Below are the 16 most recent journal entries recorded in Guillermo McFeelypants' LiveJournal:

Wednesday, September 15th, 2004
11:30 pm	Sick and tired of being sick and tired. This is preemptive: if I've given Katherine whatever it is I have, and she is currently experiencing it on a boat in the middle of the Pacific, she is entitled to kick me in the everloving junk when she deems appropriate. Junk. Everloving. Katherine kicking it. 169 (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 10th, 2004
11:35 am	Princely Racket I have a bird now. His name is Ezra, and he loves mirrors. 173. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 11th, 2004
1:35 am	Hide your goats. Steven Pinker is hellbent on fellating every goat he comes across. You stand warned. 183. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 16th, 2004
4:45 am	Neil Diamond is Pablo Neruda's equal. And when I hurt hurting runs off my shoulders how can I hurt when holding you? This kicks all kinds of ass, then stops to rescue a kitten or an orphan or what have you, then gets back to kicking ass until the sun goes down. This is love misunderstood well, emotionality fucked up just right by a metaphor so that you don't have to deconstruct it to get at your take of the interpersonal. You can just put this schmaltzy little bit of pop up on your shelf, an artifact of sweaty old man love from Neil to you. Nobody can take it away from you, not til you die, and they auction it off. The IRS, I mean. You owed them some money. Here's why it kicks ass: Neil messes with hurting in a way we're empathetic with, right? Hurting, or, as people might be tempted to call it, pain, is something that washes over us, no? Like water, except caused usually by women. There's no reason why holding someone should keep pain from radiating off you. Ever walked through a rainstorm holding an infant? I have. All the time. Doesn't make you any drier. This would be a pretty shitty line if the last bit wasn't a question. Neil, god fucking bless him, doesn't know why he doesn't hurt when he's with Caroline, but he kind of expects - although again, not really - that she does. It's a dialogue, this relationship, filled with stupid, endearing questions and cute physical indications of a general non-ability to answer said questions. It's real, in other words. God bless you, Neil Diamond. God bless your chest hair. 191. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 26th, 2004
4:54 pm	Every Man An Alphabet It is important to me that people hate Ayn Rand. Not disagree with her. Let me make this clear: I have difficulty being friend's with someone who reacts to Objectivism with anything less than visceral dislike, with hatred. A is not A, goddamnit. A is B and C and D sometimes, more often than not E. We are not constrained by our affections, we are defined by them. Die! Thanks for dying. You're the best! 198. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, January 26th, 2004
8:42 pm	Frodo, he got screwed. This rant is only partially derived from Lord of the Rings, so those of you who may, with good reason, have your geek alarm going off, put that fucker on snooze. Frodo got screwed. He's the star of the story, sacrificing his well-being and almost his life in a quest to save the earth, or what have you, basically filling the heroic role to a tee. And they totally screwed him - Gandalf, the elves, Tolkien, Peter Jackson, the lot of them. His reward for being the central figure in one of literature's most celebrated epics? Sent to Dead Guy Island with his senile uncle and a bunch of fucking elves. Have you ever talked to an elf? They're boring. They speak in riddles and they don't drink and their foreheads are improbably high. Moreover, holy shit, you have to say goodbye to all your friends and foresake the rest of your life from young adulthood on, just because you agreed to look after your buddy's ring? That shit ain't right. This is why I'm not so much down with conscription. That, and the cowardice. Give me Sam Gamgee's reward - and I don't question that he deserved it. I can do without heaven, so long as I wake up next to Rosie Cotton and get up to get my kids ready for Hobbit School, which is like regular school except kids sneak off behind the gym to smoke hobbit weed instead of regular weed, and instead of skipping school to drink in the 7-Eleven parking lot they skip school to shoot up heroin in the backyard of the Brandybuck estate. That's heroism, that's having something to live on and something to live for for the rest of your life - a full blown opportunity to be a decent guy and do right by those you love, without being whisked away from them to some so-called heaven on what looks to be a poorly constructed little boat thing. Jesus, can you imagine what playing gin rummy with Elrond for eternity must be like. I know Darryl can. Suck it, Darryl. Also, you're secretly gay, which is, when you think about it, sort of like being a superhero with more singing. 217. Possibly 217.5. Screw you for judging me. And, while you're at it, bring me wood and oil. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 12th, 2004
