Michael R. Barrick

I made a small mistake on my finances. I still owe the lawyer money. While I'm not so broke as I was before this puts a damper on surfing next week with Opie and, thanks to the machinations of other lawyers, I will not be getting my inheritance from my Uncle Floran until the end of September.

As my mother so elequently put it in her e-mail to me explaining why the inheritance would be delayed: "All lawyers are shysters."

I just don't feel like going to Sanctuary tonight. I was planning to go, I even washed my club clothes and started getting ready. Now I've changed my mind. Trish won't be there. Mike's decided not to go. I can't get drunk because of work tomorrow and the annoying fact that I have limited funds. I think I'm better off to save what little I have for when Lorra is in town next week. Why do I feel obligated to go to Sanctuary every single bloody Sunday?

What a freaking pathetic life. Tomorrow my big thrill will be writing an agent to convert personal contact lists from the old mail system to the new one. I can feel this wave of anger and revulsion sweeping over me. Bitterness, would be the right word. Suddenly I don't feel like being the cheery, level-headed one. I feel like ranting and bitching. For fuck's sake I'm going to be 34 in two months, I'm divorced from a dyke, I sit in a cubicle and waste my days on the most boring shit imaginable, my crapbox car is older than some of my friends, my life revolves around going to nightclubs. My last "relationship" was falling for a girl who is completely messed up over a custody battle (note to Sylkweb - if you are going to go it alone, really go it alone, cut the father out of it completely). The one before that was a lunatic whore, literally - ad in the back of the West Ender and everything - $100 for a massage and a hand job and four different pills just to make it through the day, who lied to me from beginning to end, and I let myself be lied to because I am a pathetic, lonely shit.

There are things I can do about it, I know. And I'll do them. But right now I just want to scream FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUCK!!! Trish always runs away when I'm not feeling cheery, Ivana has big enough problems without mine (which is part of the problem), Lorra sure as hell doesn't need me whining at her, so here it is. I'll hang my dirty laundry out on LiveJournal and tell Tharsis about it as I type (he is named Tharsis for a reason - he is my cat Tharsis). If anyone tells me I should see a therapist I'll punch them in the head. I mean it. I've learned enough about psychoanalysis on my own and in school to know that it is a bunch of untestable wanking bullshit. It's all inductive and doesn't stand up to Falsification (per Karl Popper). If I'm going to listen to unscientific speculation about what's going on in my head from someone else I'll talk to a good astrologer - at least that pseudoscience has ten millennia of refinement behind it.

But look at me, I can't even bitch about how I feel without going off on some obscure tangent. I'm a fucking joke. In fact I am such a joke I am a character in a sitcom. I'm Ross from "Friends".

You know what I pictured at this point? I was going to have a café gallery that I ran with my wife. My kid would be tearing around annoying the customers. My art would be hanging on the walls and there would be plush chairs and booths that I made with my dad and I'd be sending money home to my mom. And where am I? My [ex]wife is a dyke, no kid (thankfully... God! If I had had a kid with her...!), my father is dead, my art if piled in the corner of my apartment and I haven't had a show in two years, and I'm into my mom for $2500 and I sit in cubicle looking forward to the Friday doughnut cart to come around. This fucking well defies the laws of physics by sucking and blowing at the same time.

I'm just annoyed. I've let myself get fucked over by greedy, selfish women. I've let my life careen down the slope of least resistance and ended up in a rut because of it. I've let people who would be confused by a simple syllogism influence my decisions. The only reason I've ended up with a fucking computer "career" is I know how to think and solve problems. But these are someone else's problems. I don't give a shit anymore. Time for it to be about me.

So there.

Do you know where your brain is?

I have not been so covered in lipstick since I was whoring around at the Catwalk at C6. In deference to the official status of my divorce I was asking every cute girl at the club to kiss me on the cheek. As I got drunker I extended that to anyone who was wearing lipstick. I've got some photos that I'll post tomorrow.

For no sensible reason I ended up making bangers and mash for Opium and Sleepless Knight (who gets bonus points for finding bland boil-the-shit-out-of-the-vegetables and fry-the-meat-in-grease northern European cooking "exotic" - I actually had the pleasure of feeding the man his first ever Guinness). Chopping onion when you are too tanked to stand at 3:30 in the morning verges on completely fucking surreal. Although I have to say this for cooking drunk: at least the grease splatters don't hurt.

So many cute girls tonight... I got kisses from Daevina (who was first), Lori, Louise, Mel, Nancy, Opium, Sandi, and others. If only Ivana was there. All things in, she's really the only one I really want to be kissing... well except maybe for Mel, but I already struck out there... But when my mind is clear and I close my eyes it is Ivana I see first. *sight* If only I knew what to do.

But now the sun is up, Opium and Sleepless Knight have gone their merry way and I should catch some Z's so I can get some shit done tomorrow.

From my census form

This was the highlight of my day:

There is only one way to put this with the correct emphasis:

Holy Fuck! Fucking good fucking day, for fuck's sake! I mean, shit, fucking-A!

OK, as of yesterday I'm fielding phone calls from the Canada student loan people for the payment I missed this month and wondering how to keep my ass out of jail because I there was no way I could pay my taxes. I was questioning if I was maybe barking up the wrong tree romantically and there was still the seemingly inescapable detail of still being married to a lesbian.

The day starts with me firing off an e-mail to the HSBC that was 90% "get off your ass because I want the damn job now" hidden under 10% sucking up. Then I'm off to hang out with Ivana's kids because she is in a pre-trial discovery all day and for me a day of happy kid-energy beats the living hell out of moping around the studio waiting for the phone to ring.

But while I am at Ivana's my phone does ring, and it is the recruiter about the HSBC. I finally got an offer! And not only that, it is better than I was expecting. Money troubles are over!

Like that isn't good enough, Ivana comes back from the courthouse in a great mood. Her discovery went very well and she seems to have the upper hand in her custody fight now. She was exhausted, but I haven't seen her this happy in weeks. It's great. And so, feeling rich and seeing how simultaneously tired and happy Ivana was I figured buying her and her kids dinner was an appropriate celebration for everyone ;-)

Then it is off to home. After parking I picked up my mail. In it was a significant looking letter from my lawyer. I'm thinking, "Shit, I'm overdue on my bill" and that this is going to be a nasty letter. But, no. It is my copy of the signed order for my divorce (which would be that last, complicated detail I mentioned in my mentalhealth.com post a couple days ago). The order was signed on the 30th of March, meaning that my divorce is final next Tuesday! Five years after we split because she came out, I'm finally done with the damn lesbian bitch! (No offense to lesbians in general, the fact that she is a bitch and a lesbian does not necessarily mean that all lesbians are bitches.) I can finally put her out of my head and not have this vestigial tie to her looming over me like the Sword of Domekles.

Now I'm bouncing off the walls. I phone a couple friends to share and then phone my mom to share and to let her know that I can start paying back the money I had to mooch over the last little while. But I find out that I don't have to pay her back. It turns out that the legal snafus regarding my late Great Uncle Folran's will have been ironed out and my cut of what my mom will be getting more than covers my debt to her, so instead of paying her back I will be receiving a few thousand dollars!

How's that for one hell of a damn good day?

And, oh, yeah. Here is the comic for the 26th (without a doubt my all-time favourite), and since it is after midnight here is the one for the 27th.