The second set of my house pictures. I’d lived in that house for so long, I grew accustomed to it’s beauty. It’s only after living in student housing, residence, town houses, that I understand how well off I had it at home. My favourite picture is the one with the koala statue, which I bought while vacationing in Sydney. The colours are just perfect, and I like how the candlesticks stretch out in subtle arches, as if they were bending outwards.

I realized that I never wrote about this, after re-reading the entry I wrote last Friday. In fact, I had been thinking about this subject for the past week, the past month, the past half year. Yet, I had never come to a conclusion, had never been firm on how I felt, until considering attendance at Aaron’s new years party (with a little hand from talking Trolley through some stuff, along with coming to terms with my own issues).

My intolerance has always been an issue in the past. An issue for improvement, that is, and I’ll be the first to admit it, albeit with a helpful reminder from John. I’ve always known how intolerant I am, although I never paid much attention to the fact because I consciously never let it get as far as being unable to socialize with people (never let it get in the way of everyday life, to the point of neurosis). There are some instances where I’ve actually been proud of how intolerant I am, because it makes me feel stronger, more respectful about the company I actually do choose to spend my time with. I want all my friends to know how much I generally hate people, and that they’re AWESOME enough to meet even my high standards. Hell, I even almost decided not to associate with John at one point, but realized that I was making a huge mistake, clouded by my own problems at the time.

I digress. I’ve become less afraid of my intolerance. A long time ago I realized that other people have every right to be themselves, and I’m probably the last person that they should be changing for. Hence the quest for my own self-improvement. However, I’ve only recently realized that I have just as much right to be me. That means every right to be intolerant. As intolerant as I want to fucking be.

The issue can be extendend to relationships in general, dating or otherwise. If two people can’t come to a reasonable agreeance on something, then sometimes all that can be done is recognizing it and accepting it. If these differences can’t be lived with, then the only thing left to do is part ways on amicable terms. One person has just as much right to be themselves as the other.

And if it just so happens that I find myself in unpleasant company, I’ll be the first to bow out. I’d rather spend quality time with the people I like, than share them with people I don’t, and the last thing I want to do is force the people I care about to make a decision between me and someone else. So I make the decision for myself. No one is at fault. Some people just don’t mix. As long as it never gets to the point of harming the relationships I want to have, there’s no problem. If this means that I may occasionally have to be in the company of people who make me uncomfortable, for important events or whatnot, then so be it. My friends are worth the unpleasantness, and I know that they understand me enough to accept my intolerance.

The issue becomes a non-issue.

Another bus ride back to the apartment today. Hopefully it’ll be under five hours; the ride here was just over the six hour mark due to large scale, poor weather conditions. I’m tempted to bring an extra strength Sleep-Ez to make the ride go by faster if there are any delays, but my experience with one earlier this way has swayed me against it. It was the first time in my life I took a sleeping pill, and I felt almost mechanically, medicinally drowsy. John called me in the middle of sleep, and the only thing I remember is taking the call, and telling him that I had to hang up because I was too focused on staying conscious to listen to anything. For some reason, I’ve always found it extremely easy to stay conscious, but the Sleep-Ez is the first thing that has ever overcome this ability. The only time in my life that I have ever passed out was during a weekend this summer, due to the influence of certain inebriants. The Sleep-Ez would be twice as worse, and if anything were to happen where I need to be awake while travelling, I wouldn’t be able to function.

I decided to make the best of my time while I’m home for the holidays and borrow my dad’s EOS Digital Rebel, just like last December when I was in Hong Kong. I swear, the urge to buy one of these is overwhelming, and I was very seriously considering it until I realized that I can make due with my S410 Elph until I have cash to drop on a nice SLR.

Almost every room at home has a different mood and style, which is really what I tried to capture in the pictures, whether it’s due to the wall colour (most prominent), the furniture, or the lighting. This is part one of two; I have another set of pictures that’s comprised mainly of various objects around the house, instead of general settings of this set.

This doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. I’m not sure why, but the fact that it’s so close to the 25th still hasn’t clicked in yet. Maybe it’s because I decided not to buy presents for anyone this year. Maybe it’s because this is my first year working full-time and I’m used to having a longer running break before the big two-five. Maybe it’s because I’ve been too busy to relax, running around, making plans at the last second. This is usually my favourite time of the year, but I haven’t had any time to enjoy it.

