ObLiVioN-FalLs

Raising his small flippers and pressing strenuously upon the swollen large oak doors that let out a hideous crack as they reluctantly yielded under the flailing press of the penguin, the little penguin made his way into the room.  "Sir, another note came in the mail" the stout obscure penguin called out, breaking the shrill of silence that permeated within the room.

The man, sitting idly in his plush velvet chair, impassively dropped his hand over the armrest towards in the direction of the small penguin.

The little penguin, mechanically responding without thought, began his slow waddle towards the open hand.  Upon reaching his destination, he mindlessly placed the note card within the outstretched hand.  The man, embracing a face of cold abandonment, starred off into the distance without displaying so much as an inclination of emotion.

Clasping the card in his hand the man effortlessly raised it to his face and with a brisk clearing of his throat began reading aloud, "The Scorpion and the Frog."  He paused for a moment as he passively cast his eyes down upon the penguin that stood motionless beside him; the penguin returned the look with inquiring eyes that beckoned intense interest and desire for the contents of the note.  Rolling his eyes back towards the note, the man continued,  "A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back."  Pausing for a moment, the man refocused his eyes upon the note, zealously squinting his eyes.  "The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."  Stopping, partly out of anger, partly out of defiance, the man once again cast his idle eyes upon the penguin that stood attentively by his side.  "Well, that sounds reasonable enough" he spoke in a defiant tone that reeked of bitter sarcasm.

"But..." he continued, "The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?" The man stopped reading and dropped his hand upon the armrest, removing the card from his vision.  Without hesitation, and without a hint of emotion, the man recited the final lines from memory, "Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."

"Signed, Tony."  Crumbing the card in his hand, the man heaved it across the room opposite the penguin.  The card fluttered through the air and landed softly in a pile of a hundred or so identical cards, all recanting the same story, all signed Tony.

"Penguin", the man called out.

"Yes?"

"Don't bring me any more cards."

 

Can ideas simply be too big for one individual?  Is it possible for one them to collectively spring to life and enter and exit your mind at will?  If they decide to leave, can you kindly ask them to return?

I find myself in a life and death struggle with culture, with identity, with the essence of who I once was and who I am now.  I can feel my artistic license, genius, craft, slowly bleeding away with every data table I attempt to analyze, with every mathematical equation I attempt to compute.  Once so creative and vibrant dreams filled my mind and writing, but those dreams have long since fled and mindless mathematical computations have quickly filled the empty void.  My writing, reading, listening, is limited to that of seemingly endless columns and rows of pure data, random numbers - computing values that supposedly represent something real that took place during at some time, or at least our best guess of something real.  Perhaps they may have meant something to someone at one point, but now they are nothing but empty numbers occupying the white space between page 502 and 503 of the decaying textbook - a testament to the futility of one's lifework.

I long for the existence of culture more than anything, but it seems the more and more I search the more and more I am confronted with a homogenous existence that has stricken any type of artistic license from it.  My search has been reduced to the act of simply chasing shadows, chasing the rumors of culture and identity, but forever being cursed to watching them tauntingly flee off at a distance - snickering as they do so.

Things should be different, the college existence shouldn't have been reduced to simply going to class, studying, going to class, studying...but I can't seem to find the ability to break the chain.  With every promise of an exciting night comes the cold hard reality of an assignment due, or an exam surfacing on the horizon.  Though it may be immature, and quite foolish, I simply want to give it all up and drink.  I want to simply drink my brains out under the pretense of a beautiful autumn sky and the backdrop of a hundred little black dresses with matching stilettos.  I want to do something so asinine that would spit in the face of conventional logic - why?  Simply to prove that I'm human, that I'm not a mindless bot that crunches numbers but a live human being that makes the mistake of drinking too much - a live human being that does things simply for the pleasure they induce, not for the logic it entails.  I want demolish the ideal of moderation and scoff at the notion of an impending tomorrow.  I want to live and experience the infinity of the night that occurs when the right volumes of alcohol mix with the proper amounts of undeviating techno beats - against the picturesque backdrop of a hundred little black dresses.

You believe in tomorrow? I want there to be no tomorrow, I want to experience the night that doesn't relent and the morning that never surfaces.

[UnFiNiSheD]

BUD
"And what do you want?"

DARIEN
"...a Turner, a perfect canary diamond... a Lear jet... world peace... the best of everything..."

I think I’m finally realizing what I want in the world.  Opposing that shy boy that hides within the confines of the classroom lies a very elegant and simple desire: the best of everything. 

