We're Bustin' Out on Some Serious Funk

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feeling nostalgic. I'm starting to wonder if the reason I don't live with regret is because I never really examined what I accomplished or what I did. I've been feeling like I could have made a lot of better decisions, but that's just part of growing older and understanding that we can never know then what we know now. No matter how much we wish we could.

Ultimately, it feels like everyone's going somewhere and advancing towards to a goal. I appreciate the fact that I have a job that I enjoy which can lead into a career, but I still am working for the temp agency and waiting to get hired on by the County. It feels like I'm lying each time I tell someone what I do, because I'm still a temp there. I use not having the full-time position at the County as a reason for not moving out and getting my own place and my own car, but deep down I think there's far more to that. That fear that I keep ignoring, that fear that I think I've known my whole life.

"What if everything's not going to work out for the best?"

just as soon as I hear those words, I can counter right back with "well, let's just wait and see". That's the inherent magic and wonder of life, I guess, that we always have the ability to see, to keep waiting, and to hope that it will work out and take our daily triumphs as positive reminders that we're getting there.

My friends are getting married and I'm still a kid.

so hey. glad to see you're still around and reading this thing. I haven't really had the desire to update this, even though things happen sometimes that I feel I should talk about and discuss and really when all is said and done this is just social masturbation anyways. I write this for me, something to look back upon, something to remember better than I might otherwise. But the reasons why you choose to read this are purely personal to your own and really aren't any of my business. Isn't any of my business? whatever.

Went to Joseph Beth's Booksellers in South Side on Thursday and saw Mark Z. Danielewski speak. He's the amazing author of the scariest book I've ever read, House of Leaves. He just recently released his second full-length novel Only Revolutions a story of two teenagers, a male and female, constantly traveling, through time, through space, and through alternate realities. His talk was just spectacular. He was exciting, fascinating, and a totally awesome guy. He explained that one of the purposes of Only Revolutions was to illustrate how teenagers through history may use drugs, sex, and money as escape, but ultimately it's their attempts through words to escape that are the most universal. Their slang, their languages are constantly evolving and changing and it occurs throughout American history. I instantly fell in love with this idea of a book written about two characters attempting to break free of the very medium of their existence. Should be a mind fuck to read.

On Wednesday morning I woke up at 6:30 like usual, but with an itching on the inside of my left forearm. I looked down and saw an itchy sore. I scratched it in my half-awake stupor, thought nothing of it, and got in the shower. In the shower, my heart starts beating extremely fast. I try to calm down with deep breaths. It doesn't help. I look at my arm, the scratch marks look redder, puffier, more contagious. My heart beats faster. I think I've been bitten by some deadly strain of spider, one they'll explain on the news was a freak occurance. As crazy as it sounds, I feel like my world is starting to collapse. The sound of the water gets deafening in my ears. I try to breathe, my lungs refuse to inflate. The sound of my heart beating drums through my head and my whole body is shaking. I slam the water off, grab a towel, and scream "I think I need some help". I couldn't stop shaking and my heart would not stop beating so fast, I was sure I was having a heart attack. My mom came running in, concerned mother as always to the rescue, getting me a glass of water and helping me to calm down. I somehow finally snapped back and was able to calm down, but I still felt extremely shaken. All during the day, I was jumpy unable to deal with stress as I usually can. I was sure it would happen again.

Today's Sunday.

The bug bite is still there. but so am I. I hate focusing on the fact that I've been alive for 23 years on a planet over millions of years old. I can't even imagine hundreds of years, and thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of years are just infinite to me. This whole idea of mortality is really freaking me out. It's so much easier to just ignore it all and put on a DVD or plop down some money for some distraction. Movies. Books. CDs. Concerts. Television. Food. Toys. Comic Books. I'm starting to live from Release Date to Release Date. I'm horrified that nothing is going to change and even worse, that I'll do nothing about it.

*sigh*

• The "23 Enigma" is the Discordian belief that all events are connected to the number 23, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. It can be seen in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy (there called the "23/17 phenomenon"), Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (there called "The Law of 23s" and "The 23 Enigma"), Arthur Koestler's Challenge of Chance, as well as the Principia Discordia. In these works, 23 is considered either lucky, unlucky, sacred to the goddess Eris, sinister, sacred to the unholy gods of the Cthulhu Mythos, or strange.
• Psalm 23 (Psalm is the 23rd book in the bible), also known as the Shepherd Psalm, is possibly the most quoted and best known psalm.

• There are 23 letters in the Latin alphabet
• The European Union has 23 official languages.
• The planet Earth has an Axial tilt of 23.5 degrees
• 23 degrees Celsius is "room temperature" on Earth.
• Michael Jordan wore number 23, with the exception of a short period of time, when he played professional basketball with the Chicago Bulls and, later, the Washington Wizards. Many athletes wear the number 23 as a tribute to Jordan. Three examples are Lebron James, Jason Richardson and David Beckham whilst playing at Real Madrid and Los Angeles Galaxy.
• Manchester City F.C. have not assigned the squad number 23 to any player since 2003. This is due to the fact that Marc-Vivien Foé, the player who collapsed and died while playing for Cameroon on June 26, 2003, had held this squad number at Manchester City.
• Devin Hester, the first player in history to return the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl for a touchdown, wears the number 23
• 23 is the number of people (16 females, 7 males) that Neo would have had to select in order to re-found Zion in The Matrix Trilogy.
• AA 23 was the detention block princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is kept in, in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

The Number Itself

• 23 is (2^3) + (3^2) + (2 * 3) It is the only integer greater than 0 which can be expressed in this way.
• 23! is 23 digits long. There are only three other numbers that have this property: 1, 22, and 24.
• According to the birthday paradox, in a group of 23 (or more) randomly chosen people, the probability is more than 50% that some pair of them will have the same birthday.