From a friend who needed to spend the night

So I landed here, Saturday, late evening-ish. I had planned to take a bus to Philly later that night to stay the winter at a house we owned there. Turned out that they didn't run to Philly as often as I expected. In fact, the next one was to leave only early next morning...

"Does it matter how many periods there are at the end of the last paragraph?!" "Wouldn't you rather it be two?" He really cared how many periods there were at the end of that paragraph. It bothered him. I'm still not sure why. When I enquired, he seemed too ashamed to say.

He banged his fist on the table once. I thought I saw him tearing a couple of times. He seemed so confused. And he was equally confusing.

He randomly brought up manual transmissions. His dream manual transmission BMW. Virtue. Lies. Blame. Identity. Pleasures. Needs. Taste. Wine. Abstinence. Piety. The secrets. That disgusting man. But wasn't he as well? Of course he was. The innumerable secrets. So full of evil. And each time, mid-conversation, he control-tabbed back to his exam review. He always eventually did.

Before I knew it, he had started singing along to a song. It went on for a while, culminating in, "Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" But he yanked at the cord right then, glanced across at something, stared blankly for a few, and.. exam review.

It was dusk. The air around him was cold. Not as cold, though. But those were the days. Was that a can of deodorant in his hands? His teeth were showing. Then it went blank. And then came the regret. Flowing like hot antiseptic would flow through an open wound.

How, when he made himself believe, he gave it his all. How, when he was unsure, he couldn't. How, when he convinced himself otherwise, he was a beast. How he changed his mind. Ever so often. How he blamed his genes. How pathetic he was. Ever so pathetic. How full of flaws he was. Ever so full of flaws. How he can't maintain consistency of tense in his writing. Ever so inconsistent. How lacking he is. Ever so lacking. Dear God, those desires. Ever so pathetic.

How he wished he was no more than the subset of him that he "wanted" to be. How he carefully managed what the world saw. How he lost control with certain people. Only to an extent, though. He wouldn't dare go further. How he was more. So much more. Mostly bad. Not too much good.

How desperately he wanted to hit reset.

He was tearing now.

Why I don't talk here anymore

I don't want people to read carefully crafted blog entries (a few are, I admit) and figure me out. I want people to read me, in person, and know me, if they want to.

The pin-drop silence is eerie. Makes me want to drop off the radar. You know, shut all my windows and doors and hatch a plan for world domination from my room. It feels familiarly bipolar, being this, today, and that, yesterday.

Yes, I feel like one of those people who love dogs so much that they'd do anything for one. Yet can't have one because they're allergic to them.

C'est la vie, you say? Ouch. To think that it's chipping off at my very existence.

All that said and done, I better get back to my plan for world domination.

Your very own next-door Evil Overlord,
--
Tom.

P.S.: I am over-punctuating, amn't I?

P.P.S.: The plans are documented in Frenglish (Franglais).

My eleventh grade

I can now safely assume my eleventh grade was mostly very, very useful.

Except of course for - well, mostly.

All hail xkcd :)

I am going to go thereht og ot gniog ma I

The man has it in his mailbox.

My seventeen year old existence, crushed, trampled and bludgeoned into six pages.

Devoid of the failures, the emotion and the transformation, it lies.

One of the more important passkeys to where I want to be.

Ah well, I'd better cut the mystery drama before I lose the last ounce of your attention that I'm clinging onto.

That Katy Perry song has been playing on repeat for the past forever. There's something about the song that I just can't get over. And I don't think it's the beat. God forbid it's the imagery that it's supposed to create in my head, I have a feeling it's the underlying theme of bold, spontaneous feminism. You know, like the world would've been a better place if not for the Y chromosome.

That said, I wore eyeliner today. Lots and lots of it. A black Revlon pencil + my sister + me = Tommy Joe Armstrong - the voice. I'd show you pictures if I didn't care for your sanity. But I'm nice like that.

Mac! Now, now, it's not like Apple's infallible. But besides the odd crash and burn, one of the best things that's happened to me. Meet Baby Epsilon, my very own MacBook Pro:

Synchronize 2008! Suffice to say, IT happened. :)

It'd be a shame if I didn't tell you about the Alien napping in the attic that I'm so much in love with. :D

P.S.: I'm male. I swear I am.

Averting damage

You know what's to do when you're feeling sour?

You count till ten.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

And you know what's to do if you're still feeling sour?

You sleep.

That way, the sourness goes away without any collateral.

I'm doing just that.

Goodnight.

void main() { /* F1 */ }

 

I used to be independent once upon a time.

Hell no, not anymore.

Void main, when I used to code.

Now, it's just void, no more.

There's stuff waiting to be done.

Their patience is waning.

They start testing me day after.

I'm in no position to see them through.

My education is the largest hindrance to my learning.

Most of my education.

So goes my whine.

All mine.

Update (19/07/08 20:42):

I'm feeling powerful again.

I don't seem to want to admit why.

"Hahaha. It's in BH-213."

That's what the damn kid told me when I asked him for my bag. Dark complexion, seemingly bratty but precociously smart. BH-213 for Black Hole 213, by the way.

Class was over, it wasn't so good for me, and all of us were leaving.

But just as the last of us walked out, he called us back in.

The classroom had transformed in those few seconds of our absence. For it wasn't the same sunlit, cheery place. The curtains had been drawn and the sense that something had gone wrong crept into my suddenly alert mind. The tables had all gone. They'd been replaced by a multitude of chairs, chairs with desks hinged onto them. The kind that you got into and then closed around you.

He sat us down and started dictating monotonously in a manner most atypical of him. We hadn't even taken out our notebooks as yet.

Me, being me, couldn't seem to find my bag. Initially, I just looked about in search of it. But in no time, I grew panicky. He continued dictating ostensibly unaware of my dilemma.

I got up from my place in the front on the class and turned around in search of it. The class seemed longer than usual. And there seemed to be a lot more of us than I thought. No, they weren't my classmates. Who were they? Some of them looked so much younger than us.

I reached the end, all the while searching. But to no avail. I looked up to the front of the class. He was still dictating. But I could barely hear him. One kid, short, dark, exuding an aura of prodigious intelligence and sharpness looked up at me. Trying my luck, I asked him for my bag.

That's when he laughed. No child-like laugh. Rather, one that represented a defined emotion and frame of mind: pure sadism.

It was while he laughed his laugh that he pointed at a black-something attached to the wall. Not in my two months of study in that classroom had I seen that thing. On closer inspection, it seemed like a vortex.

"Your bag, is in BH-213," he finally replied.

I edged towards it. With every step I took, I needed less physical effort to walk. It was as if all the forces in the universe wanted me in BH-213. Black Hole 213.