So, I haven't done a narrative post in a while.

Christmas was generous to me again; the highlights were an iPod and iPod accessories, though I got some other neato goodies like the Queer Eye book (to those critics of Queer Eye, find me a TV show that's more good-hearted, nurturing and positive) and the new William Shatner album.

The year's about to end, a "new year" about to begin. This is a meaningless quantification in my mind, though every year I do the obligatory reflection. So where am I now? 365 steps closer to God(s) and a bit hairier. Over the break I've been growing a weak little McGinn beard, simply because. This does not make sense, as I think guys my age who have facial hair are obnoxious and gross. I have no intention of keeping the beard, so if you want to see it, act now.

I also find myself playing a waiting game again, as happens every so many months. How can something so important move so sloooooooooowly?

Not looking forward to diving back into school; the administration is out of control and I'm tired of feeling like everyone's a few words away from killing each other.

To those of you reading The Dharma Bums: that book is an almost perfect model of my outlook on the world, so tread lightly and I hope it's as rewarding for you as it was for me.

I'm a heathen.

Sometimes I just feel like everything's holy.

I tried stream of consciousness writing once, back before I knew what anything was, and it wasn't very good. So I did it again and enough interesting thoughts came out that it's not too embarassing:

Like the set for some movie sent down from heaven where the funds ran out about halfway through, discontented cast and crew with coffee stains on faces, wrinkled lines in sides of faces, tumbleweeds across the dusty stage with everyone standing around, confused, watching.

Shaking a stick in the middle of the grass, everyone not knowing but knowing but refusing to acknowledge their own beats and sticks. Everyone rips off clothes, sense of own mortality and smear shit on walls, proclaiming mortality and invincibility just because we’re not supposed to be mortal and invincible. It’s all coming down, it’s all fleshy, it’s being taken away.

Slamming table against wall again and again and again.

Like priests marching around the altar of some sacrifice, holy but not knowing it because they’re laughing and they can’t just sit the fuck still and not think anything and not do anything, no one knows why they’re walking, just lay down in the middle of everything and people will proclaim because the most important statement anyone can make is no statement at all because simply the essence of being, one point of concentrated space in time, is more powerful than all the words in the world set together, and all the arcane energy that they create can’t begin to touch the beauty of one unhindered moment.

Ultimate irony that you can’t feel your own warmth, but you don’t have to touch another to feel human, it’s all there. In the trees, like they just don’t care, like you’re an insignificant nothing but you love them anyway because they SIMPLY ARE and you SIMPLY ARE even though it’ll take years and years to realize that you SIMPLY ARE.

Inexpressible, heartbreaking, multi-splendorous, horrifying and beautiful complexity of everything.

Can't sleep, go downstairs, the whole outside is lit up. Step outside, a good kind of cold and the world's pure when no one's watching. Smells like the desert, I can see my breath, my English class is reading The Dharma Bums and everything's just a little more still.

Hard to believe this is right outside our windows, every night, and we never bother to pay attention.

So I hope they'll listen to dear old Mr. Kerouac.

I'm glad everyone gets that release once every so many months, at least those that aren't too self-conscious to enjoy themselves. Perhaps, actually, they aren't self-conscious enough.

Reaffirmation, reaffirmation, reaffirmation that the gritty is there, that it's there when we need it. Just jump up and around and feel dead and brilliant, like black and concrete added make light.

Get rowdy, y'all.

You can always count on the weather to be relevant.

This is hard.

You are captured by evil henchmen and trapped in a square shaft 100 feet deep. The walls are completely smooth and straight. On your person you have a container of dental floss, a promotional AOL CD, a lighter and a torn female condom.

Whoever can escape from the shaft gets to co-host.

Don't wanna feel like I got punched in no gut no more.

Don't Pick at It Radio will now be airing on Wednesdays at 7:00 pm. Here is the link, don't lose it. DPAIR

Instead of doing another rap contest, I'm going to try something very different. Whoever can most accurately reconstruct the weird dream I had the other night using these pictures as a guide will get to co-host.













