I hope they all get ripped apart by wild animals.

May 20, 2014 2:55 PM

This is a collection of Francisco "Puree Tomatoes" Taccir's blog posts from Myspace and Friendster from 2005 – 2010. Tomatoes was a writer, artist, and addict who was born on February 26. 1977. He died on October 10, 2010 from a heroin overdose.

Francisco had his name legally changed to 'Puree Tomatoes' when he was in his late teens. Though his writings are filled with the ramblings of a brain ravaged by drugs and alcohol, his words are at least arguably an affecting digest of an ostentatiously haughty mind.

posted by item (6 comments total)

This reminds me of a story about my personal life:

I had a friend in high school who I eventually cut off all contact with in college. While he was definitely a hard-core drug user, ultimately what started doing him in was the consumption of massive amounts of alcohol. I remembered him being the "cool kid" when we were 18, but when we hit 23 I felt I had had enough of his incoherent ramblings. Fast forward about 10-15 years and I was shocked to see that he was still alive and was on facebook, albeit with a private account. So I sent a friend request and he accepted.

Reading his posts on fb was an awful lot like reading this guy's posts, especially as he got closer and closer to the end. He was often incoherent and rambling while posting pictures of himself passed out all the time. The worst was when he sobered up for a few days. He'd talk about getting sick like this guy, and he'd get even more incoherent and angry at times.

One thing that struck me about Francisco's blog was his very last post. He was finally lucid, but I could tell that it was a temporary thing.

The end to my story is that the friend in question is in remission and has been sober for several months now, and is back with his family (they had kicked him out previously). That being said, I still see his posts every now and then, and wonder at times, "Is this going to be the last one (again)?"
posted by surazal at 3:38 PM on May 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

A lot (dozens) of mutual friends with Tomatoes including a mutual (ex on my part, last? on his part) girlfriend, but I probably only said hi to him once at most. It seems voyeuristic to read this after he's gone give that we ran around the LA DIY scene at the same time.
posted by nutate at 4:27 PM on May 20, 2014

It reminds me a bit of a blog that I stumbled across around 2003, "deathbydior". He was neither a friend nor an acquaintance. This person admitted to doing heavy amounts of drugs. The blog was rambling, schizoid, intelligent, and intimidating in the sense of my intuitive understanding that while the author can be incisive and insightful, he's also a danger to himself. It was fascinating but hard to read. The blog is long gone, and when I remember it, I wonder what happened to the author.

It was a strange experience to sort of care about a complete stranger while knowing that I'm absolutely powerless to influence their life choices. I watched too many creative people disappear in similar ways, usually because of hard drugs or alcohol. I haven't encountered Tomatoes until today, though.
posted by quiet earth at 4:32 PM on May 20, 2014

One of my smartest, funniest friends took himself off to Perth (with, heartbreakingly, his wife and daughter) to drink himself to death.

Last time I saw him he was shiny and bloated and smug with alcohol, it was horrible.

I'm not in touch with him anymore but one day I will call his mother to find out if he is still alive.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:43 PM on May 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Guy had a lot of friends.

Where's his art?
posted by oceanjesse at 6:05 PM on May 20, 2014

This is fascinating in a way. He wrote without any kind of filter (for obvious reasons) and it was like directly taking a peek into his mind. Sometimes I wonder how some people have such weird, nihilistic, dogmatic views, yet one can never really know what goes on in their mind. This guy seemed to have a lot of weird, traumatic things happen to him as a kid (hearing his mom bringing random men home to their small apartment all the time when he was a kid, being told that listening to his favorite band would "make the devils come out" by his extremely conservative Christian daycare, hanging around the mall as a teen with/around some Neo-Nazi kids that later stomped a guy to death) and it is easy to see how those things seemed to impact him and his worldview. In fact he writes about all those things repeatedly, which is likely a function of the drugs and alcohol, but you can tell that that stuff was still always in his head and seemingly traumatized him. The way he talked about women creeped me out. But the way he talked about people in general kind of creeped me out. He talks about hating people often. I skimmed one entry and he talks about wanting to kill people and, in another, he talks about being glad when he hears that people he knew had died.

He seemed to have a huge disconnect with the world and wrote about social anxiety and how much he hates people talking on cell phones (and goes on to admit that when he had one, no one ever called him on it).

I get the impression that nothing seemed real to him except suffering and pain, which I find equal parts scary and sad.

RIP.
posted by sevenofspades at 10:12 AM on May 21, 2014 [1 favorite]