I was up very late last night...sort of. I got home from the bar after having had a tad too much to drink (and shooting some kick-ass pool like I haven't done since I was playing several games nightly) and went to sleep...but then woke up. I hate that about beer.

So I'm lying there and thinking in that way that happens when you find yourself having awoken from sleep way too soon and not being able to get back to sleep because you've let your mind start operating. But I had a random thought...the last few months of my life could make a kick-ass book. For so long I've been trying to explore my horizons finding something that could sustain itself for a couple hundred pages and something that is not so mundane that I couldn't play some literary games with it. But life has thrown me an excellent tale about life and love and friendship and self-discovery and all of that and I realized that I could capitalize on it.

I don't know, I'm pretty excited about the prospects. If I could be anything in this life, it would be a writer...I've just been waiting for this moment to come, and it has. yay!

Every day I learn something that makes me more ashamed to be an American...not just because of things that we do, but because of the fact that nobody cares enough to be nearly as outraged as they should be...say, when their government is holding more than one child (CHILD!) under the age of sixteen indefinitely in a worse-than-a-POW camp without any real chance of release?

Children held at Camp Xray, US admits

I hear Sweden is nice...I know I wouldn't mind living in Central Europe...

Anaheim wins!

Seriously, I have a raging boner right now because of this. Anaheim is kicking some major ass against Dallas too and that can only mean that them beating Detroit was not just a fluke. These guys are friggin awesome.

Tonight I am very unproud to be an American. I watched part of the Primetime Thursday report on all that has happened to the Dixie Chicks lately and it makes me sick. Literally sick. How can I have pride in a country that is founded on the principles of freedom when the use of that freedom for nothing more than a statement of "I do not like the President's policies" leads to people destroying your image with bulldozers and making death threats over the radio? Why have that freedom? Why?

What is the point in fighting for freedoms that one is made afraid to exercise? What is the point when the freedoms that you're wanting to exercise are as rather insignificant as disagreeing with someone?

Conservatives love to complain and complain and complain about how "political correctness" is "destroying" America. That pussy-footing you're way through life trying to not offend anyone is so disruptive to the American way. But isn't what is being done to the Dixie Chicks, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, and the millions, millions, of non-celebrity faceless dissenters by conservatives so much worse than worrying about offending? Political correctness is there to protect the feelings of other people...freedom of speech and expression is there to protect the integrity and, ultimately, that very freedom itself of our nation. But it is being chipped away by those that would try to shut down those that dare dissent. How sickening. How very disgusting. It makes me very worried...very ashamed.

I seriously am losing faith in America...not the idea, never will I lose faith in the idea...but rather the institutions that make it up. And some of the people, many of the people. People that dare say "rah rah rah!" to the cause of patriotism without truly understanding what it is they're fighting for. Not even knowing what freedom is. Not accepting what it is that America is truly about.

Oh...and I wanted to gloat. It pisses me off that the Red Wings got their asses creamed so badly in the playoffs, but the fact that the Avalanche also lost in the first round is seeming to make the whole thing just a little easier to take. Of course, my backup team -- the Blues -- are out too, so I really don't care who wins the Stanley Cup...though I've gotta root for the Ducks since it would make their whomping of Detroit a tad more palitable.

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -5.08

Political Compass

To the people filling my e-mail box with spam:

My name is not pques@yahoo.com, if you do not know that my name would not contain the "@" symbol, you probably do not have a right to e-mail me. I do not own a house so, no, I am not interested in getting a new mortgage. I do not want to buy any of the ex-drug-dealer houses that you are offering to list me. No, I do not want to purchase a rottisserrie, any herbal supplements, or any such crap. No Mr. Vuyo Masondo, Mr. Charles Nwachukwui, and Ms. Mamie Johnson, I am not interested in giving you my checking account information so that you might deposit larger sums of money into it. I check urban legend webpages for any "shocking but true" story that I receive and know damn well that most of them so shocking they're not at all true. I do not believe you when I say that I can lose 30 punds in 30 days by giving you money. I am sure that I could find someone to sleep with tonight on your website, but, really, I'm not all that interested. I am happy that little Jenny is now 18, however, I am not really all that interested in watching her take three guys at once. My penis is alright in size, and besides, I don't use it enough to want to bother in enlarging it. Being a boy, I would much rather have smaller breasts than larger ones. I do not want to see your "cumtastical explosionistic ultrajaculatory escapades".

Hell, I really don't even want any jokes.

Does anyone out there actually read any of these things? I've taken to it a bit lately, saving some of the more ridiculous ones. It's fucking retarded some of them.

