Spent most of the night at Rich O's talking with RealTrainGirl. To drink, I had a Smithwick's and then one of these:

Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Ale

(draft) The first few sips, understandably, brought to mind a beer with ginger ale poured into it. By the end of the glass I'd decided that I did like this beer, and that I wished that it was even a little stranger than it was. Very unusual, and very drinkable.

To finish up I had a Guinness.

The night was very ordinary and boring - until about two seconds after RealTrainGirl left.

At that point, as if on cue, these two guys that had been sharing the living room area with us started talking about YouKnowWho. Now exactly what RealTrainGirl's leaving had to do with anything I don't know. What I do know it that both of these guys are assholes.
They know nothing about YouKnowWho but they still started spewing crap about her.

The last time this happened was back in March. At that time I jumped to YouKnowWho's defense and didn't let up until the bitch doing all the badmouthing left in a huff. This time, for a while at least, I let it go.

I got up and went to stand at the bar. It's none of my business what people think, or what people talk about. Plus, I don't care about anything or anyone at all. That's been the theme of this 'blog for a couple of weeks now.

So I stood at the bar and tried not to listen to the two assholes badmouth the person that - well I don't really know how to finish that sentence. There are really no words left in me to describe her and what she's meant to me. Means to me.

I stood at the bar, trying not to listen, and I thought I was having some success at it.

After a bit though, one of them said something that I just couldn't ignore.

...

So here I've been coasting along for more than two weeks, unable or unwilling to care about anything or anyone. And out of the blue, from left field, out of my ass even, I find something that I feel passionate about. Someone that I feel passionate about. No big surprise that it's the same thing, the same person, that it's been all along.

I sit here now, typing this entry, and I feel nothing once again. It's all like a fuzzy memory of a dream I'm not even sure I had.

Still, it's nice to know that I'm still capable of caring about something.

Here are some pics I took the other day. The Jack Daniel's racing car showed up for this thing at work.

When I last went to my old Kent, Washington hangout back in '03, I'd been hoping to see it exactly as I'd left it. Even though I'd been gone for three years. Well, they hadn't just mothballed the place and wrapped it in plastic to wait for my return. Time had continued to march forward, the fucker.

There were an awful lot of people there that I had never seen before. In MY bar. It was a little disconcerting having to look around for people that I knew. I used to know everyone.

That disconcerting feeling is the same one I've been having when I enter Rich O's lately. Last night, as is typical for Fridays, the place was full of strangers. I spent the first part of the night either talking with MusicalHippeeDude and TallLady at the bar, or sitting on the sofa trying not to interact with some retarded people.

When I first went in, I saw that NABC had brought one of their old beers back. I couldn't remember if I'd liked it or not, so I ordered one:

New Albanian Kaiser 2nd Reising

(draft) I'd never call myself a pilsner fan, so I didn't have great expectations for this beer. Having said that, this just wasn't very good. A little citrusy, and a little bit of some odd flavor that I cannot pin down. Must be the corn. Hey, at least I tried it.

I guess I drank about two inches, which was more than enough, and then I switched back to beers I know I like. Specifically, a Smithwick's and then a Bell's Porter.

The retarded people apparently know this guy named Dave, and he is apparently the center of their universe. It was Dave this and Dave that all night long. I was trying hard not to eavesdrop, and trying equally hard not to stare at the retarded girl's breasts - easier said than done, they were right there - but I wasn't especially successful at either endeavor.

Eventually these girls (more strangers) left the island so I moved up there and was quickly joined by CuteBlonde and this dude that I didn't remember but that seemed to remember me.

For my last beer I held a gun to the bartender's head and forced him to sell me a 2004 Alaskan Smoked Porter. Man I miss that beer.

Today I really wanted to go to Indianapolis for this microbrew thingy, but I've got to harvest my lawn (it's way past mowing) and then do some laundry. I'm going to Chicago in the morning and I guess clean clothes would be useful.

Early in the night I sent off a text message to my friend Eric, inviting him and his wife to Rich O's. I guess they were busy. Kids can do that to you.

