fast forward to 2012

I’ll keep things short. Or try to.

I went karaoke-ing with friends today. Much, much fun. Sang our hearts out, basically. Badly, but we fucking went for it. Wish there could’ve been more people, but then five felt about right. Went bowling after that. Much fun as well, and I didn’t finish last! Must try and improve my skills!

It’s kinda ridiculous how places like crazeecausa (or however the fuck you spell it) charge, what, RM30 for t-shirts which basically just consist of witty phrases written in (most probably) freely downloadable fonts. Haha. I will admit that some of said phrases are quite nice, though. I’d spring for the “don’t trust your girlfriend” one, but then I could probably ask my friend to print one of those phrases (in a font of my own choosing, since I’d be the one doing the “design” anyway) on a blank t-shirt, which would cost, what, RM10? Not even that? Hmm.

I went to Kino at KLCC yesterday. Got myself Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, the edition from Harper Perennial, which was cheaper than the edition I saw at MPH in OU by quite a bit. I’ve read it a bit, and it is quite fucked up. Quite, quite fucked up. My kind of book, definitely. Speaking of books, I came home today to find that my dear mother had bought lots of books at the MPH Warehouse Sale, including two Gaiman books (I seriously should finish Anansi Boys first, though… but then I could probably read through Fragile Leaves since it is a collection of short stories after all) and this nifty book about a firsthand experience of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath called Letters From the End of the World, written by Toyofumi Ogura.

I have to say that reading said book while listening to Envy is strangely fitting.

What was not fitting, however, was the breaks I took while reading that book to think of, oh God, this girl I kinda… yeah. Like. At the least, I want to get to know her better. Be friends, and stuff. What happens after that, well, God knows man. God knows. Perhaps, just perhaps, playing guitar does have its advantages (I’d explain fully, but there’s always the risk of…). Or not. Haha. We’ll see. Thinking about this stuff (and her, goddamnit) feels so wrong. But then it feels so right as well.

It seems like my habit for being overly negative about myself is very obvious. One of my friends, while in the car on the way back from KL, pointed out the fact that I always seem to talk shit about myself, which was then followed by everyone else in the car agreeing. I’ll be honest, I was surprised that she (and they) noticed and that she actually bothered to mention something. I didn’t want to talk about it though, so I asked that the topic be dropped. Which, thankfully, it was.

She did say I was a “nice guy,” though. Which I also didn’t really know how to react to.

I’ve been recieving quite a bit of positive comments lately but I still oddly feel negative about myself. What gives, man?

Exam on Friday. Haven’t studied~

january 2nd

Pull the shades, I’ll stay here in the dark tonight.
Because I’m afraid I might catch a glimpse of myself in the light.
I hate this fucking song, but I’ll turn it up if it keeps me from hearing what I have to say.
So I’ll tell myself that it’s all right, and I’ll be fine, but in the end, it’s all just lies.
Nothing’s all right, and I’m not okay.
So long I’ve burned the truth trying to make it right.
Tonight I’ll spark the flames just one more time.
Everything’s gone wrong.
And I know that it’s all my fault.

wenn nicht bist du draussen

I went to the dentist today. He took a quick (and slightly rough, if I may add) peek around my mouth and said that one of my teeth (the wisdom tooth that has been bothering me over the past week or so) is infected and that I’m going to have to be on medication (antibiotics, basically) for about a week to get rid of said infection. Nothing unusual, I’m used to popping pills for one ailment/condition or another. It was a quicker visit than I’d imagined, though. I stepped in, he asked me what was up, I told him, he poked around, said there was an infection and that he’d give me some antibiotics, told me to come back next week and then told me to wait outside.

Didn’t even take 5 minutes, I don’t think. Haha.

On the “books” front, I’m starting to get into Bruen’s Priest right now, and as far as my previous track record with Bruen’s books is concerned, expect me to make an entry in a couple of days saying that I’ve finished reading it and I enjoyed it greatly. It’s quite enjoyable so far, with Bruen’s typically tight and urgent prose as well as his sly/black sense of humour in full force.