A little bit of the game of get to know kyle®

I do not like clowns. I am afraid of them, I might even hate them. I don't know. The problem is twofold: One, I don't like people that are constantly trying to make other people laugh. Professional comedians bother me too...at least as people (and I've known one or two). It just seems to me that people that are always trying to be funny have a lot to hide. They are insecure. Or maybe just an asshole at heart that they need to make fun of everyone. I don't know, I can't stand that. There's a line that is crossed somewhere between where it's cool to be funny and where it's totally freakish to take nothing seriously.

Two, I don't like people that hide behind masks. I can't stand not being able to see the person that I'm looking at. I think that's why I'm very turned off by women that where more than a very minimal amount of make-up. To physically hide oneself behind some facade seems to me to be an intentional distraction from oneself -- again, a sort of manifestation of some deep-seated self-hatred or insecurity.

...to throw on a layer of paint daily as a profession says a lot about a person.

That, and I don't think clowns are very funny.

And don't even get me started on mimes...

One of the things that struck me most about Central Europe (or, at least, Prague and Budapest) when I was there was the abundance of Western culture a short decade after the wall fell. It upset me seeing McDonald's everywhere and huge shopping malls that looked to be lifted from any suburban town USA. Not that people there don't deserve to be consumerists as much as we do, but just the sheer volume of American corporate storefronts and ideals everywhere within a relatively short time.

It upset me greatly, and made me feel pretty sad to see all of it and, to tell you the truth, it was the one thing about either town that I didn't love. I don't know, it would just be nice to find some corner of the world where one could be free of Ronald McDonald and the Gap. Especially if that corner of the world has been free of such junk for decades or ever prior to the invasion. But alas...

A week or two ago I almost posted a cynical prediction that McDonald's would set up shop in Baghdad as soon as possible. I should have...I would've been right it seems:

Fast food comes to Iraq

Anything for a buck...the American way.

(btw, this is happening even though there still is no fresh water or electricity in the city of Baghdad or many parts of Iraq)

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting much lately...there just isn't much to say. My life has been filled up enough that I haven't watched (or even read, really) the news. Other than that, life is pretty empty...but in a good way. You know? The only trauma is the fact that I just realized that it's about time to sign up once again for the LSAT...but I know the test is in June so sign-up is in May so I got a little while to worry...but I should start studying up again. Anyone out there have any idea when the deadline is? I'll research it in a few days (when I begin a glorious week off of work) but it's easier to just ask sometimes. Oh well. Peace out.

This is reason number one why I have always been against the war in Iraq and it's stories like this that sicken me that my government, my representative government, acts so nonchalantly about invading other countries for what amount to foriegn policy shits and giggles. This one incident is enough to justify my lack of support for President Bush and his hawkish globe-trotting.

Grisly Results of U.S. Cluster Bombs Although combat in Baghdad is virtually over, carnage continues as civilians are cut, gouged and killed when unexploded munitions in city neighborhoods suddenly detonate, often in the hands of people who don't know what they have innocently picked up. An alarming number of Iraqis being injured and killed are children, who are drawn to the small, grenade-like explosives that can look like toys, said doctors and parents.

It is amazing to me how everything in my life has been so bleak for so long and now, all of a sudden out of the blue, everything seems to be falling into place. I seriously have not felt as good as I do right now (at least emotionally...the allergies are starting to come on) for years...at least since before my mother died. And it's not mania either. Sometimes I'm afraid of that. I mean, I do have issues with depression and that makes me worried that I might also be bipolar sometimes, but life right now feels natural...like life did when I was twelve and riding my bike around the neighborhood, building forts in the trees behind my hose, and innertubing down the river. It doesn't feel like any sort of sickness.

Life feels good. I no longer stay up at night because I fear the dread of waking up...I stay up at night because I just can't let go of the day. I wake up and I feel alive and ready to face the day rather than wanting to stay in bed all day in my underwear. I am happy...and not just with the person that I am or my position in life or whatever you might want to classify under the heading of the existential meaning of the term -- but I am glad to be alive and am enjoying life. Not even the downs that I have experienced in the last three weeks have brought me down in any sort of permanent manner.

The funny thing is, I am no different now than I was last summer before this little crisis hit me...it's just that I feel more comfortable and more confident in myself than I ever have. And I think that I am exuding this confidence, brimming with delight. I think the fact that I have a few girls interested in me (at one time for the first time in my life) just goes to show it. I am being myself and enjoying it, and I think people see that in me. It's awesome.

I'm sorry for posting this, but this is sick.

Made you look.

Put away your duct tape and plastic sheeting -- we're back down to yellow!!!

Fucking ridiculous. Seriously, does anyone out there really pay attention to the terror alert system? I'm curious.

...a vain attempt to get more comments in those comment boxes

It almost bothers me that I have so little to say when I have so much on my mind. Oh well...it'll all come out in due time I guess (probably in a couple days when it gets cold and rainy and I can no longer drive around in shorts and bare feet...man I love not wearing shoes, have I mentioned that?).

