2004-04-05 - 1:40 p.m.
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OH FOR OH FOUR OH FORE
So my 23rd birthday just passed. 04/04/04. That�s the only time in my life that will ever happen like that � all numbers being 04. Unless I live to 123. I bet I don�t make it past 80 though.
It was definitely an interesting weekend for my birthday. This year, on top of Martin Luther King�s execution day and the day they found Kurt Cobain�s body, my birthday was Palm Sunday as well as Daylight Savings Time (which ate an hour off) as well as being a full moon.
It was also the day that the Lot Six was playing with the Distillers and the Icarus Line at the Bowery Ballroom.
The last time I ever saw the Lot Six was in Lowell. I think it was one of the times I came back to visit but I�m not sure. I figure there�s a diary entry about it somewhere, but I�m lazy and at work and I don�t feel like looking for it. Not to mention that there are hundreds of entries to dig through by this point.
All very fun indeed.
Anyway, the last show I went to of theirs was in the Fox Hall MPR. I had no idea who the hell they were but I recognized the singer Dave from Boxer. I remember he punched himself in the throat during one song�
You know, I did write about this once. In fact, I�m sure of it. And I really wish I had the time and drive to go look for it. I really do. I wonder how many times I�ve just retold things here, how many times I�ve walked along my own footprints in the snow? This is bothering me now. 23 years and nothing has really changed. I know more people and more things and I remember less and less of what I have learned. I tried my damnedest to remember songs I wrote in high school for my old band the other day and damn me if I could remember any of them. I�m losing track of history here. I�m leaving behind a snail slime trail behind me, inching along through existence and dropping music and stories and history in my wake. And I�m losing it all. I�ve only kept what I thought was important and how do I know what�s important? Even what I think is important I know is not. Today, for shits and giggles, I memorized the name of the guy who was the engineer of the Brooklyn and Golden Gate Bridge. My dad has drawings of each hanging over our backroom couch and it tells when they were �erected� and who engineered it and all that. I did this because I said to myself �If I was ever on a game show and this came up, I�d know it.�
That was seriously my logic behind that.
Take into consideration that I�ve been on zero game shows, don�t even know anyone who has been a contestant on a game show and not only that, I�ve never seen a single game show where I�d be asked a question along those lines and you�ll realize that I wasted 2 minutes of my time and brain space memorizing a trivial fact to use in the slightest possibility I�d ever use it for.
The best part? I�ve already forgotten both names.
We all do this. We all remember stupid stupid things for the rest of our lives. How much did a slice of pizza cost 5 years ago when I was a senior in high school? $1.25. I�ll never get that brain space back but I remember that now and I probably always will. I don�t remember the color of my great grandmother�s eyes or even my great grandfather�s name, but I do remember what their bathroom looked like.
It�s like that, only apply it to your entire life.
These kind of things bother me. You�ll apply yourself to remember the most mundane and insipid things. Want to not get hurt while playing Doom? Type in idspispopd. Bling! God mode. Want 30 lives in Contra? Up Up down down left right left right B A B A start. 30 lives. Select start for 2 player mode.
And that�s just video games.
As a matter of fact, I think I�ve even talked about this before � talking about talking about things. I�ve probably come full circle again and not even realized it, only the full circle is really just me standing still because nothing has changed. I�m still thinking of why imaginary characters in a novel I�m reading are doing what they are doing and the best part is I�m thinking of why imaginary characters in a novel I�m reading are doing what they are doing.
The logical answer to that question is there is no reason. They�re imaginary characters and they�ve been told to do what they were doing.
I really can�t stand this though. If you think about it, if you take away all the trinkets, all the little crap, all the ridiculous points of life, the moments you regret and all of the moments that don�t mean anything at all, you�re left with a handful of seconds that mattered to you, most of them probably involving an orgasm. So if you cut life down to the real moments that mattered, you might find half hour segments here and there but for the most part, it would be brief one second snippets of you life. There is precious little in our lives that make any kind of difference to anything besides us at all and they are stuck in the middle of the 5 minutes you picked your nose when you were 5 and the countless hours you sat on a train in your morning commute today. Or a car. Or a bus. Or your house. These moments don�t mean anything, not really. Even if something happens during it, you were doing absolutely nothing. Someone cut you off yesterday or the day before or even the day before that. Do you remember? Do you remember their car or the color of the car or how old the person driving it was or if it was a man or woman or animal of higher intelligence trained to drive cars? What was the weather like? Was the sun in your eyes? Was it too dark out because it was night? All of these things are just as important as the fact that you got cut off. They don�t mean anything. You might bitch and moan about it when you get where you�re going, talking to people about some maniac who came �THIS CLOSE� to your car and measuring it with your fingers at a drastically overexaggerated under guessed amount. But you won�t tomorrow. You won�t a week from then. You won�t a year from then and when you�re lying on your deathbed, I would certainly hope you would think of something else than some asshole who can�t drive cutting you off when you were decades younger.
But 80% of life is like that.
You tie your shoes. Who cares? You blow your nose because it is full. So what? You watched 4 hours of television as the world spun and an entire globe of reality raced around the sun. Makes no difference. But if you tied your shoes by a curb and a car took your head off, you�d know. If you blow your nose and your organs come out your nose because you have a flesh eating disease, you�d know. If the 4 hours of television were the last 4 hours of life on the planet because what you were watching was footage of a meteorite careening towards the Earth in an inevitable collision, thus ending all of mankind in the process, you�d know. There are very few instances that we are aware of our situation here, where we either appreciate what we have or mourn for what we have lost. Otherwise, it�s life as usual and that glass of water you just drank doesn�t even register on your list.
Unless it was toilet water.
I guess the long ambling point I�m getting at here is that despite the 04/04/04 birthday, despite the Martin Luther King Assassination day, the Kurt Cobain suicide day, the Palm Sunday and the Daylight Savings time day, it was hard to even admit it was just my birthday, that literally 23 years ago on a specific time (4:36 AM) I was born, I tasted the first gasp of breath from the world and since then nothing really interesting has happened.
Even this entry.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
