I am uncertain, that is to say, I am dubious; extremely doubtful, as suspect and suspicious as a handful of apparently free candy from a foul smelling stranger, or the completely unsolicited offer of a ride home from the police.

All I want for Christmas is a girl at least as messed up as I am. And I'm totally, you know, willing to overlook various physical flaws or certain varied pick-n-mix deficits of moral character, even clinically diagnosed personality disorders in return for similar concessions from her side of the fence. Talking allegorically, of course.

Say. Has anyone told you. How beautiful? Well. Yeah. More than once I guess, more than probably. I think I may have, perhaps, retreaded the well worn rubber on that particular line a few too many times already. But! science! has already definitively shown that a omnivore at the point of near starvation will eat pretty much anything. This is exactly what I have been waiting for. The human mind, in extremis . Finally finding that one, special, wonderful person: scouring the mental wards for examples of the limited, finite capacity of the homo-sapient brain stretched far far beyond any previous credibly peer-reviewed breaking point and fallen irrevocably deep deep deep down into the murky bottomless pit of madness, malicious evil and despair. In that case, possibly, I could score. Maybe. It would be a fair throw of dice at least.

Let's go on a date! Set shit on fire. Go rob a grocery store. Do something interesting. They will write our names in the history books, I swear to god, or else we could just scratch them into the paint of the toilet cubicle ourselves. Either/or. It's all okay with me. Sure, I know you might have met a lot of idiots in your time but have you seen idiocy on such a grand scale as I can bring to the table, tell me truthful: have you ever in your life encountered such a blind and wilful ignorance as insanely ambitious as this is?

Dinner and a movie—and I really don't mind if you want to be Clyde, you can wear a suit and I can shave my legs wear a dress and be Bonnie. We'll bring machine guns to the restaurant. Kiss accidentally while eating a single incredibly long strand of spaghetti prepared especially by the chef. Go down in a hail of bullets and then stand back up on our feet again, but I seriously suggest we go to your place, my room is full of vermin.

Has anyone told you how?

Yeah.

I'm willing to bet they have.

Albert Hofmann, 102, \m/, your problem child grew up to be a well respected semiotic terrorist.

Feeling a lot better today. As if the emotional convulsions of the past week had allowed me to vomit up some of the poison or shit out chunks of the parasite. It helps a bunch that I have a significant number of high quality friends, I really do know some real stand up, stand out individuals, and I am truly grateful for each and every one of them. God, I honestly dunno what I'd do without that support network, because, perhaps then, without those people, rather than just being a bit of brain spaz, an occasional mental aberration or cyclic synaptic abnormality, my life in actuality simply would not be worth living.

So thank you.

Sometimes I flip out for no reason. Like a ninja.

I was raised a Christian, fairly hardline—I found Jack Chick tracts in my fathers old room—and I do still read the bible occasionally. Not because I believe in God. Because I don't, because I reckon that lecherous old drunkard passed away quite some time ago and is currently buried with a stake through the heart, wearing a rosary of garlic in an unmarked paupers grave in some barren potters field, far, far out of sight of any church or other place of worship. They don't bury suicides on consecrated ground, or so I've heard, and cirrhosis of the liver is a kind of suicide, or close enough at least.

But I do still read the bible on occasion, in times of trouble, or else when I've hit the liquor, whichever happens to come first. Because that shit is pure poetry. No use denying it, the ringing of this myth resonates through every cell of the Western organism like a microwave oven. Just give me a little Ecclesiastes; and afterwards I will hit the Revelations like a goddamn angry pimp, each finger clearly outlined in gold leaf upon the page.

“hell followed with him”, and it follows with me too. I'm good, I think, at what I do well. Which is causing trouble, raising hurricanes from the egg to the bird to the prey. I try, I'm trying to change, I really am, I swear to God, but, you know, could just as easily ask the bark to change the tree it covers—or the fire to throw up it's coal.

