First off I would like to say this

Tonight was a very special night in the twisted world of professional wrestling. Yes, tonight was the inevitable night that Terry Bollea, known to most as Hollywoood hulk hogan announced his retirement. In his speech he brought up his father, who had died a little before christmas time, and his mother. Hulk said his father's last words were for him to retun to the place that made him famous, the place that made Hulkamania, the phenomenon that can never be stopped, will always be apppreciated and never fully understood, except for those gracious few who lived through the entire origional run.

Hulk hogan did many great things for the sport of professional wrestling, or for those who prefer, sports entertainment. He was the one who made it famous beyond a shadow of a doubt. And tonight, he announced his retirement. As with almost all things in sports entertainment nowadays, things did not go as plannned. Vinny Mac made an appearance and so did the Undertaker. After the truly emotional speech made by Terry Bollea, shit it the fan. All who were familiar with professional wrestling knew that it was a work, that Hulkamania was nowhere near dead and we would see him next week, same hulk time, same hulk channnel.

Professional wrestling likes to through many curveballs towards it's viewers, to keep em guessing as to what will happen next. The same is true with Soap Operas, like days of our lives, general hospital or passions. Half the fun of professional wqrestling is the wrsetling, the other half is the feuds and what will happen next.

Hulkamania will never die, it will never grow old, it will always be an ethereal phenomenon. Those who have not lived through it will always wonder what it was like, and why this man who can't pull off a ddt or superplex is so important. What I mean to say is, who can't get a shoulder up after a big boot/leg drop? Hell, I could do that.

I hope that Terry has a good run as a wrestler. I want to see him next thursday on Smackdown!. I want the ideal of Hulkamania to never end. I want to eat my vitamins and stay in school, but age and reality have different ideas...

Crap dude, I forgot, at least you were thinking about it at the time. Send Ashley an e-mail, and go ahead and make some nachos or eggs for yourself. Find out what breņa is. Be happy, the sun is almost shining. Remember to Breathe; don't take the air for granted. Love everyone and everything, that is the road to wisdom. Believe in the truth, not the falsehoods. Begin to show some spirit in your life. The dreams mean something. Don't forget about them. Everything is important, nothing in pointless. The tears are symbolic and unattainable. What do tears mean to you? The pizza, that is also something to remember. And the bed, the apartment, the sheets, the warmth of her stomach versus the ice of your hand. Put some life into your cold form. Get richer spiritually and materialistically. BREATHE.

San Yaht Tii,
KaiMehTae

Plan for today:

• Ring the goddamn manager of Subway and ask him why he didn't call me back about the job interview I had yesterday. Call him a retard moron cock-knocker if he says they don't want to employ me.
• Weep, because Final Fantasy X is out now in the UK, and I have no cash, thanks to a certain lack of a job.
• Finish downloading all the itty-bitty bits of the season 6 finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and stick them together like some sort of Frankenstein's Episode for the benefit of my housemates.
• Go job hunting once more. This time with actual hunting equipment.
  I'm thinking spears. Big nasty ones.

*sigh* What an interesting and amazing life I lead.

Hrmm, my fonts are all screwed up... must be Internet Explorer here at work.

I haven't been active in E2 for a fair while, although I come back to it occasionally... I started to realise I was re-reading nodes I'd read before, and not enough nodes that were funny or interesting to me were being written, so I drifted off, heh... (not to put down all the brilliant write-ups that are being written everyday, it just takes a lot to hold my attention for long)

But today I felt the need to vent a bit, and this is really the only place I can do it in any half way coherent manner... even talking to Anna eventually turns into rambling, because I can't think fast enough for what my mouth wants to say.

So, I've nearly finished my first semester of my final year at University. Pretty soon I'll be fully qualified to be a Software Engineer/Computer Scientist. Whatever the hell that means. The truth is, I almost feel like this year is a waste of time, as I could be working full time here at work if I wanted, which I will be doing next year. And after that, I'm fairly certain I'll be able to get other jobs based on this one as a reference, if I chose to leave.