TV turn-off week -- NEXT WEEK!!!

I heard about this story on NPR last week and had tried to tell myself that it wasn't true. Is this America where we will cancel public events held by public institutions that represent national passtimes based on the political views of a couple of participants? Seriously.

Nuke and Annie's war stance means no 'Bull' "Long live democracy, free speech and the '69 Mets -- all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in."

I mean, I'm all about protesting through boycott (I myself protest The Gap, WalMart, McDonald's, Exxon-Mobil, Disney, and a few other places for various reasons...you'd have to ask -- if enough people do, I'll post something on it). But I think it's silly...no, retarded...no, UNAMERICAN to boycott a movie or whatever because of the political or moral views of actors that worked on it. Sure, if the work itself is political or whatever (and even so...it's sorta stupid...I mean, I watch FoxNews from time to time -- even though it's the most blantenly jingoistic politically motivated "news" in the world), and you don't agree with it, boycott to your heart's content...but Bull Durham is about baseball...not this war or any other. Shame on Dale Petroskey...shame on him.

Today was a good day. The sun was out, it was a nice 65 degrees or so, and there weren't any clouds in the sky. I spent as much of it as I could barefoot. I walked in the grass like that. It was beautiful. I love the Spring...at least until the trees start pollenating whereupon I experience a week or so from allergetic hell...but it's worth it to go outside barefoot and without putting on an extra layer or two of clothing.

I had the best night of sleep I have had in a long, long time last night. I mean, after all the self-love wore itself down a little bit. Today I feel as awake and alive as I may have ever been. It feels good to feel this way, it feels fan-fucking-tastic. Seriously. I don't know how to handle it. I really don't.

I can't describe it. Yesterday and last night I felt good...good to the point where I was giving as many people as would take them a hug (I got up to eighteen). I was drunk even though I had only five beers over the course of the four hour evening. But I feel even better now. I AM NOT A CREEP!!! That deserves three whoops...Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

this is in reference to my previous post...I think it works better reading first

Man, I can't sleep now because I just keep thinking about how good a person I am. Seriously. I mean, I don't want to gloat and brag and make myself out to be freakin' awesome or whatever...

But the fact of the matter is, my roommate wants to beat the shit out of this guy. This after this guy did this to him once. He seems to almost hate him. Me, I had this happen to me time and time again and the worst that I ever did was say to my friend "hey, what's going on here?" with a few more specifics added. I, for the most part, was able to keep a relatively cool head about the whole thing. Sure, I'd bust out once in awhile when it got so bad it hurt like hell, but I accepted it and never once gave serious thought to getting mad at my friend or leaving her life or whatever. My roommate had this happen once and now he doesn't want anything to do with the girl and wants nothing good to happen to the guy.

I hope my friend can see this about me and appreciate how relatively well I handled the situation, because I think my handling of it was the best that anyone could really expect. Seriously. To see my roommate like this (and he's a level-headed guy, never really pissed off at anyone...not even the guy that the girl he fell in love with started dating even though he is possessive as hell of her) just goes to show how amazing a person I can be...how accepting...how loving...how patient...how awesome.

I feel really good about myself right now...the shame and guilt of being made out to be a jerk or whatever to my friend these past few months pretty much gone.

Ah ha ha! Sweet vindication, how do I love thee!...today just started out great and kept getting better.

First off, I got to sleep in until noon. Fucking awesome. I drive to work with the windows down because it's in the sixties and sunny for the second time in six months -- the wind blowing through my hair that is the longest it's been since my junior year of high school. Fucking awesome. Then I get my new phone turned on (I lost it....again...this time the person that found it had kept it) and am no longer in the social dark. Fucking awesome. Then I was driving to my other job and seeing hot girls in tank tops and realizing as the result that this is the best fucking time of the year coming up....But the best thing came tonight at the bar.

I hate finding joy in the suffering of my friends, but I couldn't help but do it. I feel bad for my friend, but at the same time I no longer am backed in the corner where no one believes me that some of the stuff that was driving me nuts went on. Now it's all out in the open and I am no longer a jealous ass hole or something....

The guy that my friend had been pining for has wrought my last six months with anguish by always trying to butt into our friendship. He would call her when he knew she was hanging out with me, show up at the bar that I went to with her and charm his way into taking her home and making me drive home alone, treat me like shit whenever I would be with my friend. Well he's doing it to my roommate. My roomate is in a kinda-sorta dating thing with this girl and tonight he drove her to the bar to hang out. This other guy calls this girl while they're there and comes down, he then monopolizes her time completely...eventually, he takes her home with him. When my friend and I would hang out, it was usually just the two of us doing so...this guy would swoop in and no one was there to see it. I'd get upset (as, I think, is a perfectaly acceptable reaction...I mean, it is extremely rude to try and monopolize someone else's time...especially when that someone else is trying to spend time with another friend) and people would think I'm just being jealous or something. But not this time...

