Okay, so I couldn’t think of a decent title today.

Watched a very cool documentary yesterday called Mortified Nation. It’s about this event where people get up on stage and read from their childhood/teenage diaries.

It’s one of those genius simple humanist ideas that make me so happy about the current generation. Us Gen X types would never even think to do this. We are all too sullen and defensive. We’re the generation that took irony into our hearts as our great defense against the world and paid a heavy price in terms of atomization, isolation, and fear of sincerity.

Our kids, thank goodness, are embracing sincerity and emotional connectedness, and I could not be happier about it. The world desperately needs it. We have taken individualism far past its absurd conclusion and it is high time we start realizing that we are not alone, that we are in fact more connected and interdependent than ever before, and that together, we can do anything.

But enough rhapsodizing. Back to the documentary.

What happens when people read the diaries of their youth to an audience is quite magical. For starters, obviously, they are hysterically funny. The pretentiousness and lack of perspective of youth is prime grade A comedy fuel, and hearing these people read them in their own voices makes it even more magic.

They are choosing to reveal themselves like this, and thus they are giving permission to laugh. But they are also giving you permission to relate, and that is the real genius of the project. It gives people a glimpse into other people’s lives in order to show them that no matter who we are or how weird and isolated we thought we were as a younger person, everyone else was going through the exact same thing, and we are actually all more alike than we are different.

That is a basic humanist message, and it is wonderful to see the children of my generation reaching out to one another like this and finding connection on their own.

Because God knows, we can’t teach it to them.

It makes sense that this is the connection generation, of course. They grew up with the Internet in their pockets. They are the generation that is obsessively interconnected with their tightly knit group of friends, something incomprehensible to my generation. Every time they check their email or text a friend, they are strengthening their ties to one another and making community for themselves.

I could not wish for a better next step.

I don’t have any kind of teenage diary. I started one a bunch of times but never developed the habit. I kept my thoughts to myself when I was a teen, which in retrospect was probably a bad thing.

If I had been able to put it all on the Internet like I do now, maybe I would have pierced my sense of isolation and kepts me from becoming so emotionally ingrown.

I did write poetry when I was a teen, which I am sure would be quite hilarious now. One of the performers read out some of his teenage poetry and it was magnificent. A lot of stuff about “the tormentors” and “the head coward” and such. It was a marvelous distillation of teenage rage and pretentiousness. I was in awe, and a little jealous.

I could never take myself seriously enough to be that emo.

But my fave, the guy directly after my own heart, was the dude who created this heavy metal band in his head called LIVE EVIL (hey, that’s a palindrome!) and created posters, tour schedules, magazine articles, and had their whole career plotted out without ever trying to learn an instrument or even asking anyone else to join the band.

But what he DID do was write, get this, 120 songs for his imaginary band. And this was happening in the eighties and he was getting his knowledge about women from Motley Crue, so the songs are all horribly, humiliatingly misogynistic.

And thus hilarious, of course. Of all the performers, I think he showed the most courage because the songs are just awful. Totally politically incorrect. And he was reading the lyrics out loud to an audience which was presumably half women, so I could see him thinking they were going to string him up on the spot.

Instead, they pulled major awesomeness and got him an actual band so that, for just that night, he WAS the lead singer of LIVE EVIL, the rock star he had always wanted to be. A pair of cool shades transformed him from nebbishy little nerdy dude to guy who could totally be from the record label, and he rocked out.

That is pure fucking gold, there.

I should mention the nature of the house band. The producer and creator of the event decided it needed a band, so what he did was get together people to play the instruments they were forced to learn as a child, but to play the music they wish they had been allowed to play back then.

That fits perfectly with the nature of the event. I love it.

There are Mortified events all over the world now, because that is just way too good an idea to stay in one place. I would love to attend one. They seem like totally my kind of scene.

But being the ham that I am, I would be kind of jealous of the performers because I don’t have a diary or poetry or atrocious heavy metal lyrics to share. I would want to be the person on the stage being candid and hilarious.

That’s just me though. Part of me is a frustrated stand-up comedian. I have loved performing every time I have done it, and what the heck, I am a funny guy.

Speaking of stand up, I am going to Stand Up For Mental Health tonight to watch the comedy debut of my friend Ray Seredin. It’s an event that encourages people with mental health issues to learn to do standup as a way to build confidence.

Truth be told, it is something I am kind of interested in doing myself. So I have multiple motives to attend.

Well, that’s all for me for today, folks. Talk to you tomorrow.

I did something I am very proud of tonight, something that would be utterly mundane and un-noteworthy to a mentally healthy person but for me marks real progress.

I ordered $30 worth of Chinese food. Not because I had to, not because I was sharing it with someone, not because I was rewarding myself for anything in particular, not because it was some sort of special occasion.

Just because I wanted to. Because I felt like it. Because I didn’t feel like having another blah meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, junk food, and fruit tonight. I wanted something more fun. So I ordered it, and I got it.

