I don't celebrate Christmas...

... so have a merry life. Not too merry, so put that joint down.

I spent the night of the 25th with my family at Fridays. After a wonderful meal, I felt the need to fix my braces (I lost a bracket and have to tackle two loose ends of wire, so I have to fix it to keep them from impaling my inner cheeks).

When I went into the washroom, a kid was with his dad. His pants were down and he was drying... the front of his brief. I said absolutely nothing. I went about fixing my braces and they left.

This kid came in and gave me a mean stare, so I responded with an apologetic look, while still fixing my braces. He said "DIDGUSTING!" and left after washing his hands. I pitied him. I don't know why.

I have since thought of things to have said, esprit de l'escalier (spirit of the stairs in Fraunch, look it up):

5. You mean bastard! You're adopted!

4. If you carry on like that, you're gonna die old and friendless.

3. You must still have grandparents. (the mean kind)

2. Just wait 'til you find out you're gay.

1. You want to need braces? 'Cuz I can help you with that.

Looking back...

College life was a slow walk. It was a scenic path, every bit deserving to be enjoyed. That anyone still looks to rush through it is lost on me.

It’s been five years since I first set foot in UP as a student himself. I've has since gotten softer –inside and out. Softened by the goodwill of his friends, the pressure I felt from those that weren’t and the long nights of stress eating in between, I have since become a smooth rock fit to glide and tumble to the river-deltas of adult life. Losing bits of myself never felt so liberating.

In college, I learned how to leave things behind by going places and making memories. That is all the past should be, beautiful or otherwise, just a precious memory left from something one deems too important to ever fully let go of.

And those that truly left their mark on me in the end, weren’t those with whom he shared words. In the end it was with whom I shared smiles, with whom I shared laughter and most importantly, with whom I shared sweet silence.

High School at Night...

I remember the days when I used to get my buzz from coffee. It was one of those things I felt newly indoctrinated into then (I would, later in my life, find myself feeling the same things toward alcohol, my ill sentiment toward beer notwithstanding). Its effects were new and exhilirating, not to mention helpful, in the face of my immense academic load.

There was something else about this substance attracted me. It got the blood pumping. I noticed this after a hit of three cartons of RTD coffee (it was a tetrapacked ready to drink brew, new then). I had accidentally opened a wound in the shower. I didn't mind. It didn't hurt. And so I carried on with my business - until looked down, and saw that the whole area of the shower floor pooled bright red and spackled with clots.

I am a large person and I have since learned that I can afford to lose that much blood and more.

I suppose that scene sparked a taste for that sort of beauty, so that's why I started painting in blood. No Anacel, it wasn't a secret, and you really ought to have told everyone because they probably already knew. The secrets of why and what did they mean, you didn't seem so keen for then, and probably even less so now.

Suffice it to say they exist. And despite my vocal nature, I have very scary secrets. I only wish people expressed appropriate interest in them, so I could turn them down as they asked while feeling good about myself.

I miss coffee like I miss sleep and dreams. I miss dreams. Those I wake up from tired and gasping. But it's tough when you miss the city and the open ocean.

Booze is different from coffee, but everyone has their reasons and every story has its time. Just not today for beer

It sucks... I know

I took three capsules of a large dose of Ibuprofen. I don't know what's gonna happen but my neck hurts like hell.

Home has come to be all the things in my life I've wanted to leave behind. Honest truth. There are definitely things that I would loathe to part with, but it would seem that my family life has it's bubble-gum-goo over everything. And not a single move in the general direction of out has left me at peace.

Suffice it to say: I'm not supposed to be the damned man of the house. What pisses me off is this simple truth:

The only one who notices a problem is the one best equipped to deal with it. Sometimes the only one.

My neck still hurts. Like hell now, so I'm gonna take three more

"and if I die before I wake..." -- Enter Sandman - Metallica

...my DS goes to my sister and all my cards go to Ernest. He can give some to joca and joel out of the kindness of his heart.