Those of you whom I've already explained the dream to are disqualified.

The next episode of Don't Pick At It Radio will be this Wednesday at 7:00pm, not Monday at 8:00.

Bush's one-fingered victory salute

Rap.

A message to all those who embrace difference



Thank you for being interesting. Thank you for interrupting the human landscape with color and shapes and metal. Thank you for your perspective. Thank you for continuing to dress the way you please, despite constant ridicule. Don't listen to them, they're the ones doing it wrong.

New rap topic:

Rain is a blessing. When it rains during school, my listlessness vanishes, I feel warm and belly-happy.

But some people don't appreciate the rain.

Today at lunch the "administrative assistant" I lovingly refer to as "Anal Tear" was patrolling the quad, ordering people enjoying the weather to find shelter. "We're in high school now."

Yeah. We are in high school. Perhaps it's time we are treated like young adults.

It's strange; Anal Tear figures were everywhere in middle school. Freshman year, it was about half and half. By sophomore year, most of the faculty's authoritarian douchiness had subsided and this year, I can't think of another person besides Ol' Crabbytats who still ascribes to that outdated, awful system. I wonder if she knows how universally disliked she is.

Anyway, it's raining, and I'm happy.

Pump Up the Volume: best movie EVER!

New rap topic: the epicanthic fold.

Once again, whoever submits the best rap gets to co-host the show with me.

No broadcast tomorrow; I will be gone. I'll figure out the schedule soon.

This is John Kerry.

This is John Kerry stomping Bush into the ground.

This is Matt Louv jubilant.

For those of you who don't know, Spanish class is intensely boring. A few days ago, we were split up into groups to draw maps of the Caribbean with magic markers. Instead, I repressed violent impulses to spasm on the ground and channeled my pent-up agitation into a rap about cybernetic tigers:

Crawl through the jungle on your hands 'n' knees
Raise your face to the sky, smell death on the breeze.
There's a man-made horror creepin' through the brush
Orange and black, you're gonna get crushed!

They come from a lab, from the future unknown,
Flyin' through the trees, metal and bone,
Five-hundred pounds of cyborg death,
When they crush your ribs you'll be all out of breath.


As you can tell, the rap possibilities this topic opens up are limitless, so whoever can come up with the best cybernetic tiger rap will be slated to co-host Don't Pick At It for one show.


Niggaa whaaaaat!

There's this little kid with a broken heart running after me, but he's running too slow.

I wish there were really weird, fascinating seventeen-year-olds.

I wish there was some other-world we could disappear into on Friday nights where everything goes upside-down-ways and there is rock music.

I wish gum came in Kelso flavor.

A million and one kids beating themselves up over the same trite bullshit. Let's all find something new to feel mopey about. Like badgers. I am going to drive myself to breaking point over badgers.

I am such a cliche! ASS!

Go here.

Top quotes from the last two days:

"Hey, do you have Prince Albert in a can? Because if you did, you'd probably be in there with him, because you're a homosexual." - Brent Winkel

"Of I smeared you with pathogen, would you be happy?" - Mr. Asakawa

"Do you understand the fascination with beaver?" - Mr. Ihlbrock

"MY ESSAYS ARE REALLY HARD!!!"

"And When Freedom Is Achieved..."

You have used a word
Which means nothing.
You have given a word
The power to send men to death.
Men are not free who are sent to die.
Only those who send them are 'free.'
You should have freedom stuffed down your fat throats.

-Kenneth Patchen

You know, when it's two in the morning and you're on AIM and not talking to anyone.

You know, when it's silent and you're weeping into your keyboard and thinking that no one hears you.

You know, it's the spaces between the words.

You know, there are thousands of others just as lonely as you are.

There is so much not to be sad about, you just have to try.

"I LIKE SHOUTING!!!"

Intense self-loathing, brought to you by The Mall.

There's a reason why everyone's read it.

Down at Jeraback until 11 with the night tribes and about 10 bro's who showed up later, lurking around their pickups, and for the first time since seventh grade, I have to deal with Justin Mills.

