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Tuesday, March 15th, 2016
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4:31 pm - Things people are thinking while you watch them.
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There's too much juice. Too much juice in the body. Squeeze it away. Squeeze out the flow, odd bits of pulp remaining. Who knows...
The eel that lives in my chest is too familiar.
She said that, she really said that, and here I am, and here are my feathers.
Eli walking aimlessly in the sun. Then she nudged him with her stump, driving him inside the wood house. Where did they find trees in the desert: his penultimate musing.
What will make him want to die?
Smokehound troubador doo doo doo. Dum dee dum dum dum BA. Then silence.
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| Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
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1:08 am - Flying
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Sometimes I look at my future fellow passengers waiting to board an airplane and try to identify reasons why the almighty unspeakable thing might punish them with fiery death. I wonder if we will bond together with our sins upon our shoulders as the airplane descends rapidly into an unmarked field or mountain somewhere, as our bodies return to dust in near-simultaneity.
This is a great improvement over the way I used to feel about flying.
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| Friday, May 14th, 2010
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9:53 am - Big difference
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There's a big difference in the way Boston and Seattle bus drivers handle their pickups.
Boston drivers will barely stop for people who have been waiting half an hour for the bus.
Seattle drivers will wait for someone 30 seconds away from the stop, running down a hill in high-heels, being chased by killer bees.
Boston drivers respond to taps on the bus door for entrance by smiling and not opening the door, and then driving off, zoom through the red light.
Seattle drivers will wait through two of those lights to pickup the wildly gesticulating man across the street who may or may not want to ride the bus.
Sometimes I miss the Boston bus business -- you had to be ready -- accountable to the bus stop because any derivation from the plan and you'd be waiting another 15-20 for a mistake that only took 5 seconds to commit. Like looking away from the bus stop. For seriously.
While it's very nice of bus drivers in Seattle to wait for any and everyone who is a long ways away from the bus stop, I'm not sure it's fair to people who make it a point to be on-point and ready for pickup.
Sometimes missing the bus can be good for people -- maybe they strike up a conversation with an interesting stranger. Maybe they hear that one song in a new light. Maybe they sit back down at the bus stop and think about how being early and late, being there then, being behind schedule, being in time consumes our thoughts. Thankfully, we are all on-time in the end.
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| Sunday, November 29th, 2009
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10:17 pm - This is how it happened.
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| Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
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9:16 pm - How to deal with it all.
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"Don't forget what you're capable of, Paul," she said to me as they took her away. It was quotable, if untrue. I've always known better than her who I was, I just didn't want to let on.
Because letting on is so boring. While they cook the breakfast, reading the paper and pointing out all the world's events you have a larger context on thanks to the reading you've done on Wikipedia. You're smart, let it shine, man. Don't let all the knowledge disappear into ether. But if someone contradicts you or questions a fact, defer to the fact that they resisted your attempt at prowess. This may not work in favor of your self-esteem, but it does make you well-liked, and believe me, being liked is often more important than actually having something great to say or paint on walls.
They're all living a better life than you, they deserve her more, the rest of them. They move around the world, living in exotic locations. They tell you about these places and upload pictures to Facebook so that you can see how much fun they're having without you. You notice and take it to heart, disregarding the better advice of your peers who will love you no matter where you don't go.
I know my shortcomings better than I know the faults of others. Making it a point to seek out the good in the worst leaves little room for other meditation, and when you fail at those things that everyone fails at, you take it to heart because you know they have potential and beauty where you do not. This is a fiction you invent to keep yourself from getting too cocky. It is completely unnecessary and even hazardous to your mental health, but you stick to it, because you've got stick-to-it-ness about you, a j'en sais quoi.
They took her away and her curly hair. Wouldn't even let me keep a lock. In an envelope. I won't even look at it much, just look at the cupboard where it is and remember that it's there, that its oils are decaying rapidly and that my time is nigh. Her time is nigh, I mean. Her time. They still wouldn't let me keep it though.
"Don't forget what you've learned, Paul," and no I won't, not this time. This time it's all about me and no one else because it's always been about everyone else and here I am with an ego in a can, buried under a Robinson shelter no one thought to dig up once the bombs stopped falling. I've learned that loving the world and letting it be only leads you to take up a second fiddle and play when the mood suits the world, not when the mood is wearing a suit and you love the color, the hem so much that to not point it out would be akin to looking away from a building on fire. People descend, it's gorgeous, it is sick. Where were you?
Where were you when you saw me sick and hiding? In the cardboard box, underneath the trellis, underneath the ground, bones made sepulcher chapel. You thought to get out of my way or get in my way, you knew I'd be there, that I'd lift while you pulled.
