Brandon

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 07:28:44 GMT

Here we go again!

Work sucks, but that's not really anything new. It's not really that it's bad, per se, but I ought to be looking for a new job or two. Not until after the holidays, because I don't want to screw over either of my bosses. Which reminds me - black friday is coming up! Nothing ruins a good family holiday like thanksgiving like going to retail hell for minimum wage the day after. Oh boy.

I've been really telling myself I need to find a way to stop thinking about the girl at work, because it's really not a good idea. I mean, the way I figure it, she stays on my mind because I don't bother finding anyone else to concern myself with, right? So life decides it's time to throw the curveball again. There's a cute new girl working at the twenty-four hour diner, that seemed kind of interested in one of my friends. Shy indie kid that he is, they'd make a cute couple, and I'm pretty stoked for him. Everybody saddles up to head to a huge halloween dance party, I cleverly nab a copilot, and suggest she ride with indiefriend, which works. We have a blast, they dance together for a while, she's rather drunk so he gives her a ride home. She... is going to stay at his house! Except, she decides to mention that I'm rather cute. Also, that i'm in her age bracket, if you will, for dating. He's twenty-five, i'm twenty-one, and she's still twenty. Thank you, awkward impasse.

Oh well, we've still got someone to harass until three in the morning over many cups of coffee, so all's well that.. hasn't ended yet and is of uncertain outcome? Sure, why not.

My ex tried to invite me to her halloween costume party. That is to say, she wanted me to show up, get drunk, and start eyeing whatever 'costume'-shaped underwear she would have been wearing. I found no less than three other things to do that night. Go me.

Smoke break!

Two albums worth checking out: the new Aesop Rock (white guy trying to sound like a black guy trying to sound like a white guy. awesome!) and the new Radiohead (you pay what you want! their website insists that it's up to you on how much you pay! and you download it! awesome^2).

Last, but probably first in importance: the Protomen are playing Richmond again. Awesome to the highest power, and we'll probably hang out with them afterwards. Plus, early show on a Sunday means there are maybe two people that can't make it. Everyone else that gives even half a damn will be there! Wobsite! Check that out, give them a listen, etc. It's a rock opera about megaman, if you didn't already know. Second album in the works!

used books ftw

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:19:08 GMT

I picked up 1984, and after a bit of stalling, read it in just short of a whole day. Jesus christ, it's terrifying and wonderful and now occupies the same space in my heart as Empire Strikes Back:

the bad guys win.

Now it's time to write Jedi, I think.

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:53:28 GMT

As far as really strange changes go, here's one: met the guy last night. Was sort of trying to avoid him when they both showed up at work to hang out, ended up being introduced. Turns out he's actually rather awesome. He's like me plus ten years and a lot more musical knowledge. Now I want to be friends with this guy and feel a little bit bad for messing around with his girlfriend.. Everything's a lot easier to deal with now, though.

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:09:01 GMT

So, let's see - it's time to bitch about women again. This episode: women with boyfriends!

No, seriously. What the hell am I supposed to do when I've been hooking up/hanging out/becoming totally enamored with a girl and then her boyfriend comes back from a three month trip in Europe? Oh, that's right, nothing. Keep swapping books and music, keep working with her, keep hanging around the same social circles.

It really doesn't help that she's beautiful in a way I can't figure out. Or that i'm pretty sure she's smarter than I am. Or that waking up to a cup of coffee and actually having a regular day with her every day is so much better than waking up alone at five in the afternoon. And of course she wants to be good friends. If she ever breaks up with her boyfriend, i'm almost positive we're going to stay good friends while I watch her date somebody else.

Oh well! It was a fun month. I guess I can chalk that one up to 'summer love' and try to go about my business as usual. Riight.

argh.

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:17:48 GMT

one does not like it when he hears of a woman talking to her ex about getting back together. especially not when she turns around and offers to cook dinner for the first guy, and then spends the night at the second's apartment.

also, one does not enjoy women who are overly familiar after an extended lack of contact, and then go straight to mentioning the guy reason that the boy stopped talking to her in the first place over.

make the crazies go away. i want to not have crazy girls liking me.

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:58:49 GMT

Someone on IM tonight had a 3% warning level. How long has it been seen you've seen the warning level make an appearance?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 04:00:54 GMT

Well, goddamn. Nothing ruins a fun mood like suddenly playing the straight man to a girl saying she's worried that she's "becoming addicted" to some guy, that she's a little worried about being hurt because of her recently ex-boyfriend. This new guy is great and all, and of course she has to take risks, she can't just close herself off.

Oh wait, that's the waitress I was talking about. And moments after his mention, he arrives to sit one table away. I had the privelege to look up and see them making out. It was fucking fabulous, if you couldn't tell because I didn't use any italics.

