====================================================== CROPDUSTER -- Issue 4 Copyright 1994 by Steven Meece and Chris Woodill ====================================================== This is the ASCII version of the zine. It contains everything you would receive in the real zine except for pictures and the feel of authenticity. If you would like to receive the paper edition, send $1.10 for the United States or 86 cents for Canada to: Cropduster 79 O'Hara Avenue Toronto, Ontario M6K 2R3 All other inquiries should be directed to that office as well. The editors are also available by international e-mail at: ad522@freenet.carleton.ca (Steven Meece) cwoodill@epas.utoronto.ca (Chris Woodill) Naturally permission is granted to distribute Cropduster in any way you would like, but please leave it as it is so that others can see our mistakes as well. If you have a problem, don't take it out on a text file: Tell us. =============== FIRST WORDS by Steven Meece =============== Being without anything better to do, we present this. Why should we bother with made-up stories when there are so many real ones already going on? Non-fiction is much more compelling, because it deals with activity instead of verbosity. Judge people not by what they say, but by what they do... Also, this issue will be a historical artifact in a few years, a snippet of social history of life in 1993-4. We remain: Cropduster 79 O'Hara Avenue Toronto, Ont M6K 2R3 =========== SECTION 1.1 =========== I had a semi long chat with a young daughter of the proletariat in the Unicentre today, just outside Hugo's sub shop. We spoke about LePen and the rest of them, and she sold me a copy of the _Socialist Worker, being an International Socialist herself. I asked her if she was with the Communist Party (they have stuck posters all over Carleton for the October congress in Toronto) and she gave the old no no no, they're a bunch of Stalinists, and so forth. She is fanatical anti-fascist. I just might show up for their little game and get involved with them. They are having a bus to Montreal next week in protest of the appearance of LePen. For $15 I can get a round trip to Montreal, create a ruckus, yell my head off, and maybe get into a little fracas with members of the right wing. It might be something to do. Asking Laurie to come with me would be pressing it, but Michelle would probably be enchanted with the idea. Not because she cares too much about politics, but a bus trip with a bunch of revolutionary Communists to raise hell would appeal to her, simply because it would be another urban guerrilla experience, which she claims to want to experience with her extra-New Brunswick life. It could also get me a girlfriend. There is precious little interaction in class, I am much too timid to make any first moves (for fear of prosecution) and there are few other clubs that I want to join. A girlfriend is but a transitory addition to life, like a side order of French fries. Steak and chips. I'd like egg sausage, chips and beans, and a tea, please. It isn't the most important thing in the history of the universe. I don't really want any of this, not yet at least. My desire to be an adult, hold down a full time job, have a large income and an automobile has not yet kicked in. I'm not yet prepped up to compete with you and Carlile. I sort of feel like being a Communist scumbag, a greasy slimy piece of shit that hangs around pool parlours. I wish that I was a nobody and knew no-one, perhaps living in Yugoslavia. Then I wouldn't have to worry about anyone but myself, and wouldn't have to become anything other than what I was. Either that, or farm corn back in Kentucky, where I belong with all of my lost kinfolk. I can certainly have faith in something as pre-modern as corn. Good solid corn, good ground, pray for rain, wait for the harvest. I could get a fiddle and jump around the fields singing and shouting Green corn, green corn, green corn... Imagine that: From hillbilly to cityslicker and back again in three generations. But how do you become a farmer? How does one farm? Perhaps not farming, but at least something real. Rather than being a watered down university professor, I would rather be a character out of a Faulkner short story. And I am already creepy enough to be half way there, just fake a Southern accent, and there you go. People are becoming adults, and taking on the negative qualities of being a world citizen in a shitty world. To think that the Carlile who wears fancy shoes and has a slick yuppie boyfriend once embarrassed herself with this greaseball, and was once even pregnant with our child, a miniature Meece-Carlile. And now she is jetting to Ireland to study something as silly and rich as herself (Celtic studies) and now I am trying to forget the fact that I haven't eaten since yesterday. Laurie is kind of a dope; like the bit about war being justifiable because it teaches marksmanship. But everyone is like that! Sometimes I don't know if there's anyone I could ever go out with for more than a few months. In the words of Robbt Johnson, The day that you get weak for no good womens, that's the day that you bound to fall. Believe it, my brother. Message #5603 "Private Mail" Date: 29-Oct-91 14:50 From: Chris Woodill To: Wolf Meece Subj: Re: Sunday night blues I would just like to have a quiet romance for the next little while. Something that doesn't have anything to do with marriage. I was talking to Dad about Stacey the other day, and he said something interesting. The dialogue went something like this; G: Danielle seems nice. C: I really like her a lot. G: Just don't get married. C: No, I don't think I will. I have already been almost married. G: [this is the important part] The only way you could have been more married was if you actually walked down the aisle. Funk all that, we've got to get on with these. During part of L's suppertime visit here, she gave the old "I'm not going to let you touch me," and so on. It was all rather pukey, and I've heard it before. Of course I know that we weren't going to hold hands and go kissy kissy, but it seemed rude for her to say so, kind of like "I know you worship me, keep your hands to yourself bub." But it gave me an opportunity to think wisely for once, and ask myself why I even like her. After all, she's made it no secret that she doesn't give a damn about poetry, religion, philosophy, music (pretty much), politix, or even literature at large. So why? So why should I bother? What's so hot about Laurie, besides her sexual potential? Quite honestly... On occasions it's hard for me to genuinely like females. It always takes so much effort to carve off the layers of bullshit and get to the real person. Laurie Wein is definitely not the future, that I can assure you. It was different, because even though I know we wouldn't make a good couple, and I firmly believe it to be true, the way she said it the other night offended me and gave me pause. Because if we don't have the compatibility to make it as a BFGF, why do we appear to have what it takes to make it as "just friends"? And what is the missing item? I could not share with her any of my poetry, religion, philosophy, music (pretty much), politix, or even literature at large, so why is she even a friend? Why do I like her, and what do I like about her? Now that I seriously ponder that question, there isn't much I can say in my defense. She's moderately intelligent, in an Advanced-level way. She knows a little, but not a lot. The thing I like about L the most is that she's there and there isn't really anyone other than her. I haven't talked to her since she left, which was almost two weeks ago. I'm sure that I will eventually, but I know that it can't be the same anymore, at least in my head, now that she's cast the door open for me. I was telling L about the first BBQ meet this summer, with your peer group and me. I said that it consisted of Robin, the opera singer, Danielle, the actress, you the analytical philosopher, and me, the religious poet. She replied, "Sounds like a real fun time," and then smirked. Elgin is the neighbourhood main street and is where you go for shopping. It is the average inner city mixed-ethnic street, like Bathurst maybe, with small grocery stores, specialty shops, poor people places, and so on. Unlike Toronto, they don't bring the produce out onto the sidewalk. And unlike Parkdale, the people don't wander the streets all night. This is an urban middle class neighbourhood, some yuppies, but also families and old people, and for some reason, a lot of stray cats. It isn't the corrupt sinful place that Toronto is... it is so strange to hear people speaking of Toronto as if it is someplace far far away. Ottawa people talk about Toronto the way they talk about Winnipeg, someplace that you visited four years ago. I told my Marxism prof about the Canadian Tribune BBS, and he said "You mean in Toronto?" and I thought, well of course Toronto, where else? It's weird. It's weird to think of TO as anyplace other than home. Ottawa is a nice place, and I can feel myself becoming one of these people. I suppose that I'd classify myself an Ottawan now, more or less. I am still waiting for Taco Bell to discover this untapped marketplace. Perhaps a telephone call to RJ is in order. I feel somewhat pleasant because I feel like this apartment is mine; not Hammerhead's, not Moses', and not my mom's. Of course it is only rented, but beyond that, I can do what I want with it and in it. I can jerk off at any time, sleep whenever, eat whatever and whenever I want, play the music I want without headphones, without Uhhhhh, can you turn that down, and I can generally be peaceful knowing that no-one is going to barge their way into my room and piss me off with their presence. Anything is possible as long as I stay within the bounds of the Criminal Code of Canada, good conduct of Carleton University, and a living allowance of about $100 per month. I've wanted this for such a long time. I remember the times (after my sister went away to Trent) that my mom would go away to the Inter City Papers head office in Montreal for a few days on semi-annual conferences. Most of the times I really relished it; making myself food, leaving my clothes in the livingroom, faking independence for three days. One time I made a midnight run to the Food City in that strip plaza with Little Caesars, and nearly went nuts with the pleasure of buying koolaid and pecan pies and Dr Pepper. The rooming house contains an odd and opposite mix; mostly males, mostly self-contained guys. Many of the people here remind me of an exchange student from Turkey, a male Nergis. There is one guy down the hall who works on a road gang; every day he leaves his work boots outside his door and they are caked in chunks of pavement. There is a guy one floor down who appears to be an Indian playboy. I live on the top floor, facing the street, by far the best room in the complex, as well as the most expensive. I live in a turret with two windows. I have my own little section of hallway, and a fire escape that goes from my window to the ground. I used to sit out there (on my makeshift balcony) and write at night, but now it is becoming a little too cold for that. The rent is $420. Across the street, at 188 Waverley, there is a higher-class apartment house. All the people there look like Ottawa U students. (This is to say people like Laura Pattison, Jennifer McColl, Matt Fenwick and so on. Carleton students look like Brenno, Barnsie, me, and Steve Adsmundson). The interesting part about that place was that they took a dead body out of it about two weeks ago. Did I mention this? Yes. An unmarked van driven by two guys in business suits pulled up, they took a gurney out of the back and went inside. Ten minutes later they emerged with a body bag with lumps the shape of a human figure. Three days later posted on the front door there was the sign Apartment for Rent. So that is my basic contemporary story; frying eggs, taking out the garbage, riding my bike. It's quite good overall, although I know that it isn't making me "respectful" or "successful" and unlike you and Carlile, I'm not pumping fresh life into my resume or curriculum vitae. But I don't care too much about those things anymore, I am busy working on the condition of my brain. I know you think that I am at a rock-bottom and have become a rat in a cage, but I believe that I've never really felt better about things for an extended amount of time not based on having a really neat girlfriend. I don't feel gummy or stupid anymore. I feel like I'm doing things on my own, and no longer trapped in a juvenile rut. Of course, all humanity is trapped in a rut, but I feel good inasmuch as the things that I can control are all proceeding fairly well. I could use a girlfriend, but that's not deathly necessary. As Furry Lewis once said, "You didn't bring nothing in with you, and you aint gonna take nothing out with you either," and as John Mellencamp said, "an honest man's pillow is his peace of mind." So if a sound and untroubled sleep is the greatest thing that we can aspire to, I am successful in at least that area. =========== SECTION 1.2 =========== Things here are fairly sedate, with a bunch of different things contributing to a rat-race type of environment. I think that I am finally getting wrinkles, and am starting to feel physically old. My eyes are getting baggy, and I have less time for entertainment. I don't see D as much as I would during the summer: perhaps this is the year where I might actually have to work in school (I remember being told in grade five, as we all were, that this year I would have to do more than just smile). I saw Danesi's daughter Daniella today. I had first told you about her in first year, as she sat in the front of our intro semiotics class with prissy hair and Benetton sweaters and Gucci shoes. Between then and now she got married (I knew about this marriage in first year), and this summer she supposedly had a miscarriage (Danesi told me this for no particular reason). The point is, when I saw her today, she had lost that innocence, that prissiness that she had in first year. She looked real, rugged, and worn. It was if she had finally been hardened. It was spooky, as I was thinking of the people we idealize from the Hoodlands, ie. Fiona, Stacey, Krista, etc., and I think to myself, "What has happened to Fiona in three years?" Neither of us have had real contact with her. Is she as worn as Daniella, has the idealism been sapped out of her in the same way? I think that Mandy has become like Stacey, with practical problems like finding a job and a house and a boyfriend (or girlfriend as the case may be), and she probably now has yeast infections and haemorrhoids. This happens to everyone: even a house where swear words are not allowed cannot protect one from the onslaught of maturity/old age. Is this why I still get labeled as 14? Do I still look that goofy? Do I still look like I am cumming in my pants over _Playboy? "What kind of bra do I wear? About as comfortable and economical as I can get. Daisy Fresh...Sometimes I forget to even take it off...What kind of bra do you wear?" Danielle is like Janis Jackson: Really rumpled and loud and obnoxious, but with some life and a weird sense of class. There is this girl in my semiotics class that is a total babe, to the point of ridiculousness. She is like a super-model; a babe not in the natural way, but in the artificial sense. Her name is Elessandra; this should say all. She has the posture of someone out on the town, even when she is doing something like turn the lights off when we are watching a film. She would be a whore if she looked dingier, but because she wears Italian clothes and has good hair she is a babe. What is the difference between a babe and whore? Nothing but clothes and shampoo. That is why one gets angry when you expose babes: All you find is a whore underneath. All you find is nakedness. There is nothing to hide their ordinariness. What one should do is not to create babeness: woman should not be put on pedestals. It's degrading to both women but to men. All that occurs is that there is a larger fall, and so one is even more a whore than if she were just plain. Plain people are better, because they stay that way under all circumstances. That is real beauty, when someone still is beautiful when they are sitting around the house in pajamas; when they aren't trying. Danielle is like that: Stacey was definitely not. Stacey would think that when she put on clothes, she would be putting on a new body, something that would be acceptable to the public. Then she would go home and expose herself, and accept the fact that she was fat and over-sexed. It is people like Fiona and Karen, who are generally insecure about their outside appearance, who keep the fashion industry going. It is people who need party clothes AND home clothes that make the fashion industry a billion dollar industry. As for me, I buy about $100.00 worth of clothes a year, usually in the form of jeans, socks, and shoes. You do the same thing: the only things you buy are essentials. The world economy can't survive on essentials. If we all made just what we needed, North American domination over the world would fall. The domination over the world by the US and now in part, Japan, depends on us buying and demanding more than we really need. I think that things are somewhat different now in that I am finally beginning to be able to live the fiction of being well kept: ie. not spoiled, but with enough that one feels comfortably full. I am generally not emotionally, psychologically, or materially hungry anymore. Or at least, that hunger is lessened. It seems this is good for me and for the people around me, although there is that pull back to your roots, no matter how shitty you are. It's like in those movies where some black dude moves from the ghetto and goes to lala land, and becomes criticized because he doesn't like the ghetto anymore. It's the same