Everyone in our circle thought that this guy was "cool" or whatever. They wouldn't believe me when I said that he was a jerk. But they were all there tonight. They saw it all. They don't like him so much anymore. I saw him as a sometimes coniving ass so long ago but was put in a spot where I couldn't say so much...my best friend being infatuated with him and my saying anything about it being dismissed as jealousy...but now it's out in the open. Of course, it took my roommate's heart being broken to the point where he wants to kick this guy's ass, but I now have vindication....sweet vindication. I no longer have to suffer the stigmatism of being a creepy, jealous asshole. Whoop!!!

Maybe people will now start to realize exactly how fucking nice I am for receiving so much of this bullshit from this guy for so long and never really going ballistic on his ass...never ditching my best friend (after all, my roommate is saying he never wants to see the girl again...I never got that worked up about it).

It's just too bad it had to come this way.

From the scary but true files:

I got a calendar of W. quotes for Christmas from my friends (they know I love that Bush), and there have been some fantastically wonderful ones...but today's seems kinda ominous (given all that's happened since 9/11) so I thought I'd share it:

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change."

Scary huh? He said that back in 1998...before he sent Ashcroft out on his mission to demolish our civil liberties.

Ah, springtime.

This has been a weird week. Or at least today has been. I don't know. Today at work I was talking with a girl and the fact that I volunteer at the zoo came up. "That's so sweet" she said. I replied "huh?" "That's sweet that you work with the animals and stuff" she went on to say. "Yeah, I'm like sugar baby" I retorted...she thought that made me even sweeter and made the all too common comment about how sad it is that no girl will take me. Too bad she's getting married this summer...

It has been almost two weeks now since I last felt depressed. I was beginning to worry that maybe this whole thing with my friend was going to put me back over the edge, but it hasn't. And it won't. Thank God. I know this because tonight I went and visited the friend that I've been referencing in the last few days and talked with her. When a person's depressed, they don't do that. Not me at least. Depression kicks my ass to the curb and I don't want to do anything. I sit, I mope, I bitch about life, and am otherwise completely apathetic. That was not the case here. Not at all. I thought and thought and thought about it, all the while wanting to do something to take care of things, find answers, do whatever it took. And I did and now my hands have stopped shaking and I think I might even be able to sleep tonight.

But my depression came up during the little talk and so I want to address it. I think it's good for people to hear because so many of us, most of us, will experience it at some time in our life. For me, it was my second major episode (if I can lump it all together into one), the first being after my Mom died, and I hope that it's my last. Right now, I can say that it'll be awhile with my new attitude about things.

I think what I have been going through these last few months was a sort of quarter-life crisis (to throw a little pop-psychology out there) -- I was dealing (but not dealing very well) with a lot of questions about my existence. I believe this post from the beginning of it all says it all. Life becomes unbareable when you don't know where it's headed, when you're dreams for careers and love seem to be constantly set further and further back by events and things that are completely out of your control.

I was sick of working a menial job when I knew I could be doing more...not wanting to wait anymore for the inevitable steps (grad school and the like) that I would have to take to in order to do something more meaningful and useful than delivering pizza. I wanted to be doing something about it now and there wasn't anything I could do about it. When I took the LSAT and failed it (more or less), it sent me even further back. My life looked bleak, it didn't seem like I was ever going to acheive any sort of sucess in being an asset to society in some meaningful way. I just didn't have the patience to see that it, like all good things, would take time. And, of course, the fact that I was broke (and still am...but not if people click the paypal button to the left...wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and doing shit work was not helping out either.

I was also feeling very lonely and very cynical about love. I don't have very many friends at any given time. I don't really care to. I like having a few really good friends that I can keep very close to. That's always been the case and it's really not that terribly unusual for introvertive people (which I am the king of) to be like that. It's just that I wasn't seeing enough of them. At the time that my depression hit, I was moving and none of them were willing to help me move. When I did move, no one wanted to come and see my new place. This made me feel abandoned to some extent I think. And it kept happening, especially once the crisis really took hold and I became a real son of a bitch to be around. Of course, as time progressed and I stayed cranky, a few of those people stuck around and continued to be cool with me. That was awesome when it was the case, but the feeling of abandonment was so strong that when they weren't there I was expecting it to be the first case in a long series of cases stretching off into infinity when they'd never be there again. I got paranoid.

