, but the inevitable stupidity that invariably follows.

I know I'm arrogant about a lot of things, and I most definately know that I am arrogant in dealing with customers, at least when they insist that they know better than I do; but even in spite of my instinctive distance to any customer leaves me, occasionally, stumped, and in abject disbelief.

Just when you think you've seen it all. The best part is almost how people take internet access for granted, and assume that unless their house is on fire...

**1 hour later**

Well, fuck. Did I say the stream of calls had slowed down?

Guess what. It picked up again.

I'm considering homicide by flogging. Multiple homicide. As per the title of this entry.

*sighs*

Time to go home, now. Time for some fresh air, a cigarette, and something less mollifyingly retarded.

Fuelled by hatred, desire, curiosity and dreams

I really wasn't going to post tonight. Mainly, to be honest, because I had no real inspiration to write.

Fortunately, when inspiration fails, others step in and incidentally say something that makes you think in new, decaying orbits of thoughts.

And here I find myself looking back again on things in the past. This time, fortunately, it's with a mildly content grin, and a slight shrug.

All people are driven by only a few elements, anything else is just icing on the cake, at least from my perspective. It can be an ideal, an emotion, and assuming mental instability, I'm sure it can be the invisible martian lodged in your brain, too.

Years ago, I was fuelled by bitterness and hatred. Ultimately stemming from not liking myself, or what I had achieved, I projected it onto life, wishing misery on my fellow humans. Not to a degree where I'd actually cause noticeable damage, mailing nailbombs to random people or whatever, but simply wishing loss and sorrow for others.

It's natural, when you feel at a loss, and no seeming way out, you eventually channel it out at whatever gets in the way.

For me, I had an outlook on life that'd make Nietzche hide behind his moustache, and Voltaire make warding-off gestures. Lord of the dusk, mister acidity himself. It didn't make me feel better, but at least it justified my wishing ill on others, after all, what had life really done for me?

Such hubris tends to cause divine intervention, sooner or later I'm sure whatever powers-that-be would have stuck a lighting bolt down my throat, and had me raped by a rabid badger clown wearing a sandpaper condom; so I reckon my luck was that things changed for me.

I just come to think about how it was to be purely fuelled by hatred.

I've never done cocaine, but I guess this was as close to it as I'll get without doing the powder myself.

It's bad for you, and you know it, deep down...but it's so powerful, like fire instead of blood. If you listen closely, you can hear the blood rushing through your veins, and when you're high on hatred, you can feel the power of it coursing through you. It's intoxicating, all while it's disintegrating you, bit by bit. Emotions go first, sanity follows.

Like nitrous gasoline in the tank.

Fortunately for me, I learned there are other things to fuel one's drive in life. Ever since then, though, once I realized how I was running myself into a dead end, I've caught myself thinking even more of the inspiration for anyone I talk to for an amount of time. Is their goal money? Power? Love? Hate?

If you can discern what single word drives a person, you already know a lot about them, what you do with that knowledge is something different entirely.

I still feel disdain, I'm still arrogant as fuck, my most used facial expression is that of a cocked eyebrow and nothing else, but I'm better for having learned to find other fuel methods. Life is richer when you're no longer seeing things in monochromatic.

There was a point to all this at a point, but at the moment the best thing I can think of is how it relates to my (lack of) experience with drugs. Drugs, man. I should have done them properly when I was younger, crash and burn and then return to life stronger for the experience. I hate it when people talk about their journeys through mind-expanding chemicals, and I catch myself momentarily thinking "I really should get around to trying it at some point", before realizing I don't really want to do so anymore. Some things aren't meant to be pick-up elements to your life, but solely added on top of something already good, and while my life, surprisingly enough is good, I don't think it's good enough to be able to bear me waltzing around, white powder and blood pouring from my nose. Nor do I actually think my life would be better for it.

So contradictory, I know. I want to have done it, so I actually could know how it feels, but I donn't want to try something that may change my life so drastically for so little gain.

I'm an addictive nature, as in how I respond to stimuli, and considering the cigarettes next to my keyboard, I don't think I'd need another addiction.

It's the lure of drugs, the easy way out to keep the sharp edge, to make the bright lights brighter, or the comforting darkness softer. It's a lack of self-control for so many, who need the stimulants to reach the peaks they so crave, but who am I to judge them? I don't, I just go down a different path...and we all know how tempting the other path always seems.

Clipped Wings;
Fuelled by hatred™
Fuelled by desire™
Fuelled by curiosity™
Fuelled by dreams™
Fuelled for your pleasure©*

*Only for premium customers

I'll sit in my window, and look at the moon

Well, fuck.

Having come home from an abbreviated night out with a colleague, after a particularly nasty day at work, I'm now facing the fact that in less than 6 hours, I'll be opening my eyes and greeting the new day.
Some fucking greeting it'll get.

I'm already imagining it, the way waking up after too short a sleep makes you; with a gasp, and a twist of the stomach that makes you snap for air. The tinge of desperation? That instinct of "fuck no, not yet!" that makes you want to just bury yourself under the blankets and hoping the world'll go away until you're ready for it.

