16 posts tagged “quote”

"And when worlds collide," said George Pal to his Bride, "I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills."
- Rocky Horror (Picture) Show

I've been listening to the Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show album (covers of the original film soundtrack by punk bands) on near-constant repeat, specifically Over at the Frankenstein Place. It's about seeing a light off in the distance on a dark and rainy night. Little does the narrator of the song's story know that what he'll find at that "light in the darkness of everybody's life" is much worse than anything in the darkness.

After last weekend, my plan was to give this new deal at work a fair chance to see how things would work out. After four days of it, I'm certain that I need to leave. It's not that the work is difficult (it's not) or that there's a lot asked of me (there isn't). It's the exact opposite. I'm not challenged at all. It's professional masturbation, to be honest.

However, there's an issue when I'm looking for new jobs elsewhere -- I'm either too specifically qualified for entry-level or underqualified for senior positions. I'm in a middle ground where I can't win either way. There's also the fact that I never intended to do technical support or to work on computers for a career... I just fell into it. I have a talent for it but this is not what I wanted to do with my life. Unfortunately, it is what I have the most experience in (aside from management and team-building, but that's a whole other bag of issues when job searching) so it's what I have to throw out there when looking for work.

I'll always write. That much is assured. I have to have something to put food on the table, though, until someone is stupid/crazy/drunk enough to give me money for writing. The computer related fields have been (somewhat) good to me thus far, so I can't be too upset, but I'd be quite happy to jump from technical support or hardware/software troubleshooting to something where I work more with people. The problem is starting at the bottom again.

I'm still sending out resumes and pondering my possibilities, but I'm holding off on making any choices until after my birthday at the end of this month. I'm going to take the time to count what assets I have and look at preparations for possible relocations. I'm also going to continue giving the work thing a shot, but unless something miraculous happens I do believe it'll be best to wash my hands of it.

"Tired and wiggy from no sleep or at least not enough. Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end of anything."
- Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack

Exactly how I feel at the moment. Barely alive, eyes rimmed with red and black, skin a pallid shade of peach. Mind racing but only producing smoke, no speed. Getting nowhere, accomplishing nothing in this self-defacing, self-destructive headspace. Need to push forward, push through, wade into the bullshit headlong and if I can make it out the other side.

"How did I get here? The pain so unexpected and undeserved and for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life, my house, my family. My backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change, nothing new would ever be expected; it had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things spill out at me constantly, and I can count on nothing."
- Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (novel, 1977)

Reading through this novella again, I'm reminded of how I feel now.
There is nothing for me in this life now.
There is no reason.
There is no desire.
I am vacuous, empty.

"As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

• H.P. Lovecraft, Letter to C.L. Moore, August 1936

"There is simply a part of me that is broken, and to quote Kay Lee from Firefly, 'Sometimes a thing's broke can't be fixed.'

I understand this, and do my best to move through my days without using that part of me. Surely, a thing can be broken to the point where it is ruined but that says nothing of replacing it. I work through each day building a new machine inside me, structured from emotional cogs and memory bolts. There is supreme wonder and amazement in the human spirit, and I am a mechanic making innovations in mine."
-Will Reaves
12.17.07

I wrote this elsewhere, nearly half a year ago. I'd forgotten about it until for some unknown reason I happened upon it tonight. 6 months past and it still rings true in my ears, heart, and mind. Truth be told, I rarely go back and read what I have written in journals. Occasionally, I will dive back into the past and retrace my steps. My own writings feel foreign to my most times, as if I am reading someone else's words. Especially if it is something moving or poignant. It surprises me that such words might have come from me. In most cases it just serves to make me feel in adequate for not living up to what I could be.

"I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain."
- Henry Rollins

Several things that have been brought up mirror this quote.
Lots of things in my life are deserving of this quote.
It's truth, p(l)ain and simple.

This originated as a comment to someone else's livejournal. The discussion originated with her lamenting that all of the boys she's been seeing lately are coy and shy and acting like girls. At her suggestion it is being posted for posterity. See, occasionally I am witty and brilliant and bright.

Welcome to the world as it stands now, on it's head and twisted 'round.

In my own experiences, I have been the victim of the voracious female appetite several times. They are so sweet and loving until they have slipped into my trousers, and afterwards I am left wanting for company and alone. You'd forgive me the cliche phrasing, but once bitten, twice shy.

I'm a fair bit coy and guarded now, as I really do detest when someone is not forthcoming with their intentions. Were the women in question honest about their carnal, lustful desires I would have been a willing participant. However, they like to lead one on with talk and promises of interest and companionship, only to be scarce and unseen once they have glutted their wanton hunger.

All to say, there are reasons that men may be cautious; boys, as always, are not worth the effort it takes to drag them out of their shells and beat them into some sort of rough shape. Take care to make sure that the subject at hand is of the former type, and not the latter.

Additionally, you have my sympathies as to the azure coloration of your nethers. 'Tis never a pleasant prospect and despite the relief one can provide oneself there is still the linger psychological craving that refuses to subside.

