the laundry's done, my room's clean, my taxes are in order, my health insurance is covered, multiple months savings saved up.

nervous.
as.
fuck.

dunno.

well, it has nothing to do w/ those things being done. I'm anxious right now, yikes.

hell, I should just take a shower, or something. dunno, really tired/lazy to, meheh.

I liked the movie Kids. There I said it. 1995. And not in the movie critic kind of way. But I liked in in the smutty nihilistic way. The only thing they needed was condoms. End of story. The world presented in Kids, while being billed as both "an intriguing documentarian snapshot of today's disaffected youth" is actually just a scene from the world of Timothy Leary in the 1960s, an epicurean, youthful, mind-bending, free-flowing love fest. The only difference I can see now is AIDS. The rest is all just a changing of the guard in society.

In other words, I think we're more square as a society now than we were before. I won't say whether that's good for the world or not, but it speaks to something I've wanted in my life. I never grew up with cool older friends showing me the ropes of the world. I was coralled off in things like advanced placement programs and crap, and none of my friends were like that. When I was 13 or so, I had the rare opportunity to get invited to this one party where there was this one guy making out w/ a couple girls, and I sat by the side of the couch while I saw my crush have fun, and I just had no freaking idea what was going on.

I didn't know what I didn't know. The crazy, nihilistic fucked up thing in me that I'm all about is that, I wish I saw Kids when I was 13 so I could've been like, "oh, so this is what I'm missing out of in my teens."

All they needed was a condom, and everything else they did in that movie was fine. There was no cocaine, no heroin. Only alcohol, marijuana, "special-K" or whatever, totally harmless. They shouldn't have beaten up that one kid though, but that's about it.

I think what's going on here, is that everything that I'm seeing is quite out of the ordinary. It doesn't seem to be that what's going on is really happening. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to get at. Am I elaborating on a perceptive disconnect? Am I missing something? I'm not talking about paranoia, where you start hearing or seeing things that don't belong. But everything just seems so surreal. I don't know how to describe it.

Nothing particularly special's going on in my life. I wonder if I'm just getting older.

I'm a very sensitive person--not in the pathetic way--but sensitive to the structures around me, like physics and such, and problems of consciousness. And of course, like I'm extremely introspective.

I'm home or christmas, maybe that has to do with it. I've been "home for christmas," six, seven, eight times in a row now. Coming from being somewhere else, and there's always the same christmas tree, and there's the same people that come over, the same conversations, the same lack or not lack of conflicts or arguments.

I haven't really grown much in the past six years. I like to think that I've been on some fantastic journey of self-discovery throughout college and post-college, but coming home and seeing my parents' cars again in the garage, and taking in that old home smell, and seeing my parents, and my parents haven't changed, my siblings haven't changed. Thanks to modern technology, my parents have been aging a lot slower than their biological age due to nutrients and being and living in SoCal. Being hooked into various newsletters and health and beauty tips, you can mantain yourself pretty well.

Maybe this is the grand congealing that occurs after adolesecence where life becomes less of an arc and more of a loop.

And it's like everyday refolds the previous day, it's just a remix of the previous day. I'm not saying that I'm bored of it; my life is fun and interesting. But it seems like... I feel vaguely stationary. like. I mean, I'm not losing motivation, I still have goals and I want to achieve certain things. But the having of these goals is a constant, there's more things constant in my life than there are variable.

For sure I'm single right now, but one day I won't be single again. but this single-to-not-becoming-single thing is not a novel event. It's a repetition of that until I have a wife and kids, but that'll probably be a novel event. Still though, there has been a percieved major decline of novel events in my life. Even when new things come along that are "novelty." Like for example let's say when the Internet came along, well I was young then, but let's say new paradigm shifts similar to the Internet come along, I will be amazed right? But that amazement will not be a new amazement, because I've been amazed before by new things. So if something new comes along, I'll have that same amazement, but I won't be amazed as I was with that first amazement again.

It's like every emotion that I'm meant to have felt, I already have a memory of that emotion. There is some index for pretty much every situation that could come up.

