[inlink]lisa,53[/inlink] DDR Party!!!!

Ridiculous as it is, I am an avid DDRer. I am using it as a kinda workout device. It really gets you sweatin. Like really, I'm dripping after an hour. I am getting pretty good now. I can do the Standard mode but not Heavy. I think you might need to be Asian to do the hardest ones. So Lisa you have to come over, or I need to go over there (you even have fancy nailed-down(?) pads). Left Right Right Up Up Up Down Left Right...

I'm perplexed by the people who drive down to the waterfront along the lake and then sit there in their cars. Half of them leave them turned on and some don't even roll down the windows. It's so strange to have the desire to see the beauty of the lake and then not get out of your car to really enjoy it. My theory is that people are so used to enjoying sights through frames (TV-screens, computer monitors, etc.) that they don't understand that there is more than a purely visual sensation to be had. There's the wind through your hair, the cawing of the gulls, the smell of river mush. Yet as I ride by the people sit there, half not even bothering to look out the window, some just asleep. Get out of the freakin car, at least go sit on a bench. Why not try walking or biking there in the first place? I feel sorry for them. I wanna knock on their windows and tell them to get out of their box and enjoy the air.

Isn't life just amazing. I love it so much, and at the same time I am puzzled, by my love and my life. Why? The eternal question. The answer lies in the question. It's not about why it's about living. It's not about ends but means. The process is the only succes you can have. You can't ever reach the end goal, heck that's what religion is all about, reassurance that though you'll never find the end it's still out there. Science, in that respect, is similar, describing things that we perhaps may never witness but whose very theoretical existence drives us on.

Look. There are no answers. At least none that won't lead to many more questions. What are you looking for anyway. Happiness, love, contentment, adventure? The trick is that every moment is filled with all of these, and more! So maybe the goal isn't finding them, but letting them find their fruition in every possibility. Garbage, you say, you've got to have goals, everything isn't equal, there are such things as good and bad. And yes, opinions do matter. But they're so very fleeting, who can have an opinion for more than a while before it starts changing right beneath their meta-fingertips.

People call me capricious, as if that were a bad thing. As if it was a character flaw that my views are constantly in flux. I tarry on ideas and make them my own, and then before I know it they've morphed, as if with a life of their own, into other concepts. Sometimes I have stored in me completely conflicting ideas that I cling to, knowing that somehow they both make sense but that I haven't quite figured out how they coexist. But I abstain from letting them cancel each other out into some distorted average. The clue will come, that tidbit of knowledge or experience that will allow me to glue the tattered peices into the jigsaw puzzle of reality.

The tapestry is complex and writhes beneath my fingers. Sometimes I lose sight of most of it, intently staring at one singular wonder. Other times the pure vastness of it overwhelms me, I can't see the individual threads. I'm caught up in the overwhelming beauty of the whole. The shining wonder of existence, of being, of scale, pattern, and wholeness. What more is there? We live, we think, we make sense of our environment, that's life (with lots of eating/sleeping/fucking/working in between).

So just relax and break a little wind.

-sidenote: [inlink]robin,205[/inlink] biking is the best (and I really do know tons of cool trails), let's go for a ride.

-sidenote2: [inlink]jill,113[/inlink] Ayn Rand definately has a philosophy. Unfortunately it's kind of twisted and fucked up (yet somehow appealing). Go ahead and read her but make sure you've got lots of questions for her supposed answers.

First off, goodbye Bidgette, moving on to fairer pastures. I wish you godspeed and clear skies, with a dash of sparkling blue ocean! Bon Voyage!

Hey MK! [inlink]mk,97[/inlink]

The DaVinci code is pretty good. I try not to read too many bestsellers, cuz they're usually cheesy, but it was worth it, if only for the neat concept. I borrowed it from Maria (paul and mike's mom) and still have it, so if you wanna ask her I'm sure she'd be happy to lend it to you (I think it's been at my house for half a year or so now, so she obviously doesn't miss it much). Snow Falling on Cedars was good too (I read it in 11th grade so it's a bit foggy now). It is a murder-mystery but also involves the detention of Japanese during WWII and is a pretty powerful reminder of the atrocities even we "civilized" people can commit in the name of national security.

