glorifying drug life??  fuck that, it IS glorious.
these are the the years that created Core, Purple, Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, Grassroots, Music, Omaha Sessions, friggin EtSD, and believe it or not, NOT Dark Side of the Moon.  that just happens to be a fuckin glorious album when you're high.  and just got out from watching Sex and the City for the first time giving it a chance.  with my ex and two of her female friends (chill, like friendly trolls, if such a thing can exist.  friendly anyway.  just like her, but in less of that painfully compatible sort of way), none of whom would've let me criticize it too sharply.  or would've been hurt and start to dislike me if they couldn't stop me.  or just dismiss our disagreements because "I'm a boy."  well fuck that, i can understand this shit, it's the fact that i'm so much smarter and got my shit figured out that makes all those crazy emotions and thoughts manageable.  those nagging questions answerable.  they are smart enough because they're educated, not because they understand.  this is WISDOM i'm talking about, not the shit you learn in college.  not life skills, life LESSONS.  life concepts.  life truths, and life strategies.  things that would go in one ear and out the other for these bimbos.  forgive me anyone who loves catawhatserface as much as my ex does, but shes a fuckin bimbo and she writes bimbo shit.  hows that for a freakin review.
but you know what?  i can sympathize with bein that dumb.  i mean its not even dumb.  i should hardly be so harsh about a friendly person (though she and i would not get along, she's way too straight-laced and high-tension-fuckin-strung-with-razor-wire, kind of like the girls who hit on ME.  girls, who literally canNOT act their age, cuz they don't know how): and see, the weird fukin thing is i'm so high i could actually get into the drama of it.  they're busy people, capable people, affluent and powerful even in their own little ways.  attractive in their own strange one-nighter-worthy ways.  so i can sympathize when they are just crazy bitches who dont know any better than to be crazy bitches, and life hands them lemon after lemon and sometimes it's already lemonade, sometimes it's not.  but it's so sour, like life really is.  and they just don't know how to deal with it like i do.  so they get REALLY INTENSE.  they have little wars in their minds whenever they piss each other off, which they CONSTANTLY do, but then they each have their sweet sides, kind of like my ex, so that if you can just stay there, on that side, it's great, and you know why you're still friends, and it doesn't matter if she doesn't understand how to deal with difficult situations.  the perfect examples of what Bob Dylan was talking about in "Just Like a Woman."  although she never really made very good love.  and whatever she may say about me or think about what i've written here, i have the right and she has the right to be honest to my friends as well as hers, especially if we're not going to be honest with each other.  ESPECIALLY.  because we're both just being honest.  not unfriendly, not malicious, not antagonistic.  simply honest.
thats the other side of the show i can appreciate.  the ethical/moral side that deals with etiquette and delicacy and practicality and self-expressiveness in really emotionally intense situations.  cuz a girl's perspective is valuable on these sort of things; and it's not that i dont understand why they all feel like they do, i am just MUCH MORE ABLE TO GET THE FUCK OVER IT.  maybe it IS called being a guy after all.  being a guy doesn't mean being unemotional to me, it means being in fucking control.  no matter what.  yeah, i generally dont lose control anymore, but its not that i don't let myself either.  i just lose it in very specific ways, when i DECIDE to give it up.  like when i take acid and run around the city looking for a mugger to kill in self-defense (a very questionable legal defense for first-degree murder), or when i do it in all the much smaller ways, including getting high and talking about these weird things my ex creates in me.  like a blend of emotions of thoughts, thoughts about emotions, concepts inspired by emotional experiences, just like mood-altering substances give you really dangerous ideas that seem so compelling at the time.  
women are mood-altering.  their presence and milieu and especially their consumption, whether by inhalation, ingestion, or injection, alters neurochemical activity and homeostasis at LEAST as much as caffeine and nicotine, which many respectable psychologists classify as drugs.  they can be depressants, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogenics, intoxicating, impairing for operators of heavy machinery, dangerous in EVERY SENSE when overdosed upon, addicting, with tolerance and withdrawal effects, they can leave track marks, they can probably discolor your teeth and certainly decay them or knock some loose, they can cause weight loss or weight gain, they can cause insomnia and depression and suicidality and altered body image and perception of reality, they can open your mind, they can destroy your life, they can be your gateway to whole new social scenes, they can land you in jail, they are illegal to use in a number of ways.  they wont necessarily fight you for trying though, and plenty of people live and love outside the law.  THIS IS JUST HOW FUCKING SILLY OUR SYSTEM OF LAWS IS.  because fucking silly comprises a subsection thereof.  i mean straightforward sounds just fine by me, as long as theres plenty of other stuff going on before it, and i guarantee she never told anyone how well i did with that, just goin on pure instinct and obscure knowledge.  see there are techniques that even the biggest addicts don't know (cuz lets not forget they're just as addicted as i am, just to different brands/breeds).  and it doesnt matter how burnt out on the drug love they are, they'll appreciate learning them.  it doesnt matter how little you really know about getting fucked up out of your mind, if you can teach each other how better to get a little love buzz, it makes getting fucked up more often all the easier.  this is why it's good to learn, and why it's good to love, freely and openly and honestly, because it's secrets that drive us apart.  it's dishonesty and fear and laziness and dull-mindedness (not stupidity, DULL-MINDEDNESS) and insensitivity that cause all the negative side effects.  well most of them.  recklessness can cause the impairment of the operation of heavy machines, but that doesn't make it bad necessarily, just dangerous.  and danger is important in life.  thats another reason i don't take losses and failures and drama fucking DRAMA and stupid little sleights and the like as if they're life changing events that scar me forever and make me want to give up on some part of life.  then again i dont really ever reach that point of needing to give up, i always just find another way through like i was saying.  and it's really too bad they can't.  cuz they're OK people otherwise and they deserve better than what they get themselves into.  god don't we all though.  well i dunno actually i'm doing pretty god damn well for myself right now.
cuz i was going to say how much Us and Them resonated with me on the way home.  Pink Floyd is the shit and that's all there is to it.  