At any rate, that's not what's on my mind. During the evening (and the post-work beers), we came to discuss things that spanned further than the drinks in front of us, the brainless bimbos (male/female) sitting next to our table, and the questionable music from the jukebox. For some reason, we came to pick up on matters that matter, something I care highly for. After all, one can only discuss the obvious for so long until it stops even being worthy of a comment. We started talking about views on life, and how one can make the most of it.

After the bartender eventually ushered us out, we walked towards the busstop, which usually ends up the parting point. We discussed how good intentions don't help, if the act itself hurts bad enough; sticking a knife in someone with the best of intents does not undo the fact there's a fucking knife in them, and blood pouring out. We talked about karma, and I told how I don't think karma exists as other than as peripheral addendum, and how karma either can be non present, or punitive and vindictive. As they say, karma's a bitch. Just hope she's busy fucking someone else, and not you.
Boo fucking hoo, I've done things I regret in my life. Things I would dearly love to redo and undo, just like any other person alive and self-aware. And thus, we all struggle with something that has shaped us and others, where we know (or hope) we, by action or inaction could have changed the outcome. It's something I've only ever told one person. And that was tonight.

It's awkward, because the person is someone whom I'd not call friend yet - not because I don't like him, trust him or feel I have a lot to talk about with, but simply from lack of time and chance to establish said bonds. And so, it ended up being spilled onto a colleague. Of all things. Fucking elegant from the person who's until recently lived by containing the essentials inside. It did make me rethink, and realize that it's something I have to let go of, though. I've always lived by some form of idiom of keeping a hold of things; emotions and belongings are all stowed away somewhere, sometimes tidily, more often messily, but they're all there somewhere. I've assumed that by keeping the things or thoughts, they'd still be with me, but if I threw them away or put them somewhere else, I couldn't touch them, I couldn't feel them. Just below the surface, like a gelatine overlay taughtly pulled over troubled waters, I guess.
The thing is, I've done things that I would wish I could undo. One certain person I'd wish, more than anything I could part from, so we could meet as strangers again. Undo the things I've fucked up and start over; say the right things this time; but that's not what spilled out of me tonight.
Like a fountain of regret.

It just keeps fucking pouring.

Years ago, 10 to be exact, I was in school. I had a select few people I spent time with, none of them in hindsight real friends I'd trust anything of value with. I was isolated and, self-pity permitted, desolated. Just like any teenage, disassociated and discontent male. There was a girl. I knew her marginally through aquaintances. She wasn't quite the normal type of girl who'd endlessly drool after either boyband singers or year+2 students; she wasn't a rebel, just someone who fell outside of the system, and someone who had the self-confidence to stand up for it and live alternatively. I didn't realize how much I admired her back then, I only knew that I convinced myself that she and I were similar, and that I wished to learn to know her better. I was attracted to her, definately, but at the time I was not only a virgin, but also of the typical teenage guy notion that I'd go to my death, lust and devotion unrequitted both. If I had known better then, I'd have defined myself as desperately yearning for both physical and emotional gratification...and utterly lonely as a result. Thoroughly miserable and alone, does that phrase sound familiar to anyone?

I knew it would.

Good thing that both you, reader, and I, predated emo, so as to at least avoid that labelling.

She and I talked, on occasion. During recesses, a few times after school when we both went home at the same time. I wished for those times, and each time I was wondering if I would have the courage to ask her if she'd want to meet outside of school time. I never really did muster that courage. Through means of school-class intelligence (and I use this term as loosely as possible), I gathered that she actually had something reminiscent of a passing interest for me. She liked me, I was told, and apparantly talked about me on occasion when I wasn't there. I fell in love with the romantic notion of it. One day where we were talking, and the talk fell on music, I managed to say something right, or maybe I just didn't clam up as utterly like I used to, and she asked if I'd want to listen to some cd's she had gotten a few days prior, at some point.
She asked me home to her place.
I managed to, suave as always, suggest we meet somewhere in the city on friday after school for something to eat, and then go from there. Suave, I say, because I believe I managed to bungle up every single word in the sentence, while feeling like I was blushing grotesquely.
Either she didn't notice, or she didn't mind, whichever way, she agreed.

We met, we walked around talking about just about everything, we went home to her place. We listened to the music, talked some more. Each moment, I felt so close to tell her how much I liked her. I didn't have the courage to do so. In the end, her parents came home, and I eventually made my way home, feeling like I'd been within touching distance of everything I'd ever wanted. In a way, I had, sitting on her bed, next to her, just outside of reach. As it goes, time passed, she got a boyfriend and was, I assumed, happy with him, although she didn't stop talking to me. She had the decency to not publically show her affection for him, although I suspect as much that she wasn't head over heels with him anyway. We still talked, on occasion.

One day, at a party at my oldest (and at the time, only actual, though peripheral) friend, where the party content was mixtapes with techno that I'd mixed, and light amounts of alcohol (oh Pisang Ambon, the liverache and nausea you've caused!), she called the house. She was apparantly at another party, and had retreated to a bedroom, drunk as hell, and had discovered that I was at this particular other party. (bear in mind here, this time predates cellphones, unimaginable as it may sound, so instant communication was not at all an everyday commodity) She called the house, and asked for me. I still remember, me drunkenly trying to explain the difference between cutoff frequency and a resonance filter to an, unsurprisingly, drunk guy who claimed to be the best thing to happen to electronic music since the Moog synthesizer, and some girl I'd never met before coming down, asking for me. I was guided up to the phone, being told as we walked that someone wanted to talk to me.

