count three beats. exhale.

i always thought the saying "drowning in misery" was kinda extreme, but now i realize there is no misery quite like your own. you have to hate days where you can look back and say to yourself "no…i don't think i've ever been as miserable as i have been today." that's a low point that is misery, just thinking about it.

two beats.

it's not really possible to fuck up any more than i have tonight, i don't think. it's really inconceivable that anyone could fuck anything up as rapidly as i have been destroying things over the past two days. i'm baffled by it. it drives me crazy that all i can seem to do is the exact opposite of what i want to do.

the last beat, rumbling off into the distance.

i just want to mean something. i feel like i used to, but it's all been evaporating lately, probably through my own doing. i want the things i write and say to hold as much weight to someone as they do to me. it's not easy to say some of the things we, as humans, say to each other. it's not easy to lay your heart out on the ground and take a few paces back. it's horrible to see that heart turn from being an offering, given only from your own ridiculous need to connect to someone, to a line in the sand. from a gift to a separator of warring sides.

silence.

what do you do when you realize you can never be with the girl of your dreams? what can you do when you have to look in the mirror and understand that, no matter how hard you tried, it all amounted to nothing? is it still defeat if you're just losing to yourself?

breath in.

repeat.

i'm getting incresingly lazy about posting to bipolar. i guess it's mainly because i feel like i can't really talk about what's on my mind. why? censorship? nope.

the person that is on my mind reads this. i do it mainly out of respect for her. i mean (a) i'm sure she doesn't want to put up with my shit when i'm not throwing it at her directly and (b) i guess it's a privacy issue. i don't think she really wants to be mentioned here.

and there she goes getting mentioned whie i talk about not mentioning her. chalk another one up to brian's ability to do shit the wrong way.

i went out to catch a sneak of jay and silent bob strike back last night. i was supposed to go with scott, but he ended up getting stuck at work. i went alone and ended up running into some friends from way back. it's odd to see people you've barely talked to in years. we hung out, watched the movie (i sat by myself), and then grabbed some dinner at the mexican place across the street. it was a nice time out, and i may end up catching up with them again saturday night.

one of my friends asked me about a girl i dated for a while, seeing as he met her once. i told him we weren't together anymore. he looked at me and said "still fucking everything up, huh?"

yes. yes i am.

so i'm absolutely broke. not a dime to my name until thursday. i'm actually overdrawn from my bank account. i'm eating cake as a meal, at this point. sounds great, huh?

what is bipolar to me? a series of anecdotes? a place where i post about my (uninteresting) day? hell if i know. no focus around here, i tell ya.

i fuck a lot of things up because i base certain reactions upon unattainable romantic notions. changing that fact would certainly make my life a lot easier, but it also seems like giving up.

case in point: this girl that i'm currently pissing and moaning over is everything i could ever want in a girl. she the most amazingly beautiful, sharply intelligent, witty female ever put on the earth. she's also this sweet girl who seems to appreciate me more than i think i've ever been appreciated before. some might say "it doesn't look like she appreciates you at all, moron!" but to tell the truth, that just shows how badly i've ended up faring previously. i'm sure she appreciates me a lot more when i'm not being a total dumbass, throwing myself at her like a man possessed. but hell, she laughs at my jokes. what more do i need?

what i need is to stop clogging her up, i guess. i need to stop bashing my retarded shit over her head. i think i walked back into a much better situation, once i got home, but i've brought it back down to shitty levels in record time. less than two whole days, people!

so…yeah. i probably wasn't supposed to bring any of that up, i guess.

fucking up, indeed.

finally home. new york was amazing. radiohead blew my frickin' mind. when you have a panoramic view like everyone at that how was treated to, you really can't ask for much more. unfortunately, i found out that someone didn't have as great a time as i did. a kid died from unknown causes somewhere around the time that we actually got to the show, in the middle of kid koala or the beta band. you can read about it here.

other than that, the weekend was awesome. we ended up just piddling about, most of friday. later in the evening we headed out into the ocean called the new york bar scene. we hit a rather posh-ish nightspot to lead the evening off, but decided to slam our drinks and get the hell away from the beautiful people. we decided to head out in search of a rock and roll club, so we talked to some multi-tattooed girls on the street to get a head up on where they were partying, that evening. we hit another club called 85a, thoroughly disliked the clientel and then headed to our final stop, motor city. that place was badass. a detroit-themed punk bar. there was a huge irish dude named frank working the door. we ended up finding our spot to spend the rest of the evening, and ended up getting completely plastered.

