It’s past midnight, the sky is a light gray and a quiet rain acknowledges pedestrian faces every few moments. Three figures are standing at a table under a vinyl canopy, surrounded by people they will never see again. In the middle of the table sits a glass ashtray, surrounding it a mixed drink and a pint of Guinness for someone to cry into. One of them, standing behind the Guinness, is recognized to be Simon, a hopeless romantic in his own over-exaggerated way. He scratches behind his ear, almost elbowing a girl in a short red dress passing by their table in the process. He breaks the silence. “Have you ever been emotionally invested in someone?”

“Isn’t that what the sappy types like to call love?” From the dim neon light, a sandpaper voice and the end of a cigarette slowly glowing brighter. He was the reason the three were outside; a nicotine addiction that took root when it was cool to do so. It proved to be both magnetic and off-putting for the opposite sex. A paradox that is never acknowledged, never questioned. He is wearing a “Hi, my name is Marshall” sticker on the left side of a white shirt. The others presumed a pretentious attempt at irony, though Marshall had in fact gotten back from an ill-advised attempt at speed dating.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I mean.” Simon takes another gulp from the dry stout, holding back the urge to cough it up. He was never one for Guinness, and yet one had produced itself in front of him. “Have you ever found someone that was completely amazing, who just fills your mind to the point that you can’t think about anything else?”

“Seriously, that sounds like love.” A tall, capricious brunette who exuded a sultry charm that required years to perfect. Her style was impeccable, her standards unattainable, and yet she associated herself with a jaded, chain-smoking asshole and a hopelessly trepid romantic. If things were any more cliche, she would have found herself in a television melodrama or a piece of fiction.

“But it isn’t, Robin. It really isn’t, see? Because they’re too oblivious to tell, and you’re too bashful to say anything of it, so you settle for being the one guy that listens to her complain for a little bit, or talk about the latest happenings somewhere or another, without ever fully knowing whether or not she talks to anyone else the same way?” Simon slightly stumbles over the last few words, or at least, he seemed to do so within the realms of his mind.

“You switched from ’someone’ to ’she’. Obviously, you’re speaking from experience.” Marshall takes a five second drag, taps ashes loose from the end of his cigarette and steals various sips from Robin’s mixed drink. She slaps him on the arm, but does nothing more of it.

“Shush, let the kid speak.” Robin says, as she is hitting him. “He’s making a little bit of sense, for once.” She continues, acknowledging Simon’s tendency to ramble.

“I can’t even focus, anymore.” Simon takes another large gulp, before continuing on. “So many times I’ve met people, gotten to know them, and then come to the realization that I’m putting all of this effort into someone that doesn’t quite care as much as I do, acknowledge the fact, then continue to listen to them talk or complain or whatever until they fade out of my life. It’s not like I don’t want to create something more meaningful with that person, it’s just that there’s a wall in front of me erected by either her or my own neuroses. I want to walk away–every fiber of my being tells me that it’s absolutely pointless to even try, but I can’t. There’s something that’s telling me to keep going, even though she’ll just fade away, like all of the others. That’s what I mean by being emotionally invested in someone.”

“That’s… a pretty heartbreaking way to put it, Simon.” Robin, her eyes wide, finally says after a few beats of silence.

“It’s when you put all of your eggs into one basket, when you try your damndest to get to know someone, to sweep them off their feet, and actually start caring for them even though they don’t care much for you; that’s when it hurts the most.” Simon finishes, holding back the one thing people who are supposedly adults should never do in public.

“Oh, you have eggs. Ovaries, too.” Marshall quips.

Robin draws a black plastic cylinder from her drink, spilling drops of it onto the plastic table. There is a slight breeze, much like the calm before a duel in the Old West. “I will stab you with this drink straw, Marshall.”

The three share a laugh, the rain picks up and once again, the night returns to what all nights end up being.

Let’s start this off, shall we?

