The · Downtrodden · Diatribes · of · the · Curmudgeonous · and · Ruminating · Roe · Derrage

Well now that we've relived the horrors of 2006, we can skip right ahead to the horrors of the present, and presently, I'm working the front desk at a boutique hotel in midtown Atlanta, Georgia. I've been here for over a year now and it bothers me how much time I've wasted. The perk of this hotel is that I've been able to meet and talk with bands such as Ladytron, Mike Patton, DJ Shadow, Chris Corner of IAMX, Peter Murphy, and Band Of Horses to name a few, while celebrities like Ron Jeremy provided comic relief on shitty days dominated by bad traffic and terrible heat. I came to the city expecting a progressive southern metropolis, a beacon of sanity in an otherwise desolate rural piece of shit excuse for a state. Obviously, I didn't do my research.

I'll get into the people first, for they've become an infected mosquito bite I can't stop scratching. The people here are segregated to their own social circles and turn up their noses at anyone whose not a part of their respective flocks. Despite each group's differences, There is a sense of elitism within them all that just baffles the mind. This arrogance is more often times than not, without merit and undeserved. One could witness the same behavior in high school students, that sort of isolation, cut off from the outside where where a whole other world exists within those walls. People get deluded into thinking they're more hip or relevant than they actually are. Sadly, everyone up here buys into it. Someone who drinks all the time and dances every night is revered as scene royalty while the hacks plagiarize what was cool in LA a year ago, and it gets passed off as new and fresh. Style isn't an individualistic pursuit, but a collective mentality. Where in any other part of the country, my vibrant and psychotic wardrobe would be respected for it's "found" appeal, sadly, it isn't here. You shop at Urban Outfitters, American Apparel, Lenox Square Mall (if you can afford it) and then you're cool. You dig clothes out of the dumpster and wear what you find at the goodwill and you're more like a common bum. We'll call bums in Atlanta supercommon, as they're numbers are reaching plague-like proportions. There's a Kroger shopping center with a best buy, a target, a lowe's and an office depot less than a mile from my house. It's like that all over. This consumer based culture is not what I envisioned and is what I tried to escape from when I left Georgia in the first place. I'm aware that it's widespread hence the term "popular culture", but it's far more popular here than it should be popular anywhere. There is no room for experimentation with anything from music, fashion, philosophy, to even just branching out and meeting new people. Everyone has an image they defend and will snub their noses at anyone who doesn't fit that criteria. I've met rock stars and celebrities that are more humble and well-mannered than these self-obsessed pieces of shit. I started out sampling what the city had to offer and quickly found none of it to be interesting. After a bout of frustration and self-imposed isolation, I thought that maybe it was my attitude...So I tried to keep an open mind and get to know everyone. That didn't work for the reasons I laid out above. I have no place here. The only time I've ever felt at home was when the tornado laid waste to much of downtown. Dancing through the damage, so many people in tears, their expensive designer clothing torn and their hairstyles all instantly disheveled. I had a blast!



Atlanta Tornado, Pictured Left.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that a man of my taste would not want to bunker down here. Abandonments and Urban Decay are far more dangerous than I'm accustomed to dealing with. The homeless infest these buildings like rats and the police will throw you to the curb and cuff your ass for so much as glancing at a condemned structure. There have been a few notable exceptions. I was able to scratch abandoned prison off my list of places to see. The old bank on Moreland is home to a thriving homeless community unfortunately, as is the bridge to nowhere. Aside from a lack of adventure, I was hoping the city would make up for it in other avenues, such as entertainment, music, culture, but guess what? it doesn't exist! the art scene for instance, is laughably bad. Good artists such as myself and Marcos Valez are brushed aside for our unique approaches to art, while people who doodle stick figures onto coffee cups get a full display in some shitty gallery in some dilapidated building that would be far more interesting if it were abandoned.

I suppose it could be worse. One more year though, and I'm out of here. Where I go next, well, I'd hate to give away the ending just yet...

