pomo:
The Matrix is on TV. This is the second time I'm seeing the movie, and it's on TV. I didn't see the movie in the theaters. Once when I was visiting New Jersey, my brother was amazed that I hadn't seen it. He raved about it. When DVD's hit the market, The Matrix was one of the first ones he bought. He made me watch it on my parents' big screen.

I'm glad he made me watch it, it's a good movie. But at that time I was taking Jurisprudence class and was being steeped in post-modernism, as I got lucky enough to cover the topic of "pomo and law". The entire premise of The Matrix was post-modernism, or rather my understanding of it, in a nutshell, fitted into a science fiction story. Fucking brillig.

Anyway, I wasn't able to appreciate the movie for what it was because I was too busy intellectualizing its post-modern premise. I still can't appreciate it for the action film that it is because I'm still fascinated by the premise, because post-modernism just strikes a chord with me.

I don't believe in this physical reality that surrounds us accepted as "real". I think of it as symbolic. We create it. I see life as more of a playground, a matrix that we in a truer form, our true souls, created for whatever reason.

Life and reality don't exist because they exist in some objective context. They exist only in our subjective context, because we think it and believe it. Without us, life and reality don't exist. But that's enough of my belief. Believe it or not, I don't believe that the matrix was created by artificial intelligence 200 years from now as a way of controlling the human species.

morbid alert:
How compelling is it to blog a suicide? Is it sick? Is it insensitive? Is it twisted? Does it matter whether most of the people who read your weblog were strangers? But then how about the people who knew you personally? At least they'd have answers, no mystery as to what you were thinking, what was going through your mind. And what about science???!! The psychiatric community could go crazy!!! OK, that last one was a joke.

Unfortunately, that's not the way I'd want to go. I just find the idea compelling. I'm sure it's already been done. When I gotta go, I wanna just disappear, no body, no funeral, no witnesses, no proof. Ergo no computer around.

current soundtrack: Deadweight - "Stroking the Moon"

the revolution will not be motorized

car woman stuck in Critical Mass: I'm going to call the police!
cyclist trying to keep her calm: Uh, I think the police already know.

I'm speechless. Drivers had no idea what hit them. When the bikes first started coming, they may have groaned, looking at their watches, realizing it was the last friday of the month. Or they may have smiled, realizing it was the last friday of the month - a minor inconvenience to allow the bicyclists to make their point. They had NO idea. This was no ordinary Mass.

It was the 10th Anniversary of Critical Mass and it was HUGE. There are no numbers in yet, although I heard one estimate of 8000 cyclists on the streets of San Francisco. It paralyzed Muni, with light rail cars and buses at a standstill all the way down Market St. Every intersection was a critical mess. I tried in vain to get to the front of the Mass. My mind boggled at the size of this thing, I couldn't grasp it. I was trying to get to the front so I could stop and watch it go by.

San Francisco started Critical Mass 10 years ago and it has spread to cities around the world. People came. The people who came indicated where they came from on signs. Massachussetts. Kentucky. Philadelphia. Germany. Seattle. England. Rio de Janeiro.

I got to yell, for the first time in my life, "Go back to where you fucking came from, you fucking teabag" to a British-accented motorist who could only vent his road-rage frustration with racism. Mind you, my comment was aimed at only this one person. I apologize to anyone else of British descent who might take offense, as I have nothing against the British. Aside from Tony Blair puppydogging behind Dubya. Anyway, and it felt good. I grew up with "Go back to where you came from" yelled at me, and I could only respond with "America - love it or leave it". It was immature, it was uncivilized, it was barbaric, it was human, but I did it and I can't say that in the same situation, I wouldn't have done it again. In fact, I regret not catching up to him as it took a few moments to think, "I can chase down this racist fucking bastard". I saw panic in his gas pedal as I came up from behind and he peeled off down another street. I don't know what I would have done, banged on his window, spat, if I had thought of it, I would have major keyed his fucking car. Does a racist remark equal in value a new paint job for your car? It's relative, and for me, hell yeah!

