I have a philosophy on life: Don’t stress, man. Just kidding. That’s not it. I’m not a goddamn hippie. I actually don’t have a philosophy on life, but I really feel like I could use one. Philosophies usually come in handy, especially when you’re drunk so you have some sort of catch phrase to revert to that doesn’t require thinking. “Hey man, just don’t get caught in the tuna net of technology”, something that SORT OF sounds like it might make sense but really makes no sense at all.

I go through every day, and at the end of every day remark on how quickly the day has passed, and what little I have accomplished. This days turn into weeks, fortnights, etc etc, until one day it’s your 29th birthday and you wish you were six again so you could have your birthday at McDonald’s. Just think if you could do it all over again! Would you do it all over again? I don’t think I would, because to do it all over with my current brain would piss me off because I would realize how stupid my friends were when I was younger, and to do it with the same brain as before but just be cognizant of the fact that I was living my life over again wouldn’t really lead to anything. I would probably still be arrested when I’m 17 for having my pants down at the football game, and I would probably still get tendinitis when I’m 23.

But what am I talking about, this is nonsense. Let’s talk about Clipperton Island. In the Pacific Ocean, about due south of Baja California and due West of Colombia, there is an island called Clipperton island. Made up of a beach and some reef, a lagoon and some shrubs, this island is completely deserted. I don’t even know if it has palm trees. Some sort of pirate supposedly used to use it for his hideout, but other than that it hasn’t seen much activity.

Does anyone want to go there with me? We’ll form a colony. Don’t worry, it won’t be like Lost. I may be like a Jack a bit, i.e. be respected and followed and have a passionate love affair with a girl resembling Evangeline Lily, but other than that it won’t be like Lost at all. We’ll fish for food, procure water using a desalinization system fashioned from palm bark and strips of white cotton t-shirts, and in the evening we’ll sit around a fire and throw rocks at hermit crabs and periodically scream as loud as we can. There will be no rules.

We’ll tell stories and create our own oral history. We’ll have babies and raise them to be tremendous fisher people and surfers. We’ll go back to the mainland every five years and quickly realize we hate the mainland and want to get back to our island oasis. On some days the sunset will be so beautiful that we’ll stop whatever we’re doing — giving our kids noogies or throwing rocks at hermit crabs — just to stare at the popcorn-like pinkish clouds on the horizon.

We won’t look back. We’ll be free!

“I wont tell,” says Barry.

“I know you wont tell,” I say, “but I can’t have that on my conscious.”

You see, I am an upstanding gentleman. I have resolved not to drink more than one drink a day for the next year, and I plan on keeping to this resolution. Come hell or high water. Should I find myself in a situation where a beautiful vixen is splayed at my feet and says to me in her siren voice, “Mark, tu majestad, bebe una copa más y vamos a la cama” I shall say to her, “Come off it, poor girl. You have a face like a bob-tailed ass and no business in my quarters.” Why she would speak to me in Spanish, I don’t know.

One beer is actually a good thing. I used to rip on people who only drank one beer. “Who the fuck drinks one only beer?” I would muse. You can’t feel its effects; it only makes you tired.” But one delicious, frothy beer — a Mac ‘n Jack’s, for example. One desultory golden frothy mug of liquid pleasure, seething at the glass, waiting to burrow its way into the inner chambers of your stomach to bring you warmth and merriment. One beer is not to be laughed at; one beer is meant to be enjoyed.

I like this resolution. I shall stick to it. I shall be steadfast in my ways and not err, even if a uncouth maiden whispers temptations in my ear.

Be back up and running shortly, February 7th at the latest.

This blog is about to get a lot worse, and for that I apologize. But I will also start posting stuff more frequently, so take it how you will.

I’m listening to the Black Keys right now, a group I don’t really like, and thinking about how most of the reason I don’t usually write is because I’m scared it’s going to be bad, or because I’m embarrassed to reveal things about myself. What kinds of things? I don’t know — for example that I went to the Cha Cha the other night and got shut down by about six different girls. But that’s not even it. I don’t care about getting shut down by girls. That’s not what really hurts my ego, because I’m not really putting myself out there. But when you write about things that are more personal it is putting yourself out there more, so you have a bigger possibility of feeling like a douche bag when people tell you your writing sucks.

But this is how I like to write. I like to write about things that don’t matter much, like what I’m listening to on my computer or how many beers I had the night before. These are the things that are interesting to me. I’m fucking tired. I’m fucking sick of this Master’s program. If you are one of my past students reading this, Hi (I read the evaluations [which made my day] and forgot to say Hi [Hi to someone in particular who said they would be looking for this]).

I think now WHATEVER I write I’m pretty much going to put up here. It might make this blog absolutely horrible, but one thing it will definitely do is make me put more thought into my writing, because I know when I write something horrible or embarrassing that no matter what it’s going to go up here.

A little experiment.

Either way.

God, this is so fucking emo. Maybe this really isn’t a good idea. I’m going to have to think about this one. We might have to go back to the old Mark, here. Maybe I just need a beer.

