It took a long time to catch up on all you’ve been writing. You guys write a lot. But it was fun. Shit I didn’t think it would take five hours. At least I was doing my laundry at the same time. GF will be out of school soon and it’s back to the god forsaken grocery stores. And Target. To get paper towels and toilet paper. And a bike tire. Fuck it. I was going to try to shop local, but I’m too lazy. And so the world will end in fire.

My bike’s been busted for a week but I am too lazy to go to the bike store and get another tire. Besides I am afraid of those guys. They will probably laugh at me.

My lip hurts. Last night I had a dream that my best friend who I don’t talk to any more who’s in Afghanistan was here and we were in some kind of apartment complex with many floors. We were trying to figure out a puzzle, like a fucked up crossword, and if we didn’t figure it out it was sure death for everyone. And there was another annoying guy with us, fucking the whole thing up. He said he was trying to solve it, too, but we knew he couldn’t, but he wouldn’t get out of the way. We went downstairs and there were some rich white guys in a truck and they flashed a gun at us when someone said something disparaging. I knew it was going to happen. I ran for cover and heard the shot and knew there was a gun in my car, which was next to where I was hiding. Then that annoying guy popped out with my gun, it was a little revolver. He shot at the guys and then things got tense. I knew those rich white dudes were just shooting to scare us, but now someone was going to die. I cursed the bastard and suddenly there was a rifle in my hands and two girls in my car. And I didn’t know if my best friend was dead yet, so I ran up to the white guys’ car and shot wildly. Then there was no one in the car and a tall black man in a military uniform was pulling a sidearm and I knew he was going to kill me. So I shot him in the shoulder. I didn’t know how to cock the gun, but I figured it out as he slowly gathered himself to raise his gun again. And then I shot him in the heart. He looked annoyed and like he was going to die, but he gathered his strength as I cocked the gun again and I aimed for his hand, and I shot that.

Then GF woke me up by asking me if I was tired.

Switching between worlds like that is so jarring. I try to tell her that it is, but she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t have dreams, or anyway she can’t remember if she does. She never understands why I wake up feeling weird or scared.

Dreams are fucking weird. Especially because to me they are so real.

And I don’t know if they end and it just seems like I wake up right away, always breaking them up weirdly, or I’m always waking up mid-dream, which is why I feel so what’s the word ah shit I can’t think of it but you know what I mean. Disoriented.

But anyway. Shit. What’s going on around here? Today GF forgot her chef coat, and we were halfway down the street to the train when she remembered, so I ran back while she kept walking, and then caught back up with her. That was too much running in the clothes I was wearing. It’s pretty windy out there. All the snow’s gone but the scraping woman was out again. Her companion has not been around.

I’m almost to the end of Great Expectations and I’ve pretty much forgotten or perhaps never read all that happens after this point. I think I read it all but it was probably on an all nighter in high school.

I’m reading Proust and the Squid and it’s really interesting. It’s just about reading. And it makes me want to read Proust. But I feel like I should learn French if I’m going to do that.

Watching Midnight in Paris has really made me want to read more Hemingway. And reading Proust and the Squid, since it’s so dense I end up skipping through the middles of some sentences, not on purpose but just because I want to finish, even though I go back and try to reread and get every word, well anyway it made me think of Elmer Leonard’s quote, “I leave out the parts that people skip.” As much as I like wordplay, I think I’m more of a story guy. Just clean writing thanks. But then again I’ll change my mind tomorrow.

Anyway, trying to be more “manly” and have an effect on my environment. Trying to believe I can change things or that life matters. Trying to grow up. Just like always.

When I walk around the city and people walk into me like I am a ghost, it happens all the time, it usually gets on my nerves more than most things. Like Christ people don’t you know how to walk? If there are four of you coming towards me, one of you needs to move to the back so I can get through! Jesus fuck and those god damn strollers! Fucking hell! It’s a baby not a license to plow humanity under like a cornfield. Jesus mother fucking Christ I swear I’m going to get a stroller and put an old time iron ass cow catcher on the front of that shit and mow motherfuckers down!

Alright so yeah that shit really gets on my nerves because I just think people should respect each other. But I’ve started thinking that I’m at war with everyone. Like there are two sides to this war, considerate people and inconsiderate people. I’ll always be considerate, because that’s what side I’m on, but if those bastards on the other side want to be inconsiderate, well I shouldn’t expect any different. That’s what makes it maddening, is that you go out in the world just expecting other people to be considerate. If you expect them all to be inconsiderate because they’re at war with you, well you’re not surprised. And surprisingly there are some other people on my side of the war, and we smile as we pass each other, leaving each enough room to comfortably walk.