Anyway, my feelings are mixed about this experience. This Mass was impressive, but a little too intense. A higher mix of hostility in the boisterousness. One of the ideas behind Crit Mass is to raise awareness of cycling issues in the city. We can shut down traffic and we will do it again if we don't have more bicycle-friendly action in City Hall. But we can't do it again. The numbers we got today was a one time thing.

MUNI was brought to a complete halt because once the buses got downtown, there was no where for them to go.

September 27, 7:06 p.m.

from NYT.com:
A court in Myanmar sentenced to death the son-in-law and three grandsons of the former strongman, U Ne Win, for plotting a coup against the ruling military government. Prosecutors said the plot involved black magic, soothsayers and three little dolls representing the country's three top generals . . .

. . . If only Burma had oil. Then the U.S. can go there and get rid of that government.

postcard:
Dear Madoka, sf, ca
- I regret to inform you that I no longer have your e-mail address
- I tried guessing. They all came back.
- E-MAIL ME!!
- It's a long story
- In any case, my resolve to e-mail you more regularly failed miserably
- So here's my blogsite, lest you ever wonder where the hell I am or wha' the hell I'm doing: www.blahblahblah . . .
-Now send me yer dang e-mail :)
love u
k 9-26-02

It's best that people who know me shouldn't know my weblog, and I will do what I can to not send this postcard, but I've already put the stamps on. I lost her e-mail when I got that virus and re-installed Earthlink, thereby uninstalling the software that was on my 'puter, the one with all my e-mail's. Bloody 'ell.

I'm re-reading In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander. His other books include Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which is paraphrased in this book. I don't fully agree with his farther-left-than-mine perspective anymore (really, I'm not that far left), and I read his "Seven Negative Points About Computers" chapter with a grain of salt.

But I'm happy to say that I'm home and have been and my television remains OFF. It's scary how that emphasizes that the unwavering norm has been for me to get home and click on the TV, even just as background noise. Not even noise, half the time it's on mute, and I mostly mute the commercials. Just something else. TV = evil

Homer: "You're welcome to watch anything on TV."
Bart: "TV sucks!"
Homer: "I know your upset right now, so I'll pretend you didn't say that."

I think I can safely say that I'm pretty removed from the world, that I don't participate in it. It's a side effect of always thinking you're not gonna be here six months from now, ten months from now, a year from now, three years from now. Never, never, never, never, never, not once in my life did I think, "what am I gonna be doing when I'm 60?", "what am I gonna be like when I'm 60?", or "what am I gonna look like when I'm 60?". I don't even know what I look like now.

So it was odd as I walked across the street after work to my locked bike with all the people around me in the Financial District and thought, "life . . . this is some serious shit!". And it isn't. I certainly don't believe it for a second. I blamed it on the fog.

Message to folks in their 20's: You know a whole lot more now than you will know in your 30's. (that is to say, conversely, you will know far less in your 30's than you know in your 20's)
Message to folks in their 40's: Don't tell me what I'll be missing by not reaching my 40's. I don't want to know.

And still, it's funny, turning 30 is seen as this huge leap in age and you're really, really old. That's how I always saw it. It's not. It's only a huge leap in responsibility (which happens at different ages for different people anyway. the 30 benchmark is really just symbolic.). I, myself, am declining the responsibility, but in terms of maturity, experience, and confidence, 30's are halla better than 20's.
It's just that all the stuff you knew in your 20's and were so certain of, you find you don't really know and you're not so certain.

Bobby Burgess linked to a captivating article on Chris McCandless's demise. I printed the article and read it outside over lunch, and I'll probably give it to someone at random, maybe to a homeless person. The homeless in San Francisco are a very literary bunch.

Reading through the article, I kept locating where I was at the various times during McCandless's wanderings, tracing the path of his last year of life using the path of my life as a reference point, as if they were synchronous. Did my flight to Japan in June of 1992 fly over Alaska? That time period was one of upheaval and promise for me. I was in Japan when he died. I returned suddenly to the U.S. a month later and entered a most self-destructive period of my life. I applied to law school.

