the woman behind the myth/titties:

Peter and Paul responding to Heidegger's theory of the Dasein, i.e. Being as beings thrusting into the world:




Oh, and I accidentally cut off a lot of my hair.

Now will someone please tell me what the fuck Antichrist was about?

+



=



Today I was all fidgety. I went up to Jocelyn after class and asked her, "How am I supposed to know if I am a genius or a slave?"

And all she answered was, "Yes, there is a lot of room for self-deception."

To hell with the Greeks.

"The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed-- and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!"

The Nietzsche quote is obligatory. The way Jocelyn read the whole Madman section in class today was actually very moving. I could feel myself getting more and more anxious as she kept going. Some things are just meant to be yelled.

Been feeling like quite the Nihilist lately. I do try to think of things like him: life-affirming and all. If everything we have is art, then you might as well make yourself the most fascinating piece of work possible. The ubuesque is the only way to achieve this properly without being in bad faith. Feeling comfortable is just not feeling anything at all. It's like the princess and the pea. So just try and pile on those mattresses, faggots. Mountains upon mountains of white fluffiness that will just get blown away. And all this just because of a departure from the concept of the transcendental. I have a dream; it involves glitter and lots of mindless vulgarity.

Graduate school is turning me topsy turvy.

me philosophy nowadays is all just a matter of diction
i was talking today about how i want to write my thesis about critique
and evan was talking about how lyotard says that critique implies some sort of meta-narrative because you have to stand back and assess the situation you are in
like the moment of self-reflection kills the now or some shit
and so we should think about the drift instead
we're just moving along and intertwining in and out of discourse
and i'm like
that is the biggest piece of shit
edbury yes.
god i'm so glad you aren't a language fag.
me what difference does it make what word you use? it's still the same thing and you're still just trying to assess a situation critically.
like, don't get so caught up in fucking faggotry like this
it pisses me off.
edbury yeah. it's really banal
yes, every simple concept has a huge logical underpinning.
but talking about what one can mean when one says "one" from inside some sort of situated discourse doesn't change the fact that it means fucking "one"
you put two of them together and you get a two
me and also critique apparently makes discourse converge on a topic, e.g. the critique of pure reason makes pure reason some grandiose subject
there's always a risk of mythifying the object of discourse. there's no way to get around that.
edbury well mythification is like
this looming danger, apparently. but wtf is there other than myth?
the real is dead.
getting around it isn't even an interesting conversation. how else are we supposed to thrive?
in some gray landscape?
me people are just afraid of fetishes because they think they obfuscate other things
like there's something underneath
like a giant glaring cock
edbury all making shifty eyes at you

Pardon our French.

Don't wanna gloat, so I'm not gonna say shit.

I need:

- to stop spilling drinks in my car (look both ways, don't slam on your breaks when you're about to get fucked)
- tampons
- coffee (I spilled the one I just got)
- to be inspired by Wittgenstein
- almond milk

It took me a good hour to get my point about Schopenhauer across to Amena yesterday. People need to be more light-hearted in their pessimism. And denying the body is just something a sexaholic prick would want. Afterwards she asked me if I ever thought that maybe I shouldn't have children because I'm the type of crazy that is genetic.

Ideas bore me. Somebody needs to mind-fuck me again, or I'm going to have nothing to write about. Except for how Nietzsche was just a glorified Kantian and Rorty can suck my tits.

Turning into a lesbian has made me extremely crass.

Sometimes I don't even recognize you when I see pictures of you.

I don't know if Heidegger was right, if he was wrong. I don't know why that bitch keeps referring to Benjamin, he has nothing to do with anything. Everyone keeps looking at me. Everyone stares in class, like I'm the devil. They don't know I'm doing them a favor. Everybody acts like they've never heard of a continental scientist feminist nihlist before.

When you fall for someone, you also fall for their potentiality, or do you only fall for that? Are you blinded to the readiness-at-hand? Does it even matter that we're all fooling each other. That we're just projecting and interjecting.

______________________________
And then I passed out while writing on my blog.

When one is at a party one often forgets the terrible side-effects of the drugs one takes-- i.e., holy fucking shit I'm so mopey and overly sentimental slash nostalgic today I just want to burn my face off with acid.

But it might also be the gloomy weather. The problem isn't that life goes by too quickly, the problem is that we have way too much time on our hands. We fill it up with silly things that don't really have any real importance if not for our staunch belief that our little hobbies will make time go more quickly. But really you can do whatever you want and be productive as hell but you'll always be a restless wretch if you go to parties where all people drink is Bud Light and the pita chips are always gone.

