because Scott linked me.

that's it

aidan.style@gmail.com — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:58 GMT

The outline is finished. Now it's just time to fill in the blanks. Right? Right?

Yeah, right.

................................................

By some random miracle I found a couple of Rosso's EP's [it was hard enough to find all two of their album releases]. 1000 Tambourines and Outsider, and damn if the B sides don't do something for me that none of Thee Michelle Gun Elephant's ever did. Now I have to look for The Birthday's EPs and see if gritty radness like "Saxophone Baby" is something Yuusuke made a habit.

Summer's got about a third of itself left for me, and I'm now employed as a [my own kind of] housekeeper as well as a candy vendor. Not bad, really! It'll help out a lot for when a drop everything and go back to class. Well, there'll be lots of classes, but the only things I can think about anymore for then is -
a. Copy editing The Phoenix. I read most of Tim Rogers' review of Earthbound/Mother 2 this morning. Hadn't read it before, for all the spoilers. Can't finish reading it until I finish the game. Still, it's full of great observations. For instance, he first establishes Shigesato Itoi as having a background as a self-proclaimed "journalist", and then likens his work on the game as a copy editor's. Putting the pieces together - making sure they equal [at least] the sum of their parts by the time the credits roll. He calls the game "literature", because it accomplishes something only true literature can, mostly, in the the brain stem-shattering catharsis of its ending.
I like that the payoff comes after and without all or most the self-effacing humor of the game. When Ness dug around in a trash can before, and "oh, guess what, (he) found only handfuls of garbage", it came as one of the funniest, unexpected jokes I've found in a video game. I was almost disappointed when I'd find a hamburger or something later. So I have to wonder, when the game is over - and Ness goes on his cathartic journey home - is there only garbage in the garbage cans? Or is there nothing but cans of fruit juice and hamburgers? For some reason, I can only imagine it being one or the other. I hope it's the former, though I still have to find out.

b. The novel. I split off about eight pages from what I had. That'll be turning into a long short story. Rambo Town stays in the book. When the time to introduce Wine Country and the pages I wrote at the beginning come, I keep thinking it should be like North By Northwest. So... Rambo Town comes later? I don't know. I thought this thing was gonna be about Kelowna. Maybe it will be! I sure as shit can't really bring myself to write something about Kelowna as Kelowna. It should have stages - and bosses! Oh hell yeah! For all that, though, it needs a MacGuffin. That'll take me a while to think up [even though it doesn't really matter what it is, a MacGuffin should at least contribute something].

........................................................

Kind of pissed that I'm working all through the last Party Army night at O'Flannigans and The Dark Knight premiere. Still got a month left of heat and debauchery though.
I kind of miss everyone, though.
There's a lot of them.
And it took all but the worst thing in the world to happen for me to find them again.

I always thought I'd have to move away - over an ocean, even - to lose everyone and find new people like that. "The city is where you get to reinvent yourself," a guy told me a few months ago on the bus. Did it just take me this long to start living in my own city? There sure as hell aren't any orchards around me anymore.

Too Tired to Sleep

aidan.style@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:00:11 GMT

The best and worst thing in the world is venting a thousand words onto a journal entry [the first in several months], and then realizing with a sudden, thick atmosphere that all this stuff gets auto-copied to Facebook.

Man, internet. This internet thing. Man.

The internet gets old too, though. I tried watching a movie I'm semi-expected to watch. "Jumper." It was pretty terrible! When I think about what it must've been like to write it, all I can think of is a Marvel comic book fan writing what he thinks is just this really awesome first issue about People Who Can Teleport. During this process, he watches every episode of "The Hills." Then, in a coke-addled haze of re-writing, he turns his thiry-two page comic script into a ninety minute movie script. Perhaps he makes twenty thousand dollars from it.

I'm just gonna keep hitting keys until eyelids start dropping. This is ridiculous. I think maybe I might need some kind of egg timer stasis thing to just knock me out and then shock me awake when the alarm goes off. I'm looking at you, Taser engineers.

Actually, I just remembered a really great trick for insomnia. Apart from just exhausting oneself [which I suppose I do too often, and which doesn't seem to be working at the moment], somebody once told me to just tense up really tight and then relax. Bit by bit, from head to toes, or toes to head, or there and back again, respectively. It helps quite a bit. That and valerian root. Melatonin is nice except for when trying to wake up on time [and the jarringly fucked up dreams].

Oh - there they go. Goodnight, then.

i'm wearing a pretty damn fancy suit right now

aidan.style@gmail.com — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:53:15 GMT

The following is an e-mail letter I just wrote and did not send:

Hey man well um mom was all "write write write write" when I left but I can't think of anything to talk about so far that I want to mention to her so I am writing you a letter instead!!!111 Yeah man FUCK OTTAWA pretty much. Just fuck east enders.

Well okay it's not that bad but I need to get something out of my system here. Every evening since we've gotten here everyone has gotten less and less sleep and has gotten drunker and drunker and DRUNKER. At first it was all good. Day two [of drinking hard liquor from breakfast to early morning the next day] was pushing it just a little, but the end result was sweet sweet adventures. Post-adventure shenanigans were sketchy, sad, and soppy. Today is the first day in three days straight that I and [to a degree] we haven't really gotten drinking on at all [with the exception of a vodka and cranberry juice at the gala in Parliament tonight oh godddd that place so amazing when you walk up and see everything but so incredibly depressing and suffocating when you fill a square "neo-gothic" ballroom with a few hundred student journalists, set up a fucking BEER GARDEN and call it a "gala"].

But I digress.

I've met a lot of amazing people here who I like and would love to hang out with, but hanging out is a lost art I guess. I feel like I've connected with our News Team here and some sincerity has been had, but all this bullshit gets in the way. Tonight, for example. I was hella sketching all through the awards ceremony due to the air being RIFE with bullshit. I had to get out. So did the team, mostly. Me and Alexi took a cab back to the hotel, and I feel like I would've loved to just walk around downtown and hit up a restaurant or something and chat but nooo everyone wants to go to Helsinki, a hip-hop bar. When I say 'everyone' I mean 'no one really', but no one wanted to be a party pooper either and mess it up for the people who they think actually want to go to a freaking hip-hop bar.

I know it's just the post-alcohol binge but I'm just depressed as hell over here. Alexi seems the same, though she's gotten sick now too.