Why else was that article so captivating? Maybe because he went into the store and bought what I've only window shopped for. Maybe because I know as he approached death, he didn't regret anything. It probably flashed through his mind how his life could have been, taking the comfortable path and life, doing what his upper-middle class upbringing expected of him. No way.

And the strangest part of all is that reading article, I didn't feel any regret about my life, even not having done what he did. Even ending up dead, I would have preferred to be brave enough to keep and follow my passions. He having done it, made me feel OK for not having done it. As long as someone did it. Weird, huh?

Being brave enough to keep and follow passions doesn't mean doing what he did. It's different for everyone. It could mean being in an indie band that doesn't make it big, but manages just enough of a following to plug away on the road for years and years. For me, being brave enough to keep and follow my passions would probably have entailed being committed and bounced in and out of mental institutions. I would have had no regrets if I had been honest with myself and ended up like that. But no, my passions are only skin deep, and the proof of that is on my skin. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, I just wanted to end this sounding melodramatic.

from sfgate.com:
Instead of expanding forever, they suggest, the universe is only in the middle-age of its expansion. Eventually it will slow down, pause and then start collapsing until – some 10 to 20 billion years from now – everything in it will end in one infinitely tiny point of mass and energy that cosmologists call a "singularity."

The "singularity" that Linde sees as the ultimate fate of the universe is a kind of absolute nothingness. It is something like what the fate of black holes is supposed to be, crunching together more and more tightly under the force of their own gravity until they, too, become singularities.

That kind of singularity is what many cosmologists consider to be the true origin of the universe at a time just before the Big Bang. Then, in a few billionths of a second, the universe began the extremely rapid phase of inflation that Linde and Alan Guth, now at MIT, proposed more than 20 years ago.

Soon after that, the universe expanded somewhat more sedately, until from its ripples of energy and gravity galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed within a few hundred thousand years. Later the stars gave birth to their circling planets, and ultimately life emerged – at least on one.

Now try reading it again, but this time think of it as a "religious" text, or a religious commentary. That's how I read it.

This is Buddhism, straight from the Lotus Sutra:
The model has its detractors, however. And one alternative has recently been proposed by Paul Steinhardt of Princeton who with Neil Turok of Cambridge University has resurrected a new version of the old cyclic or "oscillating" universe. According to this theory, the universe may not have begun in a single Big Bang, but may be only part of an endless cycle of expansion and rebirth.

Yes, it's giggle-worthy, but I can live with this:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Moderate
Schizoid:	Very High
Schizotypal:	Very High
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Very High
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Click Here To Take The Test --

current soundtrack: U2 - The Unforgettable Fire

No one ever called me Mr. Nice Guy:
My cube neighbor at work is kinda nice, but she's such an airhead. She's the kind who would come over and ask, "Am I annoying?" in a whiny voice.

If she ever comes over and asks me, "Am I annoying?", I'm gonna have to bite my tongue to not respond, "and stupid!".

Political Compass survey, pretty fascinating, not as vapid as most, certainly intriguing.

My final results were:
Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -5.13

I actually thought I'd be more of a centrist. With a socially conscious college indoctrination (Oberlin) going into a legal education/indoctrination, I think of myself as a rationalist, balancing all sides but leaning to the left, but anyway you lean, it's a slippery slope. I'm not saying I agree with these results, but it's interesting. And I don't mind them.

author unknown, sent via e-mail from Cass:
Sung to the tune of either "Turkey in the Straw" or "Oh My Darlin' Clementine" (only verses, no choruses), either way it's uncredibly funny (perhaps only because it's so stupid):

"The Animaniacs* Explanation Why Computers Sometimes Crash"
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port
And the bus is interrupted at a very last resort
And the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash
And your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash
Then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse
But your packets want to tunnel to another protocol
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang
'Cuz sure as I'm a poet, that sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
And the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk
Then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM
Then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

EVERYBODY SING!
* I don't think it's a real Animaniacs tune, but I can imagine Yakko, Wakko, and Dot doing a "Turkey in the Straw" version!

