Out in some field smelling vaguely old and of aspirin
and the evening’s warm indulgences you dissolve: turn
back seeing stars and recall to memory’s language the thin
outline of Oregon crabgrass toe-thick and the repated sidewalk pattern
of brick as your bare now-four-year feet thump/thud to the threshold of the rear door.

Hum now past the dizzying laundry machines
warming sweaters, underthings, and cats self-cleaned
by cinnamon Brillo tongues. Drift into the entryway, leaving
behind this polyester, these shoes (millipedes have fewer), this static cling
and move: scent-lines float you to chocolate chip cookies, blackberries, other cuisine.



Now full, amble down the green wallpaper hall through the linoleum maze
to the screen through which your treehouse whispers and become
its oak, its leaves, its roof, its looking glass; fear and breathe
as you never have. Feel the sun. You are the vector sum
and king of all that you behold. Watch the breeze—

come grow old now and here. Herodotus could not have said it better.
Construct the mental temporal bridge you cross and burn.
Cold: enter sweater. Pain: insert aspirin. Unfetter
chains of touch, sight, sound, unconcealed
and evolve. Dissolve back to your field.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

</red herring>

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.

what was it all about?

unreal tournament 2004: the standby classic. they wiped the floor with me. i am not as awesome as i have believed myself to be.

half-life 2 deathmatch: i've experienced the game proper but not the pvp aspect, and the challenge turned out to be trying to balance standard weapons with the gravity gun. the nerds were faster at switching weapons, and so they inevitably climbed to the top of the ladder.

lunch money: creepy balding guy, you enjoy talking about little girls far too much. you've stolen any possible enjoyment i could have found in that game.

fear: what's better than a first-person shooter? a first-person shooter that enables you to walk on the ceiling.

a nintendo ds in every hand: okay OKAY you nerds, you've convinced me; i need one.

bawls: i've tasted bawls now for the first and only time. someone should tell the nerds that bawls jokes are not funny.

clay wars: the enraged bear-shark did not survive the clay … thing … that attacked it. impossible, i say, for how does one sneak up on the bear-shark? he's got heads that look in antiparallel directions, plus it's, you know, it's enraged. that's gotta be worth something. it is in munchkin, anyway.

femme-nerds: oh geek girls, you do it for me every time.

however, one particularly virulent nerd decided to share a particularly virulent virus with me. i cough as i write this, i wheeze in my sleep, and i fill trash cans with tissues all day. there should be a law stating sickness precludes pax. the penalty is you must give me your ds. starting now. with you. nerd. insult to injury: every thursday is donut day at work. donuts have sugar. insult to insult: the chocolate cake made for someone's birthday. if hulk not eat sugary chocolate cake, no one eat sugary chocolate cake! HULK SMASH DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE CAKE

the bottom line: i drool in anticipation of the 2007 iteration. i might even take friday off and work on bear-shark 2.0.

also. remember how i listen to carefully crafted vibrations in the air? it's a thing i was doing today. and by random, the song 'mai' by loudermilk came on. it mentions, specifically, the sixteenth day of may. tell me itunes is not sentient. tell me! tell me! you lie.

and oh wowee zowie the food. if anyone responsible is reading this, you have my highest praise.

food, flowers, music, lights, tables, dresses and suits, even the coffee: all winners. the bride will tell you that we stole her song. i will tell you that we got married fourteen months ago.

the bottom line is that it was a terrific wedding of terrific people. if i ever get married again, i would want to have a wedding like this one.

(OUCH WIFE why are you hitting me, that joke was all in good fun)



on to the /meta agenda (and also on the back burner of my mind) is a hatelife wiki, which anyone would be able to add to and edit. any thoughts? would any old/new hatelife users be interested? if the answer is generally no, please please tell me before i throw another log on the fire.

how am i to concentrate on work with them talking about generators and electronics and solar panels and port 80 and other nerdy stuff all day long? these conditions are untenable.