It was her.

She was drunk, and had decided to call the house because she wanted to talk to me. She told me she was drunk, and that she was thinking about me, and how she wanted to talk about some music with me. And that she was apparantly, at the time of calling, trying to fit the drink she was cradling into a boot. I believed her being drunk, inebriated as I was, myself. Like the Don Juan I was, I made some lame crack about how the boot really didn't need another drink, as opposed to myself. I think that if I had been any less suave than that, I'd have deteriorated into a series of grunts and hair-flowing-from-armpit burlesque masculinity. Ever the social and sexual butterfly, me. I remember my heartrate being triple-digit, easily, and my palms getting clammy.
I wanted so badly to tell her; that I'd want to be with her, outside of loud music, outside of school and outside of childish carousing. That I cared for her and that she made my heart feel like bursting. I wanted to tell her I was in love with her, even though I don't think I even knew what the words meant. I didn't, because I remembered that she had a boyfriend, and for all I knew, she'd chosen him and was happy with him. I didn't want to be the tragic figure, the hunchback of Norte Dame, come leaping from the shadows, grunting and helplessly trying to mimick a heart-shaped figure with crooked fingers to the queen, dancing at the center of attention.
Picturesque? Definately.
Pathetically metaphorical? Oh yes, I agree.
Utterly human? Indeed.

And I remember her saying something that I think I should have responded to, and me not knowing what the fuck to say, and ending up saying nothing. A few moments passed, and she blew a kiss at me over the phone; I heard her clearly...and she asked me to reciprocate. I locked up, and utterly - utterly - failed to even make the slightest of return of the gesture. Even as I said nothing, I felt like tearing the nails from my fingers, and gouging myself with them, I just couldn't say anything. The call ended in a stalemate, with her unwilling to lay herself more emotionally bare, and me completely unable to utter anything more confound than that I was looking forward to seeing her at recess on monday. Utterly brilliant, I hear you think.

The party, like the phone conversation, came to an unelegant and awkward end, as I fell asleep in the bathroom, waking up only after someone had spent the better part of ten minutes pounding on the door. She didn't come to school the following monday. A week went by without me seeing anything of her, and lacking both cellphones, email address and instant messaging (again, predating such commodities), the following week did likewise. Her friends (whom I cajoled myself to talk to) just knew she was home, with the flu or something.

About a month passed, and I saw her for the last time. It was a thursday, I remember, where I ran into her during lunch recess. I was in the cantina early, beating the mad rush for food, and I bumped into her, walking around a corner. I know how cliché it'll sound, but pale as she was, she looked as beautiful as ever. Distraught, eyes flickering around, she looked ready to dart away. I had always thought of her as strong, courageous enough to go against the tide, come hell or high water, but now she looked tired and worn out. Spent. We walked over to a side, and talked for a while. She mentioned she had been ill, and didn't feel that well really. I tried to make some lame crack about how it might have had something to do with drinking, hoping against the situation she'd mention that phonecall herself. She didn't, although I managed to convince myself I saw a flicker of a smile when I mentioned the drink not fitting into a boot. She told me that yes, she had called the house that night because she was hoping I'd be there. That she was drunk that night, and the evening before had dropped hey boyfriend because she simply didn't feel anything for him, but had just gone out with him because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, and how she'd felt awkward and awful about it. She told me she felt alone and tired, and I remember thinking that she needed me to be there for her.
She told me she wasn't feeling well. She told me her friends were waiting, and that she wouldn't want to keep them waiting, and then she looked into my eyes and said she'd like to talk to me again soon. I failed to respond intelligbly.
Then she left. I missed the spot in queue for food, and didn't care one fucking bit. The rest of the day, I was jitterish and unable to calm down, which nearly brought me into a fight with the teacher for not paying attention and disrupting the class. It never even struck me that I'd not even told her that I'd like to talk to her again, and that the closest thing I'd gotten to a display of affection was telling her I thought she was a cool person, and buying her a fucking 2-dollar key-ring teddybear from a store when we were in the city together. Time went by, and I didn't meet her. Five days later, I dared myself to call the phone number to her home to ask how things were. No one picked up the phone, so I abandoned the project thankfully after three rings. My courage didn't last long enough to find out if there was an answering machine; dialling the numbers was courage enough spent for a year for me at the time.
I asked her friends again, whom I had almost come on a first-name basis with, if she'd fallen ill again; they told me they haden't heard anything, so they figured she was either skipping school or had fallen prey to the flu again.

Weeks went, school holidays came and went, and I wondered where in the world she was; each night I'd sit and look out of the window, thinking if she was sitting at her window too, looking out, thinking about me. Thoroughly miserable, locked in my own unrequited infatuation.

Coming back from holidays, I learned differently.

Each year, a number of teenagers, predominantly girls, commit suicide by taking pills. Less than a week after I had talked to her, she had joined that statistic. I never learned the reasons behind it.

