Funnel cake sundae, no whip cream. Chocolate syrup and ice cream and
funnel cake.

It’s been a good long while since I’ve written about a movie. Even movies I’ve really liked recently (Tropic Thunder, WALL-E) I haven’t written about outside of a couple twitters reaffirming my positive viewpoint. Nothing really summons much of an opinion these days aside from, “I like it, that’s cool, I’m comfortable with that, I don’t really care why.” However, Stop-Loss summons debate because initially my opinion was decently positive, then fairly negative, and now I think I’ve figured it out.

First up, I’ve never seen Boys Don’t Cry, I had the ending spoiled and I don’t really go for that kind of melodrama, so my familiarity with Kimberly Peirce is virtually non-existent. I stumbled on this just looking at decently rated rentals on RottenTomatoes, and it had a few things going for it.

Since I saw The Way of the Gun a while ago, I’ve known that Ryan Phillippe is fucking awesome. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been awesome since everything he’s ever been in. Even Timothy Olyphant makes an appearance further cementing the fact that he needs to stop trying to play anything but a total bad ass motherfucking cowboy. And you’ve got the director of Boys Don’t Cry which is supposed to mean something, right?

But then, why is this being released by MTV Films? I know it’s not beyond MTV to release a serious drama, but seriously, you’ve got all this talent and there was still something wrong enough with the movie to have only MTV pick it up? I guess I am being down on MTV. Maybe, for all I know, she went to MTV first. Or, more possibly, MTV financed it because they had nothing better to do but shovel out a box office flop?

I’m spending all my before work free time writing about this movie.

Stop-Loss follows Phillippe’s character into some rather phony looking war-in-Iraq footage–and I say phony just because Generation Kill has so thoroughly convinced me of what the war really looks like that I had a hard time swallowing the fact that these enlisted Army grunts have clean suits, clean faces, and are relatively unwounded by the time they’re engaging in urban combat? Admittedly, I wasn’t there, but their weapons looked plastic, and that was stupid.

We see some shit go down, but soon enough Phillippe is back at home in Texas, with his outrageously outrageous Texan accent, giving meandering emotional speeches after being given a Purple Heart while the whole damn town cheers like it means something. Like it really means something. I’m not saying a Purple Heart doesn’t mean shit, and now I’m descending into dangerous territory.

Generation Kill showed me that even Marines, who are all obviously fucking bad ass, have brains. I can assume, then, that there are people in the military who have and keep their brains and sometimes use them to think about how there is life outside of the military.

I finally started to understand Stop-Loss when I realized that all the relentless melodrama in this movie, starting from the moment Phillippe gets his Purple Heart and parents cry, is because these are enlisted Army grunts. They probably enlisted because they had nothing better to do! These aren’t skilled people with brains and lives outside of the military, they’re just Texan Enlisted trash. Not to get too harsh, but really, the movie makes so much more sense that way.

I mean, at the end, you’ve got two guys shedding tears and then beating the crap out of each other, and then crying at each other so more, all over what? The Army! They’re crying over THE ARMY. Worse than that: they’re crying over not going back to Iraq to certain death. The whole movie is crazy!

There’s even a death, which is also highly melodramatic and–I don’t know.

Bits are hard to swallow: early on in the movie there are these video-montages, that I think are meant to be what the marine with the video camera was editing together to show off their superior Army strength, with bad MTV music from four years ago and shaky jump-cuts and shit blowing up. They’re annoying as fuck and just made me think, “Man, this movie was made by MTV.”

If that is really what a blinded person’s eyes look like, fucking shit, that’s crazy.

In the end, my stance on this is: if you want to see a bunch of intelligent skilled Marines who engage in a somewhat combat-prone road trip to Baghdad, watch Generation Kill. If you want to watch a bunch of whiny enlisted Army grunts bellyache about how contracts aren’t fucking fair!!! and then end up realizing they’re just stupid Army grunts with nothing better to do anyway, then watch Stop-Loss.

OH!

P.S.

Ryan Phillippe is totally bad ass. He’s what Justin Timberlake wishes he was.

P.P.S. The “let’s play a game called let’s shoot people” scene, or whatever he said, was fucking brilliant and I think that is what my $1.08 paid for. Totally worth a dollar.

Fullerton, really, but still. Wait, isn’t Fullerton the OC? Goddamn I am
a liar.

What the fuck.