I will live forever and never die, or so I reckon, or calculate, by sexton and starlight and sliderule, cos, like the wandering jew I am cursed with immortality and serve some kinda twisted purpose in the mind of the divine or else (at least) (or maybe, quite probably, at most) his relatives: the otherwise heirs-apparent and assorted far flung second cousins and various descendants of dubious credentials and whatever other varied claimants of implausible and unlikely genealogy to the estate of the celestial realm exist. A good friend of mind once told me that “eating is cheating”, and I really do find myself forced to agree, given the slim-pickings, the limited options available. Vodka! It's what's for dinner. And ritalin, the two twin strings that keep this puppet upright, perhaps a blurry photocopy of a blurry photocopy of a bad facsimile of a hasty shaky sketch of a puppet, just a shadow cast by too many candles, a vague grey smear flickering scared and timid and uncertain on the wall of the living room.

When I was sixteen I tried to hang myself by my belt from a door frame, but I pussied out. It hurt! A lot! Bet you didn't know that Ma. Not unsurprisingly, considering I never mentioned it, to anyone, ever, until now. But not your fault. Or Dad's. I was born with a broken wire in my mind, a dry socket, an unfortunate accidental bad soldering of the neurological variety, some kinda loose mental connection that made me what I am. Bill Hicks sez you should “play from the fucking heart”, and I guess that's exactly what I am trying to do, with whatever few unbroken stings are left of it

Some people, idiots mostly, tell me I can write. They (generally when under the influence of psychotropic and extremely illegal drugs) say I that might have some talent. Well! You know! Thank god! I thought I was totally screwed there for a second. Buy my products. Given five minutes and a pirated copied of microsoft paint I'm sure I could come with some kind of numbered, limited edition, one thousand of a one-of-a-kind never to be re-released obscene digital prints or lead-based sharp cornered action fingers.

The marvellous James Vance travelling circus sideshow and shotgun blast spectacular, have you seen it?

Fuck this shit: I am a goddamn one man symphonic orchestra: I play every tiny violin there is at once. Time to twist my guts inside out, externalise this internal inquiry, get some fucking answers to this double blind placebo controlled randomised questionnaire because my answering machine messengers have always dripped dulcet soothing tones, I got my notes mathematically aligned, like so-many dead ducks in a row, like the entirely coincidental scattergraph of early onset dementia in irritating close friends and wealthy childless relatives.

Anyways. Anyways. Anyways, I wouldn't go out with me either. Got all these people, think I'm some kinda goddamn legend, the things I've done, the lies I've told, the half-truths I've managed to get believed and the deeds I've somewhat implausibly “apparently” achieved, at least accordingly to common rumor or monograph, but it, you know, it always stemmed and flowed and raved and ranted from the person shaped hole I have inside me, this endless sucking emptiness that exists just one sixth of inch beneath the surface of my skin.

If there was easy access to guns in this country I think I would have been dead ten years ago.

As it is, as it is I think I might just take out a metric fuck-load of life insurance and go provoke some half-sentient borderline psychopath into knifing me in the guts.

I'm kinda drunk. Might go pass out. Me and a bottle of vodka, I think we've had a worthwhile chat. A hunch, a hope, a sting, a scratch. If was a really a prophet, then trust me, all your sticks would already be snakes.

About that last post. Yeah, I was drunk, and I tend to exaggerate when I drink. Totally a gesture, rather than anywhere near the real deal. You know how it is. My head, never the calmest storm at the best of times, is a bit topsy-turvey upside-down pudding right now. I recently went back on the filthy old prozac, and am also cutting back my drug use from "almost godlike" to merely somewhat excessive. As if this isn't sexually suspect enough, I'm also considering going to counselling (!) which I fear will put me quite clearly far, FAR over the border of fruitland and deep into all-the-way-gay territory.

I'd rather just forget all about it, to be honest. Let's put those things that have occurred chronologically previously to now firmly in the past. I'm a dick, you're a dick, he's a cock, she's a cock. Each of us terrible people in our own unique and special ways.

