finished listening to "Prey" by Michael Crichton. awesome, but quite a bit of a thriller. almost too much for me at times. times that i didnt need the additional "stress" of a thriller. but i totally recommend it.

currently listening to anne rice's "interview with the vampire"(mostly on the drive in to work and going back home). at first it was cool, then i started getting glimpses of some disturbing shit, until it became totally disturbing and a bit of a downer there for a while - almost an ordeal to get thru, and now its finally mostly back to interesting and exciting. i tried to think of the movie, which i had seen not long after it'd come out, and i realised that i actually dont really remember much at all from it, other than tome cruise, brad pitt, and kirsten dunst or whoever. and there was a fire. and lestat died. and they were in paris. and that's the part i'm just getting to now. maybe the disturbing shit was more disturbing to me because i kept thinking of Lily when they were talking about Claudia - it was just too close to home, when he nearly kills her. here's the excerpt:

"... And when I thought of this, I saw Babette's face contorted with
hatred when she had held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw
Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt, yes, damned and this is
hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into her soft,
small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, whispered even as I felt the hot
blood on my lips, `It's only for a moment and there'll be no more
pain.' But she was locked to me, and I was soon incapable of saying
anything. For four years I had not savored a human; for four years I
hadn't really known; and now I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm,
and such a heart not the heart of a man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of the child, beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny fist beating on a door, crying, `I will not die, I will not die, I cannot die, I cannot die . . . .'
I think I rose to my feet still
locked to her, the heart pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease,
the rich blood rushing too fast for me, the room reeling, and then,
despite myself, I was staring over her bent head, her open mouth,
down through the gloom at the mother's face; and through the halfmast
lids. her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the
child down. She lay like a jointless doll."

the part in red probably hit me the hardest - almost made me cry. i was not expecting that.
it might not have had that effect on me had i read it. but the way the reader read it, embuing it with emotion... actually, that was probably a big part of it. it reminds me of the time we saw "moulin rouge", and somewhere along the line i accidentally turned on this option they had, which was something like an audio commentary of what was happening for the visually impaired. in the part when satine finally succumbs to her illness and falls to her doom - the way it was narrated, and then accompanying the cuts to the different characters from the show, watching in astonishment, and the big black dude's name was chocolat as it turned out, and it probably didnt help that i was on shrooms - the narrator was putting words to my feelings, crystallising them, making them explicit - i cried like i havent for a long time. and i've been afraid of watching the movie again, even though i thought it was deffinitely worth buying and bought it.

it seems almost banal or down right irreverent to go back to the vampire story, to their enchantment with paris, which immediately brought back memories of the movie "sabrina" (the remake) which we saw recently, and how many people seem to have fallen in love with Paris. and so now i wanna see it too. though for the longest time i thought it would be too stuffy, and sick of tourists.


i'm spent...

got some fucken flu. as in flu en za.
dont wanna smoke pot so as not to make it harder for my throat, etc to heal. is having a couple shots better for my throat? 'cause thats what i'm doing. wish alcohol were illegal and not pot. i could vapourize pot - that would not hurt my throat. as far as i understand. dont like the word "pot" all that much. but it seems least of evils: 'weed' has the connotation of "undesirable plant", when it actually is quite desirable; 'marijuana' is so stigmatised, and a bit old fashioned; 'dope' is just totally old school and dorky; 'ganja' sounds all wrong from a caucasian - i know because i have a friend who says that; 'chronic' is too negative and smacks of dorky homie-ism; 'cheeba' is just too obscure; 'hemp' - industrial or new agey; 'herb' - just dorky; 'grass' - really old fashioned; not to mention dorky :) the list just goes on and on in unrelenting dorky fashion.

whatever.

installed a new router on the computer, updated it, set it up, and got bit comet working again. downloading some audio books: golden compass, subtle knife, hp lovecraft's cthulu mythos books, interview with the vampire, tom sawyer, ender's game, some william s. burroughs, like naked lunch...

gotta go to sleep...

been listening to the last harry potter on my mp3 player - havent caught up to the point i've read to, and its pissing me off.
i called around to see who would like to chill out with me and phx and boogie this evening - one couple showed up.
it sucks that i used to be pretty close with my buddy voider, but now it takes like 2 hours just to melt the ice and start having a nice flow of fun. and by then his wife gets tired of not getting whats going on and they go home.
life sucks for quite a few people, it seems - did things ever use to be different? or more precisely - better?
i cant imagine a way that i could direct my life to be truly happy - there always seem to be drawbacks. maybe i'm aiming too high.
i'm really tired, but i wanted to do something enjoyable before succumbing to sleep.
and last but not least - everything sucks, and i want a device installed in my brain that would make me happy and glad all the time.
bla bla bla...

finished listening to "a scanner darkly" by philip k dick - wild ride, but somewhat somber. especially when in the epilogue the author divulges that some of the characters were based on some friends of his, then talks about how he and people he hung out with during the 60's all did a lot of drugs, then started realising how it was fucking them up, and how reluctant they were to stop. he concludes with a list of his friends that ended up committing suicide, and/or suffering irreversible brain/nervous sytem damage.
now i'm listening to "the man in the high castle" - so far its pretty cool.

bought a Saltskär bafroom cabinet at ikea - i thaught it had a cool pattern on the glass, so it wasnt all frosted, but kinda looked like, i donno - cool. for some reason i thought a few times what the pattern looked like - and i was drifting somewhere around the idea of broken up ice like on a river or lake, but still covered with snow. i mounted the damn thing, later had a shower, and as i dried myself off glancing at it, it finally dawned on me that it must be a city map! there's a few places in sweden named Saltskär, but most of them have no roads, and none of them seem to match up with this map. yes, i looked obsessively. for 2 days. not much of an obsession i guess. but i still wonder. maybe i should just give up and follow phx' advice and just email the designers and get it right from the source.

