gotta_sleep_sleep_sleep johnny west Well, it's 3:03 a.m. I could stay up forever and keep blathering, but I gotta get some sleep. G'night nocturnal. G'night mikey. G'night dB, cuz you're already gone. G'night florescent light, because your brain stays awake longer than mine. G'night unhinged, wherever you are. G'night everybody. And remember: Never...nnnnnnnaaaa.....ssssssshit.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....... 010312 ... nocturnal good night johnny 010312 ... mikey night bro 010312 ... unhinged night johnny sleep tight i was somewhere above kansas talking to mikey 010312 ... johnny west And now it's time for me to hit the sack again. 3:11. God, I spend way too much time on blather! So - goodnight to stupidpunkgirl, who may or may not want to marry me; goodnight to nocturnal, who makes crazy feel even better; goodnight to mikey who, if I do marry stupidpunkgirl, has to be my best man...and dB...and unhinged...and whoever else cares...or doesn't care. Once again, GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY. I love blathing with you all. 010313 ... twiggie everytime i see this i don't read it as "gotta sleep sleep sleep" but rather, "gotta sleep gotta sleep" why? 010313 ... nocturnal probably because your mind is inherently symmetric. I know lots of people who can't stand asymmetry, you are probably one of those people. just one possibility. 010313 ... johnny west I think some things are meant to be misread. Yesterday, a quick glance at the tag on a suit coat revealed the word "bitches". I thought: "There's a name you don't see on a tag everyday!" But, upon closer inspection, the word became "britches". The eyes are like marbles...rollin' on the floor...or sittin' in a shoebox. 010313 ... johnny west I'm shovin' off a little early tonight (2:34). Gotta break the cycle, y'know. So... Goodnight to everyone. Since I'm hopelessly addicted to blather, I'll see all of you tomorrow...come Denzel or a trash compacter. Sweet dreams. 010313 ... johnny west Something's wrong with me...I'm going to bed now, and it's only one o'clock in the morning. I guess that's what happens when you stay up until six in the morning and get up at noon. :::jw's brain yawns::: Well, goodnight everybody. Again. Long may you blather. 010314 ... nocturnal nighty night kids. I've just been sittin here at my computer all night, advising friends in crisis (no idea why, but they always seem to come to me) and just fucking around in general. love y'all, well, most of you anyway. nocturnal here signing off at 4:15am 010327 ... nocturnal sleepy yes, yes I must. I have finals to study for and lots of lost sleep to make up for. I am hopefully going to sleep now to dream about....? ooh, I'm getting excited just thinking about it. 010507 ... johnny west Fuck you, sleep. You double-edged whore. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! Okay. Glad we got that out of the way. We're on sleeping terms again. You do what I tell you to, and you sure as hell better keep me functioning. Otherwise...well, that wouldn't be all that bad, would it? Yum. 010722 ... Aylee I don't see why humans bother with sleep. They're so much cooler without it! 010823 ... nocturnal now that it's just about 6 in the fucking morning, I guess it's time for me to go nighty night. I was exhausted all goddamn day and then at 3am when I decided to go to bed after I finished watching the little mermaid, I was wide awake. so after a few hours of trying unsuccessfully to convince myself through different means that I was indeed tired and was going to fall asleep, I said fuck everything and took unisom. that stuff is such a blessing. I'm actually kinda tired now. so good night, I gotta sleep sleep sleep. 011111 ... raze tonight i've been trawling through old blathes i haven't read in many years. so many memories. some things i'd forgotten altogether. some of it makes me smile. some of it makes me nostalgic. and some of it makes me want to go back in time and give myself a good smack upside the head. now i find myself here, where i was more than eleven years ago. using my actual name, sitting at my computer in awe of this place, wanting to make friends with everyone, all while not really knowing who the hell i was or where i was going. saying goodnight to some people i'd just started interacting with. forming images of them in my head. feeling like they were just barely out of reach, and we weren't so far away from one another. apparently i had sleep problems even then. the more things change... it's a lot quieter now, both here and on blue. i have no idea how many people read or lurk without saying anything (i've fallen into that category myself more than a few times), but the active blather population has noticeably dwindled over the last little while. i don't think that's necessarily a good thing, or a bad thing. it's just a thing. people change. things change. blather changes. some make their mark and then move on. others decide they're in it for the long