Write as if your life depended upon it. That's basically it, isn't it? And I don't do it. I get home and after several hours, I count how many hours that I'd been home and still hadn't touched a guitar or worked on anything. I'm not pushing what I want to do to its limits.

It was in high school when I first heard about 4-track tape recorders. My friend, physics teacher, and activities advisor for "Jazz/Rock" had a Fostex X-15 and he let me borrow it. I tried my hand at making a multi-track recording and when I finished something, I let him hear it. He was frank about it, "You haven't starved enough", he said.

I don't know how I responded, but I knew what he meant, and I knew he meant it as encouragement, rather than veiled-dismissal. I don't remember, but I'm sure I was quickly burying hurt feelings.

Those words never left me, but I've never acted on the meaning of those words, and many years to come ended up many years squandered. Those words should have been a wake-up call, a seminal slogan that I should have written down on pieces of paper and taped to all my schoolbooks, my locker, my room, my dorm rooms, my guitar cases, and every mirror I had to face in a day.

I don't need to write anymore. I don't even have to do music. I have no delusions of accomplishing anything, or even forming a band for that matter. I don't even think I'm capable of writing like my life depended on it, the meaning being skewed by the twisted sense of value I have on my life. But, hmm, I think that maybe I'll eventually get around to giving it a try.

I remember days like this, nice days, chilly evenings, being glad that the summer heat is almost gone. But I wasn't glad today feeling it, because the entire summer was like this. Don't get me wrong, it was a good summer, a great summer. A nice summer was due, and this was it, minimal oppressive fog, wrists nicely intact. But there was no reference point to appreciate a day like today. As much as I like the heat, I also like the respite that Autumn brings and you only get it after a real summer.

I've identified four seasons for San Francisco. There's the Rainy Season from December to March. There's the First Nice Season from March to May. There's the Foggy Season from June to August. Lastly there's the Second Nice Season from September to November. Who am I kidding? Winter is winter and the thought of another one is unbearable.

I think my weblog suffers from multiple personality disorder. But no, it's not suffering, it's kind of enjoying it. And not "disorder", the personalities are very ordered. I order them around.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Rabbi Schulman: "Repentance is not like washing your hands, you know, it takes time, devotion, pain even. On Yom Kippur we are commanded to af-flict our souls"
Joel: "Do we have to?"

This morning I woke up at 4:30 and I don't think I had been dreaming about her, but there was a very detailed and . . . deep? thick? rich? thought of Ritu, who died two years ago, in my mind. I don't remember the thought now. I did have a dubious time getting back to sleep. I don't know if it was my unconscious brain recalling the date, I have been aware of it all week, or if it was something else.

It's a thought and topic not to be belabored. I didn't spend any special time thinking about her today, I'm done with marking these dates as something that needs special thought. At some point, the goodbye was done, and when today came I didn't have to do or think anything like her family probably did. She didn't want to be here and that's OK with me, although if I could have my druthers I'd rather have her present. If I go, I hope I go like she did: tormenting everyone around me with complete irreverence.

"Well some guy comes in
looking a bit like everyone I ever seen
He moves just like crisco disco
breath one hundred percent Listerine
He says, looking at something else
but directing everything to me,
'Every time anyone gets on their knees and prays
well, it makes my telephone ring'
and I'll be damned"
- I. Brock (Modest Mouse)

18th St. and San Bruno, Potrero Hill, San Francisco.

9-12-02
It's been a year. Has it really been a year? The Earth is in the same relative position, with the same relative tilt, denoting end of Summer, beginning of fall season, in respect to the Sun. I avoided the smarmy gloss that the media fed the airwaves with yesterday. Media sickens me. Politicians sicken me. The ceremonies and parades humans need to somehow feel "in touch" sicken me.