Maidencateyes [inlink]maidencateyes,38[/inlink] is right though, that the libraries have all of these books and you can get them for a month and a half at a time. Support the libraries! They're also really good about requests. You just go to their website search the catalog and hit request and you can pick them up from the nearest library. If you haven't already, you just have to get a PIN number to use the service (also available through the website).

I love to sing!

funny link to a "game" about contracts in Iraq:

First the Lackawanna Six and now Steve Kurtz; Buffalo is getting its share of the headlines. It just goes to show that things that affect the whole country can ultimately have severe local effects. Bush used 9/11 and the War on Terror to codify draconian domestic surveillance programs (through passing of the USAPATRIOT Act). And now we're seeing their effects on our doorstep. One of our own members has been intimidated enough that they removed their journal. Whether that was the right thing to do or not (especially considering that just hitting delete doesn't do all that much in the cyberage [inlink]ajay,43[/inlink]) is debatable, but it still sucks that it has gotten so far that such a reaction is even thought of. Beware what you think and for god's sake don't write it down. You just might be a terrorist and not even know it yet! Julie, if you're reading this, good luck over the next trying days/weeks and I'm thinking of you. Hopefully this will all blow over, and it will be just one more reason to hate Bushco.

We went to the Artvoice street festival thing today. Lots of walking (somehow managing to always end up at an empty stage) back and forth. There were tons of vendors this year which I'm not that hot about (though I guess it matches the magazine's ever-diminishing content/advertisent ratio), do we have to have kitsch-for-sale at every possible social gathering. My next party will hopefully be sponsored by someone and will have little booths throughout to catch you up on the latest useless trends in fashion/lawn decor. Kettle corn is delicious, just don't buy the big bag. The gathering last night was fantastic, or at least the parts I can see clearly. Most of my thoughts are fuzzed over with musical aftershock; at one time there was music playing with altered chipmunk voices (played very aptly by paul and chris) and the casio at full strength in the next room. Best(?) moment must've been walking into blasting technoish music to a room full of riverdancing loonies. I thought the floor was gonna cave. I, of course, decided to join in and was promptly elbowed in the eye for my efforts (thanks Keith: but really no hard feelings, doesn't hurt at all today-and we have no downstairs neighbors!). I took it as a sign to toodle-oo.

-sidenote: this is kinda funny
Republican Survivor
link to full-size .swf file without website

I would be into a dodgeball experience. I just wonder if the other teams won't be burly dodge-ball pros. In response to floppydonkey I would like to play basketball, but haven't for ten years or so and wasn't even very good then. Not that I'm terrible, I know how to dribble and can probably make a basket or two... So maybe if 2 or 3 other not-so-good players were to get together I could show up... the balls in your court (pun!) to find those people to help me not feel like a total loser though.

And if you know me at all, that's something special. There is a long-lost boy in town, Namens Chris. He went out last night so someof you lucky peeps met him. Fun time. He has a hat that's called a stingy or stinger (with a soft "g") or something. It is called that because it is rather small. In other words, it has a stingy brim (is that what it's called, stingy-brim, wtf?). I think he may only own black clothing, which seems to suit him (that's an unintentional pun). I need some tunes...that's better! I like to open itunes and just hit play (and then next next next next next next next) though it's sometimes hard to find a good one, what with three of us sharing 4000 songs; I settled on Cake: Going the Distance. Any song that talks about 'trembling bowels' gotsa be good. At this point you, my humble reader, may wonder what the point of this particular entry is. Sadly, I have no answer. I generally try to keep these things pertinent to world affairs and stuff or at least somewhat entertaining, but I'm taking the cue from the rest that sometimes it's best to just type.

