> 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.

This morning the power went off 10 minutes before I was supposed to get up. I woke up anyway and halfway through my morning routine, the power had come back on. So of course I got in my car and drove to work. Big mistake. The power was out all over Crescent City and there was absolutely nothing to be done at my job since everything is produced on our computers. I waited around for 20 minutes or so listening to the Insipid Coworker of Doom complain about how no one wanted to come to her Halloween party that she had planned. If I had a costume, I would’ve planned to make an appearance. Possibly. But of course just to mentally mock her. Anyway, I went home, caught up on my blogs, watched some Sean Cody, worked on my painting, etc. By now it’s around two o’clock and I woke up at eleven. I called the office at 2:30 to make sure they weren’t back up and nobody picked up, so with nothing else to do I watched an episode of Star Trek. Around 4 p.m. they called to say that the power was back on. Unfortunately, everything was working but the Internet. We use it for everything…it was such an infuriating day. It’s nice to work in an office where you can curse to your heart’s content. Well, I didn’t do any cursing, but my coworkers articulated my feelings very well. There’s something about being on hold for two hours that will make anyone snap.

Well, long story short, it was very hectic but I got everything done and ended up driving the pages on CD-ROM up to the factory in Smith River (due to the lack of Net). It was actually sort of fun and am glad it happened on a day where I didn’t have anything else to do. I’m really glad I have the Internet at my house though. I don’t know what I would do. Well, I would be writing this… but I wouldn’t be able to post it. And that would be a hollow blogging victory.

Ben was online when I got home, he instant messaged me and said that he had seen me driving the on my trip to Smith River. He didn’t have anything to talk about and from the incredibly long pauses between his responses, it was obvious that either he didn’t care about the convo or was talking to 20 different people. Probably both. I got angry when he gave me this bullshit four minutes into the convo about having to work on his halloween costume, and blocked him. However, I didn’t really block him; I just hit delete because I wasn’t really thinking straight. So I accomplished nothing. As usual.

So here I am back at my house with power, the Internet and television but nothing to do with any of them. I would go work on my painting again, but I already did stuff do it today and it would be a bit of overkill to work on it twice in one day. There’s really not much else I can tweak. I just have to let this layer dry before I can put the second part on it. Perhaps I should start Ender’s Game.

Oh yeah, I really wanted to talk a bit more about how that last novel I read and that movie I saw last night. *spoiler alert* so okay, in the end of the Neuromancer novel you have the protagonist Case (the Neo character), Molly (the Trinity character) and Malecum (the egregiously flat character that is the pilot of this their ship). They are on this giant orbital space station called Straylight which was made by this corporation called Tessier-Ashpool. This company made artificial intelligences to protect their data, and one of the members of the family that controlled the company created two artificial intelligences who she wanted to make sentient, Neuromancer and Wintermute. Wintermute has been behind the scenes the entire book, guiding the characters into this whole situation, but Neuromancer is like, the personality of the AI. They are both engineered so they can never know the other one’s name, except for if it is spoken into this crystalline head in the center of the Straylight station which Wintermute thought would erase his program.

So eventually Wintermute and Neuromancer get into some sort of fight in the Matrix while Case (Neo) is trying to steal something from the Tessier-Ashpool corporate network, and they mesh with this Chinese virus and Case’s (Neo’s) construct to become a whole sentient artificial being. In the end, Case (Neo) sees the new AI and talks to it, and it says that it isn’t in the matrix anymore, that it is the matrix. It’s an interesting ending, especially because you end up seeing that the AI looks exactly like Case. It also says that it has been communicating with another artificial intelligence in another galaxy, which would make an interesting (albeit totally lame) continuance for the matrix trilogy. I’m sure in 2032 they will remake all of them with new special effects a la Star Wars.

I have much less to say about that movie The Dreamers. It starts as a classic bildungsroman, with the hackneyed plot of the American student in France who ends up learning all sorts of things about life. But the thing I found so disappointing about this movie was that the characters don’t learn any lessons. They don’t really even get a chance to. They live in this apartment for a month and get all incredibly intimate and such, but right when it seems like something’s going to change and the characters are going to have to face all their problems, the movie just ends with this shot of policemen running in to fight this mob of Communist protesters. And that’s it. We never learn what happens. It seems like it was the beginning of a movie that was three times as long…and the characters never really changed. The beginning half (where it seemed like there might actually be some drama) was good though.

Well, I’d better go look for something to do. I hope Misty calls me. I’ve got her hooked on this delicous cherry brandy. Well, the discovery of the wonders of cherry brandy is actually quite a funny anecdote. I’m lying, but it’s an anecdote about me and Joe so I’m going to play it up as much as I want. We were hanging out at my house, desperately wanting some alcohol (we were such lushes) when we came upon this half empty bottle of cherry brandy that I had bought years ago to make a Black Forest cake. After much careful deliberation, we decided unanimously to make it into screwdrivers. It was SOOO delicous. Cherry and orange. Heavenly. So last time we were at Safeway, I told Misty about how good it was then of course she had to try it. And now she loves it. Do I have good taste or what?

