sequential blather

4:35AM

thomas szasz says psychopathology is social conflict disguised as illness. the old adage says most shrinks are in the business to cure themsleves.

so do most shrinks suffer from unresoled/able social conflict?

3:35AM

sometimes i wonder how i will have the strength to face the next dawn. life is so, so fucked up. what i need is a worthwhile girl, some fresh air, and warm sunlight. i can't pretend to be happy anymore. and i don't know how much longer i can tolerate my roommate Nick's idiocy. i'm really starting to hate him.

or maybe what i really hate is stasis &/or regression.

or maybe i just need a good lay and a warm beach.

8:32AM - the funniest thing fortune(6) has said in quite a while

Al Gore resembled a Vulcan desperately in need of a blow job.
-- Bobcat Goldthwait

8:08PM - tersity

Lately i've been having severe doubts whether any single idea which cannot be expressed (not necessarily explained or supported, just expressed) in a sentence or three can be worth a damn. People don't naturally think in big monolithic chunks; but rather in small, discreet (???? -- maybe not), highly-interconnected snippets.

1:59PM - closer to the hardware

every day I feel the need to cut away more old personality, to chisel my mind down closer to sinew & bone. closer to the hardware -- yet now i feel i have hit a snag. there are a lotta self-control structures in place, needed to keep me sane & functionally-happy in subideal situations.. they are burdensome & uncomfortable; but force of circumstances prevents me from editing them out. what to do,what to do?

4:00PM - new video game business model

new business model for the video game industry: opensource the game engine. sell slick game variants to advertisers.

oh god, no, this is a perverse model. fuck it.

8:28PM - love parade

this past weekend san francisco hosted a huge international electronic music festival called the Love Parade. 25 or 30 djs on floats parading through downtown to a big open lot south of the ballpark, then setting up show there all evening long for a big party. went around 1.30 (parade started at 1p) w/ mike & a couple of his friends. walked the whole parade route.. delicious, delicious music, fun costumes, & even more-delicious girls.

after we reached the final destination lot (where about 2/3 of the floats hard already arrived), we sat on the grass for a while to rest. talked for a while with a nice tourist from seattle named gabriel, who was dressed as a giant pumpkin. (i was wearing only red pants, a faux-fur sash, & a buncha plastic hawaiian lais; almost underdressed...) we discussed our two cities, pollution, economics, and electric buses (seattle has 'em too!); then he gave me some free vitamin E.. which was really nice for that scene.

eventually mike & his buddies got tired & went home (like 4/5p), so i hung out for a while w/ rob (aka darwin), & mostly wandered around & danced. talked w/, danced w/, & kissed lotsa really cute girls. almost got into a fight over one.. well, i wasn't in a fighting mood.. but this girl & i really really hit it off.. then her bf comes over.. well, not exactly her bf.. 'cuz i asked him, "are you her boyfriend, or her friend?" and he wasn't exactly sure.. and she surely wasn't acting the gf part.. but then uncertain-dude's cronies came over, & kinda put a damper on things. dumbasses; i dunno if he'll keep that girl or not, but surely his friends' actions caused him to lose some esteem.

also talked for a while w/ these two insanely-hot russian girls.. one who lives in sf, the other her sister visiting from russia. alas, i was too dumb to get her number. did get the number of a lingere-model-hot asian named Regina... talked to her on the phone today.. she's up for going out for tea this weekend, but gotta hash out the schedule tomorrow afternoon... i liked her a lot (under the influence of party favors).. and without a doubt she's hot.. so i'm quite looking forward to talking w/ her & actually getting to know her.. see if i like her.. she's certainly cute enough to be long term.. so we'll see..

---

ack, no time to write more.. at anyrate, including the (kinda shitty, commercial) afterparty, danced about 14/15 hours between 1p and 8a... was hella exhausted afterward, but it was so worth it. it's not overdoing it to say the love parade was the most fun event i've ever attended. it's was like gay pride (as regards the all-around feeling of happiness & good-will in the crowd), except predominantly straight & young, and with more & better music.

