the world looks strange, as if the environment around me itself has fallen into the uncanny valley. as if i’m in the matrix version 1.0 and the simulation is just inaccurate enough that around the periphery of my vision i can tell that things are just not right, and the programmers haven’t fixed the little glitches yet.

of course my perception isn’t perfect but there is a sense – sometimes manifested as an intuition just under the surface and other times a present as the crack of a hammer on your thumb or a bite into a jalapeno – that the world isn’t right. and eventually we start to realize that the reason the world seems to be off-kilter from what it should be is because it is. the whole world is living in an episode of the twilight zone and in this version of the story we only have the faintest knowledge somewhere in the back of our primitive mammalian brains that there is the possibility of a better option.

and the tragedy of the whole situation is in our complete inability to grasp this – we can barely come to terms with the death, broken relationships, and hurting people right around us. how much more impossible is it for us to perceive the suffering in the darkest places of the world: in the ghetto, or the middle east or sub-saharan africa? there’s a whole broken world out there and we are ourselves but just a tiny little broken shard in the midst of it.

so we do what we must to survive: we set it aside and we pile our bills on top of it like a birthday card from our distant uncle; we know we ought to respond but so many other things will come first. there’s no way we can deal with it right now, but maybe later. tomorrow perhaps?

but in the end you still can’t get away from the idea that this is not how it was meant to be.

one of the coolest, most unique, most laid-back friends i know in seattle is dead, apparently to a drug overdose.

what. the. fuck.

phrases that paul taught me: jesus cock, jankasaurus, bonerphone, faceneck, ass stack, poop muncher… even right now i can hear in my head the ridiculous way he would throw out a nonsense phrase and make us all chuckle. i hope i never forget how he brightened my life.

i love five o’clock people. i was excited to discover yesterday that susanna had the other three of their albums that i did not in her cd collection. now i’m happily able to enjoy them at work.

this weekend ended up being a bit shirkful of responsibilities. thursday was a bunch of riding around, eventually culminating in the midnight show of pirates of the carribean two: dead man’s chest. what was the chest full of? plotlines. a good film but not necessarily worth getting home at 4am for. definitely worth catching at a matinee though. i got up almost exactly five hours later and made it to work for an eleven hour day of making up for all my skipping earlier in the week. that was exhausting. so much so that by the time i got home, i had no energy left to make it up to chop suey for optimus rhyme’s cd release party. hopefully they will be able to get a few more shows in before PAX, because i am concerned about this localized wackacon infestation and really need some autobeats to get in and clear it up.

saturday baoke and i got a 22lb watermelon and rolled down to kent for some nerdcore d&d action. it was a solid afternoon, and i can’t believe we each consumed probably 3 or 4 pounds of watermelon. when i came home i completely forgot about a birthday party i’d planned on attending, do’h. instead i plopped down on the couch to finish out season two of arrested development. such an awesome show, but when i got up to check my email and saw the reminder about the party i felt a bit the chump.

i did get to bed early though and on sunday i was substantially more productive. i got up and went to the 9am church service then went home and watched france v. italia, in many ways one of the least spectacular games of this year’s world cup. plus, zidane? whiskey tango foxtrot. afterwards i met up with c and we went to her friends’ fourth annual alice in wonderland tea party. i was woefully unprepared in the costume department, but i brought a bottle of port so i was given a bit of a free pass. after that i hosted a fairly successful housewarming party at my new home, it quickly became clear though that it is not nearly the size of the blakeley. still, plenty of folks came over and a good time was had by all it seemed.

now i’m back at work and already jumping into another week. is it the 10th of july already? seven months into the year, it’s hard to believe it’s been this long.