Intellectual Poison

Another post from the "Just Not Getting It" Department. Just got some spam from someone trying to sell me cheap, generic cigarettes. Let's see, how many ways can spam be wrong? There's three right away by trying to shotgun market low budget poison to me.
I hate spam as most everyone else does these days. But I hate it for more than the obvious reasons. I hate it because its lame ass bad marketing almost every time. Poorly written, poorly edited, poorly executed strategies to get a random click here or there and the odd rare sale. Spam is lazy man's marketing. Its invasive and stupid. I'd love to read an interview with a spammer and see them defend their position as the sewage underneath the information superhighway. But they are worse, they clog it up with their garbage, they inflate costs and shut down servers. They fill inboxes with spam in Korean, Chinese and Japanese. And waste a tremendous amount of everyone's time.

But it must be a cost effective way to do business because Spam's not going away. In fact, its getting worse.

Yep, that's part of where I'll be tonight and for the weekend. I'll try to get some better pics though if the weather's clear.

Just read Layne's Love Offensive breakdown on her blog Plain Layne and its certainly worth a read. Both participants had more dates in 8 weeks than I think I could stand in 8 months. Too much, too often and too many wankers. Notice how there were tons and tons of bad date stories and both couldn't come up with a single bad experience. Each had numerous.
Is this part of the reason that people stay with someone even though they can recognize that that person is wrong for them? They just don't want to deal with the dating scene again?

I don't know about any of this but I did get my blog sorted out for good for now. I'm sure it'll be tons of fun when I try to upload more pics next week but we'll deal with that later on.
In the interim, pray for sunshine.

A band I think I'd probably be lost without. Weezer rips, there's just no doubting it. Shame they aren't coming out west on tour anytime soon. Maybe I'll see when Cake's playing next. There are so many fun and cool bands to see. And baseball games to go to also.
But first things first, another couple of burns to make.

This just in from the "Doesn't the FBI Have Enough Power As It Is?" Department FBI Gets More Freedom for Domestic Surveillance.
Um, I saw Enemy of the State and I really don't think we need that level of FBI interference. But then, maybe I should just hush up like a good little worker bee?

Here's another post from the "But we were really trying hard to keep the kids from smoking" Department. A study just found that the anti-smoking campaign geared towards teens is actually making more of them smoke. Tobacco Kids.
And it looks like the tobacco industry is all broken up about it. "We tried, we really tried to keep kids from smoking but our products are just that excellent that even when we don't WANT to sell to minors, they still get them." And then Big Tobacco gets them forever, they get hooked in their teens and never quit until they breathe their last smoky breath.

On an up note, it appears that the Truth ads are working pretty well.

It saddens me no end to see kids smoking. Because smoking now means you will almost certainly be smoking in five or ten years. And down the line you will get sick more, you will not have as much money and you'll smell bad too. Where's the upside in cigarettes? Oral fixation? Stained teeth and fingers? Collections of cool lighters?

Nah. There really is no upside. Spend some time in a cancer ward sometime and you see how truly grisly the downside is. It ain't pretty.

I suppose that on the one hand I should be pissed off and have told her to go stuff a sock in her ass, or something to that effect. Whatever combination happened to strike at that moment. But no, I let it go, I let her continue to talk because I knew there was something else coming up and my ego wanted to hear it.
And I did, she needed me. Wanted to spend some time with me. Nothing sexual, oh no, those ex's are gone. Married or worse.
But I had deeds and needs to fall back upon and to grace my exit, as it were. Work in the morning, oh you're on a double, okay, well, crap, I'm gone all weekend.
But I'll be in touch, okay?
More small talk chit chat,
Clickee. Gone.

And the seething marl of thoughts climbs back from the deep to cause me some insomnia, some extra thinking, some conspired rationalizations and inevitable big-brain/little-brain debates.
Brain in head says - She's evil and going to bring me back down
Little brain in pecker says - Ummmm, she's like hot, dude.