problem we have in revising and changing our view on the whole Woodlands thang: we don't want to feel like we have been disloyal. In fact, all we are doing is changing our current view of what are now memories, traditions, and old tales. Carlile, for all intents and purposes, is dead. That is an inherent problem with _Cropduster. It is a tool used by us to resurrect the dead. However, all that will ever happen is a feeble response from zombies: Stacey calling and yelling her mouth off, Fiona sending a bland letter, etc. This is the question that we have to mull over with it, which justifies or not the whole production and sending out of _Cropduster: Do people like Stacey and Fiona think us regretfully dead in the same way that we do? If they do, then _Cropduster becomes something that will send them a message of, "I haven't forgotten. Preserve the memories. Stay true to the Rag bag, or whatever it was." However, if the people who we have sent it to are not mournful, then what happens is just a re-killing. Stacey is a perfect example of this: she gets angry because what she thinks she killed, ie. a different view of the world that puts her in the negative, rears its ugly head. Of course the response is aggression, for the purpose of something like Stacey's phone call is to destroy that what has come against her. And perhaps we are doing the same thing ourselves with _Cropduster: killing any protest and firming our own ideology surrounding the whole situation. In other words, perhaps _Cropduster is like Stacey diary, a place for us to put down on paper and thus solidify our position. Is _Cropduster inherently aggressive, war-like, fascist, or is it welcoming, accommodating, friendly? I would think the former. The question is do we care? And if we do, what should we do about it? You sound like a battered wife, except there is no one beating you up except your own memories. Now I am not accusing you of anything, so lets not get into tirades of accusations. I am not saying that I am any better either. But I do it differently: I tend to wallow in my ideals and optimism while everything around me crashes to pieces. Whichever way we do it, we are doing the same thing: we are throwing away responsibility for our situation. Carlile does it, so does Stacey (especially her), and so does Fiona. I think the reason why _Cropduster is so powerful is because of its accusatory tone, because it accuses everyone we have met of being destructive assholes. I don't think the people at Bencard would be able to do that to anyone. That is why we are different, not because we are more intelligent (look at Lloyd's waste of a brain), but because we are still angry and caring and emotional and fighting. We still are fighting, we are still trying to find something other than the compromise of steak knives and government jobs. People have sold out for the most part. I look at the professors around me, I see them doing good work in bits, but only by compromising their entire philosophy. In other words, for every new element that Prof. Smith creates in his laboratory, he has to put up with the creation of three or four new bombs, a new way to melt tires, and so on. This is true in the humanities as well: for every piece on philosophy there are thousands of expositions of Hegel or Marx or some other canon figure. I think the PhD thesis is the start of that road, if not being started during undergrad or even before. The thesis is your ticket in, your first compromise in an effort to become a part of academic culture. It is bogus to think that people are doing independent, radical work. It is as if a good business man could be an environmentalist. Its just contradictory. Academics, more than anybody, have been bought by manufacture of consent, meaning they have bought into a manufactured radicalism, a sense of freedom that doesn't really exist, a sense of individuality that is only permitted through toeing the party line. I am not saying that others do not suffer from this as well, but it is intelligent people who need the largest dose of it in order to be swindled. How much freedom you have to promise to the average man? The freedom to watch commercials, the freedom to go to football games, the freedom to be a cog in someone else's wheel. D and I are supposed to meet up on Thursday night, for a midnight rendez-vous thing. I do not know if I will enjoy it: I do not know the criteria for enjoyment anymore. I can't just speculate on how much sex I am going to get and then say, well that qualifies as a good session (ugh, what an awful word). We don't have sessions, or at least we should not. Do you know the feeling that one gets where if each minute is not the ideal fantasy of BFGF life, then one feels like one has failed somehow. Its as if we are not running at peak efficiency. But of course I realize that efficiency is not the goal, nor is finishing on time. Stacey and I were totally finished: she could give me an orgasm and leave in about 15 minutes. I'm always pushing, she says, always with a plan. I'm constantly planning, always calculating. I know you don't really care, but it is semi-important. I know the reason you don't care, and in some ways I feel the same way: we've both heard it all before. I have heard that whole, "Oh, let's just cuddle and be romantic" before. Beware of anyone promising romance, because most people could never interpret you well enough to be able to be your romantic ideal. Things don't make sense anymore. Things are not black and white, with good guys and bad guys. There are no more enemies, nothing to propel you forward except your own inertia, which over the years starts to diminish. Carlile has a boyfriend that she seems at least semi-happy with, and actually seems like a nice guy in the typical university intellectual way. I have met guys like him: boring and smart, artistic and bourgeois. Another safety net in the history of safe boyfriends. Its about control, control of one's destiny, control over one's family, over one's girlfriend/boyfriend. It is about the power to dictate what your life may be, to be free to choose. That is what control is all about - to not be accountable to anyone except for oneself. But I'm beginning to realize that one cannot find control through confrontation, through stature, through raw power. One must yield to oneself, or one will just become chained to an asshole mentality. The only way to freedom is to openness, to be subversive. One can't destroy the system, rather, one must leave as it is in an effort to use it to your advantage. That is what university is all about, using the stature of the PhD to get someone else to listen to your bullshit. The same goes for psychology, therapy, day-care, teaching, government, etc. It is a way for people to use the system to put forward their own agenda. "And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same..." I don't know why, but I think that Pete Seeger is the purest music form. I really like that whole style of one guy one guitar, just singing to the masses in communion with them, having them singing along. I think that all those guys, ie. Woody, Leadbelly, etc., were like that. Actually, that reminds me of Barry Stilwell, who is, I suppose a modern Leadbelly in that he gets into bar-room brawls while singing songs for the masses. He has a large scar across his chest because of some knife fight that he got into, and his alcohol problems are well known to everyone. He has been falling off the wagon recently, much to the stress of everyone, including me. I don't mind parents, but with Danielle's you have to be wary of them, for they are quite invasive. They do not have the sense of privacy that you are I might have: I think this has to be from being performers and living in an apartment. The idea of knocking on someone's bedroom door is very silly when you can hear all that is going through the paper thin walls. There was this women on the bus who screamed out for no particular reason, "Men in this country are god damn fucking assholes!" I guess she was having a rough day. She didn't look particularly crazy, and she didn't open her mouth after that (usually the crazy ones keep babbling all the way to the subway). I met up with Rupi today, who now has a beard. Things are getting more and more stressful. My computer keeps breaking down (Oh, how I love MS DOS), with conflicts all over the place. I have barely enough energy to learn anything, and Dad keeps yammering on about "school should be your first priority". It's a shitty day of a shitty week, and right now I hate life. I had another weird dream again, about some female in a wheelchair who was kept in an institution, until she finally gets away at the end. I do not know what this is all about, but perhaps it is me trying to escape the institution of Gary and Karen. In the end the female (I don't know who it was, but the dream was in first person so I guess it was me) is sick and has to wear a shawl and stay in her wheelchair, but at least she is free to go where she wants. I miss Danielle, and her father is home. She wants to shoot him. She has as much rage against her father as Fiona had against the baseball bat guy or Rachel had against the Digger. Or I suppose, as much as I have against my own mother. The guy is just such a fuck-up, and a pitiful fuck-up at that. He is not arrogant like Lloyd; rather, he is more like Martin, pitiful and lame. Daddy to the rescue: he supposedly got the computer up and running. False alarm: the scanner is still fucked up. This girl I am telling you about in my Italian class is more and more like JM everyday. It is as if she walked into my class and sat down. She even has many of the same physical attributes: big red hair, fattish figure and freckly face. There is a lot of this at this institution, a lot of people trying to "find themselves". This university has a lot of money. I have noticed that in the cafeteria they have put in a high definition big screen TV set, so that the catholics can watch MuchMusic while they eat. I am committing grievous sins. Not only am I having feasts with D during the week, but I usually end up sleeping in, and thus, missing Italian the next morning. I have been missing Tuesday classes because of my sexual exploits, which I admit is not good. It's not as bad as it used to be: this is not so much Stacey and I skipping to go fuck during the day, but not going to bed until 1:30 and so not wanting to get up the next day. I usually do not want to get up anyway, and sometimes I don't get up on Tuesday without any cause of Danielle being there. I wrote that letter to Carlile. I do not know whether I will send it. I would love to have her confidence again. That Peter guy is a total knob, a perfect Eaton Centre shopper. It would be pleasing to hear that Carlile still deep down hated her boyfriend, and really just wanted to go home and masturbate. I have lunch today with Karen Rothfels, if she remembers to show up. We arranged to have lunch at Ned's a couple weeks ago, and she never showed, but she said she would for this one. I am not holding my breath. Why do people do this? Is it just bad manners, or genuine not caring? I am getting sick of it, although now I do not brood about it anymore. I do not get angry or anything: I just trust them less, and do not depend on them for anything. I stand by my statement that you should consider Michelle. She is definitely a babe in the woods, and she would take you up on many offers. I think the problem is that you would have a lot of control, so you would have to control yourself. Is this your problem? Can you handle it? If you can avoid being a fuckup, then what is the big deal? You seem to think that your being a tyrant is something that comes over you, like lust. It is to a certain extent, but in some ways both of us are responsible. Because if we were not, then we would be no better than Matt Fenwick. Are you saying that we are no better? Perhaps that is true, but at least with people like Danielle and Michelle we might be able to be honest about it. I think the problem for you is not one of losing control and jumping on someone and making it stupid, but rather, of being able to be honest about your asshole tendencies and make your partner understand the problems. The problem is always one of communication, and mutual intelligence. Are you afraid that she won't be ready for you coming out and saying, "I'm sorry but I really want a blowjob right now and I know you do not want to give me one, so I feel like an asshole..."? "Rock and Roll!!" I do not think that you should try overly hard to find this tiresome hag that you can conquer and make into a jewel. Sometimes you are allowed to have something you're not supposed to. Sometimes you should go after the beach blonde bomber, or the chick that is easy, or someone you would enjoy eating. Sometimes that is OK, and it seems that you have made yourself a whipping post for the faults of your grade eleven past. You need to get rid of Fiona. You need something new, something you can get excited about. You are wallowing around on this issue, which although may only be a fraction of your potential existence, comprises a lot of mental, emotional and sexual ego. Perhaps you are thinking that I am standing on this father figure pedestal, giving you advice. At least I am not slipping you condoms. I do not mean to be, although sometimes I know you like the benefits of having the father figure, or playing the long lost son role. You need people you can count on, that you can play with. Perhaps you are taking this Michelle thing too seriously, or not seriously enough. Perhaps you should play in her sandbox, and do nice things, and visit museums, and ride the bus, and listen to Deep Breakfast, and kiss. =========== SECTION 2.1 =========== More old tymes. The train trip to/from Ottawa is always a melancholy one, since the route putters through the hometowns of three of my old flames: Cats in Smith's Falls, Kristi in Kingston, and Kucman in Port Hopeless. The most feeling one is Smiths Falls, because I know that in all likelihood, Cats is still out in that town somewhere. Barring some unforeseen development, we will both have anthropology GFs in the near future. It looks like it is going to happen, partially because she is progressing forward too, giving out revelations, inviting me for dinner, leaving messages on my machine. L never did any of that. I think it is going to work. I hope it is going to work. It would be good, provided that it stays at the proper level. It can't be overwhelming. This isn't to say that I don't want anything to do with her, rather that if it gets too strong in a BFGF way, she is liable to go overboard as I said before and send me flowers and talk about "love" and whatever. I am sick to chit of this romance crap as practiced by L, Stacey, and Brandie and want nothing to do with it. I don't want to be revered and put on a pedestal for six months only to be dumped like trash during the seventh. I would rather just receive respect now and forever. We had a really good post-coital philosophical talk. Actually, I did almost all of the talking. I cut up L and Brandie and Stacey for their belief in the Bev Hills 902 style ultimate infallibility of their BFs. "I've met the coolest guy... he's funny, smart, cute, sweet, sensitive..." and so on. If you think you've found the perfect guy, you are deluded, because the last perfect guy was a virgin who died on the cross. Sooner or later you will realise that he isn't perfect, and can your relationship handle that piece of information? Of course not. People like Stacey and L and Brandie declare that the search is over three times each year. And then when they break up and end up hating each other, they are completely confused... "I don't know what happened, all of the sudden he wasn't the same Chris that I used to know..." and so on. This came to mind when I was at their house the other week, and L was getting all gussied up to go out on a "date" with a guy named Stacy. The guy showed up wearing hiking boots, and I just had to shake my head and say "Oh man..." They went out to see a film at the Bytowne - because he is appreciative of the arts, you see. Not only this, but he is Mr Sensitive and Mr Caring-Concern. He might have volunteered to mow her lawn or do the dishes. "He took out the trash for me - he's such a nice guy!" Wake up! I was giving the guy the eye, and he knew that I knew his number. He looked at me with dewy eyes hoping that I wouldn't expose him. The movies and chivalry is an act of course. He wants to funk her and stuff his prick in her mouth, but if he said that he'd get the boot. What could cause these changes? Why can their "love" be changed to "hate" so easily? Because their love was never honest in the first place. Last Christmas the Military Man got out of bed at 5:30am to chauffeur L to the airport for her flight back to Edmonton. This was before they were actually going out. This summer he didn't even care enough about her to not go after another chick while L was out of the time zone. Same Military Man both times, just with different priorities. "He isn't the guy I used to know..." because what you knew was a fake personality used to seduce you. Look at all the marriages where the chick gets the crap kicked out of her - notice that he waited until after she said yes to show his true self and give her a bust in the chops. "Hi, my name's John. I'm five foot seven, and I like going to the movies, talking, walking through High Park in the autumn, cats, and cleaning the house. My box number is..." "Hey you fucking fat ass..." I've told M that I am a sleazeball and a skummbag, so that she doesn't get shocked when she discovers that on her own. I've already used the word snatch in her presence. I am immoral, manipulative, horny as a toad, stingy, and a jackoff, a real jackoff. I'd want her to know that now. As predicted, they are razzing her, and were silent/ignoring of me when I was over there. They