But also in there were a couple of my friends getting themselves into a lot of shit in their love lives. I had one friend falling for a married man, another friend insanely chasing some guy down who wasn't reacting, and my roommate who was in love with a girl that wasn't interested and not willing to be straight-forward. Being surrounded by this made an already lonely soul even more lonely in that I saw that nothing seems to work out right for anyone. Being a 25 year old guy who'd never been in a relationship lasting more than three dates (or, qualitatively, ten days of a whole hell of a lot of closeness), this was not a good thing to see. Hope for ever finding the love that, as a human being for God's sake, I crave and yearn for waned. It threw me deeper into depression.

Then I just wished for my mother because she had always been the person that I could come to about anything and be more or less comfortable. She wasn't there, I was without a saftey net and my fear of heights kicked in. There's nothing at all that can be done about that, but the fact that all of this stuff was going on all at once...it didn't help.

So anyway, my world collapsed around August or so last year...and it's taken me this long to rebuild it. Oh well, at least I did...and in the process I learned a lot about myself and those people that I hold dear to my heart. Numero Uno, I have one friendship that actually built up during the whole thing...that's fucking awesome and now that I'm over the paranoia of abandonment I know that I have one of those amazing friendships that'll last a lifetime no matter what happens. I'm so grateful for her. I hope she knows that. Now she does for sure ;)

But that leaves the worst part of depression...the aftermath.

People come to expect certain things of you once you act out in a certain way for so long. That's perfectly natural...especially when it's all that people know of you (the above mentioned friend is in that group, our friendship really kicking into gear a month or so before I feel into this hole -- of course, that makes the fact that she still likes me doubly fucking awesome). But once the fog lifts, it's really difficult to deal with peoples' expectations in that department. I joke about the way I've been (quirk of mine...it helps me deal and I use it as a way of saying "yeah, I know I've been being a dick) and people just don't really seem to know whether to take it seriously or not. Furthermore, some people think that I have a serious problem with depression and/or a negative outlook on life. I mean, it's like I've been an entirely different person for months and now I am reborn and people don't know how to take it. Friends that knew me well enough before my depression hit are back to being cool with me, but those that weren't around long enough beforehand seem very, very confused....seemingly saying "oh boy, here he goes again..." whenever I get down. I mean, life has its downs...I am fully capable of dealing with those downs (like I have for the past few days....even with minimal complaining aside from asking advice and commentary from anyone that'd listen) without jumping into depression. It's understandable that people that don't know me in normal mode well enough to know better would think that...but it's not the case. I want to say "hey, I'm cool, don't worry about me freaking out about every little thing, about me jumping back into depression" but I know that it won't do any good (I still try to though...hehe) -- some things only come in time and through experience. I'm really quite an awesome person, even more awesome than when I'm depressed, there are some people out there who are in for some big, pleasant surprises.

In any case, I've rambled on long enough. I will go now.

Well, the war is over...at least according to the Iraqi ambassador to the UN. But at the cost of (so far) 1100 or more civilians, innocent civilians, dead...thousands (probably tens of thousands more) gravely injured...millions without enough food and drinking shitty, literally, water. It may be great, wonderful, awesome even that the Iraqi people are free...but it cost them dearly and will cost them dearly for years to come. That does not even begin to touch the ramifications that our strong-fisted foriegn policy have and will continue to produce on the world stage for decades to come. Jubilance must be weighed against these facts.

My nerves are officially shot. My current quandary has my hands constantly shaking and my mind in a blender. I cannot think. I cannot speak. I cannot write. I cannot sleep. I cannot help but feel that there is something seriously wrong with me and the fact that, for the life of me, I cannot figure it out for myself is destroying me. I've talked to so many different people about what's going on in my life, and I receive a lot of sympathy and even praise from them, but no answers. No answers.

Quite the opposite. Instead people tell me how "awesome" or "sweet" or "wonderful" I am and then tell me that everything is going to be fine. Is it? Really? How can I accept those reassurances when this nagging question of my own self-worth is so predominately resting on top of all other thoughts? I don't know. I just don't know.

Too much advice has been given to me, too many analyses that all seem to fall into two quite opposite camps. Neither set seems to complement the other. I don't know what to do, I don't know.

This is even worse than depression: The place where you do not know what to believe or how to feel...even though you want to have both.

My little brother's coming to spend the night on Saturday. I'm looking forward to that. The fact that he's 14 seems to give me liscense to act young too and I really love to be able to bust loose like that. Just to be able to be immature and fun and stuff, even if it's just for a day, is so wonderful for the soul. I love it. I wish I could act like that every day, or at least sometimes, but the opportunity just doesn't ever present itself except when my brother's over. So, anyway, I'm looking forward to a weekend for once.

Man, why do we have to get older? Why can't we just hold onto that innocence forever? Oh well.

Speak up dudes, tinkerbell's light is fading!!! clap! clap! clap!

David Bloom was one of those reporters that I liked...that is to say, I knew his name which only seems to suggest some sort of appreciation of his journalism. There are very few reporters that I can say that about aside from the infamous ones like Geraldo and Ollie North. I recognized him on the news, and means something, I think, in a world super-saturated with coverage of current events -- serious and mundane.