Jay kay, I love Bud Light.

Better news: I've finally managed to be enough of a cunt to get clingy mc-clingerson to stop talking to me. Phew. Oh, and I've decided to stop being a baby about my body. Hanging out with 30 year olds has really forced me to give myself a kick in the ass. Now I just need to work on not being such a Nihilist. Maybe I'll start meditating and eating nutritional yeast, I heard that shit tastes like cheese but has hella B vitamins in it.

Don't get me wrong, last night was really fun. I'd say I was giggling approximately 92% of the time. Then I fell asleep with all my clothes on and woke up to booty call text messages. It was a classy affair, as always. I was wearing fur.



Look at what I found on my desktop!

I think I may have gone out on a date tonight.

"Well, I guess we could go to the Halloween store, but that's a date thing. We're not on a date because you're a lesbian."

"This is totally a date."

"This isn't a date."

It started with bringing him my favorite ice cream at work. Then, in a nut shell: toasted sesame and blue bottle vietnamese coffee screams in the city, pleasant conversation with Bas in Berkeley while savoring some wine and cheese, my first time ever in scenic Oakland, dinner in Palo Alto, where I talked about how gross it is to "get fucked" and how much men bore and disgust me. I think that miiiight have killed my game a little bit. I was driving home after having dropped him off with phone in hand. Is a text right now too soon? I want to say something to cap things off but I don't want to come across as weird but really I am just super giddy right now and then BAM my phone rings. I was engorged. It's fairly easy to read what's going on, and it is always so terribly exciting. All of the sudden I'm back to my beastly ways. Nothing's going to happen, we are friends and have no interest in each other. Not really sure which part of that sentence was a lie. But anyway, nothing is going to happen. The surge of energy is pleasant. I can't always dirty things with my clammy hands. Why is it that when something is so clean and cute I just want to rip it apart?

Every time I tell myself I'm fine with being boring... Changing your sexuality doesn't make things easier, it just gives you more things to analyze the shit out of. Like, what's up with her, "I'm sorry I'm such a dork around you" texts all the time and his, "I'm not like those jerks you date" comments? All in all, I think I've learned some very valuable lessons this week:

1. Don't have sex with straight girls.
2. Don't be nice to idiots.
3. Don't be mean to anybody.
4. Don't take anti-depressants.
5. Don't poop your pants.

Self-consciousness is a process of negation!

"He was wearing yellow pants and you want to post a missed connection about him?" - Michelle Borland, concerning my first craigslist posting. lol ftw hahahaha LOZLZ

I just remembered something.

Last night, through a chaos of tossing and turning, of grabbing and annihilating-- you were soft-- I heard it. "I love you." It was hazy, like a heart murmur; not a grounded statement. You were red, I was a rainbow. My eyes were closed, but I can remember you fixed on me. The most terrible thing: it wasn't actually a secret to be told, it was a plea. Swung close to you, pulled in, and all I heard was "please". But we all know I can't do that for you.

The worst thing is I can't tell for the life of me whether this really occurred or if it was just a dream.




If you don't cry, then you just don't feel it deep enough.

Went to the Red Room, talked about not having parents/relationships/the difficulties of growing up/doing what's "healthy"/being a Nietzschean as opposed to a Nihilist. Yelled about the problems of third wave feminism and made Gabe buy me another Long Island. Seriously, post-modern difference fucks up everybody's life. Ate ravioli after being kicked out of the Rush (again). Tomorrow is going to be even busier. I miss my bffz. Bring me water and tell me this angst is all just because I'm in my early 20s. Rock the baby.





Ok, a little drunx.

Yesterday involved no drinking, no superfluous spending/eating, none of the bad. I woke up feeling incredibly energized this morning, even after having had a weird dream.¹ This morning has so far been quite productive:

1. Cut off more of my bangs.
2. Listened to Britney's new song twice.
3. Finished Rorty reading (philosophy shouldn't follow the scientific method, everyone should read Heidegger).
4. Made a smoothie.
5. Got an e-mail from one of the undergrads I'm supposed to "mentor". She tells me she's dropping the class. Sweet, one less paper to grade.
6. Thought about doing my laundry.
7. Didn't think about sad things. Oh. Wait. Maybe. Ok, no, I'm good.

