the timboucher experience

Seeing as Bret decided to up the ante, and Mike has finally jumped on-board, and that Doug’s was so good, I thought I’d step back on the dancefloor and show everybody “what’s up”… Here’s my original entry. But seriously, I’m hard-pressed to think of better times that I’ve had reading these guys sites than when they did their 100 things list - um… 81 in Mike’s case Zing!

1. I really don’t ever want to have a job again. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think I can pull it off. I know every slacker asshole thinks they can pull this off, but I’ve done it for a year now. And even when I had jobs, I didn’t really have them.
2. In fact, I’ve really never applied myself to my fullest extent at any job or other similar official endeavor. I find it easy to just coast through things.
3. Actually, that’s not true. I worked my ass off my freshman year of art school. My sophomore year though that all turned around.
4. Then I started working really hard on my own stuff, with the now-defunct Holy Robot site.
5. Since then though, this website is probably the only thing that I have ever really wholeheartedly devoted myself to. I mean, relentlessly. I work at this thing like there’s no fucking tomorrow. I’ve never taken anything so seriously as this before.
6. I was wrestling the past few days with whether I should actually try and join the workforce again though, move back to Baltimore/DC and knuckle down for a year and make some money.
7. But then I remembered that I don’t want to do that at all. As Bret once told me, I’m “living the dream” and can’t just give up on it.
8. When you have really esoteric intangible goals like me though, it’s sometimes super hard to stick to them, because all kinds of forces want you to settle down into a normal life. Not maliciously, but because that’s what people understand, and people can’t penetrate to the heart of mysterious foolish quests.
9. My brother recently told me that he has never once seen me mad. Then I punched him in the face.
10. Just kidding about the punching. But he did tell me that. I informed him that he was full of shit and that I get mad all the time and it’s really weird to me that he can’t see it. I wonder if other people I know claim to have never seen me mad.
11. I guess I do tend to hold my cards pretty close to my chest though. But I don’t think I’m like doing it in a way that I’m hiding anything. I’m just kind of private in that way.
12. A girl I know recently told me that I was “mysterious” which is awesome because I always wanted to be mysterious, but had no idea how to do that.
13. Most of these I think are total crap, but I’ve had girls say that I look like the following celebrities: Toby McGuire, John Mayer, Vince Vaughan, Tim Robbins & Joaquin Phoenix.
14. Actually, some of those I can sort of see, although I hate when people say other people look like celebrities. It’s fucking annoying. A friend and I recently decided though that if somebody had to play me in a Hollywood movie, Joaquin Phoenix would be probably the most appropriate choice. Although I’m open to other suggestions.
15. I’m really proud because my life is becoming more and more like a movie or comic book. Today somebody emailed me saying they had “evidence” of a 4,000 year old site of human sacrifices in Ireland. I told them I would talk to an old friend who is in Bolivia doing doctoral work in archaeology to see if he has any connections.
16. See, if I got a real job and came back to reality, I wouldn’t be able to say crazy shit like that anymore. Or at least, not as much.
17. Whatever I occupy myself with generally takes up all my mental energy (though this is not the same as effort - #2 above). I’ve found that this is just inevitable. This is another reason why I don’t want a job (or at least a crap job), because then I will spend all my time thinking about that instead of thinking about my current nonsense.
18. Conversely, it might do me some good to think about other things for a change. But I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.
19. I actually know the history of the term devil’s advocate. It’s pretty cool.
20. I’m not gonna be shy about it: I have an incredible memory. Writing and researching all the time on my site has only made it even better. It’s kind of crazy actually. I wouldn’t call it photographic, but one time in highschool I read through an entire huge chapter in an American history textbook 30 minutes before the test and then aced it.
21. I could brag about being smart all day, but nobody wants to hear that. Anyway, it’s the sort of thing where like you can’t really credit yourself for it. Like I didn’t make myself smart, so who the hell cares. I think it’s much more important what you decide to do with it. Like do you go and build bombs or crack codes for the government? If you do, then fuck you.
22. Every once in a while, I worry that my rather public anti-government outbursts on my website will land me in trouble, or at least on a “hassle this bitch” list at the airport. I’ve yet to fly though and test this out.
