Just when I’m starting to give up hope, the Internet totally cheers me up.

I don’t know what it was about today… I think it was this video of Helen Thomas questioning the Bush administration press secretary (the job title is actually “spokesliar”) about the fact that we obviously tortured a whole bunch of people, and the actual admission of President Bush that he did torture people even though he maintained all of that “we do not torture” rhetoric.

It just… hit me. I live in a police state. We can be arrested at any time and tortured. We don’t respect international human rights agreements. So much for being the free world.

So I’m at work and on my lunch I check Reddit. Guess what?

Redditors set up a fund to buy flowers for Helen Thomas for being the only reporter with the balls to stand up to Bush Administration lies.

Guess how much money they raised in about 24 hours? Almost $3,500. And on my entire drive to work I was fuming about it and wanting so bad to write her a letter saying thanks for being the only person to stand up and say:

“THIS IS A LIE. YOU ARE LYING.”

Hitler was totally right…repeat something enough and people take it as fact. I wonder if the press secretary knows that she’s lying… or if that kind of institutional doublethink isn’t actually doublethink at all it’s just people who are complete and utter idiots.

But thank you, Reddit, and thank you, The Internet, for rewarding voices that speak out.

I really wanted to read about this and I have a sinking feeling of “oh… my voice recognition system doesn’t work” and then I was like “wait… it does!”

I’m really happy with my new headset. It looked kind of flimsy and crappy, but it it takes up so much less space than my older one and will be so much easier to jam in my carry-on when I go to New York this summer. In my youth, I would overpack to beat the band, but these days I would be fine with just jeans, a T-shirt, and my laptop. And that’s really all I’m taking.

So I started a new television series tonight. I had downloaded the first season of the X-Files ages ago when Alex (and a bunch of other people) said it was great, but I had just finished Star Trek deep space nine. I don’t know why… it takes me about four or five months to kind of get over the emotional attachment I have to characters from one multi-season television show and start getting into others.

I really liked the first episode of the X-Files. It should be interesting. And Jesus, it’s got to have more character development than Star Trek Voyager.

Zomg today my copy of High-Rise showed up. It’s the only Ballard novel that I haven’t read (that I have been wanting to read for ages). I read this rumor on IMDB that they were going to make it into a movie, but all the rumors were from the beginning of 2007 so I don’t know it it’s going to happen. But I thought I might as well read the book. I mean, I could die tomorrow and I would never read High-Rise so I really want to read it. It’s crisp, glossy cover is in my hot little hands and I’m going to go devour it.

Susan, Zero, and I went out tonight and had absinthe at the Kasbah, then went down to Cobble Stone (which had all the ambience of an inner-city bus station, but great hookah). It was really fun, we talked about Blade Runner, Neil Gaiman crap, and the impending San Francisco adventures.

Zero suggested that we go to this moroccan place (which, coincidentally, I also went to with Alex on that ill-fated trip to see him).

I hate people with money. There’s just no way to seem as put-together or carefree as they are 24/7.

Oh, the check is $300? Just put it on my card.

I’m just jealous because I want to be footloose and fancy-free.

Must get to sleep. I’ve actually been somewhat successful in this getting to bed before 2 a.m. thing lately.

So I got my new headset today.

In the beginning, it gave me the same error as the last one.

I just switched USB ports, and it seems to be working okay… but the recognition accuracy could be a lot better.

So I took my huge math test today. I really have no idea how I did. Almost all of my answers had imaginary numbers in them, and although she mentioned that this test would focus a lot on imaginary numbers I felt like I was using the quadratic formula incorrectly.

Well, there’s no way to know how I did until Monday, so I’m not going to worry about it. Bastards still don’t have my tire. Other than that, not much to report.

I’m still working on my mother’s website… she wrote me this long rambling thing and I have to massage it into her welcome paragraph.

Totally looking forward to going to the city with Sam this weekend. I mean, we probably won’t run into Damon and Jesse again, but I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time.

I was showing him these really disturbing videos last night… I guess they weren’t really disturbing it was just that they were more performance art than porn. There was this one video of this guy who sets his dresser on fire and jerks off onto the fire. It’s just one of those jaw-dropping moments of “umm…wow…er…hmm”

My grandma left me this note to clean up this mess (there was egg all over the stove) but the thing is, I don’t cook eggs on the stove. Article 4,203 in my dissertation of how crazy she is.