Speaking of Bruen, I finished The Hackman Blues sometime last week. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Even though the book has probably one of the most unlikable set of characters to grace the printed page (no, they’re not “evil”, they’re plain unlikable), I thought it was a compelling read. Brady, the “hero” (who also happens to be manic depressive, gay and a tough guy prone to bouts of violence) slowly evolves throughout the book into a complex character, and actually becomes kind of likable by the end of the book. In a sense. And I like the ending. It’s not happy, it’s not cathartic, but it’s not actually depressing either. It’s… melancholy, I guess. Perhaps slightly on the “depressing” side but I use that term very, very loosely. It’s not an ending that anyone will cry over, for sure. But it’s a good ending, and perhaps quite fitting.

All the Bruen I’ve been reading makes me want to write, and write something that isn’t my typical story. Something… Bruen-ish. Something hard-boiled and violent, tense and gritty, dark and intense. And funny. But, man, I don’t know if I can. Not that I’ve tried, mind you. I should, but then there’s this whole self-doubt thing going on in my head and I really don’t know if I want to try. The fact that I haven’t exactly been blessed with ideas recently isn’t helping much either. I really should branch out, though, but then…

Pffht. Nevermind. If I can’t write then I’ll read and do other things. Sometimes I regret starting to write again, if only for the fact that I hate all the self-doubt and negativity I invariably feel about myself, my work and my ability/-ies.

I watched Dead Leaves yesterday, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Its visual style is unique and eye-catching and lends the movie its own quite unique style, it’s action packed and it’s also occasionally incredibly funny, what with having a character who has a HUGE drill (presumably, judging by the position on his body) in place of his cock. For example:

Should I kiss you first, or should I just stick it in?

I laughed so hard at that part. Seriously, though, it’s quite an awesome movie and a nice way to spend 50 or so minutes. Mental with a capital “M”, I’d say. Also, I should get around to watching Mulholland Drive, Visitor Q, Oldboy and This Is England soon. Work through my movie backlog and stop adding to it, you know. Which is funny, since I just finished downloading Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society today. I need a new, HUEG hard drive (like, 350 gigs or something). Now I know how people can fill up three 300 gig hard drives. Haha. It’s not impossible.

I’ve also been assaulting my eardrums with lots and lots of emo/screamo today, and the idea came to me of putting together a sort of e-mixtape of some of my favourite emo/skram tracks to alleviate my boredom, for random shits and giggles as well as to let some of my (more musically adventurous) readers find out what exactly it is that I listen to. Not that anyone would really care, but yeah.

make me believe

I noticed that I am always happier when I am out of the house. My worries seem to just dissapear and I find that I actually enjoy myself and enjoy being me, regardless whether I’m with friends or alone. I don’t exactly know why my mood often takes a turn for the worse when I’m at home, but I guess it’s something to do with being alone with my thoughts. But then, I’m alone with my thoughts when I’m out of the house, too, but I never really descend to the depths I do when I’m alone in my room. I don’t really know why it’s like that, but it is. And it distresses me greatly.

“Home is where the heart is”? More like “home is where I get depressed”. It may not seem like it, but right now I’m actively trying to feel — at the very least — somewhat ok but I can’t help but feel that I’m failing at it. But perhaps I should learn to stop giving in to my desires and live with this odd sense of emptiness gnawing away inside of me. Embrace it, in a sense. But I don’t know how that’d work, to be honest. But, perhaps, maybe I should stop whinging about it so much. Yeah. Just deal with it.