I, too, abhor dating and share with you a distaste for the whole matter. Were there other options. Alas, I see none. Sadly, it is the only game in town and priced for the admittance of all. Dating is akin to the carnival -- you buy your ticket and take your chances.

Please note that I do not link back to Vox from my livejournal account. While this journal is not hidden I do take care not to publicize it.

You spent a lot of time full of hate
A hate that was pure sunshine
A hate that saw for miles
A hate that kept you up at night
A hate that filled your every waking moment
A hate that carried you for a long time
- Henry Rollins

I fueled myself on anger and hatred for the longest time. That fuel was never in sort supply. Growing up being the 'gifted' child brought on the ridicule at an early age. The mockery that was spawned from my love of books rather than sports. There was never any room for compromise or debate. I was the strange kid, weird because I was not obsessed with cars and football. I found little solace, even in myself.

I learned to loathe who I was. I wasn't what they said I should be. I never fit it. So many lonely nights spent trying to figure out why it seemed I couldn't bridge the gap between myself and others. Alone, I began to eat, trying to fill that hole inside of me. I ate my feelings for years, substituting soda and chips for the comaraderie of others. I ate, and hated myself for it, whereupon I ate more. My own self-loathing became a self-fulfilling prophecy, one in which I would become akin to some ancient Sumerian deity of greed and sloth and gluttony.

I used that hatred and loathing to prime my engines and keep them firing. It was an unstable, inefficient fuel, but one in abundant supply. No risk of running short of supplies so I burned fast and without care, scorching and pitting my cylinders. Hatred and anger received an additive of fear along the way, and the mixture fired not cleaner, but smoother. The ride was no less damaging but a certain rattling effect had been reduced.

The three-part formula of my internal combustion fuel was doing more damage by the day, tearing apart the engine it fed and leaving me unable to move forward at any great speed. The pistons stopped pumping and the cylinders locked. Left alone and stranded by my own mechanisms, the anger rose but fed nothing. The abundance of fuel remained but the engine would turn over no more.

Over the years I have carried that surplus with me, in the hopes I might rebuild the engine. Thinking that somehow I might bore out the cylinders of myself and replace the pistons of my person. I am a hollow body now with no propulsion. I burned out and now have to piece things back together like I am someone's weekend automotive project.

I have seen the results of my hubris and hatred and witnessed the wreckage they have caused. I have done my best to dispose of that fuel in the interim but I am left wondering if I have emptied the tank or simply cannot register it as there's nothing for it to propel.

Hate carried me for a long while. It sustained me when nothing else could. I hated until it caused physical pain and used that to justify and magnify it. In its absence I feel weak and tired and listless. Without it I am left to ponder what else might serve me as well.

"'The Dude abides'. Dunno about you, but I take comfort in those words. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners."
-The Stranger, The Big Lebowski

I don't know why I'm up. there was plenty I could have been working on this evening, but I couldn't shift gears. My brain stalled out so I passed the time in my mind's median watching the traffic go to and fro. Dizzying the speed and length and breadth of their trip, but ultimately futile. All bluster, no substance.

I think I'd rather experience genital bifurcation than attend my math course in a few hours. It's a necessary evil for the time being and I did pay for the unique torture of required attendance in that professor's presence. I always think it'll be something I can soldier through but it always comes down to the fact that I hate the approach a majority of my teachers have taken when delving into mathematics. It's not that I am unable to perform the calculations or use the formulae. I just abhor a boring, sterile introduction to the material.

I want to take it easy for all the times I haven't. I'm tired of being wound so tightly. I'm tired of being tense. I know it's partially my own mind playing tricks on me. Living with a compulsive paranoia that everything will fall apart tends to work on the nerves. One of these days I'll learn how to let go.

"I know I'll never turn heads so I'll have to settle for changing minds."
- Will Reaves, referring to his attitude towards the opposite sex

(Pssst.... that's me, in case you're slow.)

I spent the morning at work reading the newest incarnation of Conan the Barbarian comic books, which are much closer and have a greater influence from Robert E. Howard's original short stories and novels. They are extremely well written and have magnificently fitting art work (which makes me again curse the heavens that my drawing hand was injured). Additionally, I played around with Photoshop, capturing scans from comic books and turning them into single-character and panoramic desktops.

This evening I went to see Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem with my friend Chris. It was a good two hours of being able to turn off my brain and snipe at the movie in comfort. When we were going to our seats I ran into one of my ex-girlfriend's (from 2002) parents. We chatted for a bit and caught up and it was just a generally good conversation. It was a bit odd, but with the exception of one ex's father (he never liked me, never thought I was good enough for his daughter) I typically get along swimmingly with all of my significant other's parents.

This evening I've spent fretting over the few pounds I've put on over the holidays and while moving (boo for not having my stockpile of healthy foods laying about). I'll deal with that in short order, though. Just need to re-organize my monthly budget to allow for a gym membership in the new year. I'm thinking a goal of having my abs visible again by my birthday (March 28th) isn't too much to ask of myself.