and scott pissed in the subway. followed shortly by him getting hit on by "dirty girl" and me and ben having to fend off "bald dude."

we hit ps1 on saturday, lucking out and catching kid koala for a second time. he played pretty much the same set, but it was a much better environment than a packed radiohead show. ps1 is awesome, though. it's run by the museum of modern art and has some amazing pieces. highly recommended if you ever head out that way or you live in the city and you haven't been there.

saturday night we met up with molly and headed out to one of her favorite haunts, sophia's. we had a good time and ben finally talked to some girls. it was a minor miracle, to say the least.

and then a twelve hour haul home on sunday. when you're stuck in a car for that long, you have a lot of time to think. i've had a lot of things on my mind, over the past few weeks, so i tried to get a lot of it in order, i guess.

i didn't really come to any conclusions. i know i handle things wrong. i'm working on fixing that, i guess. i know i miss her. i know i want to see her. i think she'll visit soon, so i'm happy for that. i just hope i don't blow it. i've got a lot of bad shit to try to make up for. the spotlight is on me and my frequent tendency to fuck things up.

wish me luck.

radiohead was amazing. you had the stage and then off to the left was the statue of liberty (closer than you think) and the water and then across that, the whole island of manhattan. breathtaking.

more when i can actually wrap my head around it.

we've arrived safely in nyc. with only some minor confusion in the keystone state regarding a stop for gas when there was no gas to be found, we arrived in the city at around 11pm, last night. we coined a new phrase on the way out: "asstabulous." don't ask.

we walked around manhattan all day. we walked by the taping of trl. i gave carson daly the finger while scott tried to figure out who the hell the guest was on the show ("who the hell are they screaming about?").

we're about to take a ferry across whatever to liberty state park to catch some radiohead. yes…we are lucky bastards. we'll ogle the statue of liberty and complain about how small it is. i still haven't seen the empire state building.

if anyone has a marvel comic handy, . i want to bust up in there and tell joe quesada i was right about ian churchill.

and yeah…i did eat that baby ruth, the other day.

time for radiohead. more whenever.

work seems to be dragging my soul through the gutter more and more, as the weeks roll on. it's hard to believe that i've almost been here for a year.

i just pulled an interview for a supervisor position out of my ass, it seems (put that mental image away for now). i got an email wanting to know if i would be available to be interviewed tomorrow at around 2pm. the answer to that was a big, fiery "hell no," seeing as i'll probably be about halfway between "here" and "there" on my way to see radiohead in new york. i somehow finagled my way into not forfeiting the oppurtunity by firing back an email saying "how about now?" bingo. it worked. no shirt and tie for brian, i was doing this one quick and dirty (enough with those mental images!). i even explained my radiohead tickets, which got a knowing nod from the girl in hr. she's a radiohead fan. aren't we all?

i've been doing fuck-all today. i went out on lunch and got the oil changed. that was a grand adventure, i guess. i didn't get the synthetic. my wallet is thanking me, but i'm sure my engine is slightly pissed. oh well…"blackie lawless" will live to race another day, i'm sure…

maybe i'll eat this baby ruth that's been sitting on my desk, all day…

just a note…

it is my opinion that these clowns are both (a) fuckers and (b) shits. it is also my opinion that they should rot in hell forever.

hey…it's just my opinion, you know…

damn i'm tired. this could probably stem from shorting myself an average of 1.267 hours of sleep a night. i mean…i'm still getting over 6 hours, right? i should still be a chipper guy.

no such luck.

for once my cat didn't wake me up this morning, though. this was a blessing, although i did wake up at 9:02am, when my alarm doesn't go off until 9:15. talk about your shitty luck. i'm convinced that the last 13 minutes i would have gotten, had i slept through, would have been the 13 minutes that would have left me refreshed and ready to face my day. damn my chronically fucked up internal clock.

not to be confused with a "biological clock," which might cause me to have an overwhelming desire to spawn.

i skipped the usual coffee, this morning, mainly because i was already hungry and i knew coffee would just make it worse. i have one of those high metabolisms, so whenever i pump energy through my body, the contents of my stomach are instantly thrown on the fire. this is fine and dandy until the crash down, of course, which leaves me feeling even more drained than before and completely famished, for my trouble. let's hear it for being a skinny bastard, folks…it's a lot of work.

