Tonight, for the first time in about three weeks, I heard the new housemate snoring. She’s in the room next to mine.

It woke me up. I’ve never heard anyone snore like this. It’s a combination of snoring and singing and talking in sleep. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or fascinated.

That was 3:30am. It’s 6am now. Heh.

Pardon My Buzz

I’m at Tully’s, in Ballard. It’s a chain coffee place, not unlike Starbucks, but it isn’t Starbucks, so I’m OK with it.

I’d be at Mr. Spot’s Chai House across the street, for truly independent caffiene-oriented drug distribution, but the guy there gave me attitude last time for having a laptop. Fukem.

Coffee culture is interesting. People come in here, and they get their lattes and mochaccinos and other expensive espresso drinks, not even thinking about the psychopharmocology of the 12 ounces they’re about to drink. They want, nay, NEED the buzz, but to them it’s just some happy addiction with no real consequences. They’ll pay fourty bux for an insulated stainless-steel French press, but if you tried to sell them a marijuana pipe, they’d be offended. “I don’t do DRUGS, skippy!”

For the past few months, I’ve been trying, though not very hard, to find a stainless-steel stovetop espresso maker. It’s easy to find the aluminum kind, and for cheap, but: ((aluminum + heat + acidic coffee) * 365) * YearsYouDrinkCoffee = Alzheimer’s Syndrome. So I’m looking for stainless.

When I’m near them, I’ll go into posh kitchen implement stores, the ilk of Sur La Table, and say, “Could you please point me towards your coffee paraphenalia?” People usually register the word ‘paraphenalia’ as belonging after the word ‘drug,’ so they look confused for a while. Then they figure it out.

Only two places I’ve found have what I’m looking for. The aforementioned Mr. Spots has a super-deluxe stovetop espresso machine, complete with frother, imported from Italy, for $135. For $135 I could buy two or three electric espresso machines and put them in various locations around the house for emergenices. The other place is downtown in The Market (soon to be the subject of another ‘blog), and the price is closer to liveable. For an addict, anyway. I still have trouble feeling good about buying it, though. Imagine a crackhead feeling good about buying a pipe.

Now, I know that I could find exactly what I’m looking for in nanoseconds on the internet. Type it into google and voila. But I’m learning a few things about society by doing it this way, and I’m tempering my caffiene addiction in the process.

What am I learning? Firstly, that we value aluminum more than stainless steel, and when you divide that wisdom down to its lowest common denominator, you end up with: we value the cheap over the expensive, the short-term over the long. Secondly, that peole have an interesting attitude towards psychoactives; if *they* take the psychoactives (as in coffee), then it’s safe and wonderful. If someone *else* takes them (as with, say, pot), then they’re horribly dangerous and must be eradicated. Also, psychoactives that boost productivity are good, while psychoactives that slow you down and make you more deliberate are bad, bad, bad.

I read a synopsis of an interesting-sounding book the other day. I forget the title, but it’s a sort of psychoactive history of western culture. The author posits that trade with the far east brought stimulants like tea to the west, where they stimulated the culture into a Rennaissance. The spectrum of social possibility, goes the thesis, runs hand-in-hand with the spectrum of psychoactives available. For instance, LSD gave us the 60s. Take away the LSD, and there’d be no 60s as we understand them. The culture of the west coast of the US stems from the cultural developments of the 60s.

That’s the same west coast culture which features the current coffee craze. Thanks, LSD.

A Good Way To Argue

I have some friends with whom I have an unspoken agreement: When we find ourselves arguing about anything, we’re allowed to play The Buddha Game.

Arguing doesn’t create solutions because it doesn’t create consensus. It doesn’t create consensus because it assumes that the other person is lesser. This is the justification for The Buddha Game. Play it with your friends sometime, or even play it alone. It’s best to begin during a real argument, but you can just start it up for no reason whatsoever, and in fact, sometimes its more fun if you play it that way. Here’s how it works:

(To begin with, some people are arguing…)

Person 1: “Well, I took out the garbage last time, so it’s your turn.”

Person 2: “No, *I* took out the garbage last time!”

Person 1: “How can you lie about it? It’s just the freaking GARBAGE!”

(Now, add The Buddha Game…)

Person 2: “Yeah? Well, YOU’RE THE BUDDHA!”

Person 1: “No, YOU’RE the Buddha!”

Person 2: “I know you are, but WHAT AM I?”

Person 1: “Well, DUH! You’re the BUDDHA!”

…and so forth untill a third person takes out the garbage to get you to shut up.

Bonus points for using terms like ‘bodhicitta’ and ‘dependent co-origination’ in a sarcastic tone.

Try it sometime.

With An X

I’m gonna talk about something I don’t really want to talk about, which is why I think I should talk about it. If you know what I mean.

Somewhere out there, somewhere in the world, there’s a person. And attached to that person, there’s an identity. And attached to that identity is a huge question mark. And attached to that question mark, there’s a little bit of me. And sometimes, on rare nights, when I’ve had too much wine, and when I think back over my life, that little bit of me pulls and unravels the rest of me.

Well, I sit here sipping wine and typing.