23. I’m thinking that instead of getting a job, maybe I’ll just go chill on the west coast in a month or two instead. People seem much more inclined to supporting my “fuck all this noise” attitude, and maybe the sunlight and ocean air would do me good.
24. Volleyball is the only sport that I’m actually kind of good at.
25. My dad didn’t raise us to play or know anything about sports, which is a really annoying thing to do to a male. It instantly disqualified me from understanding all kinds of implicit things growing up.
26. If and when there is a draft so that we can invade Iran and a bunch of other countries, I’m thinking about applying to become a Unitarian minister. I won’t do it otherwise though, or if I’m too old to be drafted at the time. It’s strictly for legitimate draft-dodging, and I think I’d actually be a good minister, at least for Unitarians, because they like all kinds of crazy religious shit like me.
27. I also think I would be a good psychologist, and have been told that a lot of times. Especially now that I’m realizing that there’s such a thing as being insightful, but also being supportive. I had a problem with that for a while.
28. I really hate when people try to ask me what music I like. People I don’t know, I mean, because they just want to be able to use it as a tool to like figure out where I stand or something. Like I understand, but I just find it very annoying. I can deal with talking about people I know about music though, because that’s almost always part of the bonds of being friends with somebody though, is that we’ve shared or bonded over music. I don’t know if that contradicts the first part of this and I don’t care.
29. I have almost no patience for people who are overly intellectual, or who are really pretentious about art, or who are totally spaced out hippy New Agers. Of the three, I like New Agers the best though.
30. I used to listen to Phish and Dave Matthews and Rusted Root and all kinds of jazz-fusion nonsense in highschool, and I try to never talk about it or let it be known, because I think that shit is so tremendously lame now. I sold all those records after I dropped out of art school.
31. Actually, I sold all my CD’s and I refuse to buy any more. It’s all about mp3s from now on out. The RIAA is in fact lucky that I don’t build a fleet of missiles to send them all back to the paleolithic era.
32. If I could go back in time and meet historical figures, I would want to talk to Jung, and one of his students, Marie Louise Von Franz, because they were smart as all fucking shit, and knew all kinds of crazy stuff that I don’t think they ever even wrote about.
33. I would consider talking to Philip K. Dick though too, because he’s one of the other thinkers that I respect in that kind of high-caliber way. But I also get the feeling that I wouldn’t like hanging out with him personally. Or maybe I would, it’s hard to say.
34. I started reading a couple old Calvin & Hobbes books last night, which I was really really happy to discover that I still had.
35. When I was younger, I really wanted to be a comic book artist, or a special effects guy for movies, or a stop-motion animator or related things like that. I’m still gonna try to develop a career as an illustrator at some point though.
36. When I was even younger than that, I really wanted to be a zoologist. Actually, to be more accurate and honest, I wanted to be an animal. Either a cheetah or a wolf, specifically. But zoologist seemed like the next best thing, and I subsequently spent ALL my time as a very little kid watching animal shows on PBS and reading books like those ones about lions that that chick wrote. What were they called, something about “pride” or “freedom.” I forget. “Born Free,” that’s it, and there are other ones too.
37. I wonder which would be a higher figure: all the money I’ve ever spent in my life, or the cost of all the books I’ve read combined. I bet it would be close to even, because (1) I’m poor and (2) I’ve read a lot of books.
38. Actually, if I could go back in time, I would do a lot cooler shit than talk to random people. Maybe I would only talk to them so that I could convince them to join me and travel even further back in time.
39. My favorite story about my dad, although I don’t remember it happening: supposedly we were all at a rest stop as a kid, and my dad ordered like a six pack of chicken nuggets. They included one extra nugget in the box, and my dad is so honest that he felt compelled to report the error to the cashier. My brother claims that my dad left the rogue nugget there, because he hadn’t paid for it and didn’t want to be dishonest. If I didn’t know my dad, I would doubt the truth of this story.
40. One time I asked my dad what his experience with drugs had been. He explained that one time he drank four glasses of champagne at a wedding and my mom had to drive home. The next day he felt like he’d been “hit by a truck.”
41. I’ve tried but have never gotten drunk off champagne. However, I find the above story absolutely hysterical. People who have gotten drunk more than once call that next-day-feeling “a hangover.” Anyway, I think his dad was an alcoholic, so that’s why he himself never dabbled.