<lj-cut text="Us and them">Us and them

and after all, we're only ordinary men [we being me and the the other self of mine to whom I'm talking and/or was singing, regardless of how clever that felt just now: 99th %ile is still one in one hundred, over 30 million other men walking the planet just like me—even 2 million if we assume there's something special about a guy like me in an affluent, middle-class, first-world brink-of-revolution environment like this. fucking ordinary.  i don't know if i can even believe it, it sounds like superstition; but then, this is why pessimists and depressives and self-loathers test as more realistic in questions of what degree of egocentrism and self-worth they rationally deserve to have.  we're all a bit deluded by our own grandeur.]

Me, and you [talking to myself again because I couldn't talk to her]

God only knows, it's not what we would choose to do [does she feel the same way?  could i have been more open and direct if i wasn't always going off about something that was really honestly intellectually challenging?  will i have to get used to a wife who can't keep up with me someday?  prrrrrrobbbbbbbbbbably!  i am pretty badass after all, i guess; but for however much she denies her discomfort and worries for mine, she herself seemed to exhibit some.  yes we're facebook friends and failed weed hookups for one another, and colleagues to some extent with much to teach each other, and former lovers with still the dry smell of tinder missing its spark in the air, and we both parted this time with affirming words, "I'll see you later." god only knows in what way.  but whenever i tried to engage her in that deep, intellectual, creative conversation i always strive to get into while i'm high, she was uncharacteristically and all-too-familiarly-in-many-ways unresponsive, a bit too quick with the "i'm too stoned" excuse, and a bit too unappreciative of the nice evening weather when we were first alone again on their deck and i finally thought i'd get a chance to talk to her the way i want to.  so maybe she's smarter than i give her credit for, and just still too uncomfortable with being informally beaten in the impromptu psych trivia contests and overwhelmed by intelligent stoner conversation with the one she threw back all those years ago; or maybe i'm right, and this is all you get with a 116 IQ happy meal.]

Forward he cried from the rear, and the front rank died [she knows politics somewhat, we didnt try that, just psychology.  and that's tough shit to get into when you've already been away for a year and aren't getting ready to go back.  but i guess that's what makes me an honors student, and grad school material, instructor material, researcher material, scientist material.  plus if i was talking out of my ass they never would've let me know, women just aren't agentic conversation leaders like that, i've worked on a study that proves that shit.]

