Letter Never Sent

While I was gone my roommate spotted some raccoons trying to eat Sarah’s food. Sarah has been known to fight with raccoons in the past.

I just got in from Indiana at 5:30 this morning. We drove straight through for sixteen and a half hours from Bloomington. Amy thought it was a little ambitious to attempt in one day, but I kept telling her that my dad and I had done it several times. My brother was often with us but he was almost useless for driving long distances due to his knack for nodding off when he got tired. I remember once he slept for almost an entire eighteen hour roadtrip in the back seat of my dad’s truck only rising to eat the occasional McDonald’s.

By the time I hit Waco I had to really try to not get sleepy. This consisted of smoking Backwoods cigars and listening to trucker-oriented AM radio. Yuck, but it helps to hear people talking which is why AM radio is probably so popular on the road.

One of the most interested things I noticed is that almost 90% of the cars I saw Illinois have vanity license plates. What’s the deal with this? I will post photos soon.

I’m planning on doing something where I can have a smaller column thing on the right to display valuable news links while preserving more personalized or in-depth blog entries on the left. [example] If you’re a user of Movabletype I would highly recommend the forums for tips and tricks on how best to adapt MT to your purposes.

There’s been a lot of discussion of the Matrix movies lately and some connection to the evil authoritarian computers in the movie and government:

NY Times: Bullet Time Again: The Wachowskis Reload:

All this digital wizardry is both thrilling and, for those of us who loved the realness of “The Matrix,” a little worrisome. But Mr. Gaeta assured me that “The Matrix Reloaded” will feel just as real. It’s possible, he suggested, that the next time anyone writes about the influence of “The Matrix,” it won’t be on movies but on government and the military — a grim irony for a film about the empowerment of the individual in a world of technology run amok.

“The subtleties of reality manipulation in your life are all around, and they’re becoming denser and more sophisticated and more intimidating every day,” Mr. Gaeta said. “I’ve often said that the visual effects technicians of today will be the social engineers of the future.”

Related: The Gospel according to Neo: Theologians and pop-culture experts see ‘The Matrix’ as a phenomenon shaping public opinion about religion

This is my landlord and next door neighbor, Joyce, and me. She is so cool except she charges me money to live here. Ah well.

I had a nice past coupla days. I was either too busy, too tired, or too unfocused to write anything, so I’ll try now.

Wednesday night I went out and met James Stewart and his (secret girlfriend) roommate Melissa and some waiter friends of his. One thing about hanging out with people who wait tables is they sometimes feel it necessary to moralize about how hard it is to be a waiter and how waiters/waitresses depend on their tips to live. I swear I’ve heard the same conversation at least twenty times. Then you get to hear about the biggest tips or how some people don’t tip at all. I agree that people should tip and tip well for good service, however why do waiters/waitresses feel it necessary to evangelize? They seem to develop an us versus them mentality with people who are not wait staff and I think it might annoy them that no one else really cares about the issue at all or even really thinks about what its like to wait tables. I don’t hear a lot of busboys complaining, for example. It might be that most wait staff are just very intelligent and independent people. Who knows.

The next day I woke up bleary eyed and almost forgot I had made a lunch date with Thu Suong, one of my friends from high school, until I checked my phone and saw the missed call from her. We went out to lunch dowtown at Mekong River and talked about weighty matters, life, meaning, what’s important, why it’s hard to see some people you knew when you were young if they’re not making progress in their lives. I don’t mean this financially necessarily, but more personally. This is not to suggest that I am making such great progress in my life only that I like to surround myself with dynamic, sensitive and thoughtful people so I can benefit from the insights and talents that different people bring to bear.

On Friday, the final day of my short short weekend, Amy dropped me off on campus and I met Susan at her office for lunch. It was really nice to chat with her although sometimes in conversation and trying to offer advice I think I come off as a little too dismissive of her feelings. The thing is, I’m very much about solving things and I think I forget that often people just want to talk and have someone care. It’s hard for me to remember that. I always have to remind myself of it.

After recuperating with a little sitting down and laying around I coaxed Phillip, Breen, and Amy into coming swimming down at Barton Springs pool which is right down the street from me now. It was chilly at first, but it’s really the perfect temperature (sixty eight degrees year round) once you’ve been in for a while. I always hate how in normal pools it feels cool at first but then after a while feels really warm and cloying with that warm, noxious clorinated smell. I had a really nice time paddling around and ogling the half naked people there. It made me realize that I need to get more exercise. There are some in shape people at the pool. It’s a harsh reality. (Here’s my ghostly form swimming)

After swimming I felt really mellow and warm from the sun and water. I danced around the house listening to The Cure on the record player. Everyone else found this amusing due to my temporary lack of shame. Later, Amy and I met some of her friends at this place where Electric Lounge used to be before it closed down. For some reason gay men love Amy. We walked down to Shoal Creek Saloon on the suggestion of Erik and David for a GQB (Guerrilla Queer Bar) gathering. The idea is to get a bunch of gay men to just show up at a random bar and basically take over. It was a lot of fun and funny to see people looking around confused as guys hugged or sat in each other’s laps. A few guys tried to hit on me probably because they could tell I’m straight or maybe because I’m tall and they could tell how cool I am. I’m guessing the latter of course.