12:52 am	It's 1:00 am. I've got a paper due tomorrow. Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be over in a few short minutes, forcing me to see what's on PBS, It's livejournal o'clock, baby, so kiss your children goodbye in a way that vaguely unsettles them and strap your happy ass in. It's going to be a self-involved ride. I've taken to walking several miles up the Charles every day - three bridges down, a little ways past Martignetti's and IHOP. It's a nice walk, there are a couple of little sidetracks you can go on. Most of those are verboten when it's icy, which it's been for the past week or so, but it's nice to know they're there, in the same way that it's nice to know your car's odometer goes to 200. Except that parallel doesn't work. Holy shit, this is going to be an excellent paper. It's about art. In any case, there's this hawk or kestrel or what have you that lives between the Dillon Boathouse Bridge, and the next bridge, which, for the sake of narrative alignment, I'll call The John Ritter Memorial Aortal Blockage Bridge. It's sole activity, as near as I can suss it out, is to freak out the pigeons. It's not breeding season, so the bird doesn't really have a chance at snagging a baby pigeon or goose, and the pigeon's are like teamsters, they look out for each other, so they're always in the air by the time the hawk's beginning his dive. This doesn't daunt the noble hawkestrel, though - he's got to freak something out, might as well be pigeons. Moral of the story: I'm worried about the geese. The river's completely frozen, and will be for the forseeable future, and it's about to snow and make it very difficult for them to get food. One time I saw what looked like a parrot. That was pretty good. I'm not worried enough about the geese to, you know, do anything about it, or stop thinking about buying a new belt literally all the time, so have no worries on that front. You okay? Good, because you were freaking me out there for a second. Things are beginning, things are ending. I'm three weeks away from two months of 60 hour weeks for Let's Go, not to mention my last semester of college. I'm about to get a new wardrobe, and I'm thinking about diversifying my 100% L.L. Bean portfolio. There's a good line-up at the Brattle for the first time in four months. I'm about to end the comic strip, and relinquish control of Demon. I'm already done with gov classes, having batted a wonderful 3 for 10 in choosing ones that were remotely worthwhile. I've stopped drinking as much, which means my days as renowned thing-breaker and amateur bigot/woman-hater may well be past. I blame this latest development on whores, of course, who are everywhere and who work against me at every turn. Okay, time for art. 231. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2004
5:23 pm	236. One of AA's twelve steps is to make amends to those you hurt in your former life as an active alcoholic. I'm beginning to think that I'm going to have to go around a couple of months from now, apologizing to every chair I ever sat in. I'm, unsurprisingly, kind of looking forward to that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2003
1:54 am	Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc I've decided I don't really care what prompted the bizarre transformation that came over me around Thanksgiving Break - why I'm almost uniformly in a good mood since then, why I've had a harder time not caring about things and people - having typed that, I realize it sounds stupid, but there's not really a more precise way of expressing it. I'm also not going to spend much more time worrying about why I've started dropping weight - be it a tapeworm, an act of god, or some sort of divinely inspired bacterial infection, I'm going with it. For the past two and a half weeks I've had a bizarre inclination to reintroduce myself to people, particularly people who met me or really got to know me during the past two years. There's little question in my mind that there have been enough acts of redecoration in the sparse, usually messy confines of my personality to deserve at least some external acknowledgement that I've changed. That said, I don't feel like opting for even greater self-involvement by making a public campaign out of myself or my so-called reinvention. The only thing that bothers me is that I have so little time left in college to make the best of what I have before me. I spent two years in what I suppose was a funk - although not one in the afterschool special mom doesn't love and - oh yes - she's a lesbian sense of the word. Although, come to think of it, that'd be pretty cool. "Hey mom, what are you doing?" "Lusting after chicks and having a general disinterest in your affairs." "Cool." "You?" "Same thing, actually." And then, I imagine, we'd have a beer. In any case, papers call, self-involvement wanes temporarily, and my pants no longer fit. 244. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 10th, 2003