For years, I haven't thought about it. The time after I learned of what had happened, I became even more reclusive. I don't think anyone apart from the closest few even knew why I seemed so quiet. Like so many things already, I bottled it up inside and kept it to myself, close and untouched, in fear it'd disappear if I pulled it into daylight. I bottled it up, and taught myself to forget about it. And apart from a very few occasions, I've kept it underneath the surface and under the radar, to myself and others, because I was afraid it'd fade away like a dream, like a childishly romantic notion, unable to stand up to a scrutinous eye. That the holes in my perception, my failure to even remotely act on what I today consider unrefined, but obvious signs of affection would become too obvious. I didn't react to her advances, because I partially didn't believe that I should ever be so fortunate, and moreso because I remembered thinking "this isn't right, I don't want to spoil her relationship with that guy".

I remember kicking myself, even as I was saying nothing, for exactly saying nothing. I remember me doing a whole lot of that, actually.

I don't believe in positive karma. You either get raped by karma, or you do not. Neutral versus negative, you just don't want to be an asshat and piss karma off. Avoidance of retribution is as good as it gets.

Good intentions don't stop things from hurting. And having done the wrong thing, either by good intentions, or from lack of courage leading to inaction, it still changes lives.

Now, it's late. I've been writing on this for hours, and I feel no closer to closure than when I formed the words to tell this, in whatever abbreviated form my sobriety allowed.

The words are on the screen now, and I wish this would make me feel more calm about what I failed to prevent then. I guess, with a sardonic twist of phrasing, that it's delightfully ironic how for once it weren't my actions that caused things from happening, but rather my lack thereof.

Tonight, I'll sit at my window and look out. And I'll look for the moon and think about you.

I'm so sorry I never told you what I felt, and that I never met your eyes properly and smiled back to you.

I'm so sorry. I wish I could do it over again, and do it right instead.

And I'm so sorry that I still fail to do things right today, to repair the hurt I've caused and set things right. Maybe I'll muster the courage to do it one day, and things will get better.

A neverending echo

Some days just wear you out, force you to expend most (if not all) of your reserves to make it through in a proper fashion. Those days owe me bad. The least I'd expect was some kind of post-performance pat on the back, a tip of the hat or somesuch.

And it just doesn't.

The worst part is, I'm not even that bitter, just feeling this odd, detatched resignation.

Like the need to be in a room with no lights, and just sit there and say nothing. No tears, no sadness, just lying down, looking into the ceiling, and collapse.

I don't do much in wearing masks anymore; I have done a lot in the past, and just like everyone else, I still do on occasion, but this is one of those moments where even keeping a straight face means an effort that just seems insurmountable.

The irony of me writing about not having the energy to do anything isn't lost on me, don't worry. I just feel slightly like my fingers are moving without me really thinking about it, so assuming I just keep writing, I wonder what will come from it. Probably nothing entirely too impressive.

My only worry is, I know this feeling. It's one of the first things that tend to happen, before I start feeling really distant.

I don't know if others feel it the same way, but for me, when things for one reason or another become a bit too much, I start getting distant. Depending on what the cause is, and how quickly I catch it, it'll either pass with a night's sleep, or it'll deteriorate to a point where I spend days feeling like I'm constantly a bit behind myself. Looking at life over my own shoulder, a bit like a third person perspective game. Same detachment as when you just sit down to play a game you've completed time and time again, it's some form of defense mechanism to not get too involved for me.

What I don't like at all about that situation is, if I don't correct it it'll just turn into me not wanting to be here at all. Not as in "I want to die", but as in "I don't want to be here, and be me, just now".

It feels oddly...empty. Like I've let go of something inside me, but instead of feeling relieved, I just feel like something's missing, that's supposed to be there. Like there's too much space inside.

It's entirely possible to cry without feeling anything. The body reacts to something that it can't identify, and tries to cope. It happens every now and then to me. It's rare, true, but having tears coming down your face without a shred of emotion is one of those moments that feels so unreal.

I keep thinking of the past. It's a bit like watching a series of pictures from times long ago. I guess I miss them, but I don't really feel anything at all.

Right now, I just don't want to be here, and to be me.
Just for a little while.

I've now written and deleted the same paragraph four times, because it keeps sounding like some desperate cry for help, or some morbid "I'm passing onto the next plane" kind of thing. I can't seem to get the words just right, but as it is, I feel the way I guess I'd feel if I was sitting back and waiting to move on. I have absolutely no intention of neither dying, nor any wish for it, it's just that feeling like you're waiting for something that simply doesn't exist in this form of reality.
It's going to be a long wait. But then again, it's going to be a long night, too.

And it looks like I've got nothing but time.

Human stupidity displayed

Nothing much, just a few (marginally) humorous situations from work.

(In case you've just tuned in, I work as tech support for an ISP)

A kindly, but not overly computer-minded middle-aged woman who called in; she had just upgraded to IExplore 7, and with that, a few things had changed.
Largely, the page our customers need to sign in via gets overwritten by IExplore itself, and hijacked to http://go.microsoft.com ...and naturally, remembering a sign-on page is pretty difficult. So far, so good, got her online.
Next problem, her homebanking had changed a bit, because apparantly a padlock icon was no longer there, so she was uncertain as to whether it was still as safe as before. I assured her it was.
Best part? IExplore 7 comes with a phishing filter. How it works, I honestly don't know, and considering IExplore itself is arguably the biggest security liability you can find onboard a Windows machine. Naturally, the customer was asking about this 'phishing filter'...except, the conversation went a bit for the worse, as she wasn't overly good with english.
I don't know about you people, but I had to bite my lip and turn off my microphone for a moment when she asked me whether or not it was a good idea to have a pissing filter on.
A few moments later, I was able to reply that I considered it a generally very sensible notion to have a pissing filter on, since you never know when you might need it.