Rob and I had a dream. We had a dream to strut up to the Peace Flame that eternally burns in the center of the fountain in front of Parliament, surrounded by plaques bearing the coat of arms for all the provinces, commemorating their joining to unify Canada, and use it as a lighter. We tried, oh lord did we try, but it just didn't work.

No one smokes weed here. If you ask them, or if you just bring the topic up, you will get the stink eye.

Everyone does blow instead.

PS - the cab drivers here are TOTAL JERKS. ...i mean they have been complete and total dicks [except for one]

PPS - The city view is beautiful here.

g-g-g-g-ghost!

aidan.style@gmail.com — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:16:51 GMT

I'm thinking maybe I should just get someone to ghost write this journal thing for me

I could supply all the themes and flashy events of my daily life in bullet form! He or she or it could elaborate.

i've been busy. or just dead.

aidan.style@gmail.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:15:14 GMT

So, it's back to the journal for a little while again. It's been a while, and I've been up to various things. I guess one of the bigger things I've done socially is get a job at a local video store here, and so much of my time now is spent doing nothing especially contructive, though my bank account has now sprung to action! Really now, there's just so many different numbers running through it. I check it [online! how novel!] almost as often as I check my e-mail, though not nearly as often as I check the Select Button forums.

Having money and lots of... things and bits of things that can combine to make huge, expensive things is alright I guess, though as I thought it might, it hasn't really changed me. Usually in the context of money I hear this said as if it was a good thing, though really I think I need a change. Something in me, something in those constantly recycling cells and stir-crazy moods of mine requires it. I hardly thought about money before I had a job, except when I needed it. Now, I need it to open doors I can't afford to open and I love the idea of it in that context, but I'm somehow learning to hate it in every other sense.

Man, I thought this post was just gonna be take a minute and a few sentences. I hardly have so much to say, I can't write it all right now though, so here it is:

I can either come to grips with the fact that I am an incredibly normal, average person, or I can run around in circles trying to be different without being the same as people trying to be different. Since I was six years old, this has been on my mind in one form or another, and it seems to me now that every few years, I tackle the same existential wall from a different angle.

I'd like to plan out my approach a little more carefully now. I think I'm capable of that, considering all the different trajectories I know of I that I can choose from.

There are people I've admired, rather foolishly, for both being "cool" and leading "cool", seemingly eventful lives and lifestyles. However, from my understanding of what makes something cool under these very different aspects depends on how miserable they are, and someone can't be very cool and be miserable at the same time. That life can look like something worth living, until you're in it, just wanting nothing else but some rest and peace in exchange for some of the craaazy stories you could have to tell.

I'm going into my early twenties come this fall, and all my heroes have grown up. If there's one thing that's led me into this place, it's whatever extra perspective the internet has given me over the years.

It worries me that I can only seem to get the motivation, the drive to make something when I'm caught up in someone else's makings.

It worries me that more and more I only act on what's left of the drive when sleep has left me. [a non-friend of many years said recently that he expects my raccoon-like circled eyes to always be like that]

I could stop worrying, because, after all; whenever I give my situations a calm think or two, I realize I have nothing to really worry about at all.

And now I remember how a man from a city said he went to a small town, and everything there was clean, and appeared to work properly. The weather was nice, and the people were polite. And right around then that man began to become very, very worried.

mudder;s daei

aidan.style@gmail.com — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:08:02 GMT

Today was one of those rare, exceedingly pleasant days to be alive and sleep-deprived. Last night was similar. Over all, this weekend gets *** out of ****.

I am typing this with my eyes shut pretty much. Jo' Newsom is warbling some poetry... this shit would be pretty awesome as a nursery song or some such track for anyone to fall asleep to.

Mother's Day. Went to church today with the mom. Same old. Got some writing done where I usually do; got some glares from flag wavers who needed whatever space I was taking up for their worship-runway or something. I was wandering the photo collages in the foyer, considering how much older I've gotten since some photos of myself were on display there. An old lady introduced herself to me. She gave me her name, which sounded like the kind of name an Alabama-born farmer gives his daughter when he was hoping for a son.

She asked me if I was alright, which I affirmed, and she asked me, again, if I was alright. I said I was just fine. She wasn't satisfied, but she gave a strange little smile, amicably twisted it was, and went back to her duty of pacing down hallways waving flags of countries she'd probably never heard of, and still hadn't.

"It's the symbolism that matters!" These people once told me. If there's a symbol in waving a flag of a country you don't know the name of, let alone experienced in any way, for the sake of 'giving it back to God' [flags and names and political boundaries are all the tools of man for claiming ownership over what is rightfully God's, you see], it lies somewhere between crippling sadness and the fall of the next great civilization.

Anyway, I don't know why this woman felt compelled to talk to me. Maybe I just looked too disshelved or too tired and unshaven to blend in rightfully enough. Maybe, she thought that that was the first time I'd stepped into a church; all jaded from this joyless world and looking for answers. Maybe she'd have asked to pray for me if I told her the truth: nothing was, and ever will be all right. I probably would've been as likely to let her say the words and permit her hand to touch my arm than I would have to tell her that, 'symbolically', she was sacrificing the people of Taiwan, a people who have been fighting and occasionally dying a great deal for the sake of their names and boundaries for the past century or so, to an it she calls 'God', and never go back there again.

.................................................

The past few days I've also watched all through the 'Nodame Cantabile' TV drama, and it's pretty good! I was suspicious of it partly because I adore the comic and I usually fucking hate j-dramas [after trying to watch 'Densha Otoko', that goddamn painful thing, as I was told it was some amazingly significant and brilliant series or something, I was really turned off of j-drama]. Though, hey! Nodame Cantabile! I really enjoyed the two main actors [who were both in movies I really liked], and the dynamic they managed to recreate between the characters was really entertaining. Unlike most stuff about music adapted from comics, 'Nodame' works better in a format with sound because these are all classical pieces. People know and respect them, and I imagine it's much more manageable to have a known piece you can tweak and record different versions of for a specific scene [for example, Chiaki's orchestra-backed performance of Rachmaninov is totally different from Nodame's messy, intense duet-performed one]. I mean, it's important to have variety and good recordings like that, because, well, these actors aren't actually piano/violin/etc. geniuses. :p However, with some well-placed timing and craftiwork from the actors [some of which principally seemed to have at least a little experience with their instruments... a lot of actual musicians were used to populate scenes I think], director and cameraman helped to make it all somewhat believable. The romantic-comedy/silly tone of the show helps to cast off worries and criticisms about how "realistic" or genuine it all is, anyway.