Speaking of which, I really do wish I could just not bother people with my shit all of the time, that I could somehow actually get a grip on myself and sort myself out without having to whinge about things to friends. I feel sick to my stomach every time I do that, but most of the time I just feel like I need to do that, for my own sanity. Preserving my own sanity but driving friends up the wall: awesome, why lie. I can’t help but feel that — regardless of what they say about it being ok — I’m being a huge, pathetic nuisance that they’d rather be without. Yeah, just goes to show you how much I actually trust them. Sorry guys. I’m a bad person. =/

Particularly high on the “annoyance” scale is my habit of sending text messages to people at ungodly hours of the night (like right now).

And that reminds me of something I’ve been thinking of recently. I can say I have (and had) great friends with whom I greatly enjoy hanging out and doing things, yes, but when I sit down and really think about it I feel this feeling of discomfort gnawing away at me when I begin to realize that I don’t really feel like I know any of them all that well. But, then again, you never really know anyone, do you? You just know the parts of them that they choose to show, the bits of their past they choose to unearth, the aspects of their personality that they allow to surface. But it still does bother me, though, to some extent, as I somehow, typically, feel that the problem is on my end.

I wish I could say that, regardless of everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph, at the very least I know myself, but as things are right now, I sometimes feel as much of a stranger to myself as they are. I don’t know what I feel, I don’t know why I feel whatever it is that I’m feeling, I don’t know what I want right now, I don’t know what I want from life, I don’t know what to do with my life. And then there’s the whole business of “goals” and “ambition” and things I never understood. I understand nothing at all of importance. Not even myself. Only useless things like subject-verb agreements, grammar (and even then, just barely) and various movie plots.

You know there’s something wrong with me when I keep digging this shit up just to torture myself more and more.

The real nightmare, ladies and gentlemen, is being depressed and awake at 3 in the motherfucking morning.

thanks for the gift, but it’s completely useless in my situation

I hate myself.

I hate myself for hating myself.

I feel useless. Inadequate. Not good enough.

I feel insecure.

I’m tired of being depressed. Tired of berating myself. Tired of demeaning myself.

I wish I understood all this shit. I wish I understood my feelings. The “why” and “what”, in particular.

I like other people but I can’t seem to like myself. This is brilliant, and is worthy of a few laughs while pointing at me and saying “what a useless little shit!”

I feel this odd desire to die.

sweet willy rollbar

I had written a long entry but it pretty much sucked total horse cock so I decided I’d just put this up instead.

I hate myself.

i’m clementine… no jokes about my name

This is probably one of the best things I have ever watched on TV, and certainly the only time in recent memory (aside from watching footy matches) that I’ve actually stayed in front of the TV for around 2 hours, through ads and all that shit. If TV3 and 8tv and whoever else showed more movies like this then the world would be a greater place, yes?

I thought it was a wonderful, wonderful movie. Sure, I will admit that perhaps it is slightly disorienting and confusing, but damn it’s just… great great great. It’s a mind-fuck, perhaps, but it’s also… beautiful, in a sense. It’s a mind-fuck with a solid emotional core. I thought it was beautiful, personally. Really, really beautiful.

Loved the visuals, as well. The effects (like the dissapearing text from the card as well as the dissapearing people at Grand Central Station), the nice usage of trompe-l’œil (the kitchen scene), the old film look during some of the scenes, the dissapearing cars and disintergrating beach house and all that. What really got me hooked, though, was the scene where time and perspective looped: the part where Joel was unable to get from one end of the street to another. If you’ve watched it, you know what I mean. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a mind-fucking scene. Truth.

The scene on the frozen river was great too, for different reasons altogether, as was the scene at the end of the whole disintergrating beach house thing. Just… goddamn.

I liked the dialogue and a lot of the lines, too. Particularly the lines in the final flashback/dream sequence at the beach. But overall the lines and dialogue were great, as well as the acting. I felt that Jim Carrey really pulled the character of Joel off well. Certainly not the sort of role you’d associate with him, eh?

This particular line of Joel’s made me smile quite a bit:

Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?

Oh God, ahahaha. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit!