Robert owes me $70, and has for two weeks now? He was supposed to pay me last last Friday (”Don’t worry man, before I leave for Rialto I’ll swing by your house and drop it off.”) but he didn’t. Then he was going to pay me last week (”I just gotta run out for a little bit and then I’ll have your money.”) but he didn’t. This Friday, again, he was supposed to (”You’re leaving for San Diego at 7, right? Alright I’ll be at your house before seven to drop off your money. You’re leaving at 7 right?”) but he didn’t. Then he vanished all weekend to Rialto. Doesn’t return my calls. Doesn’t talk to me. He gets back into town last night. Andrew says, “Did Robert hit you up?” “No, man, is he back in town?” “Yeah, he left me like two voicemails, I wonder why he didn’t hit you up.” “Well he does owe me seventy fucking dollars?” “Oh, maaan, that suuuucks.”

Yeah, it sucks.

Note to self: 1.) Never lend money to anyone, ever. Lesson learned! 2.) Don’t be friends with fucking douchebags.

–

Being lonely sucks. It makes me want to attach myself to, well, whatever happens to be paying attention to me for the moment. This almost made me get really stupid with Trista, which I am glad I didn’t because that would have been maximum stupid. As it was, I almost dropped the “I don’t think we can be friends” bomb on her, like I did to Becca once, because eventually it just gets to be too ridiculously hard to be around a girl I’m friends with when all I want to do is be around a girl I’m more than friends with, especially when you get along awesomely and you’re delusional enough to think that differences and past experiences can be overcome by the all healing and nurturing power of love.

At least I am in control of myself enough these days to recognize when I am being delusional. When I picked up Trista to head to San Diego, I realized that hanging out with Trista is way more important than trying to be in a relationship with her, especially one that would never work and would only end in tears. I realized this pretty much immediately when she got in the car and I felt suddenly better about everything.

The actual trip to San Diego was hard just because, well, I’ve covered this. All the things we did, I should have been doing with a girlfriend, and it was hard. On the beach I caught her arm at one point when she started to fall over, and ended up up pulling her close to me and for a split second, without thinking, my arm nearly went around her and held her to me, but I caught it immediately, and didn’t do it, though that voice in my head was like “live in the moment!” but I knew better, deep down, I knew better.

But it killed. I killed for like, two whole days, but again, somehow I managed to maintain my sense: I knew it wasn’t Trista I missed, it was just being next to someone I liked. It wasn’t even really San Diego that I missed, it was just being somewhere else where I felt like I was free. It’s not that I think Trista and I would be good together, it’s just that I want to be good with somebody. So I never laid any of this on her, because there was no point. All it would have done is made a good friendship awkward for a while.

I still acted weird about shit, or have been. We texted briefly (no reason to discuss any of this at length, really) about it and just re-cemented what I already knew about us: totally broken. I’d never be able to trust her, anyway, and that would make me hate myself. But, she’s cool to hang with, etc, etc.

I can’t say I’m not bummed, because I am, but again: I’m not bummed over Trista, I’m just bummed because I’m lonely and want a girl around to pay attention to me all lovingly. It could be anyone who isn’t fat, really, at this point. No fatties.

That’s the end of that.

–

I was looking forward to one more week of full time employment, another big paycheck, before they cut me down to four hours a day next week, but my boss tells me, “We gotta renege on full time for you this week because we’re just wasting money with you here, so starting tomorrow can you be 12 to 4?”

Which is OK. I started school yesterday. I’m not sure about the hours, I’d rather earlier, but for what they want me to do, I guess I can do homework and jerk off repeatedly in the early morning hours and then flagellate myself or something, I don’t know, but I’m annoyed.

–

My cassette deck in my Prius crapped out right before I headed to San Diego, which was great for me. Luckily Trista had an FM transmitter sitting around so we used that instead of relying on her CD collection to keep us entertained.

I’ve been researching how to get an auxiliary audio input in my 2003 Prius, and it turns out: I’m fucked.. I guess the Prius has some special connection (as do most Toyotas that don’t come with aux-inputs automatically) that no one makes an adapter for. That is, no one but Coastal E Tech who makes one but their website says it is “Not Available” and it’s been four days now and two emails and they don’t respond at all. As it is it’s $110 cable, but that’s better than a $70 FM modulator that is going to give me a shitty quality signal. If Coastal Tech doesn’t make that cable anymore, I’m pretty much fucked and that makes me feel really shitty.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin as far as installing a wired FM modulator. How would I keep myself from getting totally electrocuted playing around with the insides of my Prius?

It only took five years, but I am officially pissed at my car. According to what I read on the internet, too, it looks like after 100,000 miles you can look forward to about five pieces of equipment (that each cost <$3000 to replace) to break down and render your car inoperable. I'm looking forward to that.