It was a bit ridiculous, but forgivable, and good choices were made in what to keep in the story/how to compress it for it's limited time on TV. I liked that the show went in deliberate directions, the set-up of the first half was much more lighthearted and comedic/silly, and the second focused on the 'serious' dramatic storytelling [the silly characters either leave or take the back row for this part].

I have an interview tomorrow. Must get some sleep. Goodnight, internets. Here's my compilation soundtrack of the day:

Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No. 2
Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
Ladyhawk - Sad Eyes, Blue Eyes
Camera Obscura - Books Written for Girls
Gustav Holst - Mars, Bringer of War
Joanna Newsom - Only Skin
The Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood #4
Sambomaster - Tokyo no Yoru Sayonara ["Goodbye, Tokyo Nights"]
Joanna Newsom - The Book of Right On

stolen shtuff

aidan.style@gmail.com — Tue, 01 May 2007 04:54:33 GMT

Level 1
(x) Smoked A Cigarette
(x) Smoked A Cigar
(x) Smoked Weed
( ) Kissed A Member Of The Same Sex
(x) Drank Alcohol

SO FAR: 4

Level 2
(x) Are / Been In Love
( ) Been Dumped
( ) Shoplifted
( ) Been Fired
( ) Been In A Fist Fight

SO FAR: 5

Level 3
(x) Snuck Out Of A Parent's House
(x) Had Feelings For Someone Who Didn't Have Them Back
( ) Been Arrested
( ) Made Out With A Stranger
( ) Gone Out On A Blind Date

SO FAR: 7

Level 4
(x) Had A Crush On An Older Person
(x) Skipped School
( ) Slept With A Co-worker
(x) Seen Someone / Something Die

SO FAR: 10

Level 5
(x) Had / Have A Crush On One Of Your FACEBOOK Friends
( ) Been To Paris
( ) Been To Spain
(x) Been On A Plane
(x) Thrown Up From Drinking

SO FAR: 13

Level 6
(x) Eaten Sushi
(x) Been Snowboarding
( ) Met Someone BECAUSE Of Facebook
(x) Been in a Mosh Pit

SO FAR: 16

Level 7
( ) Been In An Abusive Relationship
(x) Taken Pain Killers
(x) Love/Like Loved/Liked Someone Who You Cant Have
(x) Laid On Your Back And Watched Cloud Shapes Go By
(x) Made A Snow Angel

SO FAR: 20

Level 8
(x) Had A Tea Party
(x) Flown A Kite
(x) Built A Sand Castle
( ) Gone mudding (offroading)
(x) Played Dress Up

SO FAR: 24

Level 9
(x) Jumped Into A Pile Of Leaves
(x) Gone Sledding
(x) Cheated While Playing A Game
(x) Been Lonely
(x) Fallen Asleep At Work / School

SO FAR: 29

Level 10
(x) Watched The Sun Set
(x) Felt An Earthquake
( ) Killed A Snake

SO FAR: 31

Level 11
(x) Been Tickled
(x) Been Robbed / Vandalized
(x) Stole something - wasn't this already a question?
(x) Been Misunderstood

SO FAR: 35

Level 12
( ) Won A Contest
( ) Been Suspended From School
(x) Had Detention
(x) Been In A Car / Motorcycle Accident

SO FAR: 37

Level 13
(x) Had / Have Braces
(x) Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) Danced in the moonlight

SO FAR: 40

Level 14
(x) Hated The Way You Looked
(x) Witnessed A Crime
( ) Pole Danced
(x) Questioned Your Heart
(x) Been obsessed with post-it-notes

SO FAR: 44

Level 15
(x) Squished Barefoot Through The Mud
(x) Been Lost
( ) Been To The Opposite Side Of The World
(x) Swam In The Ocean
(x) Felt Like You Were Dying

SO FAR: 48

Level 16
(x) Cried Yourself To Sleep
(x) Played Cops And Robbers
(x) Recently Colored With Crayons / Colored Pencils / Markers
(x) Sang Karaoke
(x) Paid For A Meal With Only Coins

SO FAR: 53

Level 17
(x) Done Something You Told Yourself You Wouldn't
(x) Made Prank Phone Calls
(x) Laughed Until Some Kind Of Beverage Came Out Of Your Nose
( ) Kissed In The Rain

SO FAR: 56

Level 18
(x) Written A Letter To Santa Claus
( ) Been Kissed Under The Mistletoe
(x) Watched The Sun Set/ sun rise With Someone You Care / Cared About
(x) Blown Bubbles
(x) Made A Bonfire On The Beach or Anywhere

SO FAR: 60

Level 19
(x) Crashed A Party
(x) Have Traveled More Than 5 Days With A Car Full Of People
(x) Gone Rollerskating / Blading
(x) Had A Wish Come True
( ) Been Humped By A Monkey

SO FAR: 64

Level 20
(x) Worn Pearls
(x) Jumped Off A Bridge
(x) Screamed "Penis" or "Vagina" - in two languages
( ) Swam With Dolphins

SO FAR: 67

Level 22
(x) Got Your Tongue Stuck To A Pole/Freezer/Ice Cube
( ) Kissed A Fish
(x) Worn The Opposite Sex's Clothes
(x) Sat On A Roof Top
( ) Kissed A Worm

SO FAR: 70

Level 23
(x) Screamed At The Top Of Your Lungs
(x) Done / Attempted A One-Handed Cartwheel
(x) Talked On The Phone For More Than 6 Hours - i think..
(x) Recently Stayed Up for a while talking to someone you care about

SO FAR: 74

Level 24
(x) Picked And Ate An Apple Right Off The Tree
(x) Climbed A Tree
(x) Had / Been In A Tree House
(x) Been scared To Watch Scary Movies Alone

SO FAR: 78

Level 25
(x) Believed In Ghosts
( ) Have/had More Then 30 Pairs Of Shoes
(x) Gone Streaking
(x) Visited Jail

SO FAR: 81

Level 26
(x) Played Tag
(x) Been Pushed into a pool with all your clothes on
( ) Been Told You're Hot By A Complete Stranger
(x) Broken A Bone
(x) Been Easily Amused

SO FAR: 85

Level 27
(x) Caught A Fish Then Ate It Later
( ) Made A Porn Video/got asked to make one
(x) Caught A Butterfly
(x) Laughed So Hard You Cried
(x) Cried So Hard You Laughed