42. Supposedly my other grandfather was also, and that’s why I never saw him growing up. However, I have to wonder if everyone was just an alcoholic back in the day, and how bad it really was. I was young, so I have no real way of guaging the depth of the problem.
43. I barely knew my grandparents at all and now they are all gone, which is really a shame. If I have a family of my own, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let that happen, no matter what kind of crazy shit they may be doing. Even if they are running guns or have a meth lab in their garage.
44. Also, if I have kids, I’m going to do the funniest most embarrassing things when they are teenagers. They will totally hate me. It will be hilarious.
45. I want to be the kind of old man who is always playing tricks on people, and who noone is sure how much of what he says is true, and how much is entertaining bullshit.
46. I have a feeling that I’m going to live to be nice and old although I have no real way of backing this up. I once read this thing that said capricorns come into their own as they get towards fourty. I can definitely see that coming on the horizon, unless there is some kind of big crazy catastrophe. By 40, I’ll be an unstoppable killing machine.
47. At the grocery store today, two cashiers were talking about iPods, and how the smaller one could only hold 1000 songs, and who has more than a thousand songs. I was about to chime in that I have like 5,000 until the guy continued: “Losers! That’s who!” I really couldn’t argue his logic. I have 5,508.
48. When I was in my early teens, I decided that I wanted to go to West Point (the Army college). I was really into military shit at the time, and learned all kinds of crazy shit about military history and weapons that a thirteen year old probably doesn’t need to know, but can easily find at the library.
49. I don’t remember when I stopped wanting to do this, but it sort of just gradually died away as my hormones subsided, I think. Lacking sports (as described above), I think I was largely trying to latch onto some kind of ideal about what it means to be a “man” as I was going through the rough patches of puberty.
50. I do think, however, that I would make an excellent military strategist. Bret and I have also talked at some length about how we would make good hitmen. I decided that he would be so passionate about it though that he would probably go out of control, and then they would send me out to kill him, because I would be totally dispassionate about it. That’s the theory anyway. I think it comes from recognizing that there’s some kind of cold hard spot buried deep inside you. At least that’s what it is for me. I mean, it’s not a problem or anything though. I’m not like a psychopath, so don’t worry.
51. Hehe. That last one got kinda weird at the end. Sorry. I feel inclined to add that I’ve become a much happier, warm and open person in the past few years also. It’s just that I can imagine myself killing a man impunity given the right circumstances.
52. Moving on, hm. This second round of listing is a lot harder than the first round. I think I’ve just been in a kind of negative mood lately, and that’s why this has turned into being about killing people. Again, my apologies, I’m actually quite pleasant normally I think.
53. I feel like I’m tackling a whole new set of problems lately in my life. Almost like the “karma” (as much as I hate that word) from the first part of my life has been more or less excised, and now I’m embarking onto some whole other new thing.
54. Whatever it is, so far its pretty confusing and next to impossible to articulate. Old explanations of it don’t seem to apply anymore. I hope I don’t spend a lot of time looking for the terminology to explain my problems instead of just powering through them. But sometimes that’s an inevitable first step. Everything right now is really just sort of jumbled.
55. I wonder how many times in the average lifespan of a person do you end up thinking you have it all figured out, only to have it all get switched around at a moment’s notice. It seems like it happens a whole damn lot.
56. Man, this is getting sort of depressing. I gotta turn the tide around here if I’m gonna be able to make it down to a hundred again. Let’s see…
57. I get the urge to throw away all my possessions pretty regularly. I’ve actually done it in sort of phases - controlled purges over the past two years especially. Everything I now own can fit in the back of a pickup truck. I’d like to winnow that down even more though, maybe to minivan size. I’ll see what I can do.
58. I guess that’s one of the harder things is figuring out what’s really important and what’s just fluff. I struggle with that a lot in the past, but I feel like I’m getting really close to it now. It’s part of why I invest all my time and energy into my work here.
59. I have a niece who is absolutely adorable, and I think in May, I’m getting a nephew, thanks to my other sister. Should be a blast.