That is a big breakthrough for me. I have spent so long either having no cash of my own (horrible) or not having any I could spare on spur of the moment things (not as bad, but bad) that I can’t remember a time when I could want something and just get it. Just like that. Just because I wanted it.

As a result of such long term deprivation, I have led a very cloistered kind of life. Not just because of my social anxiety keeping me housebound, but because I had a life with very little in the way of physical pleasures.

Like a monk in a cell, I got by with the bare minimum of earthly pleasures and instead dedicated myself to the pursuit of the higher pleasures of the mind and the spirit.

After all, that’s all the Internet can provide.

And the thing about such a cramped little life is that if you are in that tiny little box long enough, it becomes very difficult to adjust to a bigger box.

You’re like an animal who has been caged for so long that even if you give it a much bigger cage, for a long time it just sort of sits there and blinks because it has long since forgotten that anything but that tiny cage was even possible. Their universe shrank to the size of that cage, and this new, bigger world is hard for them to grasp.

So that’s me, all cramped up from keeping myself in a tiny little cage for so long. Part of me, I suppose, is afraid of this brave new financial world. So many possibilities! Option paralysis. And what if I choose the wrong thing? Then I will get hurt! Better to make no choice at all and just sit here like a lump.

But also, I think part of me is afraid to truly believe that I can, sometimes, have what I want now. I can afford things. Not everything has to be planned out down to the last penny (woops, nickel) in order to make sure I make it through the month without going totally broke.

I started today with $500 in my pocket. That has to last me five weeks. (A five week month, yay. ) That means I have $100/week for spending cash. Of which I have spent $30, which means I have $70 to last me till next Wednesday.

For me, that is an absurd amount of money. I will end up spending, at most, $40 of it. So I am doing just fine. My little foray into spontaneity did not sink my financial ship or cause my world to explode into rack and ruin around me.

On top of all that, I have $200 just waiting on my secured Visa to be spent on keen stuff to improve my life. I have been working on a little shopping list for a couple of days now. Here is what I have on it so far :

Tablet to RCA cord. By this, I mean a USB cord to connect my tablet to the RCA inputs of our entertainment system so we have Internet on the big TV again. Not sure what use we will have for it, but it’s still good to have.

Summer weight jacket. I have a truly great leather jacket, but it is way too warm for summer use. I need something more like a windbreaker for use on summer nights.

Wifi signal booster. Because I am SO FUCKING TIRED of the crappy WiFi reception in my room, always cutting in and out. I am determined to find a solution to that, even if it means boosting the signal so hard the people on the ISS can use my Internets.

Microphone(s) for podcasting (lapel mics?). I am still thinking of putting together a crazy wacky podcast in the spirit of Frantic Times, the show that gave The Frantics their start on CBC radio. Skit comedy, but all audio. I am pretty sure I can write stuff like that or modify existing stuff, and at the moment. I am thinking some decent lapel mics for me and my potential cohorts would be the best way to go for audio recording without a lot of technical complications.

I am sure there is a bunch of stuff I want or need that I am forgetting, which is the exact reason I am keeping a list.

Oh, and my tale of tonight’s adventures would not be complete without telling you of the twenty minute fucking saga of getting my food actually delivered.

For some reason, delivery people around here are unfamiliar with the idea of an apartment complex, so whenever I order in, I end up getting this phone call from the deliverer saying they are at my address but they can’t find my apartment.

That is because they are out on Francis street trying to find my place in the one building of this complex that is actually on Francis road. The rest of the buildings are only accessible if you go down this little road here :

Click here to see where I live!

And delivery people can’t get this, which is understandable I suppose, but the problem is I can never seem to describe it to them in a way they understand.

I am very skilled with the English language, but this is Richmond, so…. they are not.

So it took twenty frustrating (and hungry!) minutes of telling the delivery guy that he was at the wrong door again before I got my goddamned food tonight.

It’s good that I have a large reserve of patience and tolerance, otherwise I would have snapped at the guy. But hey, this was no more fun for him than it was for me.

Oh, and get this… the place I ordered from (the Wing Kee) offers free delivery…. but added a $4 “tip” for the driver to my bill. Next time I order from them, I will ask them if I still get the food if I don’t pay this “tip”.

If the answer is “no”, then guess what, that’s a fucking delivery fee and that means you do not, in fact, offer free delivery.

Needless to say, I didn’t tip the driver over and above what had already been tacked on to my bill. Four bucks is plenty for a simple delivery like mine. The fact that I had to practically roll a red carpet up to my door for him to find it did not exactly make me feel extra generous either.

So that was stress I didn’t need. But the food was good, other than a bit of noodle getting stuck between my teeth so hard it took both hands to get it out.

I was gonna talk about this awesome documentary I watched, but that will have to wait. I have babbled on about Chinese food and shopping plans for way too long.

Seeya tomorrow, all you nice people!