3:47 pm	Ketosis When avoiding beer, it may also be a good idea to avoid whiskey. So our hero discovered upon trying to check his email at 3:30 am last night and discovering that words no longer worked right, and phrases? Forget about it. Highlights from karaoke: Trying to get John Kinnebrew to hit on a girl he knew to be a lesbian, and almost being successful. Mihalyfy's rendition of Barry Manilow's "Ready to Take a Chance Again" Shirt Averse Girl's erotic take on "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" Jumping into a snowbank not once but twice for no apparent reason. Jameson, Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, Wild Turkey. I'm not kidding - I'm dumb. Harassing Kenton and Kenton's lady friend drunkenly - specifically making a point to reverse Courtenay's drunken advice to them about staying true to themselves: "You are not good. Your beliefs are poison." Getting cut off after Kinnebrew lit up in house. Getting yelled at for dancing on the seats. Today's hangover, which has made me somewhat nostalgic for last year. Sundry tropicalia. 253, apparently. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 8th, 2003
6:13 pm	Bandie Fun Goddamnit. You're all friends, this is not as important as you think it is - all of you are either wonderful people now or have the capacity of being wonderful people a couple of years down the line, but this bullshit squabbling over slights and confidences reverses both of those assertions really damn quick. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure there's no way to delete these entries once I publish them - so I apologize if anyone reads this and is offended. I mean this as two-thirds compliment, one third shut the fuck up already about it when I'm around, if you can, because it's so stunningly ridiculous that a group of otherwise pleasant, intelligent people would get driven down by this there's nothing my continuing obsession with Sports Night can do to top it. 257.5, incidentally. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:32 pm	For the record. Timmy's Clown Timmy loved clowns. From as early on as he could remember, he couldn't get enough of them - clown clothes, clown wallpaper, clown bed linens, etc. When he was seven, he got an ear infection - a particularly bad one, as these things go - and refused to be treated until his parents told him pennicilin was "clown approved." It comes as little surprise, then, that when the circus came to Timmy's small town for the first time in his young life, he made sure his parents got him the first tickets sold, and that he got there for the first seats, front row center. The circus started off, as all circuses do, with zebras. Then a steady stream of other attractions - lions, acrobats, flame eaters, elephants, rare and exotic birds from South America, but no clowns. The kids around him were entranced with the show, but Timmy was growing impatient - circuses had clowns. That's what circuses have. Where were they? Just when Timmy was reaching a state of anxiousness unhealthy for children of any age, the lights went out in the big tent. As an anxious hush washed over the crowd, mad honking could be heard from off-tent. A spotlight shown on the performance entrance, and an impossibly small car came shooting out into the performance space, driving in circles around the track a few times before coming to stop near the center tent pole. For a moment - silence. Then as impossible as the car was, a more impossible amount of clowns came pouring out. As may be predicted, the crowd, and Timmy, went nuts, as the clowns cavorted their way into the crowd, producing balloon animals and smiles aplenty. One clown, the last to exit the car, stayed in the ring and walked to a microphone set up near TImmy's section of the audience. He was taller than the other clowns, a little older, with bright red hair and a red nose - he was easily the most simply decorated of the lot. "I need a volunteer." Now every kid - and more than a couple adults - in the audience had their hands up in a second, but there wasn't a chance Timmy was going to let this opportunity go by. He caught the clown's gaze