The date of The Smashing Pumpkins' final concert. It takes place at the Metro in Chicago, IL. The Metro has a 1,100 person capacity, but supposedly only 500 tickets were released to the public. Another farewell show is taking place on November 29th at the United Center also in Chicago. However, the Metro show is much more saught after because of it's intimate setting and the fact that it's the final concert. Incidentally, the Metro is the venue that launched the band's career.

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Time: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 00:20:16 GMT
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Things to deal with:

Other daily notes:
  • I'm 20% through Robert Jordan's new Wheel of Time release, Winter's Heart.
  • I've got to create a bad web site for a class, in order to then fix it later. I plan on using patternlanguage.com as a prototype.

It's so nice to be madly in love with one's SO.

Mixed bag today...

  • My youngest daughter had a cheap camera that she took pictures of our recently deceased dog, Buddy. We sent the film in and it came back screwy, as it seems her camera is broken. Took ice cream and a lot of hugging until she stopped crying. I have to kill my SuSE Linux box to install (ack) Windoze 95, after which I can install a video digitizer so I can make stills from a video with Buddy in them.

  • Decided to try to get a teaching job at the college I am attending. They're looking for A+ certified instructors to teach A+ Certification Prep classes.

  • I need to write up three complete COBOL programs in about two hours. When those are submitted by computer, I need to write papers about the Internet and a Spanish movie... all in Spanish. ¡No lo creo! At least I have El Mariachi on DVD.

  • I need to node more factuals, I've been slacking.

  • Decided that the only thing that really sucks about college life is that all the cute girls that I ogle are almost all universally half my age. Actually, it's worse, they're only five years older than my daughter. I have decided not to ogle the cute girls at college any more. Perhaps there's a senior citizen center nearby...


    Add to that my votes and my C!'s never reset... even on Everything2 it's not a good day :(

  • I saw her today. About an hour ago in the street. She wasn't alone. I don't want to see her. She didn't see me, but I actually stopped her. God knows why.
    "hey"
    "Hey - How are you doing?"
    "Pretty Good.........anyway.."
    I hardly stopped moving. I feel disassociated, and it's all unreal. It doesnt touch me. I watch from outside. God she looked good.

    At home I play the album I just bought - Visual Audio Sensory Theater. The second track is touched.

    fuck

    11:04

    Morning!

    Principles of Digital Media exam today. I see no reason why I wouldn't pass...

    ..even when they had funny questions where they asked us to speculate about the Mobile Internet and other voodoo/UFO stuff.

    I'm reading Usenet stuff at the moment.

    14:39

    Made a revolutionary new feedback script. Called worksforme.pl. Instead of asking the user what's wrong, the instructions just read "click this link if (whatever) works for you". (Made this because I don't have access to MSIE when I'm online from Linux, for obvious reasons... =)

    15:47

    I'm not a poet.

    Yet I have a need to somehow illustrate my feelings.

    I think I just quote one great poet whose feelings I've always found (often ironically) appropriate:

    So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun:

    and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter;
    and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.

    Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

    Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit.

    The fool foldeth his hands together,
    and eateth his own flesh.
    Better is an handful with quietness,
    than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

    - Ecclesiastes 4:1-6

    It's a harsh point of view, but I would summarize it thus: "Life sucks. Deal with it."

    I see more than usual amount of flaming in the newsgroups, people leaving from ngs I subscribe to... and a few people leaving E2 too, recently.

    Don't go.

    This is just life, for ***** sake. One of the characteristics of the life is that You Can't Always Win, Not Even Every Time.

    22:06

    Hacked togheter some Perl stuff... Tried a new method of building the HTML table, and reassigned some class responsibilities...

    Still doesn't work, but at least the code looks cooler =)

    (BTW, what the heck is up with all the Deborah909 s0ftl1nx0rz below???)

    01:30

    Oh, yeah, forgot to tell about some Hideous Puns:

    • We use StarOffice; Did the Russians use Czar-Office?
    • I once again read about "raw" images, and remembered that scanned fox picture. I then accidentally thought "rawbits" was "räv-bits"... (Räv = swedish for "Fox")

    Other day logs o' mine...