At least I got to just get up and leave, and have her suprised that I was going. It took a couple of seconds, but at least she knows better than to pull that in front of me again. I don't think I'll be seeing her around, at any rate.

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:05:23 GMT

Who wants to tell me how a visit to 4th street diner went from chatting with our waitress to her saying the Silent Hill games were better than the movie, to her having a METROID tattooed on her neck behind one ear, to her asking my friends if I had a girlfriend while I was in the bathroom.

I know there's not a '?' at the end of that sentence, and that's because it's a rhetorical question. I'm still not sure this whole thing actually happened.

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:47:20 GMT

I traded my right eye for wisdom and drank deeply in the sun's first light.

I can't stop posting

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:22:55 GMT

Whatever comes to mind. I feel really sad right now, because I just felt out the length and breadth of a awful hollow spot in my heart where I used to have a bunch of friends I only knew on the internet. So many of them are gone now, and my presence is so diminished, and I just feel badly because it's as if one day everyone just unplugged and walked away.

I miss you, guys. I don't think I can make enough effort to come back and do this all again, but I hope you're all doing well.

oh and one more thing

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:45:54 GMT

Congratulations to anyone who attempted NaNoWriMo this year. I hadn't even thought about it, for most of the month. Seriously, go, you guys.

eh

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:44:00 GMT

It's eight fifteen in the morning, a time that is extremely reserved for when i've been up all night. The city is so insanely foggy, it looks like a snowstorm outside. Oh, how I wish it were true.

So i'm still awake, and i'm trying to figure out how I feel about life, the universe, and everything. Yes, I know the answer, and yes, I know I can't know the question. I said 'how I feel about it', alright?

I feel a little stupid and lonely, and I don't know if it's seasonal, or because I've been around my ex a couple of times lately, or because I said i'd back off of a girl that i'm interested in as a favor to a friend, or because the only person i've had sex with since my ex is a throwaway fuck and the same girl both times, or because i'm the guy that gets asked 'where's your friend? i haven't seen him around lately..' instead of being the guy that gets asked about.

Yeah, instead of waiting for the sun go down to cry emo, I wait for it to come up. Oh, and don't forget the part where i'm worrying about money - I get awful hours at a nearly minimum wage job, while I have to figure out how to afford to go back to school spring semester or else how to get a high-enough paying job to repay my loans while also affording to never talk to my parents again: quitting now would crush them and me too, I think. And wondering if school is really what I need to be doing! There's that one too! And the balance of the desire to be independent with an 'elephant in the room'-size fear of failure.

And it's time for: the good things in my life, so I can shut up about the rest of the garbage. My job is fucking awesome. I mean, it's gamestop, it pays like shit and I can't get hours to save my life (I'll stop now), but the store manager is an amazing guy. Very easy to get along with, nearly impossible to anger, great musical taste.. And the two assistant managers are excellent as well. I mean, one's a little dull and the other can be as overbearing as I'm sure I am, but we're all fairly like-minded, so no complaining.

In spite of losing some very good friends who I now view as trivial, petty, selfish, and not prime friend material, I've reaffirmed that some of my other close friends are very much worth my time. Unfortunately, I can get very angry at a few of them, and they do nothing to stop it - in some cases, try to push me further. And others, I rely to heavily upon. I have to stop looking to them to comfort me and fix my problems. They still make very good sounding-boards, and they're... encouraging, in a comically frightening kind of way. **

I've got a 'short' story I've been forcing myself to work on, which is suprising; usually, I just forget about things, rather than slogging on with the writing even though I don't know where I'm going with it. I think i'm going to polish up and compress the first few hundred words and throw it around to a couple of Richmond freemags, see if any of them want to publish. If I want to be a writer, I have to write something and show it to people, don't I?

Oddly enough, in this lucd-honest-sleepless state, I seem to have reverted to my old-school type ninja ways. I'm not sure how quickly i'm typing, but it's fast and fairly accurate, which I find suprising. I believe something of it has to do with actually writing what I'm thinking, rather than considering the flows of words and structure. Go me.

See also: what the jesus? I've taken most of my writing slowly, albeit that last passage was hammered out to prove my type-speed point, but I'm shocked to see how much I've written and heartened to notice I've been at this almost single-mindedly for over twenty minutes. It's very cathartic to put something out, even if it's going silent. So much better than handwriting it, that's for damned sure.

