> Chromeo - Me and My Man
> Daft Punk - Voyager
> Propellerheads - Winning Style

Whoa. I just finished reading Ender’s Game. Fucking incredible. And even though years ago I had been told the surprise ending, it didn’t dawn on me until the very last second. I started reading it yesterday night and continued after work to read it until like 4 a.m. Oh god, the work thing yesterday. I don’t even want to talk about that. But I must.

7:50: I drove up to my second job, and the building was empty and dark. I remembered that someone was telling me that the job was going to end sometime soon, but I thought there was still a few weeks left. Obviously, since there was no one there, the job was over. So I went home.

9:10: I hear my cell phone ringing in the other room, so I go in there and checked my messages. Sure enough, they were trying to get ahold of me. As I learned later, the guys at the factory are now getting there about 40 minutes later. It would be nice if someone had told me. In my haste I very nearly got into an accident on the drive back up there. I can’t believe it. I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I can’t understand why I would do such a thing. Stupid. Getting in an accident to go to a job I hate for people who don’t appreciate my work. That’s some cosmic irony for you.

9:30: I get there and start downloading my files to process, and everything seems to be running smoothly. Except for this one file. I couldn’t get it to do anything. I tried every trick I know, but that stubborn G3 that runs all the machines just wouldn’t take it. It took two hours to get that file to work. Two hours where all of the factory employees were standing around doing nothing while collecting overtime. I felt mildly culpable, because I had the page for 45 minutes or so while I was fiddling with it where I should have been on the phone with the people that sent it, but the blame is really with them because it was a problem on their end. I know it. All of the other files worked flawlessly, why the problem with this one? it’s all the same fonts and images. Anyway, I was very until around 2:45 in the morning, ravenously hungry because in my haste I’d forgotten to grab a snack. That was the night from hell.

Okay, back to the book: it was fucking incredible. The plausibility was perfect, even though I think it was written a while ago. The references to Russia made me seem like it was written in the middle of the Cold War, but that might have just been a coincidence. The narrative voice was impeccable, unlike the rampant clumsiness, unimaginative settings, and murky point of view of Neuromancer. The author did have a bit of a penchant for unnecessarily jumping into other point of view characters, but it seemed to flow well anyway. Wow. I can’t even think about how amazing that was. It totally blew my mind, I’ll need a few days to recover. I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow. To deal with my asshole boss. To pretend like I care. Fuck.

Some random guy from Klamath Falls wanted to be my friend on MySpace, and as I was looking over his profile I saw a “Which Queer as Folk Character Are You?” quiz.

You are Ted.

Which Queer As Folk Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

My first reaction was how depressing the result was, but now that I think about it, I’m not like any of the other characters. Perhaps that’s why I don’t really like that show much, I can’t associate with these flippant, superficial people. They remind me too much of the people I see every day.

I was sort of down in the dumps earlier this week, but now I’m wearing an expression of quiet optimism, which it is advisable to wear while facing the telescreen. That quote came back to me in the shower this morning, mild Darius points if you can identify it.

I just don’t know what I’m living for right now. I sort of want to throw caution to the wind and drive to Sacramento on the 19th to go see that Nine Inch Nails concert with Kelly, but it’s probably going to cost at least $200. And no matter how much it sickens me, I would rather have a 23″ Apple Cinema Display than be with the people I love most. How hideous have I become? I can’t even conceive of being with these people that I adore so much from so far away, that the only thing I can really count on is the comfort of technology. I feel like I won’t ever be able to move away from that until I leave this town. And that reminds me: the only way I can leave is by finishing my math. And I’m two chapters behind.

I must destroy the math before it kills me.

PS: this is the cutest/wierdest thing ever.

Portishead - Roads, Sour Times, Glory Box, Mysterions, etc.

I feel really lonely tonight. I’ve been playing around with PartitionMagic, trying to delete my other bootable partition that doesn’t work. I haven’t succeeded. I guess most of my playing is because I want to create a RAID array (mirrored disks for uber-data backup), but Windoze XP doesn’t support it. I think to myself “if only I had a Mac” but then I wouldn’t be able to do voice recognition. I want those damn Macs that will be shipping two years from now that will be able to run OSX and Windows simultaneously. They had better, or I’m going to lose all faith in Apple.

I feel really tired, with the exception of the three-quarters of a saucepan of hot chocolate coarsing through my veins. I’m trying to stop myself from listening to Portishead, because then I will just get depressed. And I’m supposed to go to a party tomorrow. It’s Katherine’s going away party, and I feel like it’s just going to depress me. But Matt’s going, and so is everyone else from the office. It depresses me to hang out with such cool people for some reason. And it really weirds me out to hang out with guys that I consider attractive. I was reading this sociology book and it was referring to this one study that said that people that have less social ties are more likely to commit suicide. And I was thinking about it and I have very little social ties. So I’m probably the poster child for suicide if there ever was such a thing. But it’s just a stereotype. I would never do something so cliché. Suicide is so 1996. Anyway, I’m a bit depressed because I’m only going to be able to hang out at the party for about an hour before I have to go to my job in Smith River. Katherine is like one of the coolest people I know. And I don’t even know her that well. It really depresses me that all these incredibly cool people are moving away, like Molly and Susan. I feel like everyone that I love is going to move away and then I’m going to be stuck trying in vain to explain the use of symbolism in La Cité des Enfants Perdus to Misty while she’s half-comatose on the couch. I keep having to restrain myself from going on a diatribe about how she’s missing out on the meaning of life, but I should remind myself that my search for the meaning of life and my version of…let’s call it “ultimate truth” is totally different than hers.