Friend of mine comes up to me, sez he really, really agrees with everything I said in my last post. Like I was some kind of spiritual guide, some guru, a gourmet of those tastes as yet unsavoured by the mortal to1ngue. Which I find, well, kinda funny actually, considering I was actively attempting to OD at the time. Heh. Heh. You know how it is. Life is complicated. Nothing more embarrassing in the world than a failed suicide attempt. Sweet jesus, can’t even get that right. Okay, I admit, I exaggerate. To tell the truth: it was more of a general ambivalence as to whether I woke up the next day or not. The same uncaring indifference the sun, that great, irrefutable, brute immoral fact, shines down on all of us. Nothing I did mattered a shit damn anyway, no great loss and nothing to cry about.

We'll see, I guess. I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

We! We are wild, and absolutely anything possibly conceivable could happen, and does, and frequently. We are scavengers, feral dogs, eaters of carrion and left over table-scraps. We, you, me; them and yours and each of us, as overgrown and untamed as the bottom of the ocean. Say: ever have one of those days where you feel like a complete failure? Yeah. Me neither. Intelligence being a verb not a noun, a continual flowing action rather than just a static state; and inspiration! inspiration moves quick, runs fast, is swiftly fleet of foot and must be chased.

Tonight I have downed so many prescription drugs, I reckon I could almost start my own pharmacy with the chemicals I've ingested. A little more ritalin, just a touch, a pinch, a tender punch of zoplicon, and why not? For nearly every illegal drug there is, the American money machine is perfectly willing to (and indeed actually does) provide a legally available pharmaceutical equivalent. All you need is the illegible squiggle of some random doctors signature, or else to have previously arranged the proxy purchase for you by someone who has a legitimate scrip.

Are there any limits to how far this could go? I guess not. These people have serious psychological conditions that require serious psychiatric treatment, but at the end of the day they still need to eat. The black market for off-label illegal sale prescription chemicals is far larger than even the scariest narco-ambien nightmares of the most radical of Washington think-tanks

Word on the street is apparently zoplicon (in combination with certain other compounds) can lead to temporary delusion, and even (in some cases) actual delirium, a total psychotic break with reality. No matter. Not to worry. We were always breaking up anyway, arguing over this, fighting over that. I'm not sure on balance the relationship is worth the cost.

Down the fucking hatch. I'm already bored with the world. I read a list of a billion and one ways to blow your brainos out on some website. Son youknow reality and me divrced some time ago, and now it's time to fork over your m,others alimony. Here, take everything. I never wanted the 95 inge intelevisio.n You can decice imong yourseles who wants I wan .boox.

At this point I guess I must have passed out. I was attempting to counter the sedative and hypnotic affects of the valium, alcohol and zoplicon by way of snorting regular lines of ritalin so that I could stay awake and keep writing. It seemed the sensible thing to do at the time, but the zoplicon was just totally over powering. knocked me on my ass in the space of half an hour. I had read somewhere that by forcing yourself to stay awake on sleeping pills it was possible to enter a kind of waking dream or nightmare, a way to take a bathosphere down far below safe diving distance and deep into the murky grotesque depths of the subconscious. The polydrug combination was an extremely bad idea. Especially the Marilyn Monroe style cocktail of depressants and alcohol. Slap on the wrist Caleb. I am sometimes indifferent to my own safety. In fact the sheer willful stupidity of the deal was, in a twisted kind of way, terribly exciting.

Still have writers block however.

It is my belief that we are all responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for bringing into existence the kind of world we would want to live in. Indeed we generally do so completely naturally, almost subconsciously, you could call it the natural project of our lives. Our actions tend to flow from the deep artesian well of our “core values”, those beliefs that hold us closest. We do not cradle these thoughts and feelings to our chest like a little babies, but rather, they are the ones that nurse and nurture us.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those “power of positive thinking” types. I don't think your necessarily responsible or the bad things that happen to you, and all the wishing in the world won't help win the national lottery. I'm simply saying, in the long run people tend to act in a way consistent with who they are. The kind encourage compassion, and the ruthless, ruthlessness.