    Noded today by y.t.:

    Updated: About million nodes. (Looks like I have had a bad habit of losing ends of some sentences or something... If you spot Words With No Ends in my writeups, please /msg me!

    I went hunting for wild chicks today. It involved driving a fair distance to get to their favourite roosts, finding suitable ones at a distance and shooting to kill.

    Well, ok, the truth is that I went hunting for wild chickens with my dad. It was in a palm oil plantation outside town but within the district of Kluang.

    We used my father's shotgun. There were lots of chickens around - much more than last year. My hit rate was pretty low to begin with but improved as we went along - I missed with my first 4 shots but got about 4 out of 6 for my last few shots. In the end, we got a total of 8 chickens, 5 shot by me and 3 by my dad. I actually hit another two chickens but although they were wounded, they managed to escape by hiding in the undergrowth.

    We only shot cockerels and left hens alone ... the male chickens were larger and more noticeable ... besides, leaving the hens would help ensure the chicken population stays up...


    On another note, I found that the reason my games weren't working on my new computer was indeed the el-cheapo NVIDIA Vanda LT TNT2 video card included in the system. It definitely did not like resolutions of 640x480 or 800x600. It's funny as it seems to work fine with a resolution of 1024x768 and higher.

    I scavenged my old computer and replaced the Vanta LT card with my old S3 Virge card and confirmed that the NEC monitor was not to blame.


    Going to Melaka tomorrow to visit grandparents and other relatives.

    14:27

    So, it's December.
    Somehow I find it hard to start getting on the christmas mood when there is no snow in sight, it gets dark by 14 o'clock and Perdedor has quit E2. Still, for some reason my usual weekend gloom hasn't hit as hard as it often does. Although I was close last night. How come when a "friend" decides to put me down he/she always manages to hit where it hurts? They know me too well, I guess.

    In any case, it once again feels great to have nothing to do for 64 hours. Actually, I've got a million things on my hands but none of them are absolutely necessary. It's the freedom to choose I'm fond of. I can be a lazy bastard if I want to, and there is no boss to bitch and moan about it. And that's what the weekends are for, when you don't have a significant other.
    Perhaps I will even node something today. There are many unfinished projects and ideas for so much more...

    Sigh.
    I still sucks Perdedor decided to quit. He was one of the coolest people I've met on E2.
    Oh well, at least his nodes will live on.


    22:13

    Château de la Tour - Réservé du Château 1997

    But don't worry, this won't result in noding while drunk. I'm not noding or drunk. And you won't see any sentimental whining from me tonight either, since I'm feeling fine for some unknown reason. Probably because nearly everybody of our "gang" is present at IRC tonight. It's nice to not feel lonely for a change.


    Record of the Day
    Robert Hood - Nighttime World volume 1 (1995)

    bought: lifecasting supplies, decoupage glue, blue fabric dye for my couch slipcover, chew toy, ten oranges for $2.00 (woo!), lunch, coffee.

    it's sunny out, but very cold. but i do enjoy the briskness of it when i'm walking cozmo. jenn should be calling sometime today, we we'll probably get together.

    lunch is almost ready, laundry is almost done. more later...


    • 5:30, dinner with jenn. double margaritas. forgive no hard links, i am drunk. and i have been hitting at the bong. it's amazing how high you can get off the shit gunking up the inside of the bowl. dinner consisted of the best fajitas in germantown. and the best margaritas. my sister rules.
    • 7:30, call the man. he rules too. i miss him. he's in california for a while.
    • 7:45, make an attempt to update this writeup. i'm using the ^H a lot.
    i accomplished a lot today, artwork-wize. i finished the final coats on my latest acrylic (it's very simple, but i like it), and got the mold shaped for my lifecast. i think it's going to turn out good.

    due to generous use of ^H, my addendum isn't so bad, minus the lack of hardlinks... but i'm pretty beat (drunk) so i'm gunna hit stumbit now.
    2:22 PM

    Hey, I'm actually writing a daylog for the same day as the actual GMT date for once. I usually don't get around to my daylog until after I get home from work, which is around 8-9PM local or 1-2AM GMT the next day.

    I woke up at around noon to go into work and start a process that would re-index all of our data. That takes like 4 hours, so I was going to go do that then catch a movie and come back to finish off the reconfig and testing for the new data scheme, but I caught our net admin on IRC and he hooked me up with remote access to do this from home. Sweet. I owe him a lunch.