and held on like a drowning man hanging on to a lifesaving piece of driftwood. "You there, in the front." Timmy was out like a shot, clambering over the railing and across the gravel to the microphone and a man he already felt comfortable with, having seem him every night in his dreams for weeks before the circus. "Little man, what's your name? "It's Timmy, sir. My name's Timmy." This was really happening. "Well, Timmy - I need a hand. Can you help me?" "Yes I can." "Will you answer my questions truthfully?" "Yes. All of them." "Good. First question: are you a horse's ear?" "No, no sir, I am not. I am a little boy." "Are you a horse's eye?" "No." This wasn't what Timmy had been expecting. "Are you a horse's nose?" "No, no, no!" "Well then, you must be a horse's ASS!" For years - 24, to be exact - the laughter and the pain of betrayal followed Timmy around like a lost, belligerent puppy. He refused to sleep in his room that night until his parents ripped down and burned all of his clown memorabilia. Years of therapy, four years away from home in college, a wife, a young child - these things helped to quell the terrible hurt and anger Timmy harbored within himself, or at least helped bury it as he tried to get on with his new, empty, clown-free life. It wasn't until he saw the ad, the same ad he'd seen as a child, heralding the return of the circus to Timmy's hometown, that it all came together. Timmy needed to get revenge if he had any hope of becoming Tim, a whole, functional human being. He needed to make things right, to make sure no child would suffer his fate. He needed to go to the circus. It was just like before - he was the first person to buy tickets, the first to get a seat - frontrow, center - for the show. The circus too was familiar - zebras, lions, acrobats, a snake charmer, a bear who could do math. The same sense of apprehension crept up on the irrational side of Timmy, the side that he would need to pull off what was to come. Finally it came - the lights went down, the manic honking, the ridiculous, mirthless automobile. It was exactly like before. Right down to the tall, old, dignifed clown, the leader of the group, it now became clear to Timmy. The clown walked out to the microphone stand, perhaps a lttle slower than he had almost a quarter decade before. But the words were the same. "I need a volunteer." Timmy didn't wait to be called out - he leapt the barricade and trotted out to clown, his face expressionless. The clown was clearly a little off-guard - he didn't choose adults usually, it seemed - but he was a pro, and went along with it. "Sir, can I ask you your name?" "Sure can. It's Timmy." He attempted a smile, but it was useless. There was no happiness in Timmy. Not for a long time. "Pleased to meet you, Timmy. Would you mind answering some questions honestly for me?" "Absolutely. Absolutely truthful." "Okay then. Are you a horse's ear?" "No, no sir, I am not. I am a little boy." He shouldn't have said that. That was weird. It didn't matter, though. " Are you a horse's eye?" The clown was visibly nervous now. This guy's a lunatic. "No." "Are you a horse's ear?" "0 for 3." " Well then, you must be a horse's ASS!" And it was perfect. Timmy looked the clown directly in the eye, his fists pressing painfully against his sides: "Fuck you, Clown." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
1:30 pm	Live Journals My problem with weblogs of the confessional variety is fairly straightforward and, I think, pretty dead on. They aren't diaries, they're weapons. And if you're reading this, even if you have a weblog and champion its psychological merit, you fucking well know this. A couple of examples: 1) Pseudonyms - you find a lot of these, names changed to protect the innocent in journal entries or, what's worse, disclaimers like "I'm not going to name names but..." followed by a transparent recitation of the days events that anyone who cares enough about your life to read your web journal will be able to see through and identify who you're talking about. The end result of the game is to hurt people, to have an outlet when you're pissed but not quite ballsy enough to confront whatever/whoever you're having problems with. As someone who can sympathize with this emotionally emasculated state - at least a little - I'm wary of getting sucked into a medium that seems to encourage this kind of petty bitchery and relationship bridge burning as commonplace, even correct. 2) I don't care what song you're listening to. I don't care if your current mood is devious. I don't want to know if you're feeling generally down but don't feel like actually telling me about it, just the internet at large - there's no way for me to gauge the appropriate reaction to that kind of thing, no way for me to tell limits, possibly no limits to discern. In other words: lame. Also, I'm not a big fan of typing. (Comment on this)