What am I doing? Why would I want to reopen a door that nearly broke my stupid hand out of frustration? No way, no how can that stuff be gotten back into. I'm single now for a purpose and on purpose. I need and want to get my own shit organized and squared away before I can actually be with someone else. Up until then its all a series of rationalizations and compromises and other ridiculous crap like that. Dating and being out with people shouldn't suck badly that I'd settle for a cigarette smoking (monstrous strike one), alcoholic (strike two) woman with dubious abilities to fidelity (strike three). There's a reason I like baseball, its got a certain symmetry to it, an elegance. There are balls thrown at you that are good pitches and bad ones too, the bad ones count against you and can knock you out of the game. Not all games, just mine. The only one I have or want any control over.

So maybe it's not truly inte-poi quality but at least life's becoming interesting again. I should have some time over the weekend to write some ideas down. The book's actually starting to come up more and more in my thoughts these days and I know that I want to continue writing it. I need to print it all out and do some proofing and stitching together. Maybe I'll convert it all into memo's and load them onto the palm to take to Big Sur over the weekend.

Okay, its done. Hours of futzing with the page have yielded a page very much like the template but with some additions. Oh well, I'm not all that into HTML but its worked out for now. And I've gone ahead and changed the name to Intellectual Poison. It just resonates so much better with me. No heavy posts tonight.
But I'm sure there's some good stuff in the works. We're going camping in Big Sur this weekend and it should prove to be a most interesting time. Pics to follow.

Actually, the more I think about it the more I want to change the name of this blog to "Intellectual Poison". Something about resonates with me. Maybe it should be Intellectual Anti-Poison? Ach well, we'll give it some more thought and see what shakes out later on.

On another note, it makes a HUGE difference to get a workout in before starting the day. Especially with the sun pouring in the side windows. It just gets everything moving, the blood, the brain and the body, altogether working up a bit of lather to begin another day. And its like an instant bonus point or something because I already feel like I'm ahead of the curve. Add in the bike ride to work and I'm off to a decent day finally. Might even go and catch a movie after work, still have to see Spiderman and/or Star Wars and yep, found a 10 spot in a pair of pants this morning so I can even afford it without another trip the ATM. So yes, this Wednesday's off to a good start so far. But its not yet noon so keep your fingers crossed. And then I see cool stuff like this! Ancient Juniper

I think I'm getting by okay, I think life's going decently well for me and then I go and read about someone else's life, their blog, and realize that damned if I'm not blessed to be where I am, doing what I am and being who I am. I had no idea that the singles scene was such a horrid nightmare of freaks and grapple daddies (yeah, I like the term alot too).

Makes me want to be a better person to everyone I come across. Its such a freakish world we exist in.

Sorry the Love Offensive turned into a Love Depression, Layne. At least now you have a better and better sense of what you don't want.

Here's a nice pic of my nephew, Andrew, sitting on his dad, Dave's, shoulders last Thanksgiving that I just found.

Its actually a really cool picture with the ghost sun above them and the lighting. But what do I know, I'm just a digi-cam hack for now but I'm going to take a photography class and learn how to properly compose pictures.

I thought I was going to get some writing done last night but instead got tied up in loading up a couple of pictures to the blog. Looks better now, though and that's the big thing. I've got a few writing samples that I'm thinking about loading up onto the site but I want to be able to solicit feedback for them before I do that. Reblogger's down and the other one, backBlog or something like that is out of commission for the mean time and not accepting subscriptions.

Next up on the upgrade train is a links page with more and better pics, some background on me and other stuff. I'd also like to clean up the links section of the page. I need to learn quite a lot more HTML though.

Here's a sampler story to whet the appetite. It was written about ten years ago while I was living in Capetown, South Africa and watching droves of mountain folks come down every week and parade past my apartment.
Its called:

Ex-Pat in Seapoint

Just as she passed underneath the balcony Scott leaned over and spat a long, thin stream of watery spittle. She pretended not to notice and kept walking past. Scott smiled and sat himself back down to his joint and his ginger ale. The discordant but oddly harmonious "Sugercubes" blared from the stereo inside the flat. "Motorcrash", Scott's favorite, was just starting up. Somewhere nearby a dog or cat cried with an aching forlornness at its abandonment.
"Your trouble is that you just don't give a fuck about much of anything," a voice said from inside.
"Tell someone who cares, eh?" Scott said with a laugh.
"It's unnatural for someone to be so detached, so off-line," the voice continued.
"Bugger that tech talk, okay?"
"Bugger this, bugger that. You're trying to go native," the voice went on. The voice belonged to Mikala, Scott's flatmate and a white South African while Scott was an ex-patriot American on a tour to garner life experience for books.
"Screw that shit. I don't want to be a Boer," he retorted harshly.
"I-merican asshole!" she shouted.
"I love you too, dear," Scott mimicked the Terminator's imitation.
A couple of seagulls wheeled around above a neighboring building before settling, cackling on the roof line. "Fucking birds!" he yelled.
Scott got up briefly to go inside and fetch something. He was smiling when he walked back out onto the deck.
"Here you go you fucking vermin," he laughed and lit the end of the bottle rocket. The rocket caught and raced impatiently away towards the roosting birds.
"Wheebang!" The light firework exploded ten feet shy of the crowd. It was, however, sufficiently close to scare the birds into action, they filled the air with flutters and cackles.
Scott sat back down, smiling, to his joint and his ginger ale.

I'm going to start working on an essay titled "Intellectual Poison" about the dumbing down of America by media outlets like MTV. There are things people read, see or do to make themselves smarter so it stands to reason that there must be the anti-thesis of this, things we do that make us dumber. Is MTV evil? No, probably not. Or if it is then its the same lame evil that Las Vegas has become. Commercialized and tamed and with an enormous dose "Who gives a damn about it anymore?".

Anyway, there's the concept. We'll see where it goes from here.

Oh my god, stop the presses, its official. Chandra Levy was murdered! You don't say?
Missing Intern?

I remember when this was the biggest news story on the stands. And then 9/11 happened and no one (well almost no one) gave a damn about this for almost a half of a year. Well guess what, Mr Condit? Its back and will unravel what remaining political clout you once had. Shame the public sentiment system is going to try you and punish you before the legal system will get a chance to.

I don't know if he did it, had it done or what but anyway you slice it, his political career is over. Maybe it should be if he's sleeping with his interns.

I think I may have found something more compelling to look through than HotorNot. Check it out, its Unclaimed Baggage ! And yes, its for sale so you can repurchase stuff the airlines were nice enough to lose for you. Thus propelling the economy to ever dizzying heights!

Sad start to the week to read an online obituary by a friend about her uncle. It reminds me of the need to empathize, to take everyone with a grain of salt and treat everyone with kid gloves. You never really know what they're going through and dealing with so cut them some slack. Unless they are blatantly just being jerks because that's how they interact with the world. But those people are actually somewhat rare outside of the teens and 20's.

Sure, its easy to get off of it when some jackass cuts you off on your way home. But you know what? It doesn't matter and that's what I keep trying to tell myself. Getting irritated about things that you have no control over is an exercise is stupidity. And nobody needs to get their stupidity into any better shape than it already is! Especially me since mine's all buffed up from the last few weeks of non-thinking.

But this is a new week and I should be able to start fresher than last week. At least this time around I got some decent sleep so that'll help.

Do people have vanilla weeks? Or chocolate weeks? Why not have flavors assigned to week's in addition to colors?

Like this morning would definitely be cherry vanilla. Sweet and beautiful morning (strange how it works that way, isn't it? three consecutive days of heavy grey and then it gets perfect again when we all have to return to work) but everyone's rushing to work after three days off. Maybe sweet and sour would be a better taste for the day. I'm bitter but I'll get over it thanks to a new burn I've got playing right now. I don't know why but Shaggy has been making me smile an awful lot these days, try him out. You love him 'cause he is Mr. Lover Man.

Well now, what's news in the news? Oh yeah, Russia's now a part of NATO. Um, wasn't NATO founded in part to fight against Soviet aggression? But I guess since they are a dissolving super power now, its cool and they can come play reindeer games with the rest of the bullies.

Best thing about the weekend? I slept something like 12 hours yesterday. Came up from the beach, watched some baseball and woke up after 8 last night. Rallied up to the store, shopped like a super ace (dangerous with an empty stomach) and got back home to be back in bed and out cold again by about 11 including dinner and clean up. Maybe that'll get this week off to a decent start and I won't be yawning all week again.

But tonight's sailing so I'm looking forward to it. Hope the weather holds out and its nice but I've got to think about what to wear in any case. I'll take along one of the cameras to get some pics but since it'll probably be regular film, don't expect anything up here anytime soon.

Ahhhh, Trader's Joe Chai! The whole world needs a Trader Joe's nearby.

