12/05/2004 - 5:54 a.m. | another what

Define irony: The following away message is from Allen Wittman: "I usually avoid the word, since it makes anyone who says it sound like an emo, but tonight was surreal."

I won't let myself sleep, I simply won't. I'm not even doing anything; I just look at people and add to this web of knowledge I feel is so important to form. What is your purpose in life? I think it's to become an expert on a few select, essentially stupid, things and have people rely on you. Um, like, a drug dealer knows just a bunch of stuff about drugs and a guy who works at a dry cleaners knows how to get certain stains out, and we are rewarded for this knowledge specificity. On the plus side, I seem to have an innate talent for absorbing information, whether I want to or not. It just sticks. I don't want to know that Joe Pesci is the lead in 8 Heads in a Duffle Bag (Hell, I doubt Joe Pesci even wants to know that shit these days), but I do, and it sticks. However, despite any gifts I might have in the area of knowledge acquisition, I have just as many problems actually applying this information to anything useful. I don't know have enough stuff to write a book or teach people or even go on a gameshow. Too trite for trivia sometimes even. I don't know what to do with the knowledge that Sheldon Turnipseed played Jamal Jenkins in "Ghostwriter," but there it is. How does one apply that? I just feel this need to record everything - if not in words like here, then at least up in my head - and how do I use that? Journalism, I thought, maybe, but journalism is too dry, too misleading. All those attempts to seem impartial when it goes against human nature. The opinions need to be recorded. I want to have biased accounts of things as they happen. I dunno, man - I want my brain to be sucked out at a certain age and then just added to some collective consciousness, adding my stupid little bits of stuff about butt welding and generic Wal-mart products and filling in all the stuff maybe the important people didn't have space for. If that could be my job - preparing my brain for such point when it is taken from me - I think I would be OK with that.

Maybe you could write memoirs, I think. But no, you've got to write about things of consequence in your life - that's the whole point - and I'm more interested in the opposite, I think maybe. Maybe not, though, as I try to create situations for myself. How I ended up in Texas or was sucked into the world of an emall or hit on by a creepy old gay serial killer. What I would really like to do is add big experiences to my collection, but that requires major involvement - and consequences. I'd like to do stupid, potentially self-destructive things, start fights and just reek of confidence, get hurt for as long as necessary and then back out and start over from a safe point in time. I always get a little manic like this late at night. I want to enter a few worlds I'm not exposed to - sell drugs or my body or join a fraternity just to see what it was like. But I'd want to keep returning to this fairly neutral zone, the only scarring on my brain. Kind of like Groundhog Day or something. Would that get boring? Oh sure, no doubt. But the nice part about wishing is that the stupid ones almost never come true. Although I have this secret desire (and possibly the ever evolving imagination), I'm lacking in whatever else it would take to actually get things done. The total disregard for a normal existence, I guess. The self-confidence. The lack of feeling for all others around me. I know, life is short and all, but I can't decide if I think it would be worth it. Probably not. But things lie beneath, and I worry what will happen if they flare up.

You can see what a joy things will be when I have a midlife crisis.