SO FAR: 89

Level 28
(x) Mooned / Flashed Someone
(x) Had Someone Moon / Flash You
(x) Cheated On A Test
(x) Forgotten Someone's Name - pretty much every day
( ) French Braided Someones Hair
( ) Gone Skinny Dipping
( ) Been Kicked Out Of Your House
(x) Tried to hurt yourself

SO FAR: 95

Level 29
(x) Rode A Roller Coaster
(x) Went Scuba-Diving / Snorkeling
(x) Had A Cavity
( ) Black-Mailed Someone
( ) Been Black Mailed

SO FAR: 98

Level 31
(x) Been Used
(x) Fell Going Up The Stairs
( ) Licked A Cat
(x) Bitten Someone
( ) Licked Someone

SO FAR : 101

Level 32
( ) been shot at/or at gunpoint
( ) Had sex in the rain
(x) flattened someones tires
( ) Rode your car/truck until the gas light came on
( ) Got five dollars or less worth of gas
(x) taken chances

Total: 103

analog

aidan.style@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:56:20 GMT

Today's update comes in beautiful, efficient point-form:

-Did my history exam this morning. Went rather well, I think. Not sure if I included enough historical peeps/events examples but it'll have to do; its all over and done with now.

-By a curious twist of what I can only assume is a crazy day for schedules, I've been home alone all day since late morning. It's... not bad.

-I've been trying to study for psychology but the relative ease of the material and the pull of various news feeds and other juicy distractions has been filling at least as much time.

-I'm so close to beating Super Mario Bros. that I can feel the itch in my finger-and-thumbtips.

-Currently listening to my vinyls -- got The Alan Parsons Project's 'Eye In the Sky' on now.

-HaH! Just finished another short story -- ohh right psychology right. right. okay. back to that now, yeah...

someone cool told me that I'm "really cool!" today

aidan.style@gmail.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 06:03:15 GMT

how was YOUR day?

lol

Hmmm. Going over and tightening up these little "exercises" has been more interesting than I thought it would. -- a line from the one I'm staring at right now:

"The sky outside the cabin, tinged with grey, laid out a road for us in cracks between the cloud cover."

I rather like that, I think.

More updates, more frequency, coming soon, I hope.

I'm also considering a few ways I change change around this journal. It gets carbon-copied into Facebook and.. the Myspace one is just dead I guess. Either their could be more integration, or some different stuff in different places. Putting a header with various links on anything/everything might work nicely, though would take some more work. Anyway, first off I think a layout change will do nicely. I've had this same random google-image-collage-of-stuff-that-I-thought-looked-cool design on here for so long I can't remember when I put it up. I'm thinking newness. Something with red butterflies and black lightening bolts, maybe?

meme!

aidan.style@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:37:51 GMT

Your Birthdate: November 23

You're not good at any one thing, and that's the problem.
You're good at so much - you never know what to do.
Change is in your blood, and you don't stick to much for long.
You are destined for a life of travel and fun.

Your strength: Your likeability

Your weakness: You never feel satisfied

Your power color: Bright yellow

Your power symbol: Asterisk

Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

\(0_o)/ WhoA!

OH NOES!!!!1

aidan.style@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:48:21 GMT

HOLY FUCK! INVASION OF THE TODDLERS!!!

SERIOUSLY, THERE ARE LIKE A BAZJILLION 7 YEAR OLDS CRAWLING AROUND THIS PIT OF THE REC BUILDING, SCUTTLING ABOUT AND FIRING OFF PING PONG PROJECTILES AT DANGEROUSLY RANDOM RATES!

Hmm, actually, damn! These kids are really cute!

I mean, usually I hate dealing with kids [about 2/3 a lie], but just... observing them like this, in their primitive socializing and hearing their various monolouges with the lisps and immediacy that only children can universally convey... I can forget about things that suck for a while.

live from a beige bench

aidan.style@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:38:01 GMT

I'm sitting at a rather low workbench of sorts in the welcome center building. I've been here since something like 8:30am, reading old livejournal entries and making stabs and dents at the essay. It's at about 500 words, which... ain't even a pinprick of actual content compared to what I normally go at. What the hell is wrong with me... Thankfully, there's only one or two pinpricks left on this sucker.

I think I may grab some lunch, soon! And [overpriced] Dr. Pepper from the cafeteria!

It just started raining outside... I wish I had my jacket.

And a snappy shirt while I'm at it.

Currently listening to Godspeed! You Black Emperor's album "Tiny Silver Hammers." It makes everything on an otherwise dreary day seem to be moving in slow-motion.

...I just now finished reading the archives of Rud13's journal. You hear that, Rud13? It was a pretty engrossing read, I tell ya.

Hmmm... looking at some of my own archives here... I was[/am] a pretty retarded person! Yeah! I will probably look back at these entries next year with the same sense of crushing shame, but for now I feel like I'm moving towards someplace hip and happy with my uh, "style", or whatever is filtering what comes out of me.

Jesus fuck these swivelling chair/stool things are as uncomfortable as fuck.

EDIT PS: Killer7 is an incredibly well-polished and all around mod as hell game. I look forward to playing it much this weekend.

I still see things that I know are real

aidan.style@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 07:43:58 GMT

I wrote at least a solid two pages of material for an update post before I fell asleep, woke up, and hated everything I saw. Those two pages are gone, now. What you see here is what takes their place.

I have an english essay that, for the life of me, I CAN'T WRITE. It is the most depressing, helpless feeling. I try to write fiction, and nothing comes. I just sit here and incessantly lurk and infrequently post on internet forums and chat with friends who are not there to hold conversations. I try to read, but my head begins to hurt something ugly and all the rest of it is called sleeping my precious time away.

In conclusion, I really really really really really dislike Jane Eyre. And I don't even think it's a bad novel. When [yes, by god, WHEN I DO...] finish this essay, I vow never to write another thing on Jane Eyre ever again. I will not think of it ever again.

My worldview bubble has been shaking and getting ready to burst these past few days. I get self conscious about losing my hair and whether I'm walking "naturally" enough or not. I pick up the guitar and I can't seem to get the damn thing in tune. I try to write, god help me. I reach inside myself to look for something to use, but there's no fire. The brain is more than willing, but the spirit or flow or Mako Energy or whatever is missing. I see a few pretty photographs and suddenly I'm all nostalgic for the dreamy days when dreaming was all I did. Being a filmmaker or an animator or a writer... all these things are dreams, and I can't help but feel like I don't want to sacrifice any of them [animation can go though, yeah]. As if losing any of them would take something that matters away from the others.