The general's hat and the lines on the map move from side to side [this also reminds me of a thought: will i someday be like Catawhathefuck?  30-something and single because i'm too independently productive and publicly honest for the sensitive types that seem to see some appeal in me?  will i be that lonely and desperate when i can finally get some one night ten years from now after god knows how many failed flings have come and gone, and the one that got away comes back willing but playing hard to get?  will i have this much fucking drama in my life still when i'm so old as to need to be this straight-laced and responsible and relationally and sexually anxious?  will i start to give up like she does after all?  go be an old man like my professor, driving a sports car because i can afford it and move lines around on a map of something incomprehensible to mortal men because i've got nothing more important to do?  no one more important to care for than humanity as a whole, or as my weird friends who somehow get me on that inhuman level?  able to toy with life itself because i still haven't managed to create one?  not that im so anxious, but what the fuck if.  i mean i'd live that life hell yes, but is it so impossible?  i'm not exactly the most successful person, an argument i've gone over way too many times.]

Black and blue [this is where i started thinking about why i'd live that life.  black is evil, malice, hurt, anger, antisociality and psychopathy and externalization and alienation and instinct; blue is sadness and despair and desperation and internalization and hunger and loneliness and fear and self-defense and weakness and emotional need and societal consequence.]

and who knows which is which and who is who [when someone does something wrong, who knows which is the cause?  except in extreme cases, there's almost always a mix of black and blue.  maladaption is mental injury, and only burn patients are black and asphyxiation/heart attack victims are blue.  and who knows who is a victim of who, or will be.  it's my theory that 99% of the world's victimizers are former victims, which is to say some criminals may be inherently evil just like one in one hundred medical research articles that publishes false evidence: maybe even as many as are smarter men than i am (hence excluding smarter women), which just happens to be roughly the same number of people incarcerated in US prisons and correctional facilities—"On December 31, 2005 -- 2,193,798 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails" (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm).  and if i can tell the difference between charred-crispy black and deep dark blue (like that part of me i found flash-frozen solid after her glacier receded), maybe i'm really just as special as the people who are exceptions to my theory, and shouldn't expect to encounter and recognize an equal any more than i should expect to encounter and recognize an evil person.  maybe i'm so right as to be better off moving lines around to define the borders between black and blue instead of wasting my passion on some insensitive and dull-minded woman.  maybe i'm still very blue myself because i imagined a gleaming city of love on the horizon of my reality where it disappears under my dreams, and i went looking for her there, but she didn't even know it existed, and probably never thought to imagine it, or simply couldn't fathom it.  oh she's been to a town called love, a little place out in the middle of nowhere with a bar and a motel and maybe a few nice summer homes, but she's never thought of living there or getting a job there, much less does she have any idea of what life in the city is all about.  not that i necessarily do either, but i can dream, and she doesn't seem to, for whatever reason.  not of me, nor did she ever, even when i could picture her there, and maybe even persuadable to come and learn alongside me.  well, she came, but did she learn?  that is the inescapable question, the insatiable curiosity.]

Up and down [thats how its gonna be regardless of who im with or what i'm doing.  my baseline might rise and i'll do everything in my power to lift it but to what end?]

But in the end, it's only round and round...and round [one of the other reasons i'd live that life.  love is the ultimate drug, the ultimate rollercoaster ride in life, the ultimate game, the ultimate experiment, the ultimate hope, the ultimate and best reason for living that we have right now as society exists.  but if i can change society for my children, maybe they'll have a better game someday?  or maybe there's a reason to hope?  a reason i like round things that's worth finding no matter how long it takes me?]

Haven't you heard, it's a battle of words [this is where i associated less, because i didnt know the lyrics and couldn't sing along]

The poster bearer cried

Listen son, said the man with the gun [he being the friend i could have with the power to change things]

there's room for you inside [there are people who can and would like to use me for my power, my mind bullets, my dead aim, my telekinesis: one of them is the person i'm worried about becoming, but would willingly be—that old bachelor professor of mine, with so much to teach, and so much left to learn.]

Down and out [i missed the word down, because i was thinking about blackness and blueness, and realizing i wasn't the latter because i'm still loving my life, and maybe a bit of the former because i am still very alienated from the world: hence out but not down, unlike her, who doesn't seem so really "truely [sic] happy and in love" in a way that she wasn't with me.  she's down as always but she's not out.]