Goddammit. The pain and fury they create. They don't know, don't know, don't know how horrible it is to be singled out. They still don't.

So I went and looked at the trees, because I don't want to be angry again.

I'm dropping out, once again. Will be in Santa Fe, New Mexico for six days starting tomorrow. If you want to call me, I'll have my cell phone.

"In Italy, when the moon is like this, we call it Hunter's Moon..............haw haw haw haw."

The Matrix has me

"This movie's REALLY BAAAD!!!!"

The coolest effing werewolf movie ever created

My Google image search for "Nancy Retter" turned up two pictures, one of which was this one:

Always the man with the perspective.

My very first cook book.

Sgt. Dan 'Hondo' Harrelson: Dammit, Street! You've got to learn to control your fiery temper! You're a good cop, and a good man, but I need to have confidence in my team members when we're transporting dubiously-ethnic, crudely-stereotyped foreign criminals!

Jim Street: You know, you'd be a whole lot more relaxed if you cracked open a crisp, refreshing Dr. Pepper.

Hondo: Gee, what a great idea! While I'm at it, why don't I hop down to my local McDonald's and grab a few juicy, delicious hamburgers to go along with the soda?

Sanchez: I am a strong, female role model! Watch me sweat!

LL Cool J: Bluest, deepest, my hat is like a shark's fin!

The two craziest dreams ever:

1. I watch Richard Lewis brutally murder Eric Thornton on an island on a lake surrounded by forest.

2. My brother and I disguise ourselves as two of the Lawrence brothers to steal food from a supermarket, I watch El Chupacabras patrol the edge of our campground and ride go-karts in a haunted house where a woman I'm flirting with sticks a white M&M under my eyelid and tells me I'm crying.

All who want to hear a Don't Pick At It live broadcast, say "Aye."

And now, I will put my cat on the keyboard.

6tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
3e\\\/****y6gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg7

How to make a sappy, drag-your-feet, lay down and cry weblog post:

Begin by relating an experience of yours, only instead of actually telling a story, convolute everything with pretentious metaphor that means nothing to anyone except you. Make it seem like you're really that thoughtful all the time. Make sure you drop lots of hints to the person you have a crush on that they have absolutely no capacity to decode. Speak in the very internet-specific dialect of half-poetry and interject long, twisting tirades about the pain of being alive with lyrics. The relevance of these lyrics to what you're half-heartedly trying to communicate is irrelevant. Think that writing many of these posts will make people want to get closer to you. Understand how laughably bad and juvenille almost everything serious you write is, but embrace it anyway, and make lots of tounge-in-cheek stabs at your own pomp and share a chuckle with your readership.

WATCH DA ALI G SHOW!!!!!!!!!

Which would your rather bone:


or

Where everything is as it should be

Tomorrow I will be flying to the top of the world.

There will be no computer. There will be no AIM. There will be no phone. There will be bears.

I will be gone for a week.

Don't get into trouble, now.

My day so far:

Some time last night, between going to sleep and waking up: dream that my family are all dinosaur hunters, except my mom, because she's a girl. In this dream, dinosaurs roam my house at night, hide in my closets and are spooky, scary etc. My dad and I bust some dinosaur ass with a large arsenal of shotguns. At some point my brother turns coat, becomes a dinosaur and tries to eat me.

11 AM: Wake up and am pleased with myself that I didn't sleep past noon. The first thing I do after getting dressed is to crack open a Sprite and watch the Daily Show. Unfortunately, there is no professional wrestling playing that early in the morning.

11:30 AM: Listen to "Straight Outta Compton" about ten times in a row. The idea dawns on me to have an Ice Cube movie marathon. My dreams are crushed when I found out he's made 21 movies. Favorite Ice Cube quote: "Shit, it ain't every day your homegirl gets to make her very own documentary about indigenous Amazonian peoples!"

12 - 3 PM: Wish the new season of Da Ali G Show was playing.

3:30 - 3:37 PM: Write in this weblog while listening to Straight Outta Compton.

For every post on this weblog, there's five more sessions of staring blankly at this "new post" form, writing a few disjointed sentences and eventually quitting.