I definitely need to go to bed.

I’m back. I fucking swear it. I have so much to talk about: where I want to go for Spring Break, how my one drink a day thing is going, what I’m currently listening to right now on my iTunes (Mephistopheles’ Return by Trans-Siberian Orchestra). I will have to adopt a new tone though, obviously. I can’t talk like a giddy school girl like I’m currently talking. My tone changes so fucking often. This of course means that I haven’t found my own “voice.” But then again I don’t even know if I like writing so there you go.

Anyway, it is Friday night and you know what that means. You know exactly what that means. It means that normally I would be out getting hammered in about two hours, probably ending up at the Cha Cha Lounge, and at some point or another getting shut down by every girl in the bar. This is because I have no “game” when I’m drunk. I have “game” when I’m sober. It’s easy to have game when you’re sober. You own the place. But when I get drunk I lose control. Lucky for me, I’m not doing that for a year. Unless, of course, I find a loophole.

I have found a loophole already, by the way. It’s an obvious loophole, and actually it’s not really a loophole at all. All it basically consists of is me drinking one 16oz. beer at around 11:50pm and then having another one at 12:01am when the next new day has begun. I know, I know — it’s not a loophole at all. It’s called a new day. Or whatever you want to call it. But consider this: I can have two beers in a relatively short period of time, and not just two beers, but two pints. And I can have two pints of whatever I want, which means I could have a Winter Ale or Jolly Roger or God forbid some kind of Belgium beer that’s like 75% alcohol. So I could conceivably get somewhat intoxicated. Hopefully not intoxicated to the point where I lose my faculty for making decisions and decide getting hammered drunk is the most appropriate course of action, but I could still get fairly intoxicated.

As for where I want to go for Spring Break, I want to go to Japan. I decided this today. I heard a kid talking about how he’s going to Japan for Spring Break and how it’s (March) the most beautiful time of year because it’s not cold and it’s not humid yet and I said to myself, “Fuck me I need to get to Japan.” So I will now investigate flights and probably see that it costs a shit ton and the possibility of going is completely unrealistic, but I’m going to check again anyway.

I’m sort of bored right now. Sort of. I’m mostly just pissed I have to grade a fuck ton of essays. But that’s fine. I’ve got good music, good food, and tonight at midnight I’m allowed to have another drink. Four hours to freedom.

“Too bad! What? Isn’t he going–back?”

Yes, but you understand him badly when you complain. He is going back like anybody who wants to attempt a big jump.–

–F.N.

I’m only having at most one drink per day for the next year.  Just so you know.  Find me on January 25th, 2011 if you want to party really hard.

If you haven’t noticed, I don’t write about anything anymore that has to do with my life. I write whatever comes to my head. I suspect that most of it is bad, and that the only reason I’m doing it is because I am no longer able to write about stuff which even vaguely matters, and that this is my way of coping.

I do not know why the caged bird sings. There is no hope. The only thing you can do is fall out the window and hope you fall on a soft shrub, and maybe that you don’t break your femur.

The caged bird sings because there is no music, and he wants to create some. He sings songs by Prince like “Pussy Control” and songs by Ben Folds Five whose names he doesn’t know. He sings them loud and clear, often in the morning when his masters are still sleeping. When they yell at him he changes his tune to something more upbeat, like “Charm Attack” by Leonna Ness. He is a sucker for female lead singers.

On Fridays he sings classical songs, usually Chopin and sometimes Beethoven. On Saturday he sings 80’s hair rock , namely Guns ‘n Roses and Van Halen. Despite the fact that he always sings “Patience” by Guns ‘n Roses, it is not his favorite song. He only sings it because it has a whistling solo. His favorite song is “My Michelle.”

On Sunday, the bird is silent for the first part of the day. He is letting the Lord rest. The Lord is the only person he lets rest. At exactly 12:01pm (there’s a clock across the hallway from his cage) he lets out a blood-curdling scream. He screams as loud as he can for five minutes, but no one in the house ever notices because they are all still at church. Sometimes he cries and laments his fate to be locked in a cage for the rest of his life. He sings the first 15 seconds of “Coming Down the Mountain” by Janes Addiction followed by the middle 45 seconds of “Rudy Can’t Fail.” He mimics the sound of Joey Ramone; he hates The Ramones.

When all is said and done, the caged bird sings for himself. He sings to annoy his owners, and he sings because he likes the sound of the chorus in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He will never sing David Bowie, because he would consider that sacrilegious. Not because David Bowie had weird hair or because he was gay, but because he wouldn’t be able to do him justice. Once he broke into “Life on Mars” before he realized what he was doing but then quickly stopped, ashamed of himself. That day momma did not smack the cage with her broom.

In two years, the caged bird will die. He will have sung 5,777 songs. His family will bury him in the plot of earth just in front of the house, and after school one of the children will put stepping stone on his grave to prevent the armadillos from digging him up. In just two more years, he will be all but forgotten with the addition of a new family pet, a ring-tailed lemur that stowed away on a ship from Madagascar to Singapore by hiding beneath a trash can.