60. If I go out to the West Coast, like to live, I probably won’t see my family again for a while. I mean, I don’t see them a lot now, but it’s becoming more important to me as I get older.
61. The last girl I dated seriously, both her parents died of cancer. She was cool, but what a fucking bummer.
62. I also have a real problem with crazy girls. They find me, I find them, we hit it off, it becomes a total disaster. It’s gotten to be such a pattern now that I’m always sort of suspicious of girls who seem to be interested in me. I’m trying to move into new territory, but I’ve not got a whole lot to work with in terms of material here in Shittsburgh.
63. I own two pairs of jeans that I wear every day. I also try to wear a black t-shirt every day, as sort of a uniform. But I have this problem that whenever I buy a black t-shirt, they come with a grey one too, so I end up having to wear those when my starting line-up gets dirty.
64. Several girls have told me that I have really soft hands.
65. One of them was my friend’s girlfriend at the time. She also bit me on the neck while we were dancing at a concert in Brooklyn. Now SHE was crazy, but at least she wasn’t my problem. The next day at work, all the Israelis were making jokes about how I had a hickie, when it was actually a bite mark from a crazy girl. They said, “Who gave you that hickie?” And Aron, who also worked there, said that his girlfriend did and laughed hysterically.
66. We were the only Americans working there and it was pretty hilarious. Israelis like to yell and be really demeaning, but if you just stand up to them and yell back, they love you like brothers. Unless you’re Palestinian.
67. My favorite spot to go to for a while in NYC was by the East River in Williamsburg (Brooklyn side) because you could see the city, but it was totally peaceful and awesome.
68. The most fun I ever had in New York was during the blackout. But you can read about that elsewere.
69. God, this list is really hard. I feel like it’s better to just write these things all at once though, rather than drag it out. That way you end up saying things you didn’t mean to or that are kind of weird. That’s why I bullied Mike about bailing out after only 81.
70. Speaking of Mike, one time I flushed his cell phone down the toilet at a bar to prove a point. I think I proved my point, but then I had to pay like $225 the next day when the bar finally got their toilet fixed and the phone fished out. The best part of the whole thing was when I grabbed the phone and took off to the bathroom. Mike quickly appeared in the urinal next to my stall, saying, “Can’t we just smash it out back?” And I said, “Too late dude, I’m already pissing on it.”
71. I’d really like to get a dog, but would feel bad doing it before I had a semi-permanent home with a big yeard. If I had a dog, I would also probably want it to wear a bandana around it’s neck sometimes, because dogs that do that are awesome.
72. I’m trying to skim over other people’s lists of 100 things for ideas, but I feel like that’s cheating.
73. Sometimes when I am going through a period in my life where I am trying to make a change, I will sleep backwards in my bed - that is, with my head at the base of the bed.
74. Periodically I will sleep naked, but I only ever did that regularly when I had my own apartment.
75. That apartment was fucking awesome. I can’t believe I didn’t get laid there more often. I just didn’t know what I was doing back then.
76. Having a nice apartment again is one of the few things that would actually make me consider taking a real job.
77. I like making artwork for people with secret spiritually/psychologically empowering messages. Some are more secret than others and are layered in underneath the surface of whatever it is. Some are really elaborate and some really simple. If you ask, I won’t tell you about them, because they are only magic if you perceive them subconsciously, I think.
78. Some people get artwork from me that wasn’t made specifically for them. These usually don’t contain any secret stuff. I always feel bad when I give somebody art that wasn’t tailor made with them in mind, but I don’t always have the time.
79. I wish I had somebody to travel with cross-country. That would be so awesome. Doug and I were originally gonna do it, but then my plan backfired. But I think he was gonna bail anyway. It would be even better if it was a girl I was all in love with though. That’d just be the greatest. But then, I wouldn’t want to have to subject her to a lot of the shit that you have to go through for really extended travelling.
80. I’ve never had sex in any place more exotic than a living room, which is not exotic at all, I realize. Unless you count a hotel room, which is really just a glorified bedroom, so forget that.
81. Man, now I’m starting to see why Mike stopped at 81… but remember Mike, this is my second list. (Oh snap!)
82. I wish I could tell my friends everything they need to know to figure stuff out. Cause sometimes you can see it, at least in limited ways. But the thing is, even when you tell them, or they tell you, it’s like that’s only half the battle. Cause if you don’t just straight out resist it, you still have to go out and live it, which is much more difficult.