The reason: want to express something completely inexpressable. Always. This great big truth I can't tell. Something about the complications of walking and breathing, and the humor necessary to see how pretentious the feeling is, and the good sense to know it's true.

Something like a tree with a million branches, and then a million more.

To summate, sixteen years of accumulated experience can't be summated.

"Hey, what the hell are you kids doing? You absolutely cannot be here. What do you think the fence is there for? Do you know what would happen if the Home Owner's Association got sued? Do you live in this community? If you don't live here you have to leave. If you have a problem, call the police, and if you don't leave, I'll call the police. I like smothering puppies with my ass."

Here's the deal with the radio station:

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I will probably continue to pay for at least the basic plan even if only a few people listen to the station with any regularity.

Judging by the total hours of listen-time in the past thirty days (12), I infer that most of you aren't going to listen to just music for long periods of time. Many people have voiced to me that their only real interest in my project would lie in live broadcasts. Under my current payment plan, live broadcasting is not an option.

If enough of you will listen to the station, I can pay about five dollars extra a month to have a 10-listener cap on live broadcasting. If many of you tune in and want me to continue to do the live broadcasts, I can upgrade to a 25-dollar-a-month plan that will boost me to 30 live listeners. It'd be willing to pay that much if I knew people would listen and enjoy.

For now, I have about seventy megabites of songs looping on the station continuously. I plan on updating at least a good portion of the playlist on a weekly basis. If the station seems like it's stagnating, let me know.

When I was listening to the parade in my sleep, I thought the siren that kept going off was from multiple ambulances, as if some horrible mass-death had taken place.

I am proud to announce the premiere of Don't Pick At It Radio, my very own internet radio station.

MATT LOUV HAS HIS OWN INTERNET RADIO STATION, AND HE'S NOT GOING TO BE SUED FOR LICENSING INFRACTIONS!!!

For now, I'm still uploading songs and getting everything straightened out, but you can listen in any time of the day, seven days a week. Diggity checkit.

Back in the day when the main focus of this weblog was Chihuahuas and the squeezing/kicking thereof, I made a vulgar post on a message board about dogs. I was browsing through my archives and revisited said post, and to my surprise people had actually responded.

My dog sucks

Perhaps the strangest lie that we, as young people, are told, is that without school we'd have no/less friends. As evidenced by the fact that we all seem to be getting along just fine after two weeks of un-school and I have since discovered a completely new social hemisphere, I would conclude that stated lie is complete and utter bullshit. If anything, school disrupts our relationships by forcing us to deal with each other five days a week.

Another lie: without school we'd be roaming the streets, raping old ladies and selling ourselves to sailors for crack money. I see no chaos and no more or less degradation than during school.

Don't you see? We can live together without the government telling us what's best.

Anyone who has digital Time Warner cable needs to go to channel 900 and watch the Eek-a-Mouse! video "Schitzophrenic."

Guess whose new album totally rules.

On Scripps Lake Drive there is a construction sign that reads "WOMEN WORKERS AHEAD."

Jeff: "Just tell Peppy you couldn't do a barrel roll because you were getting stoned. He'll understand."

Spent the day in La Jolla. All the money in the world can't buy personality.

Everywhere I walked I was behind the same family, the father of which wore a shirt reading "I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a drunk! Alcoholics go to meetings!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGH

Michael Jackson -> Popularity peaked in the 80's -> People in the 80's were different than we are -> People who act different than we do are funny -> Michael Jackson is funny -> ASB plays Michael Jackson daily at lunch.

Kelso called me a badass today.

That is all.

Fading sunlight. Specks of light floating. Leaves. Little spider with white legs. Infinite, infinite lines. God is in the details. God is in the details.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

An incredible reaction to a drunk-driving lecture the other day. We all gather in the gym and listen to this guy talking about how his son and two of his friends died in a car crash because they were drinking, how it disrupted their lives for years after and how many family members were barely stuggling to stay functioning.

Basically no reaction. People are giggling, hitting each other, etc.

"My daughter, before the accident, was a 3.0 GPA student. A month after the incident, her GPA was 0.9."

