I do not want a job that requires me to lie so goddamned much -- or excel at "diplomacy," as the euphemism goes -- that I am no longer even aware that I am doing it. Lying, that is. I am so unhappy right now.

Again, not to go into too many details, but apparently some of the things that were supposed to happen to force me out on the street can't happen -- at least not so soon; there would be lots of legal issues, etc., and that would take time -- so I'm not likely to be stranded in the very near future. I'm not at all happy with the situation, but (at least regarding my housing prospects) it doesn't look quite as bad as I'd been led to believe. It still sucks though.

I was still terribly worried yesterday, though so I spent a few hours bagging a whole bunch of my action figures. It was oretty depressing, but not quite as bad as I'd imagined it to be. I won't feel too bad about selling or donating many of them for various reasons -- for example, whereas I couldn't bring myself to get rid of Tokka (even though I bagged him; I'm bagging them all for inventory purposes), I might not feel too bad about selling Sewer Samurai Leonardo or Undercover Donatello because my memories regarding Leo and Don are more attached to them as a characters as opposed to any specific representations of them. This isn't to say that I'd be willing to part with all of my various versions of the four Turtles, mind you -- you'd be hard pressed to separate me from Storage Shell Michaelangelo or Headdroppin' Raphael, to say nothing of the versions I went out of my way to acquire in later years (can you say Super Turtles?) -- but it is kind of interesting and will make for good discussion when I get around to writing about the figures. I also have virtually no emotional attachment to my carded figures -- after all, I never got to open them or play with them -- so insofar as I never planned to open them anyway (and with very few exceptions, I didn't), selling them won't be terribly disheartening either. Assuming that I sell my comics, the same rules apply, since (with the exception of comics I bought during the last three years, which I mostly haven't touched) I probably wasn't going to read the print versions again anyway. I'm way too worried about them being damaged by oils on my hands to ever remove them from their plastic sleeves.

You know, this is why I prefer to buy comics and books used -- if I get them new, I'm generally so worried about damaging them that it's fairly hard to enjoy the books! When you get one with a worn spine right off the shelf, it's pretty easy to crack it open and relax. And speaking of books, I started posting that 50K-word novel of mine from November 2004 (see the sidebar) on Scary-Crayon. It's incredibly insane. I'll be posting more of my old fiction on the site in the near future, so stay tuned.

And that's all for tonight. Thanks for your concern, everyone -- I hope things turn out relatively well when all of this is over.

Hey all! Hope you're doing well. Things are really crappy on my end -- far more so than usual. Without going into too many details, I may be out on the streets as soon as November, so I've got a lot to do in the next couple of months. Among other things, tomorrow I'm planning to trek to the dollar store to buy a few hundred plastic baggies so that I can start sealing up my action figures and their accessories and preparing to post them on ebay. If you've read Scary-Crayon, you know how much that's going to kill me. My toys are pretty much my only tangible links to a time of my life that wasn't thoroughly and unrelentingly miserable, and I imagine that ridding myself of these mneumonic aids is only going to multiply my sorrows. There have been times when the only thing stopping me from taking my life at a given moment was glancing over and seeing Michaelangelo's head poking out from the heap of his brethren, sticking his red-and-green (because some of the paint has rubbed off) tongue at me as if to say, "Mellow out, dude!" I often pick up the figures and cradle them as if they were alive, because, in a sense, they are to me: they've been my constant companions throughout my life and have never betrayed me or responded to me with hatred and malice. On the plus side, with them and those attendant memories gone, I'll have no reason to stick around or maintain any sort of contact with my family members, which will make saying goodbye -- whatever that entails -- all that much easier.

I've been thinking about my memoir lately and why I seem unable to write it -- and now I think that it's because my experiences are such that they don't even seem remotely believable. A lot of the things that have happened to me are positively unreal, and even though people are familiar with the actions of terrorists and criminals and "Jerry Springer" guests and whatnot, nobody wants to believe that ordinary, well-adjusted and even well-to-do individuals would go out of their way to intentionally hurt others by (for example) making exaggerated police reports. Nobody wants to believe that that nice assistant teacher at work holds thoroughly racist views. Nobody wants to believe that their inspiring and dedicated physician thinks exceedingly little of his son, partly because the boy isn't out having all kinds of sex like he was at the kid's age. Nobody wants to believe that these kinds of people are regarded as heroes and role models. And nobody wants to believe the person telling them this information, especially when -- by that indivudual's own admission -- he has been decried as a murderer and a rapist and a violent psycho and a monster and worse. One of the interesting things about my life is that many of the people who have thought it ridiculous that I have been so falsely accused have later gone on to make the very same accusations.

But I do want to write about my life. So as I bag and label my beloved action figures in preparation for our final goodbye, I'm going to chronicle our good times together. I'm going to write about the crazes that led me to seek them out in the first place, what I thought when I first saw them (insofar as I can remember, anyway), and how the happy events that unfolded during our association relate to the later, less positive events in my life. I don't imagine that many people would be interested in reading that kind of book, so it'll likely end up being the last thing I post on SC -- at least for a while -- since I won't exactly have Internet access wherever I end up.

I should still be around and available at least during the next month or so, but I'll go ahead and thank you all for reading now. Fondest wishes and best of luck to you in the future.

Using this touchpad on the laptop has been hurting my wrist something awful, so yesterday I went to get an optical mouse for the thing. Now that I've got it, however, I still find my wrist hurting -- and I look down to find myself using the damned touchpad. Old habits (well, not that old) die hard.

Something odd happened while I was out. I frequently pass by groups of teenagers while I'm out walking, and it's not uncommon for them to make some audible and unfavorable comment about me afterwards. If our exchange is of a more pleasant nature, words are rarely spoken at length: silent nods punctuated by the occasional "hey" or "how's it going?" sans an answer. But yesterday I passed by a small group of them -- one of whom appeared to be speaking on a cell phone. So despite her turning and making direct eye contact, I didn't realize at first that she was speaking to me when she chirped, "Hello!"

I was taken aback, but after a moment I responded, "Hi." Now, that is generally the end of sidewalk exchanges, but she went further and said, "How are you?" Her pace slowed; she clearly expected a response.

"Fine," I said. "And you?"

"Oh, I'm good," she said. And we continued along our respective paths.

Evidently one of her friends thought the exchange was as strange as I did; in the distance, he exclaimed, "Yo, what was that?" She told him to shut up.

In these kinds of situations, I'm never sure whether these kids are being genuinely friendly or subtly insulting.

Picked up some screws and tiny LED lights (seriously; guess why) and a couple more DVDs while I was out, too. It never ends.

By the way, has anyone ever tried to listen to an audiobook while typing or reading anything else? I'm finding it incredibly difficult to do! Image editing, however, is much easier.

All for now, then.

Have you ever written a really lengthy, thorough, and somewhat personal message, only to mistype the e-mail address and send it to some random person? I mean, the recipient probably doesn't know anything about the situation or what's going on -- and it's really nothing that I wouldn't and haven't already detailed at length here, where anyone can read the page and search the archives -- but still. It's rather embarrassing.

Fingers crossed for a mailer daemon response.