I’ve been meaning to read the Wikipedia entry on the different types of alcohol and how they are all produced and what the differences are (sherry vs brandy vs cognac, etc.) I feel like a fool not knowing such things and being a guy. I think another part of it stems from me just not being a beer person. Beer bores me. Maybe I just haven’t had anything that was so good, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. When I want to get drunk, I don’t want to have to go through a bunch of beers. Just take a few shots of hard alcohol and you’re buzzed. It’s all about saving time. And then you can get back to the glory that is moments like these.

I voice-chatted with Josh until like 5 a.m. I was bored. And I wasn’t sleepy at all. Must have been the hot chocolate. I woke up around 5 p.m. and I immediately showered and got ready for Kat’s party, since I wanted optimal hangout time before I had to go to work. I got to the parking lot at 6:58, but stayed in my car until 7:01, when I walked over. I’m usually always fashionably late, but contrary to my own lateness philosophy, I was totally on time and the only one there. So me and Kat hung out, ate chile and listened to Ella Fitzgerald (name might not be correct), this cool jazz singer lady from the forties. We had a great conversation, and it was really cool to hang out one on one. Then the Insipid Coworker of Doom arrived, repeating like a ventriloquist’s dummy “I made five loaves of banana bread!” seventy fucking times. The banana bread was incredibly delicious though, I had to give her that.

It was about 7:45 by the time everybody else showed up, including about five twenty-something guys that I didn’t know at all but everybody else seemed to know, so I was a bit frazzled (as I am introverted around strangers) and was unable to come up with anything cool to say. But Matt and a bunch of the others that I knew had shown up too, so it was ok, we talked a bit about the Bill Stamps Jr. stuff before I had to go. Matt was all “you have no excuse not to come back [after work], it’s on your way home.” It’s really not on my way home, but I’m going to go back over there after my work is done here. And oddly, things have been going really fast and I just might get out of here way before I usually do. I only need two more pages.

I shaved off the little beard-ish thing I had been growing, now I feel like a twelve-year-old. I should have kept the stubble.

Anyway, I learned earlier today that my iPod is being shipped ground from Hong Kong. Okay guys, riddle me this. How is “ground” shipping between countries separated by an ocean possible? I’d better get it by the end of the week, or I will be very annoyed.

Well, my luck officially ran out. Something just broke on the press, and someone from Brookings has to come fix it. And the fixing process should take 45 minutes. Fun fun. I’d better go read some blogs.

> Peaches - aa xxx
> Golden Boy & Miss Kittin - Nix

I just played Caesar III (the best game ever) for like three hours. I kicked some major barbarian ass. It was great. I am the uberRoman. It is sad that my relatives come from southern Italy, not from Rome. I’m still a Roman though by proxy. Anyway, I checked my e-mail and had a buttload of comments. It was pretty cool.

I rescheduled my backups to run in the afternoon when I’m not home. I had set them to run at 11:30 p.m., but the last two days when that time rolled around all of a sudden my system would go incredibly slow for like a half hour. I can’t stand that.

Today was incredibly stressful, so I was very glad to retreat into the Roman Empire for a few hours. I took the math placement test in Brookings this morning, and tested into elementary algebra. I was so late though because of all the road construction. By the time I got back to Crescent City, I was 25 minutes late for work and in an incredibly bad mood. But work was OK. This guy came in from the head office of our company to give a seminar on this program that we use a lot, and he was a very bad speaker. It wasn’t really much I didn’t already know, Adobe Creative Suite is my god. He passed around this portfolio of his photography work, and it was incredibly insipid. It was all of these nature photos with these clichéd titles. I mean, it was obvious he put a lot of effort into them… but that’s all they were. Nature photos. Uberyawn.

And after I got home I helped my mother rework this incredibly bad paper. It was SO draining to put all of my effort into painstakingly rewording and reworking sentence after sentence. But I think that we succeeded. My mother is supposedly graduating magna cum laude and she’s going to get this medal with her diploma. She said that she wouldn’t have gotten it if I wouldn’t have helped her on her papers. I’m not sure if that’s true, but its cool to think that she values my input that much.

She’s paying me handsomely to do it as well. I get paid tomorrow. I’ve worked the most in the last two weeks that I have in my entire life, so this should be the biggest check I have ever gotten. Friday I’m going to register for Elementary Algebra ($280ish…ouch!) and I should totally have enough to get the new system of my dreams. However, I’m a bit reluctant to get it. DDR2 (the new generation of memory) is just beginning to get into this speeds where it beats normal 400MHz DDR1, and I don’t want to buy slow memory modules if in a few months Corsair comes out with DDR2 800 with 3-3-3 timings. They already have DDR2 577 with 3-3-2 timings. Eh, fuck a new system. I want an iPod Nano. I’m totally going to buy one on the Apple Store and get the $20 student discount. I can’t wait until tomorrow. I should go to sleep.

Oh, PS: to all the “anonymous” commenters, my server logs your IP address, hostname, and all sorts of other fun little things about you. It’s funny that all the anonymous comments were posted from computers at CR. In a word: pathetic.