I’m angry about it, but what the hell am I supposed to do.

Lets see… news that doesn’t suck… I bought my train tickets for my vacation yesterday! Also, I got this miniseries that Molly recommended in the mail from Netflix, Tin Man. It’s supposed to be steampunklicious.

Um, guys, I just looked at my archives, and holyfuckingshit. My archives list has 58 months. FIFTY EIGHT MONTHS. That’s nearly five years. 3,158 posts. THREE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT POSTS. I need to throw some kind of party on the five-year anniversary. I don’t know who I’d invite that has been here for the whole roller coaster other than Amanda, but still. Weird.

Huh, I was looking through Wordpress and I had two private posts. One was just a sentence, the other was this time that I was really mad at Christen on Jan. 3, 2007. I guess I’ll post it, what the hell.

I had planned to do something with Andrew on Sunday, but my returning from a party at like 4 AM kind of killed that. I called him when I woke up (my phone had been doing some weird thing where it wasn’t ringing or giving me texts), and he was still in Carmichael.

We met at the La Bou at Country Club Plaza. I got some kind of vegetarian sandwich, and we walked around the mall, walked around the bowling alley building, looked inside the old Tower Records. We were going to stalk Brian at work, but he wasn’t there.

He told me that he’s moving out of his apartment with the ex-girlfriend, and is job-hunting. I wish him luck, but the job market is just terrible these days. He told me that he got fired from/quit two jobs because he wouldn’t shave his beard or cut his hair. Which didn’t bode well for my subconscious hope that he would get rid of the beard someday. Meh.

I don’t know what we talked about… I keep having these weird flashbacks to when we were dating and I’d want to say something, but didn’t know what.

When we’re talking I have a certain amount of things to mention… updates on a concert, a few things going on with my friends, but that’s about it. I feel like I don’t have as close of a social network as I used to have.

I don’t know… I guess that’s always a feeling when you’re between friend epochs.

Andrew just texted me, he got his yearly haircut…I bet he looks cute as a button. Or maybe the less hair + beard combination will lead to a Rapist Glasses look.

I really want to go see MIA, but it’s a friggin’ Wednesday and I can’t miss class. Well, I guess I could still go since my class is over before the show. However, it would cost a ton of money that I don’t have.

Well, I should work a bit on my mom’s site…she’s really into getting it done, and apparently she’s going to pay me. W00t for freelance design work.

Zero had invited me to this party on Saturday.

It was on this street that shares a name with a major Carmichael thoroughfare, so we all thought it was close, but no. It was in friggin’ South Sac! So I got all ready and headed down there. I really shouldn’t have gone because I had a lot of homework to do, but it was my payday weekend and I felt like having fun.

Got down there, had a few drinks, met everyone. We talked about literature for an hour or two and then Zero decided to like fall asleep in the other room.

I met Derek, a friend of Zero’s, and we talked about Milan Kundera for a while… apparently The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is lame and I have to read another one of his novels. I don’t know… I mean, he had a great style and all but I felt it was lacking in depth. Anyway, at around midnight Zero fell asleep on the couch and left me kind of awkwardly reading The Onion on my phone.

Two hours later I’d burned through the entire stock of articles on the Onion’s AV Club before falling asleep myself. I would have just left, except for that I got waaay drunker than I had any right to get that night. Well, I bought a bottle of Stoli and I wasn’t going to see it go to waste. I mean, I didn’t drink until I puked or anything, but the more drinks you have the longer it takes to get sober.

I woke up at about 4 AM, and the person that was supposed to give Zero a ride was still totally drunk. I said my goodbyes and headed home. It was one of the the coldest drives I can remember in a long time, and I had my full gear, leather jacket and cashmere-lined gloves.

Still, I’m not quite sure whether I think it was a good idea to go to the party or not…I mean, it was cool meeting Derek, it’s rare meeting people that have read more than me or read things I’m interested in.

But it was a faux pas to fall asleep on the host’s couch. Well, I had a good time, that’s all that matters.