And I realize the limitations of trying to step outside the normal bullshit associated with Brandon GIF. etc. And I don't want to upstage Ed, and I'm not drunk, I am under the influence of other things, mostly fear and stomach-dissolving anxiety, and, ok, Mr. Crowley's steed.
A few things, a number of people that have done this before have warned me that moving back to your hometown without a plan always results in depression, it's inevitable - you feel like you've failed. Well, I'm in the thick of that. What to do? Personality and identity are inextricably related to place. And, uprooting oneself is like transplanting a plant. It often goes into shock before recovering. Worse yet, do you remember that episode of Star Trek the Next Generation wherein Q sadistically grants Picard the ability to go back to his academy days and mess with the events that lead to his having to have a synthetic heart and thus succumbing to a laser blast in his future self. Picard goes back, and all the things that he regretted as Cpt. Picard, he tries to fix - sleeping with the girl he always regretted not sleeping with, not getting into the bar fight that resulting in his fatal, future injury. Q then shows him his alternate future, where he festers in a science officer position - having cleansed himself of the desire to take risks - none of his superior officers see him as promotable material, and he decides that he'd rather be dead in the future, than a nonentity in the safer, alternate future.
Somehow Picard's lesson didn't sink in. It's not that I had friends, a girl, an angry Romulan waiting for me in Baton Rouge, I just, I've tried to squeeze everyone back into their roles, as if they had been in cryogenic freeze while I was gone, and that I could slip back into the role of pseudo-intellectual alcoholic who eats weird things.
Erica asked me the other day: "What do you do?" and I had no good answer to it. I don't know what I do. I just don't know. Does anyone? I don't even know what I want to someday do. I mean, I'm 27, and I've done some things, some interesting things, and I've plowed over a ton of things in life that would give other more intelligent and cagey people pause for reflection and reassessment, and now, well, the chickens have come home to roost, and those chickens are of the 6 legged mutant variety. I remember our philosophy teacher in high school, a consummate bullshitter, telling us about his moment of nausea, conversio, enlightenment and it seems to me now that I've been there a dozen times, I just can't get it straight.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, I really fucked things up tonight, but in my self-effacing, Woody Allen slamming his car into the parked cars in Annie Hall sort of way.
Anyway, Saturday, I'm taking the LSAT, it's a big step for me and I'm absolutely scared shitless about it. In ways that I can't explain. I'm smart - book smart - I test really well (better than I perform really) But, I can't get those Kurt Wagner words out of my head, looking down from the bus at his reflection and noticing the age on his face. Haunting. For weeks now I've been going nuts taking practice tests everyday, wrapping my mind around testing strategies, dissecting newspaper articles and magazines as if they were reading comprehension passages, staring at chicken-scratched notes, tearing up during the teletubbies, glazing over at midmorning after hours of this crap and letting Buffy wash over me, burning time here when I just can't cope.
Anyway, I don't want your sympathy. God knows there's none here for me, I'm such a dick - and that's not going to change. But, if there's some something to be gleaned from this, well, actually I don't know what it is, maybe it's this: if you have something good, hold onto it, don't listen to the voices that tell you you'll have to sacrifice it for the future.
No that's definitely for another post.
You can't go home again?
Nope, well, true, but, not really.
Stay away from drugs, kids?
Good. But, no.
How about, if you are so isolated and you feel as if you're going to burst, don't take the risk of demolishing a really good friendship because of a moment of weakness.
Lifetime: Television for Idiots.
Actually, I suppose there is no lesson. I missed out on the boat several times to make things good both in friendships and relationships. And I truly believe that you only get so many chances, not because there are only so many meted out to you. But, the organs of your brain, they close off a little more with each catastrophic failure, until you get to the point that no one can get to you - not that you enter an autistic state, you can go through the motions, I suppose, but that inner kernel of you - if you persist in insisting that it's there - turns away more and more, unable to assimilate new experiences as new without comparing them to older and more painful experiences.
Maybe the lesson of this all is that you're your own goddamn fault goddamnit, but not really, but the only way to function is if you accept that limited conclusion.
So, responses, don't need them. If you'd maybe toss a good thought my way for Saturday, I'd appreciate it. Honestly, I don't know why I'm subjecting you to all this, probably because I'm high as a fucking kite right now - I'll regret this in the morning - (fuck, it is morning) definitely.
