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Earth Pilgrim. Photography and commentary. Reminding us we’re all in this together. Appropriate thought with which to begin a new year.

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If you happen to receive an authentic-looking e-mail from eBay asking you some suspiciously-compromising information in order to “update” your account, just let it go. It’s somebody (not associated with eBay) trying to scam you.

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Switch (to Canada). Now this one isn’t exactly hot out of the oven, but it has made quite an impression on Bushco toadies and other people who can’t take a joke and that, of course, makes it noteworthy. I prefer to think of it as a gentle ribbing reminding us how “we” can do better.

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Newstoday. Graphic designer pr0n ahead.

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I took a vacation from thinking, but now I’m back (I think). I don’t know quite what it was that led me to this, but one day I put down all my books, stopped looking at my website and just… existed. I think that dealing with possibly having to send away my Powerbook for repairs offsite, which prompted me to reformat my drive and keep bookmarks uninstalled for some time, might have been a precursor on one count. Well, whatever. I noticed all the silence and woke up again. I think there’ll be more writing from now on.

I suppose my mind didn’t completely dry up during this time. To wit, sips from my stream-of-consciousness recent past:

(Oct.1) …Now that dream would’ve been one worth waking up from and writing about in full. I dreamt that I was somehow living or hanging out around downtown NYC when lo and behold, I came across Osama Bin Laden himself. Gentle guy — in the dangerous, edgy way that serial killers are. I remember making sure I was very circumspect about my wording on things. I was basically putting forth my/the american perspective on things, in the hope that he might come around (and not kill me). Although we were just hanging out, not in some kind of hostage situation. Weird.

(Oct.17) Life is so here-and-now at the moment, so materialistic. Work and paying bills and surviving until the next paycheck. Well, surviving is understatement: I guess I must be riding on the wave of peace from not having to panic about where money for bills is going to come from. That’s sweet. Reading is healing my brain, making me feel ‘young’ again, on the inside. And it’s guilt-free, besides. No risks, no emotional entanglements… what could be better?

(Oct.24) Today is the anniversary of mom’s death. I don’t feel any sharp pain. But I think this disconnectedness I do feel is the manifestation that takes its place. I really don’t want to see anyone today. I had thought of getting some stuff done, like having my car top worked on, but I’m just really antsy about being around people. I just want to sit here and ‘forget’ what today is.

(Nov.14) Lots of emotion in my entertainment recently. What Dreams May Come, Magnolia, and Brotherhood of the Wolf each touched me in different ways. Wolf, of course, was just a fantasy, a thriller, but the others have to do with love, loss, longing, final fleeting chances in life. Of course I still live with the weight of having to live life one day at a time and feeling forced to waste most of mine away on rote, unexciting activity. There are a few things I’d like to do in my life, but I can’t think of one overarching, transcendent thing. I don’t have a career goal, or a humanitarian aspiration, not in the way guilty calvinists are trained to have. I don’t even have a hedonistic fixation. For now I am more than content with living and enjoying the ‘little things:’ sunsets, books, drinks with friends. I would like to travel, and buy me a few toys, but even toys don’t feel ‘important’ in any way. If I skip a few I’ll be fine. What I would like is the thing I can’t seem to procure: kindred spirits with whom to connect on a regular basis.

(Nov.15) Microsoft Office keyboard. I seem destined not to get into the multimedia keyboard of my dreams. First, the Adessos were out of stock for months. Now I go to get that Logitech, and it’s only good for OS X, and I’m basically forced to get another keyboard on the spot because otherwise CompUSA would have my ass to the tune of 15% restocking fee. Bastards. Even though they just go and resell the thing at its new, unopened price. I could tell, because the frontmost Office keyboard box had been opened before. They didn’t even bother to reseal it… The kb has a nice feel. The keys are quieter. But the bizarre shape is throwing off my keystrokes. Not like I touch-type with any accuracy whatsoever anyway, but still.

(Nov.28) I just want to be eight years old again, small enough to hide in mom’s lap, naive enough to believe in both Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men, innocent enough to hear aguinaldos (traditional Christmas music in PR) and think that they are the songs of angels. I do miss some of these unrecoverable moments in my life, but at least I can remember what a beautiful life I have lived. And I miss mom terribly. For the second Christmas in a row. Again, this was the time of year where I would be finagling to get to PR somehow so I can spend a few too-short days with my favorite person. For the second Christmas in a row, she’s gone, and so is my desire to fly out there. I love the place, I love the memory of those vibrant greens, the lovely smell of the air, the sound of aguinaldos and of smiling voices. I love it all and I miss it intensely. And yet, I feel alien to it all, almost afraid to touch it again. I want a people to belong to already. I’m tired of being this lone wanderer, foreign to all he meets. In such a family-day as Thanksgiving, I miss having one. I want to be light and joyful again.

(Nov.29)

It’s gone. The entire shoreline is gone. Joan Baez was right: they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. But what happens when everything becomes a parking lot? What happens when everything is razed to make room for parking, when there’s nothing left to drive to go see? People go home. They go home and they stay home, and never see each other. So civilized and yet, so barbaric.

… Late-nite cyberpunk brainstorm. A story? Maybe.

(Dec.2) Where is my life headed? What is my bliss? I seem to have lost my way. Or else, I’m already there. Bliss is in the spaces between the seconds, the sighs between the tick-tock of time.

Right, so I’ve been amiss for a few weeks. Truth to tell, life since I started working has gotten increasingly monotonous and there’s been very little to tell that wouldn’t otherwise infringe on an unspoken decision I made early on to keep mum about the daily goings-on of my workplace. Workplace smells are okay to mention, but little else beyond that. So let’s leave it at: I’m bored. Symptom of my existence, I suppose. No one activity can hold my interest for terribly long, which I suppose spells death to a quiet, stable, single-career life, and my story thus far bears this out. I’m cool with it: I just hope whoever ends up stuck with me can roll with it just as easily.

Realizing my life probably won’t get super-interesting anytime soon, I’ve given thought to changing my approach here. So again, I’d like to begin small, and this time grow in a direction similar to what gave the weblog ‘form’ its start: as a ‘filter’ of sites I come across. I discover dozens of sites a day through my daily reading, you see; friends also help, and even Yahoo pitches in a little. A few of them are such gems that I just gotta share. So without further ado may I present you:

Today’s Link: Gawker, a weblog/zine about New York. What a weird time in history to proclaim ‘radical Manhattanism,’ but hey.

Not only that, but ever since I acquired a wee bit of ‘real’ web hosting I started to think of ways to redo this whole thang from the ground up. So I’ve read up on the almighty PHP, which takes mere mortals like myself longer than half an hour to learn, and even managed to install kick-me-in-the-jimmy hyper-featured content management software PHP-Nuke into my UNIX flava environment, though I have no idea what to do next. Anyway, all that to say that this site will very likely be moving to a newer, better, faster, deeper, harder, ohbabyyesYESS…!! errr… — ahem — web address come the new year. Keep an eye open. Oh, and Merry Chriskwanzanukah.