Since I was much younger I realised the enormous power of the social construction of reality. A brick through a window is still, of course, a brick through a window, but the interpretation of the swiftly flying brick, the meaning of the shattered glass is still very much socially constructed, an action to be lauded, or criticised, depending on the capacious warps and seams of the social fabric. But the kind of things that could be done with technology, the possibilities inherent in producing tools that amplified my thoughts and deeds by a factor of ten, a hundred, one thousand! that was pure magic. Driven by one tenth desire to change the world and nine tenths narcissism, these projects never seemed to go entirely as planned, With so many different individuals acting with each other and with the code, there were always unintended consequences. Which was also something I loved. My projects had taken on a life apart from me, I had given birth through the crevice of my frontal cortex and now something new crawled or walked or slithered across the face of the earth.

This long preamble brings me to my latest project, which was not entirely a success, but on the other hand not a total and unmitigated failure. It should be obvious by now that I am not just indifferent, or merely even for the legalisation of—I am actively pro-drugs. When I was a kid, before I started using anything I envisioned drugs as nothing less than the fiery blood of Satan himself and “druggies” as the half-whispered monsters who raped and killed innocent law-abiding citizens at slightest whim to get their fix. None of which is remotely true, obviously, but watching the news or reading the paper wouldn't lead you to think so. It's kind of fascinating to watch the media wave around the enormous cardboard cut-out of the cloven hoofed folk devil of drug use around, in the right light you can see the wires. Fascinating, but also kind of disgusting. They were outright out-and-out lying! It was all lies and bullshit but people still seemed to gobble it up by the spoonful. What was needed was a kind of consciousness raising exercise, but you can't just tell people the truth, you have to show them. There is the kind of truth you appreciate intellectually, and then another, much richer, more real emotional truth, the truth of personal revelation. There's no running or rationalising away from a truth that resonates inside you like the ringing of a tuning fork.

After some thought E seemed like the most appropriate choice. Minimal side effects, safer than aspirin and a guaranteed good time. If your gonna give drug n00bs a taste of something harder than pot it may as well be E. I wanted to become a proselyte for recreational chemistry, an e-vangelist that could plug you in direct to all the angels and trumpets of the serotonin celestial chorus. Even if only one person took E and found it was actually good, not bad, not all the crap and foulness they were reverse-marketing it as, well, that could change a lot of attitudes down the road.

And in the end, of the five people I had initially arranged, only one person did (glad you had a good time dude!), I blame this on my own lack of organisation and on over extrapolating from my own specific feelings towards drugs (yes please!) to the more general case. Also, as a friend pointed out, I could be thought of as a “pusher”, evil old Caleb getting the kids hooked on these vile chemicals so he can push ever outwards the boundaries of his burgeoning drug empire. To help clear any confusion I don't deal and I don't take a cut when I hook people up, I do this from love. I really feel like drugs have enriched my life in ways too numerous to count. They've made me a lot more liberal in my world-view, certainly a lot more eccentric yes, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The positives greatly outweigh the negatives, at least in my case. A lot of what I consider my best ideas have come out of having the occasional late night wrestle with psychedelics. Clearly I still have a lot to work on, re being a better person, but anyone who thinks taking drugs is the easy route over the mountain is kidding themselves. They will make you confront creatures that had up until then only slumbered fitfully in the swamps and jungles of your head, and sleeping beasts you had always thought best left undisturbed will rise and rear and howl at you.

Despite the small scale of my tiny victory—or failure, I will still take the lessons learned and apply them, to the next time. Because there will be a next time. Because this is the future, and I hope to help bring it about.

I have recently noticed that the only place academics really get to be truly creative is in the titles of their journal articles

“The Truth and Divinity of Sickness and Rage in the Karaoke of Despair", Cristaudo, 1993

being a personal favourite.