want to keep her in just the right pigeonhole, that of a cute unassuming rural Christian girl from New Brunswick; i.e. what she was September 1 1992. She has changed and grown up since then, but they're not interested in hearing about that. So they crack double-entendre quasi-sex jokes in order to humourously and subtly shame her into stopping doing what she's doing. Michelle must be held back so that she does not challenge L's position as dominant bitch of 1410 Kilburn. One of L's badges for her dominance was her ability to have me dance attendance for her pleasure. So while she had no intention of ever having sex with me, she, like Stacey, threw out little alluring hints every little while in order to keep me at her front door. She says that I am the only person who is "inside" of her in Ottawa, which is to say, I-You. In her life there is me and a few old Brunswickers. It is strange, but L and Lynn (the third roommate) are still Its. We spent some time up in her room, and then went out for a midnight run for Pizza Pizza (737-1111). It was chummy but not dopey, close but not clingy, intimate and serious but not grilling or psychoanalytic. At the end of the evening at her back door it was unknown whether we were going to kiss. We did, just a little tongue, and I fiddled with her hair and neck a little bit. Would masturbating to a GIF file be considered teledildonics? The most amazing part of all of this is that I am just pretty pleased to be here and to have all of this. Last night there was a sort of parinirvana as I lay in bed in my pajamas, looking at the shadows of light cast on the ceiling, listening to the rain pour off my turret and Len Cohen at a low volume. It is very good that I can be this happy on $40 per week plus rent plus tuition. This means that I only need an income of $7420 per year to be happy. I don't specifically need to goto school. But rent and tuition don't count as I never see it, touch it, and can do nothing about it. In terms of what goes through my hands, it is $40 per week, or $2080 per year. I wonder how people like Kenneth Augustus Barnes live - what would you do with $190,000 per year? There aren't enough hours in the day to spend that amount of cash, and so obviously they are wasting it on frivolous things. In an old National Film Board documentary it was revealed that I am currently living on 1/3rd of what a single male was rationed during the war. This means that all of this religion crap has really started to do some good with me. Because I can be content with an annual income of $1500, at least for now. I really am a single male, a bachelor in a bachelor apartment. I feel like Kafka. I feel like a Communist. I am dirt poor! But I like it. I have learned to make do without respect, honour, status, cable tv, Home Theatre, a car, a job, CDs, grasp files, 69's, chiltoes, turkey subs, FTP, diet Coke, bus rides, movies, 50c pinball, fancy food and meat of any kind, all while wearing the same clothes since I was 14. Therefore I emerge with little money and a lot of free time. I can take walks through the park, read, stay up as late as I want every night, write letters all day, listen to _Spinal Tap. You can either work the touchtones all day and spend a lot of cash, or philosophise and sleep all day and use a little. I choose the latter. Sometimes I think that the purpose of university is to turn everyone into Pierre Berton. He is a liberal and is able to choke out a newspaper column on every political / historical subject imaginable. He seems like an ideal philosophy student. I think that if you want to reach people, you should do it in highschool, in grade ten and eleven, where people are changing and open to new ideas. If you teach U it will be feeding Hegelian TV dinners to a bunch of Chris Englers. I don't follow in this great fascination with cybercrud that you do. It's interesting, but it's just a game to me. It's just a diversion, just something to do. I don't swallow the whole lifestyle element. If you have the September issue of Toronto Computes, you'll see on page nine the tale of Frank Lemiere, an old Apple II buddy of mine that I befriended in the summer of 1988 and pirated with. He lives in the Beaches, and I spent a couple of days that summer in has basement engrossed in duping _California Games. He was arrested up for phone phreaking and playing around with long distance trunks. I have known the computer underworld. Reading your letter was very interesting. You're still the same in a lot of ways. I get this picture of you as someone with a great fondness for the things that you respect. You really look up to people / things / lifestyles / ideals / careers. It's funny the way that you can jump right into the Internet and FTP and Quicktime, because it represents a bit of something you admire and if you can get into that, you can get into the real thing. That makes you a little more closer to the faraway goal. I remember that you did the same thing around the perimetre of Stacey. The bit you wrote in _Cropduster #2 about sitting in the basement reading sexuality textbooks or going to the mall to play Asteroids: It was the story of a guy without much internal drive waiting to find something good to get into. It's like you can't trust yourself on your own, and you need something else to hold up to Whomever as a badge of proof of your worth. When you had your first dollop with the tongues with Natalie you had found something to get into and to express yourself through; GFs and peer groups. When that exploded you were adrift for awhile, but after you moved to Parkdale and had your first dinner with Gary and his colleagues, it happened again. Some of the things are the same, and you're still writing to reassure that you're a valuable part of an honourable whole. Danesi, Quadras, $200 teaching jobs, multimedia contracts, conferences in Boston; the Four Seasons, regular stroking of your lovely penis at 15, the King of Sex, sleepovers, "the search is over", walks by the Credit, beating out me and Pete and the Treats guy. They both mean the same thing: I have succeeded and come out on top. I am a real person with valuable accomplishments and have worth. I can identify myself with this group. This group and myself stand for the same things and we can win together. That is why you were so frantic about losing Stacey to me, because you wouldn't just lose a GF's blowjobbing and dates on movies, you would lose a big part of the definition of you, and you wouldn't really know what to strive for anymore. I remember one fad you went through a couple of years ago where every five minutes you had to bring up the "two quo que argument," and how whatever we were talking about at the time was a perfect example of it. You wrote it yourself: "It is a million dollar industry, and the people who are in the forefront started out in the same fashion that we are." The Million Dollar Man in waiting. D is right when she says that you are always planning and calculating. I also think that you might have a homosexual Oedipus complex. The amount of not-very veiled admiration for "Dad" is unusually high. You're supposed to want to coozle up to mama and sneer at your dad, but you have it the other way around. It would be good if you went back to Newfoundland, because perhaps then you would become more authentic and regionalised and less Gary-ish. Maybe you would realise that it is a hamster wheel to try to set the world on fire (because the world doesn't care) and that it is better to do things like play the fiddle and love your children, something Gary hasn't cared about in a long time and Karen never did. All you Newfies are the same though, you sell out the Rock and come to Toronto and laugh at the savages. Re: The Tiresome Hag thing. It isn't just whipping post and self-imposed torture. It is mixed in with both my esteem and my altruism. First, because it is easier to pick up a chick that other people have left behind. There is simply less competition, and when you do capture her, you are more assured that she will value you, and you do not have to beat back your opponents. Case in point, Julia: We were walking around Quincy Square in Boston and she picked up a guy right under my nose. We're walking along, and then she seems some hunky character, goes up to him, and gives her phone number. I just stood there and said "oh dear." Sex is better that it is less important. It used to be so amazing, such a great Pit deal. Now it is calmer and better. When M took her clothes off I knew exactly what was under there. It didn't surprise me, and so I could do better things. I could fuck or not fuck, I wasn't a wild panther loose. And I believe that to be good. =========== SECTION 2.2 =========== Things are fairly decent, relatively OK, moderately neeto. Danielle and I are fine, as always, although events are fairly stressed at the moment. School is much less important this year, what with everything else going on. But at least it is becoming more interesting, and the courses are more my choice. I saw Karen the other day, joined by her sister Claire, who I used to know from Telepersonals. She is now pregnant, which surprised me as I always assume that she was at least casually Lesbian. I think that she is one of these real marginal people who drift from all categories, which is both good and bad. The thing is that I can respect her, because it is obvious that she really does live on the other side of the tracks, and doesn't just wear the odd nose ring and John Lennon glasses. She is a real orphan, in the same way that Jenny Harrison was a real orphan. They are both scuzzy, but you can admire them, at least from a distance. If you can get to it there in Ottawa, go see _Like Water For Chocolate. It is an extremely good movie, and would be a great movie to take Michelle. They really get the mother figure right on, and when you see her, she really reminds you of Marcia, with that, "I'll have you charged" type of gaze. The urge to write Carlile has diminished somewhat, and everytime I think about it I get tired, not depressed or wistful. There is nothing more to write, no more urge to connect with her. I guess it was just a passing phase, a little dip in one's stability. It will probably come again, as it always does, but it is nothing to be overly concerned about. It seems that my loyalty to my present situation is clear: there appears to be little that is encouraging me to open that box. This is true for the whole Woodlands stuff in general: I have not looked at my letters in almost a year - they are finally becoming history. I picked up your Winona Ryder gifs, and they are pretty shitty. There is little to get a boner about. As well, G+K were inquiring about pornography on the Internet, so I showed them my grasp files and we downloaded a GIF file for them to peruse. They appear to have no idea about underground computer culture at all: they are so used to things like Bitnet and lists that they do not realize that the largest population of computer users are 13-19 year old males. There is some guy in Karen's grad class who wants to do his PhD on S&M. He wants to, get this, do participatory research. This is the same guy who did his masters thesis on beastiality. I bought a chromatic harmonica today, at a pawn shop for 30 dollars. It's very nice, and because it is chromatic I can play the black notes as well as the white ones. This means that I can actually play anything, not just blow in/blow out type harmonica chords. I have come to the conclusion that I really hate my Italian classmates. They are such highschool scabs, such keeners. The males remind me of John Jaques and Brad Simms, and the girls of JM. Its terrifically horrible, and I end up looking like this depressed unconscious idiot in the back of the classroom because I am not high on life. Things are not the same as they were, they are falling back into nihilistic tendencies. There are few people who are not clambering for more power. We were talking about this in M&E today, about how the Nazis would offer pure power to the citizenry. This is the same here in many ways, especially in the US. They promise labour power, and they promise Christians power, and they promise the upper classes more power. This society is going to pot, and the only thing that can be done about it is to either jump on the bandwagon or subvert it. You cannot fight power with power; you cannot stop war by going to war. Ghandi was right. I'm very sick of people who are in arts, especially in art history/criticism and film theory. These people are literal dummies. They have no presence, no form. They talk and talk, and us philosophers have to this garbage. It's not that they are wrong or anything like that, they just don't say anything. For example, we are doing this work on frame and boundaries in art, which is interesting, but they spend about five minutes on conceptual work, and then they spend 30-40 minutes telling stories, discussing examples, reading into art works. Danielle gets even a worse case because she thinks she is missing something. She believes that there is more there than the minimal thesis which is produced. These people are so conceptually behind in terms of their thinking skills. What's scary is that we are doing some extremely difficult material, works that really demand a philosophical background of some sort, or at least the ability to conceptualize and be theoretical. I had to watch Goddard's _Hail Mary on Friday. I started at three and I was to meet Danielle at 4:45, so I asked the guy how long the movie was, and he replied that it was 90 minutes in duration. This suited me fine: I figured I could watch the film, rush down to King station, and pick up D. But such turned out not to be the case. The film lasted over two hours, which made me late. I was livid, not just because I was late (you know how angry I get about that in itself), but also because the guy had given me a raw deal, and because the movie was deadly boring. I was sitting through this movie saying to myself, "I should just get up and leave in protest" but it took me two hours to get up the nerve to do. I was trapped in a Goddard film for two hours, making me late, because of my own insecurity. I was screaming when I got out of there (at the two hour mark, I actually did walk out). The movie itself was everything that I hate about film: slow-moving, inefficient and unentertaining. I am so sick of these films based on scenic and photographic tricks, which get tired when repeated over and over. I had to sit through cuts between conversation and nature shots. As I was telling Danielle, I much prefer art in that I can judge the value of the piece in about 15-20 seconds, where because of the nature of the film being diachronic (across time), you have to wait until the end to judge. Its like listening to someone who stutters - you want to finish their sentences for them in order to speed up the process. Danielle is on her period. I have something very problematic with periods, and it has become worse in recent years. I just feel really queasy about the whole thing, and I look at her differently everything 28 days. It's weird, because it's so Freudian, in the sense of people's problems with basic function taboos. I do not know where this thing comes from, but it's there. I had a very interesting argument with this guy George in my M&E class today. We started out talking about atheism, and how he hates softish atheists who are really semi-theological. I countered by saying that Christians were the same way, and we got into a beautiful row about whether or not atheists were any worse that Christians in terms of their ethical consistency. I was out to prove that Christians are just as stupid as atheists, if not more so. It ended up going for about two hours as the class was canceled, which was refreshing. I really like these types of arguments, where you just test your metal about something that is important and yet distant enough not to cause inner crisis. I talked to Rupinder today. He is busy taking uppers again, so that he doesn't kill somebody (probably his father). He is a science student, which means that he actually has to go to school and he has to be tested and evaluated all the time, which for his condition is not good at all. I do not know too much about it, but it seems pretty crazy. I think he is going to be like my Dad or my Mom, a therapist who in the closet is drawing vaginas with guns in them or penises flying through the air or something. Both my parents are like that, and me too I suppose. Psychology is the last defense for nuts. It is a way to shed the problems of others while forgetting about one's own. Carlile is going down the tubes. I was right all along it seems. She is not as she appears, with her corporate exterior. Supposedly she is become a lonely recluse, who sits in her room all day and doesn't talk to anybody. I think that girl is steaming, and I think she is running away from it. You know I think that if she actually had stayed in the Others she would have stabbed us all. She is like that - dangerously depressed. I remember that in grade nine she said that she was never happy, just somewhere in the middle, kind of numb. Comfortably numb, I suppose, although that phrase was not used at the time. =========== SECTION 3.1 =========== It's hard to believe that people were once persecuted, jailed, exiled, killed for philosophy. This was once on the outside of society, but now it is society, as my prof in this class is 50ish, balding with a beard, has an expensive watch and runs Windows on a 486. Nietzsche he aint. His successor (the TA) cracks really unfunny jokes and names his dog after a Star Trek character. Those who can, do. Those who can't, analyze. There is too much explaining and not enough doing in the world, too much hot air verbiage. Like I said about the "round table of experts," they have on TV panel news shows: They will analyze the information for you, as you are too dim to do it yourself, and