12:32AM - dissolution

go to cambodia, young man (i whisper to myself each night). be done with this self-important backwater. what happiness have you found here; and is not even barren coastal landscape beginning to chafe?

as soon as i finish this goddamn project, get paid, renew my passport, while a little more life away; comes my own reply. the nightly refrain of inaction. what is there here for me? the almighty dollar, waved daily in my face; she whispers, "sell your soul, and i am yours". a rich father plus a childhood of poverty gave me perspective on the value, and the worth, of money. it is not worth my time, beyond what it takes to live.

but what is life? surely, i am not living. but neither are the rich men, parting beneath my window, living either. we both while our time away; and thus we look each other dead-straight in the eye.

in cambodia, $20 will buy you: a decent place to sleep for the night; a decent meal; an ounce of marijuana; a firm young girl; and all the taxi rides one might need. i'd rather live in squalor and fuck a different tight yellow girl every night; than live in splendor and fight tooth-and-nail (figuratively, usually) for a second-rate ho who isn't honest enough to admit her profession.

it's like todd snider says: i'm an alright guy. ask anyone who knows me, i'm more honest & objective than most: i've looked myself over, and while i'm far from perfect, i don't especially suck. so why don't i have a beautiful girl to spend the night with?

two theora:

1) everything has an answer

2) not every answer is known

i buy #2 100%; but number one i'm not so sure about. isn't agreeing to that, pretty much the same as believing in a single god? or at least in gods? pretty sure it is..


in cambodia the ocean is warm enough to swim, and there's no plague of high fructose corn syrup & it's attendant human deformities. you have to pay for sex there, just like here; only it's more affordable and more open; and the girls are an order of magnitude hotter.

there is nothing wrong with my definition of love. the ex-gf who told me that, was defending herself not helping me. besides, i never told her i loved her. (i've only ever loved one girl; i know that becaue i still think of her, almost every single day; no one else.) think about it: it's not love if it requires thought. the devil is the super-ego, and hell is civilization.

this post, like all such post, is a desperate (you judge the degree) cry: won't someone rescue me from my painful dreams?

---

Dissolution \Dis`so*lu"tion\, n. [OE. dissolucioun
dissoluteness, F. dissolution, fr. L. dissolutio, fr.
dissolvere. See Dissolve.]
1. The act of dissolving, sundering, or separating into
component parts; separation.

Dissolutions of ancient amities. --Shak.

2. Change from a solid to a fluid state; solution by heat or
moisture; liquefaction; melting.

3. Change of form by chemical agency; decomposition;
resolution.

The dissolution of the compound. --South.

4. The dispersion of an assembly by terminating its sessions;
the breaking up of a partnership.

Dissolution is the civil death of Parliament.
--Blackstone.

5. The extinction of life in the human body; separation of
the soul from the body; death.

We expected Immediate dissolution. --Milton.

6. The state of being dissolved, or of undergoing
liquefaction.

A man of continual dissolution and thaw. --Shak.

7. The new product formed by dissolving a body; a solution.
--Bacon.

8. Destruction of anything by the separation of its parts;
ruin.

To make a present dissolution of the world.
--Hooker.

9. Corruption of morals; dissipation; dissoluteness. [Obs. or
R.] --Atterbury.

2:51AM - forced to the gpl

god.. morten, the sysadmin for my webserver, is saying that he's not gonna install any custom products, even archetypes, in the shared plone instance we're switching over to unless the shit is opensourced so everyone sharing that instance (and everyone else) can freely use it.. which is fair enough.. not that anyone will likely want the hokey-ass public-event content type i'm working on.. but still, it is both annoying and good-feeling to be forced into giving back to the community.

2:40AM - married chix

it seems like the more sad & disillusioned i get, the more the good things inside me die, & only the mean & base components remain

6:13AM - skateboarding

so i inadvertently came into possession of a skateboard last week. then last night a dude (one of our neighors, even) taught me the basics for riding it. i practiced a little tonight. it's fun. & the dude (named rob) is right: soma is a perfect neighborhood for it. very flat & paved.

12:37PM - repetition denied

mentioned here a while ago that i've been feeling the 'eternal recurrence', the cycles of life repeating themselves.. & been wanting to read Kierkegaard's Repetition. well guess what: only one copy in the whole SF library system. that copy is checked out. and overdue. by more than a month. and another patron has a hold on it when and if it finally does come back.

what suckage!


guess i should go hit the used book stores.

12:32PM - barbarians

we had a barbarian party at my house last night.. pretty good scene.. but now i'm wondering (i was too drunk/high then to care): did anyone get pictures? i want the world to see me dressed a savage :)

---

and doesn't it figure, on a day when i'm hungover and badly need to get out of downtown for some fresh air and sunshine, it's hideously grey all over the city. ick.

---

last night makes me wonder: am i way too picky about women? there was one there i almost went for.. almost certainly coulda had her if i had.. eh.. i dunno.

9:39PM - repetition denied

the SF main library has only one copy of Kierkegaard's "repetition". it is checked out. and overdue. and there is a hold on it when it returns.

yay.

are the gods speaking? or ought i just buy a used copy of the book, if i can find it?

----

and so life progresses.

george, the roomie, wants to do some coke, but doesn't have anything in mind to do once hopped. i'd do it if it were there; but i'm not the least jonesing for it.

with sex no longer a problem, more than ever i want a real girlfriend. little-l love is the prereq of course; but i really miss big-L love. maybe it's the idea more than the reality that captivates me. oh well; doesn't change a thing.

is cambodia & the extension of dissolution the right answer? it's likely better than a monestary; that's something, at least.

---

i just need something to care about. the identiy of hte object is les important than its status as object.

8:31PM - debian

i've been using debian linux lately. before this, i'd used arch, slackware, redhad, and suse. debian bests them all by a huuuuuge margin. the apt-get utility for installing packages is slick as baby shit. it beats any package management system i've used on any platform.

woot.

10:41AM - architecture & leaving sf

saw pics of seattle's new library on dawon's journal. reminds me of one of my biggest complaints w/ sf: this is an architecturaly dull city. not much interesting downtown. and the neighborhoods are all full of hideous victorian buildings. yick.

at least there's always the Crown Zellerbach tower's austere perfection. it's nothing at all new; but it's archetypical and gorgeous. the pics in that link do little justice to the building itself, and no justice at all to the sunken garden that surrounds it.

sfmoma's building is vaguely cool, but like that museum, way overrrated.

there are a couple good new apartment buildings in soma. but it fucking sucks that almost all the good residential buildings in town (except a few very very nice towers on russian hill) are in one of the city's most polluted neighborhoods. (ah yes, home sweet traffic-exhaust home...)

the embarcadero center is way underrated. probably because the closed-minded "progressives" here (reasonably) don't like the shopping mall in its base, and therefore declare the building itself to be a bad design. replace the stores in the mall w/ more varied uses, and you have a fine example of quasi-public space. (yes yes, there are BIG issues with restriction of freedom in quasi-public space. the right way to address that is to fix the law; not to abandon the idea of spaces that are half inside, half outside.)

goddamn single-family-homeowners and victorian-loving fuddy-duddy prudes. they're holding the city back.

10:04AM - libertarianism vs maoism

Q: What's the difference between a Libertarian and a Maoist?

A: The Libertarian thinks private property is even better than God. The Maoist thinks private property is even worse than God.

---

[Help! I can't tell if that's funny or not!]

9:56AM - spiffy art

all modern art lovers in sf really should see the current exhibit at soma gallery, on mission btwn 6th & 7th. the description below is cut-&-pasted from a reply to a friend's journal:

---

conceptual art reminded me of an exhibit that's on (or was last week, anyway) a few blocks from my house: huge canvases, maybe 8'x20', painted lumpy black, with big rusted steel cables (maybe 1-1.5" thick) hung in the middle. three of those on the back well, each sightly different. then on the side walls (this is a really long, shallow space, w/ huge plateglass windows opposite the wall on which the canvases hang) there are big bundles of of old broken hydraulic lines hanging from wooden rods attached to the wall.

i haven't yet passed by when the gallery was actually open, (it must be an appt-only place) so i haven't even read the little description card. but damn do i like it. if i had a room big enough to mount it, and enough cash to afford it ($5-7k for each canvas, plus $1.5k per bundle of hydraulics), i would buy it tomorrow.

5:12PM - new propaganda slogans

i've been making some very very small-scale propaganda -- just stickers applied to telephone poles. here are a couple of the slogans:

• Democratic Party = Koumintang
  
• The police are the right face, and "social service" agencies the left face, of the same demon.
  
• Universal college education will not eliminate the class system. [inspired by the optimistic naiveity of a couple of the pro-college-funding statues now on display at union square]
  

5:07PM - wild sheep chase

finished haruki murakami's wild sheep chase yesterday. overall, i liked it. but the end was -- at least when i read it -- incomprehensible. gonna re-read it again this weekend before i return it to mainlib, see if i can make better sense of it. best as i can tell, the sheep in question is some sorta devious alien. but i'm not really sure. maybe murakami isn't either.

anyone who's read it, wanna give me some thoughts on the ending?