Lately I've had two dreams about work. This is disturbing in itself (my job definitely deserves no extra time in my head), but more so because they feature me doing poorly and/or being evaluated poorly by my manager. Now granted I tend to slack off exactly as much as I can get away with (which I will admit is way more than should be), but I have never received anything less than significantly above average in my managerial reviews. So I slack but am just not caught basically (it helps that pretty much half of my co-workers are either really dumb or over 60) and I really have no qualms about it because I do as much actual work or even more than average. ...but maybe I do have qualms after all, and now my societal ethics are kicking in through my sleeping mind. The solution is probably that I should get a new job that I can feel good about, or at least like I'm not totally selling out. Why can't I just dream about fairies and elf queens all the time?

Zoar valley was nice today. A nice dusting of plutonium does a body good. I wonder what my mutant power will be this time? I hope it's not melting eyeballs again. I'll never make it on the X-Men at this rate.

Does anyone trust enough to do without money as an intermediary? What if none of us can really make anything at this point? What have we to barter with? Only our labor? Is that what socialism is? Anarchism without skills? Can you say that one is born with "abilities" and "assetts", giving both terms equal weight and philisophical merit? I think not, but reality has already played the cruel game of allocation; what to do now, at this late stage? Should we even strive towards equality, or perhaps if not, towards equity? Or are both words without real substantiation? Is there any basic reason that anyone deserves more than they are able to secure for themselves? Fuck philosophy. Makes me sick, twisted riddles in place of real answers. Who cares what the people in the "original state" would do? What about the poor fuckers starving everywhere? They most certainly don't give a flying fuck about any "original state" or for substantiating morals. Do we need to find the "basic reason" to be kind (even if you name it god, you're still looking elsewhere)? Enough. There's a 40 to finish.

Fucking cops! [inlink]liz,41[/inlink] I bet they read my journal and up and changed the plates. Well maybe we need to revise it to just starting with an 'A'. Of course, than I am an undercover cop in my car too. I'm gonna get'cha. Thanks Liz for he footwork anyways.

My dreams were really cool last night. I had this whole fantasy dream of me in the land of the goblins/faeries. It was this whole world situated in relation to different human senses.feelings. I had to climb through the levels starting with the most base and vulgar and working up to the complicated and surreal. I can't remember why I started the quest anymore, just that it was really important for me tog et where I was going. The part I really remember had me finding this one cleaner-fairy's broom closet where she slept. She never really noticed me, I think I was rather invisible to most of them because I didn't really fit into their world (though the higher I got in the city, the more they could see me). So anyways while in this closet, this beautiful dark fairy type lady cam and seduced me. We fell in love there in the closet.

I had to continue my journey and was approaching the end when I started noticing the elite guard. They were all decked out in fancy elven armor, supple and beautiful. I wound cautiously around them knowing that they could sense me but only vaguely. Eventually I got to the the lair of the king and queen. The queen, of course, sensed me at once, and ordered the guards to dispose of me. They rushed me and then I saw the face of the king. It was my lover from down below, her transvestite features conformed to a man's body. She covertly spoke to me and told me where the secret passage was and how I could reach it. There were curtain ropes hanging down and I grabbed one and ran around the circular chamber. I had to gain enough speed to lift off and fling myself to the top of this gigantic bookshelf. It took a couple tries but I eventually made it. Once there it seemed that I was now just trapped, but I new that my lady/king wouldn't have led me astray. I found the portal with my nose, the scent of our lovemaking was still in the air. What looked like any other piece of wall was actually a concealed passage to...somewhere. I woke up here, so I'm not exactly sure what was on the other side. I guess that's okay though, I don't remember my goal so maybe it would have been impossible to obtain it. I love dreams.

We're heading on down to the Allentown Art Fest. To be surrounded by hordes of suburbanites looking for just that right piece of lawn ornamentation or study wall hanging. But it's usually kind of fun too in a jaded way. Tons of cool people interspersed. We will then have a brief visit to the birthday girls (soyeon and robin) at 3 and then a family bbq event at paul's aunt's house. Then we come back and depending on time revisit the bday party or go straight to Trishas for another bbq event. Whew, busy day!