Back in the burning bush, it's not twigs, it is hair, hers. It's on fire, yes, and smells like oysters burning. Watery eyes as I hang upside down suspended in the jungle of hair, choking on a strand here and there and the flames nip around me in a neat circle. I am disgusted and I want to wake up, if she'll let me.
When I was young I'd play with action figures and fiction long scenes of interaction between these figures, using sets built by wood railroad track, fire trucks and anything else I could get my hands on, and as I'd tell the stories out loud to no one in particular I would tear up and cry for no apparent reason but the telling of the story itself. I don't remember why I stopped. I think it became embarrassing, sort of like my fixation on diapers. I used to steal these giant packages of diapers and horde them. I thought they were the greatest thing in the world, but I knew somehow that it was a dirty habit, a shame. I've always wanted something to hide from people. I've fashioned an identity that's at play with the world, and then there's me, beneath the layers. Not even sure what that me looks like any longer. It's like a gone-away place. So many demands, and, I think, mostly self-inflicted ones. We tear away at the underneath looking for better and better ways to hide and we end up broken and unhappy, crying into the aether for no apparent reason. We used to cry because the enormous beauty of our power was too much for even us to behold. We were babies then; now we cry because we can't go back.
So you set yourself down for a nice long think. You'll outhink this world of ours, you'll see it in all the lights people miss while they live it. For your desires and passions you'll substitute devices for experience. It is easier to do this, and also you do not run the risk of offending anyone. Think of the mind as a sponge, one that always retains its special buoyancy. You'll always be stupid and beautiful, soaked. You, my friend, will love it.
She is better off gone.
I think. You do.
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| Monday, August 31st, 2009
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10:08 pm - Time to die.
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8:05 pm - Why I haven't been writing at all.
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I really do hate the thought of writing at the moment. I've listed the reasons that I've utilized to stop me from doing it lately, here:
- There's nothing I could write that hasn't/won't be written better
- What I write is too weird to actually have any entertaining value (the sellability defense)
- There isn't enough time to write when I'm working a full-time job
- I'd rather just focus on the good bits.
- The television is unbeatable as an entertainment delivery tool.
- There will never ever be a truly good and also popular book ever again.
- I don't have the ability to focus.
- I really hate the actual act of writing because it sucks me dry.
- There's so many other people devoted to the task who are better than me.
- Music tends to say much more with less.
- I'm not as good as I thought I was.
- I'm good enough that I don't need to write anymore.
- Who am I to think I have anything worth writing about?
- Life is made up of both fate and free will in tandem and if I'm meant to write, I'll feel the compulsion to do so and it will be unbeatable, but it will still feel like a choice.
- I'm 26 and yet tired.
Maybe this speaking the demon's name out loud will benefit. Either way, it feels good just to write that. Thanks for your patience.
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3:20 pm - Twit Musubi
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I forgot how to write an LJ entry!
I went on to Twitter last night and learned that both Brent Spiner and Levar Burton twit like motherfuckers. They are so twittery, I nearly had a heart attack. How does one even begin to twit? It seems like people are holding conversations that last days and months, with only a snippet to keep the jaws whet. I found it strangely appealing at first, but then this raw, icky feeling began to gnaw at me when I realized that all these people are impulsively scattering their thought trains into bon mots of dubious certitude. I only found one twitterer who seemed to use the system to the best of its abilities.
But the internet can't have passed me by so quickly. Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was firing up the Facebook and updating my status with clever tidbits of nonsense, or perhaps little clues as to my current whereabouts and what I thought of the latest Transmorphers film. Now I just let the auto-update function tell my Facebook when I've rated a film on Netflix or listened to a song on Lala. God forbid I actually put text on there. Really it's only good to show the world that YES I AM DATING and WOW I AM MOST UNIQUE.
(Which are both true facts, true to life. Another true fact is the fact that Hawaiian Barbecue hithertofore had never entered my stomach through my mouth. This is a goddamned travesty, which was remedied only too recently with the consumption of 3 or 4 mixed plates and several gigantic spam musubi, which are well-approximated size-wise in this here pictograph:
Except now their size is quite diminished and most of their former selves have likely vacated my body via an internal ducting system I just had installed. HVAC, motherfucker. It's a drain.)
But now I see all this Samuel Twittridge going on and it's too fast for me. It's like a babbling brook of halitosized saliva (now let's discuss, would that be a cool thing to see or would it smell kindof nasty and be really gross to dip your feet into?)
We all joked about it when it was debuted and now it's here and now it's "changing the world," one star/-fucker at a time.
I need: a vacation, a dog, a Ph.D, an electronic cigarette, patience, a reading chair, a set of sturdier balls, Alpha Protocol, and amazing grace.