I had the hardest time deciding on what to do for new years. At first, I was just going to spend it by myself at my apartment. I don’t really have a reason to celebrate, and if I was, it would be with my five closest friends ONLY so that I wouldn’t have to deal with ANY moronic people. The only problem is that three of them won’t even be in the city, and the other two are too social to be spending it with me and my select company. Perhaps one year, my friends will indulge me (after tiring of large parties) and we will have an intimate gathering. I think I’ll start planning for next year before everyone moves off to start their careers and their families.

Aaron expressed his desire for my attendance at his new years celebration and I eventually agreed. I was hesitant at first, because, to be honest, I haven’t enjoyed the company Aaron has had over for his dinners lately. I’m one who’s always believed that it’s the company that makes things enjoyable, not the activities. Stick me in a room with my friends and we can have fun doing anything. Stick me in a room with a single person I dislike, and I’ll be miserable no matter what. The agitating guests aren’t Aaron’s fault, of course, or the fault of the guests themselves. I’m an intolerant person.

And I’m working on it.

I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within
my shadow.

Change is coming.
Now is my time.

—Tool, Forty Six & 2

I’ll be honest; I don’t talk like this in real life.

I’m not smart like John, who can sporadically use words like “emaciated” is his conversations. My entries need to be carefully thought out, sometimes taking days to write. I don’t talk to people about my sexual experiences, my personal problems, or any of the random shit that pops into my head because people don’t want to hear about any of that.

In fact, I’m very unlike this in real life.

I don’t talk about what I want with people, because I find that most don’t care. Most just wait for their turn to speak, and when they listen, they don’t understand.

In everyday life, one has to be careful about what one says. Here, I express what I want because this is one of the few places that I don’t have to give a fuck what anyone else thinks. This is within reason, of course, because there are things which may involve other people that I have no right to talk about. Anything else is free game. I don’t care if someone thinks I’m stupid, finds me offensive, or even thinks that I’m boring.

It feels good to know that I have a place where I can be myself, express what I want, when I want. It makes me stronger. It brings me comfort. It actually makes me more confident about saying certain things, and makes me unashamed of my emotions.

I’m not myself when I’m around most.

This is me.

So, what I meant to say was that I got a haircut. Due to a series of bad experiences, I generally don’t trust women to cut my hair, but Josée is different. She’s sarcastically funny, she’s cute (Trolley thinks her eyes stand out the most), and she does a great job with texture. I also feel comfortable sitting in her chair, talking or not, and don’t have to worry about her thinking that I’m trying to get in her pants (a worry, due to yet another series of bad experiences) because she’s not stupidly fucking self-absorbed like so many other girls are.

What I really wanted to talk about, though, is the discount she told the receptionist to give me. The discount came in the form of student rates, although I’m not a student anymore, and she knows this because we discussed it during the texturizing process. I’m not sure if she did it knowingly and I don’t like to take advantage of anyone, but I also don’t want to mention the fact that I don’t deserve the discount in case she did it on purpose. I thought about it for a few days, and eventually decided that she most likely acted out of generosity, and the next time it happens, I would leave her an extra tip so she could share in that generosity.

I was planning on writing something else, but had the suggen urge to confess that I was watching Trailer Park Boys with four other guys yesterday and it was the Christmas special where Jono is all preppy and Randy is giving handjobs for cheeseburgers before he becomes assistant superintendent, when Bubbles is sitting with his present in his lap given to him by his parents before they left him when he was young, and Ricky tells him to open it because they’re his family, so I started to cry but no one noticed, and I can’t stop thinking about how fucking stupid it is, and I wonder if anyone ever believes me or thinks I’m doing it for attention or whatever because it makes no fucking sense to me.

I have this theory that there’s no myth to the female orgasm. There are some who can have one and some who can’t. Most of the girls I’ve dated have been able to achieve climax (or have led me to believe so), but there was one who never did and never seemed to care. There is no set attribute for all women.

This may be supported by the fact that it’s the same with the types of orgasms, which vary not only from woman to woman, but from each occurring time as well. Some are implosive, some are explosive. Some are centered in a region, some affect the entire body. Some cause lethargy, some cause energy.

Another girlfriend was of a similar demeanour, but I could tell that she had the ability to be taught at the right time, and the right person would have the patience to teach her the right things. I find that mentally strong girls are the ones who have the best orgasms. They’re also the most fun, because they know what they like and they aren’t afraid to ask for it, allowing for a lot of exploration. It was only when I met a strong girl that I was comfortable pushing her body, comfortable figuring out what she liked. She had the best orgasms, and she’s the only one I know who’s been able to have two very different, very distinct orgasms in a row, or orgasms that would last longer than a minute.

