Are there cities where everyone is old? Driving down near campus and realizing that all the skinny young college kids are almost ten years younger than you is just plain cruel. By the way, as if there were any doubt, I’m totally out of touch. The 70’s and 80’s have been completely resurrected culture-wise. Why does pop culture have to be so derivative? (Exhibit A.) That seems to be another torture devised for anyone over 25.
On an unrelated note, Are you ghettofabulous or not? via Gawker.
This old place is plagued by brown-outs. Any time it’s just the least bit nasty outside the power hiccups for a split-second and down go all the clocks and computers, all appliances flashing midnight. During the last bout a few hours ago I was in the middle of writing down another one of my navel-gazing, micro-epiphanies for this humble website. Losing everything I wrote didn’t bug me so much since I was writing on a subject I’ve almost got beat to death…me, and how I fit into the universe. It was specifically about fear, security, and habit. It’s not that what I was writing was bad or boring, just that I knew I didn’t have to worry about covering the same ground again later.
The thing that is bothering me is that my computer doesn’t want to boot up completely. It gets to a certain point and seems to just black out again. That’s frustrating, but I don’t have time to dick around with it now.
I’ve been reading The Prince of Tides off and on all day today. When I have a book that grabs me I will keep a vigil of reading until I finish it. I did finish it, twenty minutes ago. When I finished reading, I closed the book and sat there for a while feeling all the emotions and people I had experienced in some small way, feeling also a mixture of happiness and longing. When you get involved in a story that touches you down deep, a part of you hopes that the story and characters are somehow real because then everything can live on even after the small part you shared has been played out. Realizing that the story was created by another person diminishes its magic.
This may sound arrogant and overly exhuberant, but I think this is the book the more talented version of myself would write. So many feelings about childhood, love, and family rang true. This is the kind of book I would give to someone who wanted to understand me better. I have rarely felt so much like an author has captured so much of the person I am. In many places I felt like it would be impossible for the author to fabricate these experiences he was describing because they reminded me so perfectly of insights and experiences from my own life. So much so that I would have been able to detect the slightest hint of artifice. It’s amazing to me that powerful books have this knack of coming along just when you needed them.
I changed a little something in my server settings so that now those Dutch people who keep hotlinking my images for their forum avatars will get a gay porn image instead. I made sure to heavily pixelate the naughty bits, but you can still tell what’s going on. I added a message as well. “HOTLINKING SUCKS STOP STEALING MY BANDWIDTH”.
Basically, if anyone tries to link to my images remotely (hotlink) so that it is using my bandwidth to decorate their page they will be redirected to this other image. If anyone notices anything weird caused by this please let me know. It should only disallow direct linking to my images in IMG tags from domains other than this one. People can still save anything I use here, but if they want to use it on their website they should save a copy to their server.
There is Seattle’s Best Coffee on Bee Caves where I’m at now. It’s a Starbucks pretender, but their main color is red instead of the Starbucks green. See, that’s how opposite they are.
The WiFi is free and the coffee is so-so. This particular location is way too small without enough wall outlets to leech electricity off of.
I buy a number of things based solely on my intentions for them. Today I bought a small, pocket-sized, quadrille-lined notebook, Moleskine (Mol-skin-a), to write down ideas and keep track of things. This is despite the fact that I have at least 2-3 other half-filled pocket sized notebooks. The Moleskine has some features that make it different: an elastic band to keep the book closed, a cloth ribbon to mark your place, and a hidden pocket on the back inside cover. They run about 10$ for the pocket sized ones, and you can buy them at most book stores. See the different styles here.
It’s amazing what you can do in one night if you don’t try. After work Jody and I went to eat at Rosie’s Tamale House for dinner. Afterward we didn’t have any plans until she suggested Bingo and being the stick in the mud I am I had to let the idea sink in a while before I wanted to do it since I have a difficult time trying new things. Now you know I had played the game Bingo when I was a kid, but I had never been to a Bingo hall. I had a blast even though we only got there in time for two games. There were all kinds of people there, of all races, classes, ages, and types. Little old ladies with ziplocs full of ink dobbers, sun-darkened guys with blurred tattoos smoking and looking tired, groups of college kids drinking Coors Light from a case they brought, people who looked like they just came from work, just a cross-section of society though I’d imagine most of the people there were lower to lower-middle class.
Today was one of those days that just went alllllright. Work was nice and slow but just busy enough to keep my mind buzzing. I found my 
Olympus Digital Recorder that I had thought I had lost forever. I use it to make notes to myself. Like, “remember to feed the cat” because my memory is very badly organized. Lists and notes and recordings are my friend. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the type who will get Alzheimer’s disease, although I think my problem is more one of inattentiveness and disorganization rather than forgetfulness. Still, it does make me wonder. The recorder was in my backpack, which I swear I looked through at least ten times. How in the heck does that happen? I feel like I went through it thoroughly yet when I was digging in it today at work looking for my leatherman to open a bottle, there it was. It is a small thing but not that small! I was glad to find it after two weeks. At least once or twice a day, I thought about how stupid I was for losing it, especially since it was a Christmas present from Jody.
Today I also felt better about work and I had a few good interchanges with people which pumped me up. I get energized by talking to other people. If I go for a while without talking to my coworkers I start thinking they don’t like me or something. I do care a little too much about what other people think. It reminds me of a quotation by Goethe, “A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.”
I also asked for the day off tomorrow since I’d like to actually work on a few pressing things. I feel like I’m busy all the time, but I really can’t tell you what. All I know is I get home around 6:45-7pm normally and then it seems to go by like nothing until it’s time to go to bed. The weeks and months just pour by.
I think a lot about emotional ups and downs. If manic-depression was a high school its mascot could be:
What do you think all these things have in common?
Sometimes I wonder if emotion is a dangerous thing. Like, does emotional sensitivity make you more fragile? By emotional sensitivity I don’t mean being thoughtful or considerate or anything positive like that. I mean it in the sense of easily affected. If you are susceptible to being easily affected emotionally does that cause everything to get all mixed up. I’ve noticed that when serious things, personal things, happen I can freeze up inside yet when meaninglessly sentimental things happen I can be greatly affected.
It makes me think a lot about the ways in which people try to modulate and manage their moods and emotions. I try to endure sadness because I am sure it will always be there in some fashion from time to time, and I hope to understand what causes it. I do things like read, nap, and listen to music if I’m feeling down. Sometimes I’ll eat something sweet. Other people find that exercising helps or drugs or Prozac or sex or alcohol or you name it. The common aspect seems to be the desire to create a more enjoyable sensation to overwhelm the unpleasant sensations or a desire to avoid or dampen the unpleasant sensation itself. Some people prefer getting all the way down into it, although this seems rather dangerous to me.
Jenny’s website seems to be in an ever so slightly new location. Update your links. I was wondering what the dealio was.
Well, checking through my links I realize that Bellis has moved too. You can tell how close I pay attention.