But at other times, I'm glad for the break from full time work, no matter how difficult uni is getting... I don't know, I switch back and forth between the two opinions at fairly regular intervals. I know I won't leave uni, because without the certificate at the end it'll count for nothing, and I probably won't start studying part time either, because it'd take too much effort to get it organised; plus it's just easier to get it over and done with this year, and never have to worry about it again. (Apart from my debt to the government, but luckily that's not too much anyway)

My life at the moment is quite good though, really. I love Anna more and more each day. We're planning for the future, designing our future house, planning the pets we're going to have, all the cool technology our house is going to have, and subtly ignoring the fact that it's going to cost a hell of a lot to build. That bit's for later.

The only problem is, it's so far into the future, we're just torturing ourselves. We don't really know what our situation will be by the time we've saved enough to build it; we don't even know how long it's going to take to save that much. It's fun, though, to think about. And hopefully we'll at least be able to move out into a unit in the next couple of years.

Work is giving me the shits lately though... I really with I was working with people I got along with better, people who I could relate to better. As it is, I end up having to go to lunch with someone who just ends up telling me about his drunken sexual exploits he had over the weekend. Thank god I'm only here part time.

It'd just be nice to actually be able to talk to somebody about the things that interest me for once... movies, games, television, whatever... someone who was in a similar situation to me, and who had similar goals...

Grr, and now he's playing Beastie Boys so loud, it drowns out my music...

I went to work, missed an appointment with the dentist, and then for the hell of it decided to bike (1 hour each way) to New Hope. I considered visiting Odette's, as I thought I remembered it from JohnnyGoodyear's writeup here. I decided not to, as I couldn't really justify paying that much for food by myself, which is just as well, because rechecking it, he was talking about Martine's, anyway.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Since I came back from college, in the absence of anything better to do, I've been hanging out in the center of town a bit. It's a town of around 25,000 people, and there's not much else to do, so I'm not the only one with the idea. There's a parking lot behind this newsstand/bookstore, next to the local Starbucks, that's essentially host to a floating youth community. Having established a claim over the past few years, the police don't hassle them too much, and the local merchants seem kind of ambivalent - for staying out there so long, they don't really buy much, but on the other hand, doesn't "downtown revitalization" sort of imply, well, downtown life? In any case, it's here that I witnessed one thing which has renewed my faith in humanity.

It's 2002, and there are still kids living in a VW bus.

To be technical, it's a T2 camper, white and green, spare tire and rust on the front. Two girls live in the van. One is the archetypal cute white girl with dreadlocks, and the other, between the flowing skirts and the loose, white peasant blouses looked like she wandered in from the nearest Renaissance faire. Just from looking at them, you know they're gentle people.

They just park it in the lot, put the camper top up, and live. They hold court in there, run out giggling when someone they know comes by. They play music in there. They sleep in there. They make love in there. Sometimes you'd see them rolling around inside together, sometimes a third would join them. Yeah, they smoke pot; we all do. Like I said, there's nothing else to do. It just goes that much further to perfecting the image.

Every now and then, there's someone you'd never seen before driving the van. And that's OK. These people are cool too. We trust them.

I haven't learned their names, haven't even talked to them (but hey, there's a whole summer yet for that). Just watched them play out their lives, while I lean against the bookstore wall, taking in the secondhand smoke.

Last night, the police came and kicked them out. Two cars, flashlights, the whole deal. I saw it from just down the street. This doesn't really get to me too much - it appears they just told them to move, and the parking lot is directly in front of the police station, so they were kinda tempting fate. I don't know where they put it at night now, but they still show up during the day.

And after all, that's all I need to know. They're out there. The world is all right.

After writing to Jillyan the other day, I wanted to re-read something I wrote a while ago. I tried to open a particular file and Word gave me the standard "File open: open read only?" error message. This confused me. I tried to open a few other files and some of my University project work came up with the same problem. Weirdly, it wasn't the same for every file I tried, only some. I am certain I have not opened these files for weeks, and cetainly not since the last reboot.

Then I noticed that my hard disk was very busy and the dial-up prompt came up. My machine is trying to dial out? Why? I quickly cancelled it. Initially I cursed Microsoft, but now I'm worried I've picked up a virus. I'm always installing shareware and I guess you never know what's in it.

Does anyone know of a decent (free) virus checker I should use? I feel sorry for not having installed one before now.