Even the expressions afterwards are unique, whether it’s a jocular look of “Don’t touch me, I’m overstimulated” or bewildered “What the FUCK did you just do?” or “Give me a minute, I can’t feel my brain”. Guys are totally different. Their expressions are linked to their orgasms, and they only have two: the angry face (aggressive, dominant, empowering), and the confused face (soft, whimpering, almost sorry, à la Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary).

But that’s just my theory.

I’ve been bombarded (about 50 a day) by a new kind of spam comment lately. It’s been slipping through my MT-Blacklist filters, because it creates intelligible sentences by varying verbs (like “check” and “visit”) and nouns (like “site” and “pages”). Sometimes, when I’m browsing through other sites I see the same spam comments, so I figured I would post the regular expression I wrote to block it in case anyone happens to be searching for one, like the one I wrote a few months ago.

(check|visit)[\w\-_.]*(pages|sites|information|info)[\w\-_. ]*

This has been the most difficult spam variation I’ve had to deal with. The one weakness of most comment spam is that it’s bound to a static website address. Since spam is usually generated through robots, there are patterns that can be matched in order to block it. The key is figuring out what the pattern is, whether it may be a reoccurring IP address (very unlikely and unreliable), or a reoccurring website address (most likely). This one is different though, because the advertised websites keep changing. Not only that, but the sentences used to present the site are also inconsistent. The pattern, as a result, is more complex.

I’m breaking my writing cycle today because I feel like writing. Well, no, I don’t feel like writing, I feel like expressing, venting.

For some reason, I felt lost all day. At one point it made me nauseous, and I started to break into sweats and get flushed in the face. I thought I could make it an entire week without one off day, until this day happened. There was a very general feeling of uneasiness, but that may be a continuation of yesterday. I was really nervous before Doug’s birthday gathering; I didn’t know who was going and that made me really nervous. I still don’t know why.

So I admit, I dropped an excessive amount of money on a Hitachi DZMV550A Digital DVD-RAM camcorder. My only excuse is that I had been planning on purchasing a camcorder since the summer, and vowed to do so as soon as I could afford it. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was a carefully incubated desire which kept growing into the perfectly guilt-free shopping experience I had. Besides, Aaron talked the man down $110, but I saved $210 in total from additional sales.

I had been looking around for a wide-angle lens all day, but none of the four major(ly accessible) photo stores had them in stock. I’m a little disappointed in the stock range of the wide-angle, and have been finding it difficult to capture…basically more than one person. In any case, I’ll probably have to order it online, and hopefully it’ll come in before I see John in the new year, which is why I bought the camcorder.

I also admit that I had absolutely nothing planned for today, aside from picking up my duvet from the dry-cleaners because Dolly had an accident last week. Normally, I have the next night planned the day before, usually either writing/hanging out with Trolley or gaming/hanging out with Trolley, so an unplanned evening is generally a good thing. Today, I only realized that I had nothing planned when I got home, and it just made me feel uneasy.

And I also have to admit that I listened to the audiologs of a “goth” I found online, for part of the day. It was strangely comforting, because of how humourous his monologue is, in a very deathly serious, non-jocular way. He laughs to himself a lot, and talks about his (horrendous) site updates, his smoking, his drugs, his self-proclaimed “flattering” copycat from vampirefreaks.com. Just knowing that I’m not as commiserable as this guy makes me feel better. I submitted it as an awful link of the day on Something Awful, and I’m almost certain it’ll make it. Funny note, Jackie used to date the guy who runs that site.

I really, really don’t know what this mood is now. It’s not malicious. It’s a little stoic, and almost confident as a result of that. I’m also a little scared.

Of what, I don’t know.

I’ve started tucking in my shirt. The only two times that I remember tucking were both at weddings; Dr. Lea’s and Jono’s. I didn’t even tuck for my cousin’s wedding, even after (or should I say, especially after) a chiding from Priscilla’s unpleasant boyfriend. Admittedly, I have a very thin waist, and tucking always makes me look extremely skinny. I don’t always tuck now, just when I’m wearing a dress shirt with certain new v-neck sweaters. If I don’t tuck, the sweaters end up bunching up oddly around my mid-section and make me look even skinnier.

