«Quinto de Mayo»

05-05-2309

I have to go out tonight. I have to celebrate. I have to do something.

I’ve wasted all the other holidays so far. New years day was a rather dry occasion if I recall, as was the Titanian new year for that matter. I wasn’t too worried about participating in Lent, so Fat Tuesday slipped right by without me noticing. I tasted no green beer on St. Patty’s day, or the following day which happened to be my 22nd birthday–you know, that’s the one you’re supposed to spend trashed at the slots of Copernicus for half a week. And though the 20th of April is more of a smoking holiday, I still didn’t even do much of that. It’s been a kind of boring year as of yet.

You know, I’m not a huge partier or anything, but I always enjoy having a good excuse to get wasted. I don’t know why I like the novelty of holidays so much though, something about community I guess. Like a a church service, but one held once a month so you don’t start getting sick of the people you see every time. I like seasonal celebrations too, since there’s supposedly four of those, though you wouldn’t notice here. They say there’s an excuse to drink for every day of the year though.

Today is the annual Martian reason to have a raucous BBQ. Almost exactly like Earth’s Fourth of July celebrations of independence from Ganymede, Mars salutes their ancestor’s throwing off the reins of Io on this day. Identical in all regards now that I think about it, I’m sure they even shoot off fireworks or light something tonight.

Like most foreign holidays, it’s just been incorporated into the canon of Earthling excuses to booze. I can remember back home even, kids in school always came back from the weekend with stories about an event I was only vaguely aware of. It’s a little different here though, where it actually happened–everyone celebrates it, even the Marslings.

Maybe it’s to honor our forefathers. Perhaps we need reasons outside of our approval to drink. Either way, there’s a special at the bar you’d be crazy not to take advantage of.

«Status Update»

02-26-2308

I really don’t know how to feel about virtual social networks anymore. At first it was nice to create an avatar to help define your online persona, and thus affect how your real identity is perceived by other members. But the programs have degenerated to shoutboxes or personal forums, digital walls for people to leave messages on, and I think extreme egotism might be to blame. See, once you’re given unlimited digital influence you must inevitably fall into an egocentric mindset. It’s only a matter of time before an empowered individual begins to believe that their simple existence is significant.

These social applications allow you to keep your friends, or anyone else stuck in your network, involuntarily abreast of your routine and daily experiences. It’s not uncommon for a person to manage profiles on multiple networks, as each will serve a different function. For instance, one general network may be great for keeping in touch with old friends and classmates, while another very similar one may help you meet new friends. You could have an account for artwork and or another for video, an even different writing or a music profile to show off your playlist, too. There are even systems that let you see which sites other members view and enjoy most, or browse someone else’s collection of bookmarks. But most importantly, they exist for you to whore yourself about for personal gain.

No matter what it is you‘re doing, whether you’re using a site to fish for positive feedback on poorly doctored pics or showing off feeble attempts at creating a piece of art or something worth reading, you’re undeniably using the internet as a self-esteem booster. You’re trying to turn nothing into something that validates your being, trolling for others who will feed your ego, others somehow even more irrelevant than you. A page of txt or script, or a handful of jpegs that you shit out because you didn’t have anything better to do with your time, raping the eye sockets of everyone you could force them upon. Maybe you just leave notes and cute animations on other people’s walls, even ones you don’t know, and encourage them to respond, just to see a new comment alert the next time you log in.

Well now it gets even worse. They’ve just made these social super-applications, ones that extend their tendrils to phone and pda systems, and have the ability of controlling your profiles on other networks. From your handset, button, touchi or even texti you can receive notice from or transmit updates to the nets from anywhere you can get signal out. You can begin to complain about your day, or make entertainment and cooking suggestions, or unleash a senseless onslaught of spam, or whatever it is that you do when you get home to your computer — before you even get home to your computer. A collection of blinks from the ephemeral present, already passing. Not only will it update your mood on this profile, but on each and every profile to which you grant it access. It will sicken you when you realize what a useful tool this could be.