Anyway, Thomas Carlyle once wrote that you should never pass up the chance to kiss a pretty girl. About talking to that girl the next day, he remains silent. But what do I know? Apparently very little.
brianbibbly [email] said at 8:48 AM 10-01-2004: Brandon. You are an asschimp. That being said, however, simply from reading your numerous posts over the years I am absolutely positive that you are going to kick the ever living shit out of the LSAT. Just relax, and give yourself enough time to answer all the questions. If you do that, you will be fine. If you don't do that and fuck it up, I will laugh at you for eternity.
Hey, I know how Baton Rouge can dampen the spirits. In college I left Loyola UNiversity to return, defeated, to LSU. I hated it. If it starts to wear on you too much, ring me up. We can tear up New Orleans a little bit. Besides, I kill people in a second up here in uptown. A second.
ericanm [email] said at 9:03 AM 10-01-2004: i know you are just taking the lsat so you can attempt to go to georgetown and then proceed to harass me in person on a daily basis.
with that said, good luck.
i am certain you will do well.
brandonA [email] said at 12:10 PM 10-01-2004: If can take it hung over with no idea what kind of questions to expect and do pretty good, I'm sure that you can approach a perfect on the thing. your writing shows you've got the skills that it tests on to the extreme.
good luck...
myriam [email] said at 1:19 PM 10-01-2004: oh ok, fine. i wish you the best of luck. and i'm happy to say, i didn't tell you so. i thought, and i still think, that eventually you will be glad that you moved home where you are finally being forced to think this shit through and make some changes, instead of keeping on having those "epiphany" moments without them actually having an impact on your life.
i'm sorry it sucks though. :( just think, you will be like a PHEONIX rising from the ashes of baton rouge. your fiery wings will unfurl and... yeah whatever. it will pass, i promise, and you'll be the better for it eventually.
Bryan [ url ] said at 1:05 PM 10-01-2004: Hey dude this was a great post.
1) I am proposing to my girlfriend this weekend, and that's sorta like taking the LSAT, except it lasts forever and it's never over, and you don't break six figures. I'm scared shitless too. Doubly so because my career is a joke.
2) Every day I still want to move back to Joliet. But every time I speak to an old friend there, they say: stay away. It seems they're all changing and if I went back to fit them in their same old roles - it would be a horrible letdown. So it hurts, but I'm still living in MPLS.
You'll rule on the LSAT dude. My best friend I've known all my life passed the LSAT with flying colors, and he's a big oily mimbo who can barely make a sentence.
ang [email] said at 3:03 PM 10-01-2004: This was the first heartfelt-ish post I've seen from Brandon. It was nice. Good luck, and when you are done the LSAT can you post more about piss flaps or whatever? ok cool thanks.
brandon [email] said at 2:29 AM 10-05-2004: Thanks everyone (except Milky, I hope you fail out of school you unfunny piece of shit) I'm definitely not going to Harvard, but I did a'ight. Good enough for government work.
Angie, I've got a bladder full of piss-flappish posts to relieve.
Come here Jews, I need to get around to shitting on some foreskins.
brandon [email] said at 11:05 AM 10-05-2004: Georgetown is a hub of the North's cultural colonialism upon the South, why would I want to go there? In that regard, Edward Said's dead, but we've got a better champion - one who's spent some time understanding russification, and, like Dostoevsky, he's spent some time in prison cleansing his soul: his name is David Duke and I invite you to read his book, Mein Kampf: An American Hero Fights the Negro Tax-man.
brandon [email] said at 11:38 AM 10-05-2004: Here's the thing about Jewish Foreskins. Have you, or anyone you, know actually ever seen someone either cutting off or someone having cut off his Jewish foreskin?
Of course not.
It's like the dumbest prank ever.
St. Paul the repressed homosexual Christian frat-boy was like, "Hey, if you want to be Christian you have to chop up your weenus, it's the coolest, and all the Jews have already done it!"
And now, 20 centuries later, Christian and Goyim wang is just decimated, scarred, and less sensitive.