I will begin where I left off, but I won't rehash two year's worth of events on one entry. Long story short, the memories of Florida seem like a Last Temptation-esque vision of a future that never was, a glimpse into a reality that could have existed, one where I would experience a wide array of emotions that would ultimately end with insanity. When the dream was over, everything had come full circle, and I was back to my bitter home. The strained relationships I had with a few friends down there have since been reconciled, but the others I suppose, have been suspended indefinitely. That's life though, I guess. There are ends we don't want, but we have to face them. The Human Condition.

The hammer fell a few days before Christmas when what was suspiciously seen as an intervention took place in my home. All of the family, both immediate and distant were in attendance. My convicted father even came to distract me while my mother systematically unraveled and destroyed the problematic (yet sustainable) life I built for myself in Florida. This came as a direct result of a cold, hurtful and unmerciful blow to my fragile ego, one that had stripped me of all my pride and self-worth, leaving me only the desire to overthrow and ruin those I naively elected to govern my emotions. The intervention that took place kept me from getting back at them and I so desperately wanted to. I wound up in a hospital a few days later. Goose came down to council me in the dark and early hours of Christmas Eve. We walked through downtown Macon as we did many years ago. When I was admitted the following day, I came face to face with my most crippling fear, being alone. I could hear people in the other rooms crying themselves to sleep while I proceeded through the mint hallways. I had nothing left, nothing at all. My parents didn't understand the situation and had ultimately made things worse, the life I had lived for a year was destroyed and gone, and there was nothing. I spent the majority of the night dwelling on it, wishing I'd go to sleep and wake up to a better world. I joked around with the nurses when they came in to make sure I hadn't fastened a noose out of my bed sheets. I had to try my best to appear sane and rational if I hoped to get out anytime soon. The silence was maddening. I paced around the room for a few hours, piecing together how I came to spend Christmas in a psychiatric ward. Part of me wondered if it was where I belonged. I thought about my life from early childhood up until that night. Everything from being ostracized in my neighborhood and how that carried over to my elementary and middle school years. Thought about Jay Anderson and his gaggle of cocksmoking lowlives, hiding behind a garbage can in an attempt to kill me with a golf club. I thought about the embarrassingly ignorant and foolhardy Christians who booted me from high school. I Thought about how my dad trashed the house and told me my five year old sister had done it. I thought about all the times my drunken mother told me she resented me for taking my dad's side in arguments, and how I was the dumbest mistake she ever made. The time she punched me in the jaw for blow drying my hair. I thought about the move to Florida, and about how awful living with those miserable cunts had been up until July, when everything seemed to fall into place. When some beautiful stranger accepts and supposedly loves you for all the things you think is inherently wrong and flawed with yourself, it's as if god (if it really existed) invites you to the promised land. It all came to be and crumbled so quickly, I couldn't process it. My utopia became a nightmare overnight, and it all reached it's surreal and lynchian climax right there in the psych ward. I knew then that I was deeply flawed, it had been affirmed. I was marked, a being so imperfect it wasn't meant to survive. I decided then and there that if I was going to live beyond all this, I needed to find a way to keep my head together. I released myself the following day when the doctor gave me the option. He told me I was malnourished. He asked me if I felt I was a danger to myself. After mulling it over the previous sleepless night, I answered 'no'. I was released into the care of my parents and arrived in time for lunch. The messages on my phone were disheartening, but something else was there within me that didn't exist before, and it was resolve. I spent the next month and a half planning my move to Atlanta and digging deep into my own psyche, trying to find the damages done by years of confusion, neglect, rejection, and mistreatment. I opened myself up to things I never considered growing up in that stagnant city. I was already in danger of losing my senses, and Macon's not an environment conducive to the pursuit of experience and/or knowledge. The only way to successfully survive Macon is to isolate yourself from it's residents and indulge in the world outside of it. I tried to learn everything I could about the world outside that dying city. Everything from German expressionism, late 20's and early 30's silent films, Philosophy, history, modern literature. I read up on world war II, the cold war, civil rights, psychology, sociology, politics, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon. Doomsday theories about the fall of pax americana, eschatology, the french revolution and the influence the enlightenment had on the founding of the United States government, Marquis De Sade, Thomas Hobbes. I spent all my time at the library, barnes and noble and the internet. I had to rid myself of all childish assumptions, moral codes and ideals. If I was to ever understand myself, I needed to understand the rest of humanity. Everything from Plato's allegory of the cave to Nietzsche's Beyond good and evil seemed to point me in the right direction. Once the moral code is at ground zero, I can form and solidify my own moral construct. I've shed my belief of marriage, love, social acceptance and community, all of them forms of socialization that began at early childhood. When one pursues these conventions without a clue as to their origin, disappointment and dissatisfaction will always follow the payoff. You can be a good person and still sustain a vibrant criminal life. Right and wrong is not something society should decide for you. If the only appropriate resolution to a conflict is murder and you're willing to accept the repercussions, then go for it. If you oppose corporate America, then steal to your heart's content and never feel guilty about it. Plow through any obstacle as if it were a rodent in the street.