To be honest, I have no idea what to use it for. Really, the novelty of being able to announce to everyone that I got a cup of coffee before I even swipe fades out fast. No, instead I feel the whole idea of a two-sentence update defeats all progress. Anything worth doing or saying can’t fit into 160 characters. No matter how hard we try, we always need more space to say what we need. And frankly I feel like it’s impossible to present my given current state in a serious manner when everyone else around here is just cheering any trivial victory they can express in a witty third person. So since I have this communicative exchange (if it can even be considered an exchange) I feel obliged to inform you with more than two lines.

I’m ok. I’m not well or great. Not bad or fucking terrible, either. Ok is also known as not so great or fine, and can be used in place of going into a long story filled with a bit of either side before finally explaining why the combination brings me to the middle… but I assure you I’m just doing ok.

Damn it, that’s just retardedly brief. I should do it right and explain from the top.

The  year is 2309, today is the fifth of March and it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s mostly sunny and 71 degrees outside, a high for this week but not uncommon this early in the year. Tonight Phobos will be a waxing crescent and Deimos, as full as it ever looks, will actually rise at about the same time as his bigger brother.  They are inconsistent and unreliable, but twice or so every week they’ll ride in together from the western horizon to strike fear and terror, respectively.

I am a young Earthling male of Ganymedean descent; fair skin, dark hair and hazel eyes. I’m not first-gen or anything though. More like fourth or fifth so I don’t have pointy ears like most Jovians and — since my family doesn’t have anything else exotic anywhere along the line — I lack antennae, whiskers and an accent. I’ll turn 22 in less than a month, and have only lived on Mars for two-and-a-half years now. I didn’t have any family out here, spare a cousin near Alba Patera who I haven’t seen since before I even moved out here. Everyone else was on Earth, everyone I knew and loved.

I came to be closer to a girl I was dating, but wonderful as that was, it only lasted about a year after I arrived. It used to mean more to me before I realized I had always wanted to come here on my own, and did so to fulfill some sort of sordid childhood fantasy of paradise, using her as an excuse to get closer to Mars. I grew up in the suburbs of Earth’s capital, so I’m even more accustomed to the Olympus County and Novus Angelicas lifestyle than most other Earthlings. I am more familiar with wealth, narcissism, and decadence in general, than most of us Earthlings who don’t have nice weather year round, palm trees and picturesque sunsets consistently.  I know I’m going to need to move up the coast or to Elysium to really use Mars to its full potential, but here isn’t a bad place to start trying to carry out my dream.

I’m still…uh..getting there though….to that some important thing I’m… trying to achieve, that you would call my ambition or goal. I don’t have a job and the semesters I do go to school I attend very few hours, leaving a lot of free time during which I don’t accomplish much, reading constantly and watching a lot of movies these days. I still don’t have my crawler legalized so I hang out with Allan and his girlfriend Nymh most of the time. I usually have to use his 4Door to chauffer him to and fro, so that I have a vehicle to drive at my leisure. Tight as our money is and busy as Dune and Allan’s schedules have been with their classes, our band hasn’t really had enough opportunity to practice, barely keeping up to our once-a-week routine.

Me and Allan have at least been keeping our voices sharp with his father and uncle’s band. We’ll catch them twice a week and sing as they play covers so they can just focus on their instruments. Old hits from when they were our age, you know, electric guitars and lots of synthesizers; classic rock. His dad records it all and then usually has a semi-mastered rendering on disc for us in the morning. We get to laugh at the mistakes everyone makes, as well as the customary improvisation and ad lib. But mostly we try to improve our voices, usually listening to it in sequential blocks until we’re done with an entire evening.

Any time except Thursday I think. That’s when we carry out the one job we both still have, acting as couriers for his dad. We deliver hard copy and discs of photo shoots they do for a children’s talent agency half an hour south, but still in OC. For some reason that day we always try to find something different to listen to, since when I think about looking for something new in the folder I always picture the red desert passing outside the window.