Last night I went out for a midnight walk and I popped into a gas station for some Red Bull. When I got instead was this delicious-looking cherry Tab energy drink, what tasted all of absolute disgust and sour-metallic aftertaste. I also discovered The Cherry Blackstone Cigarette/Cigarillo! A brand I'd been searching for for many hours almost a year before, when I was a bored dork reading a rather excellent shoujo comic called "Nana." I bought a pack on impulse, though it'll probably last me a while, seeing as how I don't really smoke. They're quite nice, however, if you're into that sort of thing. In a more mainstream-socially acceptable turn of events however, I also bought a videogame afterwards! ...Killer 7 [a not so socially-acceptable videogame. one that, so far, I am loving the ever-loving fuck out of].

Hmmm. In the end, this post turned out pretty long after all! So: this is me right now, representing myself, in a somewhat grumpy facet, but all the same me. I'll be around for quite a while yet; this journal has got about 4 years going for it and there ain't no reason to stop yet. As far as I know, only about one or two people have ever been reading this thing [now and then], yet here it all is: ready to stand the test of time [plus, now that I think about it, these entries probably auto-import into Facebook as well...].

I am currently drinking licorice spice tea.

It's just the right temperature: a strong, steamy scent; hot in the mouth, but not enough to burn. It evokes a rush of springtime memories since before this springtime; lazy rainy days in the house with Nirvana playing at age six. Running madly across a field while gripping metal forks in the middle of a hailing thunderstorm at age 13. At age 16, losing hope for a world where people as young as I was and am now could honestly say they weren't going to have any regrets. It's my favorite tea. It helps me remember what's dream and what's real.

It is currently 12:33 PM.

Two weeks from now, I will be attending a funeral.

Tomorrow morning, I go to a slam poetry performance at the university by the airport [after a veeery earrly morning of biology lecture]; now, I sleep.

--Aidan R. never did a drug alone

ahhhhh yess of course i remember now...

aidan.style@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 06:10:29 GMT

"I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Hungary around the year 1775. Your profession was that of a leader, major or captain. Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Timid, constrained, quiet person. You had creative talents, which waited until this life to be liberated. Sometimes your environment considered you strange. The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your main lesson is to develop magnanimity and a feeling of brotherhood. Try to become less adhered to material property and learn to take only as much, as you can give back.

Do you remember now?"

http://www.thebigview.com/pastlife/

the stages are set by the moment

aidan.style@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:03:15 GMT

What a morning. I just woke up and the first thing I see out my window is a ton of snow falling.

What the fuck, God?

Additionally, a new LPN short flick [so soon!] set the mood [www.largeprimenumbers.com] and George Takei made me feel a little better about the world again [http://www.influks.com/post897.html].

I have the day to myself it seems. To do nothing but... read.

This could be an awesome day. I may even *gasp* get out in the afternoon to pan for a job. If things are extra special I'll see if my favorite local shop still has that old copy of Killer7 around.

If not, hey, I still have to beat Final Fantasy 4 and I have pretty much an endless supply of books for the time being.

PS - http://www.influks.com/post664.html

everything old is still aging [not quite new again]

aidan.style@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:10:40 GMT

You know what's fucked up? Gift cards.

Gift cards are a the most polite way society has thought up for a person to tell another person to fuck off, relationally. It is a perfect way to keep the distance you had with one person when they do something that narrows the gap a little.

Today was pretty much "clean up good and organize act" day. This morning I looked like the lovechild of Cousin It from the Addams Family and Spike Spiegel. Tonight I look more like Julius Caesar with a hoodie. So much for reading break. I've hardly read a fuckkin' thing of immediate importance, and I suddenly see that I have my history paper due next friday. I hope I can juggle this term better than I did last.

Every year I lose more reasons to stay here.

Tomorrow I'm gonna head down to Rogers for a bit to spend exactly $15 or less before the opportunity expires.

EDIT - while I still remember to, I'll say something about Pan's Labyrinth here:

It was so strange and wonderful in all the right ways. Masterful stuff. It was really something else to walk out of the theatre into what appeared to be a lunar eclipse too. I mean how do you top that.

ironically, having nothing to do with Valentine's Day...

aidan.style@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:00:38 GMT

These past couple days have been most enjoyably stressful. Yesterday I had my japanese history midterm to study for, a biology paper to write, and an english essay to do.

I got very little studyin' studied, just about no biology was put to paper, and I finished the living shit out of that english essay.

It was on maternal relationships in various short fictions that I have read.

I mean, come on. Maternal relationships!? What the hell do I know about that?

heh, well... I also began reading the Insert Credit dot com FUKUBUKURO 2006: GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION, which I am now about 3/10th of the way through. If you perchance want to take a look at it, if you do not like what you see, look no further. Close that explorer window as fast as your fucking can, because that feature is feature-length. Over 100,000 words. And I am loving it. It no doubt is partially responsible for the quirky and bright mood I seem to be finding myself in. Though, really it started wednesday night, when I saw a movie called "Jesus Camp."

Goddamn! That flick woke me up in the anger section something fierce. I cannot at this moment recall any other flick which has set me frothing and writing and threatening the atmosphere with gibberish so. There are speeches which crawled under my skin and itched my bone marrow; speeches that I would have lazily waved away with a flick of the wrist had I simply been reading them rather than hearing them presented.

Many of the more talked-about and circulated scenes from this movie didn't actually bother me too much. Well, okay they actually bothered me a lot [that one line she spits out, "...and I don't care what kinda hero they are," is one of the most devastatingly loaded, evil things I've heard a person in her position say]. Though they are of little consequence in the grand scheme. What was the hardest thing to watch in this movie was the children giving their monolouges. I tell you: you do not know horror and frustration until you hear a pre-teen give a enpassioned speech on the 'rising up of a generation' that contains absolutely no sincerity. This one kid's hand gestures and syntax alone made it practically the saddest thing I have ever seen; seeing and hearing what appears to be a 30-year-old bible-thumping preacher with bullshit as his primary means of gas-exchange thriving in the husk of a 9 year old.

Moving on...

I was sick most of thursday, and I was told by my benefactor that I was most likely constipated from lack of water and severe lack of sleep. So, about four litres of tea and a laxative-lunch, things started moving again; internal organs shifted into their proper slots.

Have you ever taken a bathroom trip that was so epic and complete that you felt like a new man afterwards? Yeah. I swear that the onset of spring-like weather coincided with that flush. The first breath of fresh air outside was positively baptismal.