I put it in the back of my mind that, yesterday, while I was blog-surfing for present day accounts of last year, I recorded the Naudet brothers' documentary "9/11". I was watching the Frontline documentary "Where was God?". I don't mind documentaries. They present a viewpoint, as it is, nothing smarmy, nothing tear-jerking. It is only one viewpoint, but from this viewpoint, this is what happened. I remembered I recorded "9/11" after I got home this evening, after running errands.

This documentary is unreal, it is so vivid, so casually in the moment because the Naudet brothers had no idea how big this thing was going to become, that it is timeless. You watch this documentary, and this is not a year ago. It doesn't matter when it happened or how long ago it happened, this footage is just . . . "pure", almost innocent.

Jules Naudet's camera was the only one that caught the first strike, and the footage of the plane hitting the building has been replayed by the media ad nauseum. But in the documentary, it's a long seamless shot. Jules is with Engine 1 Ladder 7 on a routine call and he's filming them responding to it.

Boring as hell footage that will end up on the cutting room floor. Except that you slowly hear the roar of an airplane overhead, one firefighter looks up, acknowledges it's an airplane and looks away, and then the camera trains to the sky and catches the plane hitting the building. It is unscripted, it is completely in the moment, the reactions are completely in moment, a microcosm's moment.

Gedeon Naudet's camera caught the second strike, but unlike the distant shots that we are all familiar with, Gedeon had been making his way on foot to the Trade Center towers knowing that Jules was probably in them, and he was worried about him. As he walked, he shot footage of people reacting, panning to shots of the burning North Tower, and his camera just happened to be trained on the Towers from the ground pov when the second plane hit. Very sudden, totally unexpected, and the camera completely captures this.

I read on many weblogs that they can't stand to see those planes hitting those buildings over and over again. What's to be gained from viewing such media sensationalism? Maybe I'm a sucker for sensationalism, but I can watch that footage over and over again.

But it's not the sensational nature that is the reason why. Every time I see it, I feel disbelief, desperation. How could things have been? It's a year later and the Towers are completely gone, excised from the landscape, delivered to Staten Island in remnant pieces, but why aren't they there now?

Why aren't the people still working there, a year older, dealing with the economy, lay-offs, their lives, new people hired, people working there anew? Why couldn't the people in those planes have reached their destinations, been met by friends, acquaintances, loved ones, and where would they be now, a year older? It's a much more boring scenario, but certainly preferable.

The short answer is entrenched in history and U.S. dealings in international affairs. Consider why these "religious" fanatics did what they did, and don't write them off as frenzied barbarians with no regard for human or American lives. But as humans with faces and backgrounds that started somewhere and developed into cold zealots, frenzied with the sole mission to kill American lives.

And rewind the clock and keep rewinding and rewinding and consider how these 19 people got to be the way they were. It's not genetic. It's not even social or religious. It certainly is NOT MAJORITY. Arab and Middle Eastern societies have not developed with an inherent bent to hate Western societies and bring them down.

But U.S. foreign policy, with its complete disregard for Arab, Palestinian, and Middle Eastern lives, society, and culture, gets met with, and all it takes is, 19 fanatics with a burning hatred for what the U.S. has done to their "brothers".

And thinking total strangers are "brothers" just because they are Muslim is not primitive or barbaric. Early Islam preached Muslim brotherhood as a means to achieve peace, to look at another human being, a total stranger, and despite what argument or differences they had, recognize they are Muslim and believe in the same spiritual higher power that is beyond them, and in that way we are the same, humbled, petty.