2:50 am	Redemption Songs Six years ago I was in a relationship with a girl, and I was in love with her, and if I'm any good at reading people's faces, she was either in love to me or close to it. Since we broke up - and, oh god, was that a break-up; you know the relationship's over when she comes back from Israel and you've been missing her like stupid people miss wrestling when its preempted and she calls you and all you know is that your mouth is full of ash and you never want to see her again- I've been unable to remember the design on this shirt she used to wear: Happiness is a Warm Pomeranian. She had a beautiful laugh - one of those laughs that breaks across the face like something violent, something a little alarming, but only when you've really caught her off her guard, when you've earned it. I don't really miss the relationship. It wasn't a lot of fun, to be honest, as being terrified tends to wear out its welcome pretty quickly, be you afraid of giant poisonous firebreathing snakes or this frail, burningly sarcastic girl's little hand, inching towards yours in a darkened theater. This is what I miss: 1) In the infancy of email, before we got together, we used to send each other these emails. This was before cable modems - I had to wait ten excruciating minutes while goddamn Eudora connected to the ISP, and when she'd written back, there were fireworks going off behind my lungs. This was before I started smoking, when that was a novelty. We'd flirt mercilessly, which isn't very descriptive. Put it this way - we'd flirt the way only two overly verbal, oversexed virgins can flirt in the month or two after they recognize the other as a kindred spirit of sorts. It was fast, and witty, fumbling in the dark with metaphors. It was dumb and pretty and holy shit, do I miss it when that was literally all I had to do with my afternoon - watching the internet dust storm of digital errata settle in the form of this girl, who had friends I hated and these eyes, these eyes, these fucking eyes. I'd give almost anything for the records of those exchanges, or for some sort of machine to erase them from the past, which I confusedly think doesn't deserve them. 2) I can't talk to her any more. Not even a little bit. A couple of weeks ago she had this away message up about breaking up with someone, and for the next couple of days her messages were fairly dark - not disturbing or anything, mind you, she's among the most level headed people I've ever met. She was just sad. And, being of the rare variety of asshole who can't stand to think of a woman crying - anyone who knows me with testify to this being not entirely in line with my character, but what are you going to do - I sent her a couple of ims in the interest of drawing her out. Sunday night we had this fairly nice talk in which I remarked that the guy who broke up with her was demonstrating ridiculous bad taste, and that I would hold it against him if I ever met him. And she listened sympathetically to my boring theories about the course of my life. And we left it on good turns. And we've been avoiding each other like crazy ever since, online, at least. I understand that's pretty hollow, but when hollowness drops away to reveal an honest to fuck vacuum, you realize how happy you were with hollowness, and how much you want to lure it back to your shirt pocket and feed it M&M's and be nice to it so it never leaves you again. Long story short: I shouldn't watch Sports Night when I'm feeling vaguely emotional/narcisstic. (Comment on this)
12:47 am	There's no philosophy that can't be destroyed by love. There are rules. Here are them: 1) There will be no talking about things that seem remotely serious in my journal, not with me, and preferably not with other people. 3) There will be no comments encouraging me when I seem down, which will be never, as I find people who transmit their moods like some sort of radio signal from their misfiring heart almost invariably tedious, and I have enough good sense to know that I'm not one of the few people capable of transmuting pathos to poetry. 18) I don't wear pants when I'm journaling. I find that it facilitates a creative flow from my crotch to my fingers. This creative flow, I name it Vern, and I nurture it in the dark where it lives and grows strong. There are rules. There are punishments when the rules are broken. I'm serious about this. (Comment on this)
12:34 am	Hell is a state of being. It's been a difficult day in me-land. It seems that whichever way I look, I see ugliness and greed, desperation and sorrow. I should spend less time in the Band Room. (Comment on this)