Somewhere between chatting it up with cousin number two, and distant cousin number twenty-three, I realized that I wanted what they had - what they all had.  After speaking with my one cousin I suddenly realized how foolish it was of me to not have originally gone on to get a pilot's license. I immediately wanted to trade in everything I had for his job, all 187 credits, in for his job.  Flying CEOs, football coaches, and the distastefully rich around the country in a private jet was suddenly my calling in life.  Spending my nights eating in lavish restaurants in Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, and the Bahamas only to come back to a small private town nestled somewhere between the suburbs and the country was a perfect dream, enveloped within the words 'if only'.

After talking with him, just when I thought I had it figured out, I then began talking to another cousin and realized that a civilian working for the army was really the way to go - a civilian that drives a brand new Toyota Highlander and settles for nothing but the best.  To choose the lifestyle of Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and brands that I had never even heard of was the real lifestyle to be lived.  Having a loving wife, and a stable job that brought not only financial security but the jealous glare of all those around him, suddenly seemed to become the apple of my desire.

...That was until I talked to the man who spent the days planning a future with the 'CFO' of his company, then I suddenly realized I should have traded it all in for an accounting degree so I could pursue exactly what I was meant to in life.  I realized that that life would have brought a beautiful wife, expensive dinners, and quite a fast car with it - and I suddenly it was what I was meant to be in life.

...But then I spoke with my favorite cousin, the one what's currently bartending in distant city at night.  She is a beautiful girl that is living under the auspicious of a life of excitement and energy, working Latin-Salsa night on Monday, Techno Thursday, and lastly hip-hop Friday and Saturday.  I suddenly realized that's what I wanted, to be there, with her, enjoying the endless night that encompass the oscillating beats of the music machine.  The immortal nights that endlessly extend on forever with no hope, or prayer, of morning ever arriving.

In short, I simply wanted it all.   I realize now that's a fatal flaw that I possess - wanting things that don't exist.  Wanting to living in the expectation that exists within my mind, not in reality.  I think I’m attracted to the bitter vanity that others display, the vanity that deep inside I know is a vagrant lie but am attracted to nevertheless.  The vanity that exists in the nightclubs, family gatherings, and in every billboard and magazine.  The vanity that screams it's the best, you're the best, and you're doing it the best. 

I simply want it all.  Is that too much to ask for?

Is it too much to want the woman who leads the techno beats with her voice, orgasmically chanting out 'la-lalala-lalala-la' as the percussion of the beats in the background prop up the image of beautiful girl, an endless night, and the vanity that exclaims 'you can't have this.'  Or how about the striving artist, that paints lavish works of art in her studio as droplets of paint are strewn across her face and tattered blue jeans?  Then how the brunette in the black dress and stockings that goes travels to the opera on the blustery winter night?

Everyone has their vices, mine just happens to be a love for things that do not exist.
I think this is why I fell so hard for her.

[UnFiniSHeD]

I've converted my laptop from a Windows Vista machine to a Windows Vista/Ubuntu Linux machine.  I've always viewed myself as pretty computer technical, and always saw the installation of Linux as a hurdle I was never able to overcome - until now. 

I have mixed feelings about it; coming from a Windows background and being able to successfully install an alternative operating system with virtually no-help from anyone around me is somewhat of an accomplishment.  It also has some pretty nice features, like 'virtual desktop', where I can switch between two desktops as if I had two computer monitors.

Though, I feel the installation of Linux is really just done so that I can say, "I've installed Linux."  While I so desperately want it to work, and thereby be able to throw away Vista in the process, I find everything within Linux would be so much easier if I just used my Windows Vista....but in anycase, I can check this off the 'To-Do List'.

I used to have a best friend, quite awhile back, back when I was a different person.  I still think of him occasionally, and still believe him to be my 'best friend' even though we haven't talked for years.  Though we've decided to take drastically different paths, I've always felt as though our story was connected, as though there were vast audiences of spectators somewhere watching life unfold before the two of us.  The movie, or play, would be riddled with cut-scenes showing how drastically different our lives were.  Illicit images of drugs, alcohol and wild parties would saturate his tale of the story, while math problems, textbooks and lone isolation would be my tale.

I called him tonight, believing he was still living in his grandma's basement smoking pot, I thought the two of us could get together and catch up on old times.  Anxiously I found his name in speed dial and hit send.  He answered the phone in a cheery tone, reassuring me in my decision to call.  "Hey [ObLiVioN-FalLs], how is it going man?" he inquired. 

"Not too bad, and yourself?" I shot back in casual line that I had used but a thousand times before.

He continued on with a brief life story, about how he moved to [location] and left his grandmother's basement.  And then, in typical fashion, at around one-minute and forty-seconds into the call he dropped the news:  "And I'm engaged too!"  He was always one for telling you the most recent or best thing in his life, as soon as possible.  It usually entailed money, or material possessions.

