Doby No. 5

R.I.P.

Doby No. 5


Long live dobynumber6!!

There, I've posted an entry for ghosts from the past :-)

Today I weight three pounds more than I did yesterday. Normally that would mean I’ve been on a mad eating spree and my waist is expanding with glee…but alas, that is not the case. I’ve actually been running around too much today to eat. Make my car payment (which I hate making for my currently Nemo-fin-esque car…it involves me, my car and my garage…don’t ask), get a manicure (my nails are pretty again!), make an appointment to have my eyebrows done (Max‘s Salon…Kourtney does a great job), go to the grocery store (I forgot cocktail sauce for my shrimp :-( ), wrap change ($28.50!) and I even squeezed in a short nap this afternoon (2 hours…short by Doby standards…) Hmmm…. nothing that would seeming make me gain three pounds.
When it's added that I did, however, get my massive number of keys from CAPA back today, I can see where the extra three pounds came from. I got all my keys back. All 72 of them. I counted….there are 72, 5 Theatres….72 keys….and I get to learn what they all do all over again. When I put them in my pocket it feels like their about to pull my pants down. It's a price I'm willing to pay.
CAPA has hired me back to serve as a Theatre Coordinator...a promotion from the position that I held there before. Promotion = more money (only a little...but it all helps!)
My life is going to resemble normalcy again.
Well, as normal as 72 keys can bring.

As Chey would say:
-Who are you Tony Parker? You slipped into my life like vermouth into a glass of gin.
Okay, so that's from Die, Mommie, Die! but the quote is accurate.
You do slip in and out of my life so easily....you came (figuratively....and literally) and went....now it appears that I've lost you again, Mr. R.
This makes the second times that you've I've lost you.
You hold a permanent place in my heart so I have no choice but to continue our dance of the five-year tango. I'll see you again in 2011.
Still, even if I never see you again, you made me realize something: losing you crushed me in 2001...and now I find myself losing you again; you're gone, but I'm okay.
Okay.
I haven't been there for awhile...but I am now.

It’s gone. Not entirely gone, I left a little behind. I just got really mad at it; it just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do, so out the door it had to go. What can I say? I can have a temper.
My hair. It’s gone. Well, gone as in the description given above.
Not that my hair was entirely long before I cut it. Still, it was a hell of a lot longer than it is now. I had Chey take the razor to my head and go to town. He can tell you what I looked like with a reverse mohawk. I think he also started to write his name in the back of my head...before he ran out of room that is…which says a lot since I think my head is oddly huge.
I haven’t gotten used to my newly shortened hair. I keep rubbing the top of my head and feeling the little bristles that now function as my hair. What’s funny is long ago I used to keep my hair like this all time and then I let it grow out. Hmmm....I feel like being a little dramatic though, so I have to ponder the situation for another couple days, at least....and be totally vocal about it. I'm going to find an old picture of me and start running around town stopping people on the street and asking their opinion. I'll get Zogby's to do a public opinion poll and everything, I'm going high-tech with my neurosis. Thank God I lack the motivation or otherwise I would totally do all that.
If I were truly brave I would go completely bald. Though, I may be confusing bravery with stupidity, however, since I tried the bald-thing previously. It was during the middle of winter. Word of advice: winter is a bad time to shave your head. I claim temporary mental spacial dislocation for forgetting that I live in a northern state…where it gets cold…very, very, cold. I don’t know of it’s possible for one’s scalp to turn blue from cold but I’m pretty sure than mine did.
That was just one problem the other one is that my favorite coat is a black trench coat that I wear frequently in the winter…mainly to and from work and that sort of thing. Really, those are the only times I venture out in the winter – the aforementioned cold turns me into a semi-hermit for those months. Digressions aside, my trench coat plus a shaved head on a skinny white boy made me look like a Neo Nazi. Seriously, if someone had given me a pair of big steel-toed black boots it would have made the outfit complete. I let me hair grow back after that.
Now that I’ve cut my hair short should I be shouting, Sieg heil? I hope not, I like the Jews.
Alas, I can’t silence the song of mourning being sung by my receding hairline. I can finally see how far back it has shrunk. It isn’t pretty. I’d post pictures but I don’t want to frighten people. At this point though I really don’t care. I’ve been fighting the good fight since I was 24. I’m giving up at this point and accepting my widow’s peak with the grace and dignity that it deserves. I’m not sure why it deserves any grace or dignity since all it did was kill off all the other hair on the front of my scalp, but I’d rather cherish the widow’s peak than put it on trial in The Hague for mass hair-murder. Mainly because if it were convicted the authorities would have to shave it off my head so it could serve it’s sentence and then I’ve just gone full circle back to that whole I-don’t-think-I-should-be-bald thing again.
Let me also rejoice in the fact that I don’t have to find a stylist here in Columbus. I loved Caitlin at Siren’s in Chicago. Loved her. Loved. Loved. Loved. Loved. She was fabulous; damn well better be fabulous for the $38 I paid her to cut my hair. But she did a great job, so I didn’t mind paying. So while I don’t mind paying $38 for a good hair cut I do have problems paying for a plane ticket on top of that just to see Caitlin. I’d been agonizing over this whole stylist-decision since I got back to Columbus and now with my buzzed hair my problem is solved. It’s taking care of the small things that make me happy.