    So I got that process running, and now my plans are sort of skewed. I'm not sure what I should do now.

    Things I need to do today/this weekend:

    Right now, I'm starting to get a little hungry, so I think I'll go grab something to eat. I'm thinking maybe Boston Market, then I'll head over to a movie. A cow-orker told me that Unbreakable is somewhat interesting. I think I'll check that out if the schedule looks good by the time I get there. BBL.


    6:09 PM

    Just saw Unbreakable. It was fairly good. Ended too abruptly though. I anticipated the ending about 10 minutes in advance, but wasn't quite sure.

    Well, I've got about 2 hours before the gym closes. I guess I'll haul my ass down there and get a workout. I've been slacking on the weights, only doing walking the last two days, so I need to spend some time there tonight to get caught up.


    9:56 PM

    I spent about an hour and a half at the gym, and I know I'm going to be hurting tomorrow. As soon as I got home, I couldn't do anything but just sit. So I dug up an NES emulator and Legend of Zelda ROM, and played that for two hours. I don't know why I like that game so much when there are so many more modern games.

    My housemate’s brother is here for the weekend to visit.

    When she found out he was definitely coming, my housemate came to me with one of her more mischievous grins, “So how do you feel about skinny 24-year-olds?”

    “You mean outside of the fact that I just finished dating one?”…

    So her brother is a skinny 24-year-old geek and he’s adorable. He lives in Connecticut so my housemate’s efforts to set us up are all in vain, but he’s definitely providing a bit of amusement for the weekend, and the perfect source of distraction to keep me away from the metric fuck-tons of work I need to do since next week is the last week of classes for the semester. I was thinking to myself Thursday how nice it would be to make a new friend and … well, her brother and I have spent the past couple nights and this morning talking for hours. It’s been pretty neat. It’s all useless chatter, but he is a good solid geek personality (plus social skills! How exciting!) and … it’s been nice. And he’s somebody to sympathize a bit with my feelings on my housemate’s kids, and to compare notes with on their developing personalities. These kids are going to grow up to be some really, really interesting people. Especially the one with the evil smile. Great things could happen to her if she turns that evil into something creative. J

    Oh well. Back to work for a bit. Stress is putting me in a positively foul mood but I’m finally coming to my standard realization that the only way to improve that distemper is to just suck it up and get something done. Sigh. So back to it I suppose…
    A year ago, I used to spend all of my time indoors. I had an incredible house, filled constantly with interesting people, excellent comfy couches, imported incense, and loud music.

    The music of choice was always some random internet radio station, as we'd set the visualization from winamp to run to the television we had in the living room, providing something interesting to hear, and see, for all our guests. Not suprisingly, there were always arguments as to the "correct" music to be played.

    Then, we found Afternoon Nap, with DJ Dusty.

    It was a shoutcast station, and it was amazing. Truly amazing. I loved it. Everyone loved it.

    Jessica and I would lie back, smoking cigarettes, laughing and telling stories, listening to the nap. If there was ever a soundtrack to a blooming romance, it was the downtempo sounds from Dusty. So many secrets shared over this music, so much magic associated forever with it.. The first time that we kissed, that we really kissed, it was there, bearing witness.

    After we moved, it vanished. I spent hours looking for it, trying to find out anything about its current location. After a few months, I gave up. Jes and I were having troubles at the time, and I figured it was probably best I didn't find it, and ruin a wonderful memory.

    Now, a year later, i stumbled across it. It's on Live365 now, but is otherwise unchanged. Visit DJ Dusty at downtempo.org, and take a listen.

    It might not change your life... But it means a lot to a pair of young lovers, as a score to a love story.
    Why taking your shirt off to meet the band seems like a good idea until you actually do it...

    After seeing the Bloodhound Gang in my hometown of Nashville and thoroughly enjoying the show, my friend and I decided to dupe some poor sap with a working car into taking us to the Memphis show. The poor sap in question happened to be my friend Christy. Having never heard the band we played all three of their major releases on the way down and after three hours in the car we finally reach Memphis, home of Elvis, the Blues and damn good Bar-B-Que.

    This is where things start to take a turn.

