Shadows are strange. A wall can cast a shadow, but so can a cloud, and the effect is the same.

Darkness.

When I was a child, all sorts of horrible creatures lurked in the shadows. But now, now I see them for what they really are.

Absence of light.

When I was a child, I recoiled from the shadows. But now, now I seek them out. I embrace them, and I thank them for what they do.

Shrouding the truth.

---

Okay, this is stupid. Not at all what I wanted to write. Too metaphorical, too cryptic.

What I wanted to say was that, right now, I don't fear the truth. And I don't even know what the fucking truth is. I think I usually fear it just on principle. But. Not. Now.

I don't want to know, but I do want to know, so badly that every breath I take is nothing but another disappointment, because I'm still in the dark. Still in this shadow. Cowering.

Don't destroy my shadow. Don't take away the obstruction that stands between me and the light. That's not what I want. What I want, what I fucking want, is to be lured from my hiding place. Coaxed. Beguiled. Seduced. Whatever.

I need to emerge willingly, I think, whether through truth or trickery. Otherwise, I fear that the shock will be too great, and my eyes will close forever.

I already mentioned that I got this nifty voice recorder thingy for Christmas. My thinking is that, since I usually have good ideas for entries while I'm driving, I can use my new thingy to record those ideas. Much safer than trying to write in a notebook while I'm driving down the road.

Anyway, tonight I was listening to the stuff I recorded Saturday night, and I heard something that made me smile.

I'm going to go ahead and post the thing in wav format. I hope people can actually hear it.

The first part is the part that made me smile. HatGirl snuck a recording onto my thingy. She's so sweet.

The second part is me saying that I hate that fucker. I'm talking about the dipshit who'd tried to talk to us earlier.

The third part is me singing happy birthday to HatGirl. Girls, please try not to melt.

So, without further ado, here's the file.

This entry is not meant to be used as a timetable of my last several days. I can pretty much guarantee that I've got the order of some things mixed-up - especially for Friday and Saturday. So, unless I specifically say that a certain thing happened on a certain day/night, it's just a guess. You have been warned.

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Thursday for lunch I went back to The Pub for AlliDay, take two. It was much better - they weren't nearly as crowded and I got to talk to AlliGirl several times. Note that I've switched to calling her AlliGirl instead of BikerGirl. I doubt that I was really fooling anyone.

---

Either Friday or Saturday, I got to see TeamHotness for a bit. They'd been hiding out over at the Sportstime side of things, but I caught them in the parking lot as they were leaving. So that was cool.

---

Oh yeah, Friday night my sisters and I had our Christmas thingy. One of the things I got was a six-pack of bottles of Harpoon Winter Warmer, and I'm told that it can be purchased in Louisville.

Yay!

Neisha's husband Chris and I had a bottle each. It was as good as I remembered. Now I've got four bottles calling to me from my fridge, and if I ever get over this damn death-flu I'm going to drink them.

---

Saturday night this one fucker who I hate decided to sit with me and HatGirl and LuckyFucker. He then decided to try to talk to us. As if. What a shithead.

---

This morning I had a sex dream. It was more of an orgy dream, actually. And a lot of girls I know were in it. I wrote a draft entry about the dream, then sent it to RockGirl for her opinion on whether I should post it or not. Her advice was to change all of the girls' names. I've decided not to post it at all, because changing the names would render the dream meaningless.

---

I've been sneezing today, and sometimes I've sneezed out my eye. I don't mean that my eye has popped out - just some of the snot comes out of the corner of my eye when I sneeze. Gross, right?

---

Dina just came by and got the shrimp tray for tonight's festivities. She also bought me a thingy of nasal spray. I hope it works. And I hope I don't sneeze the stuff through my eye, because I bet that would really burn.

---

I'm going back to sleep now.

You know what's attractive?

When you've been getting more and more sick for three days, and then you get to the point where your sinuses are draining so quickly and so relentlessly that you're forced to sleep with tissues stuffed into your nostrils.

That's what's attractive.

Yeah, so I'm sick. Some kind of stupid death-flu, combined with that never-fully-awake feeling that comes from getting way too much sleep. I myself have slept for almost twenty-four hours straight. I emerged only long enough to drive to the store and buy a bunch of tissues and a shrimp tray. And today's sleep followed the eighteen or nineteen hours from Saturday.