In any case, for whatever reason, I will miss David Bloom and I was actually bothered by the news of his passing. I know I am not the only one. The following is a piece that I think is written very well:

David Bloom's Last Ride

Amongst other things, the following is an example of why I don't like Bush's foriegn policy...much at all.

How Bush kicked the [expletive] out of the Geneva Conventions -- But nothing George Bush says on the subject of Geneva Conventions and international legal standards is likely to convince anyone. He has unleashed the greatest onslaught against international law of any U.S. president in living memory. He has torn up arms-control agreements and worked to sabotage the International Criminal Court. In his campaign against terrorism, he has not only flouted the venerable Geneva accords but sought to deny suspects the benefits of the law he is sworn to uphold.

Wow. I didn't show my last post to my friend this weekend, but I did find the courage to talk about it and it feels as though a huge burdan has been taken off my heart. It is weird, very weird, when everything that your opposite sex best friend says about her new beau can be said about you. I've never been in this position before, not quite, but I've seen movies and television shows (the episode of Friends where Rachel starts dating "Russ" who is played by David Schwimmer and is remarkably like Ross), read books, and had friends in not-quite-the-same-but-close positions before. We talked about him, his views on relationships, and how she's grown in tems of relationships (gorwn remarkably, I even told her I was proud of her...not a word that I throw around often at all...in fact, I can't remember the last time I've used it, it's such a strong word to me) but, of course, it only made me more confused in that everything she said I could identify with even moreso than before. Oh well.

As I said at the end of the previous post, or at least tried to say, it is not as if I am trying to force something to happen, nor even wanting something to happen in any sort of active sense of the word (passively, if something came of it, of course, it would be nice)...but everything that I mentioned just leaves me as confused as I've ever been about girls in my life. I mean, I am more than man enough to accept it if she were to say that there's nothing there nor ever will be (though I can't help but feel that some sort of explanation would be necessary...for my own well being), but when all the pieces are there, as far as I know, and nothing happens...it leaves me in a troubled spot. In any case, I will always be her friend nonetheless.

I know she's going to read this, so I want to make sure that she needn't worry about that last bit (I don't think there's anything in any of this that I haven't mentioned at some point, in some way, and therefore am not dropping any bombshells or anything...though it may all very well be more eloquantly stated in written word than my fumbly spoken English...if there is some sort of bombshell, I am sorry). But I think it's important that she realize that I am in this spot. It's really, really weird to me. Very uncomfortable. At least right now.

But can I just say that it's fucking awesome to have a friend with which I feel comfortable enough to talk about this so openly with and not fear desertion and abandonment as a consequence? It is. I've never had a friend with whom I've felt this close and this comfortable before.

The friend who I do not want to read this doesn't have access on the weekends (as she only reads this at work), so I'm going to post it again, hoping that I can get some advice on it. Please, I need to know if I'm crazy or not. It will be deleted later...unless I work up the courage (or empathy) to show it to her before Monday morning....

***

I am almost to the point of offically declaring myself out of this agonizing period of self-doubt, paranoia, and hyper-emotionalism that has now lasted over seven months. Though it was hard, it was an amazing journey of self-discovery that has re-affirmed my faith in myself and my own happiness. Even though there are issues still that I need to deal with, I have found myself to have a level of strength and fortitude in the past few days that I haven't been able to muster since August or so. I know that I will be able to work things out in my head and with others where needed, and I am comfortable with the idea that those consequences will be whatever is best...because I will be following my heart.

That said, there is one issue that is bearing a heavy burden on my heart. It involves my best friend. She has just started dating a new guy that she met a couple of weeks ago and she seems very happy and I am happy if she is happy, but there's just something about the guy that bothers me...that he is so much like me. Every word, every last word, that she has spoken about the wonderment of this guy could easily be spoken of me -- attentiveness, niceness, humor, and all of that, including lots of minor details (interest in journalism, the books he reads, interests). But, of course, they are not. The same goes for the last guy that she was pining for for the last nine-months...and even the boyfriend of two years before that to some extent. It freaks me out, it really does, in that she is obviously into guys that are just...like...me, and yet she has never even looked at me in that light, at least that I am aware of. I don't know, it makes me feel ugly or unwanted or at the very least luckless. All I know for sure is that it leaves me confused.