It can't be helped if there's a lot of it about [or can it?  does that mean she just might need saving after all?  she doesn't know japanese for jack, she IS going to be a little lonely in Japan, and while she used to worry as much about not getting in as she did about her boyfriend not getting in, she hasn't mentioned him at all since getting in herself: sounds all too familiar, like when she got into the U of M in Duluth and slowly but irrevocably lost interest in me for the first time because i couldn't follow her up and out to her various parties often enough to satisfy her friendlyboy needs.  maybe that's all the more i was ever useful for, a confusing eccentric who could pass for a polite and dependable acquaintance in front of her (step-)parent(s) and turn her on behind their backs.  imagine that, a boy being used for his body by a girl.  but i've figured out how to use my lips and my hands pretty well after all, it's just the rest of this body that doesn't know its own strengths and weaknesses.  but it'll learn.  it probably has and doesn't even know it, much less does she.  oh wouldnt that be fun to show her, to drive her crazy.  and this from a guy who's not attracted to her?  god damn that's strange.  i would be her good friend though, and i'd benefit her however i could for as long as it took to get us both back where we want to be, whether together or not.  i thought a lot about getting into cross-cultural psychology research between us and the Japanese.  they would make a GREAT society to study—affluent but collectivist, semi-religious/superstitious/shamanistic but largely atheistic and suffering from deep existential crises on all fronts.  plus their world is just beautiful, and i would sooner know it better than my own than continue my studies eurocentrically.  maybe i'll get the chance to go there yet.  here's my next psych partnership in the making i guess.  and in japan i'll be closer to australia too, come to think of it.  i know a certain woman who wants to move to australia.]

with, without [i sang "with" much more gently, and noted that i am both, because i have a great life, great friends, a great identity, and another great woman in mind who's also well-versed in psychology and probably smarter than either and in the same amount of time she's headed precisely where i'm headed!  then again that's probably all in my head just like all this other stuff that shouldn't even be there but is every time i'm with her again and then without her again.  and i'm afraid that's the thought in the front of my head, along with all the other stuff that shouldn't be, while the woman of my current dreams is further buried back beneath layers and stacks of doubt and saved questions and forgotten fantasies (mostly non-sexual and romantic wordplay oriented, strangely and perhaps quaintly enough of me, but in my usual romantically anachronistic or postmodern sort of way).  so i am also without in just as big a way, and feeling like it's bigger.]

And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about [always the truest line of the album, next to "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way."  i'm 1/4 english by the by.  only countries i've ever been to are or were parts of the British Empire.  but the with is SO worth fighting for, regardless of having to fight without.  and who'll deny that with their actions (not just words) who isn't too incompetent to have any authority on the matter, or already dead, hence similarly incapable of speaking from a point of authority sufficient to convincingly deny it?  the proficiently suicidal are rare enough that it seems likely they too were similarly incompetent philosophically, if not practically with matters of anatomy and its cures for life.]

Out of my way, it's a busy day, I've got things on my mind [boy do i ever, and isn't it always, and wouldn't i probably say the same to someone i didn't know but who was just enough like me and unlike me to be able to convince me that i'm wrong on anything?  this mindset is also why my fellow geniuses go unrecognized by myself and each other.  another reason why i am and have been without: i too have my cold side, as is specially reserved for the Sex in the City types.  but could we get past that if we both tried to be us and not our respective thems?  THIS IS WHAT I WANT, despite all my misanthropy, for people to be open and honest and love one another simply and deeply and compassionately and passionately and in every way they feel like without fear or anger or shame or disrespect or exclusions or limits.  it's what i try to do when i'm not protecting myself from my own frailties and others' blunders, but it's rare i don't have to worry about those in some way. and i can't change things, cuz it is (as always), and boy do i ever.]

For want of the price of tea and a slice, the old man died.  [and so would i, but for the grace of god (terminologically used here as a deistic synonym for fate and convenient reference to the paraphrased proverb), or whatever you care to call the universe as we know it.  i know it to be aligned so that i won't end this way; but you know, don't we all who die peacefully at our designated times do so for want of the price of tea and a slice of whatever else is worth holding on for that one day longer just to have?]</lj-cut>

and so i did say it, evidently.  wow, go me.  stoner memory is better than its reputation.  i even worked in the counterpoint i intended to end with: that i've got happier things in mind now.  REAL women, and food, and video games, and sleep.  and that $20 i won back the other night.  and the $9 i got on top of that because i know more about mixed martial arts than your average bookie.  8)

and here's my full mood and music entries, since apparently blog uploader client designers are sheep themselves at least
<FONT face=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-1>current mood: inspired, but cynical again because there's no mood for "inspired"...are bloggers such sheep that we should so rarely feel this way? (contemplative)
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<FONT face=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-1>current music: Pink Floyd - DSotM (the acronym by which i would tell if you'd read, if i were popular enough to attract dumb questions)
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Entry tags: ha-cha-cha-cha