Now you know, people. Always wear a pissing filter, in case someone tries to take advantage of you not having it. What exactly it does, I still have no idea on, but at least now I have one more theory.

Other situation; Customer insists that "your internet isn't working". Ever noticed how it's always someone else's stuff that doesn't work?

Of course, there was no problem on the line itself, modem was responding just fine...

Except for one thing;

Customer had connected, to his cable modem, first a switch (that apparantly acted as an extension cord), an IP-router, and hooked up to that was another router, which was turned off.

For some odd reason he couldn't get online; which might even have been attributed to the fact that his wireless netcard wasn't installed, his CAT-5 cable wasn't plugged in, and even as I was about to do humanity a favor and ask him to electrocute himself, discovered that he had also set his ZoneAlarm firewall to "block all traffic".
And of course, had a hijacked IExplore set to go to russian pornsites. Go fucking figure.

Best part? He demanded that this should work immediately, as it was a home office computer he had gotten from his company, and 'it had been set up by professionals'. I was tempted to ask what exactly their profession was, but since the man was so irate anyway, it seemed a moot point.

In itself, it's funny. Being confronted with it is less so, but it's worth a mention none the less;

Housewife calls in, can't get online. Line is registered to what I assume to be her husband.

Shuffling through her computer (asking her what various sections of the IExplore window reads), we come upon the fact that it attempts to hijack the starting page to something dubious. This is going to be good, I think to myself.
I ask her to check the page history.
"Uh..."
...Yes?
"There's a lot of pages here that have a lot of X'es in them..."
...Aha. Please read a few of them up, I need to check if it's the likely cause of the hijacking.
"Leatherfetish.com, Bondagesluts.com...What ARE these pages?!"
Uh, ma'am, it would appear to be pornographic material...
"Well, I haven't visited these pages!"
Well, someone has...
"..."
"...Oh."
"...Ooh..."
*click*

And then she hung up.

I figure the man of the house was in for a warm welcome when he got home.

Final note;

I also handle copyright cases for the ISP. This more or less means that we get forwarded pre-generated mails from various agencies and lawfirms representing record companies, film companies, the works really. The mails are of a nature that roughly say "we know that this IP address tried to download/upload [some material whose publishers we represent], but since we can't do a case on it, see to it that it doens't happen again."

99% of the time, it's uninteresting stuff, you get fairly jaded quickly, and just see blonde, brunette, redhead...Uh, music, apps, movies actually, but the other sounds cooler. The last 1% is the fun part. Apparantly, porn's less copyright protected, and while I can imagine how it might be a bit more awkward to try and claim the intellectual rights for "Interracial Ass Blasters, vol 4 - Return of Dick Black" as the pinnacle of creativity, it's still surprising how few cases we get on it.

Well, as it goes, procedure is that we send it out to the customer's primary mail address at us, and while this isn't always neither active, nor has an alias bound to it, it's procedure.

So, imagine my surprise when I found a case for "Chocolate Vanilla Cum Eaters" among the cases of various just-released box-office hits.
Now, as I mentioned, usually, the customers that do the massive downloading don't even bother with an assigned email. I don't blame them, really.
This customer, however, had 3 different mailboxes, and upon inspection, all were active.
One was a guy's first name, second was (presumably) his significant other, the third one was, if the alias was to be trusted, their entire family's mail.
Being the kind person I am, I sent the mail containing the copyright infringement (with the infringed work's name in it) to all three.

See, the thing is, I don't have anything against people downloading stuff illegally. It honestly does not bother me. I just feel no obligation to help the person doing so hiding it from his wife and children. Also, who the fuck downloads interracial cumplay videos anyway?
...Family fathers, apparantly.

The little things that make your day

All the problems make me wanna go
Like a bad girl straight to video

Little darling, welcome to the show
You're a failure played in stereo

No, above text really has nothing to do with the rest of this, just listening to Mindless Self Indulgence's 'Straight To Video'. Good stuff, that.

So this day has been strange. Strange, as in multiple incidents that, on their own, would have made me raise my eyebrow.

Okay, bad metaphor, since I seem to have a constant arrogant frown anyway.

So, here's what's up:

1) Work. My former teamleader (whom I've had since I started at my job mack in march) quit in end january, to move to Australia. It's a pity, since I honestly respected him. Sure, he might have been marginally influenced by the weed he homegrew, but honestly I always considered him the example that you can indeed smoke a reasonable amount of joints and still be sharp. Also, he was considerate and willing to find solutions to most any problem that might arise at work, from work schedules, to strange solutions to strange problems. Most of all, he cared for the people that worked under him.
The new teamleader I got, was an old friend of him, and initially I considered him the complete opposite. Streamlined, goal-oriented and utterly professional. I was wrong about him, which took less than a week to discover. He had almost the same traits as my former teamleader, except he smoked a good deal less weed. I had a talk with him today, from my side because I wanted to explain why I have some trouble meeting on time. Meeting at 2 in the afternoon doesn't help one bit if you're still not asleep at 8 AM, or have already woken up multiple times due to nightmares. He listened, thought, and came with suggestions. He cared, and wanted to help find a workable solution.