An informal survey of 1 out of what-seems-to-be-an-ocho-bazillion of the homeless in the Short North think that I’m terribly rude.
It’s true, I was told so directly.
I make it a point not to give money to homeless people – I just can’t bring myself to do it. Giving money to the homeless perpetuates a dependency culture on their part while doing nothing to solve the larger picture of why they are homeless in the first place. Don’t try to make yourself feel good by giving a dollar to that homeless guy on the street- make a donation to a shelter to make sure that dollar will be put to good use and not in the bottom of a 40 oz. King Cobra.
There are two words that I hate to hear from strangers, “Excuse me”. Really, I hate those words...a lot. When a stranger says those words to me it’s not because I dropped something and they want to return it, or because they want to compliment me in some way or one of a myriad of other nice things that could be done. Most of the time it’s because they want to tell me their sob story and then ask for money.
I’ve never been comfortable giving money to the homeless. In my younger days I used to moo at them. Then a homeless man moo-ed back at me and I thought it might be some sort of homeless mating ritual, so I decided to chuck that idea out the window.
Then I took the wuss approach and started saying, “I’m sorry – I don’t have anything.” Then I realized that I’m lying not once, but twice in the same sentence. That’s hard to do. I do have money and I’m not sorry that I’m not giving you any of it. See? One sentence, two lies. In the spirit of honestly I had to quit saying that.
Recently I’ve decided just to ignore the request entirely. If you’re walking on the street and come running up to me, I will ignore you. Tell me your car broke down, tell me about your pregnant wife, tell me how bad you need more liquor. I don’t care, I really don’t. Call it an extreme case of compassion fatigue, but I just don't care about why you need money - you're not getting any from me.
Okay, okay – I’m stepping off my soapbox now. It just really gets under my skin when people think they’re doing a good thing by giving money to the homeless. So back to my informal survey: oh right, it says I’m an asshole.
While I was walking through the Short North today a man jumped off the wall he was sitting on. He proceeds to run up next to me and without even a good story, “Hey man, you gots (yes, it was "gots") a dollar?”
“Yes, I do have a dollar. Thank you very much for inquiring as to the wellbeing of my dollar. It’s nice and comfy in my wallet where it’s going to stay until I walk into the UDF where I am going to buy some water since it’s hot out today. I’d rather have a water than you have a 40 oz.”
That’s what I would liked to have said. But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. Recently, I’ve not been in the mood to expend any more energy than necessary on anything, so it was easy to use my ignore-the-request technique, and I kept on walking. Such was the moment where my informal survey results came from. Said homeless man proceeds to yell after me, “You don’t have to be rude.”
Rude? Was I breaking an etiquette rule? What does Miss Manners have to say about this? I might have to write her and ask proper procedures for such an occasion. Such a faux pas might rank right up there with eating an entrée with a salad fork! The entire town will be talking and I don’t walk to end up on Page 6.
Despite the aforementioned draconian consequences of my “rudeness” I thought little of being told I was rude. I later had a thought: if I was rude when I ignored the request, when did it become proper etiquette to walk up to a stranger and ask them for their money? I think his begs another question for Miss Manners. She might have to devote an entire column to answering all my letters.
Either way, I’m back at the drawing board trying to figure out yet another way to deal with panhandlers. Damn the man, I don’t really want to have to spend time on this. Boo.