There is no justifying or condoning what those 19 people did. An Onion article was particularly adept in publishing a satire of the 19 hijackers thinking they would end up in heaven, but surprised at ending up in the lowest level of hell possible. And all I can think is that the media/politician storm of sentiment and smarm is just a smoke screen, a distraction from thinking, processing, getting to the ugly root of the matter because, goddammit we need our oil. THINK! THINK! THINK!! Grieve, mourn, detach, deny, do what you have to, but THINK

Truth to tell, I wouldn't mind Sept. 11 turned into a national holiday. But with a twist. Sept. 11, 2001 shut much of the country down. If Sept. 11 were to be made into a national holiday, it should be one in which everything, except perhaps emergency, communications, and military units, are shut down. Shut it all down. No media barrage of the images of Sept. 11, we all know what happened. Just a day to reflect and think about our own lives, our own families, our own loved ones, and our own existence. None of the pukey, smarmy media and political posturing that went on today. . . . it would never fly.

a year ago:
My first alarm clock was set for 7:00 (radio), my second alarm clock was set for 7:30 (chime). When the first alarm goes off, it has to be set to a radio channel, I have mine set for NPR, which I find so stupid in the morning that I immediately switch it to a TV channel, which my alarm clock also receives.

In the usual daze I'm in after the first alarm goes off, the words "plane has crashed into the World Trade Center" seeped into my brain. I imagined something like the B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building earlier last century in a fog. I imaged the World Trade Center, very familiar, taken for granted having grown up just across the river in New Jersey. I imaged something small, a Cessna maybe crashing into the World Trade Center by accident.

At 7:30 the annoying chime alarm sounded, and I shut it off and switched it back to the TV channel. At 7:35, the words "the North Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed" seeped into my brain. Two seconds later, I darted up in my bed. What?!

I had just heard the unthinkable, the inconceivable. The World Trade Center does not "collapse". I imagined it falling over like a tree and . . . no. I jumped down out of my loft bed, taking all the blankets with me and ran into the living room and turned on the TV.

20 minutes later, housemate Jen, who had a cook's schedule and had been asleep for only a few hours, stumbles out of her room and says, "What the fuck are those jackasses upstairs doing?", the running around in the flat upstairs woke her up (they were in a panic trying to contact their friends in New York). "Jen, come here!" "Holy shit!"

my karma ran over your dogma:
I don't envy boss-lady. I'm not getting work done because I don't care and I'm paralyzed by demoralization and occassional hangovers. But boss-lady can't come down on me because she knows I'm on the verge of quitting. She's walking a fine line when it comes to me. It’s not like I want to contribute to her problems, I’d function if I could.

To me, she seems like she has a lot of bad karma from past lives, and has a handle on it in this life and is working through it and the misery that is her life, and is doing what she can to not make life miserable for the people around her who matter. It’s hard to say about karma, though. Only a fool projects upon another person's karma.

I don’t see karma as a subjective, linear moral system. It’s not a matter of “they wronged me, therefore they now have bad karma”. If someone wrongs you, how you react affects yours and their karma, and everything works within larger wheels of each person’s karma.

If you react the "wrong" way, your karma can worsen. If you react the "right" way, it may be enhanced. If you have bad karma, the person who wrongs you may not be affected at all except as to his or her own karma. Someone can "wrong" you and still enhance their karma depending on how you react to what they did.

If their actions are led by their good karma, it may not matter if you felt you've been wronged by them, they are untouched. And that's the trick. You must always see things in the most positive way for the other person. If their actions are led by their bad karma, it doesn't concern you, all that matters is how you react to what they do, and to make sure what you do does not affect their karma for the worse.

That's how I interpret Jesus's maxim of offering the left cheek if someone strikes you on the right. If someone strikes you, that's bad karma for the other person, but if you strike back, that's bad karma for both. If someone strikes you and you offer the other cheek, whether or not they do, that is good karma for both. (I'm not sure why it would be good for both if you turn the other cheek and they hit you again. If anyone has a clue, let me know.)

I'm probably a fool for trying to project about karma.

I got high tonight:
I went up to Twin Peaks this evening to calibrate the altimeter on my watch. It was a warm day, which translated into a pleasant night. There was a stiff breeze, but it was warm and pleasant, and if I had music with me, I'd've stayed up there longer.

I'm sure I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until I find someone who knows exactly what I mean, but warm (I prefer warmer, but this was as good as it gets in S.F.) Summer nights make me feel vast.