While Jewish dong gets the full Sarah Jessica Parker experience.
ericanm [email] said at 12:11 PM 10-05-2004: i wasn't paying attention and i clicked on the wrong thing.
i am pro foreskin, men bring me your little shai huluds!
brandon [email] said at 11:29 AM 10-05-2004: I'd rather suck off all the guys of killoggs, and then spit up their cum into a collecting goblet or urn, I'd then launder that cum inside of the twat of the Killoggs girl with the most diseases and the least feminine hygiene (there's a curve and when they meet it's disco) Then, I'd have her piss that virus-laden cum into a french coffee press filled with those gourmet coffee beans that the South American cats shit out, I would cold-brew this concoction and drink it down while some one fucked me in the ass with a big, veiny negro-cock, before, I, dear Erica, would pay one fucking cent toward your salary, bitch.
brianbibbly [email] said at 11:39 AM 10-05-2004: This is EXACTLY why you will be an amazing lawyer Brandon. In fact, I suggest you recite this very passage verbatim in your application essays.
ericanm [email] said at 12:14 PM 10-05-2004: it's a shame because georgetown is an excellent school with all new facilities.
and its full of fit little pissflaps for you to get stabbin at.
ericanm [email] said at 1:52 PM 10-05-2004: dude come eat in the cafeteria with me!
take the red line to union station and it's on. i'll wear a big sign that says "I'M GAY" so the girls know we're not "TOGETHER".
rick [email] said at 4:53 PM 10-05-2004: Dunkin' Doughnut does have a command presence in the Beantown but I do recall many, many Starbuck's ( this was Nov/Dec 2001).
brandon [email] said at 6:02 PM 10-05-2004: Dunkin Donuts gives Starbucks good competition for most prevalent chain in shy-town. And, they're all run by Indians - god bless a goddamn Indian.
I used to date this lovely Indian with a dot not the wah wah in Chicago - and we still keep in touch, actually, she's going to have my babies one day.
We were talking the other day about how she wants to move back to India, to her place outside Chandrigarh. I'm so there. I mean, when the world ends, Pakistan is going to hurl their rockets at Bombay. America is going to go on lock-down, since - after Bush is elected and he replaces 4 justices with Scalia clones and once the oil's gone sometime in the next 30 years (right on prediction) Handmaiden's Tale meets David Foster Wallace - South Americans will not want us; Canada will merely be assimilated. Europe will devolve into a hellhole of ethnic cleansing and Muslim vs. Christian strife. Africa, well, with the AIDS and all. China and the far east? Who knows, they're inscrutable.
Where else in the world could some white dude be left alone the hell alone while human nature gnarls up around him. I'll tell you where, in the arms of a smart Indian girl who laughs at the way I say G's in hindi in a house that just got a telephone a year ago.
Fuck all you crackers. Have fun arguing over lost annuities while goose-steppping to Leviticus over the public-edification intercoms.
brandon [email] said at 11:24 AM 10-05-2004: Dude, you didn't have to kiss my ass - I didn't ask you to. You were just rude for no good reason, so I, not being one to let things like that go, I responded. No harm, no foul, cock-sucker. Of course I don't really want you to fail out. Next time, remember, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
milky [email] said at 11:34 AM 10-05-2004: Man, like you had any reason to worry about the punk ass LSAT! I can't believe you were worried about a test FRAT BOYS take.
You could finish my program in 2 years with your EYES CLOSED.
brandon [email] said at 11:43 AM 10-05-2004: Milky, you're faster, smarter, more, um, handsome and more well-read and more-cultured than I - and I seriously mean that. So, please, let's stop this, it's getting kind of gay.
milky [email] said at 12:23 PM 10-05-2004: Apply to law school and get out quickly. It's now a race to this finish line...who is gonna past their board exam quicker? I may have a year head start, but I take it in 3. Start your engines...we gotta beat Ricky in the process.
RRBLUE said at 12:08 PM 10-05-2004: Milky, lest your drug addled and HADD racked mind be swept away by a torrent of obvious envy and coveting of Brandon’s righteous and honorable LSAT success, allow me to gently redirect you to the main event at hand. That is, make sure you WATCH the VP debates tonight, as our Dark Lord and
netherworld liege Cheney sucks all of the hope and wonder and light
and goodness out of the feeble and sapless Edwards' very SOUL. WATCH
in wonderment as the darkness falls on the face of the deep. WATCH as
the inequity and wickedness of our Prince of Darkness utterly and
irreversibly consumes Edwards, driving forth into the far reaches any
last vestiges of grace and purity he may have harbored in his heart,
leaving only a hollowed smoking husk-shell of a man, prostrate before
the awesome infinite power of evil. WATCH, as the ONE, our SATANIC
SAVIOR RELOADED, ushers in a new era of CLOUDS and thick DARKNESS
because he WILL PURSUE the sons of light, and DRIVE THEM OUT of our
earthly bounds, and drown them in the river Styx. Lo, what I tell you
in DARKNESS, that ye may speak it in DARKNESS-- Tonight, WATCH,
because CHENEY WILL BITE THE HEAD OFF OF EDWARDS, and deposit his
DEMON SEED in the rotten NECK hole.