Sure there'll be surprises in life, but the surprises won't be surprises. That there will be surprises won't be a surprise. The first time you had a surprise in your life, or a major surprise, was surprising. That feeling of surprise.

But now I feel like I'm on a unicycle on water and it's neither good or bad.

There are many ways to discover oneself. One thing I did was create a text file on my computer called "know thyself.txt"

Because I had heard this cliche before, a cliche that floats in the culture of twentysomething people, that they need to go out into the world and find themselves.

I have absolutely no idea what that means and why people need to do it, but for some reason it seemed to me like a good idea. If you stumble around pop psychology you'll see an emphasis on having a clear grasp of who you are. Or in literature there are lots of allusions to journeys of self-discovery.

But also, check it out, this concept goes back furthur, a couple millenia in history, to the ancient Greeks. At the top of the Oracle, chiseled in Greek it says "Gnothi Seauton," which means "know thyself." They also have written "everything in moderation." These are the only two statements written at the top of the oracle, so I figure that they must be very important kernels of wisdom. So I tried to dig my nails deeper into this concept of "knowing thyself."

And also people, like college students, would go on trips and come back and say "oh, I've found myself." Or you'll have someone who is dating for a while, but then breaks up and says, "Oh, I need to find myself."

See, I have no idea why I'm following this wind, just like you have no idea why bell bottoms were in. But I have that need. I'm someone who likes to introspect and improve my life, so hey, maybe there's something to knowing thyself.

So I created this list, and it's a running list of things about myself that I want to put to myself. It got to be a pretty long list. And I have things in there like: "my mind likes to crunch a lot of things in the background" or "I feel entitled to at least as much as everybody else gets" or "I hate being wrong" or "I'm lazy unless I enjoy what I'm doing or it's easy." or here's a good one: "my long-term perspective is very status-driven, my short-term perspective very pleasure-driven." Or "I don't like to listen to others."

So I made this list, and it's like 400 entries, and when I was done, it didn't do anything. And this was 2003.

Nowadays things are different. I'll encounter a situation, like let's say I had a big argument with someone close to me, and it really disturbs me, and I think a lot about it. I'll come up with some sort of statement that was already on this list, and yet, when I say it now, I really feel like I'm learning about myself or "finding myself," because there's a difference.

You can look at yourself like a scientist, and list all the objective details as a scientist does when observing an organism, like a snail: Oh this snail has a shell on its back with spirals on the side. But look at the etymology of realize. The first part of it says, "to comprehend completely or clearly." The second part says, "to bring into reality. To make real." When you really realize something about yourself, you have an internal understanding about that concept. What I'm trying to say is, you could ask your friend "tell me 100 things about myself" and it won't do you any good unless those concepts get wired into your head, and get attached to the emotional bubble groups that relate to your living situation and decisions. I like to think of decision-making and living as a networked-process. Every act you make is somehow influenced by your previous past memories which are all connected in some configuration that should give you some response about what is proper. And when you have a true realization about something, it's like something gets inserted into that network and affects everything about you and your worldview. Knowing something about yourself creates something in that knowing that makes a wake of impact throughout your life. And I think a lot of this process is in how the knowing is formatted in your head. For example...

(let's see, how much do I really want to reveal about myself here. Sure why not).

For example.. I could've told you 2 years ago, "I don't like going to bars," but I would still keep going to bars and keep being frustrated about why I don't like going to bars. Or I'd say, "I don't like going to parties that much" and that "I don't really get anything out of them." And I'd respond back to these statements, so what? big deal? I don't like a certain kind of music yet I'm still listening to it.

But nowadays, these statements get rephrased to myself in a different sense. In this case the new phrase is "I don't think I'm down for everything." Like you know how some people are always up for anything. They're like, "yeah yeah, let's go out. cool, I'm down, let's do this, alright yes." I'm not like that. My tolerance level for risk--certain kinds of risk--is different than other people. Some people leave their doors unlocked and have unprotected sex. And I know what the probabilites are, and I know the numbers, but I just want my odds to be one in a thousand. Maybe I'm petty. I mean I take risks in life, like quitting cushy jobs, and entering business, but they're calculated risks. I won't get so drunk that I could get into a fight, not remember what happened, end up in jail, and be in court the next day.