Readjusting to life in Georgia has been a long and difficult process. Trying to balance my desire to make an impact on the world with my utter hatred for people has been even harder. Now though, my attitude is different. Or at least something is. Maybe I'm just getting older. Maybe I purged my demons. Though, there will always be that one memory from Florida that will always haunts me. She is a loss I mourn in private...

Where do I go from here? I still don't know. Good to see you again though. I know it's been a long time. I'll try and make things a little lighter from here on out.

-Roe

Went to the psychiatrist Tuesday. He gave me a month's supply of Lexapro and off I went. I took one immediately, to get the ball rolling. I'm hopeful that it will help; we'll see.

Too much on my mind to go into at the moment; lot of longing, regret, sadness, confusion, the works. No one reads this thing anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. The point isn't so much to put my life and thoughts on display for others, but mostly just to keep a log, a textual photograph of all the pivotal moments and moods I find worth expressing. I have no idea where my life's going at the moment, but I plan on finding out in the new year. I head down to Orange Park in about a week or so to meet Micah and his brother to sketch out some musical ideas and see what we can build from there. I always wanted to be a musician, and I figure I never put forth much of an effort, so here's that effort. I'm going to look into taking the GED test in January, so I can get that out of the way. Beyond that, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing. The confidence and enthusiasm of others is nauseating, but maybe my attitude will change when the medication takes full effect. I wonder if I'm capable of seeing the world through a brighter perspective. My demeanor is only lifted when I create something that surprises and earns the respect of my harshest critic, and when I'm in love with someone. If all goes well with these guys in Orange Park, I'm going to dive right in and just put everything I have into it, even if the music isn't good at first, I'll work on it until it's satisfactory. Potential band names thus far? I only have two: The Ellipsis (which is by far the favorite) and An Antonym For Optimism (the journal's header). I have eight or nine song fragments to augment and reshape, and after hearing Micah play the piano, I'm sure the two of us can get them all sorted out.

Tomorrow I head up to Macon, so I'll be gone for a few days.

-Roe

My head's just a mess of bad wiring, and it gets more and more tangled with the passing of everyday events. The holiday season is shaping up to be another melancholy chore for me to limp through, and sometimes I wish I could find a way to stop a new dismal year from coming. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist next Tuesday, which will be the first time I've ever sought professional help for all the things eating me. I'm hopeful that whatever I get put on will balance me out. People have warned me about the zombifying effects of such medication, but given my affinity for the undead, I'm sure I won't mind much. One more year in Gainesville. After our lease ends at the Boardwalk, the plan is to put all this behind me and leave again. I don't know though, I've got a few projects on my prospective plate that might work out to a degree. A guitarist and a drummer down in Orange Park are interested in starting a band, so I might do that. I've also got the screenplay to tweak and finish, and some potential comic strips and flyers to design...Then again, do I really want to design flyers for shitty bands in this terrible town?

Here's hoping for an unexpected Christmas miracle.