One night later, when I woke up this morning, my hair was perfect when I looked in the mirror. It was the greatest kind of perfection; it was incidentally perfect. And when you can start off the first moments your day looking that gorgeous, only gorgeous feelings can follow. Hell, everything about this day has been gorgeous. I slided through that history midterm, filling every blank with an answer of some kind. The weather was beaming warm and slightly breezey, and people are wearing the sexy clothes once again [no, I'm not talking about exposed flesh. I am talking about sexy clothing]. I have been eating much. I have a new Shinya Tsukamoto film to ingest. This whole next week ahead I have school off. Which is to say, there are no classes. I have many books to read.

And Pan's Labyrinth is STILL in theatres.

So yeah, please excuse the more silly digressions and the one-person in jokes of this post. It is rarer these days than it was in days before for me to be in such a "posting" mood.

The Alien Observatory [text gains momentum on a train]

aidan.style@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:56:20 GMT

As the sun descended on the day on which Aileen Jones’ city dissapeared forever, she received twelve e-mails on her cell phone. The first was from her boss, who wanted to know if she was free that evening for a little- “something something” [complete with suggestive internet chat-room winking symbols]. Repositioning herself on the train station bench, she gripped the phone between her teeth while she tied her hair back. The station was empty, except for a man and woman both waiting on the other side of the platform, standing at opposite ends, eyes fixed firmly on the spot of concrete just in front of their feet, immobile. Re-wrapping the elastic band around the long, thick ginger hair just behind the base of her skull, Aileen mused on whether they knew each other, or had some kind of desperate disinterest in not meeting each others’ eyes.

Poised with electric instrument in hand, she thumbed up a window to reply and the rest was a blur to her memory. If there had been another young woman sitting beside her, maybe with her own cell phone: decorated with a long, silver, featureless chain and a modicum of pride over her level of mastership over it; she would’ve been in awe. Occasional thumb-cramping aside, Aileen had written novels on that cell phone dial pad. Not Dostoyevsky-like epics or clever Mark Twain-passages, but she reveled in a great sense of accomplishment over every two by two inch page of blank screen-space that she filled. It was exciting, like riding a bicycle with no hands; fulfilling, like licking your way to the center of a Tootsie-Roll pop. When the button-tapping sounds stopped and her teeth finally unclenched after an indiscriminate amount of time, she reviewed the piece:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for the offer, but at the moment I am afraid that I am currently not in a position to take time out for recreation.

The time flashed in the lower-right corner of the screen. Twenty minutes had gone by and Aileen had managed to write but that single sentence. Her mouth twisted slightly, a sigh built up in her, and she resigned herself to apathy. That sigh took breath from her that became fog, a piece of herself that was made visible and then swallowed up by the world. At that moment, Aileen considered accepting her boss’ offer after all, while the moment still presented itself. The two people standing far from Aileen and perhaps further apart from each other, oblivious of Aileen observing them or, most likely, anything else that existed outside the few paces between them, settled both their wandering eyes on the grey bullet train coming at them.

The train was a silent beast, entering the station fast enough to kill, yet gracefully sliding to a stop in a few moments of deceleration. Aileen hurried to the doorway closest to the back of the train, slipping inside quickly so as to not get caught in the unsympathetic, mechanically timed precision of the train’s schedule. The train always comes on time, the doors always open on time and they snap shut again, on time. Aileen picked a seat further near the back of the train, closest to the window. It would give her the longest-lasting view of the couple standing on the platform. They never moved an inch, and then they were gone, and so was the train station.

The train picked up speed and the usual landmarks passed by: The Hanging Man nightclub; the mansion-size apartments in the pyramid-shaped apartment building; the same dog as usual pissing on the same withered willow tree at the same time that he usually did. Aileen whipped out her cell phone once more and looked at another message. It was the forty-ninth message she’d ever answered on that particular phone, the second of the evening, and the last she ever would. It was from her cell phone service provider company, and it read as follows:

Dear Ms. Jones,

Thank you for your continued support of our company, and your patience in this matter. Unfortunately, we have consulted our legal advisers and our past records with you and your husband, and we must decline your request for a transcript. We offer our condolences and wish you a Merry Christmas.

Aileen pulled herself away from the screen, the rest of the message was nothing, and out the window, Aileen couldn’t see anything past the immediate highway on the left of the train. However, this was a highway she didn’t know. The lanes were wide and the pavement smooth. Sections came and were gone and new ones identical to the sections before came again. This came as somewhat of a shock to Aileen, as every night for the past three years, she had ridden the train back home from the station along the same route. She never expected that nothing would change, she wasn’t that naïve, but Aileen had not even glimpsed the highways that dumped into and out of the city for as long as she could remember taking the train.

Holding her breath, she attempted to look back and try to glimpse the damp, cracked streets of the city, but her view was obscured by riveted steel and political and commercial advertisement posters covering the walls and back window. Truly, from the seat she had picked, her best vantage was to just simply look forward. The train kept going until even the highways disappeared from view, and the wet neon glow of the city on the horizon dimmed, and everything was so dark that even the buzzing halogen lights of the train seemed inadequate. Soon enough though, Aileen felt the train take a strong right turn, and the moon pivoted into view above her window. Its light made her feel cleaner somehow; its blemish-like craters made her wonder about canyons and caves and other deep, hollow places on Earth.

“How much further can this train possibly go?” Aileen thought, after her cell phone pointed out to her that she had been riding this gliding behemoth for over three hours. The rest of the messages sat there on the screen, but they were left unopened, and ten other people, somewhere in the city, never heard back from Aileen Jones again.

Soon enough, long after it had lost its signal, her phone’s battery died, and Aileen breathed a sigh of resignation, settling into a strange sort of contentedness. The train made no more turns and it made no sound of its own. It was a grey bullet gliding through darkness, carrying a single sleeping woman; a newborn wanderer.

my benefactor won't stop hammering nails

aidan.style@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:45:57 GMT

Today has been the first beautiful day in a while. Too bad the rest of my week is going to hell :( ...

...from tueday to saturday, every day I've got an exam, a big assignment due, or both. I suppose this is some kind of preceding retribution for the week-long spring "reading break" holiday next week, though it's not called "reading" break for nothing.