give you an opinion that you can take to the lunch table or water cooler the next day. Why should I value someone else's opinion more than my own? Is it because I'm not supposed to do anything but parrot them? I honestly do not see the need for literary criticism or even analysis. Why bother? What would really be the point in dissecting Abbey Road for neo-Marxist sentiments? It is only done because the critics cannot produce art and would like to be paid anyway. Those that can, do. You can analyze something like biology, but not art. People used to get drawn and quartered for possessing a copy of something by Voltaire. Now, the establishment that once forbade it propagates it. The only difference between then and now is that the establishmentarians all scream that they are different, that they are not the same. Just let it go. "And remember, a Jedi feels the Force flowing throughout him..." M and L went to a Lightfoot gig the other day. When they got out, L was full of idol worship, and said that Mr. Foot was a God, and asked M is she thought so too. M said that she thought not. Then L went nuts and told M she was closed-minded, just because she didn't believe that Lightfoot was a divinity. Two points to be made here: a) Laurie gets her power from turning her opponents into straw men and making her argument seem to be a truism. Who can argue in favour of closemindedness, racism, sexism and so forth? Even the Reformers do not. b) L's idol worship is pretty sad, and so are the people that idolise anyone. The New Kids concerts were pretty pitiful, as well as the people still going nuts over Jimbo Morrison 20 years after his death. People only worship idols because they are too scared to become one themselves. Look at all Christians and tell me if one of them has a pulse. I have no faith in this society as being a particularly good place to spend any amount of time in. I was watching Coronation St yesterday, and even this working class scene seemed out of my league, too rich for my blood. That's all I want to be, perhaps, a bloated Englishman digging in the garden outside of my council flat, and then going in for tea and ginger snaps, Cornish pasty, middle rashers and treacle & jam buddies served on a Ry-Krisp crackbread! Good God! It is very distressing, trying to put together a life out here in the colonies. I don't think that's an exorbitant thing to ask for, but it seems out of my reach. The sex shop never called me back, and I was underqualified to work at the cookie stand. Not much else left! My Uncle Errol dropped out of highschool for a year and a half because he had a job working fulltime at Canadian Pacific. Imagine that: Having your choice of grade twelve, or $15,000 per year, which was a big sum in 1971. Back then anyone could get that kind of job without even a highschool diploma, all they had to do was work for it. Those days are long long gone. The simple well-paying unionized blue-collar job is a relic of the past. I think that perhaps the union has priced itself out of the country, or the capitalists have realised that there are Malaysians that will work for peanuts. All the savings get passed onto the CEOs. I think that your work ethic based on condemnation is from this era of industrial relations. Back then there were jobs for the taking, and anyone who wanted to work could work. The jobs were so plentiful that my Uncle Errol dropped out of grade eleven and started hauling in the cash. Not because Glenn got him the job, but because there was work out there for those that wanted it, and he did. Back then only the eight year olds had to sell steak knives and chocolate bars door to door, or lead ponies around by a chain at the CNE. Yes, in that environment I too would condemn people who didn't have work, because there was no excuse for it. But now I think the conditions are a little different, and you should be a touch easier on me and the Newfies, because it isn't our fault that our hands are idle. I suppose that I too would be a gung-ho work ethic proponent if I was getting paid $12 per hour to work at a record shop, or at the Leadbelly Museum, or anyplace in Russell Springs Kentucky, or whatever. Take a look at my brother - $10.15 an hour to work for the city of North York as a pool lifeguard. What does he do? Sit on a big chair, stare at the babes in bikinis, and tell the kids not to run on the deck. It's all about perspective. Anyone who is still conservative today ought to be shot for heartlessness, insensitivity and tunnel vision. This is the strangest part of life, when you are too old to be a part of your birth family, but too young to be a part of your marriage family. Going to university as a pseudo-poor person in a foreign town does not help things either. Because you don't have a home, or even roots in your community or citizens. This is the arena of the one-night-stand, not in sex necessarily but in general relationships and interaction. There are no real loyalties left. Witness Laurie and Susan and what happened to them. I got to know S in a small way last year, and she is a pleasant girl - Nurturing Tan (like Shanta and Kucman) brown hair, a little slow, some spelling mistakes, but a good warm person nonetheless. She was Laurie's grade nine buddy, and they came all the way to Ottawa with high ideals. They had visions of living together in an apartment downtown, being bohemian hip chicks, eating Japanese food and burning candles. A lot like the way that we had our own idle fantasies about the six of us getting our house and living in a hippie commune. Anyhow, they came to Carleton, S for architecture and L for journalism, and their relationship was stone cold dead within the first semester. It was dead by Christmas. That happens often. Actually it's the status quo around here. L and M were supposed to be such fast friends, but that has turned out to be a farce as well, and is yet another dead body. People are keeling over dead at a constant rate. Gone are the days when Stacey and Carlile (or anyone for that matter) was around every day for years and years. Add to that a sputtering academic career, and you've got a serious case of the creeps and a weird out. After you moved to Parkdale and the Kucman thing finished, there were a few months of it in the Saug, but it wasn't entirely bad, because I still had my home and my town, both of which I knew quite well. But now no-one has either, and I have to fend for myself in a lifeless city by paying my phone bill and buying groceries. I have Michelle, but that is all I have here, and so we both, in the words of Jimbo Morisson, "cling to cocks and cunts of despair." She sleeps here like three nights per week, which is nice, but it still gets me to wondering why. I am used to having just one person in the city (For instance Stacey in 1990), but the difference now is that I don't even have enemies anymore, for the first time in years. It doesn't bother me all the time, but when it comes over me in a wave, it's usually pretty gripping. Michelle has it too, as she clings to me, and gets overly excited whenever she receives mail. Also she has begun to volunteer for this oldster thing, probably to feel like she is doing something and not just hanging around in Ontario and eating food. Michelle came over here Tuesday afternoon, with a pile of ITV lecture tapes for us to watch. She stayed for a bit and it became a very domestic scene as she helped me with my laundry and made dinner for us while I was putting away the clothes. We ate, lay around in the sack together, she spent the night. In the morning a drawn-out 69 and then she then caught the #5 bus to Billings Bridge (to transfer to #147 and her home) and I set off on my bike for Theology class. It would have been a master stroke of parental deception and taken minute planning and timing to pull that off only a couple of years ago. It would have been a great death defying feat to get a weekday off school, get mom out of the house for the evening, confuse Rachel's parents, have her come over for the evening, stay the night, actually want to suck my dick, and then get up and go home or to school at 11:30 the next morning. It would have been a diabolical stunt that deserved to be recorded in the Deception Hall of Fame. Really, it would have been a huge deal. If it went down at the Woodlands, Lloyd would have excommunicated me forever, never wanting to dirty his hands again with someone as immoral and evil as myself. But this year it kinda just happened. Age is a strange thing these days. I don't think it's because I've changed and am somehow, magically "mature" enough to handle a chack, but rather that it is socially acceptable for it to happen now. You are no longer branded a slut if you come home from a night out the next afternoon. At 15 yes, at 20, no. What is mine for free today would have got me 20 years in Kingston three months ago. This came to me in the shower: If one believes is pro-life, then they ought to also believe that anyone who has a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) should be jailed for manslaughter. Honestly. Because they believe that a fetus is a life, and that ending the fetus is killing and murder. Murder just like it is out on the street. Ok then - the law determines that accidental homicide, like automobile accidents, is called manslaughter and requires 20 years in the pokey. Did you or did you not kill the fetus? You deserve to do the time. Why has no-one argued for this? Because deep down, they know that the fetus isn't a person. The same way that most make concessions about rape victims -- but if it's really a person then murder is murder, right? This is actually not true, as the real meaning behind the pseudo-theological story is that they just wanted more Roman Catholics. This is the real reason that Jean Chretien's mom had 17 children. There are many examples of that, where the Church make it seem as if their own goals are coming from the mouth of God. Your famous line about not being able to goto Church if you have crushed nuts or acne has to do with their desire for the health of future Christians. They didn't want weirdos and people with bad genes to be the founding generation. Anyhow, you should get over your menstruation hangup, and fuck Danielle while she's on her period. It isn't scary, and it's not really bloody, although you wouldn't want to do cunnilingus. This weekend we also went out to see a play as a couple, walked home hand in hand, the whole cutsey thing, stopping at Kentucky Fried Chicken for a little homefood. And I've done the whole BFGF thing, mailing her little sex poems, giving her a shirt of mine, feeding her when we eat together, the whole cliche. All funking huggy-huggy cuddle cuddle. I have sold out my bachelor brothers and gone all the way into being a Deep Breakfast. I have let down the bachelors by turning my back on them. Even Tumbleweed doesn't walk the streets alone these days... and she's only ffsteen. In other news, L is long gone, without much remorse or sentimentality on the part of either party. The year started out fine, just as jocular as it was when we had left. The first meeting here was a little nutty, but that happened a few times last year as well. I specifically asked her what had changed after today, and she replied that nothing had. That wasn't the thing that sealed my fate. First of all, I got a GF that wasn't her, which was grounds for the cold shoulder, but not expulsion. During the Stacey era, she disapproved of Karla and later Sanja (and also had the nerve to chide me for caring more about by GF Fiona than her - which she thought was yet another example of me ripping her off), but didn't dump me for it. The thing that got me the pitch was that it was Michelle who was the GF which was a little too close to home for her. That was an act that could not be forgiven. I realise now that we never had a friendship, or even a relationship. What we had was a business agreement, a contract to perform. I gave her my loyalty, attention, and praise, and in exchange I received the gift of her presence and her voice, and a few glimpses of her female behind. I got to follow her around, and she got the reassurance that I would do her if she ever gave me the chance. Look at the way that Carlile always complained about Lloyd... but notice that she always hauled him back when he started to stray. As much as the Tweety bird dodges and avoids the pursuit of Sylvester, the bird always comes back again for more nonsense. Because the bird would not be the bird if she did not have the cat in chase. But even now, L still tries to hold onto whatever power she may have left. The other day L was listening to M's phonecall with one of her NB friends, and in doing so heard that we were having sex. She did the parental-moral trip thing, telling M that she was too immature for sex, that she didn't know what she was getting into, that it was all too adult and mysterious and powerful for her to handle, and that I was just using her for sex. Laurie actually said "Michelle, you don't understand that your relationship with him cannot be real. It cannot be real because he worships me and not you, and is just using you for sex and to get closer to me." Word of honour -- this is actually what she said. This is what she has to cling to in order to keep her Ottawa world intact. Even now, after I haven't talked to her in over two months, she believes that I worship her and that this is my latest method of gaining entry into her underware. She cannot accept that she has lost her toy. Well, it serves her right. She should have have picked me up when she had the chance. To answer questions: If Carlile is indeed sitting alone in her res room, you should contact her. She could be responsive, because res can do that to you. I could worship Robin. She is ripe fruit hanging heavy on the vine. If I was still a Toronto person, it would be an honour. Alas, what can I do? Perhaps your should give her Viren's phone number. I saw these two at the Peppermill (cafeteria) today, and it was so obvious that they were BFGF. Not in their behaviour, but in the way they looked. They almost looked like brother and sister. Look at you and Danielle, and look at me and Michelle. It is too obvious. Michelle's father is a god-damn plumber! This is why the proletariat stay proletarian; they mix and interbreed with each other. It just happens that way. It was the same way with Rachel; they lived in the Peel Non-Profit Housing Co-op in Erin Mills. Me and my girlfriends from the council flats. You and Danielle are deadringers for BFGFs. But Danielle does not remind me so much of Marcia; she is more like Jen. And while Rachel and my mom looked embarrassingly similiar, Fiona was more like my sister. I think that aspect of it all is under-represented. There is not the same conflict (Oedipus style) with your sister, but in terms of influencing your view of the ideal female, it is definitely there. =========== SECTION 3.2 =========== X-mas is closing fast, and I do not think I can really afford it. We are all in debt, even though we have five computers. That is when you know you have joined the middle class: when you have a credit card. Life is one of paying bills, of trying to keep creditors off one's back. I have not yet written to Carlilly, but I think I shall. I think I will do it over X-mas, so that I have something do when I am in Belleville. One has to be in the right state of semi-depression to do these things, to stoop so low as to write to one's ex-semi-grade nine girlfriend. You sound happier, and you write less. As soon as you started having Michelle, you wrote less emails, with less in each of them. I do not think it is so much that getting blow jobs dulls the mind, but rather with someone like Michelle you have much less to worry about. All you need now is a job, and with Moses in the background you do not really have to worry about it. Danielle seems to be getting worse, more apprehensive as she gets more constrained by family, school, etc. I do not know what to do about it, except move her out of the house. There is only one more year of this after this year, then we can move. I do not like how her parents treat her, very much in the same Big Bob Carlile, Carol Baldwin type of way, but combined with the alcoholism. It's bad enough that they are considering going into family therapy, and the big problem is that Barry keeps on falling off the wagon. This is not good for Danielle - even if we moved to Montreal she would feel attached to that whole cycle of neurosis. I was watching this John Bradshaw (you know the inner child guy), on PBS, and it reminded me a lot of what Danielle's family is like. They all have these buried inner children which continue to plague them. Barry has his alcoholic parents, Lil has her dominating Catholic family, and Danielle has Bar and Lil. This is not good, and she does not have a way out like I did. I am still affected by Marcia, but at least I have a temporary haven from her. I think we all need that. We all have to move out. Danielle is not able to do that, because there is no where to go. ("I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to, fly to, fly to...") There are a lot of chickies here, most of them with no features but good Italian tradition. They have brown hair and hefty bosoms, and an ass off of which you could eat. However, they are mostly boneheads, and they have really shitty boyfriends. There is guy Joe who was in the sem-id-iotic thing last year, and he has this gorgeous girlfriend that he does not deserve. I think he wakes up everyday and asks himself how he has been so lucky. People are very dishonest with each other and themselves. I think this is a fundamental problem; people are not willing to open themselves up to the world. I include myself in this category, although I do not think I am as ideological committed as some. I had enough of a good dose of Carlile beating me over the head not to trying to put something forward. Carlile