On this very day last year, I was herding game dweebs into Wal-Mart's layaway dept so they could fight amongst themselves over an Xbox 360. I was also wrapping up loose ends in Macon, preparing my relocation to Gainesville, Florida. Now, exactly one year later and much like the Xbox, my life has turned a complete 360. Once again, I'm undergoing the difficult task of moving, this time however, it's in the midst of the Playstation 3's violent and deadly launch. What does this have to do with video games? absolutely nothing. Fuckin nerd.

Last year around this time, I recall thinking to myself that things wouldn't work out in Gainesville, with my living situation I mean. I remember telling friends and co-workers alike that my friendship with Laura and Teya would fizzle out at some point in the year, and that I'd return to Macon, broken and defeated. Everyone was quick to blindly and ignorantly assure me that in spite of my paranoia, things would work out great between all of us. They were wrong. If you read my last entry, then you've already got a good idea of what I'm getting at; but if you haven't, I suggest you review my previous log for a more indepth look into the psychology (and lunacy) of my bizarre and intolerably crazy roommates; and when I said 'review my log', what I was doing was employeeing the use of sexual innuendo to humorously insinuate that you should perform the act of oral sex upon me.

Those two bitches are inconsiderate and self-absorbed in a way that I will never know, a way that I never wished to bare witness to. Through their mental instability however, I found a window of opportunity to squeeze through. I moved Brock down here, and found a group of people that I can identify with, and although my life is never free of tangles and complications, my head's in a better place; even if my finances aren't.

So here I am, working as a front desk clerk in a barren Day's Inn on SW 13th St. The work is excruciatingly dull, but here, I've got all the time in the world to explore my other interests and hobbies. Right now my main interest is staging our grand exodus from the apartment complex I share with Teya and Laura. Brock and I re-applied at Boardwalk yesterday, the same apartment complex I moved into a year prior. The move-in fees are intimidating, and right now, I'm trying every desparate move I can to raise a substantial amount of money by January 1st; once again, same story from last year. This time though, will be different. I've lived with Brock now for almost a year, and as long as we both pay rent on time, I know we won't have a problem at our new place. We'll be free of loud, obnoxious, and depressing women; and we'll never wake up to The Killers ever again. Laura's loud music can be heard down the street--hell, I'll go as far as saying it can be heard in outer space; and I'll go even further by hypothesizing that it can be heard all throughout the seven layers of hell, even in Satan's ice pit. I can't imagine being buried all the way up to my chest in ice, having to listen to Velvet Acid Christ for all of eternity. I like to think that when I do go to hell, Ol' Custer and I will have the most extravagant barbeque as we slow roast Laura over an open flame, all while we play death metal and other assorted genres of music she can't stand. Custer hated Native Americans, and oh I can guarantee you he'll hate her. But that's besides the point, what really matters is that I'm hungry and I think I'm going to eat a bagel.

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to.

What's the sound of one hand clapping? if a tree falls in the forest with no one to bare witness, does it make a sound? if someone held a chicken at gun point and gave a vegan the option of either eating a mcnugget meal or watching the chicken die, would the vegan eat the nuggets to save the chicken? what's more pathetic: a waste of human life with delusions of grandeur or the one who aspires to be the waste of human life with delusions of grandeur?

The preceding list of questions are intended to make us think, but it's the final conundrum on that list that I'm more concerned with. For a while now, the gears in my head have been grinding away at the issue; searching for an explanation as to how I came to know the likes of Laura 'Pit Stain' Triplett and Teya Hypochondria-Kastrinos; though anyone who knows them will tell you that the answer, like most riddles, is surprisingly simple. Truth be told, both women are equally as tragic and grotesque. To better understand why these two are such disgusting human beings, it's best to critique them and their flawed personalities individually, starting with good ol' Pit Stain:

Pit Stain is a tightly wound yet tangled mess of complexes incapable of sustaining a normal healthy relationship (be it romantically or Platonically). Her selfish, narcissistic nature, coupled with her compulsive need to be in control, will ultimately put off potential friends or lovers. She has problems with intimacy and must separate sex from emotional attachment to have either as painlessly as possible. This personality defect causes her to divide the men in her life into two categories. Category 1 is made up of the men she'll sleep with, but won't get attached to; and category 2 is solely comprised of the men she'll befriend and manipulate, duping them into thinking she'll sleep with them so they'll provide the material and emotional support she needs to maintain her counterfeit confidence. She won't normally sleep with anyone in category 2, although she might engage in some light physical affection to better tighten her grip on them. It is best to note that the two categories are sometimes interchangeable depending on certain variables and outside influences (lonliness, mood, intoxicants, etc.). When things go sour with men in either category, Pit Stain will claim "things got weird" and she'll severe all contact, moving on to the next poor sap who falls into her gravitational pull. Men in either category don't last long in Laura's life. Those that remain on the outside of either category are considered inconsequential acquaintances; and lose all value to Laura when she's done drilling them dry of trite favors.

At the center of Pit Stain's spotted psyche, broods a lonely and vulnerable little girl. To keep from exposing her weak spot, Pit Stain overcompensates for her lack of security and identity by exhibiting an over-the-top, almost cartooney array of self-imposed confidence; a sad display that deters anyone with even the lightest grasp of common sense and/or reality. With Pit Stain's personal demons holing up inside her head, she uses obnoxiously loud music like funker-fucking-vogt to drive them out ala Waco, before she finally decides to drown them altogether with hard liquor and girly drinks; most of which are paid for by the men in category 2. Her love and affection are almost always shortlived. If my station as a friend-turned-enemy isn't proof enough, then let's use her extensive zoo as an example. Spiders, snakes, cats, newts, and frogs round out the menagerie of living creatures in our apartment. When her interest with one animal dwindles, she moves on to another. This behavior is most often associated with young adults who led spoiled and privledged childhoods, which I'm most certain is an accurate description of her upbringing.

When a situation spirals out of her control or someone undermines/threatens her authority, Pit Stain will desparately assert herself to remain in charge. If defeated, she'll cut her losses and run. She'll set up shop somewhere else until she can lay the foundation for her social ladder system. She's led a sad life and the future isn't looking much better for ol' Pit Stain. My prediction is that she'll end up being a bank teller. Her only friends will be her co-workers, and more than likely, she'll be the one to get drunk and fuck the boss at a Christmas party. By then, I could see her animal collection increasing to an almost illegal amount; rivaling that of an actual zoo. She does everything she can online, because she can't handle the idea of a universe she's not the center of.