> Felix da Housecat - Walk With Me
> Propellerheads - Better?
> Felix da Housecat - Glitz Rock [download it! now!]
> Kraftwerk - Das Modell
> Miss Kittin and Goldenboy - Nix

This is the first time in a very long time that I have been truly bored. Before, I had friends to do stuff with. Me and Joe would go all around Crescent City hanging out and eating sushi and talking about the future. Or me and Selena and Misty and Ben would hang out and watch cool movies. But no. I can do none of those things now. Ben won’t return my phone calls. I don’t know why. So I’ve been reduced to this life of exercising obsessively and eating very little because I feel that I’m fat and ugly because that guy blocked me and I never see my friends.

I have been wholeheartedly devoted myself to excercising myself to a bag of bones and my endless work. Ihave nothing else to do. All I can do is surf the Web looking at things I want to buy as if that will make my life better. That new sound card will improve my voice recognition, but what is the point? I have nothing to say anymore. I feel like my life is wasted.

Today I paid my dad the first installment of the $50 a month for the rest of my life for my transmission. I really can’t afford to drive my car anymore. I can afford to pay insurance on it and pay my dad, but not much else. I didn’t ride my bike to work today because my legs were killing me, but I’m going to attempt to do it tomorrow. Even if it’s raining. My MP3 player broke again but last night I got out the soldering gun and the superglue and fixed it. It took almost an hour for me to find that soldering gun. I even found a handgun my dad had cleverly hidden in the kitchen somewhere before I found the soldering gun. Well, at least I know what to do if there’s a burglar. I wonder if it’s loaded. Hmm.

I should instant message Amanda. She sent me the cutest text message ever and it totally made my day. Usually I only get text messages when I’ve used up all of my free minutes and so when I checked it I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

I have been staying at work a lot more lately since the semester started, which is a bit strange. Now I hang around until five o’clock or so where the work shifts back into low gear and we have all sorts of political conversations in the office. It’s a really great to work with college-educated people who know how to logically support their premises and that understand that a debate is different from an argument.

I, of course, take the completely jaded and cynical Caterine Vauban perspective, mostly for comic relief. Sometimes I fear that my coworkers think that I’m being serious when I’m being sarcastic. Today one of my favorite coworkers was talking about the failure of the FEMA after hurricane Katrina, while in the last disaster in Florida everyone seemed to have been rescued in a very timely fashion. The difference in her mind (and, of course, in my mind) is that this time the victims are mostly black. So of course I quipped “Well, Kat, I think that we really should follow Bush administration policy on this one: black people just aren’t important.”

I love bringing racial issues right into glaring focus. It’s probably just the endless rhetoric of the uberleft that makes me feel this way, but as a white guy I always have this sneaking suspicion that since I live in this highly insulated white culture, I might be somehow subconsiously a racist. But I really doubt it. It’s all just subjective anyway. Someone could say that when me and my cousin say “What’s up in the hood” for comic relief, that we’re being racists in our own politically correct American way. But I wholeheartedly disagree. I object to what passes for black “culture” just as much as I object to what passes for white “culture.” All the crap about rappers is just as vanilla in the scheme of race relations as the last Jessica Simpson album. Real black people don’t act like those imbeciles on television gloating over their cars and diamonds, nor do I regurgitate the platitudes of Jessica Simpson. But I still feel like I can’t escape our societal bias. I was riding my bike today and rode past a black person. And I was all, “whoa, a black person in Crescent City.” And I wasn’t really sure if it was a “Whoa, that’s cool” reaction or a “Hmm, things are changing” reaction. Well, I guess having a neutral reaction is the best way to respect people for individuals, but I have a hard time doing that for the inbred Crescent City scum I have to deal with on an all too regular basis. I guess I would think that way about any minority Crescent City. I don’t know. I guess I have a unique perspective on things because I view the white population in Crescent City as the biggest problem.

A lot of people give lip service to “diversity,” but I feel like the sad truth is that what passes for American culture (a conglomeration of five or six media companies) doesn’t want a world of individuals, it wants a nation of blacks and whites and latinos and gays and Muslims and more and more groups to fight amongst each other so the Republican power elite can steal our money and outsource our jobs to China. But I guess that’s the future. Once we don’t have skin color to fight about anymore, what will we dream up next?

I read this really depressing study one time about a classroom where children were divided up by eye color and by the end of a certain amount of time the groups of one eye color would fight groups of a different eye color. Oh well.

I just have to keep living. That’s my one imperative. This six months of my life will be wasted. This year will be wasted. The best years of my life will be wasted. For what? The only reason I can think of to live is to buy new technology as to better separate myself from my empty life. God, this post is incredibly long. I should stop this.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. I need a personal Jesus. (That’s a Depeche Mode homage, for the culturally illiterate.)

I never blog this much when I have friends to talk to. I’ve probably said ten or twenty sentences this whole day. That’s it. And they were all work related. I can can only pick out five or six sentences I said today that weren’t work related. And now Amanda signed off. I’m alone forever. In a cold room. Lol. Me and Kelly would joke last time I was down in Sacramento about melodramatic darkies (”goths”) talking about their life as being like a cold dark room. It’s sad how jokes will slowly morph into reality. And then they’re not funny anymore.