This post is a downer

I have a certain feeling of paranoia today - like something is just not right in my universe. I don’t like when this happens - it makes me feel uneasy and I keep wondering why I am feeling this way and then I just get more paranoid. It might have something to do with the fact that my wife handed me a delicious Americana on the way out of the door this morning and I bolted it back before I hit the 401, but I doubt it.

It’s like my back is covered with ice water - i pull my shoulders together but it doesn’t help. At times like this I feel that life is getting away from me, like a carpet pulling out from under my feet. I feel like I am running out of time but i don’t really know what to do with the time I have. The weather is turning somber and cold and my feet are chilled because I am still wearing sandals. the globe is moving away from the sun for the 42rd time in my life. To think that fall has only happened 42 times for me makes my life seem small and insignificant. 42 is not a very big number and I will be lucky if I see 40 more falls I am sure.

The thought of being mortal is enough to make anyone’s guts turn over if you really think about it. Time is running out for each and every one of us and some people are just more aware of it than others. Today is one of the days I see my life as small and insignificant numbers.

Shit - there’s nothing I can do about it so I guess I should just try to distract myself back into unconscious living. I’m sorry for bringing you down here with me. (I know don’t apologize it is a sign of weakness)

George Bush's Dumass Head On A String

This is a photo of my air freshener. It is called George Bush's Dumass Head On A String. It was given to me as a gift - a birthday gift to be exact and when I first got it it smelled pretty good. I laughed really hard at it and was excited to put it in my car. It has been there for about three months now and the smell is all gone. The thing is it is really starting to get on my nerves - each day I have to look at his stupid face swinging back and forth at me. That expression over and over again. And then I read it - George Bush's Dumass Head On A String. For some reason I just can't bring myself to pull it down. I guess I am a masochist. God Bless America - and Thank God I'm Canadian.

These jackets are for sale Don't you just LOVE them?

I could just die for one of these - I think I'll wear mine to the party on thursday!!!

A blog about a blog

This is a picture of what I see when I look at my blog - I don't know why I posted this - I guess it just looks neat for me to see my blog on my blog. I was going to take another picture with this picture posted and so on but I got bored of the idea and only got this far so you will have to imagine it the way I originally wanted it.
I think that my last post was a little boring - sorry it was so self-indulgent - I know don't apologize it is a sign of weakness. I feel a little blogged out this week - yes I have overdone it now I am lost for words. It is starting to rain here which means it will take extra-long to get home. oh do da day!!!

My Alter-Ego

One of the things that takes up a lot of my time is working on my alter-egos. When you mention on-line gaming to most people their eyes glaze over and they take a step backwards thinking that you most likely smell like spent semen and body odor. Most people have no concept of the involvement, sophistication and dedication it takes to participate successfully in an on-line gaming community. They associate them with the likes of a sniffling thirty-something basement-dweller - you know - their mother brings down their dinner and they take masturbation breaks between online gaming sessions - their weekly outing a visit to the comic store.

Primarily the attraction lies in the mystique of experimenting with alter egos. When you are inside an active on-line gaming environment things work pretty much the way they do in the real world but there are a few fantastic twists that make things far more interesting than real life. First off you can cheat death. This means that your alter-ego can take far more risks that one might in the real world. Most of the other inhabitants of the online gaming realms contain a multitude of other live players that you can interact with in many different ways.

This provides a series of varied fascinations that can easily become obsessions. There are obsessions for power, obsessions for wealth, obsessions for talents, obsessions for notoriety, obsessions for the concept of breathing life into a character that you control and can experiment with in limitless ways.

I feel that the likes of Warcraft, Everquest and The Matrix Online exemplify the infancy of a new world or frontier. These distant dimensions that many have become inhabitants of allow a place for regular people to become things they never dreamed of. The worlds are an illustrious tapestry of visual imagination and technology. They provide a kaleidoscope of compelling surroundings that never get tired.

The anticipation of an upcoming session of online gaming sends endorphens of pleasure through my body just thinking about it. It is a drug of sensory and imaginative nature. One can literally jack out of one's reality and go into another.

Headphones are the key to immersion, as well as darkening your surroundings. The best way to describe the experience is to imagine yourself at the movies and when the action gets going and things start to really heat up you get up out of your seat and walk up to the screen and right into the world in front of you.

There is nothing like it this side of freebasing crack cocaine.

From a creative standpoint I think that gaming in general trains the brain to see things differently and opens up the walls of ones own perceptive imaginative capacity - to be able to think, problem-solve, and allow oneself to behave instinctually in a variety of obtuse environments can only open the imagination.

