Lost in a moment.

Currently...

I am drinking caffeine and listening to Josh Weller. Talking about crying-time music, my goodness. At least his hair is one of the most pleasing things in this whole wide world.

These links are important.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/13/california-prisons-early-release-economy

http://gawker.com/5154567/stray-black-cats-roam-london-selling-video-games

Sitting next to Samson.

Samson is my LA plant. He's a "luck tree", in a very nice sort of stone urn thing, and I bought him at a plant shop two blocks away from my apartment. His leaves are deep and shiny, and he has a little nesting of dead spray-painted moss covering up the dirt in his bowl. I like him. He cheers me up.

Also cheering me up is some red wine, and the "go fug yourself" website. I am not sure why I need cheering, but I do. I have met new people the last three days in a row, with maybe some success, and probably some failures as well. It has me a little worn out, to say the least, and I need some sort of brain-refresher...something that will let me stop thinking about these encounters, and what might happen next.

Two of the meetings were with people I've emailed a bit with over the internets, from the ok cupid site. And one of them I got along with very well -- and his brother, and his brother's girlfriend, all of whom I met in the space of two hours and then ended up spending Friday night hanging out with. The three of them together had a great vibe going on, very smart and jokey and mellow. Basically, I would like them all to adopt me -- it's the kind of feeling I haven't had since maybe the old days of TNA, when I had those brief moments of being with people who all knew and liked each other and were just straight-up class-A people. I am sorry that I was always such a drunky loser who wanted to go home by like 12:30 during our old nights out. I'd give a lot to have those nights back. I want bar friends back.

And now I'm anxious, because man, so far my meeting people off the internet game has been pretty shitty. I've been on a few dates, been dumped or ignored by a few dudes who weren't worth my time, had a few meals with strangers. None of it's really stuck, as of yet -- it's easy to forget someone that exists primarily in email form. And I really want these people to be my friends. Maybe, in particular, I miss the sort of practical feeling of being around midwesterners. There's something that feels more solid about it, like hey, these people are probably not at their core completely ridiculous. I dare you to say the same thing about the general human product of southern California.

Maybe my longtime friend depression is kicking in too now. There's a lot that's wrong with having a crazy mental disease, of course. But occasionally I feel like it keeps me less frivilous, encourages introspection, reminds me of my past. It's something inextricable from me, no matter what meds I'm on -- although of course the meds change the feel of the game, let me be the one in charge of it. My brain is a weird dance of chemicals pushing through a goopy mass of tissue. So it goes, so it goes.

The last person I met this weekend was very shy. So am I, sometimes, but I just kept trying to make conversation anyway. So it goes. There were some others in the middle, but none of them stood out.

A grand quote.

"Once, in 1946, while still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.

Birds must be eliminated."
-Yves Klein

新年明けましておめでとう！

I hope your new year's eve was less exciting, but at least as fun, as mine was!

For my birthday, I'd like some new jeans and shoes, and to bump into Jon Hamm while he's walking his dog around the neighborhood. Please, someone help arrange this.