Soul crushing six hour interview is soul crushing. Time for drinks.

Convincing myself that I can do anything if I try hard enough is granting me a more symmetrical facial composure due to charging so fanatically face-first into brick walls, expecting them to come crumbling down to my incomprehensibly baseless exuberance. Wacha!

And it was literally only 3 hours long, and consisted of a dream where I was originally riding a tandem motorcycle on the highway (They exist) with my girl when suddenly, ZOMBIES! It's like we're warped into a shooter video game and we pull these assault rifles out of our asses to begin firing at everything and anything that moves.

Yes, they begin pouring out from every orifice the planet has to offer, until it becomes too much, we're like riding over fucking zombies and more zombies until we see this bamboo shack out in the middle of nowhere and the lady acts like she knows what she's doing, she suddenly screams, 'LOOK! FRIENDS~!' and throw a grenade behind her and uses the force of the explosion to throw us into the shack.

Needless to say, these are the retarded zombies we are dealing with, the kind that have no object permanence so as soon as they see us disappear into the shack, they lose their sudden bloodlust and being going back to wandering about aimlessly chanting the words, 'Brainnnssss.... gahhh.... brainssss'

Inside of this dark bamboo shack, I am greeted by Harry Potter and a leprechaun holding refuge inside, and everyone does this kind of greeting where we first think we are enemies, but then next second recognize each other and begin hugging as comrades. Everyone except me of course, because I'm still confused as fuck, but that's ok, I'm in a dream and I haven't realized it yet. I'm totally fine with everything that is going on so far. So my girlfriend is in a group hug with Harry Potter and a leprechaun while there are millions of zombies pawing at our boarded up windows like stray puppies trying to be fed, seems perfectly normal, no reason to feel incredulous and think now is the time to wake  up.

Suddenly the bat logo spins out from the center getting larger until it overtakes the screen, then spirals back inward, and we are all sitting next to a very ostentatious fireplace, possibly still inside of the run-down bamboo shack I blew myself into earlier with a grenade, but probably not as now I feel as if the setting is more suited for my interpretation of Dracula's castle, or possibly Hogwarts... Oh right, I was with Happy Harry earlier, we're probably at Hogwarts then... And... it looks like the zombies are gone. So I guess everyone just forgot about that then, hmm.

Now the leprechaun speaks, looking at the portraits hanging above the fireplace, and telling this tale of how apocalypse is upon us and the only way for us to survive is to use the power left behind by the great kind leprechaun who was killed by Voldemort... This leprechaun proceeds to go off on a wild, unnecessary tangent talking about how the King was the most powerful creature in the world of magic, but a massive troll (By internet definition, not literal troll under the bridge troll), so he didn't want to bother with any of the dark vs light nonsense... However he was a real hothead, very aggressive and arrogant so the dark hand eventually managed to manipulate him to fight on their side... When he found out however, he used his own Irish magiks to destroy Voldemort's HQ proceeding to declare war... So all of ol'Voldemort's top henchmen started fighting against this guy (Queue epic fight scenes which I will not attempt to describe, one after the other), until finally Voldemort's right hand man with some corny HP name like Henrik the Harbinger, who has this giant steel gauntlet nearly got at the king by sneaking up behind him and blowing out his eye by grabbing his head, like Gambit from X-Men (God, my descriptions and storytelling are just so next level)...

The king, pissed off at this point that he's wounded grabs this guy's corpse after killing him, and rips out his heart and fuses it into his chest in order to make direct contact with Voldemort and destroy him, but yea yea, as you know Voldemort sees the guy coming, so instead he detonates the heart like some massive grenade and kills the King, as the king is dying, he snaps his fingers and gold coins fall out of his eyes and ears, then we queue back to the fireplace and the leprechaun says 'So we must find these gold coins ye see, as they are the clue to unlocking the power of the king, resurrecting him to help us in this fight.'

Harry and the girl are like 'Yes, where do we start!'

and I'm like, 'I think I've had enough of this...' so I wake up feeling absolutely refreshed for the first time in ages and leave those other 3 to carry on in their magical business. 

Lost in thought living in a cave trying to imagine pictures but I only see frames.

Went over to craigslist today on the strictly platonic section trying to find an individual with some experience with R programming interested in doing a language swap of my knowledge for his, but couldn't help clicking around to read what other people were posting because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. 