It has all the makings of a bad joke. Only it wasn't a bad joke; it's how I spent my day.

Let me preface this story by saying that I didn't fall asleep until 3 a. and we had to up by 7 a. to be in the Ohio boonies by 8-ish. Doby and 4 hours sleep are a crazy mix. I don't do sleep deprivation well. Recently, in fact, I've been sleeping anywhere from 10-14 hours a day. A simple mathematical equation says that when I only get 33% of the sleep that I'm used to, I am 66% crazy-loopy.

So a 66% loopy-Doby is sitting forever is the Social Security Administration office in the middle of the boonies. For a few minutes it seemed like God was playing "How Many Stereotypes Can I Fit In One Building?" If it's sung along to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas it almost (read: doesn't really) works.

2 tired 'mo's.
3 buggy-fied Amish
6 bitchy, bitchy (yes, they deserve two "bitchy's", if not 3) Russian women.
countless Richland County hicks.
I was just waiting for an Eskimo to walk in. Classic, it woulda been classic.

Chey's employer got the great idea to hire foreign student workers for the summer. It was up to Chey to make them legal. Since I was in the mood to be torn away from my job hunt and it was a repeat of Judge Alex on TV, I decided to go with him.
In order to make them legal, the Russians had to be taken to the Social Security Administration to get temporary Social Security numbers so that when they get paid The Man (this is another Man, not my former boss. See one Man is in yellow and the other Man is in italics...two totally different people), can tax them and pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. (A little political barb every now and then doesn't do anyone any harm, so shut up!)

Loopy Doby kept telling everyone that the Russian chicks were mail order brides that I was going to sell to the highest bidder. I was holding their passports and if they didn't do what I said I was going to slap up my bitches and hoes. Yes, I said slap up my bitches and hoes. Out loud. To people. Who probably believed me. Loopy Doby had that crazy look in his eyes. I think Thelma the 60-year old security guard was about to take me down.
Thankfully the Russians have only a loose grasp of the English language and I don't think the phrase "slap up my bitches and hoes" appears in a Russian-English dictionary anywhere. Otherwise I might have been beaten up by the two Russian women-who-might-as-well-be-men-but-for-that-thing-they-have-called-a-vagina. I would love to tell them that we have surgery for that over here.

I also saw the Amish staring me down. I think they were trying to commit my face to memory. That way if they ever decide to question their Amish faith - they can just remember The English who wanted to beat up his Bitches and Hoes. If they tell all their friends I'm responsible for their renewed faith it will lead to a resurgence of the Amish population in Ohio. Buggies everywhere! Score one for Doby.

It was a fun day.