is a ball crusher, and so is Stacey. One learns quickly that to act with ego, to be oneself without care of others is going to get you killed. Have I become shy? There are two instances that make me think so. In Italian, I have the feeling that I am being coaxed all the time, like I am some timid little kid. I do not fit in with the rest of them, as I have told you, but the teacher likes me. The teacher tries to get me to speak up, and is really supportive in that grade three, "It's okay, Jimmy, you can make a mistake" kind of way. And today, in Metaphysics and Epistemology, one of my big A+ type courses, I got accused of speaking too quietly. I was told repeatedly to speak up. What is happening? Am I finally losing the Lloydish boisterousness? But there are leftover problems, and although I am living the life of luxury, of academic yuppiness, there is still that resentment, that hatred. This is typical, and I do not know what can be done about it, probably nothing. Kare and Gare think I should go into some kind of headshrinker, but I doubt that will do alot. It seems that with all the therapy that they have had, all it has done is helped them to put it aside, to get on with their lives so that they can be more productive. This is not really my concern. I have never been one to let my emotions influence my productivity. I get things done in the crunch. I am not like Barry, who leaves his keys with strangers in a drunken stupor. I would never let myself wallow enough to be irresponsible. It seems that your letter is being written by six different people, in different cities. Two are being written in Mississauga, and the narrative is one of Stacey doesn't matter, Steven was just this weird guy who really didn't care in the end, and Chris and Lloyd were really just assholes. One is being written at Bencard, and this one includes such things as I tried so hard but no one else cared, it is not my fault, and I was just trying to make everyone happy. Another is being written in Parkdale, and this one includes statements like: there was nothing in the end, I got betrayed at every turn, and everyone hates me. One is being written in London, and this one includes things like: I never really was liked, nobody could understand, and everyone had more than me. Lastly, there is one written in Ottawa, and that one spouts things like I was the only one who cared, I was the only one who could love, and I was deceived into believing that worthless people were valuable. Do you see what I am saying here? We mock Stacey for keeping to her story, while doing the same things. We are all writing this narrative where we are the victims, where we are the one's who got ripped off. Fiona definitely has this: I think she entered into it with this in mind. Stacey is the most vocal, which only reveals more pomposity that anything else. We are the most devious about it, and the most fearful. We hide behind our letters, by getting vengeance through laser printed pictures. And we are all finding our own ways to escape, our own fantasy world where we are the righteous. For you it is religion, for me language and philosophy and computers, for Carlile the Celts, for Lloyd his phone-freaking, and so on. For me this is an old habit, and I have been aware of it for a long time. This is why it disturbs me in the sense that I don't really find much comfort in it. I lived in Narnia for a long time, and that was not a solution to my problems. I remember thinking about the same things we are now in grades six and seven, where I would look at the girls in my class and think what it would be like to have control over them. Perhaps I was right for Stacey. The problem for me is that there is no way to remedy the situation. How I can I say goodbye to Stacey? Remember we tried for months, and all it got was more anger. I do not know that I could even now. I think I could with Carlile, which is why I want to. After five years of being upset, I am finally getting to the level that I can forgive her, and say goodbye. It's the first time that I think of her as someone else that the person who went out with Alex Tang. And I do not think it is because of lack of energy either. For obviously we have energy to waste because we are all carrying this stuff, and writing hundreds of pages on it, and feeling everyday. That requires energy, and lots of it. I am finding myself much more squeamish these days about sex. In one of your posts you asked why we have not had sex yet, and I said that it was just because I had not bothered to ask her. But I think there is something very squeamish/shy in me that doesn't want to do it, in the same way that I do not really want to turn anyone into a slut again. I guess I just don't want another Stacey, where I come over for half an hour, get blown and then leave. She swallowed tonight, which made me feel really queer. It was different in the sense that Danielle's pragmatism shows where Stacey just did it because I wanted it. Danielle did because it would be "easier to clean up afterwards". This is typical of Danielle and her style: extremely unstylish, but very practical. In many ways I like this better than the biting scratching, virgins united in flesh, I want to eat you, type of Stacey approach. There is something very odd it about though. There is always going to be something kind of dirty about it. I do not know, but it seems that it is a regression back to the days before Stacey, when kisses were OK and blow jobs were not. Sticking it in is the same way. I do not really want to get into condoms and the pill and staying home all day to fuck, etc. It's weird, because in some ways I do not feel ravenous for sex. It's not something I want more and more of, and feel OK with getting as much as I can. I do not feel so much like that anymore. Perhaps it is because of everything that has gone on, or perhaps it is because of some semi-conscious decision to reform myself, I don't know. This is of course not some "I'm holier than thou" speech: I do not really care about what other people in their bedrooms. It's more abnormal on my part than normal, more unrighteous. It's wierd, because you would think that by now I would have been over much of this, that I would have been less squeemish. I think it relates to the general asshole tendencies I have in me, both in bed and out. This was true in high school, but is still true today. There is little I can do about it except try to avoid getting into situations where I am going to be insecure and egotistical. I perhaps perceive intercourse to be that way, a cause of ego. I do not want to be Stacey's boyfriend again, gloating over Lloyd because I am sticking it in. I know this is foolish, because everyone is fucking. It is no big deal. There really is no dilemma, or at least there should not be. =========== SECTION 4.1 =========== Xmas is coming but it doesn't even feel like it at all. Ottawa is cold but dry and not very snowy. In talking with M, it has been revealed that I was the floor whipping boy, the person that everyone wrote off as a weirdo and then despised for the rest of the year. Just like the Hoodlands, they all hated me with varying degrees of venom; a lot of it had to do with the big horror incident of me borrowing Rick's bike for two hours in September. I wrote you about this one. It turns out that the floor don, Rich Duphor, called in M to testify because she supposedly knew me the best ("Well, who knows this guy?" ... "uh, I think Michelle does...") and without my presence or knowledge they tried me in a kangaroo court, pronouncing me guilty and to be detested forever. I brought back the bike in one piece an hour later, so they couldn't do anything, but my status was cemented in the eyes of people like the Military Man. I still can't comprehend what it was about that incident that was so inflammatory. Yeah, and by the way, during the weekend that you came up to Ottawa, my roommate saw us sleeping together and then spent a few days of cafeteria conversation telling everyone that would listen that his roommate was homosexual, and brought up his homo boyfriend from the big fag town of Toronto for a weekend of buttfuck bliss. I don't think that I forget about people too easily. In fact, I hold on for longer than I really should. I am always too kind to people and even during all of last year I tried to be diplomatic and friendly to my floormates, even though they would have gladly stuck a knife in my back. My resolution for 1994 is to only remember people who want to be remembered. Unfortunately this includes Fiona. Krista is partially correct when she says that all of that stuff is ancient history, and probably should be left for textbooks and not real people. Some of it is good for a purely psychoanalytic basis. Situations become ancient history, but psychology and people do not. L is going back to Edmonton for good after this year, and I doubt that she'll do it wringing her hands with regret over old Stevie Meecie. I don't feel like I need to say goodbye to L or Stacey any more than I should say goodbye to Bronco. But I think I'm going to send a hateful little letter to L and get some of the bile out of my system. But I'm going to do it in April, so that I don't have to see her afterwards. Of course the chances are good that she'll rip it up or write me off as a jealous madman. I doubt she'll actually consider any of the things I write. She never has before. You seem to be misinterpreting my position. I'm not arguing that I never cared, because of course I did. I ran around screaming my head off and going nuts for months over the both of them. But was it love or was it something else? It was love at times but not all the time. Even if it wasn't exactly love all the time, it was there, mattered to me, and was very heavy and powerful. It was important from my side of the fence, but not from hers apparantly. I am not trying to hide from being a fool, because of course I was. I was foolish to believe her and play around for as long as I did. The only good part about the whole things are that they are over. I'm not discounting everything from grade eight until graduation, but I am saying that some of us were no better than the characters on BH90210 in terms of how we treated and used each other. I will change my tune when either Stacey or Laurie find me and say that they are sorry. Or if they find me and say anything at all. It won't happen - because what can you say to an empty milk carton? I'm doubting that it was purely love due to my semantics of love. I can only tell if love exists in retrospect. Love if it is real "never dies" or at least can't be completely killed. It is immune to logic, moods or even if you are still with them. The people that you love you do so "no matter what". Then I love Fiona for sure, Carlile probably, and Sanja and Rachel perhaps, and Lisa al-Habib has a fair chance. I think that there is less to the human interaction than we peg. We make it more of a big deal than it really is. Like those sex philosophers who rant for pages about the psychology of sex, yet really it's just driving for orgasms. Such is also the case with human interaction. In watching Beverley Hills 902 you can tell that none of them have memories that last beyond six weeks ago. When I look at M's photographs of floor people, I see a group of 19 and 20 year olds lollygagging around, doing cool and fun things, getting drunk and going wild. But I don't actually see people, or feelings, or anything that couldn't be done just as well by Frankenstein's monster, provided he could hold a beer stein. You and I and precious few others are the only people who are alive and actually doing something that matters. It's beautiful that we are still writing and having dreams about those people because that means that we are alive and that we have feelings and have actually noticed the world going around us, and then people in it. Do you think Travis and Matty Fenwick are doing the same? The arcade at Carleton has that _Clown Time pinball game, the one from the Comrade X Memorial Arcade that goes "I could be sitting here all day!" and "My grandmother throws better than you!" and "You got an arm like a wet rag." I can get a replay early on in the day with some effort and some luck, and it reminds me of the first half of 1992; playing a game or two of it after school after I got off the route 44 from Streetsville. An arcade on Rideau St. has _Splatterhouse, the one where you play the Jason figure and decapitate walking lizards to (as usual) save your kidnapped girlfriend. The old Amusement Palace where we went for two skins per hour has disappeared. So much for the concept of flat-rate videogames. I guess the guy with no teeth has faded off into another part of the ghetto. Life seems to be about amusement in one way or another. You certainly learn this from watching television; life consists of amusement or working to earn the cash to provide for amusement. Because if we weren't interested in being amused, we would stay in bed all day and be fed from an intravenous drip line. "With his poo poo, and pee pee, slipping out through a hose." Why does anyone do anything? Because it's interesting or fun, and the opposite of interest is boredom. Video games, delicate tacos, silicon, university, cunnilingus, doggy-style, tours of Europe. It is all about being amused, but the problem is that it is based in time and never lasts very long. Or to quote the words of Bob Dylan, the tragedy of our lives is that "the same thing that I want today, I will want again tomorrow." Another videogame, another chilito, another download, another suck. Another girlfriend when you figure that nothing her cunt or mouth can do could possibly amuse you anymore. Lloyd fucked Jayshri's cunt a dozen times, and then when the amusement level of sex with Jayshri surpassed the embarrassment level of sex with Jayshri... "I don't think we should be going out anymore, you bitch!" Levels of amusement, maybe that's why it's tougher to be poor in Canada than it is to be in Senegal... in Senegal you learn to be amused by less. I can remember the days when I was blown out of my chair by _Raid over Moscow on the Commodore 64. I experienced more amusement with that game than I do now with Quicktime. The critical-mass needed for amusement has been upped. Hell, I remember when I was hailed as a hero and Lothario of 8e when I felt Carlile's left tit over her sweater. Which is why it is tougher to be poor in Canada than it is in Senegal. In Canada you know what you're missing and therefore you're unhappy. In Senegal everyone is poor and you believe that amusement comes from playing Wari or whatever. When we were playing Pong, we thought that it was great because we didn't know that GIF files were lurking in the future. It was the most amazing thing we had ever seen. You are amazed by the computer you have now, but it will be humourous and quaint in ten years, just as the Vic-20 is today. It is hard to believe that anyone was ever impressed by 10 PRINT "FUCK YOU IDIOT" 20 GOTO 10 but it really blew them away at the time. They thought it was a big deal, just as we think that grasp files are a big deal. But I am sure that when they make _Look Who Won't Stop Talking Part Six (in which the furniture starts to converse) it will be released on VHS, Laserdisc, and Quicktime. In Canada, poor people see _Wolfenstein 3-D but get _Pong. In Senegal they see _Pong and get _Pong. Who do you think is happier? This is another reason to keep the multinationals out of third world countries. They never really saw anything wrong with their bike until General Motors started running advertisements. =========== SECTION 4.2 =========== This is a letter that I will send in the next few days, so it should get to you before Danielle and I get there in Ottawa. I am watching Clinton doing his throne speech (what is this called, I don't remember), about his health care system, and welfare reform and so on. Its very interesting to watch him, because he really is a brilliant politician. He is much more interesting than Bush, much more personable. There is much more to him than any politician that I have seen, a combination of raw people power and political ingenuity. And I also like what he is saying - for once I think I can look at the United States and think of it not so much as a superpower with nukes (although it still is), but as a country that starts with working rural people who are trying to make it for themselves. It's interesting hearing the guy, because everytime he opens his mouth he sounds like he is speaking like George to Lennie, as if he is saying, "And we are *going* to have the rabbits..." It is extremely cold here, with warnings of freezing your ass off within minutes, with six car pile-ups on the QEW. I have to stay here until 5pm, to pick up Jen from mentorship. She is doing the last year nerd thing, with mentorship, three or four OAC's in which she gets 95%, and bunch of girlfriends whom she gives Xmas and birthday presents. Speaking of letter writing, the Carlile thing is done. I do not know whether it is best to send, as the the zeal I felt in October has at least slightly subsided. I just want to get it off my chest, but in some ways if I get no response it will just make it worse. And if I do get a response, and we start to talk again, there will be tonnes of complications. I do not see how I can win by any of this, but something that goes back to about grade ten compels me to do it. In some ways it's like Stacey; after I wrote that letter telling her I was sick of her I felt that it was finally over, that I had finally stood up and made peace with myself. It is the same way with Carlile but in the opposite way, instead of proving that I can stand up for myself I have to prove that I am not the asshole I was in grade nine. I think that is a big problem for me... there are a lot of regrets about things and actions I took when I was in junior middle school. I do not like the idea that there are Lloyds