That in itself ain't such a bad thing either though, I suppose. The books I want to read are few, and the books I have to read are at least interesting. One fits into both those categories. I just ordered it off Amazon and it came a few days ago; Haruki Murakami's "Underground", which is a book I've been meaning to read for a while. So far it's, like I said, interesting. It's Murakami's only non-fiction book, about the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway lines in the mid 90's. About two-thirds of the book is made up of interviews he conducted with the victims, and some of the perpetratorrs of the attack, and the rest is musings/an essay on his insights [and possible conclusions] on the whole affair, as well as his own native culture.

So uh, yeah. There's all that, and there's another thing.

It's FUCKING KONAMI WEEK 2007.

Which I'm afraid I might not have much time at all to participate in. I'll be trying my best to fit in a couple hours, here and there, though! The Konami selections I've got lined up are: DDRMAX 1 and Silent Hill 1 [which of both I've already compledted somewhat] as well as Tokimeki Memorial 2; a game which I think I'll try to write something about when I'm done with it. Ren'ai games and visual novels have always interested me, though I've been out of touch with them for a long time. The last time I was playing them in any significant capacity was when I was 16 or so, which was around the last time a patch for the english translation of "Kanon" came out. If Haeleth gets permission from the publisher, Key, then he may yet still release the final patch [he apparently has all the translation done, just the hard stuff left to do, like coding it in].

This morning my 'benefactor' sat down at the dinner table beside me as I was flipping through some of the news and most of the junk mail. He brought to my attention that this is a new year, a year of changes and shenanigans. I should point out here that 7 is my lucky number. It wasn't too hard to see through his filters that he was pointing out something else entirely: I turn 20 this year. Ugh.

Bad luck this week, though it's a sweet season to accompany it, and nasty numbers loom ahead.

today i copied Riley and...

aidan.style@gmail.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 03:21:59 GMT

-woke up at 6
-woke up again at 7:45
-skipped breakfast
-got to school in time at 8:30
-walked back home [almost got frostbite]
-ate brunch
-read the new Tim Rogers essay [www.largeprimenumbers.com]
-experimented with new ways to tie a scarf
-scarfed down the rest of the Tim-Tams Rowan sent me [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Tam]
-made earl grey tea [potful] [Douglas Adams style] with a bit of milk
-make a blog post detailing the way of a proper cup of tea as taught by Douglas Adams
-left for psychology class, fooled around/was silly with Jamie in class
-was a ろくでなし around campus: played Super Mario DS, drank coffee [twice!], wrote scathing reviews of my peers' literary work
-went to creative writing [and tried to stay sane until the imaginary bell went]
-utilized new scarf-tying techniques to stave off frostbite on the way back home at night
-did my homework/studied/transcribed notes
-watched old 60's Doctor Who episodes until dinner
-dinner was salty-ish soup
-read Kafka on the Shore
-checked the internets, wrote this, and will now go back to Kafka on the Shore, and get some early sleep.

photo dump extravaganza

aidan.style@gmail.com — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:46:06 GMT

I have been having waaaay too much fun with Photoshop lately...

Wheee!! I'm in a Japanese porno!

Now I'm a painting!

Hey hey! Now I be wandering the streets of Japan! [ooh, check out the snazzy lighting effects! or are they just TOO subtle? ;-)]

Just goofing around with the simple tools. Usually ruining the colour balance by playing around with colours/hue/saturation and random filters... pretty much what I did here.

Okay enough of that garbage. :p

the 'you' and 'me' of the alphabet stolen from emma

aidan.style@gmail.com — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:39:34 GMT

A: You like to drink
I: You are great in bed.
D: You like to drink.
A: You like to drink.
N: You like to drink.

S: Fuckin crazy.
H: You have a very good personality and good looks.
A: You like to drink.
N: You like to drink.
E: You are easy to fall in love with.

R: Easy to get along with.
A: You like to drink.
N: You like to drink.
N: You like to drink.
E: You are easy to fall in love with.
Y: Best b/f g/f anyone could ever ask for.

*I don't know how great a girlfriend I'd make but it does seem that I am extremely prone to alcoholism or something.

A : You like to drink
B : You like people.
C : You are really silly.
D : You like to drink.
E: You are easy to fall in love with
F : You are dead sexy.
G : You never let people tell you what to do.
H : You have very good personality and good looks.
I : You Are Great in bed.
J : People Adore yOU
K : You're wild and crazy.
L : Everyone loves you
M : best kisser ever.
N: You like to drink.
O: awesome kisser.
P : You are popular with all types of people.
Q : You are NOT hypocrite.
R : Easy to get along with
S : Fuckin crazy.
T : You're loyal to those you love.
U : You really like to chill.
V : You are not judgemental.
W : You are very broad minded.
X : You never let people tell you what to do.
Y : Best g/f b/f anyone could ever ask for.
Z : Always ready.

fuck

aidan.style@gmail.com — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 02:27:23 GMT

You know the state of music in this world is in dire fucking straits when a close friend of yours tells you that he "doesn't listen to the music alone that much, or go to see the band live. the real magic of music is in the music video."

Hey, I love those Polysics videos too, but you're fucking killing me here.

On a Something that is Always Moving

aidan.style@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:45:56 GMT

I’m writing this as I do research on stuff and a couple things. Taking notes, I occasionally check the surroundings. You see, I have this thing for libraries. The kinds of people that go to them, how long they stay, and of course the eventual question: what are they doing here? Very rarely have I ever seen a person whom I consider closely enough to call a friend inside a library. Today, I walked with a girl who is an old acquaintance and a recent friend. I mentioned to her that I was coming here in about half an hour, and she tightened the loosely knitted pink scarf around her jacket collar some more.

“That library is weird.”

I asked her if she’d ever been inside it. To this, she stuttered faintly.

“Yeah, well. I’ve been to the outer room. The one that leads into the real library, and you can see in through windows. It was just weird.”

She didn’t elaborate any further and I didn’t ask her to. Nearly any topic I start these days is dead after the first few exchanges of sentences. I wondered, briefly, on whether she had made the trek across the snow and ice she so hated [she refused to come to school for a week last week, due to the frozen-over hell outdoors had become], to this library, for a reason. Was someone waiting for her? Was she expecting to meet someone who wasn’t?

The things people do in a library… I only see working and quietly chatting. A Korean guy two computers and one desk down from me is watching an old episode of Naruto without subtitles. Is he fluent in Japanese, then? Does he understand what’s going on in the show? Or is he simply Japanese and I’m, simply, wrong? I could swear on my now-outdated PS2 that he’s Korean, though.