I recognize all the symptoms: lack of interest in updating, lack of interest in reading other people’s journals. Even my last several entries haven’t even been my own words but rather selected works of others that express what I want to say far more eloquently than anything that I could write. Classic symptoms of LiveJournal death, indeed. I know them well as I’ve gone through four of these things before the birth of Doby No. 5 one year ago (almost to the day…. Doby No. 5 was born on 6/10/05)
Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on this journal; it’s really not dead but just in a medically induced coma. Right now I have the time but not the motivation or ability to keep writing in this thing so it's best that I put Doby No. 5 to bed for a little while. Should I continue write while I figure out what I’m doing, this journal would become a self-perpetuating pool of loathing and self-pity. More importantly, to continue this journal would create a false impression of who I am. I am not in the mood to be the owner of a depressing, angst-ridden teenage-esque journal, but neither can I pretend everything is roses. I can't ignore some of the biggest challenges and decisions that I have to make, I just don't want to write about them. This journal was never meant to be a place for serious conversation and I’m not in the mood to make a long-term break from that rule at this moment.
At the moment, I leave Doby No. 5 with this: My Last Serious Entry of 2006:
My phone broke the day after I returned and I didn’t get it replaced until this past Thursday, so I’ve been living in relative hermit-dom. I also stayed at my parent’s house in Toledo for a few days to get away. I’ve entered the requisite depression while eating mad amounts of junk food and watching Maury’s paternity test results and ignoring just about everything and everyone else. During this time I can’t stop comparing my life in Columbus post-Chicago to my life in Columbus pre-Chicago. I feel that I have so much less; less money, less certainty that I am right, less stability and feeling of control over my life; now than I did before I moved to Chicago.
I console myself by saying that I needed to lose those things…well, maybe I didn’t need to lose the money. My former certainty in my convictions was a straightjacket that rigidly held my ability to accept and conform to new situations in a narrow sight. And maybe I needed to lose a little bit of the stability that I used to have. With my back against the wall I’m willing to take some chances that I wouldn’t take if I had something to lose. I’ve always believed that great things are not achieved by people who are unwilling to put everything on the line, now it’s my time to test that hypothesis.
My lingering depression so blatantly ignores these changes I’m making; it also ignores all the wonderful things that have begun since I’ve been back. My roommates and I have secured the most beautiful apartment in which I’ve ever lived (we’ll have a library!). I’ve got enough cash saved that I’m not strapped yet, I have found several jobs that seem a good fit for me, I’m getting back into my volunteer position with Stonewall Columbus and I’m starting to do volunteer work for the Ohio Democratic Party. These are all amazing opportunities and it’s up to me to make the most of them.
Opportunities, though – that is all those things are. The fact that things can still crash and burn is what has stopped me from shaking my depression entirely. I’m wishing for guarantees in a world that isn’t willing to offer them: we are moving, but the place isn’t available yet (July 14th!) I have sent out several resumes, but no job yet. I have cash, but it won’t last forever. I can’t help but feel a little apprehensive that my volunteer work for Stonewall or the ODP will end up similar to my horrible experience at the American Heart Association. Still, I cannot find my place by avoiding life’s challenges. I previously avoided making these hard decisions by saying any challenges I faced would be moot once I moved to Chicago, a place where everything would be perfect and everything would just fall into place. Now I’m tackling my issues head on, so I’m trying to make a lot of changes at once. I’m working hard to make Columbus everything that I didn’t let it be before. Some of the things needed to make that happen have begun, but I still have a lot of work left to do.
In the meantime, I'm taking a month away from LJ. I don't want to come back until I can be a fun-loving happy-go-lucky guy again. Serious Doby is not a Doby that I like. Thankfully, he'll recede a little bit as I get my house in order. Have a good month.

Cocktails and black market Wellbutrin make any drive across Indiana tolerable.

Since antiquity - in the tortured lament of Job, in the choruses of Sophocles and Aeschylus - chronicles of the human spirit have been wrestling with a vocabulary that might give proper expression to the desolution of melancholia. Through the course of literature and art the theme of depression has run like a durable thread of woe. From Hamlet's solilquy to the verses of Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, from John Donne to Hawthorne and Dostoevski and Poe, Camus and Conrad and Virginia Woolf. In many of Albrecht Durer's engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the percursors of the artist's plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinges the music of Beethoven, Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la diritta via era smarrita

In Engish that translates to:

In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood
For I had lost the right path

One can sure that these words have been more than once employed to conjure the ravages of melancholia, but their somber foreboding has often overshadowed the last lines of the best known part of that poem, with their evocation of hope. To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear represenation of its meaning, which is, for those who have known it, a simulacrum of all the evil in our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held on the intolerable equipose of history.
For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of Dante, the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as "the shining world." There, whoever has been restored to health has been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may indemnify them enough for having endured despair.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle

And we came so forth, and once again beheld the stars

-William Styron
Darkness Visible

I just tried to open a screw-top bottle of wine with a wine opener. When did expensive bottles of wine start using screw-tops? Isn't that antithetical to wine? I mean, really...I don't any help feeling more stupid than I already do thank you very much.
I'm feeling much better today. Why? Because I'm going home for a little while Come Monday I will be part of a caravan that is hauling me and a few necessities back to the teat of normalcy that is Columbus, Ohio. Permanently? Maybe....well no, probably.
It's been said in many different ways but what it boils down to is this: it's not where you are but who you're with that really matters. What that means is that all of close friends are in Columbus; specifically me two best friends: ernestinewalker and soon, lostandlonely25 will be back there as well. And with my job with the AHA not working out, I realize how little I have keeping me in Chicago. I don't have the support structure here that I do in Ohio. I would be hanging on by a thread here for no reason other than to say "I made it in Chicago", and that means so much less to me than making it while being around the people that I love. That means Columbus.
I miss my Friday nights with ernestinewalker and just being stupid. Making up inane scenarios and acting them out. Thus making running jokes out of situations that would make people think I'm on the edge of semi-retardedness. I miss the Big Four which, upon my return to Columbus, is reduced to the Big Three, as I doubt the fourth member will ever set foot in Ohio again. It's better than being the Big One.
I always said that I couldn't accomplish what I wanted to do with my life while living in Columbus. I'm beginning to realize that I was wrong. I think I was so enamored with moving to Chicago that I never gave Columbus a chance to show me what it could do for me if I was willing to work for it. Now, I am willing to do the work, and I'm going to make Columbus everything that I didn't allow it to be before.
Maybe I'm now looking at Columbus with rose-colored glasses on. I realize that. At the same time, after two months I still feel like a stranger in Chicago. It's a feeling that I need to shake. It's a horrible feeling to not feel comfortable in your own skin. I've become involved with things here that I don't need to be involved with and aren't going to help me achieve my goals. Pray for me that there is a God that is willing to help me get back on track.
I learned a very valuable (and expensive!) lesson during this two month vacation in Chicago: The people that you surround yourself with are much more important that everything else. My two months in Chicago have been characterized by more ups-and-downs in my mood than I have ever experienced in my life. It hasn't been healthy, and I haven't had the friends here that I need to get through it. kefitzat has been a lifeline for me here, and for that I thank him immensly; but I need to be home. I don't consider myself "home" here...Columbus is "home" and that's where I need to be.

Be glad there's one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to go where people know,
People are all the same;
You want to go where everybody knows your name.

Jeanette & Melissa,
Effective immediately I resign my position with the AHA.
-Doby


* * * * * * *

I'm at home. I'm taking a nap now.

It was an early morning yesterday
I was up before the dawn
And I really have enjoyed our time
But I must be moving on

Goodbye Stranger, it's been nice
Hope you find your paradise
Tried to see your point of view
Hope your dreams will all come true
Will we ever meet again?
Feel no sorrow, feel no shame
Come tomorrow, feel no pain

I will go on shining
Shining new brand new
I will never look behind me
My troubles will be few
Goodbye Stranger, it's been nice

I'm updating my resume tonight with my information from the American Heart Association and am applying for a job with the Lincoln Park Zoo tomorrow. Yay!
Totally random job find since I only recently discovered that the Lincoln Park Zoo exits. While I was checking out their webpage trying to find out hours, where its located and whatnot I found a little tab, aptly labeled "Employment".
So they have a job opening for a Sales Supervisor. The job description is 90% of what I did when I worked at CAPA (CAPA btw, recently removed the job posting for my job that I left in mid-March...so hopefully that means they've filled my old position! I have to admit I'm a little jealous of that person right now.) So I typed out the bestest cover letter today at work and I'm going to update my resume tonite.
I won't feel bad tomorrow when I use the AHA fax machine to fax off my application for another job. This place owes me that.