    See, we used Mapquest to get directions which has never failed me in the past, but this time...we got screwed. We wandered aimlessly through downtown Memphis, trying to find roads that no longer exsisted due to construction and realizing that we've been taken the most ass-backward way possible. The most commonly heard phrase in the car was, "Fuck a whole bunch of Mapquest!" Finally, we wandered our way into Beale Street and found a place to park...8 fucking blocks from the venue! After walking through the freezing cold (it felt 10 degrees colder than back home) and being accosted to come into every restaurant and club on the strip, we found the New Daisy Theater. We were simultaneously relieved and annoyed that Bloodhound Gang had not yet started. Relieved obviously, because we had not missed the band we had driven three hours to see and annoyed because we still had to sit through two of the three opening bands. The first band, A, sucked, but they tried hard. On the other hand Caviar, the band that had also opened for them in Nashville, was a bunch of no talent, pretentious bastards that made me want to vomit blood out of my eyes!

    I digress.

    We started drinking heavily and waiting, we were pissed to find that it was about one hundred degrees in the club and there was no coat check. We did however find a very nice (and very cute) doorman who offered to watch them for us. (which he did without incident) After Caviar finished up their set, we made our way as close to the front as possible. Our friend Christy being a tiny woman was then briefed on what to do should a pit ensue.
    "Stand your ground. Never let your feet come more than an inch of the ground, shove back as hard as you can and try to make your way foward. Grab the barricade and hold on for dear life. Remember, STAND YOUR GROUND!"
    As we were waiting for the multitude of roadies to finish up their sound check I ran into a guy that had been with Evil Jared (a member of the band) earlier. They guy was now wearing his underwear on his head. I asked him about it and he said that "Regis", (if that IS his real name) the assistant tour manager (and generally weasely guy I had seen with the band at the Nashville show), had told him that if he wore his boxers on his head for the whole show that they'd give him free passes to the Birmingham show. As "Regis" walked up to him with a video camera, I asked him what someone would have to do to get backstage.

    "Well this guy's wearin' his underwear on his head for the whole show...What ya' got?"

    "I got a big ol' pair of tits!"

    "So you'll take off your shirt and your bra off and wear only your overalls for the rest of the show?"

    I contemplated this and realized that I was pretty much covered by the overalls, so I said,"HELL YEAH! It's go time, motherfucker!" And proceeded to disrobe.

    "What about your friend there?" At which point she puts her hands up and started shaking her head.

    "C'mon Christy you're gonna' show your tits to a bunch of people that you don't care about that you'll never see again! What's it gonna' hurt?"

    And so her shirt and bra were removed for the enjoyment of all. "Regis" informed us that he'd be back to check on us and took his video camera elsewhere. Less than 3 minutes later this bouncer descends upon Christy like an unholy plague and screams, "This is a club not a fucking titty bar, PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON!" Which she did. She got much props from the people surrounding us for trying.

    The lights went down and the crowd surged toward the stage. At which point I was seperated from my friends and this guy took it upon himself put his hands on my hips, which I was okay with, as I couldn't move to get him off and I assumed that's where they were going to stay. Unfortunately for me (and him) that is not where they stayed. My arms were pinned to my sides so I couldn't do anything but push his hands down with my forearms. Eventually I got enough room to elbow him in the gut (which there was much of), but not before every guy around me had managed to cop a feel. I spent the rest of the show relatively uncomfortable about my partial nudity and paranoid that Captain Gropey would return. I was also getting a little peeved that I had not seen "Regis", who supposed to check up on me. The band left the stage, they returned for their encore and still no "Regis". The show ends and people start to filter out, still no "Regis". The roadies are breaking down the stage, cleaning up...STILL...NO..."REGIS"! Finally after almost an hour of waiting, wandering around back stage to no avail, Christy busting in on the guys on the bus and getting kicked off and generally getting more and more pissed off, I found "Regis" again. He had heard about Christy almost getting bounced and that I was pissed at him and swore that he would make amends. He was then called backstage for an "emergency" and that was the last I saw of him. Eventually Bry and Christy got fed up and dragged me out of the club to go eat. We had a lovely dinner and headed home.