Hopefully I can keep this up. I will actually do my laundry, read my Wittgenstein and finish the portrait of my vagina I've been working on.










p.s. Upon rereading this, I hate myself. Oh well.






_______________________________________
¹ The dream entailed some girl I don't know stealing my favorite dress and wearing it really badly. Seriously, it looked way better on me.

So bipolar lately. But also incredibly refreshed. Exciting to start something new, edit life, cut, paste, delete, delete, delete. Without desire everything just sort of got lackluster. It's crazy the things we do to feel. But now my little will-to's are all bustling around inside (is it sexist that I always imagine them being sperm?) David is pushing me to work with John, but I'm not into the philosophy of mind. I'm already starting to notice the politics of the department, how manipulative everything is. It's what I grew up in, it makes me feel at home.


[11:06] edbury: you like indulging people too much
[11:06] edbury: maybe i'll just kill everyone you know so that you can start to flourish in a new way


Let's just say I'm ready to get my hands dirty.

Received my Teilnahmezertifikat from Colegium Palatinum yesterday. Admired it but didn't necessarily want to think about it. Today I noticed a letter, a letter that came after I already left, but Willem was kind enough to send it to me. Sorry, Claud. I can't even finish the first page. Germany seems like too long ago, everything changed so quickly when I got back. Every day I would learn more words, soak everything up, walk home alone--probably a bad idea when it's 4 am and you're drunk and you've been followed home before. Then all of the sudden I was in Orange County eating Indian buffet, cringing every time the Worm would address the waitress.

Nostalgia is deceiving as hell, and I know this. I've never trusted anything I've thought. The past is no different. Sometimes if I lie enough about something I actually start believing it. That's why I keep telling myself, "You've read enough Nietzsche to know that it's never a big deal." Cool, bro.

At least I'm getting what I want. It's a gift I have.

Dear Diary,

I've had a very bizarre week.

( caution: true blood season finale spoiler alert )


There are like ten million twists TO MY LIFE. Also, I had never fully realized the negative side-effects of my reading Boudrillard at such a young age, but I've decided to stop being tough and just completely give myself up. Maybe it'll work this time. I hate being a 20something year old testosterone-booby-driven man about the opposite sex. At least I'm pushing gender boundaries. FML IDGAF STFU. lol.


Cordially,

Yesterday went to MOMA to see a Richard Avedon exhibit. He's awesome. He can take pictures. He removes people of their context, makes them timeless. Then he tells them to say everything they want to say on their face. There was this picture of Tennessee Williams, and I was like, "Fuck, I didn't know this fucker had such a great mustache." This morning I read about his life, I wanted to know more. Here's it is:

Rose's mental health continued to deteriorate as well. During a fight between Cornelius and Edwina in 1936, Cornelius made a move towards Rose that he claimed was meant to calm her. Rose thought his overtures were sexual and suffered a terrible breakdown. Her parents had her lobotomized shortly afterward.

Laura never got her lobotomy, but the gentleman caller did turn out to be a douchebag.

I want to be dripping diamonds and decked out in Marc Jacobs and Chanel. My family, we're like out of a movie. Let's see:

1. inflated self-esteem or grandiosity: I'm going to be famous as shit one day
2. decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep): waking up at 5 every day
3. more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking: I don't really open my mouth because I'm afraid of what will come out.
4. flight of ideas, or subjective experience that thoughts are racing: you bet
5. distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli): "unimportant" is an extremely offensive term.
6. increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation: Yesterday I decided I'm going to drop out of school and write a collection of short stories.
7. excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments): just thinking about spending money makes my body tingle. Sex is alright but I'm sick of boys always talking themselves up. It gets so boring. "But wasn't the sex good?" As if passing you up means I'll never have good sex again. Please.

Now that we've got that settled, I think-- shit, I totally forgot what I was going to write about. Breakfast was alright, the Worm kept talking about tennis. Do I care about tennis? It's an alright sport. People grunt a lot. It's definitely a sport I would watch, if I were to watch sports. The Nooch got this waffle, and there were strawberries on it. She started picking off all the strawberries.

"Why are you doing that?" I ask.

"Last time I ate them they gave me a rash." is her answer.

"But that was then, you can probably eat them now." the Worm often answers for her because she gets quiet.

"It was because of that thing." she explains.

"The thing?" I know exactly what she's talking about, obvi.

"The thing. The treatment." I guess I should've just left it there, she looked so sour after having to say just "treatment".

"Oh, you mean your chemotherapy then the radiation therapy you did last year?"