And I don't know if it's jealousy or self-doubt or maybe a little bit of smittenosity that makes me feel this way, but it does bother me. I mean, maybe this is a guy thing, or even just a kyle thing...but if I knew someone that possessed those things that I was looking for in someone to date, if I knew someone that was available, who cared about me deeply and for whom I too cared about deeply, someone that I could confide in and feel safe in confiding in return, someone who was attentive to my needs even when it caused her to make small self-sacrifices, someone who was honest, even willing to be brutally so when the times called upon it, someone that loves me, even if it may be in the platonic sense. If I knew someone that I knew thought of me as her best friend and always would consider me as such, I wouldn't run away from her and off to someone just...like...her. I would run to her. I wouldn't go off somewhere else to try and develop that understanding, that confidence, that love with someone else from scratch, all the while having to play guessing games, setting up ground rules, and all that new relationship stuff...I'd follow the path of least resistence. You know? Because what more can you really ask for than someone like that who I just described? People search their entire lives for that sort of person and oh so many fail, settling for something else because they have grow weary of the search. The world is full of people in mid-life who regret that decision every day. I know many of them.

But, like I said, she doesn't go for that. She runs to other people. That confuses me.

I don't know why she does so. Perhaps I'm not attractive enough or young enough for her (I don't want to think the reason is that vain...and I don't). Perhaps I have failed in letting her see the real me. Perhaps she is scared of the possibilities. Perhaps she doesn't know how good she has it. Perhaps I am not the person that I think I am...perhaps I am completely ignorant of myself. I don't know, and it hurts me that I don't.

But maybe she does realize this (maybe not consciously) and it is the reason that things have been so weird between us for so long. Our friendship is marked by long and short periods of hot and cold. There are times when she has said and done things that made me feel like something was happening. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, I spent the entirity of the weekend wondering if we weren't quickly becoming a couple because the week prior had been a hot spell, and there have been other times that I thought the same thing (once or twice very sexually suggestive)...but each time was followed by a cold snap where there was none of the warmth that she had shown me before...and it sometimes made me snap into a state of bewildered flustration (you know, flustered and frustrated)...sometimes to the point of having a need to ask or say something to her about it. That never went over well...even to the point of her sometimes blaiming me for the tension between us (I've always taken as much of the burdan as I could bare...a product of my patience I guess), always causing a rift for a hour or two, from which we have always, always, been able to forgive and forget. As she has pointed it, our friendship is sometimes not unlike that of an old married couple. And I recognize, too, that our ability to rebound so quickly completely underscores our understanding of each other, our love for each other.

But I am here and she is there.

I am not writing this to say that she and I should enter into a more romantic form of relationship. My biggest fear right now is sounding like I'm saying that she and I "must hook up, or else" or something...whixh isn't the case. I can accept her friendship if that is all that it will ever be. More than that, I will adore her and our friendship forever -- I will always love her as a frIiend. But there's just this funny feeling in my heart that there is more there (and I know that we could have more) and that we're being damn fools, each of us, for behaving the way that we are. All the pieces are there....you know?

Then again, like I am about much, I may be wrong. Who knows? That's what's beautiful about life.

...having read this a long, long time ago and keeping it in my brain ever since hasn't helped me out either.

Love. Some say it’s mysterious, others say that they understand it completely. I tend to fall in the latter camp. That’s not to say that I know what it’s all about, nor even what it is, but it is to say that I do know what it is not. There are sometimes things in life that that’s all you can ask for.

Talking with a friend last night I found that she is in the former camp, believing that when you love someone, “you just do”. The other side of her argument was that you can really care about someone, really love someone, and not be in love with them…and not know why it is that that’s the case and never hope to ever be able to figure it out. I don’t understand that.

To be in love is to be connected at the heart, it is to be one with someone else. It is not to want, not to worry, not to distrust. It does not rely on anything outside the heart – not time spent together, not gifts, not sex. It is a relationship with no strings attached, as it were.

It is still Jose Flores' birthday. I am starting to feel real bad for what his mother had to go through during childbirth to make his birthday last this long...

I just read this article about the Bush regime's talk of going after Iran once Iraq is all mopped up and it just makes me wonder if W., Cheney, Rice, et al have their collective heads up their collective asses. Why is Iran still our enemy? From everything that I've read about the country, most of the people that live there are 25 and younger and don't remember the Revolution...they aren't at all interested in Theocratic politics, they just want to be free to live life and have fun. Hell, I think it's fair to say that most of them appear to be infatuated with the Western lifestyle. With such a large portion of the nation being this way, does the President really feel like there's a any chance in hell that Iran's going to try anything against anyone? I mean, my God, if the most-moderate government in twenty years of Iranian history is in power, and there's a majority of people in Iran that do not support that government's policies, it doesn't seem possible that that government can do much without completely disrupting domestic tranquility.

IF Iran were to attack, say, us...the people in Iran (the kids) would take advantage of the situation and force things to change. I firmly believe that. And to think that we might even think about making the kids of Iran pissed off at us (which would naturally push them towards acceptance of extremismt -- sort of like the Shaw and the Ayatollah thing back in 1980ish) is just so utterly assanine to me. I don't get it.