I stopped in mid-sentence, in mid-thought, I simply couldn’t believe it.  After the initial shock wore off I began to forcefully question who she was, "Who is this chick? I mean, is she the one chick..." I immediately caught myself before I continued with the thoughts that pervaded my mind.

"...Is she that crazy bitch that cut herself all up and was strung out on drugs?  Or is she that underage chick you were banging and she wanted you to meet her dad?"

I began to rephrase my sentence, "I'm not sure I know her, do I?"  I'm pretty certain she was in the background; I could hear someone questioning our conversation. 

"No man, you don't know her, I met her about a year ago."

My mind began to viciously enter attack mode, I felt Tony chomping at the bit to tear him and his fiancé apart - for his own sake.  I wanted to ask him why he did it.  Hadn't he seen that movie?  Didn't he know how it ended?  Having no idea about the situation, or her, I resolved that he was making a huge mistake - and I still believe so.  In my mind, and in reality, he was still just a little kid that that spent his days and nights playing play station, video-games, and smoking pot.  As foolish and ridiculous as it sounds, I was hoping to call up that kid, play a few video-games, and chat about how shitty the world is.

"Wow, that's awesome.  Congratulations man, that's pretty cool" I coughed out as I attempted to convince myself that he really was getting married, and that people do grow up.

"Hey, do you have facebook?" he amicably questioned.

"Uh, facebook?  Yea I think I have an account.  A facebook account? Um, yea I have one" I mumbled out, still in shock and anger over the news.

"Well, look me up on there sometime."

"Yea, sure thing."

"Talk to you next holiday?"

"Yea, next holiday."

"Bye."

"Adios."

"Will you come with me?  If I leave school, would you follow?"

Asking someone to simply pick up and move is quite a strong proposition, and even more outrageous when you make it to someone that you're not even 'technically' dating.  Nevertheless I can't seem to get it off my mind of asking /Lm to do it, to simply pick up and move with me leaving everything all behind.

Crazy?  Perhaps.

Rewind back to January of last year.  I applied for a Navy training program (civilian) and didn't get accepted; it's a program that would have given me the name of a city in the U.S. and orders to move.  Fast forward to January of this year and I find myself in the same situation, with one exception: my resume is now infallible.  It is with complete certainty that I would get accepted[sic]*, though it's not as easy as that.  The new situation carries with it a minor piece of baggage, namely /Lm.  Even though our relationship is still somewhere between friendship and dating, and I still avoid key phrases around her such as: "friend", "relationship", "girlfriend", "dating", I can't help but toy with the idea of asking her to come with me (if I get accepted).

I suppose the whole idea breaks down to me asking her to move with me, she says yes, and well, I'm not sure if you've seen the movie but it ends with the two characters riding off into the distance down a desert road amidst the backdrop of a setting sun.  Naturally, it's a perfectly foolproof plan.  I just have to explain to /Lm that it's going to happen....

....even when I don't know that it's going to happen; though it's a plan B I've conjured up in case I don't make it through my second semester of graduate school, which I have my doubts.

*Certainly no resume is infallible, and I state that out of jest.  Though I do feel more confident about mine this around.

• Statistical Methods 2 -                   B
• Theory of Statistics 1 -                    B-
• Teaching Practicum -                      S
• Sampling Theory and Methods         A-

GPA: 3.33

It turns out that I did pass my first semester of graduate school with a measly 3.33, a GPA that I am more than happy to accept.  While I should be celebrating ecstatically the party is tragically cut short as I look towards the next semester and how difficult it's going to be, namely due to:

 

 Theory of Statistics 2: Techniques of point and interval estimation, properties of estimates including bias, consistency, efficiency, and sufficiency; hypothesis testing including likelihood ration tests and Neyman-Pearson Lemma; Bayesian procedures, analysis of variance and nonparametrics.

I poured everything I had into Theory of Statistics 1, literally studying not merely for hours but days.  Looking back I took umbreons_shadow advice and began to "study like you've never studied", those words actually rang through my mind as I stared into the book and mindlessly reread sentences and pages a dozen or so times only to find that they still reduced to mindless doggerel.  I bring this up as Theory of Statistics 2 is known to be twice as difficult, and frankly...I don't believe I can pass it.  I gave Theory of Statistics 1 everything I had, everything, and ended up with a B- (which I believe to be a gift)

 So, enter plan B.

I don't know how to word it other than simply saying, I feel as though this has all been done before.  The people, the stories, it just feels as though everything has been already played out and I've been sent back in time to witness it all.  I sat next to my Grandpa during Christmas only to feel as though he and I had been through it all before, as if I finally understood his perspective - witnessing so many Christmases that they suddenly all blend together to create a single experience that is repeated over and over and over....