    In a way I'm glad that I did it. I was never one to do outrageous things when I was younger (I'm 23 now) and it was kind of liberating. I can't lie, I think the Vodka Tonics had something to do with it, but I felt little like a hero for doing it. I had made a memory not only for my friends and myself, but for the folks around us. I can't deny that it was cataclysmically stupid and lame, but I'm still getting a kick out of it, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

    At least I wasn't wearing my underwear on my head...

    i read through daylogs, regularly.. i write daylogs, sort of regularly. many of them have a common thread that has been pointed out more than once but.. why is everyone so sad? or so alone or so afraid or so weak and so tired and why are so few people living how they want to be?

    i hear it really is that easy. i believe that it is.. so i'm going to leave here, some time, soon, i can't live like this, i'm not living at all. i'm just coping with days that hold nothing for me but smatherings of stuff to write about.

    i have a tendency to push people away, i am not sure if i mean to. i try to talk about things when i am sad, because i used to keep it inside, and that is where it hurts the most. it makes me sick, when it is in there.

    so i have no idea what to do with the people who don't understand. i know exactly what to do.. i am just not sure how to do it. others have been through much more. i wish that were more consoling.

    goodbye's are painful.. but some are so necessary. all i'm sure of is that i can't do any of this alone.
    Hammy -- I think that Tolstoy's observation on happy family's applies here. Happy people are all shiny happy in the same way. Why write about what everyone (at least everyone happy) all ready knows? OTHO sad/depressed/miserable ppl are s/d/m in their own unique way -- hence something original and easily nodable.

    Personally I node day logs when I'm depressed so that the people around me don't have to hear my rants. Which brings me to my next point

    Our good lord am I bored!!! Not depressed or particularly sad, but pecking out this node is the most exciting thing of done all day. But that's my fault.

    Woke up this morning with a toothache the size of the Queen Mother's hat collection. Had stayed at a friend's, and upon waking them, was told that the only painkiller they could prescribe out of the apartment was some Canadian Club. I took about three times the suggested dosage and settled in to continue reading The Professor and the Madman.

    I am very particuliar about my whiskey, as liquor stuffs such as Jim Beam just end up making me naked, not really pleasantly inebriated. It's a bit early for an cocktail, five minutes to 8:00, but this thing is so dehabilitating, who the hell am I to complain? (But I forgot to pack my jar-o in my overnight bag.)

    Unbreakable. Decent movie up until like the last five minutes. Security, maintenance. I love the symbolism. I related way too much to the wife, and the kid gave me goosebumps. Now, if they could just make a movie about what would occur if one were to marry their archnemisis, then I would truly be impressed.

    I made a huge, honkin' lasagna for later in the week...8 lbs. by my estimation, and some really kickass chili. I be a cookin' fool today.

    Hornier than usual. Accrediting that to all the nodes I've been upvoting lately that are so centered on the sexual. No. It's all the porn, it's always all the porn. But seriously, must be all the intellectual stimulation. As my friend Gouda said the other day, "Just say SCSI to her once, it'll drive her bananas!"

    Softlink me to some fingers and tongue. I'm throwing everything away and writing the book everyone says they'll write. Right now, with my tongue in my cheek and my fingers never idle.

    It now feels like it should up here in the Frozen North. Brutal cold with a wind chill harsh enough it as if skin can so easily be peeled off your face.

    Day two of a crippling headache. Drank water by the pitcherful hoping that I was having dehydration problems, but no such luck. I stopped taking the painkillers as they didn’t seem to make a dent in the pain anyway. Even now my vision is slightly lighter than it should be and little phantom silver firetrucks pace across my line of sight now and again. I’m beginning to worry.

    No call from beautiful girl today. I had hoped to hear from her but no such luck. Thought about getting drunk, but with a headache and fever it didn’t seem like such a good idea.

    Tonight slow jazz and water is all I have to keep me busy. There is some formal event downtown, I caught a glimpse of a woman in a red slink-dress and high heels trying to walk in the snow. I can't concentrate.

    I did little today, but thought about it a lot in the process. I also thought that I really should study. I have so little self-control. That pisses me off. I think about it and depress over it. I feel inadequate. Feels like walls inside my brain. Thoughts not getting far. Ideas dying young. Words not coming out. Guilt.

    Today was a good day.