The other day I woke up with a hangover so incredibly monstrous, so incalculably immense and savage that I felt it must be God's way of punishing me for leading such a terrible life. Which, I guess, in a sense, He was. Or maybe it was just a friendly reminder. A kind of paternalistic don't-fuck-up-again-caleb love tap across the jaw. It's been many months since I did anything wretchedly debased or hellishly appalling while drunk. No black outs. No gut clutching feelings of remorse. Haven't had the urge to write, probably from having nothing much of anything worthwhile to say. I could tell you of women, of my many failures and the occasional, limited success, but uh, yeah, to be honest I'd just be picking at the navel lint in the bellybutton of my soul, trying to summon up some words, a subject of conversation, making mere inconsequential small talk.

How are you today, I'm fine, hope the kids are well, fuck you and so on.

I met a drunk at a bar once. True story. Yeah, I know! what are the chances. He'd just been fired from his job as an offset printer for chronic absenteeism, and there he was pissing away the last of his savings on beer. He told me he felt lonely, absolutely lonely, a loneliness as sharp and absolute as the blade of a falling guillotine. Perhaps that's why he drank; I think it was. I felt like saying, “I know what you mean! I feel the same way!” but I didn't because then what: two sad drunks at a bar sharing a pitcher of beer and misery. Could have helped, but probably not. Got the inclination the blanket of night smothers each of us alone. The stars still shine, they reach out hands to clasp each other for comfort but are forever separated by vast blank gaps. The old stories got it round the wrong way. The holes in the sky don't let the light in, the sky used to be pure white and the dark spaces in-between are where the devil done tore a big chunk out of heaven. That's how it is with people, reaching out but being too far apart to touch. Least-ways, I reckon so.

I want to fall in love, but you can't force that shit. That shit has to happen natural, like being blind-sided by a bus or surviving a hurricane. The coffee I'm drinking is too strong, too sweet—and just about right for me.

Over at wikipedia they're trying to delete the article on "spotting" (hot kniving for Americans) claiming non-notability. NON-NOTABILITY! Every one I know who smokes weed spots. Particularly here in NZ

So go here, vote KEEP and show those assholes what for. It's not like wikipedia is running out of space.

Charlie Hampton worked long hours at his tiny shop near the flower district, where he sold perceptual motion machines & various other such oddities and ancient curios of antique times. Business was admittedly poor. There was no longer much call for that kind of carry on, at least not now-a-days, and Charlie often found himself at a loose end. with nothing more to do with his time than spending much of the day in solid bouts of wishful thinking.

Even at this late stage of the game lately I've trying to be a better person. Yeah, I know it's a bit of a fruity concept, but bear with me. Through out my time I've done a few things I'm not proud of, done some things I'm still ashamed of, and generally been prone to fits and starts of total assholism, particularly when unhappy. On the other hand there's been the occasional performance that wasn't exactly appreciated, but about which I still think “fuck yeah! hell yeah! ok!” sweet.

I thought about trying to phrase this. Less childish would be better, susceptible as I am to temper tantrums and the throwing about of toys. You can express your raw pain, a long primordial howl of invective, or:

If you see me hitting on your girl, honestly, it's not what it looks like - swear to God - I'm just trying to connect with someone, experience some real level of real, genuine, human interaction, you know, almost as if we was actual goddamn actual almost GENUINE REAL PEOPLE; and then possibly take her out the back and fuck her brains out, I swear to god. To paraphase Hunter S. - poorly - sometimes self-identifying as a beast is simply easier. A monster has no absolutely no responsibilities. He does exactly what he wants and doesn't care what happens, to anyone, self included.

And that's kinda how you have to be, to survive life. Some days I just think I should become some old troll, hurling my boulders down the mountain at the local village and “laugh” “laugh” “laugh” and be hated. I dunno bro, if you've noticed the pattern or not but all this shit I do is my way of reaching out, touching, or else punching out, caressing a face with flame. Brief ribbon slashes of warm and steaming touch. A snowblind flare of something truly powerful.

It kinda works, but also I feel it fails, in an important sense.

Explosions, all things being equal, are generally greatly preferable to black holes.