Every single time, it happens. Every single fucking time. I see, and it happens. I hear, and it happens, I smell or I touch, and it happens.

And I can't describe it with any clarity, and I can't endorse it with any understanding, and I can't espouse it with any eloquence, and I can't dismiss it with any abruptness. I can't I can't I can't I just fucking can't.

It's just fucking there. It just fucking happens. It just fucking is.

Why?

That's the question that I ask myself every 10 seconds. That's the question that everyone on Earth asks me every chance they get.

"Why?" they ask.

"Fucking just because," I reply.

Eyes meet, and circuits close. Words are exchanged, and energy flows. Auras merge, and affection glows.

And, every now and then...

Hands touch, and desire grows. Skin slides, and lust shows. Lips meet, and love overflows.

Why?

Sometimes I wish we would just talk about all this. Not discuss and not debate and certainly not argue. Not lie and not predict and not dismiss and not make excuse after fucking excuse. Just talk.

I guess it's because I'm a man. I always think that things can be fixed. Even when they're not really broken. I constantly look for the words to make everything okay, and I constantly ignore the fact that okay may be too lofty a goal.

Lately though, more and more often, I've thought about eschewing words, and letting actions speak my volumes for me. For us. Words, after all, have done zero good.

Perhaps it's time for action. Perhaps it's too late for action. Fuck, perhaps it's too late for anything.

The way I see it, there are two times when I absolutely should not be writing here. One of those times is when I'm sad.

I know, I write when I'm sad all the time. It's par for my particular course, I guess. But the deep sadness that I sometimes feel, I don't write during those times. I'm too busy trying to breathe and keep my heart beating. So you guys are spared the really depressing stuff. You're welcome.

The second time when I shouldn't be writing anything is when I'm pissed.

Like right now.

There are so many things that I want to say. So many accusations that I want to level. So much pressure that I want to vent. So much truth that I want to fucking scream.

But, I shouldn't be writing when I'm pissed, so I won't. You're welcome.

So let me get this straight. These two guys are going to the flipping White House to have beers with the flipping President of the flipping United States, and they've chosen Red Stripe and Blue Moon.

A Jamaican pale lager and a pseudo-Belgian. That just seems so sad to me. It's like they put zero effort into their choices at all.

And the flipping President has chosen Bud Light.

And most of the people at Rich O's, myself included, voted for the guy.

If I ever have a beer with the flipping President - any day now, I'm sure - it's going to be an Alaskan Smoked Porter.

My brain tells me that I should be writing something now, before I go back outside to cavort with the stobors. Of course my brain has no idea what I should write, so I guess it's up to the rest of me. My fingers, perhaps, because my heart is all tapped-out, and my dick isn't much for words. It's more of an action dick.

I'm not really sure when it was that I became wise. Sometime over the last few years, I think. It's like I stopped getting birthday presents and started gaining wisdom. Or at least a very good imitation of wisdom. Good enough to fool most people, including my lovely self a lot of the time.

I found myself today in the most unlikely of conversations, giving the most unlikely of advice. Unlikely, that is, unless you actually know me, and not many people do. Lots of people think that they know me, but they're wrong. I'm a better person than many people give me credit for, and I'm a worse person that many people suspect. I'm a person, is I guess what I'm saying. If I were 100% good I'd be some kind of supreme being, and if I were 100% flawed I'd be a dipshit, but I'm somewhere in the middle, just like almost everyone else.

Anyway, today I found myself in a conversation about relationships. Because I'm some kind of expert, I guess. It's like quitting smoking; I've done it a million times it's so easy. Well, I haven't quite had a million relationships, but I've had my share. So maybe that makes me wise in a way. I dunno.

I'll paraphrase from today's conversation, in which I pretended to be wise:

Every new relationship seems perfect. But then it turns out that everything isn't quite perfect, and people get disappointed and they start to question the entire relationship.

Every relationship in history has followed the same pattern. Sometimes they last beyond that initial disillusionment, and sometimes they don't.

I think back to the relationships that I've had. Not all that many, really, and except for the ones that were doomed from the start, they've all followed that pattern. Not many have made it passed that first round of disillusionment, but the ones that have, the ones that have lasted have all been something really special to me. They're still really special to me.

I'm in one of those relationships right now, and even though I know that almost everyone on Earth would say that I'm in no such thing, I will say without hesitation that almost everyone on Earth is wrong. We are in a relationship, and we've made it passed that first disappointment, and the second and the third, and the fourth.

But we're still here, in one widely varying form or another, we're still here.

Doesn't that mean something? Shouldn't that mean something?

Isn't this supposed to be the goal?

Because, as I said today in my unlikely conversation, Perfection doesn't exist, so shouldn't a relationship be more concerned with surviving imperfection than with seeking perfection?

Am I the only person who sees this?

When I was about ten years old, I felt an earthquake in Southern Indiana. It was a very mild one, and I might not have noticed it at all if my grandmother's hutch hadn't started rattling.

Then, in 1994, I felt an earthquake in Seattle. This one was a little stronger - it kinda felt like a very heavy truck had rumbled off the road and then lightly smacked into my building.