The building in which I work is being converted into a hotel. It’s going to be called The Reserve. Supposedly in honor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which is the building directly next to this one. I personally think someone was too lazy to come up with an actual name for the hotel and they just looked next door.
“The Federal...no, no…too stupid. The Bank...no, no...also stupid. Oh wait! The Reserve, it’s perfect!”
There’s been a lot of speculation the last couple of days about what this means for us that work in the building. Today we learned that it’s not the entire building that is being converted; only floors 1 thru 8 will be converted for tourist usage. I was unaware of this but apparently the building is ½ empty and those floors don’t have many businesses on them. The few that are located on those floors are being relocated to open space on floors 10 thru 21. Thankfully the AHA is on the 9th floor so we don’t have to move. But from the plans that were released today, the outside will make it look like the entire building is a hotel. There will be a giant marquee that says "Reserve Hotel" that will run the from the 5th to the 19th floor. They’re putting up new signage and changing the name of the entire building. And I just ordered business cards. I doubt I’ll ever get used to saying, “My office which is located in the Reserve Hotel...”
It’s going to be a pain in the ass when the remodeling of the building starts. Tentative plans show that it will start in late summer and end next spring when the hotel opens. There will be 400 new hotel rooms on 7 floors in Chicago’s Southwest Loop. Joy. The elevators already run slow enough in this building, and that’s with the building half-empty! I don’t want to imagine what it will be like once hotel guests start using the same elevators...d’oh. Something tells me this is going to be interesting...

I was late for work this morning. I didnt really care and that makes me a little sad. It doesnt change the fact that I didnt care, though. I walked from my apartment to the el at 10:00 and was thinking about how beautiful a day it was rather than what I was going to tell my co-workers about why I was late. Thats an easy excuse to come up with. Plus, I think right now I dont have anything to worry about. Since the other Assistant Administrator left last week Im the only one left doing this job.
Job? Yep, thats all this is anymore. Im going to do it for a little while, keeping my eyes open for a career. But enough about that.
I stayed at Pauls house last night. His roommate was out of town so we had the whole apartment to ourselves. We could have used this time to act like monkeys...you know, eat bananas and throw our poo haphazardly at each other. But we didnt - we kept the place intact :-) After dinner and watching a few episodes of the Tivo'd Daily Show, we were both exhausted. We decided that we were sad, sad individuals for being dead tired at 10:30 p. We blamed it on our advanced age. We tried to make ourselves feel better by blaming it on the bottle of wine that we drank with dinner at Francescas (I didnt know it was a chain the one that we went to on Bryn Mawr was so much bigger than the one on Clark!), but then it just came back to the fact that a couple years ago we could drink, drink, drink and be fine; now we get tired. Yeah, we just went full circle back to the advanced age thing.
His bed is so comfortable, its one of those beds that as soon as you lie down on it you sink into it and it conforms to your body and its just 100% delicious goodness sleepy-time. In fact I slept so well that when he woke me up this morning to drive me home that I dont think I entirely woke-up. Thankfully neither of us are morning people so he didn't think I was ignoring him. I barely remember walking through my door but I do remember clearly making the decision that I should crawl back into bed and stay there...which is what I did.
God love today.

"Orchards are simple," a peach tree says, "Some of me will be juicy and some of me will be dry. I'm not growing for you. I grow because that's what I do. You always hear some person compain aoubt how dry their peach is."
The peach should say, "It's not my fault you have no understanding of the proper use of dry peaches."

There's a stream that runs up in the Rockies...and then it runs into a bigger stream and it finally makes its way to a river, but never to the ocean. And I was thinking about being whole again and that you don't have to make it to the ocean to be whole. Maybe you froze and became part of a snowman and then melted away. And that's okay.

I have no room for special effort.
Just be ordinary and nothing special.
Eat and drink and, when you're tired, go to sleep.
Fools will find me ridiculous
but the Wise will understand.

