"I can't change conditions, I can only meet them without backing up"
-Al Capone

Sometimes this quote ruminates throughout my consciousness for a day or two. Repeating over and over like some popular freshly fancied ditty. It invokes the logic of fighting and interpersonal confrontation: I can't change or control my opponent, I can merely face them. This shouldn't be surprising as it came the most notorious businessman of crime in the twentieth century. Could those conditions be referring to the alcohol he sold, and the fact that he couldn't reverse prohibition. Or the conditions may simply be reality: There is a palpable demand for booze. Someone needs to break the law and supply it.

Al Capone would make a fantastic twenty first century CEO.

I just saw two cops riding their bikes this Saturday night. Single file down a dimly lit street. The stamped white letters, POLICE, barely visible through the shadows. Apparent semi-incognito patrol. They rode at such a measured pace, rather slow and in perfect harmony. Further proof that some people could never be cops. Who has the discipline to ride on a beautiful, New England October night in such a boring manner? I would have been going faster, with no hands and probably swerving, trying to see how much those police-issue bikes could take.

Last three entries written at another time and place.

Diatribe against 80 hour weeks.

I just sentenced myself to this.

Overall efficacy declines in the long run.

Anyone who counts hours spent per week certainly doesn’t enjoy the activity. Like me now, sentenced.

These people have cubicle jobs that don’t require manual labor—they most certainly don’t even vacuum their own workspace or empty their own trash. Manual labor requires certain grueling work stints, but in short spurts, not as a regular program. Implementation of regular program=loss of productivity.

Well that was easy.

You’re making all this shit up as you go. Like you know all. Age 14. No love.

I’m at your feet.

Having trouble even in my current state to view Insurance as anything but evil: as an occupation, an idea, everything, no more to say.

If only I truly couldn’t care. I don’t: confidence is fine, at least it’s internally formed. Insurance is shit.

Forsaken me.

People give me creativity, fodder. Spite verb as gasoline.

Neuroses provides me with all needed to say. Even last statement.
Incomplete sentences. When writing for oneself, doesn’t matter. Basically typing practice.

Self righteous idiots sinking into the ocean to suffer inscrutable, soaking drenched gasp eyeroll death. Maudlin public replenishing water lost when people died. Our bodies are 70 percent you know. Is now the time to bring it out, would it seem to forced, or insincere? Fucking code word language bullshit. Die assholes I hate you. Die from intolerable suffering before suffocation. Anyone working in the insurance industry: die terrible death.

What was it that made me like this.

Unfortunately it is not just one thing.

But if I could point to one, it would be lack of discipline. I’ve been harping on this as the possible reason, and come to the oblique conclusion that I need death to reside eternally on my shoulder. Without impending doom, I become complacent in all areas of life. I’ve lost virtually everything, and now the chance of not surviving approaches as oncoming traffic off the horizon. Ever closer, but instead of turning around and running, I sit frozen with fear. Composing fearful journal entries, narcissistically peering at my own iniquity, as if it is fascinating, unheralded and therefore valuable. Like a rodent inside a cylinder, I then declare it is worthwhile exactly because I recognize that it is dull, mundane and useless. Or that it’s worth hinges of the degree of narcissism, in my case very high—if I peer ever so close, and express that, the value must increase. And then renege the peering entirely; it’s all bullshit; making sure to hint that if nothing else, it is poetically pleasing.

And on and on and on, as traffic approaches closer and closer and closer…

Alone
Cold room
Turn up the heat
Done
Nothing to say
So I’ll say nothing
Compelled to say something.

I went to the movies today with my mother. I made a concerted effort to be a man, a successful grown up who was spending an afternoon with his mother. The auspices of being an adult make it so easy to do something like go to movies with your mother. As a kid, my usual part, it’s much more difficult.

It doesn’t have to be true, or represent my life really in any way, it’s just a role that I’ve learned. Perhaps I should’ve learned some time ago. I finally feel confident in this role. I don’t miss any cues, say what I’m supposed to say, be funny—but not too funny. I just imagine how I’ll be doing this act for the rest of my life. Typecast like any shitty actor.

I don’t know of any other way to be more pretentious. I guess I just want you to see what I am right now. This blob of flesh sitting in front of his monitor, with two white-noise fans running, unable to sleep at four in the morning. Pounding on the keyboard at 40+ words per, with improper self-taught finger placement, but still faster than some. Slouched because I’ve given up. Not entirely, just tonight. Couldn’t sleep, so I gave up trying. Arose got a glass of water, increased the heat, and proceeded to pound with mostly the wrong fingers.

But the question I cannot avoid, and frankly I find delicious, like this water is: are you actually reading this. Even now as Word capitalizes my letters starting sentences, I imagine in a fantasizing manner: where in the future are you reading? What year is it, do you even still record years? Or run on sentences? Computers, cars, television, do they exist? Do you exist? Only if I let you. For if I were not writing this, you wouldn’t be reading it. And if you weren’t reading it, (here comes the then) then you wouldn’t exist. You exist because I created you. I created you for the sole purpose (cliché) of reading this. You understand my asides, without me having to explain what an aside is. On other nights, my creation needs a sentence or two. Other times I must forsake (there’s that word again) the asides entirely. Next time I write something, I will create another person similar to you, but different. How can I continue to write under these circumstances and still consider myself sane?

That last question devoured my inspiration and replaced it with the same familiar nothingness that began this entry.

....that makes two men in their early twenties that I've met in past month wearing rings. However, neither are married. "My girlfriend gave it to me." One chap had a picture in his pocket which he was proud to show me. "She's in Germany."

Either the impediments to engagement and marriage are too great and these young couples don't want risk. Or, marriage simply has no meaning anymore. It's probably a combination of both. It's worth saying that neither white couple has children. These are also college aged people.

The all-important thrust to get married still is provided by pregnancy. However, due to advanced contraception young middle-class white couples from respectable families can easily prevent pregnancy and thus avoid pressure from traditionalist's to get married. I.E. Fathers can't enforce shotgun marriages without something cooking in the oven.

Poorer people seem to lack parental pressure for marriage when there's a pregnancy. The tradition is losing it's footing with the largest class.

Good. The ring is enough symbolic commitment with the ceremony. The fellow whose girlfriend is in Germany has at least some reason to wear a symbolic commitment at all times. But the other fellow lives with his girlfriend--I simply can't see the point of wearing a ring. He said he likes it, much to my dismay. The poor fellow is essentially married without any of the benefits (if there are any.)