Men loved lightness rather than dark, because their deeds were impure,
and they were misled. Rejoice in the Fellowship of darkness with me
tonight my friend! WATCH!
Brandon, it is with no surcease of pleasure that I commend you in your preeminent statements regarding the federalist cesspool that is Georgetown, that loathsome Boston, the South’s new and improved reasons for succession, and finally, LSAT success. *tips hat*
milky [email] said at 12:21 PM 10-05-2004: Yes, but here's the problem: Dubya lost the last debate. And the polls reflect it.
How would a Cheney win at this debate make Dubya look like a secure leader? No, it would make him look like a clueless idiot. Edwards will come out smelling like a rose, regardless of the outcome. Nobody wants to be reassured Bush is a puppet.
Now, having put that to bed without any...disturbing homoerotic imagery...what's this got to do with Brandon's post?
brianbibbly [email] said at 12:56 PM 10-05-2004: While i agree with the above posters (*cough WADE*) sentiments regarding the South Rising Again, I have to say that, overall, this is a retarded post. That said, however, the debate really is going to be Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker.
RRBLUE said at 1:19 PM 10-05-2004: Its going to be a match. I'm bettin on EVIL. Do you somehow doubt that in the end, on network TV, Cheney will bite off the neck of Edwards, and shit in his windpipe? Do you deny the gosphel?
art said at 3:10 PM 10-05-2004: All Edwards needs is a Rainbow pin or something to show the contrast between Cheney's lesbian daughter and Bush's anti-gay-marriage crap.
If that fails, then Edwards needs a mini microwave emiting device that would give Cheney's pacemaker caniptions and would show just how fragile he would be if something happended to Bush and he became president.
julie [email] said at 3:19 PM 10-05-2004: Drinking game for tonight's debate:
Take 1 drink from your glass if Edwards resembles Dennis Quaid.
Take 1 shot if Cheney reveals that he was hiding under Bush's podium last week.
Finish your glass if Cheney clutches his heart, falls, and before dying, manages to gasp, "Vote for Bush, America, or... the terrorists will kill you all. This is my dying wish" and then his feet & legs curl up and disappear under the stage.
josh [email] said at 3:23 PM 10-05-2004: This actually brings up an interesting point - what if Cheney has a heart attack between now and the election? Would it effect the race? Would we even be allowed to know?
meredith [email] said at 3:24 PM 10-05-2004: Didn't you ever see that movie where the president goes into a coma so they get that guy who LOOKS like the president to fill in? That shit's REAL LIFE!!!
julie [email] said at 3:38 PM 10-05-2004: I agree with this. The real "Cheney" died about two years ago, and they've been using the guy who used to impersonate Gorby for any necessary public appearances. By now, they've nip/tucked about a dozen men into resembling Cheney, and they just roll out whichever one has the most rosy glow in his cheeks that day.
Haven't you seen Face/Off? Haven't you seen LASSIE, fercrissakes? That wasn't ONE dog, guys.
julie [email] said at 3:48 PM 10-05-2004: I mean, when Original Lassie died, they just replaced her and kept on doing so for YEARS. Though I don't doubt that there was a stable full of border collies. But yeah, Cheney is totally worm food, I've thought so for years.
kiche [email] said at 3:58 PM 10-05-2004: there's no way this is true. if cheney dropped dead the republicans would jumping for joy at their abillity to replace him with someone more electable.
julie [email] said at 3:39 PM 10-05-2004: If Cheney dies, they're putting Rudy Giuliani on the ticket and laughing all the way to the fighter jet factory.
brianbibbly [email] said at 2:29 PM 10-05-2004: That's cool, cause Luke got that motherfucker in the end, well, until Bush swooped down and electrocuted the both.
brandon [email] said at 5:49 PM 10-05-2004: Please make mine a giraffe. No! A dinosaur. Yeah, an, um, Allosaurus, I like them more than the T-Rex, and instead of the dinosaur eating the giraffe, make it the other way around. Oooo! And give the giraffe fangs.