    Good 'ol Gare...

    My stepfather's good friend and co-worker from the "old days" is in town from Hong Kong. "Good 'ol Gare," my stepdad calls him. They used to run amok back in the '70s picking up all sorts of low-brow women, selling merchandise at my stepdad's uber trendy apperal stores, and doing lines of coke to feel good...not to mention the occasional story about "plinky dink," or some other not-quite alliterative but amusing name and the ass-kicking, womanizing, illegal fun they would have. Charming.

    The day started out by meeting good 'ol Gare for breakfast this morning at Zumbro Cafe in Linden Hills (in South Minneapolis). I drove ahead of my family to secure a table (it took forty minutes)! Gare bitched about how expensive the food was (as breakfast was over, and now all breakfast items were a la cart on the lunch menu). I ordered lunch instead. Sliced turkey breast on sourdough with cranberry mayo. It was fantastic! Everybody else had equally good looking food but good 'ol Gare. He tourtured himself by ording the a la cart breakfast items and ended up racking up $15 in charges by doing so. Ah good 'ol Gare.

    When the bill came my stepdad reached for it, but good 'ol Gare made growling sounds until he conceded. My stepdad wiped his brow and said, "damn, that is expensive," and good 'ol Gare growled some more. He payed it, satisfied with his new cross to bear.

    Costco, Where I Can Find Four Gallon Crisco...

    A new Costco opened up in Saint Louis Park, the first in Minnesota; although the concept of these membership driven discount stores is not forein: we do have Walmart's Sam's Club within the same suburb. However, I did have to see it, just in case they were handing out any free stuff in honor of their grand opening.

    Nope, nothing free. I stood in front of the membership desk for my free one-year membership and stood in amazement at how many fat people shop at Costco. The place is like a fat magnet. This re-affirms my conclusion drawn in: Why are the people on food stamps always fat? Although, these people aren't probably on food-stamps: these are the people that are just one cast above.

    I mean seriously folks, you've got a big fat ass. You kids have all got mini-big fat asses. Your spouse has got a big fat ass; and I bet your pet has even got a big fat ass. What the hell are you doing with that wholesale priced vending pack of Snickers Bars? For god sakes, go get something healthy— just because you went outside and got some excersize by huffing around Costco to buy some more calories, it won't make you and yours' asses any smaller!

    A Couple of DLTs for Me, Please!

    I also stopped by CompUSA today to see if I could find a 40GB/80GB DLT tape to verify the operation of a new backup device we got at the office. CompUSA has lowered itself to below the bar that a even a Best Buy filled with retards could never hope to get near to. They are horrible. I successfully roped a "salesperson:"

    "Excuse me, do you guys carry any backup tapes? Specifically do you stock any DLT backup tapes here?"
    "Um, sometimes. Look over by this stuff over there, then go back across the store to networking. If the junk your looking for isn't there then we don't got it. I have to go now."
    Now, if this guy was sixteen and this was his first job where he might had to learn how to flex that people skills muscle of his: I would understand. This guy was at least forty five. What they hell did he have to do that was better than helping me? Check his pecker to see if he can still get it up? Hey, that leads me to a joke I heard on A Prairie Home Companion tonight:
    "Did you hear that Bush and Gore started taking Viagra? They never knew that they could hold out an election so long...

    I ended up driving to the new Micro Center store (also in Saint Louis Park). They had the tapes. The salesperson was so nice I ended up buying a new Epson Stylus Photo 2000P. It's the one with the new pigment-based inks that when used in conjunction with their archival paper the prints are supposed to last for over two-hundred years. That's kind of cool. Finally I can move off of this Alps on-again-off-again dye-sub piece of crap.

    Girlfriend...Why do I Have to Do Your Homework?

    If you don't know why, you don't have a girlfriend. I left her apartment this evening with warm thoughts. Damn her and her womanly charms.

    Woke up late and screwed around on my computer. Called my friend Matt and had him come over so we could go buy some presents for my other friend's birthday.

    My brother took me and him to the mall and we proceeded to buy a book about the 60's and a poster(alice in wonderland). The mall was packed tight so no mischief could be had. We spent the rest of the time walking around the mall. We tried PS2 out, which was cool. It's a very nice system but not a huge improvement and the graphics seem blurry.