Moreoever, after having been teamleader for less than 3 weeks, he also told me that he's leaving the company at the end of the month. He's been offered a position in another company that he felt too good to pass up on. Naturally, he felt somewhat bad about having just taken over this job, and then leaving, but one has to do what's right for one self. I understand him, and wish him all well the new place.

And then he said something that I wasn't entirely prepared for;

"If I was in your situation, I would file an application for the position".

In truth, I want that position. I am not entirely certain if I'd be qualified for it, having had no formal management training, but he struck a nerve. I considered applying for the position when my former TL left us, but turned it down on the grounds that I wasn't sure what I actually wanted to do. I do now.

I'll need to mull over this for a while, because I'm worried how I'll react to the rejection in case I apply and get turned down. It's obviously not the end of the world, but it's easier to slack and set the goals low, because that way you don't get disappointed. Problem is, I've done that for a long time, emotionally as well. Maybe it's time for a change.

My qualities?

1) I know what I'm doing as it is now, so I know what to expect of those who'd work under me.
2) I wouldn't ask them to do something I know I couldn't. Easy, since pretty much anything we can get tossed in our face, I've already had happen, from Backbones tilting, gateways dieing horribly and mailservers discarding usernames + passwords.
3) I care for the workplace, and those working there.
4) It'd be one fuck of a PR-stunt from their side, to show that they encourage development and growith internally in the department. God, I'd feel nauseatingly good about being the poster child for the company *coughs*.
5) I have informal management experience from work, from several occasions where things simply were going to fall apart unless I intervened.

Cons:
1) No management diplomas.
2) Not sure whether leadership experience from EVE Online really counts that much, although I could point out that I have people skills.
3) It could be strange having colleagues that'd now take directions from me.
4) Morning shifts.
5) Would you be able to take directions from a guy with purple hair?

All in all, it's started a minor avalanche of thoughts in me. Would I be able to streamline and lead people I consider more than colleagues? I actually don't know. But admitting to myself, I want to find out how I'd handle it.

That was the first thing.

Second off; going for an after-work beer with one of my good colleagues, went to the local bar. Ran into some semi-colleagues that work on the Dell Dimension assignment. One of them, whom I periphally know (from having run into him a few times), greeted me as I walked in. My glasses were fogging a bit, so I looked around a little confused; for some reason he took this as a sign to jokingly say "Hey, don't look at me like you don't know me, we've run into each other enough times!". He sounded like he was joking when he said it.
Honestly, I only know what assignment he works on, never even heard the guy's name before, and looking through fogged glasses makes it pretty damn hard to discern anything but rough size and possibly gender of the person in front of you.
Picking up on the joke, I asked him to repeat what he said.

And that's when things took a turn for the strange.

Being confronted with what he said, although I honestly did not even stab it in his eye or sneer at him, I apparantly had mortally insulted him? He began inquiring as to why I thought he'd said that, and how he would never have said anything like that. The more he proclaimed, the more agitated and wounded he became. After about 30 seconds of rambling, he stated that if I indeed thought he had said that, then I had issues trusting people, since he would never say something like that. Odd thing is, the guy standing next to me (both of us sober, while the Dell guy was heavily inebriated) had also heard him saying it. I tried to tell him that it was indeed what I had heard, but I had thought he had meant it as a joke, which for some reason infuriated the guy even further. At this point I considered simply turning around and walking away, but stubbornness, and to some extent, annoyance that a sober person apparantly hears *worse* than a drunk-off-his-ass person does, made me force the issue and tell him that I did indeed hear him saying so, and that I had taken it as a joke.
This was the point where he began to look decidedly bitter and resentful, while mumbling through a sentence that I assume implied that I was a horrible person to even imply that he would judge people based on their looks...Where the hell he got that notion from, is beyond my reasoning. After a bit less than ten minutes of listening to him (while waiting for a beer), my patience was about worn out, and I intently turned away, ignored him and walked off to a nearby table.

I'm unsure as to whether I'm looking forward to seeing him at work on monday, or whether I hope he'll hide away from the abject nonsense he spouted.

Final straw: Sitting down at a table with my colleague, and setting up a dice game with some guy from the same building we work in. Nice guy with a white tie, no problems, but his colleague (whom I've blissfully never met) obviously had something to get off his mind. Staggering into the table, he started muttering about how he was going to get beaten up when he left the bar, and how we should follow him outside to help him. This guy looked like someone who got rejected for the casting of the "I must be Emo" video, and his rather whiny attitude made me want to toss my beer in his face and tell him to grow a pair and stop fucking whining.
Eventually, the tie-guy apparantly rejected this drunken excuse for an emo sufficiently, so emo-boy attempts to stand up, yells "you fucking owe me one, now I'm gonna get beat up outside!" and kicks a chair in towards the table.
Incidentally clipping my knee with it.

Not that it hurt significantly, but I was tempted to stand up and inform him that he wouldn't have to walk outside to get the snot kicked out of him.

God damn sufferjunkie.

Obviously, I have people skills. Especially how kindly I portray people when they annoy me even in the slightest.