My friend, Layne has just done a whole redux of her blog Plain Layne . She's cool that way.

Well today was an enough is enough kind of morning with the same grey skies and generally overcast look to the world. The deep grey fog off the coast was quite menacing as it raced south towards Monterey, pulling along wishful grains of sand with it, blowing away concerns about sunburn, fears about frying one's skin. But those fears are being met in the next hour or so, those funny people on the beach are learning that the sun's rays, while not quite so warming, are still capable of sizzling the skin.

It was nice enough to be down on the beach today, windy but sunny enough to be worthwhile. Played some ball with the wind cutting across the court and making for an interesting condition. Same as yesterday but I wasn't into it at all and didn't try terribly hard, today I worked a bit harder. Played some marathon games with long rallies and drama and the like. And ended up without a loss on my record. Not a bad day. The wind made it fun really, although it caused as many losses as it did free points.

I've started lusting for a new toy again. Its a Canon Elph digi-cam. Tiny little thing but does an awful lot.

Another morning, another overcast cloudy and chilly start to the day. Perhaps we'll get a whole half hour of sun today. Let's see what the weather has to say about it.
Santa Cruz, CA (95062)
as reported at Watsonville, CA.��Last Updated Sunday, May 26, 2002, at 7:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time (Sunday, 10:53 AM EDT)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
� Cloudy
�51�F Feels Like: 51�F
�
�UV Index: 0�Minimal <---------- This is the bad one, zero chance of sunburned tourists, where's the fun in that?
�Wind: calm
�Dew Point: 50�F
�Humidity: 96 %
�Visibility: 5.00�miles
�Barometer: 29.97�inches and steady

Well, I'm now located on my own server which is kind of cool. Now I think I'll start to monkey around with the templates and make some other changes. Can't get my archives to come up properly yet but I'm not all the worried. I think I also want to get my airport network running again. There are plenty of times when I want and need my computer downstairs.

The card was loose the last time I had the case open so maybe it will function perhaps a little better once again fully seated.

This is and has been my favorite gif for years.

Epiphany after epiphany is supposed to be flowing from my finger tips but sometimes the shit's just not going to come out. I suppose that I could come up with a clever name for it like digital constipation or something like that but I'm sure its covered territory so why retrace steps. Better to link instead but there is no decent link and they all mean something else anyway.

Since it looks like mama nature's going to be cruel to the sun worshipping Santa Cruzans and our unholy mob of Valleys and Kooks from over the Hill. So long as there's no rain then I won't be all that peeved by it but it could sleet right now for all I know. Maybe I'll go and take a look from the top deck and see what it looks like from there.

No, not good at all. Light sprinkly mist and not a speck of blue anywhere in the sky. Its not hideous out but it means the beach would be a bad idea. The week has been awesome weather everyday and it gets crappy on Saturday? Someone's idea of a joke.

Anyway, had some sundowners last night out front above Seabright Beach at Youngmans. Ended up getting invited to start joining some of the weekly sailing regattas! I've always like sailing and used to do it much more when I was back east but fell out of it. I've been thinking more and more about buying a small sailboat to buzz around the bay in all summer, or a kayak but the sailboat's more social. Hell, maybe I'll buy both.

Oh yes, I've got to run up to campus and post a few fliers to sell my Mongoose. I was expecting to be able to do that on the motorcycle because town's going to be insane with people but with the drizzle that'll make it way more of an adventure than I think I want this early in the weekend.

Cold, windy and all around shitty out. And we just inherited another cat.

So heart break's supposed to be a sore ass bastard that makes you want to stomp on kittens?

Ah, we'll see what it ends up doing and being.

Would someone please explain to me why I can fall asleep at my desk in under three seconds but sometimes can't sleep a wink at night in my nice big warm comfortable bed? These long Fridays are tough to drag it all the way through. I'm reminded of the new Gatorade commercials about not eating right and having your performance suffer and its someone trying to shoot a free throw with a huge boulder and another running through quicksand to get to first base.

Feels like someone put quicksand in my brain about an hour ago and the only reason my eyes are open right now is to catch all my typing mistakes (the backspace key is my friend!) as I make them. But once this post is done I'll be struggling again.

Maybe I should go and grab a soda and see if I can check out the super cute paralegal upstairs! Yeah, that'll work!