Yes - the alter-ego is a great place to spend the day. When I think of my characters I see true extensions of myself. The avatars lay in waiting until I log on and take them back into their worlds. I can fight other players or creatures, go shopping, make something, hunt, put things up for auction, go fishing, cook food, make potions and machines, train pets, and travel to distant lands with complete ecosystems and geographical details. The games even have their own economies and you can literally pay Canadian currency for virtual currency if you are too lazy to try to earn your way inside the virtual worlds.

The stigma attached to such things is like any other stigmatism - people don't fully understand the concept and pass judgments with their uneducated conclusions. Sure these games are not for everyone - including children, but they serve as an excellent form of escapism and entertainment. The best part is that there is no advertising - it is a crystal clear medium so far - one that is pure and unencumbered by commercial motives.

My current MMORPG of choice is Warcraft (I have played most of them). Warcraft has over four million active users. This in itself proves that online gaming is here to stay and frankly I am sure that it will become THE primary medium for human entertainment. It may take a decade or two - but the concept of the alter-ego is something that we obsess over at childhood (Dolls, Heros, Idols) and carry the fantasy right through to our adult lives.

How would you like to live the life of your role model?
How would you like to change yourself?
How would you like to be in complete control of everything?
How would you like to cheat death?
How would you like to play by your own rules?

The fantasy can be yours for about 20 bucks a month and a 1200.00 computer.

I Think My Cats are Gay - But I'm OK With That...

Yes - the jury is in and so is the verdict. My cats are gay - but I'm ok with that. I have two male cats - both neutered. One is named Otto Madd and the other is Wiper Blade. My cats are in love. They are having a wildly passionate love affair and they seem quite proud of it.

When they first met they hated each other and expressed their feelings freely. As time passed they started to warm up and began to spend hours wrestling. They would lock together and roll back and forth in a violent knot of biting, scratching and snarling. I would find large chunks of hair about the house - chunks too large to have fallen out on their own.

Sometimes they have unseen quarrels. One of them will be sitting daydreaming and the other will saunter by and brush against the other affectionately. Then out of nowhere a screaming snarl of disagreement and violent claw-filled lashes. It seems that at times they resort to hating each other and are not intimidated by expressing it. Was it something the other had done hours before to instigate such dissatisfaction?

They speak to each other in some type of cat-language. One will call the other to announce the arrival of food or things of visual interest. They sit side-by-side looking out into the big unknown world sharing the most intimate of moments together.

My cats are in love. They have adapted themselves into some sort of symbiotic organism - a yin-yang of their own alter-egos. Each one has its' own specific behavior pattern - one that separates it completely from the other. They each do exactly the same things but do them in completely different ways. If I am asleep and one of them approaches me I can tell which one it is at first contact. Their physical individuality emanates from them, and they each have their own distinct scent.

But when they pair up they become one. Their accepted and participatory actions transform them into some sort of pack-like behavior. When they look at me as a collective I see different animals than when they look at me on their own.

My cats are in love - they bathe each other and sleep together for hours. They share experiences and pleasures without any conscious inhibitions. They communicate their feelings perfectly and never give mixed messages. They live in the moment and carry very few pre-meditated agendas. My cats are in love and they don't even know it. Their consciousnesses have melded into one and at times I am sure that they are unaware of themselves. They exist somewhere in-between each other and float outside of themselves. They personify the perfection of unity.

Some days I wish I was one of them. To be able to bask in their tranquility without the markings of my own evolution.

Building 627

Building 627 - that's where THEY took me. I didn't want to go. THEY came and pulled me out of my world and put me into a nighmare. I was working things out, I was going to be fine. There was no reason for THEM to come.

I remember being able to feel safe in bed. I remember curling inta a ball and scrunching my eyes closed smiling inside because it was so warm and quiet. I didn't need anyone, I could keep myself company. There was nothing I needed and then THEY came and fucked everything up. If only people would learn to leave other people alone. Things would be so much simpler in life.

Now I'm stuck here and I will never get out. I have to spit pills in stranger's faces and act out to get any attention. The only time any of my family show up is if I throw some kind of fit. I guess they get a call when I do. I guess THEY think that if I have a tantrum it warrants a phone call to next-of-kin, whatever the fuck that means. It must be some sort of policy.

Then one of them shows up and THEY clean me and put me in a room.
"Why don't you just try to act normal?" my sister will say -
"Why don't you just settle down?" my dad will say.
My mom just cries and gives me a hug. All I want to do is go back to bed, back in my own apartment. I just want to go home and not bother anyone. Why is it such a crime to want to just stay the fuck away from people. If people would just leave me alone then maybe I could get on with my life. What's so wrong with not wanting to be around anyone else? What's so wrong with being creeped out by other people? Every time I deal with anyone I end up in some tourture chamber.
Building 627. That's what they call it.
"We're here to help you." That's what they say.