Oh yeah, I talked with VigilanteGirl for a while on the phone. I apologized for being unavailable lately, and assured her that it's not just her that's become an innocent victim of my mood.

Speaking of my mood, I was actually able to depress myself a little bit last night. This news I got Thursday has irritated me just enough that my mind has started looking for something else to occupy it. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at what it found.

Got some rather unsettling and surprising news today. I promised that I'd give it some time to sink in before I reacted. So I'll wait for the whole picture to emerge and I'll try to avoid jumping to any conclusions.

It'll be difficult though, to avoid thinking about the ramifications. It's not like I've got anything else to occupy my mind.

I've noticed that I've been getting a lot of visits to this 'blog from China lately.

I guess it shouldn't seem that strange. Over 20% of the world's population lives in China, so the odds are good that at least somebody there will be bored enough to read my stuff. I guess I just figured that I'd be blocked there or something for saying fuck so often.

Anyway, greetings from the West, and I really like your wall!

There also seems to be a big San Diego fanbase. Or stalker community, whatever. I don't think I know anybody in San Diego either.

I heard an interesting story today. I don't want to get into too much detail. I suspect that it was a little more painful for those involved than the retelling indicated, and I've got no business opening up anyone else's wounds.

Just a little story about a promise kept. An impulse followed. A relationship tested. A drunken jaunt similar to those that have run rampant in my own imagination for months.

I was thinking about this tonight, as I tried to put into words some of my imaginings. As I was trying to do the homework I wrote about the other night and, failing miserably, I thought about this story I'd heard.

This was a story about people that cared about each other. Each in their own way, to be sure, and I'm not going to sit here and say that I completely understand everything, but all of the people in this story definitely cared about what was happening. And even if they didn't like it, they at least understood.

I tried to use this story as an inspiration for my own.

And, as I said, I was failing miserably. I failed miserably.

See, a story of understanding and caring just does not apply to me right now. There are things that have happened to me, or because of me, that I still don't understand. Things that I may never understand. Yet I don't care. I've said so many times in these writings that it's all irrelevant. I believed it each time I wrote it. This time as I write it I don't just believe it - I know it. And if understanding is irrelevant, then I don't need it.

Everything that once threatened to pull me Westward is still there. Every answer to every question is still there, behind those sparkling eyes. It's not that I don't want to know the answers to these questions. I still do. But what was once an all-consuming force has been reduced to mere curiosity. Sure, it'd be nice to know the answers, but I don't really care what they are. And if these secrets wish to remain as such, well that's fine too.

I guess you could say that I've given up.

You could say that, but you'd be wrong. I haven't given up anything. Whatever it was that I had, whatever it was that was driving me for so many months, I didn't give it up.

It was taken from me. In the middle of the night, two weeks ago, I lost focus. Not because I'd turned my gaze elsewhere, but because the world itself had shifted around me. I'm still stumbling about, waiting for my vision to clear. I have no idea what I'll see when and if the world solidifies.

And, right now, I really don't care.

So I won't be writing the story of my search for answers and closure. I won't be writing of how I'd face my fears and my desires and walk through the desert to bare my chest and offer up my heart. I won't be writing about the pain or the joy that would result from such a journey. That story just isn't inside me anymore. Exactly what's inside me I'm not sure.

And I don't really care.

Today after work I met up with RealTrainGirl at Rich O's. It was very nice to see her - it's been a couple of weeks.

Normally after work I'll have an NABC Cone Smoker but this evening I knew I'd be staying a little longer than usual so I had a Smithwick's and then a Guinness.

Ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut and left at around 6:30. Stopped and said "hey" to VigilanteGirl on the way home.

It's days like this that make me wonder if I should bother posting at all. I do try to care about stuff enough to write something interesting, but I'm just not capable of giving a flying fuck about anything right now. Even if I try to stir up old pains, they just don't hurt, and so I just don't care.

Okay, so last week I never got around to writing anything about the results show. Neal left, and I'm glad. I've actually been right about who should go home three weeks in a row. Yay me!

Tonight started out looking like a pretty boring bunch of performances, but things got interesting later. And not always in a good way.