I never met the person, at least that I know about. I met the identity; she was called Xara. We met on a socially-oriented multi-user chat system. We had similar interests (tarot, magical things, cultural criticism, beauty and truth). She was mysterious; she’d be around for months, gone for months, around for weeks, gone for a year, back for a single encounter, etc. She told me about being on the run, unable to talk about her private life, connecting from terminals in public libraries and college computer labs. She said that the demons chasing her were stronger than she could ever be. She said I was the only person she felt like she could really trust, only because I was so far removed from her physical situation. She said I was one of her very few trusted friends.

At first we just chatted. Then after a few months, as the trust started to build, we started some hot-chat. When we both decided that was too awkward, we’d do energy sharing experiments, where we’d give each other… something hard to describe. Then she vanished for a few years. Then she came back. Then she vanished again. Poof. The end.

How do you really know someone through mediated contact? I told her how I felt: that she was really important to me, that I was concerned about what happened to her. She felt the same way. I asked if the demons that were after her were the kind who wear badges, or if they were the kind that live in your head, and she said she couldn’t tell me. I offered to help her get rid of those demons, whatever their origin, and she said it was possible that we’d meet one day, just not in that context. There’s more to the story, but I promised I’d keep it secret.

And then she went away, leaving behind more questions than answers.

Anyway, I lift a glass to Xara-with-an-X: Here’s to you, wherever your physical body may be. I hope the demons are gone. I’ll always remember the night, in the dream, with the endless stream of paper flowers coming from your slight-of-hand, your I’m-A-Poet beret sitting askew on your head.

Obligatory question to ask possible respondents: Has anyone just vanished out of your life? Poof?

I just got back from seeing ‘The Others’ so I made a review. I could tell you what I thought in this ‘blog, but…

…that would ruin the suspense.

So I’m sitting here thinking about my life, and how it’s very carefully arranged into little (and not so little) patterns that I’m finding it hard to break out of.

Like, for instance: I eat a lot of fast food. Since I’m autistic, I seek the least complicated social interaction possible, and fast food joints are experts at making that happen. I’ve probably already removed ten years from my life by eating at these places, and it’s not cheap, but some part of me finds great solace in a drive to a drive-through in the middle of the night. So that’s what I end up doing.

Another is the realm of employment. I’m a bright guy, and I’m eminently hireable, it’s just that I have a neurological condition that makes it next to impossible for me to deal with anything resembling a workplace. So my time and effort orbit around busywork I create for myself, in order to keep my mind off the fact that there’s not a lot of meaning in what I’m doing.

I’ve given myself over to these things, to some degree, but I do want them to change, eventually. However, autistic-me keeps me in the well-worn grooves of my life, away from things like making appointments with psychologists and neurologists. In a lot of ways, I’m a wreck.

Not asking for any sympathy or pity or whatever; it’s just on my mind.

This makes sense why?

I have 6 subscribers. On my ‘Sites I Read’ page, Xanga lists five of them, then says ’1 Other Reader’ and then ‘List Other Readers.’

Now, I can understand wanting to limit the list to the most relevant 5, but to use 7 lines to list them, when I only have 6 subscribers seems kind of silly.

Ah well. Just random griping. I think it’s nice that this is the worst thing I can gripe about at the moment.

Fudge Brownies
(a/k/a Marcia’s Brownie Recipe)

This recipe is perfect, unless you substitute barley flour at the behest of your non-wheat-eating friend, and accidentally add baking soda instead of powder.

1/2 c. margarine or butter
1 pkg (12 oz) semisweet chocolate chips
1 2/3 c sugar
1 1/4 c all purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 c chopped nuts (if desired)

Heat oven to 350F. Heat margarine and chocolate ships in 3 qt saucepan
stirring constantly, until melted. Beat in remaining ingredients until
smooth; stir in nuts. Spread in greased rectangular pan 13″x9″x2″.

Bake until center is set, about 30 minutes; cool completely. Cut into bars. 36 brownies.

The Summer Of Our Discontent

Well, not really discontent.

Essentially, I’m sitting here looking out my window at the street outside. People walking their dogs, people wearing only shorts and shoes, a very confused bee trying to fly through the glass. There’s a strongish breeze blowing the last of summer’s pollen; fall will be here soon enough.

And I still don’t have a tan. I promised myself that I’d have more than a driving tan this summer. I also promised myself that I’d go to the Olympics (the mountains, not the event) and hike through a temperate rainforest for a while. Haven’t done either.

Instead I went through hell with (‘with’ is the wrong word; ‘for’ is more accurate) H. and her son, while they waited for the restraining order to kick in, drove across the country, spent an extra five days in Nashville, TN, while my van got healed by a mechano-shaman, and ran out of money. And now I’m teaching myself C++, trying to get v.2.0 of some software out the door, and dealing with the inevitable friction of a new housemate.

So my question is: Should I abandon the romantic notion of solitude in the wilderness (since it’ll ruin my momentum on actual important things), or should I just go ahead and be a self-indulgent hedonist (since the momentum sometimes feels like drudgery)? Winter is long and hard here…

glTron makes me happy.

Just think. For less than a thousand dollars (much, much less), you can get a computer that could probably render the movie Tron in real-time. That some guy did the lightcycles part as a game for a class project just adds to the wonder.

Technology is neeto.