Hmm, I seem to have deviated drastically from any important information I could have imparted with this…or maybe I was just too basic. Nah, that was just pointless, I should just use one of the million tricks you use when you can’t think of something to say in your headline. Like, I could talk about the video game I’m playing, or the book I’m reading, or the show I’m watching, but I just don’t feel right name-dropping. So I can’t really list what albums I’m listening to, or what movies I’m downloading at the moment. I could write a deeply cryptic message based off a corny inside joke that no one who actually checks my status would understand, but that’s about the lamest thing to do on one of these things. Almost as lame as spiteful messages to a loved or hated one in your banner that instigate an immature flame war.

The only thing left is to describe exactly what I’m doing. Which is currently passing around a pipe in a shopping center parking lot on Allan’s campus, smoking in his car before he has to return to class. Our friend Mistri is playing on the radio, a popular local channel operated by this university’s station. Her band recently assembled after she had been playing solo under its moniker for years, and it’s so encouraging to see someone we know making it, even if it just points out what we still need to accomplish. This bowl will be through before the song ends and I’ll be getting Allan back in time for the last two thirds of his class.

I will probably spend that time waiting for him, this glowing touch-screen keeping me occupied in another parking lot somewhere between here and his home. Then we’ll meet up with Nymh and embark upon a requisite stony adventure. That will end when she has to return home to be a mother again, and since it’s not a jam night, Allan and I will retire to his home to smoke more and watch old 2D sci-fi’s on the plasma screen downstairs.

Instead of going on about all of this for a few pages, I think I may just come back and post my favorite cheesy line from one of the movies instead.

«…One Year Ago…»

«Sleeping on the Floor»

02-10-2309

     I can’t tell you how much it thrills me to be able to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight. For the past 7 weeks I’ve been making nests of various piles of blankets and sleeping bags, ever since I got kicked out of my last apartment. In almost two months I’ve jumped at every chance I’ve gotten just to lay down on someone’s bed and prayed I could get a couch wherever I crashed. Even when I went home to Earth, I had to sleep on the floor of my old room cause my brother commandeered my bed after my cat pissed on his. I was too amused by the situation to care at the time.

     All that time tossing on unsporting floorboards and thin carpet just reminded me of when I first moved to Mars and had no where to stay but Linda’s house. Hell, even after I moved into my first apartment with Pashan, where I just had that broken futon, I still spent almost every night sleeping on the ground in my girlfriend’s bedroom. Even this past summer I spent a lot of time on Allan‘s floor because I still lived half an hour away from my life. But now that’s all over.

     Yes, now I am coming to you from my new apartment on the other side of Costa Mensa. I may have mentioned a complex I looked up, last year while I was first trying to move, called Villa Venusia. If not, it’s a beautifully spacious gated community with an artificial lake that runs through the entire complex. Even in between the rows of buildings where walkways and driveways would belong, deceptively shallow streams and tributaries meander about, trickling over boulders or spewing with fountains. The fortunate residents that live within the inner units even have balconies that rest on the water where one could sit on the edge and dangle your toes if you so chose.

     I may not be that fortunate, but I’m still lucky I got the place I did. It’s a small 2-Bedroom on the second story of one of the units in the back, but far from a shabby residence. I found the room online through one of those sketchy classified services, so I was expecting the worst when it came to the roommate I picked. It turned out for the best, thankfully.

     Witt is a nice Ganymedean woman and we share a few things in common, including a birth sign and roots in Keret, where she grew up and where my father‘s family is from. Although, there is definitely a generation gap pervading our conversations, though deep and insightful, what with her being my own mother’s age. She does like to drag me into these long talks as I’m trying to get back to my room or out the front door, but I don’t mind cause sometimes I do actually want to respond, and any other time her busy schedule keeps her out of the house.

