I am An Island Part 2

Day 2
I wake up exactly as I knew I would except in addition I also feel like someone has punched me straight in the gut. A Hot shower, turned cold shower, turned Sauna kind of wakes me up. I tell myself that today I am going to be productive. Then after an hour I ask myself....How?
Before I know it I'm throwing on my running shoes and gym shorts and out the door. A good run will make me feel good. I want to take it easy so I don't set the bar high on this first run, but I already know that I'll be doing more of it. So I run around a LA block, which is the equvilant of a maybe an 800 meter dash. By the time I'm standing outside of my house. I'm exhausted. Too many cigarettes. I rememeber that time that Joe Bill had his hand on my chest as i tried to sing.
"You smoke?"
"No"
"Don't ever start."

I guess I showed him. Once inside I do a little stretch down and start eating. 3 waffles, a banana, and one of those power bars I stole. Feeling good. It takes me an hour to write the post I posted yesterday. Then my internet gives out and I lose everything. So I have to write it again. I don't. Instead I pop in Raising Arizona again and start scraping the bowl for Res. I also get together all of my stems, grind them up into a fine powder. And smoke that. Not my finest hour. But needed to be done. Once I have enough res to consist a good time, i try to smoke it and it goes right through the hole and disappears. I try shaking it out of the mouth hole. Then try tapping it out with a lighter.
tap.
tap. tap.
tap. tap. shake.
tap. tap. shake. TAP.
tap. tap. SHAKE. TAP. TAP. "COME ON DAMNIT". TAP.
CRACK

The bowl explodes open and becomes immediately unuseable. FUCK.
I get up and write the post again. And by that time it's already the afternoon. I make myself a quick lunch and then decide to go on a walk.
I take my ipod with me and 6 dollars in quarters. Before I do my walk I stop off by the 711 and buy a pack of Camel crushes in quarters. It comes to 5.76. I give the arab guy behind the counter my change which turns out to be only five dollars in quarters. Thank god for that emergency dollar in my pocket.
When I leave, I check my pants for a lighter and find the other four quarters. This only upsets me because i could have given him those 3 quarters, and a take a penny. Kept my 1.25 and bought a jug of water as well. But live and learn.
Besides from seeing a pretty asian girl with a bag that read "I heart me". The walk was just a walk. I spent it listening to CSNY which is GREAT walking music.
No the walk didn't get interesting until I hit sunset and was given a free admission to the psychiatry an industry in death musuem. Now, usually i wouldn't have gone in there. But I had just finished listening to This American Life podcast the other day. One of the stories was about a man who had been in Bedlhem Asylum for 12 years. Bedlhem is where London sends all of it's serial killers and multiple rapists and pedies. This guy who they called "tony' had been in the asylum for 12 years, his offense was simple assault. But he wanted to avoid prison time, so he faked being crazy. And now he can't get out. Fucking terrifying stuff.
Anyway, needless to say the idea that shrinks were actually pure evil had been rolling around in my head and so I saw this as nothing more than a furthering of my research.
It should also be noted that this musuem and the organization that funds the museum are all branches of the Church of Scientology. So everything I've learned needed to be viewed through a skeptical lens.
Needless to say, The Church of Scientology believes that psychiatrists are nothing more than an evil group of people dedicated to enslaving the world to believe they are defective soley so they can make millions off of our pain. Unfortunately, they may be right.

A few undesputable facts that I learned at the Musuem.
- Benjermin Rush the "father" of modern psychiatry based his entire practice of "medicine" on the belief that mental illness was caused by too much blood in the brain. The cure: remove the blood by any means.
- Pavlov, famous for making dogs drool with the sound of a bell. Was from the widely accepted school that humans were no better than animals who could be trained. To prove this his 6 month old daughter lived in an enlarged climate controlled cage. While he performed non harmful experiments to test that she could be trained like the rats and dogs he had used in his other experiments.
- Eugenics the scientific belief of genetic breeding only the best the poplus has to offer is born of psychiatry. The practice of Eugenics is best seen during WW2..ie. The Holocaust.
- psychiatrists also labeled being black a form of lepercy, and segregation was the only way to keep the population safe. Also created a mental illness for slaves. Symptoms of this illness were a desire to run away from slavery, mouthing off, not wanting to work. The cure: Whipping.
- A Famous shrink in america, drove around in his van the lobotomobile. And offered lobotomies to cure your mental illness. Sometimes performing them right in the van. His style of lobotmy was to stick an ice pick under your eye, move it around a bit scraping the brain until he felt he'd done enough. By the time he was eventually stopped he had done this to over 17,000 people.

Anway the musuem pretty much claims that shrinks are to blame for, the holocaust, slavery, south african apartied, columbine, 911 and alot of other really evil shit.
It's a pretty one sided argument. But they make some very interesting points. And it's hard to argue with the fact that the entire "science" is based on trying to make everyone act "normal". Whatever the fuck that means.
Alot of it is probably shit. But if you got to blame someone.

On the way out I'm trying to let this information sink in. And the cute girl behind the desk who looks like my best friend Janice from when I was 3 wants me to fill out a questionare and give money. I sign one of their many petitions but don't give them my real name because..well they are scientologists. Before I can get duped into giving them any cash. Kevin gives me a call and offers to take me to UCB. Oddly he's only a block away from where I am.

When we get to UCB I'm overwhelmed for a few reasons. One, there is a pretty long line waiting for this comedy show. And I think in my head. What does pH have to do to get that in Chicago.
Then I look right in front of me and sitting outside of the resturant right next to UCB was....
I actually don't know his name. But the fat kid from "the big green and Sandlot. I just looked him up his name is Patrick Renna. It's funny how excited i get by seeing him. He's the first celeb I spot outside of a stuido in LA. Kevin and I shoot the shit in line. Unknown to me there is a very tiny lady standing in line behind me who is using two of those hand crutches to stand. I move around alot when i talk and when Kevin hits me with the punchline of his story (which i cant share here because it is way too personal) I back up and pretty much knock this little lady over. I apologize. She accepts (I'm sure she's used to it) but I make up my mind that I am going to not move and reposition myself like I felt the desire to do. I only wanted to move cause she was hanicapped and i was afraid of getting in her way again. But I wouldn't have moved for anyone else. So i didn't move. Thinking:
"Just treat her like everyone else."
After almost knocking this lady over not once, not twice, but three more times. Kevin grabs me by the shoulders and forcibly moves me. Turns out I was being a dick. Ah well live and learn.
The shows were on a whole pretty awful. Save for the last group who was so good they actually got me to ask about classed at UBC. It reminded me i hadn't seen good improv in a long time. Besides pH i was pretty sure most people had forgotten how ot do it. For the most part I still l think I'm right.
When i get home I make myself two hotdogs and put on the first season of the simpsons. I've found myself checking the personals of craigslist cause i find comfort in knowing other people are also lonely. One girl named Diana, in all caps talks about how her life is falling apart and her family is dying. I send her an email saying she could vent if she wanted too. I feel its the least I could do. She never responds maybe she found someone to talk too. Maybe she killed herself.
I finish the night with a quick read, a shot of jameson and a cig. That makes my total for the day 5 or 6. Still more than I would like. But i did finally learn how to blow SMOKE RINGS.
something ive wanted to know since I was like 5. The combo of book, drink and cig, plus the fact that I was listening to Clare De Lune on repeat made sleep come very easy. Tomorrow will be interesting.