I look up into the Summer sky and see the stars and the intangibility of the universe and the actually abstract nature of the science of the sky and I don't feel small and insignificant, I feel vast and connected as a part of it. I could have screamed, and if I wasn't self-conscious, I probably would've. I didn't want to alarm the tourists.

Coming down from the peaks, the south boob to be specific, I had a brief flash about how I live my life, how I never expect to be alive after this point in time in the future or that point in time, but I always end up living past those points.

It got so regular that it was turning into a ludicrous game, and I started assuming that even as I made up the points in time, I would live past them. That's been going on for years now, but I always had a specific end-date that I never let go of - not a specific date, but a definite period.

But coming down from the peaks, the south boob to be specific, it hit me that maybe this is just the way I affirmatively live my life.

Quite honestly, it doesn't help me progress materially, it doesn't help me prepare for "the future", it doesn't relieve the stress that someday I might not be able to support myself, but it does help me maintain the values that I consider more important than the house thing, and the marriage thing, the normative thing, and the family thing, and the career thing, and the nest egg thing, and the retirement thing, and the medication thing, and the nursing home thing, and the kids-going-to-therapy-because-you-screwed-up-so-bad-raising-them thing. I don't want to get caught up in that.

And the value that I want to cultivate and understand most are the first two Noble Truths (out of four) in Buddhism that life is suffering, and that impermanance is the cause of suffering. Not that I'm affirmatively exploring them as I used to, but maybe the way I've chosen to live my life has those concepts built in.

My parents prepared me to do the normative thing, but my unconscious mind set me up to make sure that got sabotaged. So I'm kind of stuck in between. Still, I consider that a good thing.
If it's not my time, I can't leave. And if I leave, that means it was my time. It means my star was directly overhead, a la The Little Prince. Insha'allah, in this I believe.

Urg! I love that book and I keep giving away my copy of it!

sent from boss-lady:
Are you tired of all those mushy "friendship" poems that always sound good but never actually come close to reality? Well, here is a "friendship" poem that really speaks true friendship and truth itself!

Friend . . .
When you are sad... I will get you drunk and help you plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

When you are blue... I'll try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

When you smile... I'll know you finally got some.

When you are scared... I will tease you about it every chance I get.

When you are worried... I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be and to quit whining.

When you are confused... I will use little words to explain it to your dumb ass.

When you are sick... stay away from me until you're well again.

When you fall ... I will try to keep from laughing.

This is my oath. I pledge 'til the end.
Why you ask?
Because you're my friend.

Send this to five of your closest friends. Then get depressed because you realize you only have 2, and one of them is not speaking to you right now.

And remember, always:
A friend will help you move.
A really good friend will help you move a body.

And boss-lady wonders why I'm not getting any work done.

It occurred to me:
Is it just in California, or is it everywhere, that when you're driving down a highway, and someone is signaling to cut in front of you and you back off to let them, they don't wave a thanks? I always wave when someone lets me in, but I'm from New Jersey - polite society.

50 mile ride:
It's funny, after the first 10 miles, most of it climbing, you're shaking your head at the thought of the <echo>***NEXT 40 MILES***</echo>. But then at mile 39, you're euphoric, thinking the next 10 miles are going to be a cakewalk.

Of course it isn't, as muscles start cramping around mile 42, necessitating several stops, and the aching butt comes soon after that. But it's all worth it when you come full circle, and recognize the place where you started, coming at it from a different direction, and realize you're finished. But that mile 39 is key.

A Long-Standing Question I've Never Had Answered:
If someone kills him or herself as a result of mental illness, why is the cause of death never "mental illness" or "suicide caused by mental illness"? Why are victims of mental illness/suicide vilified, while victims of other diseases get sympathy? I know there's an easy obvious answer, but it eludes me.

Oh my god, I've outdone myself. I'm making a mix for a stranger named Helen, and she knows all the bands that have been showing up on my recent mixes. So taking a sharp left turn, I made a J-pop mix, with an emphasis on late-80's, early-90's material and, despite not understanding hardly a word of lyrics, I'm shitting myself reviewing this mix.