A penguin waddles across an icy iceberg in such tacitly tact way you’d think they were foolishly fooling you into thinking that it is way too cold to swim. It’s actually a few degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), so it isn’t too bad, there are fish aplenty within the deep blue yonder and yet all the penguin wants to do is stand, because, as we have mentioned before, it may be very cold. In fact, a few degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) is very cold. The penguin is faced with an option that is more human than penguin, really. Should it jump into the waters cooled by the icy iceberg, swim around for a little and find some sustenance for the rest of the day? Or should it stand still, stoically stowing away its remaining energy and keeping warm for a pretty indefinite period of time until another penguin waddles along with some surplus fish in its beak. The rift, it seems, is between the willingness to venture for more or settle for less. So the penguin stops, digs its little feet into the building snow (did I not mention it was snowing?) and uses all of the power in its frontal lobe (if penguins have one at all, I’m as of late ignorant in the ways of penguin anatomy) and tries to decide what the best course of action would be. What would the best course of action be? (Furthermore, why is this penguin adopting such human traits? Is it an evolved penguin, brought about after many genetic mutations over generations? Is it merely a terrible metaphor?) The desire for more fish or realizing that it is perfectly content with just sitting for a little while?

I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore (I rarely do, but this is beyond my normal realm of comprehension), so let’s change the subject. I haven’t been writing a lot recently, mainly because way too many unimportant things (and many important things, for that matter) have been clogging up the ol’ cerebral cortex recently. This isn’t saying that I haven’t had the desire to write, no, no, that remains the same. This is saying that all of those great ideas, all of those strong notions that suddenly crop up in the mind have gone by the wayside for other things. I don’t like that much (if at all).

Many, many apologies. I need to straighten things out within the whole mind thing.

I wrote this script almost a year ago thinking it would be a good way to get in some practice with directing actors, and filming lengthy dramatic sequences. Plus it seemed like good fucking idea. Unfortunately, it looks like it may never be produced do to my lack of 10 to twenty friends willing to sit around for nearly an hour pretending to be a crowd. So I figured I’d just share the script with you people. Enjoy.

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(The scene is one of Mr. Cross’ drama classes. The students appear to be bored as yet another one of their classmates is performing a monologue. The student is clearly acting their best but not doing a very good job despite this. Mr. Cross is one of the few watching this respectfully.)

STUDENT: (Trying to be as fully emotional as possible) …so…uh… Rick, he went outside to face them, “bang bang,” got show dead. (He attempts to well up tears but all he can manage is to scrunch up his face a little bit.) He was my best friend and I lost him to gang violence. (The boy returns to his normal state, believing he did fine.) That’s it.

CROSS: (Clapping politely) That was good, Jorge. (All applaud routinely, giving no trace of emotion except utter apathy and boredom. Roy, however, simply laughs in amusement at what was just presented. Mr. Cross makes a note of something in his gradebook, sets his pencil down and looks across the class.)

CROSS: So, let’s take a look at what he could have done better.

ROY: Everything. (The students react in various ways, many laughing. Mr. Cross is not amused.)

CROSS: Do you care to elaborate, Roy?

ROY: Sure. His emotions seemed fake, the emphasis he placed on a lot of lines were out of synch with the character and he was over-acting.

CROSS: Over-acting?

ROY: Yep.

CROSS: Well, that settles it. You’re up next.

(Roy looks up, shocked. After a few seconds, he rises reluctantly and takes a chair to the stage. He sits down and looks to his classmates with fear in his eyes. Cross urges the boy to go on. Roy looks back to the crowd for a moment before closing his eyes. When he opens them the fear is gone. He is in into character. The monologue begins. At first a lot of comic delivery is presented but there comes a point when the audience realizes that they are viewing a very complex dramatic piece.)