Thanks!
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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11:22 am - Idea for an MMA show
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Steel cage, mats on the ground, two fighters squaring off in the ultimate test of manhood and virility!
Who will grapple the hardest? Who will overpower their opponent with the fiercest moves?
Who will MAKE OUT the sexxxiest?!
MMA: Male Makeout Action!
Let's do this thing.
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| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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8:50 am - Mistaken identity #600
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I used to post about these all the time, but it's just never-ending and only some of it is worth sharing.
With Gmail I have paul.rice, which also counts as paulrice. Since then, I've received many mistaken emails, emails intended for paulnrice, ricepaul, paulrce, etceterice.
All these people are Paul Rices of different persuasions.
A few years ago I got email from The Sexecutioner. I received quotes on music for a wedding a few weeks ago (expensive!).
This morning I received detailed resume notes for Paul Rice who is a "Senior Chemical Engineer with over 15 years of process design and project engineering experience in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, food and specialty chemical industries. Creates practical solutions to technical challenges faced during technology development and project execution that save both time and money."
One of his achievements is that he, "Managed retrofit to mate with headers without major rework and to maximize processing capacity in existing space."
Then, the response to his resume:
Hello Paul,
At Claire's request, I just took a look at your resume. Claire asked me to provide any comments or suggestions I might have and yes at this time I do not have any positions open. It looks like you have a varied background bouncing between Project Management and Engineering - which is not uncommon - my background was Engineering as well. In order to get into a project management position or at least in the door for the interview, I would suggest that you put something into your summary that indicates project management background. Any project management background should be highlighted. The first words in the summary are Senior Chemical Engineer - while true this may immediately push a manager with little time to put your resume aside and look at another candidates resume. The resume much catch their interest right away in line with the position they have open. Another suggestion would be to add any formal project management training you may have and join PMI.org and put it on your resume. It shows commitment and interest in the field and it shows you are staying current with Project Management best practices.
Good luck in your search.
Kind Regards,
Susan Mount PMP
Director of Project Management
Bioprocess Division
==============================================
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| Sunday, March 15th, 2009
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3:14 am - That night in the storm
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That night in the storm;
what do I know anymore
save the wind and the cloud's rain.
Drained out of me the piss and cynigar;
a lonely flock
tending towards a new home in the sky.
Speak of Earth like it's not a spaceship;
a guiding ball of dust and and chrome
fleeing from a farmhouse window.
Human remains piled up on the sides of empty streets;
a wine bottle sagging
with contents fermented beyond the taste bud.
"I am an oak that knows," he says;
to a gale
dragging its own sooth across a graveyard of sails.
As the needles of my feet fall;
one caught against the other
until we're back at the lightning campfire
washed in such a dull blue haze
even the marshmallows change their color.
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| Thursday, March 12th, 2009
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10:49 am - Driving to work at 9 AM in Fremont
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Driving to Fremont is very different at 8:40 than it is at 7:40, or 9:40.
At 8:40, the three lane highway is bulked-up. The rightmost lane ends at a certain point, and everyone who tried to take the faster route ends up slowing down the whole because they must merge in with the rest of us.
The few who don't play by the rules -- who stay in the dicey lane must then slow down the whole when they reabsorb into the regular flow of traffic.
Driving, we're all alone. Our own space is ours, we listen to our music and we don't have to speak to the others. An occasional glance in the rearview might reveal the face of your fellow commuter, locked inexorable into crawling movement towards the things they must do that day, but for the most part, we're alone.
I'm in an awful mood today. I wonder how much of it is from the drive?
I should start taking the bus again. I miss people and their sideways glances, their sadness and excitement. I miss the bad smells (urine) and the good smells (shampoo). I miss it all.
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| Monday, March 9th, 2009
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4:42 pm - Dude you suk at got of war when you smak da bleez
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| Friday, March 6th, 2009
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11:53 am - 7 Things
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1. I remembered to breathe deep this morning, around 6am, ten or so full breaths and all the potential skullpain seemed to have gone. After I fell asleep again, I had a dream I was a secret agent, and one of my mom's old friends was outfitting me with dope gear.
2. My language in dreams is so different than the language I use in the world of flesh. Everything is more fluid there, gibberish with intent. The character of the words don't matter, it's the act of making noise, a telepathic breach between the hard mathematical craft of language and the realm of the mind that turns those equations into tapestries to hang behind eyelids.
3. Sometimes I will talk in gibberish all night. This usually means my dreams are at their loveliest.
4. Sometimes I will feel extraordinarily bad about using the first-person singular pronoun all the time in both writing and speaking. Listening to the things I say, reading the things I've written, I can't help but feel shame, which is a feeling I despise, so in turn it becomes about feeling ashamed for feeling ashamed.
