Been ages and I'm unemployed, so hey:

The first five people to comment in this post get to request a sketch of a character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their drawing ability level. If you absolutely can't draw, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to offer drabbles or icons or something instead.

Go for broke.

The subject pretty much says it.

So I went online the other day to buy a hookah off ebay.

I found a hookah I liked from a store I trust and bought it. I went to pay with PayPal.

Turns out that a certain wonkiness with buying my phone left $170 in my PayPal account. I was understandably shocked and went through the transaction history to make sure it was really my money. It was. It also explained why I was more broke than I anticipated being after I bought it.

So, with $120 of free money to blow, it was time for an ebay shopping spree. I came out of it with a new, really nice laptop bag, a beginner's keyboard (as I've been wanting to learn to play piano for ages) and a pair of spats, those awesome white foot coverings that gangsters and the Joker wear. They're costume-quality, which isn't saying much, but genuine ones are harder to find and more expensive.

This was the only good thing to happen to me lately. My more-on-than-off-again ladyfriend of more than a year left for Spain four months ago. We had been talking about moving up to Denver and getting a place together. She got back a few weeks ago and, though we talked a lot during her trip, something was definitely different. I'd lay with her and think, with nothing specific to draw upon, 'this isn't going to last much longer.'

When I expressed this to her, she effectively told me I was right. It figures that I finally found someone in this town that is amazing and who I really connected to and then something random comes along to fuck it all up. I spent some time in Europe and I know what a shock it can be to someone who is effected strongly by new experiences. I didn't want her to go but definitely couldn't say so, because I figured something along these lines would happen.

We haven't really talked it out yet, but I can pretty much guess how it'll end and that has caused me an incredible amount of sadness in the past few days.

On top of that, I got a call from my parents letting me know that our phone bill this month was $450 because AT&T likes to dick you over and not tell you. My new phone has a full HTML browser and push email service. Basically, AT&T signed us up for an iphone plan and didn't bother to tell us. Nor did they bother to ask if we'd maybe like a bandwidth plan. I thought we already had one. We did not.

My best friend (and former roommate and current neighbor) called me yesterday to tell me that he'd gotten a girl pregnant. This is a man who literally has sex maybe twice a year. He's also a conservative and the leader of the College Republicans--in the state of Colorado. Not knowing what else to do or say, I facilitated his desire to get ridiculously drunk. I skipped rehearsal to do so--something I've never done before.

However, the show I'm in makes me want to go back in time and pass on it. It's not good and it's not fun. I take that back. It is good--in a way. It's silly, inane, rather unintelligent humor throughout. It's the same cheap jokes this theatre company has been relying on for years and it's really starting to wear on me. After you play a few really challenging roles you start to feel like you're growing out of the silly absurdist stuff except for when it's really good.

Eugene Ionesco is really good. So is Alfred Jerry, the author of the plays that our current production is based off. However, this adaptation is killing my head. It's too long, too ambitious, and too unintelligent. We've got a cast and crew of pretty much everyone in the theater program directed by the least organized and focused director in the whole program. He's got great ideas but can't manage to keep track of and execute most of them with any amount of success. This is distressing for an actor and a director to have to witness without the ability to really help matters.

I feel like I'm wasting my time with pretty much everything I'm doing right now. I love loving people and the one person that I love the most is pushing me away. I love being in theatre, but I don't love doing things that aren't good and aren't challenging. My character is two-dimensional and boring, as are most of the characters. The political commentary is taken out of the 2004 playbook and the social commentary is thrown at you with the force of Thor's hammer and hits about as hard as a pillow in a sorority pillowfight.

Working at a student job at a university seems a universally unfulfilling place to be and I've still got a fucking year before I can get on with my life.

All of this has pretty much culminated in the time following the stroke of midnight on the 1st. It has been a terrible start to the New Year. I can only hope that it goes up from here.

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Edge Pull
Karen Farbridge

1. Carlos F. Borcosque
2. Nameplate
3. St. Mary's Orphanage & Day School, Dum Dum
4. Metamorphism
5. Hieronim Jarosz Sieniawski
6. Rock Me (Platnum album)
7. Bhiwani
8. Palompon, Leyte
9. Laramie High School (Wyoming)
10. Gen Nishino
11. Thurston Bay Marine Provincial Park
12. U-Tapao International Airport
13. Hurricane Deck, Missouri
14. Fenland
15. Detlef Kästner

Must be a concept album, because there are a lot of strange places and interesting names and very few concepts and ideas.

SA goons: finally updated to platinum. Give me screen names, please.

Question for the SA goons out there:

Is a platinum membership worth it? Is there any point in spending $10 to PM someone and search the fourms?

One of the things I've taken up since I moved in with my new roommate is shooting guns. I've never really been big into it, and had (and still have) no real intention of purchasing any. Even still, sometimes it's fun to go out to the range and let off a hundred shots. It's empowering and good to know that I'll know what to do if I need to pick one up and start shooting.

Sometimes, however, you learn what not to do. We grabbed his dad's old .308 hunting rifle–with scope–and twenty rounds, along with the 100 rounds apiece for his Beretta .40. Off we go. Now, I'd never fired a rifle with a scope. He fired off a few rounds and I was pretty surprised at the sound the thing makes. It was intense.

So it's my turn. I sit down and line up the scope. It keeps blurring out on me, so I'm constantly adjusting to try and find the clear line. Incidentally (and thankfully) I remove my sunglasses so I can see better. I line up on the target, breathe in, hold it, and squeeze.

My face immediately starts hurting like hell, and then there's moisture dripping off my nose. Yep, I was an idiot and didn't take the impressive kick into account, and the scope went right into my head. So far into my head, I found out later, that it tore into the fascia lining my skull. First thing I think is "ouch," naturally. Second thing is "fuck, I'm bleeding." Third thing I think is "I hope this doesn't fuck up my acting career." Fourth thing I think is "please take pictures."

We get some pictures (to be developed later) and the range marshal comes over. We have a first aid kit and he used to be a nurse and EMT, so he bandages me up good after getting the bleeding stopped. We head down to the hospital, where I get three internal stitches and eight external.




She's a beauty, isn't she? 3cm, according to the doctor's notes. I'm actually kind of proud of it, despite the stupidity of what caused it. Everyone can appreciate a good face scar.

Why do I even have an MSN Messenger account anymore? I never use it. Hell, on those grounds, why do I even have an AIM account?

So it's summertime and I've (as you may have read) taken to a new summer schedule: work, drink, sleep, repeat. This has proven to be something of a convenient summer ritual. I have nothing to study for and not a whole lot really going on personally or at work, so being a bit fatigued and getting too little sleep doesn't effect things in really noticeable ways.

However, last night was goddamned ridiculous. I played beer pong with my local brewery's Warning Sign Ale--a beer that is twenty-three percent alcohol. I was severely intoxicated before we played that particular game, and by the end of it, I was so tremendously hammered that I really can't imagine that I am capable of being awake even now. In addition, I had the band of my underwear forcibly pulled up onto my head and then ripped off and made into a headband. We are strange people.

Not only that, but I'd mentioned to the brewery's owner that I am not good with whiskey and that whole line of drinks. Scotch, bourbon, cognac--they all sort me out quick. I've yet to have even a single shot of whiskey without vomiting shortly after.

It was immediately following the beer pong game that the owner and bartenders offered to "bring me into the Arctic family" (Arctic being the name of the brewery). I have no idea what that means, but at the time it seemed fantastic. These are my drinking buddies and they do often supply me with free beer.

The caveat to the invitation was taking a shot of Jack Daniel's and then running a lap around the block. It took about fifteen seconds (in drunk time, so who knows how long it really took) for me to settle myself on the task, drop the shot, and haul ass around the block. I must be in better shape than I thought, because even stumbling drunk I practically sprinted--and didn't vomit. I was hardly breathing heavier.

It was a weird night to be at Arctic.

I eventually shoved a finger down my throat to induce vomiting because I felt nauseated but knew that I wasn't going to vomit, especially once I calmed down. I didn't want all of that alcohol coursing through me all night. Unfortunately, when I vomited, not a whole lot came up. I tried three times and got out an irrelevant amount of regurgitate.

As a result, I woke up this morning hung over for the first time in four years. It is the second hangover of my life and I wasn't altogether pleased with it. I tried to sleep in and kill some daylight--and spare myself the pain in the process--but only managed to sleep an hour and a half.

It wasn't until 5:45 this evening that I got any sort of analgesic relief--my coworker had some Aleve, which has made the headache fade. People who have known me long know that I am resistant to taking painkillers for normal pain. However, I get headaches maybe three or four times a year. I don't know how to deal with that sort of pain. Thus, Aleve, and peace for the first time all day.

These are the days of my life.

I'm going to drink a lot of vodka in a few moments and then come back to this. My thoughts are too convoluted and jumbled around one another at the moment. I'd like to get to a point where I don't realize this and simply write it all down.

We shall see. I'll be right back.

And back I am. Found a Diet Rockstar in the fridge from a month ago, from moving into this place. Rockstar and vodka go rather well together, just as vodka and I work out rather efficiently. I wish some amount of hard liquor mixed well with black coffee, but I am not so lucky. As much as I love Bailey's, it isn't going to work out in the way I want it to.

The past few weeks have been filed away on the lower echelons of the scale of good times. It might even be passable to say that they have been unpleasant times, all things considered. I have felt a change in me that is a long time coming, and I'm not entirely confident of what to make of it.

I would like to say that my continued excursions into the stupor provided by alcohol have a concrete origin, but that would be erroneous. The Civil War wasn't just about slavery, World War I wasn't just about some Austrian royal being shot, etc. There are causes that contribute and there are catalysts, but never one supreme origin to any conflict, large or small.

Contributions: Katrina soon departing and everything that is thrown into confusion and all the despair that comes with the dread of her leaving. Arielle up-and-downing every week, bringing yet more confusion and, ultimately, a very familiar disappointment. My best friend abandoning me for a woman, deciding that I am no longer necessary and so severing me from his life like an appendix removed as a preventative measure. Michelle Mullenax's strange and erratic behavior--talking to me, ignoring me, then telling me to text her, then talking to me briefly and ignoring me once again--without explanation, rhyme, or reason. The upheaval caused by moving away from dear friends and moving in with another dear friend. As awesome as James may be, leaving the house I lived in was a heavy sacrifice and something that will take a lot to equal.

Catalyst: Katrina deciding that the entirety of our...whatever it is/was can be thrown away on a whim, because that's what the moment seems to call for. A small argument leads to her pushing me away, as has happened so many times before. The last straw, as it were. Don't get me wrong--I love the woman to death. However, there are things that have happened to me that make my tolerance for such things very thin. Even in the face of that, I like to think that I tried very hard to make things work for us. You don't offer to move in with a woman unless you mean it, unless you want it. Granted, that would come after her return from Spain, and as such is as up in the air as anything. People change a lot in four or five months, let alone four or five months in a foreign country. Even still, I meant it then. I'd still do it now, but I think that the world will not work out that way. I have to accept this and hope that I am wrong.

This is a transitional period--no, that's a lie. That's what I say to justify the changes in myself that I'm not altogether satisfied with. I have spent a good amount of my adult life criticizing my actions at every turn, just as I have spent a good time noting the trend toward alcoholism in my family and my efforts to avoid it. Now, however, I am criticizing less and drinking far more. I have long felt that I was fifteen years older than I really am--I felt like a thirty year old for a long time. This was all a misunderstanding with myself.

I have not felt thirty. I have felt like a much too self-aware human being and confused it with maturity. I realize my faults--that does not make me mature. I realize my failings and my triumphs and all the fucked up things I do. This, too, does not make me any more mature. Realizing that you constantly become more heartless and then slowly breaking out of it just to drop right back into your former ways is not a sign of maturity. Dropping further into your apathy every time is not mature, either. Becoming more and more the things you hate is not mature anyway.

Understanding why people that you hate are the way they are, or at least one possible reason for it, may well be. Probably not, but I remember that I'm 22 and my perspectives on such matters are bound to be somewhat naive and narrow. I go with what I have.

The simple fact of the matter is that I'm not a very happy person. I don't think I really ever have been. I may be a smart person. I may be clever. I may be witty and humorous and playful and willing to take a joke. I may also be all of these things because I don't care enough to be disturbed by things. I'll be the brunt of my own jokes. I'll take anything with a smile and a laugh. These things do not make one happy.

I am an introvert. I am afraid to expose myself. Granted, anyone who has been around me for the past couple years knows that I am completely comfortable exposing myself outwardly--one doesn't get onstage in front of strangers in their birthday suit or go down a slip-and-slide naked at a party without a certain amount of exhibitionism. However, this is not nearly as dangerous as exposing oneself emotionally--everyone has seen a penis. Mine is nothing special. I'm not worried about it.

But not everyone has seen into someone's heart. What someone percieves of me--love and admiriation or loathing and fear or anything at all, really--is inconsequential. The fear is derived from the sheer fact of knowing--someone has seen into what I am. When one is as self-loathing as I am, allowing anyone to see into that is a gift and a curse.

That is why Katrina is the catalyst: she has seen and I have no ability to control that knowledge or the consequences of it. She's simultaneously present and distant, here and already gone. I have opened myself up to someone who may soon become someone different, but someone know will always know who I am deep down inside--and that can lead to beautiful and/or dangerously hideous things. I must admit fear that she might return and find me substandard, even loathesome. This frightens me, because I am much more fragile and sensitive than I like to let on. She, more than anyone I can think of, could exploit that and make me even more of a train wreck.

I am a very frightened and insecure person.

I can only hope that my friends are truly friends and the people that claim to love me--romantically or otherwise--truly do. I question such things, possibly in immaturity and foolishness, far too often for my own good. I can only do what I can to make myself happy, somehow. I can only leave it all up to fate that everything and everyone are as they appear to be.

I should stop rambling now. I have lost track of my own points and am now dropped back to a point where I can no longer keep my thoughts in line. Perhaps I will read over this tomorrow and see where I was going and what I meant to say. Until then, I know that I am incredibly whiny and probably overly analytical of the seemingly mundane details of my life.

For the record, if you're concerned for my well-being and the like, don't be. If you're concerned for me at all, the best thing you could do for me is buy me a pack of cigarettes. I could use them and the two dollars and miscellaneous change sitting on my table would be grateful.

Greg out.