Update: Cool. I called Coastal Electronics and they told me they don’t offer that cable anymore.

–

I want friends who aren’t fucking assholes.

I want a girl.

I want money.

I want to be able to use my fucking iPod in my car.

I want happiness back. I had it for a little while and it was cool, but then I had to go fuck it all up by lending people money and trying to convince myself to be in love with someone I can’t love and relying on a job to pay me money so I can sustain–sustain what? I don’t even spend money. What the fuck do I even care for? I guess saving is good. Having a nice pad of cash in my bank account so I know that if I want to drop $20 on something, I can. That wont vanish anytime soon, but still:

Why’s everything gotta get all dumb at once? Why?

Whine whine whine.

Last night I walked on a beach barefoot in full moon light with a pretty girl I got along with for the very first time and it was awesome. I wish it was a pretty girl I could touch, but that’s fine, that’s fine, one day, some day, I will walk on a beach at night with a pretty girl I get along with that I can touch and that will be awesome.

I don’t actually have much words for last night. It was cool. We ditched the concert we drove all the way there to go see (too many old people, ocean is more interesting) and rode on a roller coaster and then walked a beach and smoked in a parking garage and ate mexican food and… when you condense it like that, I guess it’s not so significant, but it was pretty dreamy to be so far from home and so content to do whatever the fuck. Having a job is awesome, if only because I didn’t have to worry about how much money I was spending or what I was doing with my time. There was nothing holding me back, and if it wasn’t for Trista not being my woman, I probably could have kept us in San Diego all weekend doing cool shit. It woulda been nice.

As it was, it was great.

I was starting to feel really good for a while.

It’s hard to summon the words for this entry because I am ashamed of myself.

I am a monster, but not in the cool way I thought. I am just, sometimes, completely terrified and it spirals out of my control. I can’t trust anyone, ever, when it really comes down to it.

I’ve always said that I trust strangers more than I trust my friends. I’ve never really understood it, I’ve just always said it, because I felt it. Now I understand: strangers don’t hold any power over me, they can’t make me hurt, they don’t know what I have to take (unless, of course, they do know). People you know, people you’re intimate with, the people who you share the inside of your life with, they can take from you, they can hurt you, they can make you feel like you aren’t worth a shit in the whole world.

I thought I was over it, I thought that two years and yet another failed relationship later would have been enough time for me to recover from the things that were done, the trust that was broken, but it wasn’t, and now I’m thinking that I will never be over it. Forever broken, etc, etc.

I relapsed last night, I fell into a really dark spot in my brain that I hadn’t been to in probably three years now. I freaked out, I lost sleep, and when I did sleep, it was restless and I woke up feeling far more tired than I was when I went to sleep.

I obviously don’t want to get into details, but I scared myself, and even when I realized that I was scaring myself and that I had nothing to be upset about, I continued to be upset, and I got even more upset. I just kept building on the paranoid delusions being created in my head, I added bricks and bricks until I walled my brain in with something ugly and dangerous and there my brain tried to sleep, trapped in this room with everything ugly that I never wanted to think of again.

Even now, I’ve been up for hours now, I even had a conversation with a friend about it and possibly resolved the problem, but still: I am bound up with it. It’s still tearing at me. I’m still not sure if I can believe or trust anyone about this. Why does everyone have to be a liar? It’s not the delusions speaking, it’s the cause of the delusions: why does everyone have to be a liar? Why couldn’t I have just sailed through life on a wave of people who were always honest? Why did I surround myself with people who would eventually cause me to feel like I couldn’t trust them not to hurt me?

There’s a section in my dating profile on OKCupid that says that I refuse to ride with other people, that I am only a driver and never a passenger. Someone read that and commented that it sends up a red flag, it obviously means that I distrust people, but I don’t, I really don’t distrust people. I trust people immediately, and openly, but the problem is that I have surrounded myself with people who have gradually eroded that trust, or in some cases shit all over it as much as they could, or in some cases have confirmed my paranoid delusions with actions, and how can you recover from that?

How can you ever recover from that?

I can’t. I just can’t recover from it. It sucks, because it means… well, it means a lot of things, and all of the things it means are collecting in my belly and I’ve felt sick to my stomach for the last few hours. I keep nearly vomiting in the trash can by my desk because I am so bound up with the fear that there is someone out there, right now, who is actively hurting me in some way, and they’re not telling me about it, and they’re probably snickering behind my back.

I am fucked up, but I guess this is how it is.

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