We had some good political discussions and since most gays I know of are left-leaning (with the exception of the Log Cabin Republicans) everyone was roughly in agreement. It turns out Erik is heavily involved in Howard Dean’s bid for the presidency. I haven’t seen him too much on television, but what I’ve seen I liked and agreed with for the most part. I predict there will be some pathetic Democrat straw man set up to go against Bush. Some cog who doesn’t have the backbone to criticize this corrupt idiot fascist we have embedded in the presidency. This can be done on the issues and not just on his character flaws.

To cap off the evening we all walked several blocks down to Red Fez where we had yet more drinks and everyone took turns dancing with Amy. I would have stayed longer, but I had to be at work at 8 AM.

So, Amy gets accepted to yet another law school. This time the dean of admissions calls her on the phone personally. Read about it all here. I’m so proud. The best part is it’s a top tier school and happens to be in Bloomington, Indiana where they filmed ‘Breaking Away’!

This weekend (my weekend is Thurs-Fri) I spent moving the rest of my crap into my new place. Alaric came over and lent a hand for a while since he has a truck. We had a pretty good time laughing about things and he relished freaking me out by driving like a completely insane lunatic with ambient techno blaring on his stereo.

Later on at night I got to see a friend from high school I hadn’t seen in almost 8 years. God, I can’t believe it’s been that long already. He’s moving back to Austin from Houston to get his PhD in Bioengineering. We drove down to the Horseshoe Lounger and tossed back a few cold ones while trying to catch up on all that time. He looked pretty much the same except for the signs of wear around the eyes. I also noticed a few grey hairs which I was quick to point out. He said I looked the same except my face was not as skinny as it had been back then. I guess that’s good. I had a nice time talking, but the awareness of all that time passed made me feel a little down. I’m not really sure why. I guess I always expected to have everything figured out by now. That was the plan anyway.

Maybe because of the previous night’s experience I felt a little wistful and cranky the next day. I had very little patience at work and really felt like I needed some relaxation and peace. Luckily, since I excel at forward time travel I was able to put the work day behind me very quickly. It’s just a matter of skipping from moment to moment without thinking of all the moments between you and the culmination of the work day. Because of these sorts of experiences and feeling tired of what I’m doing I’ve been thinking about going back to school for my master’s. The prospect of onerous student loan debt doesn’t really excite me, but at this point I’d welcome the sort of focus that school brings. Who knows how long I’d really feel like that though.

While moving things into my room I found my glasses that I never wear. I took an updated webcam with them on if you’re at all curious. Just look on the left side over there. <--

Later, Phillip from work came and picked me up to go see Xmen 2. It was enjoyable although now only an hour or so after seeing it I have trouble recalling even the big plot points. I guess that’s the way it sorta goes. I require more grist for the mental mill if I’m going to be thinking about a movie a while after I’ve seen it. There are some movies I see that make me feel compelled to get out every thought and insight I had because of it. Xmen 2, while enjoyable and escapist, is not one of these kinds of movies.

In Austin we have this thing called Eyore’s Birthday every year in Pease park. It’s pretty much an excuse to spend some time in the dirt and heat, bang on drums, drink overpriced beer, stand in line for the port-a-johns, and listen to Bob Marley-inspired-funk-reggae-jazz fusion music. In other words, it’s a blast.

Here’s me with two guys who look like they wandered off the set of Xena: The Warrior Princess. I don’t know them or anything. I just abused the goodwill of the event by forcing them to take a photo with me.

As you can plainly see, there were a lot of people there. A lot of very colorful people. A lot of people with fairy wings, and paint bikini tops. I even saw one woman dressed as a vagina. At least, that’s what I thought it looked like.

Steve and Susan came over last night and I hooked them up to the electrodes to administer the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. If you know me, you know this is a perennial obsession of mine. The Myers-Briggs is to me, what astrology is to hippies. Some people say this leads to pigeon-holing everyone you know, and reducing their distinct personalities to a few, general descriptives types, but I have an argument against this notion that consists of the following:

First of all, this is for educational purposes only. The test is a conceptualized sorting of personality characteristics used solely for the purposes of investigating and delving into how you and others think, perceive the world and each other, and how you relate to the world based on this perception. It is not deterministic. It is only a model to describe perceptions and behavior. After all, what is personality but the way you perceive situations and yourself and how you behave in situations according to these perceptions. I actually believe it is somewhat possible to change your personality because it is a way of seeing and behaving. Once you are aware of how you see things it may be possible to then change your perceptions.