I can't help but notice that there are songs on this mix that Shiho Nakai put on her first mix cassette for me after she moved back to Japan, and songs from the last CD she gave me before I cut contact.

Part of the reason why I cut contact with Shiho was her inability to break up with me the last time when I knew she wanted to. I stretched it out hoping she would do it, because that way I would at least respect her, but she didn't. So I finally did it and lost respect for her.

I didn't want to break up. The main reason why I never fell in love with her in high school was that she couldn't take initiative, she was a follower, she wasn't proactive. That was dull to me back then. I miss her mixes and making mixes for her.

The irony isn't lost on me that I don't take initiative with my life, I'm more of a follower than a leader, and I'm not proactive about my life.

Helen Mix (not that any of this means anything to anyone who reads this):
Runa Runa (Spitz)
Sekai de Ichiban Atsui Natsu (Princess Princess)
C-cho Kotoba ni Goyojin (Southern All-Stars)
Kessen wa Kinyobi (Dreams Come True)
Platonic Dance (Anzen Chitai)
Lemon (Nokko)
I am Einstein (The Pugs)
Minna no Uta (Southern All-Stars)
Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi (Puffy)
Kimi ga Iru Dake de (Kome Kome Club)
Itoshi no Eri (Southern All-Stars)
Vivace (Nokko)
Ajisai no Dori (Spitz)
Ii Dasenakatta Himitsu (Rankin' Taxi)
Manatsu no Kajitsu (Southern All-Stars)
OMEDETORE (Kome Kome Club)
Diamonds (Princess Princess)

civilized people:
I was about to blow through a stop sign because it was a stop sign that bikes usually don't have to stop for. On the bike side is a restricted parking lot, and almost no one pulls into it, so we treat it as a T-intersection where we're safely riding across the top of the T.

But today as I came along side a truck, I didn't see the car with the right of way pulling into the lot. I jammed hard on my brakes, she slowed to a stop, I waved an apology acknowledging I was completely in the wrong, and she waved acceptance and drove into the lot.

Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? No flipping birds, no angry words, no obnoxious looks. I made a mistake, it was my responsibility to apologize. I apologized, it was her responsibility to accept. No harm done.

That's what I say when I have the right of way, and someone gets in my way and then says, "Sorry". For a brief flash I might think, "Fucker!", but then I'll say, "No harm" and go on my merry way.

I was pricing flights to visit the 'rents in New Jersey at the end of this month, but was then struck with a great feeling of "what's the point?" Everytime I go back there, it's the same thing. I float into their existence for a few days and float right back out with little fanfare or impact. It's all very placid and staid. Nothing meaningful.

Why should I go if I'm anticipating the same old nothingness? The whole family thing is feeling unbearable. Anticipating the last day, leaving for the airport, feeling nothing except being glad to go, when I should be feeling something is unbearable. I'd rather go and not visit the family. It should have cooled down enough in New Jersey by then that wearing long sleeves all the time isn't unusual.

After two gloriously, veritably, and very, very rare hot days, it is cooling down outside, but my apartment is still pretty warm.

Today was the kind of day I want to have if I had to die today. After a day of no drinking, go on a long ride in the heat and the sun, cross the Golden Gate Bridge, ride into the headlands to the top of Hawk Hill.

The downhill on the other side of Hawk Hill is hella steep. It's like a roller-coaster without the safeties. The trick about that stretch of road is to make sure a car didn't go down too soon before you, because you will catch it and following a car down a hill sucks ass, but it's also good to start before a car, because if you do bite it, they'll reach you soon after if you need attention. Unless you go over a cliff. Then you're SOL. Otherwise it's pretty exhilarating.

Today was the perfect day. So hard to stay, so hard to leave.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Ed: Hello Shelley, I'll have glass of red wine, please.
Shelley: You want wine? Red wine?
Ed: Chianti, if you have it.
Shelley: You don't drink, Ed.
Ed: Are you sure?
Shelley: Uh-huh.
Ed: Grape juice then, please.