i've recently been listening thru the viking youth podcasts - these guys are cool.

apparently in iran an unmarried woman will be punished with 100 lashes if she 'allows' herself to be raped, while a married woman will be stoned to death. was this mohammed's idea?

its fucking cold out there, and i got a shitload of stuff to do today. i dont really wanna do any of it.

why are there so few good books available in audio book format?

just finished listening to 1984 by george orwell - fucking depressing. the last 1/3 of the book is just the dude's ordeal - i felt like i was just being pounded by it over the head, just wanted to get thru it, one part nearly put tears in my eyes. i would say the book is interesting up to the point when he is taken. after that i would advise to use whatever substance or technique to detach oneself from one's feelings to continue. maybe i'm just a pussy. i get down easily. i dont wanna work. i dont wanna do anything. nothing productive. its cold out there. fucking benzino is still not talking - i stopped talking to him too. but its tense. that sucks. all i wanna do is to get stoned. or do whatever that captures my attention without requiring me to do anything. movies. stories. tripping. reading. my head seems to be hurting often now. my psoriasis is flaring like its going out of fashion. i hate christmas. when i first heard someone uttering this phrase i was outraged. now i'm a full convert. the only thing one can count on is change. i dont know how phx is putting up with me.

feeling pretty shitty lately. i dont think that gingko shit is good for me. sometimes it makes me feel a bit dizzy, slow and stupid - kinda like a stone, but without the pleasure. i should read up on it and probably quit it. maybe my moods have been rubbing off at work, because benzino has been having some hardcore hissy fits. i can tell he's pissed off, but he just wont talk. i think he's been hanging out with girls way too much. i think he said most of his friends are girls - no benefits tho. i donno.
totally losing grip on the work situation. benzino is now de facto running the site, and i'm the helper. except i'm also like a consultant. i like that part of it. i could chalk most of it up to seasonal affective disorder or something, and the recent cold temperatures. the closing in of christmas. the crappy situation on my account. the unfinished side jobs, people calling about new ones. i dont wanna do anything but listen to my stories and watch movies. and boogie. she's so cute. but sometimes she drives us up the wall. most often me.
i just wanna be a spectator for a while. an extended while. get stoned and enjoy. go to sleep when i burn out.
looks like i'm actually gonna have to read some books. count zero and monalisa overdrive are apparently not available in audio format. it might look weird for people to see me there, just sitting at the site. maybe if i went and read it on my coffee breaks at the starbucks...
pattern recognition was really cool. now i just started listening to virtual light, but its somehow different. i think i should do some kinda course that would improve my information extraction from spoken word. i really wanted to use the word 'aural' though... :)
that and speed reading. if i could speed up my reading speed, maybe reading books would be a more plausible activity for my tight schedule. as i perceive it.
i should go. my parents are waiting for me. i said i could install an outside outlet for their christmas lights. this is gonna be interesting.

i'm trying out a new drug - gingko biloba - see if that expands my horizons... :)

"...dude, its like totally not a drug, man, its an herb, and like the man says: "whats from the earth is of the greatest worth.""

driving up from oregon was fucking fucktarded - slow spots everywhere, humble folks without temptation ( which i kept thinking was "homophobes without temptation" until benzino corrected me), then the snow and sleet, trucks passing my slow ass, spraying the goddam sleet all over the windshield so i couldnt see anything, then accidents and jack-knifed semi's turning the I-5 into a friggin' parking lot back-to-back-to friggin' back, so we didnt get home till 2 am or so. even on the way down there was a few serious bog-downs, one of which turned out to be a friggin' burning minivan on the side of the highway! the heat was very noticeable even thru the closed windows. kinda reminded me of the treasure island show they used to have in vegas - really surprising how much you felt the heat of the explosions from such a distance. too bad they killed it.

listening to another story by william gibson - "pattern recognition". still having the same problem with the density of information sometimes - the dude packs so much info into a phrase, i cant do anything else while listening to it. well, i do anyways, cause i mostly listen while driving, but i often regret it because i miss stuff at times and have to rewind if i can. was happy to hear that the main character dislikes those square-toed shoes - i dont like them either! was happy for a moment in knowing that i'm not alone in this, until it dawned on me that, after all, it is a fictitious character. hrrumpf...
it was cool to find out that gibson lives around these parts. wonder if i'll ever run into him while doing a service call. might already have, before i knew who it was... i also just found out the other day that tom selleck - the dude that played magnum - also apparently lives around these parts! i was also surprised to find that apparently he is NOT gay.

i was really miffed today at the apparent disappeareance (hehe :D) of free wifi at coffee places around where i worked. i had to drive down a back alley to where i thought there used to be a weak signal as barely detected from a little coffee place before, opened my laptop, and found a weak-ass connection - free! kept my fingers crossed that the battery would last long enough for me to go to hotmail, login, attach my time sheet and email it to my office so i could get paid tomorrow! :O to my relief, it showed that it went thru... :)
felt like a bit of a back-alley techno-cowboy though - what a rush! :)

ok - gats ta git to sleep. shower first.

re: the universe as a readout

turns out that the universe as a readout idea has already been thought of - like when i was a year old. i was just listening to the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy when it dawned on me - that's my idea!
:(
but hey - life keeps moving on.
ok - time for beddy