5. Feeling shame is so useless. Accept the way things are, accept your responsibility in them, move on because no one else will do it for you.
6. Sister Christian, oh the time has come. And you know that you're the only one.
7. You're motoring.
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
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1:59 am
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All always talking to themselves. Like a sick metronome, we try to deny that fact. We think that by pretending we interface directly with another human being, we somehow do, though the good traits we see in that human being are but reflections of the soul that resides in us, hidden by flesh and misdirection.
Those connections that we feel are mirrors, bouncing light back and forth.
When we feel free to speak our minds. When we feel free. When we feel free, we can dance without worrying what another might think of our two-step. When that happens, we can say god to the devil, we can pray doom and go to heaven.
We do not tend to, because that freedom is a form of solitude. Maybe we're not ready for it. Maybe we're scared of being rejected of being rejected of being rejected.
Of being rejected, it is not the worst thing that might happen to one, and it will happen in one form of another, but the results are always dependent on the one who falls in that little trap door left open baited with honey for self-conscious minds to harvest and suffer.
When we switches to one and I find myself separating from the ego I see the heaven around me right now, and the heaven awaiting me when I die, and both are sublime and forever.
Fear is what keeps it all in check. Fear that by following this track, I'll lose all guiding and slip into a freefall, like the tiny rock particulate that bombards our planet daily.
Fruitless woe, that all could be ended by somesuch rock. Life, being short, rocky, needs the shaping of a home where the trees seed, not too far away, on a slope, looking down from where you climbed.
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| Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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8:42 am - Tom Tom Tom Tom Tom
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Today everyone mishears my voice over the phone, calling me Tom. I feel like Patrick Bateman, every name not my own is mine but my own is not.
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
"Hi Tom."
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| Friday, February 20th, 2009
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10:47 am - Hallelujah!
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| Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
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3:07 pm
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| Monday, February 9th, 2009
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11:54 am - I could use
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I could use like seventy gin and tonics, a catheter and a bag of huggies.
I could use a laundry hamper, some new blankets and a way to turn my two beds into one big bed.
I could use some more patience but I just don't have the time to find it my heart.
I could use a gun with one of those "BANG" flags inside it.
I could use more hours in the evening and more hours in the daytime and less hours smoking.
I could use a voice machine like the one Stephen Hawking has.
I could use the ability to see in that part of the brain that thinks of things to text message me.
I could use an aerosol laxative to spray in the faces of uptight wanks who have forgotten what their shit smells like.
I could use the ability to trust you.
I could use you but I'd rather be used.
I'd rather be used than use, for the rest of my life.
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| Friday, January 23rd, 2009
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12:58 am - To the stars, spinning in their divine rotation, right now and forever.
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People tend to tease me because I haven't ever been in a relationship that lasted past a year.
I still can't figure out why this is -- why I behave the way I do or why others behave in such a way to cause me to behave the way I do. Or is the latter invalid, due to the precept which accords all changes must be determined as self-involved, due to the unlimited unknowing guaranteed by singular consciousness and the fairness of logical thought that must follow that self-same knowing?
I'm not sure. Either way, it confuses me. Is it that I'm not being myself? Am I with the wrong people?
Tonight my feeling is towards me (full disclosure: most nights it is) in that I am too much in my desires too many things floating in my head to ever settle on one concrete idea that might make up all of my existence, that might lead me to reconsider breathing unless I was given the go ahead, to make me a seed awaiting dirt and water, to make me something to be shriven, like gold, to be shaped.
I try to be both things and neither are adequate. Nothing is adequate but the self, being honest, and this thing left to its own devices will not put enough outside friction on your penis so as to ensure you reach orgasm in a way you haven't ever felt before. The best lovers can also be the greatest dicks to each other. We know the chinks in the armor. We could cut you deep, if we wanted to.
I guess I've never met someone and known at that time that I would let them hurt me, I loved them so much. My first instinct has always been self-preservation, because no one else does that for you. You learn the ways you will survive, that your human life will continue, and you fight for that. The very nature of love only allows for complete and total surrender. You must bare your breast to the knife. And I'm not so keen on that. So many I've known have been cut for nothing.
This is the risk, this is what it's all about and precisely why I avoid it. I don't want you in my heart, holding the knife there like the threat that it becomes, a severing of all that grants me meaning, just because I believe in so little that for me to believe in you, just a bit, is sublime.
Both times I've put the knife there, both just walked away. I don't blame them. There's other worlds out there, and infinite variations on those. No time to settle for a pound of flesh and the threat of death. There is so much more than that.
Anyways, this shit is too long.
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