As the haze of a sober day clears up thirty minutes after six doses of cyclobenzaprine, the empty orange bottle among numerous others littering my desk, I realize that it's been quite a bloody long time since I've written anything that wasn't some sort of cowdefecation academic paper that I was required by law to write. I have also been listening to various Pink Floyd albums (the ubiquitous Dark Side of the Moon, Animals, and The Wall, direct digital copies from the reel-to-reel master tapes) on repeat for over 20 hours straight. I was looking through an old box and unearthed my old journal from a few years ago that I officially titled "The Book of Word," which contained the mad ravings of a lunatic, and I suddenly came to realize that my mind was most indeed lost at that space in time. This post will, among other things, contain excerpts from this volume, exposing my deepest, darkest secrets. With sparkling vampires. For example, I wrote the following during my tenure at Davis on some sickly warm night where boys in colorful striped shirts under green double-breasted blazers were running through vacant fields and lying right on the dirt to observe the shooting stars from the impending meteor shower. After having consumed considerable doses of organic hallucinogens for spiritual and educational purposes, naturally. Or it might have been another night; only the wind remembers. Suck on this da Vinci code, betches. You might have to click on the picture if it's cut off. Now suck on... well... you know...
[This, children, is what you can expect out of adulthood] [jk]
{written backwards, upside-down, and with my left hand}
But that's neither here nor there. It's everywhere. It appears to be the one thing people these days don't want to talk about. But it's the one thing that makes each and every one of us similar, that makes us all human. As a student of the human condition (and actually being a human, of all things), one might wonder why people are afraid of the culmination of everything. Everything they have ever done, everything they have ever thought, everything they've eaten and shat, and even those balls of gum that don't get shat out. Or do humans see it as the culmination of nothing, which is why it's so taboo. Nothing in the sense that nothing of substance was ever achieved in the lifetime of a human. Sure, people achieve goals and win challenges and get degrees and well-paying jobs (or not), and feel satisfied, but then what's the fear of it all about? You tell me. Why am I writing this? So one rogue Canadian computer can accidentally scrape this text and have some Canadienne psychology student use this for their dissertation as an example of a mind that has completely snapped beyond recovery? No matter, I've returned to [this] earth since then. (insert creepy winking smiley here)
On another note, check out the rad schedule I had written up for myself in the Book of Word back then. It seems like insanity now (not really) but it was an apt description of the lonely days of my life. This all was before I discovered the beauty in the people and town of Davis, which as it happened, was too late for me to prevent the Authority from declaring my "enforced leave of absence," based purely on academic grounds, of course.
[Do not do as I did, unless you want to, in which case I have volumes of knowledge to drop on you]
As you can see, shit was pretty fucked up. I'm not gonna lie, I loved it while it lasted. That kind of just fit in with who I was at that time. Where did the pseudo-pseudonym Crackbar come from? And as for who I was, I hadn't at the time the slightest idea, as you can see in the following scan containing a poem I wrote but have no recollection of (unsurprisingly) with the date blacked out like some sort of hushed-up government document. Fucking capitalist pigs. But the show must go on.
[How pathetic. I used to be an English major when this was written]
Things are just starting to get interesting as the hypnotics and CNS depressants kick in. Wonder if I should continue writing or call it a night. Nah, screw it, let's make this world a better place. I'll continue to upload the madness that was my mind in the coming days, but I think we've all received a healthy dose of it for now. So, what have I been up to these past days, weeks, months? I would ask you the same thing, sir/madame/robit. Well about a month ago I was still working. 3 weeks ago my semester at Cal Lutheran University started, the one with all the good shit I was gushing about in yesternight's post. Two weeks ago I realized just how fortunate I am for having been given all these opportunities and fucking them up one by one, but now finding something I can stay with. Fantastic, truly phenomenal professors who've persuaded me to jump back into the pool of primordial academic ooze known as "The Shit." I spend my every waking moment with my eyelids glued to a textbook, notebook, whiteboard and projector, or the inside of my eyelids as I listen to music at home, which I listen to every moment I'm doing anything else anyway. ALERT: THINGS ARE NOW STRANGE AS OPPOSED TO INTERESTING,WHICH IS WHAT IT WAS EARLIER. Ah yes, the music. That's how I get my fix every day, how I unwind when I get home from school. I sit in the middle of the new Denon system and bathe in beautiful sounds for about an hour. That's my pack of cigarettes, my bowl of cannabis, my ball of opium, my glass of whiskey (that is not to say I don't occasionally enjoy the latter two on rare occasions). Back on track though, (disclaimer: nobody knows anything about what i'm about to say) I invested, heavily, in a new Denon top-o'-the-line receiver with more than enough speakers and hardware audio upconversion. I reassembled my father's old Pioneer turntable (record player), after he had more or less disposed of it. Works like a charm, I just need to get the tonearm servos replaced but for this old heap, the replacement parts might cost more than two new turntables. I'm sticking with this one though because it is still considered to be an audiophile-grade turntable to go with the rest of my audiophile equipment. A pre-amp goes between the turntable and receiver to amplify and clean up the sound, which is going through its burn-in period right now as it starts equalizing the signals to match up what comes from the input to what goes through the output. Additionally there is a Panasonic SACD/DVD-A player that a dear uncle who I haven't seen in quite some time gave to me a few years ago. Now that I finally have a functioning record player, I needed to pick up some vinyl to play. I picked up the essentials like Abbey Road and Led Zep IV and Tommy, but what really gave me a hard-on were these 200 gram LP's that I had never heard of. Upon further researched, I found out that these are ultra-high-quality LP's that use pure virgin vinyl, not that recycled plastic shit that the cheap vinyls use. The 200's are audiophile grade, completely surface-noiseless, and contain smoother grooves to increase fidelity.