I’ve also thought this way about customers and older people. Like I heard this one guy talking at a party I was working, he was talking to this young architect about how he doesn’t understand why young people don’t want to work. He was commending this young man for having a real job instead of just opting out of life and so on. He said it drives him crazy that young people don’t want to work. Well little did that fuckface know but the guy serving him bruschetta on a stick was an out of work architect. Guess what mother fucker people want to be architects but they can’t because no one’s building shit right now!

But of course that guy is probably totally a good person with a wife and kids and struggles and such. He probably would be fun to have dinner with. Maybe. Probably. And on top of that, the server I’m talking about who’s also an architect, well he’s basically a pretentious asshole and I hate him. Not really. He has a good heart and he’s interesting and fun to hang out with. But he’s also pretentious and an asshole and I can see why some people hate him. Or would hate him if they didn’t know him.

The incident made me think of this really awesome blog post on Rarasaur, which was also probably the first inspiration for me to start thinking this way.

But when I think that we’re at war, it helps me to manage my expectations and be more like myself instead of getting really angry on the inside. It’s really not a generational thing, it’s just that this guy and the generations and generations of humanity before us have helped hold up an idea of what society should be that in the end might not be sustainable, and is certainly irrational, and the only logical response to an irrational world is non-participation. Or at least it’s one logical response.

So I think to myself, that’s ok, he’s on the asshole team. Of course he hates me, we’re at war, and I’m on the not-an-asshole team. But just like the Germans and the French that one time on the battlefield, if some shit happened where we could temporarily forget our uniforms, we could sit down and enjoy a beer together.

But yeah, non-participation. I was thinking maybe fuck it, if this is the way the world is, I might as well act like it matters. Even if it really doesn’t, I guess it’s a little like what I was telling Matt on his blog, about induction and probability and shit. The probability of anything happening, really, philosophically, is 50/50. Or at least that’s what David Hume postulated. And it makes sense if you think about it. Like the coin toss and what not, if you flip it 100 times, 50 times or so it will be heads, that’s true. But say you flipped it ten times and all those times it was tails. Well, now you’ve got to believe that this time it will be heads. I would guess the probability of it being heads at that point would be about 91 percent or some shit. But think about the coin. It doesn’t know it’s been flipped ten times and the universe could give a shit less about you flipping a coin so it’s not keeping track. There is nothing keeping track of your flips so there’s nothing that really makes this particular coin toss 91 percent likely to be heads. Nope every time you flip the coin it’s a 50/50 chance of being heads or tails. That is unless you take into account that it also has as much chance (and this is taking a philosophical bullshit leap) to burst into flames or become sentient or ask you “do you want some more?” like that machine in The Fifth Element. Anything could happen, but we don’t really believe that because we believe the past is a predictor of the future, which according to Hume is the logical fallacy upon which science is built.

But anyway, shit what was I saying?

Oh right, non participation. So Hume was a fucking crazy ass for thinking of this shit and articulating it and what all but in the end even he had to agree that a person can’t live without basing his idea of the future on his idea of the past. I mean you can’t live a fulfilling life if you walk around continually conscious of the fact that the sun is just as likely to rape you in the ass as it is to rise tomorrow morning. So the point is to just be aware of it as a logical construct and then just go with it, if it works. Which is somewhat the same as functionality…or shit what is the real word for it? I don’t know but it’s what Newton and those fuckers thought about when they made their theories. Maybe the basis isn’t true, but the end result is true. Maybe calculus depends on something irrational and non-existent, but it accomplishes the desired end so that’s fine.

So probability is bullshit but in a coin toss I’d bet twenty dollars that the coin that’s been tails 10 times will be heads on the eleventh. And if I think this way about that, well shit, I might as well deal with the world as it is. Like some kind of rationality is possible. Like change does matter, however futile it is in the long run.

Ah but it’s so hard, since the world is so farcical. And life is a joke and death is the punch line. Working within the system to change the system. Shit I don’t know. The system is fucked with a capital K but then again, maybe that’s a bunch of horseshit. Maybe there is no system. Maybe the internet is a construct. Maybe they’re after all of us.

But really, you can’t save the world by changing your light bulbs and not going to target.

Mother Theresa said we can’t do great things, only small things with great love.

Be the change you want to see in the world and all that.

But even that was a simpler time.

Or just as fucked up, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe everything that happens has to happen.

Alright well I’ve stopped making sense about a thousand words ago. But what I’m trying to say is that I think I’m going to try to act like the world is a rational place. I’m going to try to make a small difference in it. I’m going to stop thinking that everything is futile and meaningless and just pretend like it isn’t. Just for the hell of it. What have I got to lose?