09/28/2005 - 1:19 a.m. | and i feel like i could plot it if i had the time

Maybe as some sort of a coping strategy, I�m looking for significance in stupid things. Not even with people � trying to avoid them mostly, in fact � but, I dunno, I�m starting to think everything is a little weirder than it seems. Like, I was trying to tear off the cellophane on a DVD yesterday, so I quickly scoured my desk for an adequate tool. A moment�s deliberation, and I grab the end of a broken paintbrush. Even as I am doing this, I think, �What a stupid fucking choice. This will won�t help me at all.� It ended up working fine, but where in my brain did it seem acceptable to grab the brush as compared to, say, finger nail clippers or even a pencil.

And then tonight I was boiling some penne (not farfalle, which is the far superior form of pasta � penne cooks weird, unevenly, and it makes a nasty squelching sound when mixing the sauce in), killing time until I could add the tomato vodka cream sauce (on a Tuesday � lush), and the plastic fork I was stirring with eventually melted and reformed into a pretty serviceable tiny velociraptor claw. I thought of making a second one and construction a fork fossil, but then I remembered that Calvin from �Calvin and Hobbes� did the same thing once. Its head was a bottle; Hobbes said it looked like it was kissing.

Anyway, none of this is the least bit important, but it keeps leading my brain astray as if it is, and I wonder, is this the smart drugz at work again? I don�t know if you can call a subtle sense of pleasant paranoia smart or not, but it�s distracting, and I like that.

It makes me want to solve mysteries � or at least plot the progress of others in their own mysteries � so I�ve going off on these hours long tangents. First a thread on the Something Awful forums about this guy who is trying to figure out who this internet girl is. It sounds boring, but the girl has been fibbing, and the whole thing could be a scheme masterminded by one of the guy�s enemies, and it�s fun watching people grasp at straws. They set traps and dig deeper and deeper and make and refute claims. It�s very involving.

Meanwhile, there is a whole other community I�m starting to get involved in. ARGs, or alternative reality games, which are these complex puzzles taking place on multiple mediums � from websites and e-mails to phone calls and actual treasure hunting in the real world. It�s the same sort of thing � everything is very cryptic, and you start to think that everything is a clue or a fake clue or a fake, and occasionally you�re right, and then it�s awesome. Everything could be a code or a riddle, and they�re actually designed to be as obtuse as possible (e.g. if one person wasn�t from Pottsville and if another person hadn�t noticed a particular typo, the next clue would never have been found), which requires a lot of intelligence and guesswork and the establishment of a community. They�re used as a marketing device. I would love to make them someday. I would love to make them now, actually, or even just a very thorough fake person, but there�s no way that I alone could be as clever as the group of people trying to figure out what I was doing. I�d make too many slipups.

Anyway, this line of thinking, that everything has meaning, is getting to me. That call from the fucking Ford City Mall has been stuck in my mind for a while.

As it is, the closest thing I�ve got is a would-be internet stalker. She sent me a facebook message the other day, Klara Kim, about how a series of connections (Dakota Smith, Giovanni, Diaryland, Murakami) had her nearly interested enough to learn more. Well, that is intriguing in itself, and turnabout is fair play, so I dug a little bit and found that a) she lives two houses over and b) she is the diary �luminescent� as is prominently linked on Zouyan�s diary. Well, other things besides (e.g victorious debater from Whitney Young, 1999), but the diary spanning 5 years seemed far more promising than anything. So I sat back and read for hours and hours and hours. I felt sort of disturbed, really, reading the obscured Cliff Notes of someone�s life backwards. I mean, I love memoirs and all, and I think I would love them more if they were less focused than they typically are. Everyone in them always some sort of thing that makes them special � Dave Eggers had to raise a kid, Brad Land had his frats and beatings, Andy Behrman was manic, Daniel Paul Schreber was batshit. I think it�s more interesting when it�s just normal stuff � meeting a person, falling in love with them, fucking it up. But memoirs are a focused effort � you�ve had a chance to go back through and order things how you�d like. This diary was a series of snapshots from each event, and while I did not understand half of them (she specializes some obfuscated style; I can never tell if it�s deep or an attempt at depth), I felt like I�d wronged Klara by getting so involved, by learning all this stuff. So I let her know. Meanwhile, she had been doing her own research, learning of stick-it and IMSA and apparently pages and pages of my diary on archives.org. She is a clever girl, and her overuse of parentheses I find strangely sexy. Much like my own.

The obvious solution would be for me to let her read my own entries, but that holds a number of problems in that 1) between my IMSA books and this I must have written thousands and thousands of pages and 2) she will have this same sudden intimacy. And lord, who could like me then? It was terrible enough reading her alluded references to �third base.� I was downright graphic at times, lord, I didn�t know what I was doing. Besides, my diaries are fairly terrible � I don�t have great taste in things, and I write about shallow things, how I can�t get laid and how trashed I got on some particular night. Anyway, it�s completely terrifying now, and I told her so. Going to the gas station for Coke and M&M�s, I sprinted past her house, just in case she happened to be looking out the window and our eyes met. I would have leapt into traffic.

While I was gone, she read my message(s) and left a Michael Jordan valentine in my mailbox. Ah, my own ARG.

I think it�s funny how weird people start to get this radar for each other. Probably every group of likeminded people does � that�s why stupid frat guys get stupid hot girls when I can�t. There�s some connection there that goes above or below the surface stuff � looks and the boring shit we talk about and so on. Somehow I know everyone who is crazy, and they all know me, and we all feel this buzzing sort of connection. Shelly said I just needed to find a normal girl, but I know in my heart that will never happen. No one understands me, but at least the weird ones can appreciate the parts they don�t understand.

See? Something is going wrong here. I�m not talking like I did even a few days ago. I need to go back to the most shallow stuff.

Smacko found a new supplier of weed, and I am tempted to partake, as if it will somehow make me wiser. If anything, I will only be more paranoid and more sensitive to everything as some sort of sign, but that's what I really want anyway. Some sort of vast conspiracy that I can't even comprehend.

But if I were to smoke, the feeling I've been having would only get worse. MY TEETH ARE NOT EXPANDING, my teeth are not expanding.

My worst fears have come true. I checked my roots, seeing if I needed to redye. There are no roots to speak of. This is my natural hair color. Medium brown. All the dirty blonde is gone, buried under various colors for over 2 years. Actually, it�s sort of what I wanted all along. Finally something useful from my dad�s genes.

Maybe a little darker.