When she doesn’t take an interest in movies are novels that I like, I feel snubbed. I watched that movie Face-Off, and it was *yawn* OK. I guess we just have different interests. But it makes me sad that we can’t connect on such a level like me and Molly could connect after reading a bunch of the same novels. I don’t know. Me and Misty connect… but it really isn’t on an intellectual level. We were talking about it a few days ago, and I can’t really put it into words better than that we just have compatible personalities. I guess I shouldn’t mind. It’s not like we’re going out. But were definitely going to get to know each other quite well, and I have this sinking feeling that I’m going to get all egotistical because since I have few friends I feel like I’m the most well-read person in Del Norte County (with the exception of my coworkers). Darn. Just turned on the Portishead. Evil iTunes and its smart playlists.

I had a bit of a revelation today. I asked myself what my obsession was with seeking out all my esoteric novels and obscure European electronica artists. What was the difference between rocking out to Miss Kittin and the Hacker and dancing to the mind-numbing platitudes of Good Charlotte? And I realized that I seek out alternative music and novels because I don’t want to be ordinary and that the only way to find any original thoughts in this blanched American cultural desert is to import art and music from other countries. And that I don’t want to be one of the crowd. I don’t want to be the one that did all sorts of crazy antics at the party and don’t remember it. I would rather spend my life in sober contemplation of the universe. I’m not a Platonist, but I feel like ideas are very important. Much more important than parties. We’ve been partying for thousands of years and what has it gotten us? It’s all so ephemeral, but I feel like ideas are necessary for the mental evolution of our species or some such Star Trek-ish platitude.

I don’t have the vanity to think that I will have an amazing idea that will endure, but if everyone’s trying to think of the next big thing, then it’s more likely someone will come up with it and it just might be me. Anyway, the point is I have to curb my egotism and realize that there are some people that don’t want to expand their horizons and that are happy with listening to Good Charlotte and anything else the corporate world decides to make the conformists of the world listen to. See? I can’t stop being sarcastic. Fuck.

I start my math class next week. I’m very excited about it. It’s elementary algebra, so it should be quite easy. At least I hope so. I’m auditing the class in case I am a complete imbecile about the subject

Fischerspooner - LA Song
Nina Hagen - New York, New York

I must admit that today I am as bored as I’ve been in a very long time. My MP3 player broke a few days ago (on Friday, I believe) and I think I’m going to get an iPod. But I feel totally lazy this semester…probably from the fact that I’m not taking any classes, so I’m going to look into taking my math in Brookings, which was what really helped my mom. That’s my one obstacle to graduating. Everything else I can do in my sleep or at least with moderate concentration. Math is going to be an epic struggle. And I really need to get started now. So tomorrow I’m going to go to Brookings and investigate what it’s going to cost and when the semester starts. They’re on a quarter system instead of a semester system, so there’s some hope that I will be able to start relatively soon. Also, I’m going to go over to Fred Meyer and by myself a new iPod Nano (if they have them). I promised myself that if I signed up for math and started the path to academic success again, that I would allow myself to buy an iPod.

The real selling point was this article I read about people that subjected the iPod nano to a bunch of durability testing and they literally had to throw it off of the two-story building to get it to stop playing music. They even ran it over with a car two times and still worked. The nano’s strength is that it only weighs as much as a stack of two dollars in quarters. A real iPod would shatter because it is so heavy, but this one was near-indestructable, which will come in very handy on my marathon bike rides.

I read this article on Slashdot or somewhere that people were turning public domain books into podcasts, so I went on to the podcasts directory in iTunes and I found the current book that I was reading. Yesterday the spine came undone and deposited a stack of pages in my lap. It’s only nine dollars for a two-hour podcast of the book. That’s only a few more dollars than I paid for the falling apart used bookstore paper copy I have now.

In other book news, I finally read the last chapter of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. It was very optimistic about the whole future of information and technology. I heard that he got much darker in his views after the seventies, but I shouldn’t read that. It would just depress me.

Well, I should be getting to sleep. I hope to do the Brookings jaunt before work, but as the hours tick by that no longer seems like a reality.

Oh dear.

I just read this rather lengthy article about one of my heroes, Marshall McLuhan…and it turns out the novel of his that I read was his most optomistic and after he wrote it he went in a totally different (and unfortunately much more plausible) direction. It’s sad. But I really recommend reading the article. McLuhan was/is god.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for days and it’s something that’s been grating on my whole philosophical system. I was reading that Simone de Beauvoir novel and she had this amazing scene where the main character realized that all of her friends were just empty. I should hunt down the exact passage:

All at once the flame died out. He was just a few feet away from her, watching her. He saw her looking at Sanier, looking into his eyes, trying to set his heart afire. He saw the give-and-take of words and glances, the play of mirrors, and empty mirrors, reflecting only each others’ emptiness.

When I first read that last sentence, it just clicked with my whole worldview. But then as I was thinking about it… with the evidence for this? So everyone is empty? Surely someone has something to contribute. It dawned on me then that believing that everyone is empty, vapid, and soulless is just as naive as believing that everyone is good. I guess it should have been more obvious, but it never dawned on me until that moment.