And now? Off to bed, because in less than 7 hours, I'm going to be rising to greet the new day, and another glorious workshift. How fortunate I am.

The bastard brother of dreams

I don't sleep easily. Never really have.

I've always been prone to nightmares, some particular ones that have kept popping up since I was 4 years old or so.

Bear in mind, this is not based on scientific knowledge, merely my perception of it, but it does seem to hold up reasonably.

When a child is born, their entire world is themselves, and whatever's within earshot of them. They do not percieve the world outside their immediate sphere, because they are not aware of it, nor capable of understanding it. Thus, irrelevant. And while an infant may feel an immediate fear of being alone, they don't realize fear as such. Barring abandoned babies, I doubt any recently-born will ever feel lost for longer than it takes for a parent to scoop it up and hold it.

I don't think babies have nightmares, because they haven't developed their worldview enough to understand exactly how much there is to be afraid of.

When a child grows up, it starts sensing the world around it. And slowly, it dawns, that while the world is a gargantuan playground to frolick in, it's also a vast expanse of indifference toward the child. The world persists, regardless of the child. One is no longer the focal point of existance everywhere.
This is where the nightmares kick in, I reckon. The slow coming to terms with existance as we define it is scaring. The wondrous, but ultimately simple, mind of a child cannot accept, immediately, the fact that the world simply doesn't care. Yet the child is left to come to terms with it by its own accord.

Everyone who dreams (and I believe most everyone do, remembering them is another matter entirely) experiences nightmares. It's inevitable that at some point, your mind walks down a dead-end path, and gets trapped by its own (lack of) logic.
Everyone have had nightmares where they are chased by something. An image, a thought, a monster or just the feeling of something hot on your heels, lurking around the corner.

And I have no doubt that if I were to ask any child at the age of 4, if they'd ever had a nightmare about being alone or abandoned, they'd nod in agreement.

As a child grows older, they learn to cope with their existance. Their lives again turn back into a microcosmos of expectations, goals, dreams and whatnot. In short, turning back to egoism because it offers a measure of solace. Facing the world's whimsical cruelty with no means of comprehending it simply will not work. And usually, there, the nightmares stop again for children, and don't resurface unless some traumatic event triggers them again.

The next time nightmares start showing up on a significant scale, I surmise, is during adolescence, where we once again dip our feet into the world outside. Taking in external impressions to help shape ourselves and define ourselves also means seeing what the other side of life is about. And the dreams return. They'll fade, bit by bit while puberty has its way with you and you're too busy making any sense of it all, and honestly I don't think nightmares really resurface until you step out of teenagehood and into the ranks of adults. When, once again, you're forced out of the microcosmos because it's expected that you're now an upstanding citizen who'll help maintain the world.

From then on, you're alone with your nightmares, because you're expected to be able to handle them, and the cause of them, by virtue of adulthood alone.

I guess I missed the memo about nightmares stopping at the age of around 8.

And that's the reason for why I'm writing this, because that's one of the ways I have learned to combat it.

Until I was 18, I never talked to anyone about my nightmares, because of the dreams themselves. One of them in particular, as it's been the most consistent of them. It's changed along the years, but in essence it's the same.

In my dream, I am standing in front of a wall. I'm not standing on anything, more like floating in nothingness. The wall stretches unendingly in front of me, the way things can in dreams. I begin to realize that the wall, in some way, is my doing, and while it's never clearly defined for me, I sense that I've built it for a reason.
That's when I turn to look over my shoulder, where I see people. My mother, father, my brother, my friends and those I love or have loved.
None of them say a word, they just look at me, waiting. Blank eyes and taut faces, I never see them move.
I get a sense of restlessness, that turns to worry. They aren't waiting for me to do something, they are waiting, hoping for me to prevent something from happening.

And that's when I realize that I am not awake. Some people enjoy, when dreaming, the realization they are free. Free from rules and regulations, they can do as they will.
I become fearful when I realize I am dreaming, because the comprehension brings with it the thought that I no longer have a measure of control over things around me. That the laws don't apply, that I can take nothing for granted. That I am a subject to the whims of my own subconscience.
And in the dream, I realize that I am standing on the safe side of dreaming. The strange, the wonderful, the mysterious and enticing dreams...and that on the other side of the wall, are the things I fear. The green-eyed wolf made of shadows and angles from another nightmare, the dust-yellow fog that rolls over the hillside in the twilight, The gmork from the Neverending story, the demon in my plush teddybear that causes it to try and savage my throat with jagged teeth. They're all there, on the other side of the wall, waiting to come through.
Then I notice a crack in the wall, that starts expanding into a fine network of shadows.
I put my hands against the wall, trying to hold it in place, hold it together, while I sense the people behind me, silenty staring, and waiting, and hoping. Without blinking, moving, they depend on me to hold this in.

The wall comes crumbling down, I can't keep it together, and from the holes in the wall, shadows flow like a flood into my dream, darkness and teeth and green eyes wash over me, and the last thing I see is the wave roll over all I know and love, swallowing it up. Because I couldn't hold it back.

The people in the dream vary, as real life changes and people part ways, but most everyone I've met from age 18 and onwards stay there.

I don't remember the first time I dreamt this, it's lost somewhere in the early years, but for the longest of times, I didn't tell anyone about the dream, because I remembered the dream and what happened in it. I was afraid that if I told anyone about it, the floodgates would open again, just in reality instead of in my dreams.