I eventually found myself immersed, balls-deep in reminders of what the hell is going on in the outside local world, a place that I have been long out of touch with since I preformed my ancient Chinese, Feng-Shui time-seal on my apartment completely blocking out all thoughts of pregnant teen mothers, snobby liberals, and other such processes that can be seen only when you're living within the city, much in the same way the cracks and imperfections of a giant monument can only be noticed when you move in closer to inspect. 

It took a bit of effort to pull myself away from the tentacles that life that managed to wrap around me, trying to pull me in with its seductive charm, but the better half of me was able to take a step back into the stillness and note that the promising sense of pleasure that always used to pull me in was just a cover for the insufferable carnage and chaos that lied underneath the surface waiting with its fiendish smile, hoping for another foolish victim to stray into its trap.

OH well, back to work. And incase you were wondering, no, there are no R programmers on craigslist and I'm not going to bother posting an ad for one. It was just a longshot, but I'll probably print out some fliers and post them up at the universities and colleges nearby. Meh.

And then there lies an empty desk on center stage, there Donnie sits, wrinkles on his forehead as he channels his energy, his creativity, his spirit, to write.

And write.

And write.

Using the sharp tip of the pen to translate out the products of the infinite universe and all its possibilities within Donnie, the pen merely a tool, just like his body, and the paper, along with the desk.

All of these tools are a medium to the communication that occurs with the endlessness of the internal with external. All around Donnie lie bottomless black holes, other minds, minds of the audience as they gasp in astonishment towards what they are watching. Absolute silence throughout the entire auditorium. 

Scribble scribble scribble.

The capturing of the vision, a powerful action of spell binding magnitude that symbolizes the full cycle of life ,in all of its creative and destructive beauty, for the audience to watch happen before their eyes, bringing a tear to the eyes of many from the sheer magnificence .

Off he goes. Writing.

And all you hear in the room are scribbles.

Life isn't so bad when you remember to appreciate the little things in it that turn out to be the most important, such as gin & tonics.

Merry Christmas all.

I've broken my 1 post per month streak that I've kept since I joined in 2003. Boo hoo. Time to go cry. Or just sleep. 

Probably just sleep. Gnite. 

I got excited and thought he was referring to Australia. Instead I was shipped to Florida.

I know what a lot of you might be thinking, 'Where is Melbourne?'

Well Melbourne is a magical land located an hours drive from Orlando populated with old people and animal mail-boxes such as the family of matinees in exhibit A:

Yes, yes. Quite cute and adorable... Is what I would be saying if I lived in the 1950s, a glorious time before the first Asians arrived in America and black people had dibs on the backseats of buses.

My work has been a grind... a 60 hour a week grind, but a surprisingly enjoyable one at that. Surprisingly enjoyable in the sense that it is granting me new experiences such as this flavor of crippling work-related depression I've never had to deal with before. Sure, the insomnia is nothing new, but showing up to work an hour late and getting rage-assigned an ass-grip of work that I don't specialize in by my boss is something I've never quite had the opportunity to experience. 

However, despite these unsavory conditions which I face, I have triumphed and proceeded to learn how to become an quasi-competent systems administrator and database engineer proceeding to surprise everyone at my job who was sure that I would crack under the pressure of having to do a large amount of work I have no experience or knowledge in, in a ridiculously short time-frame, and managing to not only succeed, but exceed all expectations (Which wasn't very hard actually, when you take into account that all expectations were that I was going to fail miserably and commit seppuku out of shame and inability to return back to my village). 

But now I've been banished to Florida into the bowels of a server room full of old men that don't know how to dress or take showers. Is this the end of ironstove? Will he ever be able to make it out of Melbourne and back to California? Or will he be re-banished after overcoming this banishment to some other strange and foreign land such as Montreal (Because that's apparently where my boss is saying he's going to ship me next if I ever manage to lift my head back to the surface with all of the work I've been assigned).

Stay tuned! You'll find out on the next episode of ironstove... versus.... the WORLD!

What other crazy apocalyptic nonsense are people going to talk about now? Perhaps it is time to make some up, add a little spice to our boring existences. 

In some senses I suppose, the end of days might be exciting to some.