Gasps, disbelief, shock.

Fuck that.

I miss Santa Cruz. I want to feel involved like that again. I want to feel stimulated by everything around me, instead of barely crawling through chemistry homework because I'm too listless to give a shit anymore. Back to that land of giants, where every person was like a painting you kept walking back across the museum to see again because it was just that intriguing.

As I grow older the mist parts. The gap is shrinking between now and then. I know why people did what they did; I'm starting to move and talk like them. The mystery is gone.

I feel like something important is missing. I feel passionately about next to nothing. I am excited by next to nothing. I am becoming nothing, consumed by myself.

What would be good would be to get on a plane, alone, and stay for a month in a city I've never been to before. Need to experience.

To anyone considering taking it, Video Production is the easiest class I have taken since web design. Once again, I have sat staring at this computer for an hour, with another forty minutes to go. To my right, Matt Kelly also stares at his computer, an iMac that behaves like it was dropped as a baby. Likewise, to my left, twenty other people stare vacantly at Shockwave games, the hands, the shambles of their empty lives. At the front of the room, the teacher has inflated himself to "ward off predator" stance as he confronts something shiny.

Matt and I have found ways to entertain ourselves. If we didn't, we'd spiral into a comatose twilight state.

Matt and Matt's top five methods of distraction:

1. Inordinately beat each other. If the teacher interferes, beat him too.

2. Harass the teacher to let us do news stories such as "Is our school prepared for attack by dinosaur?" and "SRHS video teacher android from the past, demands human sacrifice." When teacher rejects, argue. When teacher continues to refuse, hold magnets up to his head and rub.

3. Hide in the news room and play with the SRHS time machine, a metal box of unknown purpose or origin which we have determined is our key to a wacky romp through the circuits of time. If teacher hassles us about deadlines, reassure him that we can simply go back through time if we have more work to do.

4. Claim we are going out to gather footage for our stories and instead exploit the power of having a camera to hold free reign over the campus. Pull friends out of class, have Mortal Kombat-esque melee battles and hit stuff with big sticks.

5. Staying in our seats and staying on task, completing the items in our packets in the order listed and not screwing around on the internet. Writing story proposals, interview questions and scripts, capturing SOT and B-roll, logging with Final Cut, editing the SOT and B-roll together into a linear, coherent story and submitting the quicktime-formatted stories through the local server.

When do we stop distracting ourselves? When do the curtains draw? It doesn't end after school, does it? We have to start now, don't we?

What doesn't matter is that I will likely get a C in math.

What does matter is that when I start adding up variables, the answer is hidden, maybe not even there.

And yet, why is it that I will continue to do my math homework? I should set it on fire.

Absurd.

Nothing like waking up covered in bruises from a No Dough Show.

Like, incommunicable complexity of feeling, and stuff.

Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger

It's the color black.

It's eyelashes and a sweep of hair.

It's little moments of smiles and eyes.

That's my secret.

It never fails to crack me up how the VaVaVirgil AIM bot will never respond if you say "the sky."

ToAnim (4:39:33 PM): the sky
ToAnim (4:39:40 PM): the sky
ToAnim (4:39:45 PM): the sky
ToAnim (4:39:50 PM): the sky
ToAnim (4:39:53 PM): smoking
VaVaVirgil (4:39:53 PM): hey! that topic's right up my alley. what do u think of smoking?

"I AM A TERRIBLE ACTOR!!!"

In Chem we were watching Big Fish to pass the time. A very good movie, and involving enough to make it hard to watch towards the end when things start coming to a close. During the saddest sequence in the movie, in which I couldn't help but get a little hurty, the assholes sitting behind me started doing what they do best: being assholes.

"Whaaat? He turns into a fish? This is so fucking stupid. God, we should have watched Pirates. This is such a stupid movie. How can anyone watch this, seriously(one of them shuffles a deck of cards as loudly as possible)."

Then I was silently angry at them and continued to watch the movie without saying anything.

I have no heroes.

There are no heroes.

But I still want heroes.

