the paradigms shift

Despite my best efforts to the contrary I've managed not to play on the internet for nearly twelve straight hours. The real downside to doing nothing last weekend and next to nothing most of this past week occurs late thursday night when one tallies up all the postponed problems and delayed work. I didn't think I'd make it through the heap of homework in time, yet I somehow pulled it off with over an hour and a half to spare. As the computer analyzes my final problem's data I write this very entry. Just waiting was getting to be a bore. I'd like to extend a big thanks to my friends coffee and Dr. Pepper for helping me through this tough time. Also, big props go out to Gus's and Petros (the one downtown) for feading fuel to my midnight fire and um, lunch. Oh look at that. I just have to save this, send it in, then I can go home, and take a nap. Wake me up if something cool is going down in a few hours.

I didn't even notice November happen. How is Thanksgiving a week away? The wonders of time will never ever cease to amaze my unworthy brain--all I ever 'see' are paradoxes, but time somehow works.

I was hoping to host a Cranium party this weekend, but there's still mud (mostly dirt now) in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure it'll never go away on it's own and I can't seem to clean it up very well. I got a one-by-one foot section fairly free of this freak accident whose cause will probably forever remain unknown. I can't believe it's been nearly three weeks since it happened and more importantly three weeks since the landlord hasn't called me back about it. I've left messages, detailed ones. What's the deal anyway?

Oh! Oh! The first night of sleep on my new bed was all I imagined it would be and more! I didn't wake up once until my alarm went off. I even had rather vivid, life-like dreams that I can still recall without any difficulty. It's odd, one of them was definitely in greyscale. I don't think I've ever dreamed in black and white before. At least that I remembered upon waking. I think I should start keeping a dream log. Perhaps I'll dub it 'mlog' for short. Pronounced 'muhlog' except the 'uh' is hardly there, the 'ml' should practically sound like one consonant. 'M-log' sounds too cheesy. Well, that ought to do 'er. No more news from this homefront.

That's what I did this afternoon. I'll also go to bed early tonight...

If one would like to witness the new level of geekdom for which I voluntarily enrolled, check this site out. It's a play-by-play blog of an email Diplomacy game that will probably take forever. I'm playing Germany. This is mostly for my own reference, but there it is in case anyone else is curious. Now, to see about a mattress...

After a couple of weeks of what has felt like the worst unmerited hangover I've ever had extended ad absurdum (which are finally under that bridge over there), I'm once again ready to project out into the ever-pervasive ether that is the Internet. Which by the way is apparently still a proper noun and must be capitalized. I really don't know why computers keep telling me to capitalize it. It's not a brand name. It's not some sort of unique one-of-a-kind object. Well maybe it is in its way, the way that one-god believers' God has a capital G. It's a machine conspiracy, I tell ya. They want to be a oneness, an omnipresent being, an internet with a capital I. The God of our future. I guess it wouldn't be any worse than most religions, and a bit more tangible to boot! Whatever. I digress.

I was talking about how shitty the past weeks have been and how wonderful the past few days have been. Or I was about to, one. I can't remember and I'm too lazy to go back and look. Between that flu-like disease which I strongly suspect was a flu, the post-election blues... I'm getting really tired of hearing that phrase. It's got to be one of the worst puns ever devised. I don't want to hear anymore 'Blue State Blues' ever again. From now on I'm not even going to think about it. Don't get me wrong I love puns and double entendres and whatnot. But right now I jump every time someone says 'blue' or I read 'blue.' I think 'oh god' and I sigh. Not another person using that pun in the media. Word plays become a lot less amusing when everyone is using them all the time. Had they just tossed it out there occasionally, maybe just a dozen times over as many days, I'd be fine with it. I might still chuckle when I hear about that color in conjunction with a state. Look! I digressed again! And this time it was a rambling complaint. I really didn't mean to do that. Ok, forget the shitty stuff.

Last friday I drank myself silly, and it was wonderful. I even had hiccups for what must have been two hours. And I found them fucking hilarious. I laugh even now thinking about them. I drank myself into hiccups! It was so cliche, but I'd never experienced it first or even second hand, so it all felt quite novel. They didn't stop until I downed two giant glasses of water just before I fell asleep. Having achieved my goal of drinking til reaching blissful contentment friday night, I decided to follow through with another quasi-goal. I just did nothing all weekend. Sunday was the one filled with more respectable non-activities. I went on a walk. I walked until I reached the woods. Then I walked through hemlock groves, sunny clearings, and more kinds of undergrowth than I knew existed until I was quite certain I was alone in what passes for wilderness these days. Once as alone as I imagined possible I sat down and just stayed there for a couple of incredibly comfortable afternoon hours. I cleared my mind. I filled it again pondering clouds. It took what felt like forever, but took only a couple of minutes to really experience clouds. They're almost always there, adrift; always different but the nuances go unnoticed and even their presence unacknowledged. I thought about anything and everything that just popped up, but I did so quite tenaciously, deliberately, and with a great deal of attention to detail. The experience was rather absurd, but in a twisted, slightly roundabout way that sort of deliberate thinking cleansed my mind of all the mindful/less thoughts that built up and clogged my being. It refreshed me just to experience fall. Also, the whole deal was a self-enforced video game detox clinic...

I played Diablo II for the majority of saturday. I don't think I even put on pants until I went out around midnight to get food. It was so refreshingly mindless. I must've pointed and left-clicked some thousand-score times. And I don't think I'm hyperbolizing, come to think of it. I've seen a handful of results from 'clicking studies.' I only interacted with one other human on a personal level that day, Matt, and probably only because he too played a lot of Diablo II. It really helped that my phone didn't ring that day. It beeped around one telling me I had voicemail. I thought it very odd indeed to discover I had five missed calls that left voicemail. [Apologies to everyone I missed that day!] Who knows how many people might have called and not left messages! It must have been divine intervention. Or rather, I bet it was the doings of The Internet.