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(sorry, shocking lack of links. if you can tell me where to find the brackets on an arabic keyboard...i'll add some more. or, when i get back from Syria)

tea, tales, and feather skirts

Damscus is full of sun, and, as it's Friday, the souks are all but derserted and the Omayyad Mosque is full to overflowing. My frumpy clothes are paying off already - I was spared the indignity of tripping over one of the brown Jedi cloaks which are provided in the Special Clothes Putting On Room. The ticket seller, and guardian of morals, approved and let me off. As long as I covered the inch or so of throat which I was brazen enough to display to the world.

In the sunshine, the mosque was dazzling. Despite the inches of birdseed fed to extraordinarily happy pigeons (happy enough to be protected from the small children chasing them with widespread arms and waaaaah! calls by a man with a Very Big Stick) the marble floors acted as polished mirrors, throwing shards of light back up into eyes, and to light up the remaining green and gold mosaics. I am always amazed by how much life and activity there is in this mosque - none of the whispering hush of European cathedrals. Picnics of roast chicken under the arches, gatherings of friends and family, and kids tearing up and down with no one shushing them.

I arrived yesterday morning, just after dawn, in a blur of no sleep and too many miles in one go. My flight arrived in Amman, in Jordan, at the unfriendly hour of 1am, and by the time I'd got into town, to Abdali bus station, it was pushing three and I was obviously the only traveller-target within range, because every taxi-tout within a hundred yards pounced on me with recommendations of cheap hotels, good hotels, and a very good taxi to take me there. Eventually, I was driven round and round the bus station, being shown the sleeping corpses of the servees drivers, and their empty empty offices. I would have to wait till NINE O'CLOCK TEN O'CLOCK to get a ride. Not believing a word of it, I still caved and chartered the whole taxi up to Damascus. A grand solo ride, in a mile wide american old beater car, strewn with carpets and tablecloths and scarves in the back. I pulled my hat over my eyes, and half dozed all the way to Syria.

Except when the driver wanted to tell me things. He wasn't the chattiest man on the planet, which was a relief, as we didn't share a single word in any language we attempted. When frustration at my idiocy overcame him, he switched on the light, and repeated himself. Several times. When understanding still resisted me, he huffed, puffed, and put the light out again, shaking his head in disgust for the next five miles.

Ten miles outside Damascus, with the sun starting to seep pink into the sky, he stopped at a row of Wild West style shops. Dust blowing across the road, doors creaking, not a person in sight. Only the gruesome vision of a hundred bagged Pink Panther dolls, swinging by the neck from the rafters. At the next, Mickey Mouse and Minnie, and a range of other ripped-off Disney dolls swayed in the wind, strangled and suffocated. The driver dashed inside (we had already stopped at five or six duty free shops on the way, for sacks of potato crisps, cigarettes, and what looked like a bottle of whisky swathed in plastic to preserve his good name). Expecting to be joined in the back seat by one of the fairground attractions, instead I was presented with apricots, plums, and a marl-bo-ro-o-o cigarette to welcome me to the city.

The hotel was just a five minute walk from the bus station where I was dropped off, and the skies were as full as swifts as those above home. But there was no room for me until noon, and I after a pot of tea with about half a kilo of sugar stirred in, I pottered off to kill some time at the Tekkiye Mosque, and then the National Museum when it opened. The Tekkiye complex is cool and elegant, with thin pencil minarets, domed cloisters of the old housing for Hajj pilgrims, and a wide courtyard with a shallow pool patrolled by fealbitten skinny cats. The anomaly is the collection of MIG fighter planes which are strewn around in the gardens. The place is the Army museum, as well as one of the loveliest mosques in the country. If it wasn't quite so funny, the visual shock would be more bothersome.

Once the museum was unlocked at nine, I started a slow drift around the halls. The collections are worldclass, but the curation and the labelling is beyond belief.

Beautiful lady from Palmyra.
Stone head.
Old glass.
Lion with his mouth open.
Gods.

I attempted to draw things, so that I could concentrate, try to remember what I was seeing, look at the details so that my eyes wouldn't skim across and reduce me to nodding daze of 'oooh, old things. cool.' I drew little bronze weights in the shapes of animals, clay cows, high priests in feathered skirts and plenty of eyeliner, tablets of cuneiform.

One of the guards was entirely perplexed. "You can buy a postcard! We have pictures of this!"
"Oh, I'll get the postcard too"
"Then no need to draw! We have a shop!"

