cocknbullkid

One pill makes you large
One pill makes you small
One pill makes you an absolute know it all

Her words are made of glitter
She’s a bullshitter
So they’ll try to bait her

But of all the powers that I could possess
To make you love me for me that would be the best
But before I become that earnest
I would throw myself into the fiery furnace

Chorus
Did she just say what I think she did
(oh oh)
Did she say she’s the Cocknbullkid
How are we to believe a word she says
(oh oh oh oh)
She’s from the depths of Hades
Is it comedy or tragedy
That we’re never to believe a word she says
(oh oh oh oh)

Please help me before I hurt myself
Are these imaginings of somebody else
She’s a narcissist
She’s a self loather
Don’t lose control of her

Cos of all the powers that I could possess
To make you love me for me that would be the best
But before I become that honest
I would throw myself into the fiery furnace

Did she just say what I think she did
(oh oh)
Did she say she’s the Cocknbullkid
How are we to believe a word she says
(oh oh oh oh)
Sounds like a boy but she’s a lady
Is it comedy or tragedy
That we’re never to believe a word she says
(oh oh oh oh)

The mouth is a trap
whatever I say I can’t take back
Can’t take back
The mouth is a trap
The mouth is a trap
The mouth is a trap

hold on to your misery

misery never sounded so sweet. what a gem.

I want to break free

But still, it was not the desire to ‘write’ that was his real motive. To get out of the money-world — that was what he wanted. --Said of the "artistic" Gordon Comstock, the quixotic/puerile Marxist protagonist of Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying

I don't do well in the money world. Like Gordon, I have hypocritical/half-hearted affiliations (ones enabling responsibility-shirking it turns out) with a money- and status- effacing ideology and community. It flatters me to believe that my ideologies/my community determine who I am--with meaningless work a malign alien in my life, a millstone. Silly, of course: life is made up of but two things: work and leisure (it goes without saying which one precedes and permits the other). But after a shitty week at work, I'm itching to get out of this place, sheltering myself in and taking up the armor of artistic expositions of Romantic notions like freedom, of self-expression and summer days.

"How'd I get here?," I've wondered over the last couple of days. First, I blame the culture, under the tutelage of which, I spent my childhood internalizing the pep talk mantras of "follow your dreams" and "do what your passionate about." Once the privilege of the elite, such idealization has been everywhere promulgated by our schools and the mass media.

Think your grandfather's happiness ever rested on his capacity for and success in his own creative self-expression? Well, of course not, but we live in a different age, in the age of Adler and Maslow, in the age of the white-collared working class of the service and information economies.

Of course, base vices (selfishness and laziness, e.g.) are the warp and woof of our being and opportunistically take up the cloaks of lofty principles when they operate--in one's self-righteous consciousness and in one's unsolicited apologias declaimed to hapless co-workers, friends, and family, recourse is always made to virtues, disguising their

Danny Noonan: I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college.
Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too. --From Caddyschack

Though it will never happen, I want out of the money world.

three awesome songs with "bird" in the title

i need friends

I did a lot in 2010, huh?

But that tack of self-inquiry really began with, "What more do you want?" asked in needling, mock exasperation. Another voice, this one more solemn, answered, "love."

I try to keep my perspective grounded and fair--and,  in my equanimous moments, I rationally acknowledge my blessings (both circumstantial and the ones for which I've worked). Still, in my day-to-day goings-on, I'm haven't been satisfied with, or proud of, my life since graduation.

I wish I could say that it comes down to unfulfilling work, but, mostly, it's just plain loneliness. I'm definitely one of those people who gets down for no good reason, which happens just about anytime I have time to myself, which is often. For all that I did in 2010, what I really want in my life in 2011 are friends and time with friends--for the initial and very selfish reason that I don't want to be down so much. I also have an inkling that life's joys, at least for interpersonally-inclined me, will be found in my relationships and not in my accomplishments. One (most of all, me) hardly looks back wistfully at a day spent watching DVDs or studying for that German test as one would when reminiscing about times spent with friends. Working through new ideas and other practices at life-mastery became goals of mine because they were the alternative, the things that one's left with aside from hobbies and hanging out.  I've sustained them because I want to be an interesting person, fair and equanimous to all of my friends and acquaintances.  But I can't say any of my competencies in the humanities have ever won me a single friend...

I know that I'm not incapable of making close friends. I've made them and I have them, but they live hundreds, even thousands of miles away. They even tell me that I'm not repulsive and mostly normal, if a little eccentric and sarcastic. But I still get jealous when I see groups of friends or others with full social schedules and I wonder how I've bungled my life up to this point that I'm alone and bored yet another Saturday night. 

I feel like a silly chimera: outwardly aloof/deliberate/calculated/sly but inwardly playful, like a labrador puppy running at you. I've had to cope, but time's dragged on since graduation and things haven't improved and my circumstances aren't likely to. So it's up to me? Well, that's disheartening--I've been largely alienated from my peers my whole life and I can count on one hand the friends with whom I can just be. (There's something so great about just sitting on a friend's couch sans all personae. But there's no couch like that in San Diego for me.) Every interaction with a new person is so calculated, so far removed from my spontaneous energies that it becomes a game, a theatrical production where I'm just playing a role.  I've been so concerned with coming across in a certain way--of making sure an idealized image of myself (as smart, funny, complicated) was realized in the perceptions of strangers--that I've lost myself chasing a illusion.  Well, this is ridiculous.

Action point, then: obviously, I can throw myself at life: at travel, at church, at hiking or marathons, at studying German, etc. Well...I'm thinking I might start to throw myself at people. Better a fool than a loner.

in 2010, I

ran ≈ 485 miles

completed my first marathon in 3 hours 38 minutes and 4 seconds

drove up to LA with friends just for chicken and waffles at roscoe's

spent a week in san francisco, seeing the sites, visiting friends, easter service in a cathedral, wine country tourin', chats in the parlor

took a photoshop class

was a boyfriend for 5 months

ate apple pie in Julian

ate a fried klondike bar at the del mar fair

got broken up with

got drunk and wandered/danced the streets at 2 a.m., blasting music thru my qc2s, fell asleep in my car

hiked 25 miles round-trip and made it to the top of the 11,500 ft peak of mt san gorgonio

saw scott pilgrim twice at the theater

took a 5 unit german class at a local community college

enjoyed some life-defining albums

saw Robyn in concert

swam with a wild dolphin in Hawaii

finally volunteered at church

soaked in the hot springs of two countries

rode a horse to a waterfall in Costa Rica

rappelled down a 220 ft waterfall

went white water rafting

ziplined

got a picture with a monkey

embraced a label

decided to work on living for myself

christianity and the alientation from self

[ehhh, I can't write that blog, but I'd love to read it]