30 years old, redux.

Let's recap:

broke a heart, prevented a suicide, fucked up a relationshit, had piece of art dedicated to me, got a new car, got sold out on a hike, had my heart broken and jumped up and down on, got chosen over a bad friend, lost all faith in pretty much all of humanity as a whole¹, my old man hit the hospital twice, my mom once, one brother is an asshole (house issues), one brother also had heart broken plus legal problems, i think i broke another heart but i'm not sure, quit smoking, got a new bass, joined a band, wrote an album, started a book, have read a buncha books², found a bunch od really great new music³, started drinking again, made a bunch of new friends who rock, shipped a friend off to Texas, will ship a friend to Tennessee, learned to cook Indian and Greek, said hello to Tai-tai's brand-new baby girl, became a master seducer, totally failed at women, totally rocked at women, got a new job, my sister got married, am learning how to be at peace around others without withdrawing, picked up a bunch of new work skillsets, lost weight, gained weight, lost weight again, worried a bunch, stopped caring, hated more intensely than I really thought possible⁴, got my kink on, got my vanilla on, learned to be an appropriately sweet person, shocked myself with my venom*, and am still -- right now, actually -- putting the idea of karma to practice, started to learn Portuguese (really have to practice more before I bust that out tho).

In retrospect, I wound up with better people in my life overall, as opposed to a false friend. Which is better, but I still feel used, thrown away. I don't know if that was a really fair trade. But I've heard that the way you know when a deal is really fair is if both sides walk away feeling ripped off. I really wish I could have learned that lesson some other way, but when even asking doesn't get you basic decency.... My lot in life has improved and I got stronger. Overall, I would say progress. I'm certainly not happier, per se. I'm less trusting, less open. Maybe that's safer. I don't know. I care a little less.

Happy birthday to me.

¹ You know how I don't have any male best friends? Now I don't have any female best friends either. Thanks. ² David Foster Wallace's "A History of Infinity", Bill Bryson's "Made In America", Norah Vincent's "Self-made Man", Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys" all top the list. ³ well, new to me at any rate: Depeche Mode, Iron & Wine, Of Montreal, Klaxons, Daft Punk, Graham Parsons, Neutral Milk Hotel, Belle & Sebastian, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Arcade Fire, a bunch of other stuff. And I got back into afrobeat: FELA! Also, I kinda learned to dance. That could just be vodka though. I don't know yet. ⁴ see note ¹ above, but also: "seeing red", not just an expression. you can become so angry that it hurts you.

weekend, redux

The short version:


my sister got married

and i have a new office along with my new job:



I had a migraine and woke up with a bump on my throat. Also, I slept like 12 hours yesterday.

"Be faithful to that which exists within yourself."

i have the best friends in the whole world. i wish i could really tell them how much i love them. tai-tai's all kinds of back to normal more or less after the kid. kinda hiding how happy and giddy she is, she's so loving mommy-hood. dutchie's gonna be a moron for daddy's little girl, it's so funny. sun's all whoa between law school and the new boy. sterling is so much harder to read, and fuck knows i'm so bad at that anyway, but she's got this devil-may-care attitude about everything that's kind of surprising because she never struck me as the kind of person to be so laissez-fare (i want to spell that faire but firefox says no, it's "fare". whatever.) about life. H comes & goes. Mill's is rushing headlong into romance and tennessee but is so much better with this guy that it's all i can do not to cheer her on. mel's getting married tomorrow (well, the party, anyway, she's been hitched for a while). he's such a good kid and she needs that.



tai-tai and sun saved my life, and i don't really know how to put that into words. tai-tai's never really needed any help, except her relationshit stuff and that was all minor-league stuff or the baby's bed and that was just a money thing so pfft. sun's weather freak-outs are kinda silly to me but i know what it's like to wig out over shit no-one else feels, so i can't do anything except try to talk her away from the wigging-out. i'm just about all angry-song'd out, maybe i could write them something nice. i wonder whatever happened to that drywall i painted and snapped into rough trypic-pieces held together with yellow nylon rope.

mon petit vulcan

So. I have a band now. Or maybe this band has a bassist now? I don't know how "in" I am, but I liked them and they appeared to like me, and the drummer called back same day saying 'ok, yr in'. I emailed them via cragislist and they hit me back with their myspace and I hit them back with old music of mine own and we agree to meet. So I learned their songs from their myspace (admittedly I learned one of them wrong because I was in the wrong tuning, but whatever, transposition is not hard) and that coupled with my odd tastes ("Seriously, who plays Bjork on the bass?" -- hell son, I'm the playa that tabbed that bitch out -- and that was in what, 98? -- for ye olde OLGA archives at nevada.edu) got me in. I would roughly describe them as Black Heart Procession with heavy Joy Division leanings. They all seem amicable, good guys. There was another guy jamming with them that weekend, first time playing guitar in a band but supposedly knows keys and drums, and I do dig multi-instrumentalists. Maybe I'll get to do a full-band version of "Your Faithful Serpent" ? That would be nice.