     It only took me a couple days to get all my stuff from Manna and Justene’s garage up to my room and unpacked, and now I’m surrounded by the familiar knickknacks and images from parts of the Solar system I’ve never even been. My portable workstation seems relieved to be unpacked and has been successfully integrated into it’s new homesphere–no need to buccaneer my way into a random unsecured network. I remain seated at it most of the day and night since I don’t have a teli to keep me inebriated, but sometimes when my back is hurting from being hunched over a keyboard and computer screen, I take a few minutes to thumb through one of my books or pluck a few chords on my guitar.

     Actually, now that I mention it, I’ve been on the nets all day researching tourism on Jupiter and Saturn, instead of looking for a job to pay for such a holiday. My back is murdering me and I feel like I’m starting to get sick, so I’m gonna go turn in for the night and lay down on a fluffy, inviting mattress.

«Caravans to Cuffed Hands»

09-19-2308

     It was supposed to be our last hurrah. It was supposed to be the last great adventure before the summer came crashing to an end. It was supposed to be a memorable experience for all.

«←→»

     When I regain consciousness I’m handcuffed to a chair in a foreign concrete corridor. I’m halfway through reciting my address to a grizzled uniform disinterestedly taking my words down on his requisite paperwork.

     “It was pretty sly of you trying to sneak by me wearing a different top,” the hardened old officer snarls sarcastically, “but you didn’t fool me for a second. You should thank your friends for bringing you back in so you could go to jail,” he finished with palpable scorn before looking back to his clipboard. At the mention of this I realize I wasn’t wearing half of my clothes anymore. Suddenly I’m wearing a collared shirt under a read Europan sweater. I begin to feel the gravity of the situation, my hands bound behind my back by a plastic band, seated in an unfamiliar place with the contents of my pockets strewn across a folding table. It’s only now that I start to wonder what happened to the past few hours, so I try to piece it together as I casually dispense personal information to the badge with a slur.

     We were going down to Sanctus Da Vinci for a two day festival-style concert so we could celebrate the end of summer. Next week my best Martian friend, Allan, would begin school at his new university. He somehow convinced our Saturnian friend and fellow bandmate, Dune, and myself to spend what little money we had left on tickets. At the time, we thought that was an awful price to pay.

     The night before we would set out, Matt and I made ourselves a part of a different adventure in the name of rock and roll. After visiting a bar, named after an Earth city renowned for its music scene, we tagged along with the friends whom we came to see, and the other two bands they just played with, to an after party. The caravan left Costa Mensa heading for the City of Olympus. A bustling suburb between NA and Fender that unwitingly awaited the trail of crawlers we joined.

     Led by our friends’ tour van, the party arrived at 2 AM and didn’t die until 4. It wasn’t your typical party; the loud music and alcohol is requisite. But this crowd seemed to be more concerned with having a good conversation than see how many beers they could chug. At some point, after the Uranian comedy duo was done playing on the wall-mounted  teli, Ganymedean techno began blasting and everyone began to dance. Whatever dismay I had suffered earlier in the eve had dissolved completely from my memory, maybe taken by the sweat now soaking my hair and clothes. Through some irony, the cops would put an end to the fun this evening, prompting our departure back to my home to catch what little rest we could before the real trip began.

     As to be expected, we woke up late. With no time to shower and properly prepare ourselves for the coming day, we rushed down 4 freeways to meet Dune where he was waiting at Allan’s house by himself. The Saturnian obviously had enough forethought the night before to know this was going to be a grueling journey, otherwise he would have answered our calls when we begged him come to the show.  Originally wanting to be parking in Sanctus Da Vinci at 2 PM, our show didn’t get on the road until 4. I kept reassuring them we’d be there in time for the first band, that it only took two hours to get there. I was wrong, but of course I was, I’d never been to Da Vinci before. Once I’d been to Oceanside with my only other Martian friend, Brick, the halfway point from OC to SDV, and was foolishly miscalculating our ETA by thinking it was much closer.

