Guess what? I have PINK EYE. Yes, that would be viral conjunctivitis. This is just ridiculous.... pink eye to me is a disease you get when you're in first grade and the snotty kid at the next desk fails to stay home and get well. Not something that lays me out and makes my boss send me home from work 'cause I'm going to get all the customers sick and be the cause of several hefty lawsuits against the restaurant.
It really fuckin' hurts. As if my eyes don't ALREADY give me enough trouble. I'm half-blind as it is, folks, so thanks so much for gumming shut my good eye!

It's official. The Irony Gods have WAY more fun than I do with my life.
Mostly I'm just bored right now. Gotta find something to do with my time. Someone to talk to... I really need friends. That's the bitch here, really.... all my friends went away to college and so now when the roomie goes out to parties I sit alone in the apartment and wish that I EVER, at ALL, did anything social, with anyone. But there's no one to do social things with, really... I mean, it sounds like hyperbole on my part to say I have no friends, but really by and large it's true: I have NO friends. They're all in other states.
But aside from the freeform bitching, I'm not too depressed about it right now. Just want my damned eye to start behaving itself.

Hmm... haven't had much to say for a few days. Street Fair was fine... grueling, boring, exhausting, but fine. I'm glad it's over. I've been writing a lot, which is good, 'cause the three people who routinely distract me from any endeavour save talking to them are all out of reach at the moment. The-Best-Friend-In-The-World is in Lake Tahoe or something skiing (that bitch), the Hole-In-The-Head-Imagination -Intelligent-Fascinating-New-Geek-Friend is en route moving from one place to another.... (why anyone would move to Texas is utterly beyond me, but go figure. I went to San Antonio once. It was nice. The weather's pleasant. As for the rest of Texas.... I've seen a hell of a lot of the Dallas airport. That's about it.) And the Far-Away-Beloved-Wonderful-Man is working too much and I can't be there to rub his shoulders and take his mind off things.
So the downside is... hey. I can't talk to these people. The upside? I'm getting a huge amount done on the damn book. *shrug* Doesn't really bother me I guess.... just kinda waiting for one of them to get back online.

So I watched Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions last night. It was... fine. I've been trying to expand my knowledge of Barker's directing credits since I'm such an addict of his written work, but for the most part I'm being held up by my severe antipathy towards old movies (read: anything made before 1980.) I don't know what it is, I just can't stand 'em. If it's the graniness and technicolor of seventies movies, the black and white of earlier works or the downright optic crazyness of stuff like the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (which has its own joyful twistedness about it), none of it really catches my interest. Is it that acting was just not as good back in the day, or that there's just an aesthetic of acting that pertains to that era that I just don't get? And of course the special effects are abhorrent, me being used to the computer age. *shrug* I just don't like old movies.
That said, Clive Barker's movie work is interesting on several levels. Exactly what I'd expect from him in many ways, and also I guess revolutionary... I'm not enough of a movie buff to really point out exactly what's unique about it. I'd like to see what he'd do with modern movies though, and modern special effects. Really, I'm just sitting here screaming in my tiny way: "Make a movie of Imajica, dammit! Or of Weaveworld! And do it right, ya fuckers!" Owell. Liked Lord of Illusions better than Hellraiser, anyhow. Let the flaming begin.

Now I sit, hunt beetles in Aetolia (for the 1% of you who actually know what that means) and watch the sixth season of Buffy in my underdrawers. The roomie is camping until tomorrow, which means that I may wander my apartment in my skivvies as I am wont to do when given the slightest opportunity. Salivate at that, suckers! It's just too bloody hot here for clothing, man.
Street Fair's this weekend. Speaking as someone who has to WORK and suffer all the hordes of yuppies, any of you in Tucson had better STAY HOME and spare me your ugly mugs. Unless you've got cute mugs, in which case bring 'em on. Just don't expect too much ogling on my part--I got me dishes to wash.

Spring Break dawns. I guess it technically started two days ago, but I didn't have school on Saturday, so what the hell difference does it make? Of course, to an antisocial geek like me there are upsides and downsides to this. Upside: no freakin' school. I'll be getting more sleep this week than I have since I was five. If that. Downside: practically everything that one might want to do in town is shut up early this week, because supposedly everyone should be out of town carousing and getting knocked up by roving bands of pirates. So that means I'll be forced to spend the whole week cooped up in here chained to my laptop, working on the damn book, working on the damn campaign, watching Buffy reruns, playing Thief and Icewind Dale, and sleeping. Sounds like I'm gonna be really miserable, eh? Yeah, that's what I said.

