sometimes, death seems like the best option available in any given situation.  sitting here, staring at this screen, my neck sore, if i were to have a massive heart attack, collapse to the floor, dead, i would not mind this at the moment.  it's just gotten so easy not to care about much lately, apathy is the best policy when you're faced with the monotony i constantly come across.  when did life become this way?  everything wrapped up into nice neat little packages, no struggle for anything.  i don't even really have to try, and somehow i do all right.  we don't hunt anymore, we don't have any real problems that require us to really worry.  the closest thing is disease, but that's nothing compared to what we were up against in times ago.  in past 
times, humans constantly hunted to get their limited food source. that was how people stayed active and in shape.  there probably wasn't a whole lot of obesity or heart conditions back then. humans with those sort of problems simply died from not being able to survive in such a place.  in more advanced times, things were getting better for mankind, our advanced brains were starting to develop technologies to make life easier, more complicated in 
different ways, but solving those old problems which required physical exertion and work.  soon, we meshed with technology so much, that it's simply a way of our life.  the way we cultivated ourselves and destroyed/advanced to present from the future usually, our real problem is that everything is too easy nowadays.  nothing acts as a necessity or excitement/adventure.  instead of our instincts pointing us to run out to the jungle to go for some wild something or another, we hop in our SUVs and head off for the supermarket, where we pick up some precut steak or chicken or something else some butcher did while standing in a sterilized room somewhere in the back of the shop.  to escape this monotony, we 
simply invent social problems for ourselves, trivialize over things, or depress ourselves so that nothing really matters anymore and we don't focus so much on it as other aspects of our depressing overall lives. 

i was looking at webpages all day, my internship has effectively ended and i have no urgent tasks to attend to, so during the day i sometimes listen to albums, write reviews for grooves magazine, write in general, or stare off into the depressing vastness which is the internet.  i've realized that people's lives on the internet are much more depressing than ones in real life.  i haven't yet been able to figure out why this is, but there's a general idea in my mind.  online, chances are you'll never meet anyone who comes across your webpage (unless you become some internet superstar somehow) but there's the total anonymity it offers, so most people just put up their load of problems or "who they are" and whatnot.  of course, i have to wonder if these people are actually honest in their routines, for i know that i am not really "honest."  everything is a bit jaded when it comes out of my mind, making it seem worse or better than it actually was.  it disguises the medium-tinge that everything in life seems to take nowadays.  i was looking through random pages today, and the sheer stupidity of several of them, along with dumb stories, anecdotes, layout, etc. depressed the hell out of me.  also, i can't really stand it when someone brags about how great their life is.  those are the people i wonder about remaining honest to their internet going public. once i got bored looking through personal pages, i went to the uiuc search engine and decided to find my name on the fall 1999 deans list (i did not make the spring 2000 list).  the list was sorted by zip code, so i figured "this should be easy enough."  i wandered down to where my should have been, but alas, it was not there.  to a normal person, it would have been amusing, or it just would have confused them.  for me, with my wonderful inferiority complex and all, became despondent and relatively angry.  i want people to see that i made the stupid dean's list, namely because that recognition 
allows me to at least be better or on the same level as others, academically i suppose.  i already am pretentious enough, but with an inferiority complex, you can always stand to be a little bit better in every way.  i don't know if i want to be perfect, complete.  i'm not even sure what that means, to be honest.  what does it mean to be a complete and perfect person?  what is perfect? it's all very subjective, and i honestly don't have a personal definition.  about the only thing i can describe as perfect are abstract musical albums, and how i feel when listening to them. moments to me are imperfect.  i as an intellectual, clever little jerk are far from complete or perfect.  anyway, i copy/pasted the entire list into a text editor and did a search for my last name and came out with nothing.  this further depressed me, the inferiority complex causing the ego to slide downhill a bit further than i would have honestly liked.  so, i was humiliated by this stupid and inconsequential occurrence.  so, the university doesn't really care about my high gpa from first semester of my freshman year.  so i am just another brick in the student wall.  so i am anonymous.  so the university forgot about me.  so i am unknown to whoever was making that list.  so i was a typo.  i was 
a typo.  i am a typographical error. now i've vowed that i will make the dean's list again, even though my desire to keep my once pretty little grade point average seems to be dropping at exponential rates of decay.  but, just to get a stupid second piece of paper that says "you're on an abstract idea of the 'dean's list'" i'll work diligently, eschew any sort of fun antics or ideas that i had wanted to accomplish, and sit in my bedroom and see if i can't get higher than a 3.6 gpa for fall semester in order to see my name on an internet page no one else but me bothers at looking.  that was today, 8/15/00. 