Had sushi with H (whose sunburn I peeled), then V (whose picture I took), then M (whose fiance I just met) last week. I'm about sushi'd out. Last two days at the Med school coming up, and then Law. I'm a bit nervous. Kinda sucks in that we just tripled the network size (from 10K to 30K!) AND I was just starting to learn the Checkpoint (in addition to the Netscreens and Cisco). Checkpoint's a goddamned PITA, but the amount of granular control is fucking godlike. At least I'm not leaving Vij or Frank in the lurch. Wish I'd been able to go to the crashcourse for the CCNA or CISSP, but them's the breaks. I'll see if law ponies up the beaucoup bux for 'em.

I was a lover before this war.

Found a band whose online demo I didn't hate from the word go. Time to whore myself again and see if we get on, I guess. I miss playing music. We'll see how it goes.

Enjoy the somewhat artsy fartsy fan made video for "I Was A Lover" by TV On The Radio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPyp92pExAg

round hole, square peg indeed.

ouch.

You know, postsecret is a truly genius idea. It fulfills a certain voyeuristic thrill at seeing others' secrets, it encourages art and beauty in the world, it works as a release valve for those holding secrets in and those viewing them as well, and finally, it holds a mirror up to those viewing them. That's a lot of spinning plates.

I saw the exhibit and it was moving, and then it was Sunday and I saw the updated page and the postcard here, and for the first time ever since then, I felt like that again. It is heartbreakingly sad and beautiful and it took my words away.

I love that bridge postcard. I wish I'd sent it in.

I sent mine in. It's the photo of us smiling at the Days' Inn, playing pool.

I went to the postsecret exhibit in the Design District in Miami today. Lots of very moving postcards, some more than others.



It was really neat seeing a whole bunch lined up, the handwriting on them, so beautiful and sad and happy.

I will be in the bar, with my head, on the bar.

Since Mills is going to go to TN soonish, I like hanging out with her before that happens. She likes the key lime pie at the dive bar, chez b's, so that's where we go. honestly the pie's just kind of OK. I prefer key lime to be a bit fluffier, but whatever. So haven't seen Mills in shit like two weeks and we made plans to meet there for dinner, rocking out the chicken strips and pie. She tell me about her divorce BS, I tell her mine, she tells me her job quitting thing, I tell her mine, and et viola, the actress' ghost comes in. I am fine after a few, and Mills, bless her heart, offers to be mean to her for me. I'm still counting on karma to do it for me, so I hold that back. After a while my faithful serpent's sullen look bores me and I'm laughing with Mills again. After we settle up, as we're leaving, I go past the store and there's Tai-tai & Dutch w/ the kid who is literally shit-you-not The Cutest Fucking Baby Ever. Got that angry pink sheen from her momma. I want to tell my faithful serpent how pretty the baby is and how sad it is that they're not friends anymore, but I don't think she'd see it as a comment but an attack. So the safer, more polite course of action takes precedence and just say nothing. I hope her karma doesn't fuck her up too bad; there's a good person under all that acting, somewhere. Stace thinks I'm a chump. She's right. A chump and a soft touch. Not on that matter. I'm just sad about it. It's like...I can't even describe it. It's like every bad thing you've ever thought about yourself is shown to you, in personally painful and graphic detail, to be absolutely true. Think about every moment you've been down or doubtful about yourself.



Yeah, like that.



After a quick discussion vis-a-vis breastfeeding and leaky breasts, we all dip since Avery's gettin' hungry and Stace ain't gonna whip 'em out right then and there. Tai-tai says Mills and I should have a kid. We've discussed it but let's see how that TN thing works out, eh? Also, I wanna see how the Little Trouble Girl thing pans out. She got hammered and drunk dialed me last night, very cute, very funny. 2nd drunk dial in recent memory.



Work gets slowly more hostile as I ride out my last days since I gave notice; very strange -- since the jax guys hanging around more even they have commented how I appear to be persona non grata. Also, we recieved a bomb threat today. Warning email was very vague and

not followed up, it's like our communications office is trying to incite panic. In some ways I'm kind of torn about leaving, cos now with the net TRIPLING in size, that's fucking exciting to contemplate -- a whole redesign from scratch on a net that's fucking huge, shit there are smaller cities! And yet, I know I'm doing the right thing. I need to get out of my comfort zone, even if it means Windows and a smaller network.





Made another Moz mix for the car while at the 'rents fixing their computard, maybe post that later.

welcome to this world

Today, at 105pm, tai-tai's baby was born.

I don't know anyone else in that area code

I think I just got drunk-dialed by saltdog. THAT is funny. Got tickets to see Morrissey with Chicken in July and tomorrow I will see Grindhouse with Little Trouble Girl.