So I'm pretty well fucking rested, I think.

I don't know what's going to happen with the holiday obligations. I really only have one left. I'm supposed to go to my grandmother's house tomorrow night. It's a long tradition, that we all go there and pose for pictures and stuff. Plus, that's what the shrimp tray is for. But I'm not going to go and risk infecting anyone - especially not my grandmother. She's got enough problems.

I have nothing else planned for the next two days. There's a wrapped and labeled present, for a child I've never met - it's sitting in my car. I guess I won't be allowed to give that gift after all. That's okay, though. I think I understand that it would be weird. Besides, now I'm all sick and stuff, so any gift handoff would be too risky.

I'm going back to bed now.

Buy stock in Puffs plus tissues.

Happy birthday to HatGirl!

Yay for HatGirl!

I got this nifty voice recorder doohickey for Christmas. Tonight, I recorded myself singing happy birthday to HatGirl. I was thinking about posting the audio file here. But I realized that the risk that my singing might melt the hearts of women all over the world - it's just wasn't worth it.

Besides, HatGirl already got to hear me sing it in person.

The Internet is now complete.

I think we should all shut down our sites and our journals now, lest anyone ever be tempted to use the Internet for a lesser purpose.

I was doing fine. I really was. Even though the place was completely infested by weirdoes. My sister Dina was there at first, and she and I talked for a while. After Dina left, I was able to escape the weirdoes in the living room and join the PBDs at the island. I had three yummy Rogue Chocolate Stouts (2336).

I was doing just fine, for several hours, until this one PBD decided to utter the magic words that never fail to piss me off.

It gets blurry after that.

Kind of an irritated day for me. AlliDay was a bust, as they were too busy in there for me to get more than an edgewise word or two in with BikerGirl. But my woes started way before lunchtime.

I can't shake this feeling that I'm swimming against a current, and that all progress is an illusion. I need some encouragement, some sign that I'm not wasting my time with all this. And I'm not expecting to get any.

I should really be more excited about the holidays than I am. I mean, tomorrow is my last day of work until next Wednesday, then I work three days, then I get nine days off. I should be fired-up about all that time off work, but I'm not. Spending a day working isn't all that much different, fulfillment-wise, than spending a day by myself. So the next couple of weeks won't be that special, I don't think.

The holidays themselves? They're shaping up to be irrelevant, just like everything else, everything except this current that's trying to sweep me backwards.

Maybe my mood will change tomorrow at about 5:00, when I get off work. I hope so.

You know, for such a happy guy, I sure am in a funk.

Today, not much of anything happened.

I worked. I went to Rich O's after work, and got a pizza. I came home, ate some of my pizza, and took a nap. I watched some DVDs. That's pretty much it.

I have this thing I want to write about, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to write the thing without making it seem like I'm being judgmental. So I'm not writing about it, yet. Problem is, it's got my brain so clogged up that I can't think of anything else to write.

Tomorrow is AlliDay. Maybe that will unclog my brain a little.

I've noticed something lately. A change in myself, besides the one I keep rambling about. A more subtle change. A change in my reasons for writing my drivel.

It's not a particularly good reason, but it wasn't a particularly good reason before. Most of the world, I'm sure, hasn't even noticed this change. But I've noticed it. I've noticed it, and I don't like it very much.

A long time ago it happened, more often than not, that I wrote my drivel in an attempt to get a reaction. Good, bad, whatever. It didn't matter to me, as long as a reaction came.

Well, no reaction ever came. No matter what I wrote, it was always wasted. But that was a long time ago. And I pretty much gave up. And my writing suffered greatly. It suffered greatly for a very long time.

But then, then something changed. Both externally, and internally, everything changed.

Now, I don't write in an attempt to get a reaction to my drivel. Nope, I awoke from that particular dream a long time ago. What often I'm doing now - and again, I'm not proud of this, is I'm testing the limits of what I can get away with.

So far, I'm getting away with all kinds of things.

It won't last, though. Nothing ever does.

Eventually I'm going to find, and surpass, the limit of what I can write without ruining everything. Eventually, I'm going fuck this up.

Consider this a preemptive apology. I need to do this now, because when that fateful day comes, I expect to be busy kicking myself in the ass.