I don’t mind it so far, although it feels a little odd to have so much material stuffed into my pants, like I have a skirt on underneath (not that I have ANY idea what that feels like, or ever pretended I was Candice Bergen from Attenborough’s Gandhi after finding a cache of my mothers old clothes as a confused adolescent). I’ve always been most comfortable with the casual untucked-shirt with tie or blazer style. I’ve been against tucking for so long that it feels like I’ve sold out, started laying down to the proverbial “man”, but really, I’ve only started to tuck my shirt in on occasion.

I’ve also started trying to sit up straight. I think that posture is an important part of self-image, and realized that I’m confident enough now to project it. My parents would always tell me to keep my shoulders back, because they’re generally forward in a sleazy slouch. I’ve been trying to go cold turkey and not slouch at all, instead of only sitting straight when I feel rested. The greatest challenge is sitting up straight while eating soup. The extra distance the spoon has to travel to the mouth is scary, and after a while, I end up slouching again to prevent stray drippings from making large splashes.

I wrote this on the bus this morning:

I wrote this on the bus this morning. I generally hate writing on the bus because it always seems so pompous. I don’t like to come off as someone who thinks he’s an important writer, or as someone who’s looking for attention. Then I try to tell myself not to care what other people think, because the fact is that all I’m doing is writing in a notebook. And then I pull out my notebook.

The notebook itself, however, may be the important detail. I bought a new ruled, pocket Moleskine to keep track of my ideas. It cost me a pretty penny, but I’m hoping it’ll last me a while. What I used to do was use a text file saved on my desktop when at my computer, or my Dominion Blueline A9 (coming in at a hefty 9 1/4″ x 7 1/4″) when travelling. The Moleskine is perfect because it’s small enough to carry on the bus, and too small (a pocket-filling 3.5 x 5.5 inches) for other people to read over my shoulder. I can’t stand it when other passengers nosily glance at my words.

It has a ribbon to keep track of the current page, a small pocket in the back to keep loose items, an elastic to keep the pages together and prevent damage, and some of the smoothest uncoated paper I’ve ever used. Perfectly, all of the things I look for in a notebook. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to leave my A9 in desuetude; I’ve relegated it to keeping track of miscellaneous notes, lists, songs, etc., recently the only task I have been using it for. The Moleskines also come with a little card in the back explaining an interesting history:

It is two centuries now that Moleskine has been the legendary notebook of European artists and intellectuals, from Van Gogh to Henri Matisse, from the exponents of the historical avant-garde movements to Ernest Hemingway. Many are the sketches and notes, ideas and emotions that have been jotted down and harboured in this trustworthy pocket-size travel companion before being turned into famous pictures or the pages of beloved books.

This long-standing tradition was continued by writer-traveller Bruce Chatwin who used to buy his Moleskines at a Paris stationery shop in Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie where he would always stock up before embarking on one of his journeys. Over the years he had developed a veritable ritual. Before using them he would in fact number the pages, writing on the inside his name and at least two addresses across the world, and a message promising a reward for anyone finding and returning the notebook in case of it being lost.

He even suggested this method to his friend Luis Sepulveda, when he gave him a precious Moleskine as a present for a journey they were planning to undertake together in Patagonia. And there was no doubt as to how precious it was, given that at the time even the last Moleskine manufacturer, a small family-run firm of Tours, had discontinued production in 1986. “Le vrai moleskine n’est plus” was the short and curt statement of the owner of the stationery shop where Chatwin had ordered one hundred before leaving for Australia. Despite having literally swept up all the moleskines he could find, they were not enough.

Now, the Moleskine is back again. This silent and discreet keeper of an extraordinary tradition which has been missing for years has set out again on its journey. A witness to contemporary nomadism, it can once again pass from one pocket to another to continue the adventure.

The sequel still waits to be written and its blank pages are ready to tell the story.

Now I feel free to do this. Write what I want, when I want, where I want. I love writing in this thing.

I’m back.

This is the ritual.

We meet. Usually by Greyhound.

We get stoned. In the car, in the park, or in the apartment.

This is what we’ve been saving for. What we’ve chosen to deny ourselves of, until the present company, so that the experience is more intense. The reason why we’ve withheld for so long.

We introduce to each other what we’ve discovered on our own. Songs. Videos. Experiences.

There is no pride. No bias. No judgment.

We cherish these times. These weekends. These memories.

When we can grow from one another.

Because we’ve grown from ourselves.

It feels barren today. It’s cold outside, but there’s no wind and the air is still. Everything is so unforgiving and largo e pianissimo sempre.