I have no enemies.

There are no enemies.

But I still want enemies.

My blog looks like new car smell.

"Some day, Matthew, women will fuck you for your words."

~Sasha

I just found this in the dusty way-back of this blog, but it's so good I think it deserves a re-posting.

Cougar

I'm fourteen again, the whole world is new, I'm scared out of my skin and timidly loving every minute of it.

This STAR testing has my left eyebrow locked in the "up" position.

This is how I see it. They take us when we're four or five years old, put us in intellectual shackles for ten years, do their best to strip us of our individuality and break us down into drooling automatons and then come to us to help them jockey their way up the financial ladder. They themselves have even declared it: the only purpose of this three-week-long test is to strengthen their status in the school system's hierarchy so that they can get more money to throw away.

The ball is now in our court. Most people seem to want to pass it right back.

If the test actually affected us in any significant way, they wouldn't have to try to intimidate us into doing well; if it influenced our college applications, we'd march in lines for them. They showed their cards when they sent office goons to every classroom to try to scare us into trying.

My advice is this: don't intentionally do poorly on the test, but just don't give a shit if you have to spend five minutes working through one algebra problem.

Schools function like a pack of buzzards grappling for the few scraps of monetary carrion our rotting carcass of a school district still has clinging to its bones. Some bureaucrat idiot up in Sacramento grinds the organ and all the monkeys dance.

The largest share of educational funding goes directly into the pockets of suits who have no purpose but to sit at their desks and throw leftovers to local administrators who then use their minimal resources to do stupid things like re-carpeting the main office and planting flowers in front of the school (a new goal proposed by Forcier).

It's not like you can just throw money at a problem until it goes away, either. The whole "compulsory education" idea is a travesty anyway, but that's a whole other can of illiterate worms.

I'm considering cutting my ties to the media machine entirely, if maybe only for a couple months, isolate myself completely just because I can. No internet, no AIM, no Diablo 2 and certainly no DAMN television.

I've gotten too complacent. Not self-righteous enough anymore.

I like letting parameters slip into place and then breaking them.

Take some aspect of your life you think you can't exist without, and then exist without it.

I was sitting on a bench in front of my driveway watching the sun disappear. I was there for half an hour before my neighbor Bradyn pulled up in her Explorexcuradventure with her little brother in the passenger seat, rolled down the window and demanded to know what I was doing.

The message was clear. Any action we take must, MUST be some means to an end, we must ALWAYS, AAAAALLLLLWWWWAAAAAYYYSSS be doing something productive and logical. If something doesn't fit into the standard equation of daily, monotonous, routine life, it must be questioned, scrutinized and avoided.

"I am sitting on a bench."

"Why?"

I stared at them for a good while before walking over and climbing through the passenger window onto the dashboard.

"Drive."

Why Xanga is a stupid little bitch:

1. You have to have a Xanga account to comment on Xanga weblogs.

2. eProps.

Kudos to the Natives for their excellent battle of the bands performance. It was one of my year's major highlights. Thanks, also, to all of you who made me crowd surf.

Rock music.

Bryan: Matt, tell me something that you think I should know.
Me: Babies come from the sun.

(10 minutes later)

Me: Where do babies come from?
Lauren: I think I came from the sun. I don't know about everyone else.

Call me The Synchronaut.

The Fleshy

When I exhale through my nose it sounds like a majestic eagle.

Thoroughly disappointed in the low turnout for Friday's No Dough Show.

The Natives are trying to do something good here. How many times have you just sat at home on a Friday night hunched over in front of your computer, typing fractured sentence after meaningless fractured sentence to people who you can't see?

The No Dough Show is basically the only cool thing that ever happens in Scripps Ranch, so I encourage you to take advantage of it while it still exists.

Plus, y'all missed seeing Matt Louv dance and scream at people.

I'm starting a new AIM slang term.

"lqucs"

Pronounced "luh-cuks."

It has no meaning except that which you ascribe to it.

Spread it.

Mmmm...watching Mulvey squirm as he realizes he's outnumbered. Good show, everyone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGH...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGST...