pixelated.me

Mario Fucking Paint.
man did i love this "game"
SNES and a mouse, pure joy

and you can totally download a recreation and play with it on your computer http://www.unfungames.com/mariopaint/ fucking yea! there goes sleep

Father's Day.
My Dad has 6 children and 1 "illegitimate" child that he just found out about and is trying to build a relationship with. Of his children all of us at some point or another have been through therapy for co-dependancy and addictions of one sort or another and two have been through rehabs for eating disorders.
To say that the sins of the father reflect on the child is putting it mildly. We all grew up with, at various times, an incredibly absent father who was exceedingly generous financially, an interesting duality that for many years kept us from realizing just how absent he really was from our lives.
My youngest brother is the one who is really testing my father. He is 20. Never finished high-school and is gripped with such intense anxiety that he smokes pot every night just to try and go to sleep. When things started to unravel with my brother about three years ago my father decided that the best approach was to just let things reach a natural boiling point. To let things achieve a state of crisis. In hindsight he's admitted that was a mistake, but i also think he believed that he would be in a position to throw money at the problem and solve it when it finally boiled over. I don't think he ever realized that his financial situation could take a turn for the worse and that as a result he would find himself feeling far more impotent to combat the problems that finally have boiled over.

It's sad, deeply saddening to watch my brother so deeply dug into a trench of his own behavioral patterns and coping mechanisms. But what's worse is to realize that had my parents made different choices, and in this regard because my mother is bi-polar more of the blame falls on my father as the only physiologically stable parent, my brother david might not be in the state he is right now.

So on this fathers days my dad sits alone in a hotel room in Houston, overwhelmed by the weight of his responsibility to his youngest boy. Who at 20 years old is still just a boy, who's lost, and full of resentment towards a father that let him get lost, because at the time he thought thats what was best.

2 years just go by, they didn't even ask permission.

fuckers.

someday soon i'll write about my first love. At the very least for everyone who's read the rants and meanderings that came about because of it ending, I'll write the beginning. Those first three days in Dec of 2000. It feels like time to do it.

circa 1993-94

I got chicken pox and my perpetually traveling father came "home" to see me, although to be fair by this time i think my parents where almost divorced.
I was going to spend all week in bed, trying and failing, not to scratch myself silly.
My dad having just returned from a trip abroad handed me a brand new powerbook 150.
He said here. this is for you to keep you busy. So really this mac thing is all his fault.
I'm a geek cause of him.

might as well, write something.
shit if i do then i can pretend some part of the last hour of useless and slightly self destructive reminiscing was in some way constructive

add 1 part: thinking about ex, seeing her myspace, and wondering what the fuck if anything is left, yet again, reused thought, recycled, shat it out and ate it once again, and it still taste like shite.

add 2 parts: my ex-gfs sister is staying in my flat and has been for a week. She's lovely, and not at all like her sister, which is to say i feel i can relate to her. but goddamn if it isn't a challenge not to thing about the ex, the lack of contact, friendship, failed attempts at friendship, and wonder yet again if it isn't a shame that after 5 years all thats left is a little bit more than nothing and a friendship with her sister.

add 1 cup of: after 7 days, the diplomatically vague topic of P. the ex, came up with the sister in conversation. bits and pieces really, of who she is, seen through the eyes of a younger sister that doesn't always relate to her, nothing really of much use. the sort of half conjectured observations that serve only to highlight how estranged the once loved can become.

blunt: i hate that i give a shit. But now in the presence of a, house guest, reminder it saddens me that there isn't anything between us, it scares me to think that having loved so intensely and so blindly it or rather i left so little room for anything else, But hey man a bad break up is a bad break up, you get over it but it doesn't quite motivate you to invite the person for tea, or send an email every few months to catch up. There's always that lack of trust.

More than anything, i wish one of us had had the balls to end it sooner, before it got ugly, before the cheating, before the blog reading, before my faux attempt at post break up friendship because i thought she needed me, before she confided in me that she had a [removed at the her request as a courtesy], her process, finding herself through her darker side, i wish i'd known to walk away, COLD, because i think maybe today i'd have that occasional email to say hello, and it would be ok, as she seems to be okay now, except i wouldn't have born witness to her destroying the person i loved before discovering who she was.

maybe thats why i can't reach out or send the email i've been writing to her in my head all week.
maybe it all boils down to i haven't figured out how to forgive her for tearing to bits the version of her that i loved so utterly.

We had these very silly and very personal nicknames for each other, i was peep and she was peo, and really it was just the personas for two lifetimes of unexpressed childhood playfulness and wonder that we discovered we could indulge in with each other, One day, of the many shared with her, i playfully "threatened" to do something, lick her eye i think, and she squirmed and said "no, don't do that, it's the instant death of peo spot" i laughed at the thought, thinking that the playful childish side of her was in some naive way eternal, in the same way i though we were.

For months, and months during the course of the first year after we split, i kept thinking, "instant death of peo." over and over again, Aware of how ridiculous it sounded but also of how precisely it expressed my utter disgust and heartbreak. could it be that even now, somehow i haven't forgiven her for the "not so instant death of peo" and with it peep, some bit of my ability to love naively.

I'm not sure how to end this post. there's still somethings i can't quite bring myself to write.

I've noticed a trend. the end of the month/ beginning of a new month are slow blogging times. something in my internal clock takes a moment to realize that we have in fact carried on into the next month.
It's almost as if i'm a sailor trying to sail to the edge of the world only to realize its round.
I still think the end of a month should include a small pause, a day or two to say phew that month went by quickly.

that's it for now. but at least the May index of my blog archive has something in it now.

i've this wonderful wonderful book. But i won't divulge the name of it, not yet. and it's filled with the ability to mix and match animal parts to create new ones. I've decided i will from now on occasionally share some of these carefully concocted concoctions.

accordingly todays animal is:
a capricious specimen with a sturdy caparison hailing from the malaysian forests.

Bueller? Bueller?
ok so despite the fancy hit tracker that shows up to the right of this post i really don't have any clue who, what, where, why, people read this blog.
so in an effort really do fill the time on a lazy sunday i've decided to do roll call,
except i have no idea what your names are (with one or two exceptions)
so everyone or no one.
please comment with at the very least, if not a name, a city, it'd been fun to see where people are stumbling onto this blog from.

sometimes when nothing else seems worthy of my attention i cram my short term memory full of random images from flickr. I feel like i'm cramming them full of a random slice of lives. Laughter, people spinning, mediocre pictures of buildings and dogs, gadgets, half naked girls, pain, sadness, memories.

and then i'll move on. write. listen to music, do something unrelated and all that imagery that represents the fragments of someones life just vanishes into the mist of forgotten new memories.

and tomorrow i'll submerge myself in another set and it will affect my mood for a few minutes and then pass.

It's an odd sort of meditation on life and voyeurism.

I've stopped counting the end of my past relationship.

for some time now, I stopped paying attention to old anniversaries.


But i've sorted of done away with them in general. Some day this summer.

On a nice day with a good


breeze i'll somewhat arbitrarily say "it's been a year" for my new relationship.


No date. No anniversary. No marking of a calendar. I think it's nicer this way.

I'm at the part where i start processing the little random bits that were once me, us, her, that chapter.
some moments are awkward like watching my new gf put on the cooking apron i bought once for valentines many years ago with old gf. It seems so bizarre that my stuff, my things, my sheets, my pillow, my stuffed animal, a green frog, all once seemed so shared with that one person. They're all analogous with me i suppose. It's the realization that i'm sharing of myself again.

another something i noticed: no one ever quite fits in your arms the same way. the small evolved patterns of holding, nestling, sleep, are utterly different, devastatingly so, because however unfair it is to say so, a small part of me wondered if she would fill the spot on my chest that the old "she" once fit into.
instead it's my right ankle that notices her absence when i sleep alone. It's the leg with which i reach and touch her leg as it reaches for mine since we sleep facing opposite directions.

Quote: Before Sunset from Luis Sosa on Vimeo.

I stumbled across this song playing Rock Band.

and man was i into it. "jamming" to Seven by VAGIANT.

and boom. I'm singing along to the chorus but i'm alone, and the mic isn't plugged in.

cause "I----I-----I-----AYYYYY Got your back until i DIEEEEEEEEE-AYYYYYYYY"

and fuck me but i was moved by the fucking punk rocking stalkerish sentiment to this song.

moved man, fucking moved, thinking i want someone to love me that fucking much.....enough to stalk me....

enough to sing to me

"and I'------gonna protect you till i die....I won't let nobody hurt you again...i'll fuck up your next girlfriend if she breaks your heart"

Got home more.

More than i did when i left new york for mexico.

More than when i spent 11 days in new york in March purging my belongings.

I got home a little more this time around.

some of it has to do with closing doors.

but more so it's about realizing what the corridors i've got in front of me are.

I can see the burdens on the horizon.

If i knew what to look for i'm sure i could smell them.

It's growing up time.

putting it off has been fun and necessary.

my mother's bipolar. It's a subtle bitch of a condition. It masquerades as stubborn pride or indignation but ends with her sobbing in self pity in the corner of her room. It starts with some round about logic about how everything you've agreed upon for the past 3 or 4 days has really been wrong. It begins with what sounds like a suggested alternate course of action.

Mother: have you considered that if you don't do what we've agreed upon because secretly i resent you for not being able to give me exactly what i want and feel i deserve because once i was very wealthy and beautiful and coveted and now i'm not, that it might actually work out better.

Son: well i can't do that. cause i can't afford to.

Mother: well how come your father has a nice house and a nice car and...

Son: well because he's a different person than you.

Mother: it's not fair.