You know there’s something about a movie if I take the time to wax lyrical about it like this and if I actually try and express my thoughts on it, because I am quite horrible at this whole expressing-my-thoughts-on-a-movie-or-book thing. Really. I never felt comfortable with it, which is why I didn’t say anything much for 5 Centimeters Per Second or even Paprika. But this time ’round…

Watch it if you haven’t. Which would be strange, since it’s been pretty much four years since this was released and it won Academy Awards and stuff. But, hey, I’m sure there are people out there like me who are horribly out-of-touch with the movie world, yes?

So, again: watch it.

(God I am horrible at this!)

all the footprints you’ve ever left and the fear expecting ahead

I actually finished reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch today, fittingly, in one day. And in one sitting, pretty much, although I did go from reading it in my room downstairs to reading it upstairs in my brother’s room while I occasionally glanced at him playing through Portal, which seems to be quite an interesting game. And not devoid of humour, too, if the final “boss battle” is any indicator of things.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Yes, it is short, but it’s also good. Quite good indeed. Really brings to life what a day in the Soviet work camps was like: the good and the bad, the savoury and the unsavoury, the hardships and the good bits. It’s all there, and is wonderfully presented. Recommended. Now, to find more books of his. After, of course, acquiring Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Kerouac’s On the Road. Those two take precedence over anything else I feel like I want to buy. Yes, even over Murakami.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this, so: I finished reading Camus’s The Plague as well a couple of days back. Certainly worthy of being called a “classic”. Great book. Very thought-provoking and presented some nice ideas but wasn’t actually preachy in any way. At least not to me.

Today wasn’t an especially good day. Had an exam in the morning, and it was probably one of my most unpleasant exam hall experiences ever. My nose was running 20 different kinds of marathons, my head hurt quite a bit, the dull ache in my mouth was still there and I really didn’t know what to answer for two of the questions. And probably screwed up a few more. All in a day’s work, I guess. Next exam’s on Friday, 2nd of May, and is my Introduction to Literature 2 exam. I still haven’t read Hamlet all the way through. Honestly I’m not that keen on Shakespeare. BLASPHEMY, I KNOW.

Spent the rest of the day listening to Spirit of Versailles (AWESOME) and doing nerdy customization work on my desktop. Lots of head-scratching and worried looks.

Cousins came over tonight, much noise ensued, watching various funny clips on Youtube (TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN~) and just cracking jokes and practicing for tomorrow. We’ll be jamming tomorrow, y’see, which will probably do wonders for my fingers but hey, I guess it’ll be worth some pain, as long as I can rock the fuck out. I’ll probably be on drums, which isn’t exactly my preferred role, if I may add, but I do have lots of fun banging on the skins. And it’s good exercise, too, in a sense, so it’s all good.

If there’s one good thing about today is that I somehow managed to get my mind off my current feelings of attraction, save for a very depressing about of it in the car. I’m going to give myself some time to get over this, and if I don’t then I guess something has to be done, regardless of what the outcome may be from said “something”. I don’t want to write any more about it here, so I guess I’ll just leave it at that.

And I really wish I could figure out why I keep putting myself down about everything. About studies, about my work (writing/music), about my personality, about my traits, about my trials and tribulations with attraction (I guess, for this, at least, I’m trying to get myself to just realize that it’s no fucking use feeling the way I do about someone when I’m so fucked up in the first place) and about how I’m going about things in general. As I’ve said before, life is good, but I am not.

Shit, why is it so utterly impossible for me to not write about this shit in one of my entries?

a series of shorts

I went to OU today. MPH had Burroughs’ Naked Lunch but I didn’t exactly have enough cash (I had already bought a book [more on that later] and a pack of strings). No Kerouac, though, which is slightly mystifying and annoying. I’ll check out Borders and Kinokuniya soon. Probably next week, if my condition doesn’t get any worse.

Every morning I wake up with my throat feeling that little bit worse and my nose feeling that little bit more blocked and my head hurting that little bit more. All in all I have this ominous feeling that I’ll end up feeling pretty crap soon.