Now onto our other lost soul, Mrs. Kastrinos. I proposed the question earlier as to what's more sad, the human waste or the one who aspires to be waste? Mrs. Kastrinos is that garbage dump hopeful. Her childhood was rocky and plagued with mental abuse and parental neglect. Her body proved to be very problematic and thus, she was subjected to an array of medical tests and procedures at an early age; the kind that could easily traumatize a child. With early diagnostics, doctor's theories, and a slew of painful hospital stays burnt into her memory, it's no surprise that Teya has become a hypochondriac. When Teya learned about a dysfunction called Celiac disease (the body's inability to process gluten) she jumped at the opportunity to pin all her ailments and unhappiness on this dreaded condition. She switched to the diet immediately, without a doctor's approval or diagnosis. After a mere day without wheats and grains, she claimed she never felt better. Before the celiac disease, Teya thought she was allergic to vegetables. I recall one such instance when she ate asparagus, and was crawling around on the floor in crippling pain. However, with the realization that wheat is actually the culprit, she can healthily consume and digest vegetables that were previously thought to be deadly to her, and the wheats she could consume and still function with, are now the new vegetables. This inconsistency in her behavior is baffling and somewhat creepy. Her hypochondria isn't as innocent as it may seem. She uses past injuries and sicknesses as excuses for her slothlike behavior. I'll use our move to Harbor Cove as an example. Teya claimed she couldn't lift anything because of the "back injury" she sustained a few years ago in a car accident. She claims she suffers everyday, but was able to cartwheel into James' arms one night at the Day's Inn. Her pathetic life extends beyond the hypochondria and crosses over into other territories. Her troubled childhood has made her a desparate approval seeker. Like pit stain, Teya's open personality is an over-the-top attempt to win over the hearts of others. Sadly, it doesn't work and most people are put off by her impossibly bright (and dishonest) disposition. I've got some advice for you Teya, when you make your life an open book for the world to read, don't be so shocked and upset when you get a lot of bad reviews. You can't get a word in on a conversation with Teya. Her subconscious effort to one-up you is omnipresent in her every dialogue. If you had minor surgery, she's had major surgery; if you have diahrreha, she has dysentary; if you had a friend stay in the hospital, she had a grandmother die in the hospital; so on and so on. But the main and most depressing aspect of Teya's personality, is her love for Pit Stain. What I've gathered from Teya and Pit Stain's relationship is that Pit Stain is the kind of girl who belittled Teya in her childhood, even though Teya wanted to win over and befriend those kind of people. Honestly, Pit Stain would have made Teya's life hell had they known each other long ago. Pit Stain said once that she doesn't get along with other girls, because she views them as competition. Based on that, it's easy to figure out Laura's true feelings for Teya. She sees Teya as a lesser-inferior female, one that couldn't possibly rival her in any way. This is evidenced by the things her and her ex-boyfriend Eric would say about her when she wasn't around. Laura has openly declared that Teya isn't attractive or desirable, and would joke around with Brock and I about her hypochondria. Teya needs someone like Laura to latch onto and emulate; she sees in Pit Stain all the qualities she wishes she had in herself, and thus refuses to acknowledge the emotional pain Laura inflicts upon her. Whether Teya's complacency is conscious or not, the fact of the matter remains; Laura uses Teya to make herself look better by comparison. Teya is constantly buying gifts for Pit Stain to win over her full loyalty and devotion (I'd say Teya is probably the only female in Pit Stain's category 2, that I'm aware of anyhow). If all that wasn't enough to convince one of Laura's true feelings for Teya, then just take a look at Pit Stain's myspace. Laura is number one on Teya's top friends, yet Teya is number 3 on Laura's; right behind her cat (yes, pit stain made a profile for her cat), and a sixty-year old man she isn't related to.

Teya's overwhelming insecurity also manifests into her desire to marry and have children. I think she'll marry her current boyfriend; however, her insecurity will resurface at some point and she'll cheat on him with the next available man who convinces her she's attractive. Either way, Teya's future weighs heavily on whether or not her marriage lasts. If it does, then she'll live out the rest of her days as an inept housewife. If it doesn't, she'll wind up alone and eccentric, becoming another creepy cat lady. She is a sad and troubled individual who could benefit greatly from counseling, oh, and dropping Laura as a friend.

For the longest time, I stood idly by and observed Teya and Pit Stain's many misadventures. I kept my mouth shut for the sake of household civility, and never brought up their inconsideration or objectionable decisions. I made excuses for their behavior and tried to revel in the few qualities in them I found tolerable. Eventually, these two could wear down the patience of a buddhist monk, so I told both of them off the day we moved into the new apartment. The timing was bad, and in retrospect, signing that lease was a dumb idea.

As of now, Brock and I are doing what we can to save up and move out, thus finally ridding ourselves of that mournful duo.

