20.9.06

Do I look any different to you?

A big strong deliveryman came to my house yesterday. He had legs that were thick as tree trunks and he looked strong enough to tip over my car if he wanted to. He brought with him a new computer so of course I welcomed him heartedly.

I’m not exactly certain what specific model computer this is. It’s a Mac. I know that much. I also know it’s got a more sophisticated version of OSX than I have on my iBook.

Hmmm, I just did a little looking and discovered that it’s an iMac 5.1 dual Pentium core nitro-burning funny car. I’m certain that it can crunch numbers like crazy and juggle sixty-two graphics files at the same time, but I mostly like it because it looks like a gay Scandinavian college student designed it as his Industrial Arts thesis.

It’s a skinny little thing, which I like, because that means the cats can walk behind it, as opposed to climbing gracelessly over it or tripping drunkenly over the keyboard like they usually do with my iBook.

Technically it’s Valarie’s computer. An old friend of the family (she wrote and delivered our wedding vows some fourteen years ago) does a lot of political consulting work and Val pitches in donates a lot of her time to help out. This had becoming increasingly difficult with the limited equipment we had here which is why the big strong man showed up yesterday with the box.

It’s situated in the home office that Valarie and I share, and it’s much nicer to work on than my iBook—still, I feel funny using it. It’s not mine. I feel strange.

I’m sure, like most things in life, this guilt too shall pass.

18.9.06

Does anyone have Dennis Quaid’s telephone number?

I haven’t been the happiest camper of all the campers out there for the past few months. I’ve struggled with a handful of silly/stupid illnesses and it’s tough to keep yourself on an even keel while spending extended amounts of time loafing around trying to heal from something as idiotic as tripping over wheelchair.

My sleep has suffered immeasurably. While stretched out waiting for cracked ribs to heel, and goofed up on painkillers, napping becomes a common habit. Which of course screws up your nighttime sleeping schedule, which results in sleeping during the day while the rest of the world is active, which leads to copious amounts of guilt and embarrassment.

The latest ingredient into the mix is a painful sinus infection that appeared out of nowhere. For a week or two I was pretty dizzy and it felt like I was wearing a hat that was two sizes too tight. During a normal visit with my MD she poked and prodded and concluded that I had an infection. She sent me home with a big bottle of antibiotics. For some reason antibiotics kick my ass harder than cheap vodka. I feel terrible when I take them. A week later the problem is back and she ups the dosage and changes the spectrum, or something silly like that, and now I’m on a new brand.

I’ve had nothing but Franz Kafka dreams for the past two weeks. I must be near the point of losing my mind but I don’t know how much further I have to go. Which is why I need Dennis Quaid’s telephone number.

Dennis (the Quaid brother blessed with the looks) starred in a1984 semi-cult classic film called Dreamscape, where he and other government-funded flunkies were doing experiments in entering test subjects brains.

[Hollywood drones—if you’ve run out of ideas and are looking for a reasonably solid movie to remake with all your CGI toys, this one should be in the running.]

My dreams are fraught with anxiety. Buckets of anxiety loaded into a cannon and fired right in my face. There are large chunks of what takes place during the dreams that I can directly connect to something I read in a book, saw on television, or discussed during a conversation the night before. The thing is, being able to dissect them later, doesn’t make waking up from these dreams any less stressful.

One common thread that runs through a lot of my dreams involves large contained places. Whether it be at a big consumer electronics show, or the San Diego Comic Con, the offices of a new company that I’m working for, or even an especially large house. I always seem to be in a hurry to get to one corner of the building to the next and my legs seem to be slowing me down, like I’m running through sand and mud or pudding. I’m always late getting to where I’m going, and a lot of the time, when it’s a new job I’m left on my own to figure things out and to get things started. Nobody expects me to do very much during the first couple of days, but I’m sitting there in this new office; I really need to be getting something done.

17.9.06

As if we needed yet another reason to watch 24 this season...

James Cromwell has been signed to play Jack Bauer's father, while acclaimed British comedian Eddie Izzard will play a "villainous accomplice" named Darren McCarthy.