Entries this day: AM Dan Phat_Farm_storytime orwell zzz

AM

3:45pm JST Thursday 1 January 2004

Woke up around 2pm. Ate eggs that I cooked and some spinach that I bought. Painted a bit on my painting.

Dan is watching _Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels_ which is more violent than I remembered and more violent than I want to watch right now.

Four more days of no Nova.

Dan

6:49pm JST Thursday 1 January 2004

Dan and I walked around Tsunashima, contemplating life and looking for his bike and buying chocolate.

I'm still looking for my life purpose, and he is still looking for his bike. Difference is that his bike was taken from him the day he bought it and my life purpose has never been for sale nor found.

I seem to lose passion for everything that I start. (*) Each relationship, each job, each project... It's a struggle to finish things that are finishable and a struggle to keep doing things that have no clear ending. And things (marriage, kids) that seem like they'll last forever, I'm quite loathe to start at all.

Tonight, I have started importing pictures from my camera. These are, mostly, pictures from yesterday (dammit I have no picture of me and Karen) at Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, including a lot of fish type things.

Grr. I hate how fucking slow iPhoto is. Each operation takes like 15 seconds to do. I don't know how to make it not open all my photos at once; there are 3304 in my library now, and it seems to put a thumbnail of all of them in RAM which of course slows it down, but which of course I don't need to fuck with all of them at once.

That's one reason I don't have a million pictures on my site; it takes so long to jack with them and do things like change the filename, rotate the image, write a memo about it. Grrr.

(*) for the record, as I type this, I'm not in a bad mood, but I wonder if it could turn bad by focusing on it. I'll keep an eye on that.

7:23pm

Fuck a duck man. It takes like (**)

(**) 9:44pm. So sidetracked here that I don't remember my train-of-thought that I was on when writing.

Oh, images. It takes way too long to fuck with these images. Like 20 seconds for it to save 50 to 100 bytes of notes.

Sidetrackification:

I'll post images from yesterday on my site.

Hey, I should tell the story of how I got my Phat Farm hat. (one of the pictures includes it)

I'm tired of writing the story; I think I'll work on my painting.

"Haha hey Dan, this color is called PHTHALOCYANINE GREEN."

"How do names like that get in the dictionary?"

"I dunno; writers write them."

"Have you seen Orwell's essay on making a cup of tea?"

"No."

"Have you seen Orwell's essay on why he writes?"

"Now that one I'd like to read."

Orwell says there are four reasons to write: 1) ego (that's me). 2) archiving history (that's me). 3) aesthetics (that's sometimes me). 4) political persuasion (that's rarely but sometimes me).

Hey here's an essay on autobiographies. Hey, he says all biographies lie. Mine lies. It's time to reveal more about myself. I've got to be different. To be better. Aries.

Phat Farm storytime

7:33pm JST Thursday 1 January 2004

Some weeks ago I was in Cinecitta while Miki was in her flute lesson. A guy was on the street handing out flyers for his hip hop clothing store. That was the day I hurt my wrist falling off my bike due to my umbrella engaging the front wheel and I was walking around looking for a Vodafone shop to have them replace my broken phone. When I walked back by the guy, he was all, "hey man, how's it going, lemme show you what we got."

And he led me to (*)

(*) it's 8:58pm; I've been well distracted in the middle of the story. And I'm not done being distracted yet.

10:03pm

And he led me to their little store about 50 critical feet off the main walking drag. Expensive jackets, pants, shirts, shoes that I would never wear.

"Man... I'm not cool enough to wear any of this.. I'm way too white."

"You can wear it mon."

Accent from Jamaica.

It was kinda hard for us to communicate (seemed to me); he seemed to mumble, and I seemed to be white and felt out of place.

I didn't want to leave empty handed; I simultaneously wanted to prove that I was cool, that I could afford it, and to help his shop. What could I wear in here?

"Lemme see your hats."

He showed me to some pimp Gilligan looking hats and I was like, "naw naw more like this one" and pointed to my knit cap that janette sent me.

I really hoped he had some.

He did; they were in the front case. Celtics, Lakers, something else, and Phat Farm. White with black logo and black with white logo.

"How much is Phat Farm?"

"Tix tousand yen."

He handed me the white one.

