i've decided to try and counteract the winter blues by attempting to get in shape.
i mean... all this spare time and i can't spare 30 mins for a short workout?

my goal: one day i will be able to do a pull up.

hese are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand.

stolen from makebeliever


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Surprisingly I've read a lot of these, or have at least started.
Although, i generally refuse to read Jane Austen or the Bronte's on principle.

i'm hoping that by writing in here i'll be able to focus and keep writing, but not on this ... my thesis proposal.
but i need to start somewhere.
so i'll start with frustration and anger and...
surprisingly coping
but not well
with the pressure of having to meet and talk
and...
it's a strange feeling, this growing up
sometimes the world makes no sense
sometimes i lose track of consequences
sometimes i just don't care and it sorta worries me that i don't

but it amazes me just how old habits, old urges can spring up
in times of pressure
in times of stress
the urge was so strong today
memories of blades drawn across flesh and
release
and blood
and the urge to recede into
something unknown
but for today
resist.
i wanted to cry but i
couldn't.
my skin wanted to cry.

after weeks of asking again and again for some sort of feedback on my thesis proposal, i get
"yeah, that one part looks much better, but can you rewrite this part and this and get it to me by tonight"
!
tonight. is now. it's midnight and i'm going to be so fucking tired tomorrow
but i have to keep going
and i have no sort of fall back plan
i have... colleagues, at best.
no friends here.
no comfort here.

and to add injury to insult
the wind blew hard and cold sleet/hail into my face today
cold and prickly pain.
i'll be working til 9pm tomorrow
9:30-9pm.
with a short break from 3-6
in which i'll have to get dinner.
this sucks.
and i have this work
and
i just don't know

i almost wanted to give up today
all i could think of was failure
the same urge that brought the desire to hurt
brought the desire to paint
too bad there's none of that here.
the pen is too controlled.

what is my life?
how did i get here?
who am i?

i think i'm having an existential crisis.

it's been forever since
i've been here
before
something
and everything
has changed
and the world just seems so
full
and fast
and i don't know
if
i
can
hold
on
[breath]

life around the corner
only 9 months away
almost like pregnancy
(without the sperm)
or sooner if i consider
summer
job
work
wedding(s)
graduation
what are you doing worm
what are you doing worm
what are you doing
worm
what are you
worm
doing nothing
except procrastinating
and not admitting to myself that i'm moping.

but here it is
i don't want to do what i should be doing.

second mini comic
get it while it's hot.
email me to arrange
(wormulus (at) gmail.com)
$3
special: 2 for $6

excitement!
tell all yer friends.

dear krystyna,

i often find things to say to you, things to share with you, things i think you might laugh at. but i seem to have gone and failed at communicating. failed at talking. your letters set in and on my desk unaswered. i have no address or else i'd send one to you. i don't even know if you read this any more. but i've accumulated quite the amount of things to share with you. so maybe if you wanted to, you could send me your address. and in return, i'll send you two bright and new mini-comics (drawn by yours truly) and a letter full of goodness. or maybe you could just send me an email. or something.

i do miss you.
i'm rubbish.

also,
in addition to getting engaged,
i also got a tattoo of the symbol for a resistor on the inside of my left ankle.
i am now officially officially a GEEK.
a geek with a cold
and too much work to do this week.

ok ok ok
yes. engaged.
i made the ring out of a quarter
august 11?

and in other news
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRYSTYNA (a day late)

oh man
i've got a girlfriend
she makes my stomach go into knots
and simultaneously flutter

also
i get to meet scott mccloud next week

my life. it's good.

hm. well... in response to the previous entries: i gave up after day three.

anyway.

new topic: MINI COMIX!
oh man oh man
$3 and it could be yours!!!!!
24 pages (b/w AND color) plus cover art

just ask me
worm@papercanary.org
or you can buy them at million year picnic in harvard square, cambridge, MA

man. this sucks. most of the way through the first day, and now i'm all craving actual food.
granted, this lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne concoction tastes better than i thought it would.