out there telling their respective Jashries that there was this goofy guy named Woodill who really was an annoying twerp. It's very hard to say, because I really feel like I have come along way in a lot of ways, but I also feel that in some sense I am still the same. I was talking to this girl in Metaphysics and Epistemology class, and it was friendly. It was very different than what was a few years ago in that I really did not feel like having any ulterior motives, background fantasies and such, ie. Farah. I don't really have a whole lot of desire for that sort of thing, mainly because I do not see the point. In the end, I learned that Farah was a mirage, and that the only reason that she meant anything to anyone was because I really had hope for her. I am not saying that she is fake. I think the hope was well-placed, but it just didn't produce any results in the end. Perhaps Lloyd was right: Maybe I do just look at the bottom line. But than again, what else is there? I do not like this idea that love is a journey, and that the end is no where in sight. What is the point of a journey if it is not going anywhere, if there is no vision, if there is no hope for anything working out? See I do not think it is a journey, but rather a point at which there is a stability. The only times when Carlile and I were really good together, and when I thought I was "in love" with her was when there was a certain level of stability. I could call her and we would talk, we would go out together, we would swim together, etc. That in itself is the goal, the stability created. But this is no journey, no adventure. This is also why I don't go for the idea of romance: I do not see the point of tension when it is artificial. It's like Stacey: "Let's not sleep together until we can't stand it anymore". For me, I never get to the point where I "just can't stand it anymore." I get to a point where I just give up and don't care. I cannot afford to do single things, to have a single mentality. Why? Because I am not single. I can't think like a single person, like someone on the prowl. There is no point in preying on people, or saving them as you like to think. We cannot hope to save the world, and in fact, they don't really want us anyway. All that happens is that in our attempts to save the world we destroy ourselves in false martyrdom, we become victims of the Staceys, Carliles and Farahs of this world. I'm so full my tummy aches How sad it must end But I'm glad I've a friend Sharing cups and cakes with me And cakes with me... I just want to return to a peaceful home, to a family, to something that can be called loving. I do not want to be big and powerful, at least not emotionally. There is no joy in having to beat someone out for a girlfriend. It's a fairly hollow triumph. Have you ever noticed that Sue Johanson has the same sense of humour that Barnes does? Sue is the biggest pro-pill person in the world, every time some girl gets on she instantly puts them on the pill. She also is a big user of KY - every person gets a complimentary tube. Dominic and Marie (French people) use it, and Gare and Kare use it. I never thought about it much, but I guess there are lot of either really dry 40 year olds or a lot of people greasing themselves up. Have you ever heard these adverts for the Family channel? I think that the Family channel is a conservative propaganda machine, the last bastion of family values. The ads feature these inane kids, the same type who appear in antismoking ads, who are shouting for joy "Family Channel! Family Channel! Yay-ay!" because they get to watch _Winnie the Pooh or _Burns and Allen. "Do what is right for you. Don't do drugs." Its the same here. "Fun for the whole family," a dictation of "classic" television and over-edited Disney cartoons. What these people want is censorship in a bag, a nice way to get regulated by people like the CRTC and Tipper Gore. Karen has this friend Linda Weigal who only lets her kids watch the Family channel and such things, and the last time she was here she was braggin how her kid had regulated himself so that even if she wasn't there, he would not watch the evil channels (like Global?). It was so fuckin' scary, I was just watching with disbelief. She is an Albertan in the most freaky sense, totally Reform. This is to whom the Family channel relates, to people who want to clean up the crime in our streets by blowing the criminals brains out, by giving the police bigger guns. =========== SECTION 5.1 =========== Of course, if I was back in residence, I really would be a demon. Res is a place where the spirit of highschool, or perhaps junior highschool, lives and thrives. The sad part about the UNB prof is that what he said about university residence is for the most part true. That place really is a glorified cathouse. The motto of Housing & Food Services of Carleton might as well be "You need a place to spend the night and we provided it. You need sex, we provided the girls!" But I digress. It would have been interesting for a little while, however. I remember last year that I tried to show off Chandra. I had a sly grin everytime that Hammerhead came in on her and I, because he had previously admitted a Suzanne Hastie type lust for her. There was one time, after one of our long late night chats, that the fire alarm went off at about 5am. It was in the winter, so instead of going outside everyone crowded in the tunnels and the mailroom. I happened upon Chandra there, in the midst of everyone but sitting down against the wall. She was bleary eyed and dazed. She said "Good morning sunshine" to me, and I sat down next to her and gave her one earphone of my walkman, and we listened to Bruce Cockburn. It was so nice. It was like I was giving her my music to act as a protection from Coco and Gunner - I was taking her away from the floor dicks, and they could all see this. And behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon him. A voice from the heavens said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Oh well. These chicks come and go. At least I hope they do. "Chandra" was such a beautiful name though. I even enjoy typing it. Why do I always fall in love in the spring? Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do... I guess we differ in that I do have a single mentality. I always have a roving eye, scoping out the chacks, wondering if so-and-so has it together or is a lost soul. It's difficult to ignore the pale-faced big-bottomed Body Shoppe vegetarians with names like Martha, Wendy and Shannon. I like the stability side of having a GF, but I can't forget that there are new experiences, new things to learn. If I wanted stability I could have stayed with Carlile. I know I can't save the world but I can make a difference in their lives in the way that Viren or Derek never could. Listening to Jen muse about all these BFs, you realise just how shitty males are in relationships. They just don't care. Honestly, they don't. What was the product of the L-Military Man union? Nothing more than sexual gratification. Neither of them learned one damn thing. Your letters from JM are very interesting, because they show a female coming out from under her winter coat and learning to be herself. You can almost see her mind expanding more with each letter. She wasn't able to handle it, but most chicks are. I've done that a few times and I love to see it happen. I'm not doing it for ego: To beat out Dogbone. I don't think that they necessarily worship us, or maybe even care. Maybe they don't deserve it or understand why. (M never does: She's incessantly asking me why I put up with her & her crap. She expects me to trash her as everyone else has.) I don't know. But I do know that they want what we can give. How else could guys as awkward, geeky, ugly and inept as we are have so much snatch in so few years? A few nights ago she woke up during the night, cooed my name, and then reached out for me. She didn't feel anything, so she moved over and tried again with the same results. She kept on doing this until she fell out of bed. Turns out that I wasn't there. It has come to the point that she expects me to be sleeping with her. Talk about marriage. I am watching _Faith-20 and the preacher is praising Xianity because it takes away your free will. He says that Weight Watchers takes away your freedom to get fat, and Xianity is Morality Watchers that takes away your freedom to sin. The scary part is that I could do his job. I already speak like him. "And the thing about diets is this: You just aren't allowed to, that's all there is to it, you just aren't allowed, it's very simple..." You and your numb skull and your hard-on. They are so hung up on families and family togetherness. Spend Time With my Family! Families are like big dicks: Everyone wants and talks about them, no-one has them. Packaged morality. There is one diet ad where the model says "The next time you see me there'll be even less of me!" as if that is the greatest thing in the world. Talk about not-too-well-hidden self-hatred. I am seriously considering jobs as a preacher or a pornographer. I admire Glenn Tilsonn for one thing, his dedication to his music. By aligning himself with that heavy metal suicide stuff, he totally shot all his chances with any kind of normal female. In grade nine he had to decide, "Am I going to buy this Bleeding Brain Matter cassette, or am I ever going to have a girlfriend?" He chose the latter. I can appreciate his commitment to it, because his sacrifice for his music was any kind of respectable adolescence. He followed Rachel around for a good time, in a typical lost-dog Lloyd fashion. I felt kind of embarrassed and ashamed when I waltzed in from nowhere, and in the span of three weeks had her bra off. He had been trying without success for years. On the transit bus out of Port Credit during our night school shared experience (Feb to May 1992) he told me that he wanted to start a band with Jimbo for a short time. Another thing I remember about those Port Credit nights is hearing the arrival of Glenn to class. You would hear him all the way down the hall, the sound of crashing heavy metal guitars and machine gun drumming at 140 dBs played through 1 cm headphones. Then the music would snap off, and Glenn appeared in the doorway with a glazed expression. What happened to him? Gimme some money. I have had a few talks with M about music, and most of it seems to be going over her head. She doesn't connect with it on the glandular level, and so anything I can say just doesn't stick with her. She can't understand how music that you just hear (instead of create) can mean so much. I tell her that you don't have to be a priest to be religious. Most people are like her. Sometimes it's hard to believe the kind of shit that will sell 14 million units. I recently took a look at the chart from the back of a 1989 _Rolling stone, and about 70% of that music is now garbaged, closeted, in 99c bins, or for sale at the St Vincent de Paul. Does anyone want to give "She Drives Me Crazy" another spin? How about the "Ghostbusters II" soundtrack? I never hear too much about Martinka anymore. Barnes is like that. She has almost as many cassettes as I do, but the majority of them are by Tiffany, the Nelsons, Right Said Fred, and Tommy Page and haven't seen the inside of a cassette player since the 80s. The turd keeps piling up, old turd replaced by new turd. But people are shitty and their musical tastes are in line with that. Shitty and rich, so they can afford to buy crappy music. I am thinking of a Kenneth Barnes type driving one of his Benzez with a Michael Bolton CD in the player, Kenneth getting in touch with his sensitive side by hearing Mike scream out ballads. CD-I as the latest catalyst for family togetherness. Happiness at the other end of a remote control. The commercials show the Land family of dad mom and the kids happily crowded around the television, cheering and smiling and laughing over Carmen Sandiego. They used to market the Atari 2600 with the exact same tactics, but it wasn't enough to put family councellors out of business. But who knows, this might be just the thing. You can solve Marcia's demagoguery, Anita's thesis hesitation, cw's homosexual Oedipus complex, Jen's ulcers, Brandon's Devil worship and Coby's diseases with the purchase of a $700 CD-I by Philips. I am glad that you have hesitations over the Carlile letter, because that is the probable course of action. As we both know from experience, when people are presented with a letter that is out of the ordinary that may hold new challenges, 95% of the population decides to do nothing 95% of the time. Do you remember that letter that I wrote to Karla in June of 1992? Neither do I, because I never heard a peep from her afterwards. For about three weeks after you drop the letter off, you will be jumpy when the mail comes and have a hole in your chest cavity. It will become apparant that nothing is coming, and you will sink back into the standard Carlile feelings. Six months later you will have another Ned's encounter, and you will start to feel it again. Case in point: I have heard zippo hippo flippo from the either of them in reply to my reply to their _Cropduster comments. Nevertheless, your efforts have my blessings and support. Do you think you'll be the guy to make the queen of the angels sigh? People are sluggish in general. If you really want to find out the truth about Carlile, the way to do it is to corner her and stick it between her eyes. This puttering around isn't going to go very far. You'll find that this is true when Carlile does nothing in response to your letter. If you want to change someone's long-held opinions of you, one letter, no matter what you put inside of it, isn't going to do the work. Letters, words and stamps are cheap, and anyone could pass for anything when it's in writing. Live flesh always presents a more convincing argument, and it puts you in a better position, because you get instantaneous feedback and reaction. I know Carlile, and she's always been fairly gutsy when it comes to these things. Tiptoeing around is no good. When/if you get a reparte with her, please casually ask her about me, because I would like to know. I still don't know what happened after grade eight, how the pig-doorstep thing went over with her, and so on. I would doubt that she thinks of me as a demonic devil figure, although she may say that she does to Rupe or maybe even you. She could claim this, but it certainly isn't how she's since acted with me. We went through a period of bitterness (most of grade nine) in which she once spat at me, and the music class stories, and some other things. But after that it sort of warmed up again. In grade ten, after a few weeks of letter exchanging, she invited me to her house so that she could 'tutor' me in math, also known as renting videos. Later she heard about Fiona, screamed at me the day after the gig, and we were apart for another stretch. But then interestingly enough we came out of that again. Near the end of Dr Maloney's class we started talking again, and one sunny day in May we went to the Links enriched conference together. It was like your bowling trip with D and the rest: Just me along with Karla, Farah, and Carlile. (That day I met Wowbagger in person for the first time, quite by accident. He was an enriched kid at Meadowvale. I pointed Carlile out to him and we guffawed.) We spent the day together, and the four of us dined at Burger King there. All of this is to say that if she thinks of me as satanic, she never acted that way to my face. Carlile was actually very soft on me after grade nine. She may tell Andrew Ryder and all these guys about what an immoral villan I was, but when we were actually together in the same room at the same time, there was nothing but smiles and warm friendliness. Which may prove that I am not the Christ that I speak of, but actually the Evil One himself. Because internally she wanted to hate me, but every time she came near she fell under my spell and could not resist. It would be interesting if you could ask her. But I know what she will say. Carlile may or may not look upon me as Periole. I wouldn't be very surprised if she did, because I am used to being despised. The man you love to hate... You know the way that JM sees you? Many many others see me in that light. Scores of people, including my grandmother and most of my cousins, see me as an obscene character that ought to be crushed underfoot like a cockroach. Black man'll give you a dollar and won't think it strange White man'll give you a dollar and want 95c change - Blind Willie McTell Don't get too heavily involved with CIL@T and disability technology, for fear that you will start living someone else's life instead of your own. I was listening to the CBC the other day, and they had a reading from the latest-hip Canadian writer. Being Canadian was a tip off to how shitty it would be. There was one line in it, delivered in some kind of gripping ultra serious gutteral voice that stuck with me: "The thick and misty night was blacker than a dog's throat." Blacker than a dog's throat? What the fuck is that? I turned the dial immediately in disgust. I imagine that Stacey would perhaps enjoyed it. There's nothing intrinsically better about reading than anything else. It matters greatly what you choose to read. This dog's throat shit is an example of the kind of crap that our society and this country especially is based upon. Just take a look at the news. Some days it is hard to determine which news is real. For awhile last month, _Channel 6 News and _A Current Affair were the same shows: 1) Figure Skating Attack 2) Severed Penis Attack 3) Michael Jackson Attack 4) Commercial break. There was no difference between the "legitmate" news and the "sleaze" news. It's almost as if they would tune in the news to see if they were laid off today. If they weren't, they would breathe a sigh of relief and then check out the latest titbit of good