so! whilst we were nearly lost in the wilderness of the eastern oregon blue mountains, on a fool's errand sometimes referred to as 'geocaching,' we came across a truly interesting cache indeed.

not the cache we had set out to find, mind you. the locations to which the satellites directed us were respectively 1) a copse empty of everything except ants and scrub and various droppings, and 2) unreachable except perhaps by helicopter. so that bit didn't pan out as we had planned. but it's hard to imagine finding something more interesting, or stranger, than what we did find out there: the journal you kept and wrote in during those periods of time when your mind was so dissociated from itself that it may as well have been dictated by the actual invisible pink unicorn.

enough of my rambling. i'll let the best of yours speak for itself:

it goes on.

this weekend the mates and i will be living off the land out of the trunk of a car, eating the food we caught bought ourselves, wearing clothes made of rawhide stitched by hand made in china.

happy anniversary of the start of a war! eighteenth century britain can suck it.

we say things like it's a small world without feeling their full meaning.

the world is small only in comparison with such things as the rest of the galaxy, which is itself only small in comparison with such things as the local supercluster. we're to the point in our development as a thinking species where we can observe objects that emitted some bits of light near the beginning of the universe, and the light is only now reaching us. and light is fast, dig? if my calculations are correct it takes light approximately one year to go one light-year; do you know how long it would take you, even taking the entire journey at the fastest speed any human has ever gone? beyond the scope of supercluster one could take two, maybe three meaningful (however gargantuan) steps up, and half a dozen or more on the way down. we live near the bottom, and on the scale to which we are accustomed, the world is pointedly—almost arrogantly—large.

thank you for following so far; it's important you understand where i'm coming from if you're to understand where i'm going. it's a matter of using the appropriate scale. though it's not saying much, the difference between (1) the immensity and permanence of the rock we're all floating on and (2) my own unimportance and brevity is more than the meat between my ears can process. and yet it is precisely this difference that made each bite of greek food, each sight of stacked ancient marble, each step taken on age-worn stone, each smile on the face of the girl i love—all so small when taken individually—so large when viewed through the lens of what i'm used to.

this is what i learned: we're each so small, and each so temporary, but because of this each moment and every inch we have just becomes that much more meaningful. where we are, everything matters except you. you are exactly as self-important as you think you are; it is just your scale that is wrong.

i'm sorry, what was your question? … 'how was greece?'

pretty frakking swell.

i justify this entry by saying i discovered this while on the nine-hour leg between seattle and heathrow, courtesy of british airways' in-flight entertainment.

the empyrean, by john frusciante. if you can afford it, buy it; if not, beg/borrow/steal it.

this album is style with substance, effing sublime, and—as he claims—is best served loudly in a dark room.

overheard @pax:

'pax is like disneyland, where every ride is wil wheaton. … please keep your head and arms inside wil wheaton at all times.'

rhetorical imperative:

ask me about the time i went on holiday and visited amsterdam and smoked things.

</red herring>

guitar hero is not fun. fun is guitar hero.

there's something addictive about hitting that awesome chord at the perfect time, going nuts on the whammy bar, maxing out my star power, unleashing the 8x awesomeness at the climax of the song, and hearing the crowd roar the sum of their approval. the resultant positive feedback loop resonates deep in my soul.

the downside is this: to master this game is literally orders of magnitude less difficult than to master a proper guitar. hence my forthcoming disillusionment when i go to pick one up and see no conveniently scrolling notes. hence my sorrowed lack of motion aftereffect.