i am officially all done with working here. i finished the paperwork i was assigned, and all that's left is to sit and stare the few remaining hours away today and tomorrow. tomorrow promises to be highly awkward, shaking hands and saying goodbye to people who probably don't care about me, and that i don't really care about.  having to be an emotional fraud is not really a 
fun pasttime of mine.  i never know what to say to anyone, but it's not like anyone here knows that.  they'll want to talk and they'll expect a nice little email saying how nice it was to work with them. then i have an 'exit interview' which i've been told is where they basically tell you what's going on next year and have you sign some termination forms, then they take your ID and security badge back, and promptly have you escorted out the front door since you are no longer employed here.  my manager told me when someone gets fired, they have two hours to clear their cubicle, and then they are escorted out the front door and to their car by security officers.  apparently, motorola likes to give it's employees many benefits while working here, but the minute you are no longer needed, they want you replaced as fast as possible. i uploaded the 'software project management plan' and the user's guide for this second project into the tool i had designed, which, 
ironically, is meant to hold such things.  i created a tool which holds what little of me is left in the paperwork and projects after this internship.  i feel some sense of closure. today it was raining when i came to work.  i suppose it was a fitting end to this rather drab internship.  i was listening to a mix of chris cornell, radiohead, beck this morning on the way to work.  it was pleasant, everything melded together in a sad sense of the word.  reminded me a bit of seattle, had i ever been there.  more like i just stereotype it and think "this is what it must be like."  from experience, the way we imagine things to be, are never quite like that in reality.  i'm listening to 'do make say think: goodbye enemy airship the landlord is dead' and it's got acoustic bits and electric bits of guitar play, very emotional, dense, depressing stuff.  written probably when someone felt pretty low or couldn't get over their ex or something like that.  typical music fare.  i suppose it's a bit psychadelic sounding at times, though i woudln't play that up at all.  90's post grunge rock it feels like.  i'm looking out the windows occaisonally while listening.  my cube is about two feet away from the windows (they gave an intern the window cubicle?) and it's gray outside, a light steel blue perhaps in the sky.  there is no sun, or if there is, it decided not to shine on this portion of the planet today. 
it reminds me of that one time where me and lyn went collecting leaves for accelerated track biology class around his neighborhood.  it was a cold fall day like this, and although at the time i don't think i was having too much fun, i look back at it and say to myself "i was enjoying it alot."  it's odd, how i look back and find i feel differently about things i felt then.  i remember going through numerous bushes, looking for the most extravagant leaves.  the purpose of this was of course dichotomy and classification:  we were beginning a large unit on taxonomy, the only area of biology that i was truly gifted in.  genetics i can not do.  cell structure?  why bother.  life processes?  do i really care about something else's life that much, especially when i wish my own would just end at some points?  anyway, getting back to the flashback sequence, lyn and i ended up at this odd bush in some neighbors' backyard which grew some sort of green brain looking fruit, seed, or vegetable.  we broke one open, it smelled horrible, and then we proceeded to throw pieces of this brain at each other.  it got all over me, i'm not sure if any got on lyn.  i was pretty pissed off, after all, whatever the brain was, it smelled horribly, and had the color of creamed spinach (and yet i don't mind creamed spinach...) anyway, we found enough leaves, and i went back home, my clothes caked with artificial green brain.  it was cold that day, and my nose was running constantly.  cold weather always makes my nose run, i'm not sure why.  that was a very fond memory i have, i honestly hope i never forget it.  8/17/00