For one day insist that everyone greet you with the phrase, "Aye, aye captain."
Reduce your vocabulary to two words: "more" and "butter"
Answer your phone in the voice of a professional wrestler.
Stay up late and order two dozen porcelain surfing monkeys from the Home Shopping Network.
Why? Because you can. Life is yours. And sometimes you need to live life with reckless abandon to remember that.

I'm better. I'm glad. And I'm going out with Paul again tonight, which I'm sure is the last thing I need but I'm doing it anyway.

There seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas; even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive, so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated exercises of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen.
- John Locke, Human Understanding (bk. II, ch. 10)

Their hearts, once capable of inspiring others so completely, could no longer inspire so much as themselves.
Their hearts beat now only out of habit. They beat now only because they could.

After taking the Myers-Briggs personality test at our meeting yesterday (we didn't have to, it was one thing among many that we could do. I opted to since I had never taken the very long test before.) and I scored as an ISFP. I finally got around to reading the "profile" of an ISFP.
So now, I introduce to you the personality of Doby:


ISFPs generally appear to be soft-hearted, but can become quite assertive if required. Their facial expression can change suddenly and unexpectedly from friendly one to a stern one, especially when they wish to distance themselves psychologically from someone. ISFps are often inclined to give advise concerning will power and initiative.

ISFPs have a well developed aesthetic taste. Their clothes are usually neat, colourful and radiate a warm, comfortable feeling. They like to touch things in order to appreciate their physical qualities. When interacting with others ISFps try to maintain a closeness. They are often outwardly sociable, charming and friendly. They know well how to endear themselves to others and how to make people trust them. They prefer to interact in a democratic fashion, avoiding the spotlight.

ISFPs do not usually try to push friendships. If they feel that a person does not want to establish contact with them they do not insist. They usually make just one attempt and if it is not successful they hardly ever try again. They maintain contact only with people that they find interesting. ISFPs find it fairly difficult to interact with people that they dislike, even if it goes against their interests. In these situations they lose their personal magnetism, and their speech may become unintelligible.

ISFPs enjoy gathering and sharing interacting facts and news. However, they always add a certain degree of colour to their narrative hoping to make it more interesting. This is the reason that ISFPs are rarely caught telling a story the same way twice. They can easily talk about a single subject for a considerable amount of time, especially about their recent experiences. They also like to read a variety of newspapers.

ISFPs do not like to unload their problems on others. When asked "How are you?" they usually reply that they are fine regardless of weather they are or not. ISFPs do not like to make promises. If someone asks them for their help they will often reply "I cannot promise but I will try..." or "If I can..." If they were not able to fulfil a promise they will continually apologise until they feel that they have been forgiven.

ISFPs have a strong desire to experience as much as they can and to enjoy themselves as much as possible. They love spending time and having fun with their friends, often joking and playing pranks. They do not like to be the centre of attention, but they also do not like to be too far away from where it is all happening. ISFPs behaviour can be so independent and original that they may confuse and bewilder other people. Because of this people can consider ISFPs to be light-minded.

ISFPs can usually only be productive when working for themselves. In all other cases it is rare for them to work hard. They try their best to avoid strenuous physical exercises wherever possible, unless it is in the course of a particular sporting activity that they enjoy.

Another behavioural pattern peculiar to ISFPs is their tendency to try and stay in the middle. To be neither the best or to be the worst. This is the reason that they do not like to openly criticise people and do not get involved in confrontations. ISFPs always try to keep well away from bosses and other authoritative figures. They do not like briefings and other boring business meetings. They try to negotiate on an informal level using only safe and reliable acquaintances. ISFPs try to maintain peaceful relations with everybody.

Last month I strongly agreed with President Bush. And now I strongly agree with Justice Clarence Thomas? What the fuck is going on? This can't be happening. I'm the anti-Thomas. If I were going to be a Supreme Court Justice, I would want to everything that Clarence Thomas is not...starting with sane.
I am not getting more conservative and they sure as hell aren't getting any more liberal.
I think this may be the sign of the apocalypse.
Oh, Mr. Apocalypse, Jones v. Flowers, No. 04-1447, fortold your arrival.