 ROY: We met in October about a year ago. I didn’t really talk to him all that much in the first few months. He was an odd looking fella. The dude had some really scruffy brown hair, funny arms. He was really tall for his age. Like 6’3” at fourteen years old and he wasn’t proportioned well at all. Lanky arms and legs with this broad torso. I don’t mean to sound shallow but I just didn’t want anything to do with him at the time. When we got our first class together in January, we really hit it off though. The guy’s name was Alex. We had so many things in common. Still loving the Power Rangers. We were into the classic animes of the ‘90s like Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Stars and indie films like Donnie Darko and Brick. Alex would always do the craziest things though. He had these catch phrases laced with innuendo, like “Supersize me!” and “Black snakes make white girls scream.” There were these times when he’d run down the hall and start to slide on his belly but he’d always land on his hip and limp for the rest of the day. Alex would swear never to do it again. A week later he was back at it… What happened to him? He was a magician; vanishing without a trace… Okay. There was this situation with a couple of girls at a dance. He liked them both but he only ended up dating one. You can imagine how it made the other feel. Alex was a real idiot for being so nice and leading that other girl on the way he did with all the notes they had me transferring and those private talks in the hallway. I thought it was definitely the strangest thing he ever did. Stranger was what happened after that… At lunch one day, the eighth grade dean came and took Alex to the office. My other friends and I thought nothing of it ‘cause he’d skipped a lot of classes. Later I asked the dude what it was about. There was a drained looked in his eyes, like a rodent paralyzed and ready to be swallowed. That girl who he’d rejected and continued to be so kind to have disappeared. She had become a ghost, not there but her hand having an affect on us all. The next day, Alex’s eyes were more shocked than before. He’d been told that the girl’s mother still hadn’t seen her. Then he told me something he told no one else… She’d said to him that if she didn’t show up to school the next day she was dead. That she’d killed herself. My friend. He’didn’t take her seriously at all. Who could blame him with all the emo kids today that talk about this shit nonstop? I couldn’t. But when he disappeared, I had to worry. I was so afraid that this happy go-lucky guy had finished himself off too. I got to be really depressed for a few weeks and then he shot an e-mail my way. All that had been weighing my soul down seemed to drop as I was able to write to this guy and tell him how scared and angry and happy he’d made me… You could tell something was different though. As we increased the length of our conversations his lack of hope and overwhelming amount of sorrow became more apparent. The things he’d say had become so dark that I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him how much he scared me and that if he kept talking like that we were just… done. The last message he sent to me said, “Signing out…” We never spoke again. I moved on with my life thinking I wouldn’t care about it after a month or two. Well, I’d stopped caring… about everything. It was alright by me. I became the class slacker that I’d always wanted to be. Nobody else seemed to enjoy the change as much as I did so they sent me here. (He begins to laugh hysterically as he speaks, his voice gradually intensifying.) You wanna know the screwy thing? We never did find out what happened to the girl. Nobody did.

(The boy continues to laugh, gradually falling into a silent sob, almost inaudible but the tears visible. Roy’s eyes close for a moment and when they have opened he’s broken character. The boy looks up at his classmates frightened at what their reactions might be. At first the crowd is speechless but soon they begin a massive applause. A timid smile spreads across Roy’s face. He looks to Mr. Cross who claps with a proud grin on his face and the boy knows that he has done well.)

Ridiculum is the noun form of ridiculous that I just now invented.  This is because I’ve decided that the word ridiculousness is just ridiculous; and ridiculum sounds much cooler.  So take that, Merriam fucking Webster.

Aside from my current state of experiencing ridiculum…

Actually that’s pretty much an accurate way to label all that is going on.  Applications, work, school, art, and bullshit.  Lots of it. 

<unrelated>Mr. Bill’s neck is breakable.</unrelated>

All around her was gray, and brown, and a dirty color that might have once been called green. A car alarm was going off, somewhere to her right.

Molly looked down and frowned as sticky sweetness dripped onto her hands. That was no good, letting the wonderful treat waste away. She so rarely got something like she was holding in her hands – a rainbow Popsicle, to be precise – and she wanted to savor every drop.

She glanced up as another car alarm went off, this one right in front of her, and was rewarded with the whole Popsicle sliding off.

Molly glanced at the sticky stick. The newly-colored ground. The car.

Reaching a decision in no time at all (in the true fashion of young children everywhere), Molly threw the stick at the car and was rewarded with a startled look from the robber pillaging the rickety old thing.

Molly giggled, then frowned as she realized her Popsicle was still on the ground.

She looked at it again, a rapidly melting blot of color on the dirty expanse of gray concrete, totally out of place in her world of grungy grays.

Molly promptly burst into tears.

Completion of assignments and the boredom that occurs when this happens has prompted me to spend my time in Web Mastering making little logos for TSILB.

Sorry if it’s a bit sloppy, I made it quickly during pauses in note taking.