Everyone's dead silent.

"It's weird that we always have to deny that these things happen to our family." Is my explanation for me being rude, loud-mouthed, whatever.

"I'm not denying it, I just don't want to identify myself with that time period."

"Yeah, but it's just weird that the word 'cancer' is off-limits. Don't you think that's just having bad faith?" The minute I said "cancer" they both turned bright red.

"She read Sartre, now she can throw words like this at us. She's so smart now." the Worm always answers for her because she gets quiet. Then, after a couple of minutes of silence, he continues to talk about tennis.


I think I'm going to go eat some clam chowder for lunch.

Everyone has one thing to say, and they're always looking for the perfect way to say it. This is especially noticeable when someone is drunk. Obviously, this thing you're saying is hidden by you saying other things. A translation is almost always needed. E.g., last night I kept telling Dylan that I really admire him for being so honest with me when I'm wearing something he hates. Translation: I love it when guys have the balls to call me ugly to my face. Evan kept telling me he's super enthused about "having [me] as a colleague." Nobody does Deleuze like us. Nobody gets the instrumentality of humans, the primordialness that you can't explain so why the fuck am I even writing about it right now. Difference isn't an intrinsic quality of humanity, people have to fashion themselves to be outstanding. That's the last of what I remember preaching before I vommed all over the place. It's ok, we're all beasts. Those of us who are lucky, anyway. The woman sitting across from me, the new grad student's older sister, was a pretty interesting creature. The thing she kept saying was, "I just really hope my kids don't grow up to hate me." For some reason I felt like reassuring her. There, there, your kids won't hate you even if they try super hard to. They're always going to be bound to you in some way, there's nothing like that anywhere else in the world. I can have anyone I want, but I want him to be the one there for me. That being said, fuck my parents. Then she just looked at me with the most blank expression, stirred her drink a little. I think I might have made her feel uncomfortable. I'm so harsh on my gender. She would get frustrated when Evan, Dylan and I were talking philosophy and say, "I just don't get it!" then an embarrassed chuckle. If you don't know, ask. But maybe my overcompensation is just as bad as her bubbly aren't-I-so-cute-in-a-mediocre-way demeanor.

Andy kept talking about Michelle, about how happy he is, how scared he is, how unexpected the world is. He told me he knew I knew his secret that I'm not supposed to know. Then he went on one of those rants. This is why being single sucks: being single sucks because you have people who are in happy relationships trying to tell you how to live a good life. Suddenly everyone who falls in love becomes the wisest motherfucker on the planet, and everyone who isn't in love should be so thankful to hear their words of advice.

"I'm worried about you, Giulia. I want to see you settle down with a nice boy."

or

"He thinks you're super cute. You guys should fuck."

or

"You just really should be single right now."

Thanks, world. I'll keep it in mind. Love is composed of three things: sparks, sex, and compromise. I'm working on the third, then I'll get back to you.

I wish I could remember what Austin kept trying to say, but I was too gone at that point. There is one visual I remember, though. He caught the tiniest glimpse of my bad side. For an instant, I let the world turn just a tad bit sour, and he picked up on it. I've never seen anyone look so scared. I just laughed it off. Haaaaaa, just kidding!

I used to think that intellectuals had one idea, something that obsesses them and, for the lucky few (thanks, Simon Critchely) will be the death of them. What the fuck is agency real how can I get out of this box and justify the fact that I like putting things up my ass even though I'm a man? Or, I'm a woman but I feel like my opinion doesn't really count I hate this Othering bullshit but then again I love it because my whole identity is based on it fuck you for making me realize that, Lacan, I'm just going to act like an arrogant dyke and overanalyze everything to hide the fact that I don't know what I'm saying anymore. That was my Judith Butler impression, obvi. Back to the point: now I realize that everyone is haunted. Sometimes when we get drunk our internal monologues get voiced, and we will cry out for hours, but everyone is usually too fucked up to listen. I choose to blame modernism.

So that was my night. I'm such a hungover rambler.

Tell an Aquarius to do one thing and she'll do just the opposite. You are laughing as you read this because you know it's true. That's your role as the zodiac's rabble-rouser-to turn things upside down and inside out. Don't ever change. Aquarians are fascinating creatures and are often in the media, making news in fashion, politics, community work, or for charities. Brimming with self-confidence, you love bright, neon colors or anything that looks futuristic.


Today I read my horoscope then proceeded to do everything right/wrong/awful/amazing/nightmares/naps/lots of chicken.