This thing that I have for libraries, it’s an affinity for their atmosphere I guess. It’s a temperate, dry environment that smells to me like an unexploded potential bomb. As I look at the window in front of me, I don’t see the outdoors; I can only see the library [yeah, it’s night]. I can see directly into my reflection, and right behind that I see rows of rows of neatly affixed books that no one is reading. My time here is short, with my battery down to twenty minutes left, and I don’t feel anxious or hesitant about leaving. Probably because I’m just really fucking hungry, and plugging in the laptop would provide an excuse to stay and work. I’m manipulative of myself like that sometimes.

Holy fuck some guy from my creative writing class’ cell phone just went off with the Super Mario theme playing. He’s a good guy. Got a Suicide Girls sticker on his notebook with stories of hanging out with the alternative soft porn starlets in Calgary and all that. Writes nearly nothing but goofy poems of zombies and vampires and archaic prose of witches and tragedies that remind me of modern mythology [eg – see: Neil Gaiman [though one might say that he has a few more levels to gain to hit his apex of that sort of genre]]. I don’t even think he knows I’m sitting here. I might like to meet him, but not on purpose. That would just not be charming at all.

Anyway, I look at the library in front of me, and now and then I return to the library behind me to gleam some obscure knowledge of things that won’t matter in all of two weeks. Somewhere in the sudden moments in between all these actions taken, I take glances at my selves in between the converging rows of books. There’s something there, something I don’t know the name of, but it’s eyebrows contort quizzically, and it adjusts it’s scarf reflectively. It moves outside of me, and when our eyes meet, I move inside of it.

Edogawa Rampo once wrote that….

….okay my battery died and is now resurrected. I’m sitting at home, facing my selves ,my room, and the outdoors all at once. Anyway, Edogawa Rampo once wrote in his freakish Edgar Allen Poe-inspired gothic mysteries [note the wordplay’d penname] that mirrors are like a gateway to another world. That a mirror's reflection is a peek into an un-real reality. That, if one were to be surrounded by nothing but reflection, by nothing other than mirror, what would one see in that void? Would one become a ‘god’ of that world?

Looking at my own reflection, it reflects someone I don’t know. It’s as if I’m seeing through someone else’s eyes, looking at me, a mind apart from a body.

No. I did not just see “The Matrix.”

………………………………………………………

This research is bullshit. Our library is bullshit. I’ve been assured by an old friend, who is, in fact, attending the school I’m heading towards, that our library [our whole campus, in fact] sucks. Normally I would counter with something like: “Our campus could totally curbstomp your campus.” But alas, I have seen that other campus, and it is the future. It is, as the name of the Sambomaster album I’m listening to at the moment, the way and light of new rock n’ roll.

Those damn fancypants university preps even have their own bar/club establishment. Not that I drink these days [or have drunk at all for a couple hundred days now], but something like that isn’t a something you just pass up.

So here’s to writing a biology paper, passing the damnable hateful course and moving on to the next semester. Here’s to rocking that fucking crap campus so hard that it suffers indigestion and spits me back out. Here’s to newer and bigger places to be; fully equipped with licensed venues.

-Lates.

PS – New episodes of ‘Smallville’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Torchwood’, and I just got my sparking hands on copy of GO!GO!7188’s ‘best of…’ album. Good times ahead.

dramatic dramatizin'

aidan.style@gmail.com — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 03:28:37 GMT

"What's on the Menu? [the songs, the states, and the space]"

Zoe- Twenty-one years old. Wears curled hair down to her shoulders and dresses for winter, though it is still early fall outdoors. Sleepless circles are formed around her eyes and her face is pale.

Erick- Twenty-five years old. Carries a broken guitar in a case, wrapped in duct tape to keep it closed. He wears a baseball cap, a windbreaker jacket, and looks noticeably, but not overly, shaken and detached.

[Zoe waits at a café table, outside next to the sidewalk. Muffled city sounds drone on. There's a road sign and a sparse few people walk along the sidewalk, between the audience and the main characters. She stares into space, her mind seemingly elsewhere. After a few seconds, Erick approaches and sits down. Zoe calmly surveys him for a few moments and begins to speak.]

Zoe – "Why'd you show up?"

Erick – "You asked me to."

Zoe – "I know! I know… but-"

Erick – "It's fine. It's over now, anyway."

[A waiter silently comes to take their orders.]

Erick + Zoe [simultaneously] – Coffee.

[Waiter leaves just as quickly and silently as he arrived.]

Zoe – "When's your plane?"

Erick – "Train, actually. I've got a few minutes before I gotta get to the station."

Zoe – "And where are you going?"

Erick – "A bigger city. After that, I was thinking somewhere farther. Like North Korea."

Zoe – "Oh come on!"

Erick – "No bullshit. I wanna go somewhere mysterious."

Zoe – "It figures you would head off on some self-made adventure like that."

Sounds of a flock of pigeons taking off rise up and fall. The two of them are momentarily distracted as their coffee arrives.]

Erick – "And you? What about you?"

Zoe – "Oh, I'm just fine. I got a new place near my parents, back in my hometown. It's a bit small but it's something. The manager at the Halebenaro Hut says he can get me started there and some old friends are-"

Erick – "So you're gonna be fine."

Zoe – "Well… yeah. I'll be just fine."

[The two drink some coffee.]

"We did have some good times around here, though. Didn't we?"

"Let's not talk about it. We at already agreed that we're over with, at least."

Zoe – "Can't you even try to remember the good parts?"

Erick – "I'm not gonna wallow in some fucking depressed state, Zoe. I'm not like you."

Zoe – [She becomes flustered and opens her mouth to speak, but no words come, at first.] "I always hated this fucking city. Everyone's dead here. And I... I'm just as dead. You killed me. ...you fucker you killed me the day you met me."

Erick – [Speaking in a detached tone.] Everyone dies, Zoe. We die, and we get reborn. All that's left is the space between. Which state do you think we're spending our time in, right now?

"Doesn't really matter to me. You pick one."

[Getting up and pushing in his chair.] "Blank space has got to be better than this. Goodbye, Zoe. I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm gonna find someplace outside of myself. Someplace where I can just spend time."

Zoe – [No longer looking at him as he walks away.] "Living or dying?"

[Erick leaves the stage, checking his watch on his way out. Zoe sits alone, and motions for the waiter to come over.]

Zoe – "Can I see a menu, please?"

I'm not even going to talk about the part that really needs to be longer and less awkward. It does, but I need to forget entirely about this before I can stomach going back to it. I think.