Today’s soundtrack: if you want it bad you gotta steal your own fuel
Today at 11:02pm: I don’t know ‘cause it’s only 9:34pm


Yesterday in the rain amidst garbage I found four closet doors and various pieces of hi-grade plywood in a pile on the sidewalk.

Our apartment badly needs kitchen cabinets, and I’d been planning to hit a lumber yard to get the wood to build some. The wood on the sidewalk was in good condition so I made five trips and hauled most of it home. I got really fucking wet in the process.

I say hauled “most of it” home because on trip 3, a Chinese guy with a station wagon pulled up and started loading some of it up himself. Since it was obviously someone else’s garbage, I couldn’t exactly be like “Hey man that’s my shit.” Plus the rules of sidewalk acquisition are: whoever gets it, gets it.

Next I have to sand the wood down (it’s painted), clean it and stain it. I suppose I could just go to Ikea and buy finished cabinets but there’s something to be said for doing it yourself.

The worst part about doing home projects is listening to my roommate bitch about it. He likes to sit on the couch and say discouraging things. He also urges me to take shortcuts, like he doesn’t think I should “waste my time” cleaning and sanding the wood. Must learn to shut him out.

Just started re-reading this book Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid. It’s a fascinating collection of scientific essays that provide psychological breakdowns of stupidity.

I won’t go into the specifics of psychological drives and the acts of satiating them here, but I will mention a couple things. Chapter Four lists a bunch of conditions people can suffer from that may ultimately lead them to do stupid things. I was alarmed to see I possess most of these characteristics. They are:

Impulsiveness - i.e. you’re in the middle of doing something but suddenly decide you need to go out and get a bacon cheeseburger or an angora sweater or laid.

Neglect - The opposite of Impulsiveness. While Impulsiveness implies you act too quickly, Neglect means you act too late or not at all. Is my book finished yet? Er, no.

Procrastination - Not quite the same as Neglect, Procrastination means you actively avoid work you have to do, perhaps by busying yourself with other, more trivial things. What should I be doing right now? Working on my book. What am I doing right now? Updating my freakin’ online journal.

Vacillation - i.e. dicking around while you’re trying to make up your mind. What should I have for dinner, a bacon cheeseburger or a Vietnamese sandwich? The Vietnamese sandwich is cheaper. But wait, I’m in the mood for a burger. But the burger place is farther. But I had the Vietnamese sandwich yesterday. Fuuuuckk...

Backsliding - Backsliding is when you adopt a new practice, but soon lapse back into the established way of doing things. Like saying “I am going to get up early from now on!” and doing it for three days before oversleeping by several hours.

Indulgence - Indulgence implies engaging in excess. Like “Man that chocolate cake was good, I should probably have another 97 helpings of it.” Cigarettes ain’t a bad example either.

Overdoing - Overdoing is when you disguise Indulgence as something effortful. Like writing a lot in your online journal under the illusion that writing a lot of anything is better than writing nothing at all.


Well at least now I’ve identified my problem. Or seven of them anyway.