In the More-Fun-With-Microsoft Department: Alt-Shift-X will start the process of creating an index. Highlight your word and use those three keys and boom. You get an instant index. Kind of cool for a place like this that really needs it but another example bloatware because just about every other user has zero use for an index feature. Oh well, works for me and that's really all I ask for (can you hear me, garage door opener? All I wanted was for you to work, I didn't want to beat you up with a stick! But now you work quite well!)

No pleasure philosophy, no sensuality, no place nor power, no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purposes, for maintenance of integrity, for the preservation of self-approval.
- Minot Simons

Check out this cool article about Baseball's arrival in the Internet age Baseball's Evolution

I'm thinking about creating another blog called Email I've Sent. No names (to protect, well, me) but it would be just a running series of emails I send out everyday because some of them are pretty damned entertaining to read and shouldn't be restricted to a scant few.

Is this a bad idea? Maybe but so what, how about my other idea of reposting old emails between myself and my ex? I've got years of them so why not rekick them out into cyberspace and see what happens?

Or maybe I'll just try to get this blog into some shape and off on my own site? Yeah, that's probably a better idea for now.

Here's an older pic of Me At Alices that my sister in law snapped a couple of years ago. Alice's Restaurant in La Honda, California is where Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters were centered back in the 60's. Its one of Northern California's meccas for bikers and on a nice weekend you'll be able to see more motorcycles than anywhere else. Its a good place to head to as there are 5 (count em on one hand, 1, 3, 4, 5) excellent biking roads that lead to it. How much better can it get? The food's pretty good too!

And there's no better way to wrap a day out riding by heading out to Half Moon Bay and coming all the way down Highway 1 (that's Pacific Coast Highway 1) as the sun sets over the Pacific. Especially if I time it just right and get back home just as the sun disappears and the fog takes over again! What a place!

Peolpe ask me why I am figan when I'm online. Here's the reason, Jane Goodall and her study of chimps back in the 60's. Figan was one of the first males she studied and the name struck me since I'm just a much less hairy kind of chimp (dang, how Freudian was that? I wrote chump instead).

Why do the Oakland A's suck so badly this year?

I suppose I'm several days late on this topic but as I was out of town last weekend and couldn't watch the finale of Survivor I had to tape it and only watched it last night.
One thing I've got to say is that both Neleh and Vecepia started to drive me frigging insane with their constant praying. Why is it that Christians parade their faith like some banner and the rest of the world has the good taste and decency to shut the hell up about it?

If that crap happens again I'll swear the show off for good because it was really irritating. I hate when a pro athlete thanks God for getting him to the victory circle or whatever. God, if it does exist, almost certainly could care less about one person over another and thanking him/her/it whatever is basically telling the loser(s) that God likes you more and that's just stupid. Jim Rome said it best a long time ago. No one thanks their heterosexuality for winning or their homosexuality for winning so why not keep your religious zeal in the closet and let the athiest and agnostics have a rest.

If I'd been on that island I would have started praying to Buddha, Mantis and any other God I could think of, just to bother the thumpers. John, the irritating wanker nurse, had one good line in the whole season when he addressed them at the end. He said neither of you bible thumpers deserves this money because you both lied and then forgave yourselves, so convince me that you deserve it.

But damned if it wasn't a compelling show to watch. Race card, honesty, religious nuts, knuckleheads, Boston Rob with that oh-so-sexy gold chain and much more (like Sarah's two best assets that apparently we'll all see in Playboy soon).
Good stuff and I can't wait for the next series to start up.

Bring back LEX!

Maybe an ultimate survivor of all the top two winners or something?

I suppose I should post my email address every once in a while so that readers, if there are any, can contact me.
Send your inquiries to me at zedoneoh@pacbell.net

Well the Giants finally got the wollop on against the Diamondbacks last night. Good to see and better to see Barry absolutely pound that home run about 4/5's of the way up the foul pole. Pretty awesome power, dontcha think?

Here's an example of getting ahead of ourselves. This guy has the bike land speed record on snow and thought, gee wouldn't it fun to do this on the side of a volcano? Did someone forget to mention to him that volcanos are covered in some razor sharp rocks and underneath (in case the rocks aren't enough) there's liquid magma. Think about that for a second, liquid rock. How hot does that have to be to stay in that state? Hot enough to make a human body explode as it combusts. Eeeww.
Anyway, here's the stack of the month from Mountain Bike UK

I hope he got some sense knocked into him while he was getting the stuffing knocked out of him.