 Not that it's bad, not bad at all, and just that it's all been done before.  And it doesn't simply stop at Christmas; it extends to all different aspects of life...

 My cousin declared that he and his wife will be having a baby; I knew this day would come and wasn't shocked at the news (he is the first of us to have a child).  I sat back and, for better or for worse, just felt as though I was merely a figure in a picture that a child twenty years from now is staring into and inquisitively asking, "Who is that?"

"That's me kid", I lived twenty years ago and I could tell you all about it.  I have this awkward feeling that so many people around me are so fixated in their lives that it seems as though everything has already happened.  Take for instance when they broke the news to me, I felt as while they were speaking I was remembering it - as if it wasn't happening that moment, but it was happening twenty years ago.  I almost felt as though I was sitting with the not-yet-born child and ecstatically explaining the scenario, "I remember when your Dad told me they were going to have you...."

It just seems as though everyone within my life, I'll admit it's mostly the 'successful people', seem as though they are simply running on a track that is immovable, that their decisions, their life, everything has already been laid out by the hands of Fate and they are merely following allow the presubscribed path that lay before them.

I'm pretty certain my apathy derives from this feeling, the feeling of us having already had all of our life decisions made and we are simply going through the daily motions to witness them all.  I can almost picture my life doing a violent fast forward in which Death and I are standing together at my last breath and this entire existence has been nothing more than a mere reflection, a looking back period in which I desperately plead for another vision.  Death chuckles and replies back saying, "I've already given you one, how many times are you going to look back?"

"Once more?"

This didn't quite come out the way I had hoped.

I've decided to post an entry now that the semester is over, now that my time isn't consumed by insane math problems. [See Attached]

Though I've decided to sit down and force myself to write, the words just don't seem to flow as they once did.  I'm filled with a silent indifference that has seemed to become the apathetic standard of my life.    It bothers me that I've become so neutral to things, that I have lost the drive to do so many things, including writing the short stories that I once loved.

It also bothers me to know that I still can't answer the question of, "What is graduate school like?"  Having completed one-semester, or gone through 25% of the program, you would think that I would have a pretty decent understand of what it entails - though I don't, or at least I tell myself I don't.

At first I would brush off the question with, "eh, I don't know" or "it's alright" or even "so far so good, but I've just started so..." just as a little child would counter with in explaining his first day of school away.  Now, instead of attempting to find the words, or artistically crafting a parable or allegory, I just sidestep the issue and simply state, "I don't want to talk about it."  I simply don't have anything to say about it, it merely is what it is - two cold strangers passing each other on a bitter snowy evening.

Perhaps I can't answer the question because I've changed and haven't found the proper words or emotions to describe the place relative to the 'new me.'  I feel that every moment I spend here is a moment that I become more and more detached from the real me, from the idealized person and people I have in my mind.  The more time I spend with /Lm the less and less I seem to see of Tony, it's a strange relationship that has me at odds.  I have this odd inclination of Tony proclaiming an ultimatum between /Lm and him, adamantly pleading with raw emotion that "he has been here since..." and that "no matter how much I want /Lm to be AM she will never be her."

 [Insert Creative Allegory]
The reoccurring vision of this whole imaginary scenario leads to an apex in which I am running up to Tony's room only to find it completely barren and empty - he left, he moved out in the dead of the night leaving behind a box, two jars of baby food, and a book entitled, "The proper care and feeding of babies."  I smirk at the title and violently heave the jars of baby food against the wall, forsaking his name out of pure rage. My eyes glance down upon the floor, and ultimately over to the small obscure closet only to find a small shoe-box in the corner.

The box is a small opaque object that reads, "[Edit]" on the front in dark bold letters.

... (it's a short story I have yet to write)

The people, the situation, I just feel so disconnected from it all.  I'm not sure exactly how to sum up the raw emotion other than it just feels wrong.  It doesn't feel as though this was supposed to happen, it doesn't feel like I was supposed to know these people or interact with them.  I have this sick feeling that something else was supposed to happen, but when questioned on it I can't produce a shred of evidence or thought as to what that might be.  Perhaps that is why I can't seem to answer the question, because you have to answer it in relation to yourself, and if you don't know where you are you can't define anything around you.  Just like a ship mindlessly setting sail without a course, destination, or means of navigation.

Politics drive me completely insane; I realize now why I avoid political discussion and discourse at all costs.  I let this completely consume my emotions and blanket all logic - I'm ready to begin deleting friends out of my phone/facebook/life based simply upon their political views.

 

I just need this to end.