    While we were looking for a camera for my brother's girlfriend I overheard a little kid say, "Are we looking for the mall? Cause if we are I know where it is." Thought this was funny for the next few hours.

    Then we went home and wrapped the stuff along with some CD?s I had. One was an MP3 CD and the other was Spastic Ink. Also squeezed some pot seeds in one of the cases.

    Then we burned some time and ate dinner and then we went to my friend's party.

    It was a kicking party. It was tame when we got there with only a few people there and they were all play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Then we started messing with two turntables and a mixer. Soon after the party really got started. At least half of the people there had raved and still do, so it was an interesting thing to watch.

    Some of my friends got drunk and were screwing around. I picked one up on my shoulders and spun him around and watched him try to get up off the ground.

    A few people got stoned and most of us were just smoking cigarettes. There were a few people snorting Special K. Eventually I had to leave so I got a ride with a few of my friends back to Matt's house. On the way out the driver (who was perfectly sober) backed into a badly parked Mazda Millenia that belonged to another friend. We weren't going to say anything until we realized whose car it was. He didn't flip out and they calmly worked it out.

    By now it was like 12.30 AM and we pulled in front of matt's house. We went in and avoided his parents so they wouldn't smell the smoke on us. Then went and watched Casino. In the end we stayed up till close to 6 in the morning talking about crap. I was able to do this because I had taken a caffeine pill. Eventually we fell asleep and in the morning my brother picked me up.

    one of these days i am determined to change this habit of only noding in the daylogs a few days after the day actually occurs. but not now.


    a day that should be a happy one. i get to not only watch my dad get married, but be part of the wedding. i've seen how happy she's made him, and it's his time now. i should be ecstatic for him.

    but i'm not.

    you see, there is still a fact that i, somehow, someway, haven't managed to tell my parents yet. yes, it's that same fact that i wrote an entire node about as if it were a big deal (and it is). somehow, since they haven't been informed, they have managed to find a way to treat me as if i'm not a different person yet. it must be due to the extraordinary power of denial, as anyone who can see, can see how much i've changed.

    but because they haven't been told yet, i am forced, for my father, to assume a role in the wedding that fits me not, to wear clothing that does not seem to be appropriate formal wear, but a costume, clothing that makes me feel like i'm pretending to be someone else.

    i try to avoid the mirror, to avoid seeing that parody of myself that i have to put up with for the day, but that becomes impossible, and i cringe.

    my dad looks incredible in his tux, very distinctive, even with a long, grey pony tail in his hair. my sister, and my new step-sister, are gorgeous in their emerald-green bridesmaid dresses, so simple, yet so elegant with the hair and the gloves that match flawlessly, and i am jealous.

    the wedding goes well, yet for some reason, seems entirely unemotional. there seem so few tears, and it barely touches the heart. i am left wondering why, what it was lacking. (and it wasn't that damn cell phone that went off in the middle)

    the best moment of the night ends up being the toasts given. the bride's daughter goes first, managing to speak only through the beginnings of tears, about how wonderful my dad is, and how happy he's made his new wife. i then speak, and while i never took much time to prepare, it wasn't necessary because i knew exactly what to say.

    you see, my dad has sacrificied for my sister and i from the beginning. taking a job just to support his new kids, a job he didn't like. he stayed there, eventually working overnights, and even overtime, to make sure we had what we needed and wanted, even with his own life a blur of pain. he made sure we went to college, that we had a good start to our own lives. and now, my sister and i are on our own. this is now his time, his turn to really live his life for himself, instead of worrying about us all the time.

    i never even got to lift up the glass to toast him, as he gave me a big hug right afterwards. he doesn't have too much of a problem hugging (though usually they're a little weak), but this was unexpected, enough to know that i really affected him. i was happy. the day was worth it.

    we eventually left the reception, the first out of the wedding party, to make the four hour drive home. we wanted our own bed to sleep in, the freedom to sleep in and be lazy after the chaos of the past two days. and i needed some time to really become me again, after being that other person again.

    at least i know that costume i wore, that strange oddity of clothing that feels and looks most unnatural on me, will never be something i wear ever again. and that my dad is happy. and that maybe he understands how much i appreciate him.

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