Got some bonus points last night from one of my pals. Any women reading this are about to roll their eyes in some mixture of disgust, amusement and bewilderment. But I checked in with a friend of mine for permission before I asked out one of his ex's who still happens to be a close friend. Its the right thing to do and those that don't do it are subject to censure (are you reading this Grainger? probably not but there's a lesson here for you).

I should get into that topic sometime, just to open it up to the world and see what happens. I still hold my upper moral turf but I'm curious to see what the world at large would make of it.

Anyway, its time to ring the bell, spin a little, proof alot and get the day behind me.

Still undecided about returning to blond for the summer. Though I need a haircut like nobody's business.

Hi ho, hi ho.

A friend of mine doesn't like the Bloodhound Gang at all but I'm so totally into them. They make me smile even when I just wish I could stomp on eggs or something violent and messy. Lately I've been grooving to Hell Yeah because its about being a pithy and stupid god with a personal agenda instead of the typical omni-benevolent crap the church launches at us. God love us all but loves those who go to church a little more and those who give lots of money are almost gauranteed heaven!

Come on, why not tell me that the more I suffer in this life the better the next life will be? What a crock.

A buddy just sent this over and its yet another instance of the record companies flailing and coming off like the over grown greedheaded idiots they are.

I can't wait to see all the lawsuits that result from this!
It definitely deserves a few boycotts and petitions and other means of expressing dissatisfaction with their idiotic business practices. If they'd embrace Napster as another means of delivering their media they all of this would be gone and they'd be making more money than ever before.

Isn't there some over riding economic principle about breaking packaging down into smaller and smaller sizes so that consumer can purchase only as much as is needed? What about a CD that has 16 or 18 songs on it yet only three of those songs are any good? Why do I need to pay for all those other songs that suck? Because that puts more cash in the greedhead's pocket. Let me pay each artist for their music and fuck the recording industry altogether. I'll burn my own CD's that won't jam up my Mac or mangle my data in my PC. Jesus, what are they thinking?

Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 10:43:54 -0400
From: Bill Bumgarner
Subject: Re: Apple: break your new PC with a copy-protected CD ... (R
22 07)

Is it a car company's fault if you put sugar water in the gas tank and it destroys the engine?

Is it a printer manufacturer's fault if you put toilet paper through your printer and completely destroy the print heads?

No -- is the consumer's fault in those cases.

In the case of the copy protected CDs, things aren't so clear. It still isn't the computer manufacturers fault-- at the time of design and manufacture, they cannot predict changes in technology and they certainly can't predict and account for changes in technology that are designed to break their products!

The problem with the copy protected audio CDs is that the CD manufacturer has purposefully designed a CD to be incompatible with computer hardware. They have purposefully violated a standard that hardware manufacturers have been manufacturing to for nearly two decades (since 1983/1984).

Let's rephrase the question slightly:

Should it be legal for antitheft devices to destroy property? In particular, should it be legal to destroy property in contexts where it is not 100% guaranteed that a theft was actually in progress?

That is exactly what the audio CD manufacturers (to be fair, the folks mastering the CDs) are doing. They are purposefully creating a piece of media that, when inserted into a computer, can cause data loss [a number of PCs outright crash when faced with these CDs] or even changes to the hardware that require relatively nasty fixes (as is the case with the Macs -- it doesn't hurt it, just leaves it such that there is no way to get the damned disk out).

Sure -- it may be the fault of the consumer for actually sticking the CD into their computer.

But it would seem that the folks that created the format in direct violation of published standards should share some of the blame and resulting liability.

Here's a report from the "What are you, stupid and had to do a survey to figure this out?" Department. Sexy TV Linked to Sex Behavior in Some Teens

I mean, gee. Who's paying for this kind of ridiculous study? But then again, my cynicism is running high right now so perhaps I need a whack in the head to reset my perspective.