**Something I forgot to mention earlier that really ought to go here, triggered by 'comically frightening'. A friend was pushing me to do something creative, since I had a couple of crazy days in a row, and he pointed out that I really didn't have any creative outlets. I was frustrated with the story at the time, so I took what was a laughable idea and actually started on a webcomic with an artist friend of mine. He's been lazy with sketches, I've been lazy with coming up with scripts, the third has been lazy about webdesign, but we've actually got a little more than a half-assed attempt on our hands, which I'm starting to be proud of. I hope someone finds our sense of humor (i.e. the things that happen to us that make us laugh) palatable, over the internet.

My aside aside, I have absolutely nothing to do today. That means I need to get to sleep, since that's the most productive thing I can think of right now. That's right, sleeping is my chore for the day. It will probably take me all day too, and I'll be finishing up around the time the sun goes down. What? Want to blame my craziness on switching up my sleep schedule, not getting any exposure to light, and having limited social interactions with the people around me due to my strange patterns? Well i'm not going to, so feel free to pick up the slack for me.

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 06:34:49 GMT

I think it’s ridiculous that everyone thinks he’s a suit-and-tie sort; the luxuriant silk suits and the finest wines really aren’t his cup of tea. That is to say, he does enjoy a cup of tea, now and then, and sometimes he buys a twelve- or thirteen-dollar cigar, but he’s not nearly as opulent as everyone insists on saying. He works from nine to five, rolls up his sleeves in the evening; he plays eighteen holes every third Sunday of the month. That aside, it is true that the oldest habits die hard. Not pride, mind you, not defiance or rebellion or blasphemy. The furthest fall wasn’t from heaven, not if you’d hear the way I know it is. God would even forgive the occasional power struggle, but there’s one thing that he just won’t let go of; the Devil wears paisley.

nano

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:30:32 GMT

Yep. November. Time to write a 5o,ooo word novel, *and* try to not fail out of school. And I just got back into warcraft, so this is gonna be interesting.

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 18:45:56 GMT

So, i'm an idiot, but november is nearing again. That is to say, NaNoWriMo is happenin' soon. Fun times.

Arr!

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:23:33 GMT

It do be talk like a pirate day.. De holiday wharr all ye bilge rats do be speakin' de finest language on any side'o de equator.. If ye don't, we'll bring an arrrrrrmy after ye!

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 08:30:24 GMT

My friends are amazing people. I don't know where I would be, without them. Thank god for them, they mean so much to me. I love my friends.

threadless!

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:13:52 GMT

Kenny showed me an awesome site that prints tshirts based on submitted designs - they have rules about it, and all the users vote on shirt designs, blahblah.. But it usually ends up that they print some fuckin' rad t-shirts now and then: there's one that's out of print, but it has a japanese plane dropping a bomb onto a battleship, only it's the battleship from the game, and the bomb is a big red peg XD

Point of the whole post:
1) Go visit threadless.com. Go be amused by some tshirts, maybe register and vote on a few you like.
2) Whore for myself. Visit threadless with this link (http://www.threadless.com/?streetteam=valken), buy a shirt, I get credit with which I can buy shirts. We both benefit :D

And i'm off, for I have driving school! I'll be getting my license quite soon~

tired.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:25:31 GMT

Rode from Richmond to Williamsburg yesterday. We ended up going 50.33 miles in 3 hours and 44 minutes. That's fairly close to fifteen miles an hour the whole way, which is pretty nice. It was a fun ride, even if some of the (few) hills were grueling. It was also way tiring, but I think that's partly because I rode about fifteen miles the night before, as well.

Sat, 06 Aug 2005 09:06:29 GMT

Found $100 on the floor in a burger place today. I'm kind of weirded out, though, because it seems like it was intentionally dropped - on the front, someone wrote in blue pen "don't gain the world and lose your soul" and "wisdom is worth more than silver and gold". On the back of the dollar it says "YOU ARE NOT A SLAVE". I think i'm just gonna not spend it.

Mon, 09 May 2005 03:30:36 GMT

http://arash.mit.edu/Berkeley_Laptop_Thief.mp4

goddamn.

Tue, 03 May 2005 21:35:20 GMT

So I guess i'm not doing anything with that piercer girl anymore.

Fuck.

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:31:43 GMT

Problem solved. 'nuff said.

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 18:43:33 GMT

So few people are really 'in' on the story, so, just to explain: I'd like to date this girl. I'd also like to sleep with her. Both feelings are mutual. But she won't sleep with me 'cos i'm a virgin. And she won't date me 'cos she won't sleep with me. Her suggestion is I sleep with some girl so then i'm not a virgin and there are no problems.

Or, in brief: i've got to sleep with a girl so I can sleep with a girl so I can date her.

where's my crown?

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:23:30 GMT

new zero wing high score: 219,15o. I've worked up from the 8ok to the 1ook, to the 15ok, and now i've broken 2oo,ooo. All your base are belong to us, bitch.