When I explain to myself "you're not down for anything" it really affects me. It's like "Oh." See, I could've told you I don't like parties or messing around or fooling around like everyone else. But what's really going on is that I had a self-image sense that I'm someone who's tolerant, flexible, a down-for-anything hippie, and that sort of drives a lot of decisions I make. But it's a false image. People will say, "Phil, let's do this," and I'll say yes, but then I'll be a party-pooper later.

So when you truly realize something about yourself, or when you fulfill that concept of "know thyself," you have to have beliefs about yourself that match reality. If otherwise you uphold ideal conceptions of what you are, and present those ideal conceptions of yourself to the world, then there's going to be a disconnect between the life you're living and what is your true destiny.

A few weeks ago plastic asked, "What is the perfect album?"

This is what the guy posting said:

I recently came up against a wall. While sorting my albums of music in the MP3 format, I came to the conclusion that for most, if not all, of the albums I own, there are only a handful of tracks per album that I love. Generally there are a few tracks that are passable and almost always several that are forgettable. This makes listening to an entire album or even mixes of albums set to random less enjoyable than if it was just the best songs per album. So I began purging tracks, saving only the best of each album.

Then I ran into a phenomenon, the phenomenon of the perfect album. An album in which every track is great, each one worthy of being a hit. An album with not a single song I would skip past and nothing mediocre or even average.

I'm only part way through my music library and I've only found a handful. But it piqued my curiosity. What albums would you nominate as a perfect album?

For me, I'd pick Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, The Beatles' Abbey Road, both Gorillaz Albums (Demon Days and Gorillaz), any Elliot Smith album, Ataxia Automatic Writing (really depressing), Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP.

The discussion on plastic generated 775 album suggestions. Check out The Perfect Album, according to Plastic to see what the final results are. Hint: Radiohead's OK Computer is no. 1.

If anybody's reading this, what is your perfect album?

just like whatever. Nothing is over till I say its over dammit. It's just over, I got it. Oh wait, where is it. Dammit. Okay, there, it's over. Stop. Okay, done. Wait, no, there's some.... hold it. Okay. okay, gone.

Yeah, so like, yeah, so like everything is whatever. It's just, I don't know, so nothing. Nothing is everything, everywhere there is whatever. Okay, yeah, whatever.

After 7 shots of spit, I wonder how much can shit I can take. Life is like, laughing at the broken embers in my slightly charred heart.

Not heart broken, but definitely needing stitches to stanch the slow painful wounds that happen to those who date so infrequently like me.

I'm with a girl, intensly, madly, for months, and then poof, a vast desert of cactii and missed opportunities.

What's the point. Marriage sucks anyways. The sucking sound you hear is the vacuum created by the lack of meaning within the nihilist perspective.

Nihilist, or envelopist. I'm so epicurean, sorta, it's not even funny, or is it. I've expanded like the big bang into so many fields that I'm claustrophobic. Really, another great essay by some great dead white guy who tripped out on acid is not gonna do it for me. So time to close my cute terrance mckenna books etc that I don't get anyways.

I might have to full circle back to simpler roots, like starting a business, getting a house, a nice car, you know, stop trying to be this transcendental existentialist artist whatever.

Or maybe I can straddle both.

I've read in many places that a lot of life's meaning comes from the fact that we die. Kurzweil said it, Dennet as well, among others, esp. those who are discussing the ideas of life extension etc.

But why is this? Why do the projects that I accomplish only have a significance if at some point I will die?

Is it maybe because your death permanizes the notion of self-sacrifice. After you die, you stop receiving things and all that's left is a positive outwardly flowing legacy... i.e. you consume nothing and can only produce stuff... who knows, I'm curious what's going to happen when we do start to live forever.

Hopefully by that time we'll have direct access to the human psyche and remove our need for meaning based on death, and just feel meaningful with the click of a button... kind of like blogging, ya?