JINX!

I jinxed myself last night. As my friend was leaving the bar she started going the wrong way out of the parking lot...where there's a curb going down to the street, not a gentle slope. "Remember when I did that," I said, "I busted my car." And I had, the shock of going over the curb snapping a tie-rod on my already badly misaligned steering system...

Well, I get up to go to work today, start driving, turn a corner, and suddenly I hear the sound of metal dragging on the street. "Oh oh" I calmly say to myself as I turn off as soon as possible, not knowing if what I am hearing is the metal on road sound of a rubberless rim of my tire or something hanging off my engine. I get out of my car, go around to the front, and look underneath to find the EXACT SAME TIE-ROD busted off and hanging there. That's sort of weird.

And so I bring it into the shop and the guy's really pissy about it, telling me how he remembers my car and how bad a shape it is in..."we told you that it needed a lot of work" he says, "I don't know if it'll be covered under warantee" and then a bunch of stuff about my car in a tone that made me think that he had a bad fight with his girlfriend or wife the night before and that he was taking it out on me. You know the tone. "I don't care," I wanted to say, pretty much because I don't. But I didn't. I don't care that he was mean to me, I don't care if I have to pay, I don't care that he had that tone...sayng "I don't care" would've been taken the wrong way and would've blown the thing out of proportion. Yeah, I didn't care, and I don't have a problem being honest about that (it's $75 for God's sake)...but had I said it he wouldn't have taken it how I meant it. My saying "I don't care" would've been interpretted by him as "look you cock-sucking fuck-head, you better fucking give me my fucking shit for free or I'll fucking crack your fucking skull in"...or something to that effect. Which is not at all what I would've meant (or ever said).

Okay, maybe he wouldn't have taken it that personally...but people tend to take what I say as being more harsh for some reason and it's another thing that is weird. It's like the preview for Anger Management where Adam Sandler's sitting on a plane and asking, politiely, for attention from the stewardess. She takes it the wrong way and even though Sandler's being congenial as hell, he gets arrested because of his "anger" problems. See that's one of the things that I have to learn...what I actually say is not nearly as important as how the person that I'm speaking to interprets what I say...and how they interpret something depends on factors that I would have no way of knowing anything about -- this guy at the shop maybe having problems with his old lady or something.

But anyway, it's incredible to me how something as retarded as a minor malfunction of my car can turn into a life lesson. Kinda awesome, kinda makes me sleepy...which is okay because I'm using it as an excuse to not go to work this morning.

Early morning, April 4
shot rings out in the Memphis sky
"free at last", they took your life
they could not take your Pride

In the name of love
what more in the name of love?

Why oh why does streaking have such a bad rap? I don't get it. Too many people just don't understand that being outside in the buff is one of the simple pleasures of life. But I expose too much of myself with my comments...

Soldier Is Relieved for Streaking on Base (washingtonpost.com) A National Guard battalion commander is being relieved of his command for running naked outside the barracks at Fort Bragg.
Lt. Col. J.D. Webster was one of several soldiers seen streaking on Feb. 18, the military said.

It's Jose Flores' 25th birthday...so says a sign that I saw on the side of the road on the way home from work today. It said it yesterday too. I wonder if he really has two birthdays right in a row?

lucky bastard.

Five days in a row where I could consider myself to be happy. That's the longest strecth since July/August. Awesome.

The only problem is that I don't want to be serious. I have been writing letters and e-mails to people (some to be sent or given, some without that intent) because when I see them, I don't want to ruin the joy and happiness by being serious at all -- good or bad. That kid of sucks, but it's definitely better than biting my lips because of the fear that something bad might come out...and the occasional slip when something came out anyway that has defined my life for months on end. I look forward to more balanced times.

Man...I am coming out of my long winter's sleep, I can feel it, but the worst part about it is that I have been so damn serious for so long that I can't seem to take anything seriously now. I just want happiness and the like. I want to be funny and cute and sweet and all those sorts of things that I am to some extent when I am not the morose mother fucker that I've been for so long, but I am not balancing it with seriousness like I do when I'm "normal". Instead, I feel like I'm presenting myself as taking everything as a joke...even though I'm not. I don't know. I usually have a good balance going on, but it's been since last summer that I've felt this good about life and people and such that I just want to bust out...for awhile at least. Hopefully those people that have come to really know me since August or whenever can cope with this upswing for a week or two until I get balanced out again. There are certain people in my life that I think will be pleasantly surprised by the person that I really am -- all the stuff that makes them like me plus a bunch of fun stuff to boot.

Of course my lack of willingness to be serious has prevented me from doing and saying some stuff that I feel I really need to take care of, but they can hopefully wait a little while.

Until then I will leave you with the words of Abraham Lincoln...PARTY ON DUDE!!!