vs evil with Geoff Gillollie and his famous billy stick. >From a book called _Changing Bodies Changing Lives, part of my research for my fuck essay: Wendy Sanford: I am co author of The New Our Bodies Ourselves and serve as campus minister at a commuter college in downtown Boston. My eighteen-year-old son is now well past the stage of being embarrassed that his mother writes about sex. I dedicate my part of this wonderful book to him - may he enjoy his sexuality, grow in love, and protect himself from AIDS! I would have loved to have a mother like that. She sounds like Marcia. My mother has always been very hush-hush about it. She isn't a prude, because she does screw, but by her covering up of it she has tried to teach me to be ashamed of sex, like it was dirty or something. She would never tell me to enjoy my sexuality, even if I was married. She never walked around naked and I was never Best Bod at age eleven. A real St Augustine thing. I used to be ashamed of my body, and convinved that sex was oh-so-naughty and forbidden. The strange part was that I was able to fuck them, but up until Kucman in late 1991 I always ran and hid and covered my private parts in all other situations. That was my mother's doing because she taught me that nakedness was something to be frightened of. Obviously you know much more about growing up under Marcia than I do, so you're perfectly justified in feeling however you do about her. She is a bitch though. She got mad at me twice, both times for something I didn't do. Once was when the Gumby Gangers were sleeping in the trailer and she dropped by and found it a mess. We all got chewed out. The second time was when I supposedly trampled her flowerbed. But I like the sex aspects of Marc, and the peacenik stuff. At least from this anti-Xmas card you can tell that she has a brain, and that she is thinking about things. =========== SECTION 5.2 =========== The latest religious harangue is a song recorded by Bobby "Don't Worry be Happy" McFerrin of _The Lord is my Shepherd which has changed all the he's to she's. People are up in arms because they cannot take the idea that mother is God. People are quirky this way: they think psychoanalysis is bunk, and yet they display such gender problems. I think gender should be eliminated altogether. I have no real reason to feel male, except for the member dangling between my legs, and the fact that I prefer breasts to chest hair. It has been interesting to watch these females travel from first year to third and fourth. In the same way that we noticed the difference between the look of grade eight to grade twelve, I have noticed the same here. They have gone from being wide-eyed orientation folks to really haggard looking survivors of "the system". It's remarkable how physical a difference it makes: Bad hair, baggy eyes, fatigue, and so on. It seems to bring the most beautiful first year goddesses to their knees. There is several girls like that in my soiree group, who are about 19 and have never experienced life. There is this one girl Danusha, and she acts like the ideal Carlile figure, driving me through an immense tizzy. But I will see her in a couple years and she will look like Danielle. There will be little left to be conquered, little innocence to be sheltered. This is why the whole scene is kind of tragic. The dreams of these enriched drama students will be shattered as they realize that skits about gay lumberjacks won't get them through life anymore. Although things seem to be getting better, what with a good job, girlfriend, house, etc. the depressions are getting worse. I frequently finding myself in a daze of pseudo-boredom/suicidal tendencies. I am still constantly running, constantly trying to find something to do that will excite me. Life as it is just doesn't instill anything in me anymore. I think that it is perhaps because of too much white noise. If I sit in a park and try to enjoy the scene as it is, the noise of twenty years of history comes through, screaming out "Carlile" and "Marcia" and "Stacey" and "Dr. Maloney". It seems that I can only rest when there is enough distraction to block out all those voices in my head, all those regrets. I sit in this cafeteria, with a walkman screaming into my head, and the computer turned, or I play video games, so that I don't have to stop and remember. I am seriously thinking of going into therapy, generally because I don't want to end up dead sometime in the future, or get myself arrested my writing the names of farm animals on somone's driveway. I can survive for now, but one crisis could shatter the whole stability. If I became poor, or got a really bad grade, or lost Danielle, or someone died, it would teeter the whole thing out of control... My father announced that the Woodill's have regained the title of most dysfunctional family from the Perryman/Comries. My Aunt Linda's (Gary's younger sister) husband killed himself, and they found out that he had been sexually abusing her two kids for the past ten years. The Ottawa thing was good: You were very well behaved. What is interesting that you both had the same fears, that you were going to embarrass me. I don't think it was too bad an arrangement, although Danielle was not to happy about the landlady problems. I think you should bring Michelle here, so that we can have a sleep over or something of that nature. My parents are probably splitting in August for Regina, so I will have the house to myself. I had to go to this cast-party with Danielle on the weekend, and it seems that I had a close- encounter with real Generation X people. These guys were total beer guzzlers, and this one chick kept making lewd comments about being fucked and being sucked - at one time she was talking getting sperm caught between her teeth. Their record collection was embarrassing: the total sum of all the greatest hits records of the last twenty or thirty years. This is what is thought of as Gen X., and there really are a lot of people like this. They all have two bit jobs, and they spend all their money on booze. They are like Matt Fenwicks who have grown up and moved out of their parents house. We are definitely not this. We are not anything, a complete enigma it seems. This is not to say that we are great rebels, or non-conformists: we are just nerds who have to be different because they can't be anything other than that. On the tube is this early video by Mr. T, a rap about doing the right thing, as he goes through this wearhouse and beats the crap out of some drug dealers ("Hey there, Mr. Dealer..."). He punches them out, and everyone cheers. He does not even sing: he just shouts in that classic "I'm gonna get you sucka" grunt. Things with Carlile are pretty much a dead matter now. It seems that the letter was delivered about a week or two ago, and I have yet to hear anything from it. Such is what I expected: I did not really have a lot of faith in Carlile's responsibility. In Metaphysics and Epistemology, we spend a lot of time talking about the idea of respondeo, which means to commit. The idea is that we respond to the world by giving it a chance, by allowing it to presence in us. In order to do this one has to be respons-able, that is able to commit to a world that may be scary, angry, hateful, etc. Carlile lacks responsibility: she lacks the ability to communicate with the world. Perhaps we all do: we all seem to have gone underground, creating our own little cults that will worship us. Each of us now has our world of pals: Carlile has Andrew Ryder and Peter, you have Michelle, I have Danielle and Robin and Micheline and Deb, etc. And with each circle, we have control again. I was over at Micheline's the other day and I really realized how much there was a sense of control. There was absolutely no way that I could get booted out of the group, no way that I could beat out by the competition, or shut down by a Dobson or a Viren. Perhaps it is because there is no power hierarchy, but rather, a certain balance. However, it is obvious that Deb is an outsider. I am too, but I fit a new role, so I am more easily accepted. They don't need another giggly girl: Deb has no unique role, no quality that can enhance the group dynamic. I do in that I am male, and I am not a slumber party buddy. And because I am the only in that position, I don't have to compete for anyone's attention. What I also resent is that these people cannot be tried for their crimes. When you and I are at least attempting to reconcile the shittiness of the past and improving, it seems that Carlile is just driving it under the rug and moving on, as is Stacey and Fiona and Krista. It seems that this is typical, and although I don't want to be obsessive or full of some victim mentality, I think that we have to acknowledge that we have all been hurtful. We really have been extremely mean, and we are all guilt of exhorbatent crimes. We would be less guilty if we were just Matty Fenwicks, taking chicks here and there. But we were far worse, because we perverted something, we betrayed peoples trusts, and we destroyed people's innocence in a way much more damaging than the traditional virginity-taking. You need to take care of your girlfriend. If you don't, she is going to be another Fiona. =========== SECTION 6.1 =========== How many times have I tried to tell you son that your problem is that you never stop running? You can't even sit still in Taco Bell for more than ten minutes without getting restless, like some kind of eight year old. If you can't find peace in simple things, you are never going to be very religious and you are going to have to be a yuppie in order to feed your habit. You have a real love/hate relationship with your father figures - Carlile, Gary, Danesi, et al. Strange that you are the one who is having mental problems - it always used to be me doing crazee things. If Dr Maloney and Carlile are chasing you, it may be beneficial for you to get out of town. Coming to Ottawa has changed things - you no longer feel like you are under a microscope when you eat your New York Fries at the mall, because there's no-one there to condemn you. I walk around town knowing that I am almost completely free, that there isn't anyone in this city waiting to seek revenge. Most importantly, it has put up an iron curtain between that life and this one. When I am back in Toronto I become a Saug boy once again, and hang around Yonge St arcades, but when I am in Ottawa it is as if that stuff never happened at all. I can sit in a park and not be bothered, because the ghost of Carlile and Stacey can't reach me here in Eastern Ontario. The only instance where the worlds cross over is on the floppy discs that contain my diary files from 1988, and from a few parts of Ottawa U and the public gallery at Parliament, where the ghost of Carlile still lives behind the pillars. A few times it has come out and I have seen it - thrown back into the field trip that we took to Ottawa when we were together in grade eight. But most of the time it isn't around. It may help you to split town for a few years - maybe goto Fort Qu'Appelle. The exclusive stinginess of Gare/Kare is not new. Remember the summer of 1992 and the Everfresh incident? When I was working for him and living at the house, Gare made a big deal of showing me the kitchen, where everything was, and how I could eat anything/everything I saw. He made a big deal of his generosity. Then I started drinking Karen's mineral water spritzer things, and they took them away and hid them upstairs so that I wouldn't be able to get at them anymore. It reminds me of the high water point of the Others, and also how when we actually got together all we did was create a fascist state. As has been pointed out many times, that is the only purpose of the feminists. They want the power - in the most literal sense, "they want to be the bosses", and they'll use anything that can get them there, be it sex, merit, affirmative action, or anything else. There is a big name feminist (Bell Hooks) coming to speak at Carleton, and the name of her lecture is Ending Dominance. She intends to scrap male dominance. I don't think she's a communist, so she wants to replace it with female dominance. Fine. But the question is this - will they be any more responsible with the power than the males were? Exhibit A is Margaret Thatcher. Exhibit B is Kim Campbell. Missile envy can be experienced by females too. But if you see the handout, you will notice that they are advertising that campus Foot Patrol will be available for members of the audience. This means that females who are too paranoid to be out on the street at dusk can have security guards escort them to their car. Why did they offer this for this lecture, and not for anything else? Because many lesbian feminists have been sexually assaulted, and are subsequently so afraid of males that they feel more secure with it. And these people are feminist scholars? They understand the gender situation? Not a chance. Can you expect rational analysis of the male identity from someone who is too scared to go outside after suppertime because some male might get her? That's like someone from the KKK calling themselves an expert on race! I empathise with their position, and I'm not belittling it, but I don't think that their writings should be taken seriously as scholarship. Have you seen Andrea Dworkin? She is the one who belives that all heterosexual sex is rape. She weighs about 300 pounds. All this clap-trap about feminism on a crusade to liberate all women. What an affront to good taste. Ah yes, Karen Anderson the self-sacrificing martyr. What a bunch of shit. I was at the St Vincent de Paul yesterday, with all the Hintonburg low-lifes buying used 1982 era Jordache jeans for $3, and so on. Some Coby looking girl was walking a baby, and the backyards had lines of underware and towels flapping in the breeze. All these people with their unattractiveness, unfashionability, and poverty. Many people smoked, used vulgar language, were racist and generally not very appealing. On Somerset St as I biked past there was a bleach-blonde whore with a paunch, a cigarette, and spandex tights sitting on the kerb. This is the triumphant proletariat that the communists rally around, and the 'oppressed' that the political correctors ballyhoo. Strange, I didn't see any PC crusaders hanging around Hintonburg: They must have been someplace else that afternoon. Then again, the Hintonburgers didn't seem to be too interested with their liberators: Everyone who went to the Bell Hooks lecture looked more like Karen behind the wheel of the Saab. Hintonburg dinges they were not. They were so convinced of their ethical high-standing and piousness. Karen supports feminism because it is the only thing that she could use to launch herself from full professor into faculty chair. She spends over $2300 per year making her cunt look fancy, and $7 on a tube of K-Y to make it wet, and what does that have to do with the scum of our own cities? These womyn don't give a rat's ass for anything other than the status of themselves and their friends and I wish they would give up this martyric pretension. Feminism is taken so seriously. The people do not care. Feminism is cocktail party conversation for the aristocracy. They do not have respondeo to the people they claim to help. Gary and Karen really do make me uncomfortable, which is why I get so ANSI when they are around. The whole hypocricy of it makes me angry. When I think of education, it stirs up the Meece blood in me. All the Meece education reformers, and Leonard Ephraim with his hopes for bringing education to the hillbillies, would not be pleased to see what has become of higher education. It's wrecked as far as I can see, and now almost all professors give me the creeps: I'm not pally wally with them as you are. Karen reminds me of a grown-up Laurie or Honorable Member from Warnes, with their egoistic self-image equally inflated. Look at Nietzche, too. Another phony, another paper-mƒche Mephistopheles. At Frankfurt, on his way to the front, he saw a troop of cavalry passing with magnificent clatter and display through a town; there and then, he says, came the perception, the vision, out of which was to grow his entire philosophy. "I felt for the first time that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower!" Bad eyesight conveniently disqualified him from active soldiering, and he had to be content as a stretcher-bearer; and though he saw horrors enough, he never knew the actual brutality of those battle-fields which his timid soul was later to idealise with all the imaginative intensity of inexperience. Even for nursing he was too sensitively delicate; the sight of blood made him ill; he fell sick, and was sent home in ruins. Ever afterward he had the nerves of a Shelley and the stomach of a Carlyle; the soul of a girl under the armour of a warrior. Will Durant, _The Story of Phil, 1926. Nietzsche was an old man with the clap, a retired university professor who had his request for marriage turned down by Louise Salome, yet fancied himself a Dionysus worshipper and a killer. Another Johnny Reb, another Glenn Tilson who worked at a pharmacy in a uniform in order to get the dough to buy heavy metal suicide cassettes. Richard Wagner believed he had discovered the cause of the young Nietzsche's frequent headaches, poor eyesight and prostrations to lie in 'excessive masturbation', which he communicated to Nietzsche's doctor. When he learned what Wagner had done, he flew into a rage and declared he would never forgive what he termed 'this affront to my person'. from the Intro to _Ecce Homo. I look at the adult world and see that they really do not know what they are doing. They are not 'advanced' or anything like that. They have cash and stuff, but they are not superior to me. Marcia is as nutty as a fruitcake. Her marriage lasts four years, and she switches jobs, homes, and cities all too easily. Continuing on in the tradition of self-aggrandizing, I