9 more days to go?

on the bright side, i'm drinking more fluids than i usually do. this has to be good for me at least on the hydration front.

so i've decided to do a colon/detoxifying cleanse. hm. maybe i'm crazy. but it will last at least 10 days. the basic idea is that every morning i drink 32 oz of salt water to flush my digestive system. and other than that, i'll drink lemon/lime juice with maple syrup and cayenne pepper.

in other news, the fourth of july was awesome. but i worry about the fact that some of my friends drink way too much. sigh. i guess it's always so.

i <3 musique concrete way too much. theremins. bloops. bleeps. random sounds. makes me want to go and chop up some tape loops.

i'm sitting in my office worried that i'm actually crazy and that people are just humoring me. seriously, though. if people knew what i thought half the time, they'd probably think i was insane. i don't know. maybe i shouldn't worry about it.

place we looked at today sucked. way too small. so we're going ahead with negotiating the south boston one. i guess i should know by the beginning of july if i'll be moving. we'll have to talk him down for it to be feasible. or find 8 people total. i don't know. or maybe we could take the 1st floor, which would be cheaper, but that won't be available til "fall". i liked the 2nd floor. we could do the work and negotiate the price against the rent. that could be cool. as long as it's around $600/month, i'm happy. we're gonna have to incorporate though. that should be interesting. [crosses fingers]

oi. back to making this thing. almost done with one wheel of control.

there's nothing like biking around in the summer.
my shoulders hurt.

looking for a new place going ok, i guess.
visits scheduled thursday and friday.
i'm hoping for the allston one, i think.

i'm going to new orleans next week.
found out today.
fun fun fun.
it'll be good to get away
and do some work.

oi.
i should go to sleep.

you'll have to forgive me
i can go days without ever noticing a change.
time usually seems meaningless
and it's all i can do to remember the days
but it's saturday today
and i should be doing something
but instead
i'm all grumpy from a frustrating night of not sleeping
and being angry that i couldn't sleep

i read thoreau last night
kirkegaard today
color theory in my dreams.

i dreamed of dinosaurs
and unending quests
and never getting what i wanted

i got so frustrated yesterday trying to explain to someone why i was making what i was making, because she found it so impossible to comprehend why i would want to make something difficult to use, so i tried to explain that it was the process of making it and the process of using it that was important and not its ability to achieve a goal.
process not goal.
process not goal.
she stared blankly at me.
and tried to call it an "experiment in collaboration" when maybe it is, but it's not an "experiment" it's just me having fun making things for myself and trying to get my friends to get away from a computer and look each other in the face and talk to each other and make something that way.
process.
not goal.

so what i'm making is this interface for a computer to make art on openstudio that's inspired by an etch-a-sketch. two wheels opposing each other meant to be operated by two separate people. instead of collaborating by each person doing something and passing an art piece around, you're collaborating in the process of creating it. forced to interact with another human. and it's meant to be clunky and hard to use. it doesn't matter what you make with it.
why can't people get that?
some people do.
but others
i worry that their souls are sucked dry
and that they don't understand the importance of imperfections any more
and how exploring limitations is good
for the soul
for creativity
for life.

the digital world has spoiled us.
sometimes i think we've forgotten how to live.

Ive seen him twenty times, if Ive seen him once
before the door, most unmistakably contemplating
At ten I was on horseback I hired a gallant grey,
secrets from the bosom of affection
effort, though never so mildly,
I must take some other course.
but a little time ago.
What need have I to say more.
youll bear in mind about the money
Id go ten thousand mile, he said,
Id go till I dropped dead
And yet I always liked you


(i think this is from david copperfield
but i couldn't tell the way the spam content was so chopped up)

tooth edge
paradise apple
half-ashamed
sin-burdened
self-defeated
work

pah.
i hate waking up with a headache

the door rang
i went to answer it
and was so petrified with fear that i couldn't
so i stared at the guy through the window
where he didn't notice me
and watched his greasy long hair
and dirty nails
by his cell phone
as he got into his penske truck and drove away

without logic
i hope no one needed a package today.

oh man i never write in here
except i thought today was exceptional --
i did my taxes
first time that i did them myself.

i'm now officially a grown-up.

i also talked to mom today
and didn't want to yell at her
i actually almost... enjoyed... talking to her
which is just strange
maybe i'm getting soft and sentimental
i don't know.

i'm looking forward to tomorrow.
this seems to be the trend of late.

i haven't written in here in foreeevvvveeeeeeerrrrrr.
i woke up after a short night of intense dreams
very cinematic
and now i find that i can't remember a damn one of them
but i know it involved searching for something

i'm sore from working in the yard yesterday
but it's a satisfying soreness

i also haven't finished the paper that was due last wednesday, nor have i truly asked for an extension. i.will.get.it.done.today. grar.

going to san fran on the 24th. am thrilled.
if anyone has suggestions about what to do out there, please offer.
so far:
MOMA
the pirate store

L word tonight
i think dana might die.