Also, this is entirely unrelated, I just clicked paste and this is what appeared:

“You made an excellent impression in your interviews. The executive editor and I agreee that you are perfectly qualified for the job and would be a great addition to our staff. Therefore, we are delighted to offer you the position of Copy Editor in our Editorial Department at a salary of $3,000 per month, based on a 40-hour work week.”

Interesting, isn’t it?  Makes me very curious about what the story is behind this.

“My shirt smells of her perfume.” Simon tells Tim, in reference to what had happened only minutes before. The scent mingles with the threads of his cotton shirt, reminding him of a field of flowers, or something as adequately cliché.  “It’s slightly nauseating but I don’t really mind.”

“Oh god. Not this again.” Tim responds. Not this again indeed, for Tim had witnessed the event many times before. Simon, on the borderline between emotionally unstable and entirely too emotional for his own good, often found himself engaging in elaborate imaginations of romances with those that were too good for him, those that he was too good for, and those who, despite the best of his abilities, he could not resist wanting to take to at the very least, dinner. The girl who had just left, the one who so carelessly gave Simon a final embrace before leaving to parts unknown, whose perfume smelled of a field of lilacs, was in a category of her own. She was, in essence, the one that got away, the one that was never meant to be, the one that broke his heart to tiny enough pieces that he has yet to put it back together. The one that caused him to be the effusive, overtly emotional persona that Tim had grown accustomed to. Tim gestures Simon to return to the green vinyl booth of an all-too-familiar bar.

“What does that say about the situation?” Simon muses. Tim began the process he always does. A swig of whiskey, a breath of air, and a truth masked in an insult.

“It could mean that even though you find her at least somewhat insufferable, very insufferable, even, you still long for her presence, even when you two just said goodbye. Like, not even five minutes ago. It’s either that, or you like wearing women’s perfume.” Just as before, just as he always did. Things had gotten mundane, it seems, for the pair.

“Asshole.” Simon retorts. “This is why I don’t talk to you about these things.” There was nothing more that Simon wanted than to return to a time of perhaps not-empty flirtations between him and the girl, before the times when his overly paranoid self was kicked into an overdrive driven by the desire to not get crushed again. Before her person changed within the span of a stairwell and whatever was between her and Simon was crushed to smithereens, ashes falling ever so lightly from the cigarette of someone smoking a cigarette on the roof of an apartment building. Maybe she had changed, maybe they could return to being perfectly fine with sitting on a worn leather couch watching whatever was on TV. It was too late for that, now. Simon snaps out of his trance with a sip of Chardonnay. He could muse on the subject for hours, left unchecked.

“At least one of those points was valid, though.” Tim shoots back, his wit a revolver and his statements the bullets. There was caring behind the words, hidden amongst the jackassery that psychologists would call a defense mechanism. “Judging by your past and my knowledge of your personality, and the fact that you’re drinking white wine of all things, I can only assume it’s the second.”

“Jackass.”

Here is a list of things I must complete today and tomorrow:

• My YoungArts application
• The rough draft of a College Application paper
• A seven foot tall sculpture that is due tomorrow (I’m still constructing the armature)
• A proposal for an installation
• And applications for Cornell, Cornish, PNCA, AIB, MCAD, KCAI, UT, and Corcoran.

Out of this, I have completed:

• The first half of my YoungArts application

It’s become apparent that I’ve got my work cut out for me.   I think it’s time I dropped from the social scene.  It’s happened before but usually as part of a punishment for procrastating to a point of extreme detrimentality.  So of course, out of naturally occuring rebellion, I continued to procrastinate during those periods of isolation.  But now it is time for a self-imposed isolation.  A holy-shit-I-need-to-get-stuff-done-and-I-just-don’t-have-the-time-for-anything-else  kind of isolation.

Here is a list of things I need to do in order to get everything done:

• Cancel weekend plans
• Change availability hours so I’m not closing on weekdays
• Cut back on the pot
• Actually do work

The world was black and green and white, and Nita was laughing for the first time in weeks. When she realized this, and realized that Kit must have been planning this whole thing for nearly as long as she hadn’t been laughing, she was startled into more jubilant laughter and the beginning of tears.