Getting quieter and darker here... it gets so very dark in the summer when the heat kills the clouds and opens up the sky to let the night in. I can't believe it was 85 today.... this summer is going to be a good one. Taking bets on when it hits 100.... I say before May 1st.
Spring Break dawns, I guess. While all y'all are out having wet t-shirt contests and getting drunk or whatever it is people who care about such things do on Spring Break, I will be cracking down on myself and trying to get this damned D&D campaign on its feet. My work ethic is just abysmal, even on things I actually want to do.
So instead of devoting my brain to things that produce concrete results, I stay up late weaving stories with phantoms (you know who you are) and listening to my new Bright Eyes CDs. Get them, they're awesome. One of them is a foray into electronica like we've never seen from Bright Eyes before.... it's like Bright Eyes with shades of Modest Mouse. Riddle me that one. At least it's cheerier than their earlier albums... I could've renamed Fevers and Mirrors as "Music to Slit Your Wrists By." Don't get me wrong, there's a soft spot in my heart for whiny annoying indie rock, but here's a tip for any aspiring Conor Oberst's out there: Crying onstage has been done. It's like biting heads off small rodents, you can do it once and it's a selling point. IT IS NO LONGER COOL. Now it's just... embarrassing.

G'night all of you... whoever you are.

And.... *drumroll* the gloom hath lifted!

God it feels so good to just feel NORMAL again. I don't know what that week of hell was about, but I never ever want to feel that bad again. What a mess.

But the hot pianist around the corner continues to make me happy, and my beloved far away makes me happy, and the fact that I kick EVERYONE's ass at DDR makes me very happy. And the fact that it's getting hot makes me happy. And horny. So here we go.... turning on my meager flirting abilities, going down to the coffee shop and hoping I don't fall flat on my face and/or ass.

The gloom continues. This is really fucking getting out of hand. I'm never depressed like this. I don't do depression. I get sad, then I get angry, then I get over it. I don't mope for days. And I definitely don't do it without a reason like I am now. Starting to piss me off. A lot.

So in an attempt to escape the grim aura of this apartment right now, I went for a walk last night about 10:15. Passing by a little coffee shop north of my house (the new one on University, for those of you who know this town) I caught sight and sound of a person playing a piano inside. Of course, as they intended, I was suckered in, and discovered a very attractive (in a scruffy geek kind of way) young man playing the piano very well indeed. I had me a banana nut muffin and sat on the steps and ogled him for a long time... really did make me feel better. Also made me feel fucking horny, but of course because a) I'm painfully shy and b) guys don't tend to look twice at me, I barely made eye contact. I'm gonna go back when I can, not only to ogle, although that's definitely in there, but also to listen. He plays good stuff.

God I need to get laid. *fidget*

Staving off the melancholy of an unholy day with a severe infusuion of online geekiness. For all you sad sacks out there still languishing in the world of 56k, I submit the following as a gentle reminder of how you are viewed by we, the high-speed internet elite. Let us never speak of this.... this.... Dial-up again.

http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-01-26&res=h

Oh, and update: my laptop has just lost the VERY LAST of its cute little rubber feet. This distresses me to a degree that I can't quite express in words. Only this little pouting circle will do.

I need Superglue. I know that gluing just the one little foot back on will only make my dear Lappy lopsided and tilty once again, but it's the principle of the thing. I mean, if you're a laptop and you've lost all your little rubber feet, you really haven't got a leg to stand on anymore, and I mean that in all possible senses! I, if I were Lola the Laptop, would feel most bereft without even one little rubber foot to call my own. So I shall find Superglue, and she, the Sovereign Mistress of Glory in Red, will tilt once more, as she used to do.

UGH. What a stupid day. Don't you hate those days that aren't ballsy enough just to go ahead and SUCK, and instead just plod along being stupid? I mean, if I'm going to have a bad day, I want to really have a full-fledged bad day. Not a half-assed stupid day.
Could be worse. Could be raining. Oh wait--it IS raining. In the desert no less.
This day has just been one botched attempt after another. I've made a decision: I'm no longer going to make any attempt to help anyone. Ever. Meddling only makes things worse and then I feel bad for further screwing up something that wasn't my business in the first place. I'm just going to sit in my apartment and look at pretty pictures and listen to music and let the world go to hell all on its own. Bye bye world! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Oh hell, damn, and curses. So I'm just sitting at my beloved red laptop, whose name is Lola (because she is red and because then I can shout at her when she's not working, "RUN, Lola, RUN!" Hehehehee.... and now I have afflicted the world with my favorite geeky joke.) and just minding my own business, when she freezes, chokes, wheezes a few times and DIES. Like a BUG. Like a FISH on the FLOOR. Like a MONKEY in a LAKE. Like a TOASTER in the RAIN. DEATH. Are we understanding one another here? DEATH. Blue Screen O' Death.

Turns out the motherboard was fried. Fortunately I'm still under warranty with Dell, so after a week of trials and travails on the phone with some technician from India--I kid you not, Dell tech support is in India, *bangs head on wall-- whose name was some eleven-letter hairball-inducer which for the life of me I couldn't remember, something like Raghavadababad, so I spent the rest of the night referring to him as Rajamala and Ramayana and Rasputin and Rachmaninoff. Which I don't think he appreciated.

After a little (read: an hour and a half) verbal jousting with the aforementioned Red Rackham, I got them to send out a fellow to fix the damn glorified electronic abacus. So now I am back on line, rock on.

Not that I didn't use the time I didn't have this machine to distract me to get a lot of good things done, so I guess it all works out. We shall see if I ever get anything productive done ever again....