The Dark Balloon

A weblog by Hao Lian.
A terrible secret guarded by golems.
A note that thanks you for being born, all those years ago.

§
Scenes from a life from a distance from a time from a place.

You are standing in a narrow hallway of your railway apartment watching two people play the delicate game of putting shoes on while wearing a backpack and managing luggage in three square feet of space. You love one platonically, the other unrequitedly. It has taken you a surprisingly long time to realize this, and it has never struck you more true than now. Today is a day where facts seem malleable. You realize it is raining outside all of a sudden, yanking the soft pit-paps into the foreground. It is gray outside and the hallway is dark and these two people who were your family for one night are tying their shoes in shadow. You will come back much later, alone, and identify the pain in your chest as terrible heartache. You will know that people are not meant to live alone, that this loneliness too is a price you paid for life's choices. You will do more drugs than you should, sit by the internet, and try to cry. You will realize that there is a type of sadness that is so heavy and ill-formed that it prevents you from enjoying even the catharsis of tears. You will fall asleep too early and wake up too late. You will avoid mirrors. You will use the second person. You will be alive.

[(2011 August 15) .]

§
IntricacyMan and the monoamine oxidase inhibitor!

Dark Bob walked up to our hero, who struggled in heroic captivity. He smiled and stroked an ebony finger down the slender cheek of IntricacyMan.

“Do you know what the most degrading thing you can do to someone is?” he whispered.

“Give him a federal holiday?”

“No! No! What—You know I want Dark Bob Week to replace Black History Month.” Dark Bob seethed and decided to do this another day.

As the cell door began to close, IntricacyMan muttered—not quiet enough—”That would only work if they could make a Prozac parade float.”

Dark Bob closed the door, sprayed tanning lotion on his weird finger, leaned against it, and cried.

[(2009 March 15) .]

§
Public service announcements that should have been kept private, #1

  • —(Narrator) What do statisticians do besides regressions? They write grants.
  • [Cut to statistician writing]
  • —Is that all?
  • Audience (children): Yes?
  • —No! They also socialize!
  • [Cut to statisticians talking during lunch break]
  • —Not that socialize. This socialize!
  • [Cut to people at a rave, cue rave music]
  • [Cut to statistician taking off his clothes, revealing a pure-white body of applied mathematics]
  • —Is that all?
  • Audience (children): Er, yes?
  • —HELL NO! THEY SNORT PURE ECSTASY!
  • [Cut to woman snorting pure ecstasy]
  • Dr. Susan: AW YEAH!
  • —THEY SNORT MISERY!
  • [Cut to man snorting purple substance]
  • Dr. Eugene: BITCHING!
  • —That’s right. Statistics is pretty BITCHING.
  • Dr. Eugene: BITCHING!
  • —Is that all?
  • Audience (children): Um.
  • —FUCK TO THE NO! THEY ALSO MAKE BEAUTIFUL LOVE!
  • [Scene impossible to describe here]
  • [Audience (children) begin crying, never stop]
[(2008 July 10) .]

§
Autobiography.

  • reqqit: I love how Colbert gets onto the dance machine, but … shouldn’t they be looking at the screen? Anyway, Rain is like, “look at me, I am Michael Jackson, I’ll stick my thumb up a kids ass if you don’t believe me!” and Colbert is like “I play like I can’t dance but my moves are like liquid dynamite.” You know he scores heavily after each show.
  • smackywentz: I think I speak for everyone when I say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
"Stephen Colbert/Rain Dance-off", reddit
[(2008 May 11) .]

§
Fine line.

This is a rewrite of a previous post.

Drink ’n’ Drive strips alert the careful driver as to whether he’s drunk enough to drive for the conscientious daredevil that’d like to drive drunk but also keep it legal. These handy-dandy strips are for the classy connoisseur of alcohol whose moral compass is merely a cross reference to his local state penal code that defines the acceptable, moral, decent blood alcohol content at which point the possible manslaughter of other people becomes acceptable. I do take umbrage that these strips are sold to just anybody though. If you think about it, they should only be limited to SUV drivers; otherwise, the company runs the risk of people complaining that even though the strips guaranteed a safe bon voyage they still got a neck brace while the other person walked off with two broken legs and backlash. Limiting your clientele to the elite SUV drivers ensures people who get into those rarest of rare accidents when you’re 0.01 below the BAC limit completely and totally annihilate whatever other vehicle or small train they crash into. I mean, come on, friends don’t let friends use Drink ’n’ Drive strips and operate a family sedan. That’s crossing a line.

[(2008 February 17) .]