| 24 may 2002 "i don't know how many times i'd felt frustrated with completely meaningless songs being awarded as 'best song of the year'... *sigh* how i love christian music..." go michael w. smith! i have a hard time telling if people are being sarcastic. and an ever harder time if it's in print. holy shit i'm tired today. these 9am company meetings are going to kill me. every time i don't get enough sleep, i get a little sick. i woke up with a cornucopia of snot in my nose, and an irritating feeling whenever i swallow. heh. i said swallow. i have some business to talk about. one of my friends got an e-mail yesterday that was addressed from me, but it was a forgery. there was a potentially malignant application attached to it. so, if you ever get an e-mail from me that seems suspect, don't mess with it. in any case, i rarely ever attach things except for pictures, so... just be careful, ok? e-mails are pretty easy to forge. i know, because i've done it before. i used to use the RMAIL feature in emacs to read my mail (even at stanford; i had none of that pine or elm or eudora shit), and when you write up a blitz, you can change headers pretty easily. but the hop-by-hop details are usually correct, so it's pretty easy to tell a fake e-mail from a real one if you look at the full header. the current culprit seems pretty stupid, though, for reasons which i'll talk about in the future. i thought about what i would do if i ever contacted the offender. i'd have two immediate questions... first, i would want to know how old he/she is. i don't care that much if the person is young, because then i'll just dismiss him as a stupid bored kid. and then i'd like to know why he's wasting his time. most people come across as total dumbasses when posed with the question "why" in this case. i just had a smoke, and one of the stray questions that popped into my head was, "was there a band called timbuk3?" but you know, with the internet and all, lots of questions like these are easily answered... you just to not be lazy and do a little research, that's all. i find that amazing, how there's so much information a few keystrokes and clicks away. pretty cool if you think about it. so yesterday was a company-mandated "fun day." at 2, we took a group picture. after talking to various people, i decided to switch out of my vivace shirt. luckily, i remembered that i always keep some clothes in my trunk, so i didn't have to go home. i dunno. i totally see why my wearing an ex-company's shirt was in bad taste, and i'm just bothered that i didn't realize it as i was putting it on in the morning. afterwards, we headed off to see _star wars_. it was not bad the 2nd time around. and i decided that i could watch the last half hour or so (starting with the coliseum scene) at least 5 times straight. and the coolest part of light sabers is the sound. ah, the humming... i always thought that a sign that an object had immense power would be the fact that it hummed. and after the movie, we went to have pizza and beer at a pizza place in santa clara. pretty generic affair, except that i got to talk to another coworker for the first time. fresh! and what makes it fresh is that the employee was a girl. and, she was not an engineer, thank goodness. (we have four women in our company.) so during the movie's droid assembly line scene, i got my death jolt. basically, every so often (maybe once every two days), my mortality hits me. i am suddenly rudely shaken by the fact that death is a certainty, and that someday i'm just going to disappear, most likely earlier than i want to, and most likely in a painful way. and then, i think about how i'll go, when i'll go, and the amplified sinking horrible feeling when i realize i haven't lived life the way i wanted... it's kind of like how time slows down futile panic when you have a head-on collision, but probably 100 times worse. i think we often trivialize death. we read about chandra levy's body being found, about the suicide bombings in israel, plane crashes, floods, a random murder here and there... but my guess is that we're all pretty numb to the news. but man... those times when it hits me personally... i get consumed by a a short seizure of paralyzing fear. so yesterday marked the first day of my summer vacation. because aside from _sportscenter_, there is nothing for me to watch on tv any more. it's really nice. i don't think i've ever welcomed the rerun season until this year, and i find it really refreshing. i got to have dinner with jay and make a walmart run with him, without worrying about when i had to be home to catch my required viewing. at walmart, i got really sad when i was at the checkout counter. i looked around, and i just saw humanity as a collective consuming force. it started when i saw the old lady in front of me was buying a stack of handkerchiefs. i just started thinking, why do we buy all this shit? what is the point? it's like we're all just little creatures, running around and congregating to places like this to accumulate "stuff." heh. i bet the religious-minded people will look at what i just wrote and say that i'm a lost secular soul. and the assholes among them will gloat. what *is* it about certain religious people and their self-righteousness. it's so annoying. jay moves out today. i have a feeling that the place will get really empty for a while. both in how it feels and how it just *is*. i'll start noticing how certain things i took for granted are no longer there, like a cup here or a pillow there; he's really been the one who has been maintaining the place. the whole walmart trip for me was about replacing certain mundane objects that he'll take with him: dishwasher liquid, laundry detergent, sponges... and god damn it, i forgot paper towels! i need a coffee table. badly. until i get it, there will be piles of shit on the ground in front of the futon. ugh. i'm thinking about getting a square table for the dining area. that way i am one step closer to my dream of having overnight mah-johngg sessions. i had a dream last night that mike was admonishing me about women. and that i was playing taiko with chopsticks because i forgot my sticks (which is a horrible thing to do). i've been thinking about how i don't have much exposure to women who really dress well. by that i mean "dress maturely." hm. that doesn't sound right either. i'm not talking about women who wear 40-something stuff from talbots. and ESPECIALLY not the nasty-ass couture getups that you see in storefront windows at neiman's or saks. but you know, a nice flowy skirt, white blouse, heels... stuff like that. fashionable and feminine. and hella sexy. i'm very familiar with the current laid back college student look of jeans and a bra-less tank top, etc., which is totally cool and hot in its own right. but there's this whole other women's attire that i'm not getting in touch with. and as much as i bitch about my exes's (how do you pluralize "ex" and tack on a possessive?) fashion maven-esque tendencies, it *was* really cool to be with girls who could look smashing when they wanted to. /nostalgia/ i am a HUGE fan of the sundress. honestly. and there's a sublime bonus when no underwear is involved. breezy! k1, k2, grace, et al... i salute you. genuflect to the sundress. |