In 1996, the day after I'd arrived in Alaska, I was sitting in a chair in the living room of my Anchorage apartment. I was taking a swig of soda from a can, and I leaned back to get the last few drops.

The next thing I knew, I was on my back, and the chair was on top of me.

The news said it was an earthquake. To me it seemed more like an earthjolt but I'm no seismologist. Whatever else it might have been, it was certainly a harbinger of things to come.

During the months I spent in Anchorage, I never went a week without feeling at least one earthquake. Some weeks would bring as many as three or four. None were ever particularly strong. Even that first one hadn't been more than a 5.2 or so - it had just caught me off-guard and off-balance.

Most days I worked in the customer's building, but every now and then I'd have reason to visit my own company's Anchorage office. Calling it an office was a bit of an overstatement. The company had been founded in Anchorage, but had relocated to Seattle at some point, and there was only one permanent Anchorage employee. A nice girl named Brenda who did everything from sales to accounting to first-level customer support to sweeping up at the end of the day.

She didn't like earthquakes very much. So I had a lot of fun walking heavily around the office, making the floor creak and the partitions sway. I never could see Brenda when I did these things, for if she'd been able to see me that would have ruined the jokes, but I liked to imagine that she crawled under her desk every time I did it.

Good times.

---

One of the things that struck me as funny about Anchorage was actually one of the more depressing things. People are always yammering on and on about how beautiful it is in Alaska. And it certainly is. Words are inadequate to describe some of the natural beauty I saw up there.

But one of the most beautiful phenomenon was actually man-made, though I didn't know it until Brenda told me.

See, it was so cold up there that the actual smog would freeze.

Frozen smog would coat the leafless limbs and branches and twigs of every tree. It turned every tree into a crystalline work of art. It wasn't like the ice-coated trees I'd seen before. Nope, it was fuzzy and delicate. Just really really pretty stuff.

Caused by air pollution, but still one of the most beautiful sights in one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen.

MusicalYuppieDude and I working on building a HatGirl sandwich.

I was up there to work, of course. Because I was, at the time, the only single engineer at my company, I got to do all the traveling. I liked it. I'd already spent half a year in New Orleans, and I'd probably never have made it there otherwise. Double-ditto for Alaska.

My days always began at about 6:00. I'd get all bundled up and I'd go outside to start the car. Then I'd go back inside, take a shower and stuff like that, while the car heated up and the windows de-iced. If I was lucky, I'd be able to do all of this without the old man shuffling down and knocking on my door. He always asked me if I wanted any coffee, but I never wanted any.

During that time of year, the Sun wouldn't make an appearance until 10:00 AM or so, and then it would be gone again by 2:00 PM. Anchorage lies South of the Arctic circle, so it never quite gets down to zero hours of daylight in the Winter, and it never quite gets to twenty-four hours of daylight in the Summer. I know that those four hours of daylight did me a world of good. Just knowing that the Sun was shining outside, even if I couldn't see it from my windowless room.

Anyway, I'd go to work. This particular project was interesting to me, but probably not to anyone else, so I won't dwell on it. Except to say that static electricity and computers don't mix, and that Alaska in the Winter is so cold and dry that static electricity is a huge problem. I felt like some kind of super hero, the way the sparks were constantly shooting out of my fingers.

I totally forgot to mention the snow. There was about three feet of the stuff on the ground. Whatever had fallen since September or so was still there, joined layer-after-layer by new stuff. It was Alaska in January. Of course there was snow. I'd actually been expecting more, but people said it had been a dry Fall.

What got me to thinking about the snow was the seagulls.

You know how, back in the real world, when it snows they plow the parking lots and they usually leave a pile of snow somewhere kind of out of the way? Well, in Anchorage they do the same thing, except the resulting piles of snow are usually two stories tall and fifty feet in diameter.

One day I was standing outside work, smoking a cigarette, and there were some seagulls playing on the wind currents around one such mound. That's the only word to describe it - they were playing. Hovering at the top of the pile, where the wind was strongest, then diving down the other side, sometimes even turning somersaults in the air, and then going back and doing it again and again. It really was a cool thing to watch, and I bet I stayed out there for an hour, wishing I was a bird, because that really looked like fun.

Working all day was, of course, annoying. There I was in fucking Alaska and I couldn't do any sightseeing because it was always dark when I wasn't working. So my excursions to check out the natural beauty of the place would have to wait until the weekend. My weeknights were mostly spent shooting pool at the Billiard Palace. Back then, I would occasionally gamble a few dollars on my pool games. I'd win some and I'd lose some. Mostly I won, I think, except for this one dude who was a lot better than I was but I kept playing him because he was a friendly sort.

Remind me to tell you about all the earthquakes.

Here are three totally unrelated things that piss me off.

---

Brown-nosed idiots.

At least know someone well enough to form a knowledgeable opinion before you bury your nose in their ass.

---

"Incapable of supporting life."

Life can exist in the most unlikely of places. You people are scientists, you're supposed to know this. Read some books by Robert L. Forward if you need a refresher for your imagination, and then stop saying stupid things.

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Typos.

Like the one I had in the title of this entry for over six hours.