Son: no it's not

Mother: well now i don't want anything. I'd rather not having anything than accept what you can give which isn't what i deserve.

"i've been driving WV cars since i was 16, why should i stop now!"(actual quote)

and it deteriorates from there.

But i have come to one conclusion. She's stable for 4 days. it's the 5th day that sends her off on one of her bipolar induced rages of self pity and anger.

My original return flight home was yesterday Wednesday at 8:50pm. It was perfect. i would have left right at her stability peek. But i had to delay my departure and now i've overstayed my welcome. Her brain is fighting back against my subtle attempts to placate her. to comfort her and control the mental tangents that lead her down dark roads of regret.

But in the end she resents me. she resents that i've accepted my fathers help and secretly and not so secretly at times just wants me to suffer her mistakes with her. to tell my dad to fuck off and shove his money and go hate him from a distance with my mother and my younger brother who did take my mom up on her strategy for all the good it's done anyone.

My father probably was a bit of a dick. I know him enough to accept that half what my mom has accused him of is probably true.

But sometimes. as i myself have recently discovered, you need to let go of the anger or it will just tie you to the person you're hating.

my mom's been tied to my dad through hate for more than a decade.

enough mom.

enough.

anonymous comments are delightful and vexing. mainly because i'd love to know more about my readers.

haha readers. there is probably like 5 of them.

But hey 5 readers is 4 more than the ones i have in my head.

anonymous comments remind me of secret admirer notes i got in highschool...or the secrete nemesis notes that i also got.

i never did find out who sent either of those.

love.

i really believe it can only exist when two equally fucked up people come to understand both sides of pain.

breaking hearts and having yours broken.

that pain. that scaring permanence of loosing love that I'd started feeling was as constant as consciousness is the only thing jaring enough to have made me finally figure out who i am. (apologies for switching to first person but it was necessary)

So i stopped looking for damsels to rescue. or beautiful fucked up girls, broken girls, wounded girls who i could wrap in my sense of centeredness*

i want awareness of humanity. our condition is flawed. we slam into wisdom like jumpers leaping off tall erections and crashing into concrete.

I'm still learning. realizing how reluctant i've been to forgive, how much the loathing simmered and settled into a substrata that helped me force a distance between me and that one person i once loved so utterly. But i have to let go of that hate. It's no longer serving any real purpose, except ironically to tie me to her.

in hate as i was in love.

enough now.

enough.

I'm in Houston. unpacking the boxes upon boxes that are the artifacts of a life lived in New York City. Boxes which up until two weeks ago had spent a year and half at a storage location in Harlem.

When we start coming across some decidedly feminine products. some empty facial cream tins, some decorative jars to hold bathroom supplies and other misc. She asks me what i'm doing with these things and i say "the were probably ______'s (my ex)" "She lived in my place for a few months after we broke up while she looked for a new flat. "Que bien la tenia, todavia vivio en tu depa?" (She had it nice, she actually lived in your flat?" She then asked how could it have ended if she had it so good, something which reminds me that in my mom's generation all a man really needed to do was take care of his girl and that's it. No messy emotional baggage to deal with, at least not on the surface. I say something about it being complicated and then in something that struck me as suprisingly naive for a woman as bitter as she is she said "But she seemed so in love with you when i saw her at your graduation."

"Yes" i say

"She was" i say

"We were" i say

but it had nothing to do with it.

and it didn't.

There was a time when all i needed to lead me to my newest frivolous technology purchase was that rush of Dopamine that the mere knowledge of a new gadget would elicit. My life for my first 25 years or so followed a steady stream of update after update that kept me on the relative cutting edge of whatever.

in the last two years though i've started to mellow. Tech purchases now undergo a less that rigorous evaluation through whatever part of my frontal cortex is responsible for responsible. The words "do you really need it" mock me. I sometimes find myself doing what no early adopted should ever do...wait...for the next version!

my computer will be two years old in sept. that for me is an eternity and yet other than the limit on RAM (2gb) i'm actually doing quite okay with it which doesn't help justify the mac pro i want to buy.

*this is a fairly mediocre post. but in the interest of the daily. i'm just gonna let it float onto my blog like that piece of poop that won't flush.

Because i firmly believe everyone should have a laugh at the expense of this blokes parents choice.

much has been written about muxtape in the last few days by the blogsphere. and for good reason. It's exceedingly simple, beautiful, fun, and clever and yet like most things that achieve this combination of adjectives it runs the very real danger of crossing the digital overlords of the RIAA (who appointed them anyways. fuckers!) for those that don't know it's very simply a website that allows you to upload 12 songs (that's it) and create your online mixtape that you can share with your mates. simple. except for it to be legal i'd have to actually have permission from the 12 different copyright holders to upload the songs. It's actually much grayer legal territory since the DMCA does allow provisions for fair use. but fair use is somewhat subjective. I hope muxtape sticks around, because its cool and clever and created by new yorkers, and as former new yorker i tend to root for the home team.