I spent years, fearing that what I hid of dark thoughts would one day, if unchecked, flow from me and swallow up everyone I knew.

So I kept it to myself, and in return, it did not spill out.

I write about it now, as I have written on it a few times in the past, to once again try and get some measure of closure to it. By writing it, or saying it, I feel I diminish its power a little, every time, and its hold over me weakens enough for me to breathe normally again.

Unfortunately, I've done it before, and I know, that like an unkillable infection, I can only drain it down to a tolerable level, and keep it there. Eventually, I'll forget about it for a while, and it will come back.

I wonder how this came to happen. What caused me to dream that my own mind would flow through me and bury everyone I know, what kind of nightmare is that? Why would I end up fearing, for over a decade, that I was a conduit for nightmares. What the fuck caused this? It's not normal, I'm fairly certain of that.

At least, for a while now, I can breathe again, with it removed from the back of my mind.

As to the why of me writing about it now?

Simple. I dreamt it again last night. There's a reason for why I usually sleep with the lights on, when I sleep alone. As soon as I wake up, and realize I'm awake, catch my breath and the heart stops pounding like it's trying to escape my chest, I end up cursing my mind, that it won't stop thinking, because awake and asleep, I keep thinking myself into dead-ends.

What this world truly needs...

I've had this idea broiling around in my head for a while;

You know what the world needs?

Fuck online convenience stores that do to-door delivery.
Nevermind the online funeral home sites.

No. I've got it all figured out...

An online store. For emo kids wielding their parents' credit cards. Fuck yes.

Do you have any idea how much stuff I can peddle to these whiny brats?

Picture this:

First off, a classy name like www.darketernalabyssofdespair.com should be a hit. Might want to set up a redirect from something easier like www.uberemo.com or similar, too. After all, while its undoubtably very emo to lack the linguistic complexity of a poly-syllabilic domain name and fail even at that, dyslexic emos should have a chance at this, too.

Second, a design that instill hopelessness and despair. I'm thinking hospital palette here, folks; bleached bone, pastel green, and of course, an almost-black hue of red. (note, the green is just to cause mild nausea in the viewer...call it a minor payback for having to endure emos in the everyday).

Third, and this is where it gets good: What I'd sell.
Obviously, we must assume that any good emo wants music. And self-mutilation tools. Although I'd personally think that listening to bands like Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance and Evanescence would be punishment enough, these little sufferjunkies need more. I'll give them more. CDs with all of the above, all claimed to be "secret unreleased B-sides". Delivered on self-printed CDs. Every single CD needs to be shattered, though. For self-mutilation purposes. Nothing spells fanboi/grrl as cutting one self with the shards of a CD thought to contain your favourite band's never released tracks. Naturally, this would only be enough for the play-cutters. For the serious ones, you know the ones who don't constantly blog about how they're going to kill themselves horribly, the deluxe item;
Rusty glass shards from a broken mirror.
Fuck yeah. Does it get more emo? I think not!

Also, to the shopping cart needs to be webcams. Shitty USB webcams that never work properly, and only show two colors; Black and some off-chromatic greyscale smudge. Locked at a compression that'd make Dali vomit. And hard-coded to only do 315 x 237 resolution.
I'll sell it under the slogan "I'm so goth, even my WEBCAM is non-conform!"

Also, we need some form of eyeliner that'll instantly cause the victim to cry blood. I'm still pondering whether flour with microscopic glass splinters would work better than mixing black dye with suplhuric acid.

Finally, I'm thinking of selling Absinthe. And by Absinthe, I mean green-flavoured window cleaning liquid. It might not make you drunk, but it'll make you just as sick as if you tried drinking the real stuff to impress your poser friends. The name "Killing Joke" springs to mind. Also, because I know the buyers wouldn't get it, as it refers to a band I don't think concurrent emo stars have (dis)covered and cashed in on. It's either that, or "Final Solution". I like that name as well, though. Maybe Soylent Fairy.

All of this should be promoted under the collection name of "These wounds/they will not heal/my suffering/eternal" or similar, so they can proudly display the set logo and claim that they invented that line, and that it's the epitome of dark poetry. Fuck Lord Byron and Poe, make way for xPunkGothSk8Grrl89x!

Of course, the page needs to have one of those guestbooks full of signings from people who don't exist, who claim that my online store has increased their penis/bust size, made them a major hit with their peers, and caused their parents to ground them for a year. 110% rebel. I'm angling for the grounded part to be the authenticity part on the site, in case you're wondering.

Now, you might ask yourself, as one potential investor asked me;
"But, how do I know that my substantial investment (of no less than a few thousand dollars) will not merely be squandered on absinthe, shrooms and hookers?"
That's actually a pretty damn good question. You don't. Apart from that I've yet to spend money on hookers, and I don't do shrooms. But as was pointed out, "if you have the two first, I think the third comes automatically."

In short, invest now! Help make the world better, one bleeding wrist at a time.

Also, I intend to pack, alongside any order, a step-by-step guide to successful /wrist action. I reckon that if you can't even figure out how to kill yourself through means of whatever I'm selling, you need all the help you can get.

...Did I mention I'm not that fond of emo subculture?