I mighta been born yesterday but I stayed up all night

God's in the strangest places. To wit: two days ago everyone had dipped but me & vij, so we hit lunch together at the chinese joint with Ang and Necu -- they dipped early cos they had a meeting to go to -- and wound up sitting briefly with a prominent geneticist (no links because this is a a personal blog blahblahblah but he's SMRT for realz and a big-wig nationally in his field) and wound up having a discussion about religion and it's role in science. For someone who'd put science in such focus in his life, he was remarkably open-minded about religion (paraphrasing, but along the lines of "to be as adamant about the non-existance of god as a lot of atheists are seems kind of closed-minded, especially if you're a scientist and supposed to be figuring things out, not just assuming they are the way you want"). Dude was totally cool and more relaxed than I'd seen him otherwise, although to be fair, other times I'd seen him had been during emergencies, so uh yeah, I get frazzled too.

He also went into a tangent about astrology -- as an example, i think, i forget how we got into it as a subject -- and how maybe it isn't planets or what-have-you, but rather the general temperature patterns during gestation that affect personalities, IE, gemini's are bastards, cancers are sensitive etc etc because during gestation they had colder or hotter womb temp averages, and he had seen in his own work how minute temperature changes in utero or in vitro could affect outcomes drastically and dramatically. Interesting thought.

post title courtesy El Producto's new album, "I'll sleep when you're dead", which is still growing on me. Good, but so far I like "Fantastic Damage" more (although the Trent Reznor guest spot was weird on the new one).

Mawwige, twue wuv.

Rose left. Been speaking to the Little Trouble Girl, playing guitar by myself and drinking wine. Hung out with the Crafty Witch, made my world-famous (that's not an exagerration) grilled cheese sammiches, tried her tapenade, watched "The Wicker Man" and played guitar and got to meet her friend Sunny and then we discussed relationships and love and marriage. I don't know. I think she's ugh about marriage because the commitment is just a big scary thing and feels dishonest to say "forever, you and only you" especially about love, because the heart is such a fickle fucking cat. But I never really thought that marriage was about that, at least not by the time I got to thinking about that. I don't know that I got across that I didn't think that marriage had to be about that, but it was like she just didn't want to think about marriage not being about love forever and every monogamy. Which, I'm no advocate for polyamory specifically, in whatever flavors it comes in, but from what I know of her specific feelings about monogamy, and the legalities of marriage, it sounds like the only way she could have a relationship (not specifically marriage) for a longer period of time and not get all heartbroken and insane.

But then again, consider my folks' marriage. I dunno. Dysfunction vs just putting up w/ it?

Buddhism's suffering-stems-from-desire totally makes sense, especially when viewed in the context of relationships: every relationship problem I've ever even heard of has been the result of what A wants and what B wants differing and that not being made absolutely clear because communication between them having been less than clear. A good friend of mine broke up with his fiancee because he wanted kids and she absolutely didn't and thankfully they realized this before that marriage happened, and they broke up and he found another chick muuuuch more well suited to his temperament and humor. And she does want kids. So there you have it.

The more I consider it, the more I think that marriage should not be about capital-L Love but about lowercase-l love and a recognized partnership. Comrades-at-arms, with fucking and love. Not some romantic idiocy of the twue-wuv variety thinking that things will always be wine and roses. Part of what makes the joyous moments so sweet is that there are the bitter moments to contrast them against. It can always be so much worse, you know? You hold on to the good and you let go the bad and when it gets really bad you go back to the good and weigh it and decide whether it's enough to stick around for. And part of that marriage thing is just a promise to try really fucking hard. Sometimes you promise yourself, and sometimes you promise the other person, or God, or a judge or whatever. As serious as you make it, man, just like anything else.

I want to tease the crack in you:


Sonic Youth's "Sleepin' Around"

Smashing Pumpkins' "Pennies"

little trouble girl

sonic youth vid in honor of new friend apparently. litl troubl grl, seems a conglomerate of dee, bee, sun, ces, maybe a bit of reven. whoa havent thought of her in ages. also briefly remembered RA from 7thh grade? funny i remember edgar mocking because she was so annoying and i was crushing and all i remember about that is feeling bad. tht's not true but i don't want to remember any more details. the past a different country etc

dream: haiti, lines in travel queues waiting to get in, driving around, rose w/ me then stace, inside a bodega looking place the trouble starts -- zombies, well, it's haiti, what do you expect -- and in a building next to the shack we're sheltering in, above & looking down from a party, b is dancing and laughing and i'm in it to my neck and it's no picnic but i feel pity for her, and i don't know if i'm forcing myself or not but there's knifework to be done so the unexamined life prevails. i get us out, but we lose stuff. i shrug. stuff is easy to replace.

god i'm drunk now. red red wine stay cloes to me.

SAMPLE HOROSCOPE FOR GEMINI (May 21 - June 20): Put down that chainsaw! Turn off the particle accelerator!
Leave the exploding pudding cups at home! Right now, playing a practical joke could open an energy
vortex into another dimension. Instead of pranks, maybe try some of those Random Acts of Kindness?

...from http://askdreldrich.com