They were running, leaping, stumbling, all from their haste, and it was the best damn adrenaline rush Nita had ever had, even after the past few years fighting ambivalence and evil. No Powers That Be right behind her, no twisted cabs hunting her, no sharks after her flesh.

No racing against the clock.

Nita glanced at Kit, grinned even harder at the sight of him, all sweat and smiles and pure joy.

It was ecstasy.

Then another one fell, closer this time; the white streaked across the ink dark sky, burning afterimages into their eyes and outshining even the brightest of stars far above them. For once, Nita didn’t pause to wonder what the stars were or how far away they were or how tight the Lone Power’s grip on those far-away worlds was. Her attention was on the brilliant light of the burning meteorite, the jubilant aura emanating from Kit, the tears of joy and receding pain carving paths down her flushed face.

Nita laughed again, allowed the feeling of simple joy to envelope her, made a mental note to thank Kit profusely.

In the meantime, they had a falling star to catch.

The night sky watched them, the stars the lone witnesses to their momentary happiness, and in a world much closer to the heart of time, someone smiled.

Another product of my English class. No offense meant to either gender.

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For more than seventeen years, I’ve been around women and I’ve yet to understand how their minds work. From daycare on I never could comprehend the origins of their fascinations with clothes, jewelry, and make-up. However, the subject that has managed to keep me particularly curious through the years has been their uncontrollable fascination with men, rivaling and possibly surpassing the one which men hold for women.

            To some degree I can understand this bewitched state of mind; their have been times when I myself was taken aback by the elegance of what I believe to be the fairer of the two sexes. Still, while I have been tempted to begin pursuit based solely upon that factor I have yet to be drawn in fully by such intoxication. For a long period, I could not bring myself to understand what it was that drew the women I knew in so easily that somehow managed to elude me all of these years.

            Charm.

            It stemmed from something girls I’d known for years had continuously said when I commented on my dissatisfaction with their choices in men. “You don’t know what it’s like when you like someone that much.” They were right; I had no idea what it was like. In most cases, I was in lust with a woman so I never went farther than a couple of brief conversations leading me to realize how dull she actually was. It was a very different experience for my friends though. I’d heard of or known many guys who had perfected the alluring qualities necessary to catch and keep kind-hearted naïve girls. At a time in which I was far younger, I had aspired to be like one of those guys. I was born with sufficiently good looks, could easily enough hide my insecurities with a charming smile and pre-existing witty dialogue, and at such a young age I didn’t need much money to pass for a reasonably classy person.

            Yet, as time went on and I began to see the emotional impact that such actions could have on others, I no longer desired to be that way. As many girls as I had met who were quite content in a serious relationship, there were at least five others who had been in many unsuccessful ones and continued to boldly say to any younger girl they wished to mentor, “You will never find a really nice guy.” With all of the selfish men I had seen in the world, I was beginning to further understand their point of view and see the origin of that catchy phrase, “Gay, straight, or taken.” However, just as I had so many times before, I found another flaw in the argument.

            I’ve looked around myself numerous times in the past years trying to examine why I wasn’t taken. In more recent times, many women had considered that I was the type of guy who was very nice, handsome, and considerate. I’d already resolved with myself that I would never be unfaithful to the woman I was with under any circumstances, having seen the other end of such break-ups constantly with the women I cared about. With all of this in mind, was I not worthy of being one of those taken? Thinking more extensively about all the nice single guys I knew, I had to wonder if they were not worthy either?

            As time continues, I cannot bring myself to believe that women (or at least the women I know) are foolish. In many cases, they’ve made far wiser decisions than I or any other male I’ve met would have made. Certainly, if they are intelligent enough solve problems in the relationships of their friends, they are intelligent enough to solve their own. These days, I’m beginning to think that it isn’t the women who are at fault with the choices they make in these situations, for we are all deceptible to the impact emotions have on our judgment. The answer lies in the men. In reality, as men we are not nice enough, handsome enough or considerate enough. It may even be that we are too nice and considerate, and despite all their complaints, women actually want a guy who isn’t always going to be there for them. In the eyes of women, the good guys aren’t always good guys, the bad guys aren’t always bad guys, and nice guys are rarely the right guy. The truth of the matter is that the “ideal man” is only as good as we think he is.