Jordis: Begging for audience participation always turns me off a little. Sang great though. (80 points)

Suzie: Nothing really wrong, just a little boring. I blame the song. I also took off 5 points for breaking out the harmonica twice and playing a total of like 5 notes. She's still hot though. (75 points)

Jessica: Hot. Part haunting, and part bad Cher impersonation. (80 points)

Mig: Pretty good. The best he's done so far. (85 points)

Brandon: Very distinctive voice that I never noticed before. He mumbled a lot and was very pitchy. (70 points)

Ty: Fucking awesome. Why is this guy not already famous? Is it the goofy hair? (95 points)

Heather: Something very wrong. She says she's been sick, and I can tell. (50 points)

JD: Complete crap. I couldn't listen. He blamed his sister for his poor performance. (minus 846 points)

Deanna: I still don't get it with her, and it seems that the band is finally coming around to my point of view. (40 points)

Daphna: I farted and it sounded better than Daphna's performance. The band guy said she'd murdered the song, and I agree. (minus 42)

Tara: I hate that song. She did okay with it I guess. (60 points)

Marty: Really surprised me. The night's second-best performance. (90 points)

I'd really like to see JD finally stop showing up on my television, but I'm afraid that Daphna will be the one leaving tomorrow. We'll see.

(update Wednesday night: Wow, they kicked both Daphna and Heather off the show. I don't really agree with the Heather thing. It also scares me a little that JD wasn't even in the bottom three. Things like this are why I've been getting so frustrated with American Idol the past two seasons. The sympathy voters have way too much power.)

This past week's Pisces Horoscope from Free Will Astrology:

"When truth is buried underground it grows," wrote French novelist Emile Zola, "it chokes, it gathers such explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it." I'm delivering this as a warning, Pisces, not as a prediction. In fact, if you act quickly, you have an excellent chance of ensuring that Zola's scenario doesn't unfold in your own life. There are important truths that are buried, but if you dig them up and expose them to the fresh air now, they won't explode in a few weeks.

I guess these things are published each Wednesday. At least that's when I see them, in the weekly LEO paper. This particular horoscope I first saw last Wednesday, July 20th.

The guy was a week late. If he'd published this at the same time that this happened, I'd probably still be freaking out over it. Hell, even at a week late it's still a little freaky.

I don't know what caused this particular bit of truth to exhume itself after so many years. I seriously doubt that it had anything to do with Saturn conjuncting with Uranus or whatever. I guess all that's important it that is did reach the surface, and that it did finally, mercifully, kill every last vestige of hope left in me.

Now, if I believed in this shit, and if this horoscope had been published two weeks earlier - or at any other time during the past year - I'd have figured that it was referring to a completely different secret. One that I don't think I've been too good at keeping, but one that still threatened to explode fully into the light at any moment. It still threatens to do that, actually, but it's been completely neutered by now.

This horoscope certainly caught my attention, one week late or not. Another thing that caught my attention is this little homework assignment that the guy put at the end of his horoscope listings. I don't see it anywhere on the site but here's part of it:

Homework: Do a mental exploration exercise and write about the place you're half-afraid to travel to even though you know it would change your life for the better...

This here is like he's writing directly to me, for I've caught myself imagining this trip several times. He's got it wrong with the half-afraid part though. Perhaps he really meant to write totally-fucking-terrified. No matter, I'm still going to write about it. I have serious doubts that what I write will be published here though. We'll see.

Was talking with FutureDude yesterday about yet another reason that I could never work at Rich O's. Specifically, we were talking about these idiots that had taken over the living room area. More specifically, we were talking about this one particular idiot that had decided to put a chair right in the middle of the walkway so he could sit his fat ass down and block everybody's path.

This was not the first time that I've mentioned to FutureDude that I could never work at Rich O's, and he suggested that I make a list, suitable for framing, of all of the reasons.

Well I doubt that Roger would ever permit such a list to adorn his walls, I'm going to make a list anyway, and adorn my website with it.

Reasons that I could never work at Rich O's

I'm sure that, given any time to actually think about this, I could come up with a couple of dozen more reasons that I could never work at Rich O's.