     An hour into the first set we were only checking into the hotel. It was at this exact moment that Allan realized he left his ID and his charge cards at the bar the night before. I slapped my forehead, Dune sighed and swiped his card, warning knee-breakings if he has to pay for damages to the room. After quickly dropping off our bags in a dinky hotel room, which looks like every dinky hotel room, we began running to find a bus.

     The first night of the show we didn’t even worry about chemical enhancement, we were just stoked to finally be there and listening to so much great music. The second day gave us some time to prepare before the music began to play. Since Allan didn’t have his ID he couldn’t gain access to the beer gardens to drink during the concert, we had to come up with a creative way to get fucked up. We never did come up with a better way, and didn’t want to risk entering the premises with substances illegal to carry, so we just drank in the car instead. A six pack and half a bottle of rum passed before we felt ready to let the event commence. The day’s motto was ‘We gotta get drunk, right?’, after all.

     The plan worked flawlessly at first, as most do. And as most plans involving alcohol do, it would slowly begin to unravel. Things really began to fall apart when Dune found a twenty dollar bill on the ground. This twenty would have to be spent, on booze and quickly, god damn it! The forgetful Martian waited outside impatiently as the two people who didn’t leave their ID’s at home got to enter the magical land of beer. It actually wasn’t that enchanted on the inside, discarded plastic cups in pools of strange colored liquids carpeted the way to the ticket stand. For 10 bucks you get seven 2oz samples and make you finish each before you can receive another, making it impossible to sneak any back out. This wasn’t arguable though, it just meant more beer for the two of us. More beer we’d have to finish quicker since we couldn’t it enjoy it slowly while watching the next band play, so we chugged and left the gardens a little more difficultly than we’d entered.

     At an indiscernible period of time before I left the beer garden a second time, I blacked out. Not to be confused with passing out, no I was still active as ever, the lights were definitely on but no one was home. My body continued to stumble aimlessly long enough to leave me with plenty of bruises when I woke up, but that the only part of the story I could decipher when ownership was returned to me. Everything else had to be supplied by the first hand accounts of my friends.

     I was told that on the way out to the car, the last time we needed to refuel, I was into my badass habits of jumping off or almost breaking everything between me and my destination–a typical sight when I’m not behind my own wheel. At least my body knew it was too drunk, it didn’t even take a sip of that last round of rum as it went around the back seat. The runaway train even knew well enough to insist it stay in the car, it couldn’t manage to chew what I had already bit off. But the powers of coercion work well when I’m not quite up to bat, and it would be dragged back in through the gates.

     Or at least they tried to. Some moments later Dune and Allan would realize they were a person short, walk out and find my body laying on my back somewhere down the street from the entrance. If I had been there I would have told them I had been given a warning and wasn’t allowed back in at all. If I had been there I wouldn’t have let them make me throw up and change my clothes. If I hadn’t checked out early I would’ve helped my body beg them to let both of us (me and my body, that is) stay behind.

     The next time Allan would lose sight of me, he wouldn’t find me until my hands were already bound in rings of some sort of silver-plated steel. I wouldn’t actually meet the officer until later in the evening, but in the meantime he was busy trying to get my body out of the concert and away from my friends in the most efficient manner possible.

     “Just tell us where you’re taking him,” the Martian pleaded in desperation, failing to reach any human emotion in the cop.

     “Don’t worry about him, go watch your band,” he would reply with a scorn I’d later learn is just his natural tone.

     Which brings me back to my present restrained self. I’m in complete control of my body now, though limited to the range of motion of a bobble-head doll at the moment. I’m sure if I tried to form a sentence the words would be there before the body could catch up, but instead I’m giving the officer my telephone number and former addresses so he can check my background, requiring more accuracy than I can muster.

     Last time that I come to Sanctus Da Vinci.