In the next room, he found me drawing again.
"You don't want the poscards?"
"Oh, yes, I want the postcards, but I also want to draw."
"Ah, you are an artist."
I showed him my godawful drawing and shook my head.
"No, you are not an artist. Buy the postcards. We will be happy then."

So I woke up today at 5am after a night of moderate torture with some sort of creeping flu like illness. It all started a week ago when I got up bright and early at 8 and went to make breakfast, halfway through the pouring of milk into my cornflakes all the energy just drained from me, and I put the bottle down with some effort. I then went straight back to bed, my head asleep before I even hit the pillow. Waking up a few hours later I still felt exhausted, and it's been that way ever since.

I've slowly developed the flu, and fever like symptoms but I haven't been able to take the day off since then because of Orasi, and also because of my half-year university report that was due in today.

What fun *that* was.

Worked on it all last week, submitted it to my supervisor on Friday, waiting for amendments all this week, nervous and stressed, until this morning. Getting them done barely in time. And now I'm here, in university, waiting for the clock to go around so that my mother can come and collect me and take me home.

I would drive, except that a couple of days ago my BMW broke down, and its in the mechanic's being repaired. 48hrs and gosh how I MISS that car. Walking isn't half so much fun when it's enforced, folks.

Its been a hard week, quite long in some ways, and I am looking forward to going home and sleeping. This thing within me, virus, or whatever, needs my body's complete, vengeful attention, and so I'm going to turn my consciousness off and stop distracting it. Then perhaps when I wake up tomorrow, I'll feel better instead of worse. Here's hoping.

I hate my job, but I like my boss. He's a good friend of mine, and he's taken care of me at some times when he really didn't have to and it didn't benefit him in the least.

We work out of his tiny apartment in north Dallas. He's a full-blooded Italian, so there's usually some pretty good eats laying around.

For breakfast this morning he made pancakes. He's awful proud of them, and they aren't bad, so I don't complain. He laid out all the flatware he thought we'd need, which included knives. I don't particularly need a knife to cut pancakes, so I didn't use it. Instead, I spent the better part of the morning itching my head with it. He watched me do it several times.

For lunch he made spaghetti. He was getting down to the last of his pasta and needed something to herd it onto his fork. He picks up my knife and says in a mock italian accent "Ifa you ain't gonna use dis, I will!"

I state to him very clearly what I was doing with that knife earlier, and in the shitty italian accent he says "You-a lying!" and proceeds to use it with his food.

My head is by no means dirty, but if I saw somebody using a utinsile the way I was, and that person also told me directly what they were doing with it, I wouldn't use it with my food. He's a weird guy.

See also: May 27, 2002

I've slept maybe five hours since Tuesday, but you know, I feel great. I feel wonderful beyond any previous threshold for wonderful.

I started a week-long (paid) vacation from work on Tuesday, and that night, a very close friend of mine called Annalisa arrived here from Birmingham. We had been planning the visit for a couple of months and we were both really looking forward to it. We've known each other for just about three years, though we originally met online we'd met a few times (over the years) for concerts, coming-through-town sort of things, etc. But this visit was different.

It started out Tuesday night with sushi at Kanpai in mid-city, then we went to see Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (which really kicked Episode I's proverbial ass in so many ways). We went to the late show, and returned to my place at around 1:00am. We got a call from one of her friends that lives here, Lana, wanting to know if we want to hit Bourbon Street with them, as they were in the neighbourhood and Lana hadn't seen Annalisa in a few months, so we went. We ended up going to Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, which was boring to say the least, and then to the Alibi Inn for drinks, which was considerably more fun. Through most of it we just talked, like we usually do when we see each other, though I displayed a bit of my attraction to her: I said, Can I smell you? We were both drunk, and we've both been very into each other for the entire length of our friendship, but the circumstances were never ripe for getting together. She giggled and nodded, and I leaned into the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply. I sighed. She smelled so good. She smelled like my most pleasant dreams. We continued drinking and talking, and ended up back at my apartment at around 7:30am. (The bars in New Orleans don't suffer from the dreaded "last call.") We brought Lana and some of her friends back to my place for about an hour to smoke some salvia divinorum, and a good time was had by all.

Wednesday proper came into being at around