The Conversation - Secion Two

PERSON:
Yes things are going fine. I am totally starting to get my life together now, there are no more nightmares and most of the skin irritations have cleared up. I just wish I could get a handle on why you keep wanting to only meet me in public places. We never share any intimate times together any more.
Remember how we used to get into bed and cling to each other for dear life? Remember how you used to let me squeeze you around the waist until you could hardly breathe and I would cry for hours telling you about my shitty childhood? I really miss those times. The smell under the sheets because we wouldn't wash for days and then you would come over and we would have sex - just the way I liked it. I used to love the exotic challenge of tasting you and your dirty, dirty parts. It made me feel alive, I loved every second of you and I want it all back, every single bit of it. We really were so dirty together, it was great. I want things to go back the way they used to be. I want you to love me like you used to. Those were good times and I want them back.

WOMAN:
You want them back. You want them back. Well for your information I don't. I didn't come here to get back together with you, frankly I don't even know why I agreed to meet today. You didn't even by my lunch like you promised; you are so full of shit. And you sit here and smile at me grovelling like a whiny little schoolgirl. Fuck this shit I think I will go out and get fucked by a big biker-guy or some fucking brute with a big sausage-dick. Someone that can pick me up and spin me around, throw me down and just give it to me until it feels like I am going to completely rip apart. Yeah that's what I'm going to do.

Why don't you go take a fucking shower or something - maybe get yourself sandblasted - fuck!

remember things from my childhood that I wish I didn't. Like the time my cousine told me to stick my finger in the cigarette lighter of his father's car, the time I saw a cat buried beneath the hide of a dead calf pulling chunks of meat from it's decomposing body, the time my german sheppard puppy got hit by a car, the time I cut my leg on a wire of the fence at the zoo as I watched the squrrel monkeys play, the time my dad made me help him gut a deer that he shot and cut its throat and I watched die at my feet, the time my mom got drunk and spit blood in my dad's face, the time I watched a kid almost drown in a creek on the way to school, the time my cat got shot in the eye with a BB gun, the time we drove by a car accident and I saw a woman crying and picking teeth out of her unconscious husband's mouth, the time I had to help my dad kill chickens by holding their feet as he chopped off their heads with an axe, the time I fell into a pool at the Holiday Inn and sat at the bottom screaming under water, the time I cut a chunk of my knuckle off at the cottage carving a peice of wood, the time I go beat up at school, the time I saw a soldier pick up a man's head on the news during the Vietnam war, the time my grandfather made me help him cut horns off of the cows at the farm. There are more, but I can't distinctly remember them right now, but I am sure they will come back to haunt me, they always do.

The Conversation - Secion One

MAN:
Is everything ok you seem a little agitated. What's that look for are you feeling a little out-of-sorts because you fell this morning? I told you we should of taken you to the hospitial, do you want to go to the hospital? I don't understand you anymore, in fact I don't think I have ever understood you, are you listening to me? You hate me don't you, yes it's true why don't you just say it huh? I smell shit did you shit? I smell it for sure did you fart or something? It's so hot are you hot? I think that my balls are steaming it's so hot today, don't you feel hot? Oh we should of just stayed home and ordered in some sandwiches, sandwiches would of been nice for lunch instead of soup don't you think? The soup seems to have upset my insides, yes my guts are starting to churn are your guts rumbling like mine? Oh it really is so fucking hot I think I might just melt away, yes melt into a big puddle right here on this bench, will you mop me up if I melt right here in front of you? Oh I wish you would say something will you just say something?


WOMAN:
Yes it was me, I did shit my pants and I am quite happy to just sit here and cook in it, thank your very much.

Where are you going and why are you so tired?

I walked passed this man on Sunday and he was snoring loud enough to wake himself up. We were walking back to our car after spending the day at Harbourfront (Toronto). It was a good day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, there were people everywhere. This man has no idea that his image is on my blog. He most likely doesn't have a computer or has access to one. I bet he would be pretty mad if he knew I had posted him up here for all of us to see.

I wanted to take more pictures of him but I was nervous. Sometimes people will wake up if there are others around them - preying on them in some way. I think it is a defence mechanism. I have boldly shot photos of people sleeping on the streets and had them wake up and chase me violently. You think - sure like they're going to wake up and the wham they do. It scares the shit out of me. I saw this girl snapping photos of a man passed out on Bay and Yonge Street on Saturday. She was right up in his face and he was dead-to-the-world. I felt bad for the guy, and nervous for her. She looked like she was some sort of photo-vulture and it upset me a little - but then here I am the next day taking the above photo. I am such a hypocrite.

It would of been interesting to talk to the guy on the bench sleeping but there is no way to know anything about him. He is just a guy on a bench sleeping. For us he only exists here.