I spent a lot of time at Pay Less Books at OU browsing. Was browsing their “classics” shelf and I came across Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which seemed interesting enough for me to want to buy it. Only RM3.90, so yeah. Awesome. I’ve read a bit of it, seems like a book I’d be able to get into.

Started reading Nicholas Blincoe’s The Dope Priest last night. I’ll probably enjoy it, if the awesome first chapter is anything to go by.

I want to join a writing group or something where people get together and critique each others’ shit. I’m sure it’d help me improve greatly as a writer, and that is one of the few things that I really, really want to do (aside from die, occasionally). But, uh, where? :confusedface:

I am attracted to someone, and I hate it. I wish I could say I hate her, but I can’t. This shit is making me feel utterly horrible sometimes and slightly uneasy most of the time. It’d be best for all involved if I got over this, but… uh… how? I don’t see an end to this.

So fuuuuuuuuck~

from here to eternity

I’m being annoyed by all manner of physical ailments. Most of my fingers hurt (although not as much now, thankfully), I have a couple of blisters in my mouth, one of my wisdom teeth is apparently not wanting to come out and thus occasionally presents me with huge, huge pain, my rash is still annoying me, my throat is sore and my head hurts.

Haven’t been feeling too good inside, as well.

If there’s one thing I truly, truly hate in this world, it would be attraction. No shit. I’d rather be without it right now. It’s never done me anything but harm and I just don’t want to feel it again. Not now, and sure-as-fuck not about this particular girl. It’s distressing, this whole “attraction” business is. Couple that with the fact that I am nearly always completely unable to actually get my mind off things, and it all becomes utterly brilliant.

I am utterly brilliant. Pfffffht.

And you know what really sucks? She’s been popping up in my dreams. Now, if they were nice/sweet/enjoyable dreams then it’d be alright, but every time I’m suddenly awakened from them (which happens around nine times out of ten) I instantly, and oddly, feel crappy. Like my heart’s dropped to my feet. And it makes me feel pathetic.

It’s slightly distressing, also, to know that I seem to be able to brighten up other people’s days with my words but not my own. I’ll be honest, there’s always this certain feeling of fakeness that crawls over me when I write or say those kinds of words. Like I’m saying things I don’t really believe in. Which would be true, to a certain extent. I do have hope and I do believe in Good Things, but most of the time I’m your average pessimistic depressed pathetic teenager who really needs a kick up the behind.

You’ll never catch me saying those kinds of things to myself, that’s for sure. For example, this:

…give it time and i guess things will perk up a bit, the sun will shine that little bit brighter and somehow things will feel right.

even if for a little while.

But, yeah, as long as it perks up someone’s day I guess it doesn’t really matter… or does it? Hm, I’m like a white mage who can only cast curative spells on other people, without anyone to cast them on me. And so I hurt.

(Ok, maybe slightly over-dramatic and not exactly accurate, but I thought it made good copy, okay)

Three exams down, two to go. Quite confident I did well on two of those three, but I’m not entirely sure if I did well enough. I’ve got one paper tomorrow, and then my final paper is on the next Friday, 2nd of May. Which is great, since I can go to the Art for Grabs thingy at CM Annexe without any sort of guilt or worry about upcoming exams. I’m probably going to be attending that lecture by Farish Noor (“The Lost Tribes of Malaysia” or something like that), which seems, and should be, very very interesting. Managed to get a friend to come along too, so it’s all good.

Looking forward to perhaps buying more books, movies, CDs and maybe even some fashion accessories (another cap? haha) and/or photos. And just walk around looking at stuff, relaxing. The Annexe is probably my favourite place in KL, you know. There’s just something I like about it, but I’m not entirely sure what.

You know what’d be nice? If I could actually get to know some people there and get some new acquaintances and stuff who actually, you know, share some interests with me? Yeah, that’d be very nice.