Another day, another freaking monkey jabbing hassle to get out of bed. Took about twenty minutes for my eyes to open and stay open. Luckily I can't really be late for work unless I miss it altogether. And since I was the first fool in the door this morning, I'm going to bolt like one of Skinner's rats when they opened the electro cage exit. Best part is I've got my moto today and that makes it nice and easy to get home and back. Although today I've got a mission. Taking My Blue Heaven (my 98 Ibis Mojo mountain bike) into the shop to get her rear derailleur hanger straightened out.

That should sort out my drive train issues. And then I can park all my toys and ride into work for the rest of the week! And its a thankfully short week this time around. I can't wait for the long weekend to sleep in and not have to answer the damned phones for a couple of days.

Bah, I'm sour, sore and just not into it today. Although maybe it was that big old tumbler of single malt. Oh well, what can you do, when you need to write, you need to write and the catalyst comes along with the deal. No, that wasn't intended to make a whole lot of sense to anyone else reading this. So what, I'm under no contract, this is my expression and if I choose to be obtuse then so be it.

Long weekends pretty well rule, don't they? They make all the attitude adjustment needed sometimes to get a kickstart and make changes that have been needing addressing for weeks, months, years. Its sad, sickening and slightly stupid how time slips by, yeah, uh huh time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.

So I came home with a renewed sense of drive, purpose, theme and direction all as a result of spending so much time among my fellow Americans and other money bearing humanoid monkeys from all over the globe and possibly beyond. I mean, wouldn't it kind of make sense that at least some Elvis impersonators were from other planets? Yeah, you know where I'm coming from, the city that just can't stop sinning. Good old Vegas. And yep, I did hear a woman at the airport today complaining about it really being Lost Wages, just like in a big stinking, smoke encrusted cliche.

What do I come away with from spending time there? There's a sense of movement always, money's moving, people are moving and the shit is truly happening. big time, all the time, helicopters, new hot and sexy Ford Thunderbirds for rent right next to souped up golf carts for those who like to sweat in the Nevada sun while they move from outrageous freakshow snapshots of places and events that are deemed memorable. We walked the streets of New York and then headed into the Eiffel Tower but why are all the slot machines the same, wouldn't the French ones be in, well French? Or would that just confuse Johnny?

One of my better concepts for the weeked was to hunt down the most proto-typical Las Vegas visitor and convince him or her to be in a picture for some reason. Damn, I just came up with a great excuse to get them in a pic, tell them they look exactly like my uncle Robert or aunt Janice or some such hokey bullshit like that. But the pisser of it all is that I literally looked at thousands upon thousands of people and didn't see him or her. Saw some incredibly bizarre upright primates but not the one I was searching for. But heck, I didn't win the $21 million dollar progressive jackpot either. Never saw anyone else win huge either. The entire weekend seemed surreal, mostly in a cool and entertaining kind of way. At least, Erika and I laughed an awful lot at things, people, events, the past and the "upgrade" to a large, midwestern family sized minivan. Whatever, it turned out to be fun to bop around in, even if it was a sort of inverted and alternate reality slice of what we might have ever actually become all those years ago.

Funny, I hadn't thought of it that way until now. Should it be blogged? Who's this for anyway? Is it bad, strange, wrong or evil that what goes up here is a fraction of what comes out of my fingers? I should have carpal tunnel but don't, yet. Boy am I looking forward to surgery on my wrists from writing too damned much. And wearing those super cool black wrist guards so it doesn't happen in the future. Chicks totally dig guys with armor on, don't they?

No, no, please don't answer that.

Ah, single malt. What a pure and tasty concept. But not something to be undertaken in a bar where you just come off as an incredibly pretentious wanker. Which I am but that doesn't mean I have to broadcast it quite all of the time.

By the way, is it bad of me to write using alternate names? Not that I really care because its still my thoughts, just with a different designation assigned to them. No harm in categorizing a little is there?

Its late and I must try to sleep for tomorrow and the rest of the week shall be filled with excitement and busy-ness. Workwise and house wise. The book lives, the book lives. Vegas sparked it back up and the cherry glows brightly. A new direction, a new depth. Neat stuff but who knows if it'll pan.

Perhaps I'll use this semi-private forum to post clips for potential feedback with an email address? I guess that's one aspect of the blog that I'm still wondering about. Who does read these things or are they loaded up and launched into cyberspace willy nilly? Just high speed angst bombs running amok?

Ponder and report your findings to a stranger at an inopportune time.