realise what it is that I am -- an anti-missionary. I come into some site, set up camp, and go about de-Christianising the natives. A curious part about me is that I seem to manoeuver myself into the most beautiful postions. I do things with people that "friends" never do. L has admitted that last year she was closer to me than she was to the Military Man, her boyfriend - in terms of knowledge of her soul, etc. Partially we have both earned our titles, and partially it was a hand-out because there was no-one else that wanted it. I believe that this is good for us, but especially for you, because it keeps you from becoming a shit again. The azimuth of this happened at the Perryperson picnic in the summer of 1990. The photograph you have captures it perfectly: The bare-chested male with a shit-eating grin and Robert Plant hair, holding his concubine at his hip who smiles approvingly. Talk about Dionysus. I don't really have that problem, probably because I never cared that Lloyd was out after me. I have become an asshole with my girlfriends, but not because someone else was after them. The difference between Fiona and Michelle is that most of the time I don't get sick of Michelle after I see her. I used to have to space out the times that I saw Fi, because too much of her shit would drag me down. In the summer I would sneak away for more than a week before I went back to renew my status. In the summer Fiona was about 80% hassle and 20% niceness. M is the opposite, 80% niceness and 20% hassle. I miss her when she isn't around and when I sleep alone, and sometimes I will bike up the gut-wrenching Kilburn Avenue hill just to hang around with her for two hours in the afternoon. We have conflicts from time to time but the difference here is that we care enough to solve them and so do. With Fiona and Carlile it wasn't important that we had difficulties, because I didn't give a rat's ass to solve them: By the time the difficulties grew enough to threaten the relationship with Carlile I didn't want it to continue, and with Fiona I cared more for Stacey's state of mind than for hers. I was like Pinky gazing at the television while Fiona hovered around me and said "Are you feeling OK?" Pornos and videogames. You have a point, but if it were true, uncorrupted young people would start on _Donkey Kong and work their way up to _Mortal Kombat as they got bored. Porno and videogames are artificial sensation, and people always seek the most sensational. Little kids start with _Mortal Kombat, and they would start with porno tapes if they could get their hands on them. They start with Kombat, they don't even bother trying out _Snowballs first. We always go for what is most exciting, but not because what we already have gets boring. We don't know it is substandard until we are told that it is. Cavepeople pounded rocks, and they found it amazing. They did that all their lives and never got tired. If you gave a Caveperson a game of Galaga, he would find it amazing and play it all the while. Your line we increasingly need more reward to get the same high is not true. I think we are conditioned to believe this to fall into the hands of the computer manufacturers and pornographers. No-one thought that CGA was all that bad until EGA came onto the scene. Everybody loved _Summer Games and I think that what made them tired of it was the existence of _Summer Games II. They seek the best, whatever it is at that time, be it _Spy Hunter or _Virtual Fighter. Of course the best keeps receding beyond their grasp. These new PowerPCs are amazing, but they cause me a bit of dismay because I know they will be garbage in a few years. This is a game where you can't win, unless you lock yourself in a bubble. I remember in 1987 when the 386 chip came out, the computer magazines said that it was targeted for the high-powered techie user, and that the average joe would not "need" the extra power afforded by it. There was no "need" for the average user to have more than his 640k 286 system. I think this is true, and that we are all patsies. Why am I tired of this Classic II? Because I have seen more impressive machines at a lower price. If I had not seen better, my satisfaction would still be complete. Actually, if we had not seen better we would still be using a pen and paper... We all have our own dumb ways of wasting time. You work to liberate wheelchair dudes, I sleep and play the silver ball, and my girlfriend apparantly has become addicted to soap operas, _Days of our lives to be specific, which is causing me a great deal of bother. We are always arguing about it. She claims that she knows it is all phantasy and not real, she says it is a placebo to help carry her through the afternoons that she shares with her distasteful roommates. But it is this that I object to the most, her using soap operas to escape. Escapism is not the best thing in the world. To paraphrase Marx: Soaps are the opiate of the masses. She is deluding herself. Soaps are without social merit, and you learn nothing for them. They are pure manipulation. There is no reason for soap operas to exist other than to support themselves by getting you to tune in tomorrrow. The biggest issue you will see on soap operas is whether Luke is the father of Melissa's baby, or how long Victoria can keep Stone hostage in a cage in her livingroom. Look at Carlile's thing about wanting to cut my dick off. Jayshri heard that and was not shocked. Why? Because Carlile knows that she can use my name forever without being disproved or even challenged. I am just a General Tyrant figure now, your average Hitler type. Fifty years later everyone is still talking about the Nazis, but no one challenges what they do. Even the modern day Nazis don't dare side with Adolf and state that the Holocaust was a good thing, they just insist that it didn't happen. Hitler, Attilla the Hun, Tojo, Saddam Hussain, Judas Iscariot, the Sheriff of NOTT, Steven Meece... who cares about the dif anymore? Judging from the fact most of them have not even tried in the least to contact me since, they aren't waiting for me to say anything new. Take someone like Farah - did she ever really care about me? Did we ever talk about important things? Never once - not in 1990 and certainly not in 1994. Unlike you, Stacey does not leave messages on my machine and get jealous of my current GF. I don't run into Carlile at the Peppermill on campus. Fiona has turned my "let's talk" offers down three times. I don't look upon them as my old friends of which I was seperated from for unnatural reasons - I see them as people who feigned friendship and then dumped me. If you think this is victim mythology fakery, you should have had to live my life for those months. If there is anyone I guiltily miss, or sigh about, it is the girls I met in Streetsville - Sanja, Lisa & GenieviŠve, Dorothy, Rachel. It is hard for me to have any genuine remorse for Carlilly, Fiona, or Stacey. Like I said last time - I will apologise to any of them if they actually care enough to track me down and ask me. Guess what: My mailbox this morning was empty. =========== SECTION 6.2 =========== Things around here are crazy, and father is going nuts on this multimedia business. Now he has people who are thinking of giving him money for this wild idea, and he has major sugar plums and apple dumplings dancing in his head. You can almost see the glow of glee that surrounds him as he continually thinks of the potential millions he is going to make off of Woodill Corp. And you think I am going to see any of it? Good luck. The only way I will anything is if both Kar and Gar die. I will get a small allowance, small enough so that it won't impinge on their right to go to France and blow ten thousand dollars. This is how it is now, and how it will always be. Even with the rhetoric of "Oh, we have tried to support you, blah blah blah" it really comes to peanuts, and money allocated only after the wines and dines have been payed for. Karen spends more on underware every year than I spend on tuition. This is typical of everyone in my family. This sense of false generosity, of being so giving while meanwhile hoarding thousands of dollars is quite disgusting. My grandfather is supposedly this great generous man but meanwhile he is like Lloyd's Dad; after saving half his income every year for the past forty five years he has massed a small fortune. And do I see any of it? Do I see even enough to cover basic expenses? No seree. What I resent is that people around here are so critical of the fact that we don't save, that we are not taking care of ourselves, when our income is less than one tenth of what there's is. It is difficult to do anything but tread water when your income is less than ten thousand dollars. I know this is blithering, and I know you are an even greater martyr than I. I would rather have my own place though than have good food, because I am not even eating the food here these days anyway. I usually don't spend too much time at home anymore, kind of like at Marcia's. I basically just use it as a free bed. Speaking of Marcia, she called me yesterday because of some dream she had. She dreamt that we were all on the CN Tower (my mother is scared of heights), and there were amusement park rides. Jen and I were in these planes that went round and round, and up and down, and we were kids. Well I fell out, and she said that I had this expression of fatality, as I could not do anything about it. I did not tell her but it seemed obvious what this meant to me. Especially considering the fact that I was falling out as a kid, not as an adult. My mother is getting nuttier as the days go by. She is now officially the head preacher for MCC Lake Simcoe, and thinks she is going to make a video on the history of MCC (she actually thinks the task is easier than writing a paper/book). Somehow I don't think it will turn out to well. But at least she is out of my hair, although she got pissed off because we forgot her birthday. Her birthday was the last of my priorities, and I have no time for relatives. I think more about Carlile than I do about my own mother. Perhaps that is why she is so important, as a substitute. I have had substitute mothers since I can remember: Carol, Barb, your mom, grandma, etc. I don't really have one now (Lil is almost as scary as my mother). I was at Robin's house the other day, watching videos, and Robin's mom walks in about midnight. She was rip-roaring mad because we were there, and because Micheline was parked in her parking space (they live in an apartment on Davisville). It was like when Marcia walked in on us at 7:30 in the morning and started screaming because the place was a mess. Well this was the same thing, except that there was no mess, and we were not even doing anything. She did not scream at us (I would have really shut her up if she had), but she did the kind of Big Bobbie type thing where she made it plain that we were not welcome, and we knew that Robin was going to get it afterwards. I am so sick of people like that: My parents are shitty, but at least they are not rude to my guests. They tolerate you, and you don't even give them the time of day. They would never abuse either me or Jen's friends. It is a shitty thing to do because it is a war with pawns, as the friends can't do anything except take off. I don't see what was the big deal either, all we were doing was watching television. I think it is the same thing that Marcia has: This is my space, and I want absolute control over everything and everyone that goes in or out of it. You can tell that Robin is flighty. She has the same type of nervousness that Jen has, a kind of obsessive neatness and uptightness. With Robin it would be so easy to crack her because she desperately wants to escape, where my sister still feels some value in the power that she gets from being a 95% kid. Robin doesn't really have that, and just wants to relax. All she needs is some ballsy male to take her parents on, in the same way that you did with Carlile. All she needs is some boyfriend that will bring her out after hours, will keep her from going home. I was reading this book on pornography yesterday and I realized that video games are much like pornography in that the only thing that keeps one going is the contextual and visual rewards. Because video games are just a bunch of controls: A few button movements here, and in the end they are fairly boring. This is why people don't play space invaders anymore; not because there is any real difference between space invaders and Bart Simpson, but because they have become bored with a black and white reward system. In other words, the only reason why we keep playing something that we have been winning for years is because the rewards become better. And the tolerance level is getting higher and higher: We increasingly need more reward to get the same high. This is why you see mortal combat II with killings and maimings, while only a year ago they were just punching each other out. The same is true with pornography: While thirty years ago a boob was good enough to cause craziness, now it is something to be seen on ordinary television. And it is going to get worse as the mediums come together, as pornography, entertainment, television, etc. become one and the same thing. The new pornography CD's are nothing: they are merely AVI files on a disk. But when you get real interactivity, you will see a transformation of the industry. My sister thinks she is going to go across Canada, and get this, is going to talk to people across the country and write about it. I think she is a lot like your sister, stupid, yet with that pompous sense of wanderlust. Hell, if someone wanted to pay me to travel, I would do it. But I don't like the idea of having to be so obsessive about it. I had a dream about Danielle and I having a baby. It was really odd, and we called it Kate Elizabeth. I also had this dream the other day that I met Sarah McLachlan and she turned out to be a real bitch. I think you should watch out for Michelle. Especially considering when the summer comes around, both of you are going to be much more fiesty. This could be good; there are lots more things in the summer to do with your girl, ie. go to the ex, etc. than in the winter, but there is also more time on your hands, and more strain in a way. You should really bring her here to Toronto for a couple weeks; we could show her around, take her out, she could come over, etc. I think it would be really cool and your mom would adore her. So would Moses: She has that immediate sense of comfort that parents really like. I think it would be tragic if you spent the summer apart in that you would end up falling back, getting bored, angry, etc. It would be like stalling just as things got good, and than you would have to pick it back up in September. Have you thought more about moving in with her? I think you should; it would force you to grow up and be responsible. In the same way that living on your own has made you responsible for yourself, living with her would make you responsible for the people around you. And that, friend, is what you need. You need someone to force you to not be so insular and pigheaded when it comes to other people. I think you would really change and become much more comfortable with others as you would not be such an orphan. Plus, it would be a coup in that you would be the first. There is nobody that we know of that has done such a thing. I think that I am doing okay, but I am not sure. I went through a bad stretch of general depression, and now I seem to be out of it. I have talked to Danielle about going to a shrink, and she is thinking of doing so over the summer, and I might do the same thing if I feel depressed again. I don't know, because it seems to come and go as different stress levels go up and down. Right now I just want to get finished, and I have only a week and a half of school left. I have a lot to write still, but I seem to have a handle on it. All the big things are finished: I have no more italian tests, no more speaking gigs, just writing in my corner. And after writing a few papers I will be finished. Do you sometimes feel like we are back in the 19th century, writing back to each other like school comrades in Europe? I do. People really don't do this you know, the idea of two men writing each other for no particular reason is completely foreign, even faggy, to the average male. By the way, you got a letter from Julia Pratter. I am including it with this letter. Not much has changed it seems. Speaking of which, I was watching Vicki! today and Ms. Pratt from _Sassy was on talking about sassy gals and guys, and cool language. She seems to be a total bimbo. Candace Cameron (the teeny chick on Full House, Kirks sister) was also on as a celebrity teen, and the two of them sounded like a pair of gabby girls. I think we are right on about those mags. Ms. Pratt was actually defending the sassy guy/gal as a good thing because it was not a beauty contest, but based on who was really cool. In other words, it's not okay to be just a beautiful bimbo (because you might get fucked), but you have to a beautiful puritan who will never get laid because they are too brainy. That is what these sassy chicks are, the epitomy of teases. It is absolutely beautiful here. =========== SECTION 7.1 =========== Right now I am writing at 1:15 in the morning after getting back from Michelle's place for a weekend of ITV watching. Tonight she decided to order us a special package deal from Pizza Pizza: She paid. So I ended up with a free medium pizza with green pepper, pepperoni, garlic & oregano, and extra thick crust, as well as two cans of Coke, and a Sara Lee cheesecake thingy. I got all of this for nuthin', just for being me and just for being her boyfriend. Life is tolerable sometimes. -- "We can't prevent every incident, but the message is out in the community that if you want to be violent, we'll hit you hard." -- Yves Ducharme, mayor of Hull, Quebec