83. Noone ever seems to give me advice at all. Except maybe my friend John. But maybe that means that he’s the only person I will accept advice from. I mean, I’ve had moments of clarity with other people, but nothing like with John.
84. I think, for me, more important than advice though is just amplification. Just being like, “Go on with your bad self, Tim!” That’s the kind of shit I really need. Aron and Bret are really good at that, I think. Doug and Mike sometimes are. Actually, Doug has pretty much dropped off. And Mike would if he could. But I know they’ll be back around when it comes down to it.
85. In reference to 82, I’ve also learned really recently that it’s important not to take other people’s problems onto yourself. Maybe I’ve just got a high degree of empathy or something (see #27), but it’s been a problem for me in the past. Maybe it’s just that there’s a certain intimacy to suffering with somebody - even when it’s sort of spurious. I don’t know, but I’m starting to get over it.
86. I miss having a neighborhood dive bar. This area only has this one phoney-baloney dive bar where a makers rocks costs fucking $7 and then this other bar where only like 35+ year olds drink fucking fruit-flavored martinis and the walls are painted red, and there are tasteful but ultimate pointless nude black and white photographs on the walls.
87. The last time I was there, or two times ago, I almost stole this incense holder that they had in the bathroom. I put it in my coat pocket, but bailed out on it at the last second.
88. I haven’t really stolen anything in a while (unless you count mp3s, which I don’t - see #31). I worked at this art store in highschool though, and man, we robbed that place fucking blind. BLIND!
89. The guy who owned it though was a huge pervert, so it was alright. He used to tell us about how he went to the Girl Scout carwash to look at the pre-teen girls, and no doubt beat off later.
90. That was my first job. The only other time I’ve worked retail was 2 months at a Whole Foods store around the time when I dropped out of college. I quit though when the school gave me a partial refund check for tuition that semester.
91. My middle name is Stephen. My mom always claimed that “ph” was the French spelling, but then I found out that in French, it’s actually “Etienne,” so that’s probably just something my mom made up. “Timothy” means “honoring god” and “Stephen” means “crown.” I am named after Bishop Timothy Harrington, whom my parents were friends with.
92. If I had a girl, I would want to name her something French probably, like Madeleine, although I recently started liking Genevieve as well. I’ve never really given much thought to boys names though, but it would probably be something slightly odd.
93. Man, I’m really struggling to get to the finish line here. Hm, for some reason, that just triggered this weird memory from elementary school. This kid named Ricky had been bothering me really badly, so I had brought this metal pipe in my backpack that I planned on using to hit him with if he bothered me again. But he never did after that. He must have sensed my resolve.
94. One of my best friends in elementary school was Brian Szikoli. I think that’s how you spell it. I remember liking him even though I thought he and his house smelled weird. I also remember he would beat me really really badly at Nintendo games, particularly that ice hockey one. I would get furious and start punching him in the arm really hard.
95. Wow I haven’t thought about elementary school in a long ass time. I was a really weird little kid, so I guess I’ve mostly just repressed all the awkwardness. Mostly I just remember riding my bike to the store and buying comic books and GI Joes, or going to the library. On second thought, I was probably just more lonely than weird.
96. The same girl that suggested I was mysterious also said later that I “seemed like a loner.” I can’t decide if this is really true or not though. I always thought it was, but now I’m starting to think it was more circumstantial. Like that’s just how it played out, so I got used to that. But who knows, I guess I am pretty “private” like I said.
97. Until I get to be pretty comfortable - or else drunk - around you, and then it’s more than likely I won’t shut up.
98. It would be nice to live around my friends again. I miss them. I don’t really have anybody close who I hang out with a lot here. I’m working on it though.
99. This one time really recently, I got really sad and happy at the same time, because I realized how important my friends are to me, and I was hoping against hope that I’d been even a fraction as important or good to them.
100. This took two and a quarter straight hours to write. It’s now 4:30am. I’m really used to staying up writing though. It’s become pretty much my MO, thanks to not having a job or any other worldly responsibilities. But fuck all y’all, cause I’m done!

BAM!

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