"We start selling them at 12:01, but I wouldn't waste my money, the 360's gonna be lame" I told the smirking customer. He rattled off reasons why the new Xbox network will render the PS3 obsolete before it's even launched. Little did he know, I would have the last laugh by the end of the night. The time was 10:39 PM, and there was already a line of forty-or-so people, all eager to get their hands on Microsoft's Xbox 360. The asshole I was talking to was one of them. We only received ten units from Microsoft, and this guy was too far back in line to get one. In an hour, he'd walk away empty handed; and as fate would have it, I was assigned to deliver the bad news to the mob. "No one outside the US has embraced the Xbox, not the people, or third-party developers; I just don't know think it's going to do well" I said. "The Xbox has a bunch of games that are ten times better than anything the Japanese has made, we do games better in the U.S." This guy was a complete and total geek. "Up until the Xbox came out, almost every system we had was Japanese" I said. "Yeah, and our first effort turns out to be better than all of their anime games combined" I gave up. "Halo doesn't justify the system's existance; that game is terrible". I left and came back an hour later to witness what I hoped to be a riot, but alas, people were behaving themselves. You can't expect too much out of game dweebs; and so, I was disappointed. I got a good look at the launch titles, and found that the majority of them were games you could already buy on the regular Xbox, or the PC. What a crock for $499 a system. After our ten units sold, I walked up to the crowd, held my hands in the air and said "I'm sorry, we're all sold out; but don't worry, Halo 2 awaits you all at home" and then a Kid about eleven or twelve asked me "Do you know when you'll be getting any more in?" "I have no idea, but the Xbox is stupid anyway, you're beter off" I told him and sent him on his way. I like to think he'll remember me as the guy who steered him away from a life of first-person shooters and com headsets. The douche bag I was arguing with, walked away in defeat. I wanted to do a jig, but felt it was inappropriate at the time; plus I've been told I look retarded doing a jig. No world, YOU look retarded doing a jig. That stupid jig you call an orbit, dancing endlessly around the fiery sun, 360 degrees, for the rest of your pathetic life. You disgust me. Why don't you just hurl yourself into the sun and marry it if you love it so damn much? Same goes for you, Xbox fans. If you could fuck your Xboxes, I'm sure you would. Looks like you're gonna have to wait till after Christmas to, essentially, buy the same system you bought a few years ago, when the Xbox first debuted to disappointing sales.

More on this as it develops...

So this morning I get a call from Brock and naturally, I don't answer the phone. About half-an-hour later, he comes over. I know I should be pissed and bitter, but as soon as I saw him, all my hostility washed away like the ghettos of New Orleans. We talked for a while, but didn't mention our falling out. Apparently, he's dating a co-worker, writing for the telegraph and majoring in journalism at Macon State. Glad to see he finally took his aunt's advice and went back. When it came time to validate my existance with a progressive anecdote, I fell short. What have I been up to? nothing really. I've written several story arcs to the Mac Town Frivolity comic, including the ever-controversial swimming pool wake; and although I find the ideas and the situations to be hilarious, they kind of come off as preachey and forced. The characters are too linear for my liking, and I'm still unsure as to how I want to present them. You've got Joe, the morally sound protaginist, then you have his as-of-now unnamed roommate; a mass murderer who's blackmailing Joe into keeping quiet. To spice things up, we've also got the animal characters Jrunk Bunny, Emo Penguin, and Blossom Possom. When I tried showing it all to Brock, I found that without any visual aids, the dialogue lacks the punch it's intended to have; however, with HIV AIDS, your body lacks the white blood cells it's intended to have. Some medical science for you guys.

My gums are aching. Dentistry is truly a sadist's profession.

-Roe

People are terrified of being possessed, absolutely terrified! Why is that? You can't help it if a demon decides it wants to set up shop inside your body and soul; and I doubt the almighty would hold you accountable in that unlikely scenario. Honestly, I'm more terrified of zombies; the idea of being possessed is actually appealing to me. I think I'd look really cool with one of those freakishly weird faces; floating around and scaring the living crap out of everyone, yelling obscenities. I already do that on a daily basis, but if I were possessed, people wouldn't ask me to stop making a scene; they'd recoil in terror.

Speaking of zombies, I dreamt I became one and actually saw things through their perspective. It was like being unbelievably drunk. My vision was blurry and my entire body felt like it was asleep, which actually kind of sucked; but when I saw a living person, zombie instinct took over and I just had to--HAD TO--eat his skin. I couldn't think, I couldn't speak, I just felt drunk and famished; then I got shot. I get shot all the time in my dreams. Apparently that's a form of self-punishment that I'm unconsciously imposing upon myself.

That's enough for now. I need to get to sleep and prepare for another grueling weekend. I always have such high hopes for the weekend, but every time, they just turn up stagnant. People usually want me to come over and see their cramped, depressing apartments and everytime I do, I'm disappointed. There really is NOTHING for me to do here. I think I might go cheat death somewhere in the badlands. I hate this town.