you know…writing out my feelings about "that girl" kinda loses it's allure when i know she reads this page. secret plans can not be hatched in secret if she knows all the details i may relate to you, dear reader. current plan: keep my cool. no more discussion. she might be looking…

and…yeah…i totally cribbed that "dear reader" thing from stephen king. so sue me.

it has come to my attention that adam kempa is either (a) a fucker or (b) a shit. as a matter of fact, this was just confirmed by a mysterious source:
Adamweezer: He's a fucker.

wouldn't it be neat if gary coleman had a weblog? i mean…adam curry has one…

did i mention that a couple of weeks ago i watched alkaline trio from the side of the stage at house of blues in chicago? yeah…i felt like a rockstar. i was drinking free beer the whole time, too. thanks, guys…

that's about enough for one day, i think…

third attempt. i am officially pissed as hell at blogger. for some fucked up, unknown reason, the blogger window has decided to unlearn the ctrl+c and ctrl+v commands. you know? copy and paste? the god send of the blogging public? what we're supposed to be able to do to save our asses (and our long-winded, go nowhere posts)?

blogger, today you have earned my ire. bollocks to you, i say. bollocks to you and your javascript error.

so…where was i?

you never come to truly appreciate sleep until you can't get it. i tossed and turned all night, last night, for no discernable reason. i had nothing of consequence on my mind. nothing important. no worries, no impending bills. i'm guessing the culprit was the two non-drowsy allergy pills taken with coke. that'll do it every time.

another culprit could have been my cat firing up at around 7am. she's developed this annoying as hell knack of waking me up at the asscrack of dawn, regardless of the fact that i feed her right before i go to bed every night. when i finally wander downstairs to feed her, i more often than not discover that she still has a half bowl of chow sitting there.

the following is a dramatization…

her: meow! hey! get up! it's almost 6am, already! i'm hungry!
me: clyde…i just fed you a couple of hours ago. go back to sleep.
her: meow! i thought i said get up, shithead!
me: fine, fine…
[i then walk downstairs to discover the bowl is still half full]
me: clyde…you still have half a bowl of food here.
her: meow! freshen it up, jackass!
me: i swear, clyde…you keep waking me up, like this, and i'm gonna stop feeding you until that damn bowl is empty.
her: meow! go ahead and try it, fucker…then you'll learn what hell is really like.
me: yes m'am…

yes. my cat is a girl. yes. her name is clyde. i thought we went over this…

the morning started off with a bang. it seems that a transformer blew, somewhere in my neighborhood, knocking the power off for a grand total of 2 minutes. luckily, this happened about 5 minutes before my alarm was set to go off, so i went ahead and got up.

when i walked into the coffee shop for my morning mocha, the guy behind the counter that wasn't at the register said to me (still 2 people back in line) "mocha? three shots of chocolate and no whip cream?" i grinned and said bingo and it was ready by the time i got to the register. good service is always the best. having a usual rocks, as well.

she and i are talking again. i don't really know what it means, or how to proceed. my current tactic is to just play it cool. of course…she's going to read this, and then my cover is blown. ah, hell…she already knows i'm not cool.

god damn it…back to work…

well…how fuckin' long did that take?

thanks to everyone who constantly asked "where's bipolar?" and then followed that with "when is bipolar coming back?" i honestly didn't think you all cared…

i'd also like to thank everyone that linked to the story of our outage. if you haven't read it, you can find it on the x:13 design homepage. be warned…it's a doozy.

thanks are also in order for seth from wraithsys for hosting the site on short notice. he even built us a whole new server, to boot.

no thanks to these jokers. what a crock of shit.

so what have i been up to, this past week? not much. trying to get my finances back in order, mostly. nothing exciting.

transmission3000 has been getting steadily updated, in our downtime. there's a couple of live braid tracks over there. it's all to whet your appetite for the coming full braid show that i'll be putting up sometime soon (pronounced: as soon as i find the time to finish it).

i stepped out to see shiner and burning airlines, last night. i had a great time, and both bands blew me away. i haven't seen burning airlines since i recorded them for t3k, so it was really nice to see them playing the newer stuff. i hope to record them again on their next swoop through the midwest.

conversation from last night:

Transmission3000: bipolar got the mad flava.
gregblahblahblah: word up

'nuff said.

did you miss us?