Good Friday always makes me think back to the First House of Clocks. One of the more notorious parties we had there was the Be Bad on Good Friday Party. We crucified Ian and played Pin the Nail of Jesus. I remember someone shouting "the beer's on fire!" and rushing to put out the flames. You know it's a real party when you have a beer fire.

We had music in the old tinfoil covered playroom. The old playroom was crazy. I mean, really crazy. Tinfoil walls, strange paintings along with random items screwed into the ceiling. I had written on the walls and the floors. Blissfully hopeful things and abysmally awful things. The pictures on the walls didn't match up spatially with their frames. A Twister mat was the table cloth. It was me. Me then. Strange, cluttered, mismatched, bright, stark, broken, glowing, and scary. I'm different now. I am no longer that room. I am breaking out of a chrysalis, not sure yet of what I have become.

I just saw the birds that have their nest in the closet, and they are in fact european starling and not house sparrow. By seeing them enter, I know they are in fact in the wall and not under the floorboards. Baby starlings make me happy, too.

The right closet of my bedroom is filled with the squeaking of baby birds. There's a nest under the floorboards, which is where the roof meets the side of the house. The parents must be entering in a hole right above or below the gutter. By the frequency that I see house sparrow out front, most likely that's what's in there. Little birdies growing up right under my feet. It makes me happy, it's spring.

swiped from dan4th:

another year I thought that the version of PhotoShop that came with Orac (the name I have given to the used computer purpleglitter recently bought me) was the scaled down version, unlike the professional version on Clementine. I woke up well this morning and was hoping for a very productive Project Schedule. Skye is egg bound with a soft shell egg. sometimes the only thing that makes death unappealing is that I do not believe it ends existence. dan4th took a couple pictures of me in the sunlight last weekend. Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it. I thought that I could not be any more disgusted by the Bush administration, but his response to the Israeli assault on Lebanon has proved me wrong. I've improved some of my old userpics. I had a great time this evening celebrating purpleglitter's birthday with zarthon, recoiling, and of course purpleglitter. The paste of purity has run its course and I have scrubbed it off the wall of corruption. Yesterday, President Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all."

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the United States.

Happy Thursday to everyone else.

I'm having a good visit. Maddie is a ball of energy, literally bouncing off the walls. She knocked on my door and got me up around 7:30am this morning showing me a clock that had been set to 9:30. Tricky, but I'm glad I'm up. I don't really like to sleep too late these days.

Dinner last night was good and I loved the port later in the evening. Christian is intelligent and charismatic, making conversation with him generally a pleasure. And, of course, it's always great to see Bridgette. She's made quite the life for herself and has not ceased to amaze me. I'm proud to call her sister.

Today, a second time, I see the "dirt" of on the wall in the stairwell. I doubted that it was dirt the first time, and now I do even more so. I believe it may be a mould. If it appears a third time, I will be sure of it. The perpetual leaks may have finally sealed our fate. If it is in the walls, we cannot stay. Perhaps this could even explain the sicknesses that trouble us in the house_of_clocks. Where will we go, I do not know. I have thought long this was coming to an end, and eventually it must. Now seems like a time of wind, I can feel it like a dream taking me to the next scene.

This winter will be cold and long. I have met none who doubt.

While I was sitting on a bench on the shore Spy Pond last week, I found myself looking down from above at Spy Pond and the autumnal trees of Elizabeth Island. Whether this was some sort of spontaneous out of body experience or a product of dissociation combined with vertigo and a high aptitude for spacial transitioning, I do not know.

Regardless of how I got there, it brought my thoughts to the budgies. The budgies get a lot of out-of-cage time. They fly around a lot in Lake's apartment. But it's not the same. The room has a ceiling and walls. The room has limits and I wish I could give them the sky. They are birds, that freedom is their hatchright. It seems unfair to keep them contained, but there is no realistic other option. To set them free in New England, especially on the dawn of winter, would be to give them death sentences.

We do our best to give them the closest to what they deserve as possible. We try to give them what we hope is a better life than they would have in the wild: providing a constant food supply, healthcare, and freedom from predators. It might not be enough, but it is all that we have to offer.

I'd like to address an issue that often stymies liberal causes: Liberal smugness. Sure, the conservatives have a smugness too, but I am addressing it specifically when it comes to the left wing.

Smugness differs from being sure of oneself. Smugness is when you are not only sure you are right, but also think those you consider wrong are sheep, idiots, etc. Smugness comes in the belief that something must be wrong with the cognitive abilities of anyone who would disagree. The problem with smugness is that it is usually simply implied, though sometimes it is outright stated. And this attitude is endemic in the liberal community.

Yes, it can be frustrating addressing non-liberals. Yes, I've been guilty of liberal smugness myself. It's hard not to be, sometimes you can feel like you're only talking to brick walls. However, if you want to convince people of your point of view – people who don't currently agree with your point of view – it is best not to start out by insulting them either directly or indirectly. Liberal smugness reflexively turns people off of liberal ideologies. It makes people not want to be associated with liberals or even the word "liberal".

Be sure of yourself, but keep in mind that just because someone hasn't come to have the same "enlightened" views as yourself does not mean they are inherently evil or cognitively impaired.

There are things that I try to say. Things that cannot be said because for such things there can be no words. Many people will therefore find much of what I say nonsensical. I am by far not the only one who sees these things, I am just one of those who is foolish enough to attempt to speak them.

I talk of demons and of angels and of monsters and of God. I remember the walls stained with blood and I know where the devil lives. I have wandered between the dreaming and waking to where I could no longer distinguish one from the other. I am friends with færies and do business with ghosts. I have walked the asylums and tasted their zombie potions. I do not speak in the polite language of the day. I am mad, of course. And that is that.

i want to stop taking my meds
i want to clean
i want to smoke some pot
i want to lay down and sleep
i want to drink
i want to cut
i want to eat
i want to starve
i want to die
i want to live
i want to be
i want to hide
i want to get a job
i want to write
i want to care what happens to me
i want to help people
i want to save the world
i want to destroy the world
i want to do everything
i want to do nothing
i want to get a grip
i want to stop wanting
i want to believe
i want to remember
i want to forget
i want to make up my mind
i want to let it all work itself out
i want to take charge
i want to get rent paid
i want to do a line of heroin
i want to drop acid
i want to bre