OK I've lost all of you, and for those bold enough to stick around, this is the end of this night. Today's post seemed to be slightly egocentric but that was just because I want to "reintroduce" myself (the new myself) to you and alyssa to our anonymous friends Canada and Alaska. Good lookin' out Bros!
More to come tomorrow
But to finish up this night, I'm taking an Olympic dive into oblivion. Consider this post only half-finished, the rest is on its way right now. I bid you good night.
My review of this recent blogpost:
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot of hype surrounding Crackbar's newest creation, titled, "No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom." Many hailed it as a masterpiece before it was even conceived, but now the glum psychological thriller has been released, and the reputation of the once rum-filled chum who likes to take it in the bum is on the line. The verdict of this humble critic is that the work is filled with many fantastic concepts such as drug-addled class schedules and Canadian robots (a truly frightening invention from our typically docile neighbors to the north), but the story is an unusually weak fare considering the strength of Crackbar's previous release, "Anal Ambush."
"No Dark Sarcasm..." is the muddled story of a young man who is trying to rebuild his life while reflecting upon his less auspicious past away from home. As a struggling university student, the unnamed character (who possesses many similarities with the author) turns to a cornucopia of illegal substances to manufacture contentment while trying to hide the fact that the mask of his sanity is slipping.
The story is told through a monologue broken only by photographs exhibiting the result of the student's drug use. One photo is of a poem that exemplifies the student's perceived misdirection in life - his lack of place in the world - while the other photo is a strange inscription that gave chills to this humble critic. While only two sentences long, the statement speaks volumes about the futility of life - the utter bleakness of reality. Truthfully, it had this humble critic furiously combing his hair to maintain the perfect part that he has so long strove to cultivate.
Ahem, anyway, as soon as the protagonist of the story (or antagonist, depending on how you view him) is forced to return home to his wicked family, he is aided by a devilishly handsome Armenian man [who gets all the ladies] and is soon able to get re-enrolled in a prestigious university where he encounters instructors he loves and is inspired to truly apply himself in his educational endeavors.
However, there is also a brief reminder of humanity's materialistic side, as the student describes in almost daunting detail his acquisition of a classic turntable and his purchase of a very expensive audio receiver. He uses these machines to calm his mind and console himself. One could argue that he has replaced his organic hallucinogens with these more... sophisticated contraptions. This part of the story is strongly allusive to the highly controversial novel, "American Psycho" by author Bret Easton Ellis [a personal favorite of this humble critic].
Ah, but where do the Canadian robots fit in to all of this? Well, they are briefly mentioned at the beginning to the work, yet unceremoniously ignored completely throughout. Here's hoping they make it into the sequel, which currently circulating rumors suggest will be titled, "The Sequel."
While the work was mildly entertaining, it is the view of this critic that Crackbar simply phoned this one in. The story was flat. The character development was much too lop-sided [major depression should not turn into major hope in so brief a time period, lest it should become a cycle of mania].
However, we must always take the good with the bad, and "No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom" was simply not what it was hyped up to be. This humble critic will sadly spend the rest of the evening crying himself to sleep while his emotional outbursts are drowned out by repeated viewings of the film adaptation of "Anal Ambush," starring James Franco and Philip Seymour Hoffman.