"Naw the black one."

holy shit six thousand yen is a lot.

My mind chewed on the number and my desire to buy something.

I'll bargain with him. What's a good number? Four? Five? How do people normally bargain? I don't want to be a wuss nor an ass.

I fingered the material. "Five thousand yen?"

"No, treetousand," with a hint of "are you nuts?" intoned.

Three? "Oh, okay; cool"

I pulled out three bills and he started to put the hat in a bag.

"Naw, I'm gonna switch it now."

And I left wearing my new Phat Farm hat.

- - - -

"switch it now" ??? This was my attempt at being cool with the language instead of using "put it on" which seemed quite white, or "wear it out [of the store]" which reminded me of being a little kid with new shoes.

- - - -

I felt a bit conspicuous, but no one seemed to notice I was wearing it. Now it's nearly my favorite knit cap.

- - - -

I was walking around with Miki some days later in the area and caught the guys eye. I smiled and gave that guy head-nod thing and he did similarly, like, "nice hat."

orwell

8:58pm JST Thursday 1 January 2004

From George Orwell's essay on Dali:

       Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something
       disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is
       probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is
       simply a series of defeats.

There are a lot of such lies in my journal and my life. Wende and janette have recognized and told me that I lie most commonly by leaving out pertinent details. Sometimes I outright lie.

Things that are true:

1. I have never done any illegal drugs.

2. I have never been drunk.

3. I haven't stolen anything from a store since I grabbed a deck of Playboy playing cards from Astroworld a long time ago.

   I specify "from a store" because I take things from work more frequently. Pens and paper and a few pushpins from Nova. Once I gave to a student a copy of the index to the quest book she was using. The index tells what parts of speech each lesson is designed to cover.

   Above is a lie by inclusion (not ommission). I wrote "a copy of the index" which makes the reader think I made a copy of the index and gave it to her, but actually I took it right out of the book and gave it to her. I took out the book's copy.

4. My biggest consistent lie by ommission surrounds my romantic relationships and sex life. I have at times labeled myself as a sex addict, and have attended 12 step meetings for sex addiction. (*)

I have looked to women to satisfy some basic needs in myself, needs to feel loved, to feel valuable. Also to cover the innate (?) negative (?) emotions in my being, I look to love/companionship for a way around feeling those; a way to not feel "lonely" and have to face these emotions in me.

(*) sidetracked here trying to find the function that tells emacs to open the file in an external viewer (to make sure the URL is correct).

(( beautiful irony is that I found the command (C-x C-s (save-buffer)) because I saved the file after I wrote the above, but what I can't figure now is how it doesn't happen so often that I already knew that. ))

- - - -

I've made many references to women being on or taken off my list. It's a list that Morag and I have been talking about; we both have our own list. My list includes most cute women I see. Ways to get on the list: smile, be cute, be funny, appear to be interesting or smart, like my jokes, flirt, etc. Ways to get off the list: smoke, drink more than rarely, wear too much makeup, stop flirting with me, be not so smart, be emotionally unstable or unavailable, etc.

- - - -

More things that are true:

1. I haven't had sex with anyone in Japan except janette.

2. I didn't kiss Yuuko at midnight New Year's Eve.

As I told janette about my night last night, she asked if there were fireworks or what at midnight. I was like, "yeah there were fireworks and lasers and stuff."

"Did you kiss Yuuko?"

"No." I didn't kiss Yuuko at midnight.

Yesterday's now declassified entry gives details.

10:42pm

Right now the part of this entry below the - - - - above has not been copied to my site. The entry I referred to as declassified has been declassified; I could reclassify it.

Though it's really difficult for me (fuck negative language) - though it may seem easier in the short run, I'm choosing to unlie to janette for sake of our friendship in the long run.

I'm not sorry that I kissed Yuuko, but I'm sorry that I lied to janette.

I'm going to call her now and hash it out.

10:50pm

Dammit; she was still fully asleep; I hope I put her back to bed. I want to tell her this before she reads it.

I'm tempted to put a note at the top of the page

but I'm resisting. I trust that what happens here is in the highest good for all involved.

zzz

6:28am JST Friday 2 January 2004

Called janette last night and hashed out our situation. She told me that I am in a long term relationship with her; inviting me to un-believe "I can't maintain long term relationships."