haul. i decided a while back that none of us really found blather by accident. not really. blather found us. i miss some of my old friends. and i think, though i may not have forged the deep connections with some of them that i feel i have with a handful of 'skites now, i can safely say they really were friends. dB. i wonder how he's doing. i think we could have had some interesting conversations over the past decade or so if we'd kept in touch, about life, and music, and beer. florescent light, who let me know she cared in such a beautiful, unexpected, open-hearted way, it would have made me weep if i'd been able. i still wish i could hug her for that moment of understanding. megan, whose correspondence i lost when the free email account i was using unceremoniously deleted all of my emails. aimee, who made me blush when she called me her "movie star". kingsuperspecial, and paste!, and black-dyed gel product, who were my partners in mayhem on blue when i adopted the "baby satan" pseudonym. i miss those guys like hell. they inspired me to levels of silliness i still have a difficult time believing i was ever capable of. and there are people i miss who i never communicated with at all, but i felt i knew then, because of how much they shared of themselves. i miss reading their words. i still wonder every once in a while about a handful of people who reached out to me while hiding behind anonymity, only to turn to dust when i dropped my own mask and tried to grab onto their outstretched limbs. this used to really bother me. i felt it was the coward's way of reaching out. nothing is on the line that way, and you never have to reveal anything of yourself. "i'm here," you say, "but i'm not stepping out of the shadows. you're not alone. but you're on your own." it was difficult to draw much comfort from that at the time. now there's just the occasional pang of curiosity, wondering, "who were they, and what was it that moved them to tell me they were listening?" i'll probably never know, and maybe that's as it should be. in some ways, i'm so different from the person i was eleven years ago, it's almost frightening. in other ways, i haven't changed much at all. and if someone had suggested to me that i would still be here all this time later, i'm not sure i would have believed them. i never felt i contributed nearly as much of worth as some of the blather heavyweights did. sometimes i questioned my value as a blatherskite. but i always came back in the end. blue stopped feeling like home for me long ago, but not this place. i almost feel like i should drop the last bit of pretense left and go back to using my proper name. almost. i don't think i can think of a new name that makes sense or feels appropriate. and i think i've outgrown this one. but i also think going back to simply being "johnny west" would feel a little awkward. who am i now? what do i call myself? i'll figure it out at some point. those are thoughts for another day. for now, there's a need to sleep in the shag of his stomach slide around his eye with your love in tow if he heads this way don't you say hello get out of the way they'll turn the buffalo they'll turn the buffalo 121213 ... past . 121214 ... PeeT .. 121214 ... sheryl maybe one day we can sleep somewhere I don't know where a hotel with a waterbed, a tent in the sand, on a boat, on a fallen tree branch on a grassy mound next to an ant hill, on a green bench but it has to be at night after we've had some coffee (do you drink coffee?) maybe even some jagermeister (do you drink jagermeister?) and sparkles there have to be sparkles somewhere, everywhere and you can go to sleep and I will hold you (on a green bench, maybe with some apples or an apple tree) in the blue (there may be clouds, but all I'll see are stars) my hand on your your face as the sun sets and you will sleep calmly through the night even if it is just once you will I promise 121215 ... raze two years and five months. that's how long it's been since those sleep demons were vanquished once and for all. after so many years spent feeling like a vampire with a day pass, it's still a surprise sometimes to wake up in the morning with a mind that's clear and a body that doesn't seem to belong to someone else. but it's a nice way to be surprised. feels like i got my life back. (and i still wish i could hug you, sheryl.) 210720 ... kerry i've gotta get enough sleep or else i'm in deep eventually way deep shit it accumulates like dust which in the house i often don't really mind or maybe it's just that it's a losing battle but when you think about it dust is a lot of piled up skin cells plus some other bug stuff in there to add some kick so it can't get too dusty in here is my point. 210830 ... unhinged but the city has had intermittent overnight road construction on the busy road i live on all summer, started up again last night. seems like they are never gonna finish this shit as if i wasn't already in a bad mood 210831 what's it to you? who go blather from