It's remarkable how much less evil there is in the world at 11am as opposed to 9am. I'm taking this summer class (so that I can finally graduate) and for some reason I thought that a two-hour long 10am class four days a week was a good idea. And it's not that the class itself is too bad, though it's a music survey class so of course it can be crushingly dull at times, but I'm a night person. Having to get up before 9 every day is not what I am wired for. Four days in a row of getting up at 8:45am this week left me feeling pretty solidly depressed and with an unceasing headache that made my eyes feel like they were about to implode. Not explode mind you, implode. But wow, one good night of sleep and I feel vastly better. Even the usual dark cloud of mental distraction that normally plagues the edges of my vision is mostly abated. I actually felt *good* when my alarm clock went off this morning. It's nearly miraculous. I guess there's not much of a point to this post other than to point out that I like sleep. Go figure. But I guess there's nothing wrong with writing utterly pointless articles (who would have guessed that hard drives were useful?).

Thought I would also mention that in case there's any SelfUnfocused fans who had given up on the idea of Matt ever posting again, he's actually been back at it for a couple weeks now. From the "Interesting Only to Me" department, I can never really manage to wrap my head around it when favorite authors of mine happen to be fans of the same semi-obscure bands as I am. I found it weird/cool enough when William Gibson mentioned his fondness for the Sisters of Mercy at almost the same time that I was in my Sisters of Mercy phase, but at least they're relatively well-known. Neil Gaiman being a fan of the Future Bible Heroes/Magnetic Fields strikes me as almost bizarre though. I know he's one seriously hip dude, but that just makes me happy. It's one those times when everything sort of comes together. Well, I guess I wouldn't go that far - retract that last sentence. Of course it could also just be that they're more well-known than I realize and it's been too long since I left my cultural isolation bubble. Then again, "Some of us can only live in songs of love and trouble, some of us can only live in bubbles." Always liked that line.

Matt on 05.28.04 @ 02:36 PM PST [link] 

So it's sunday night and I'm back in San Diego. It's strange, I'm nearly always busy doing something or other when I'm sitting here in my room, but coming in fresh on arrival I'm looking around right now and I can't figure out what the hell it is that I do until 2 or 3am every night. I mean, yeah, I got this here computer that I'm typing semi-painfully on (I seriously and deeply bruised my left pinky finger yesterday... long story) and I got my plush kuroneko looking on happily and so forth, but seriously, I sit here entertained for hours every night? I can only roll d20 for entertainment's sake so many times. I guess I need to restagnate for awhile; see where this ample glass of scotch takes me. I seem to recall that I have quite a bit of unwatched Doctor Who around here somewhere...


Matt on 05.23.04 @ 11:17 PM PST [link] 

Once again, I don't have anything of interest to post. The subject is the best part of this post. You can stop reading now if you like, you won't miss anything. I'm just in this mood right now where I have to do something semi-creative, and since I haven't blogged in a couple days this seems like a good place to start at least. Though saying I haven't blogged in a couple days is only slightly right; I actually spent over an hour last night writing up a post that I eventually decided to scrap. It was one of those it's-2am-and-I'm-depressed type of posts that just make you want slap and/or throttle the person who writes it. Here, I'll sum it up for you: "Sigh. Angst angst. Complain. Sigh. Whine. Pretend not to whine, but do it anyway. Complain complain, angst."

Sometimes I think that there's some slightly damaged part of me that causes me to exercise my demons, rather than exorcise them. Heh, lame joke I know, but it some ways it's true. No matter what I do to try to get rid of them they just get stronger, leaner, quicker, more agile. I can see them there, in their spandex and leg warmers... "One, two, three, four, angst, angst, mope, whine!" It's the mental feedback syndrome. You get these ideas in your head and the more you try to dismiss them, the more they consume your brain until you're lying there half-asleep at three in the morning with the same scene looping again and again in your head. It's been hitting me far too often lately. I think the latest wave is over, but who knows, maybe they're just off against the wall squirting water in their mouths and stretching.

You know, sometimes, I read back what I've written and all I can think is... what the hell am I talking about. Heh, hell. Get it?

Matt on 05.18.04 @ 03:09 PM PST [link] 

So I'm sitting here in the Roasting Co. in Ashland on sunday afternoon typing this up on my shiny new laptop. (which, yes, I did get in a bit of trouble for, but I survived). Lynnea is sitting next to me researching some paper on Adam Bede (the mere concept of writing a paper on Adam Bede makes me sleepy, give me Hardy any day). Anyway, which makes this my first mobile blog post. Exciting, no? Don't answer that.

So I've noticed that semi-late night drinking combined with semi-early morning church attendance is not the best combination. I think I got somewhere around 6 hours of sleep last night and for no appearent reason my left eye is really sore so that it hurts every time I blink (a symptom which actually started last night). Speaking of last night I had a good time at least. Didn't do anything too exciting just hung out with Tim, Zac, and Brenda at Zac's place. Yes, *the* Tim for you Hurting fans out there. And let me tell you something, drunken Tim is one of the funniest things e'er I have seen. Tim doesn't normally hit the bottle you see, and he was practically bouncing off the walls after a bit last night. (In case Anne ever reads this, no, he didn't have *too* much). Definitly good times.

Ah, well, I can't think of much else to write at the moment, and it's getting near 2 and we haven't had lunch yet. So I guess I'd better wrap this up. I'll probably post again fairly soon though, not much else to do when you're on vacation.

Matt on 05.16.04 @ 01:47 PM PST [link] 

I got trouble. Right here in River City.
That's trouble with a T, and that rhymes with L and that stands for Laptop. Ok, so T doesn't really rhyme with L. But trouble is what I got. Or what I'm going to be in when it's discovered that I just blew $1350 on a notebook. I mean, it's not really that big a deal, I bought it partly for work purposes so I'll be able to write it off. What it really means is that I'll be working 5 days a week this summer instead of 4. I just know I'm gonna get a scolding or two, regardless.

Still though, it is one sweet piece of portable computing. It's a Fujitsu Lifebook S6120. It's of the "thin-and-light" variety (because not thin and light seems to defeat the purpose of a laptop to me) so it's got a 13.3" screen and comes in under 4lbs (w/o combo drive, 4.5 with). Plus, a 40gig HD (not bad for such a small system) and it's got the built-in WiFi. Mmm, WiFi. I can hardly wait till it shows up. I just can't decide if I should run Win2k or Mandrake 10 on it. Cause I sure as hell ain't running XP Home. Mandrake 10 is of course, the far more 1337 option, but I know Win2k way better than I do Linux. Ah well, that sort of thing will come later. After the immienet verbal (or actual) flagellation I get for wasting money.

Yes, I have been very bad. A very bad monkey indeed.

Matt on 05.10.04 @ 03:47 PM PST [link] 

My Trillian window displays a long list of gray names. My email box sits cold and empty with the exception of a couple 419s. It's been seriously quiet online lately. A little too quiet. I even noticed that by my hit counter that I've only had 3 hits this week, and I'm pretty sure those were me. (Which brings up the usual question as to why I'm bothering to write this...). Where is everybody? I mean, Tim's obviously up at his folks' house, but where is everyone else? What, it suddenly turns warm out and I'm the only nerd shut-in left? Alright, that's fine by me. You'll all be sorry when you're tan and in shape and, um, feeling good, and um...

Anyway, speaking of nerdism, I discovered, thanks to good ol' /. one of the best arcade games ever: EveryExtend. Don't let the fact that the page is in Japanese scare you off, the game is insanely fun. Not to mention addictive. I was supposed to be studying for finals yesterday; I played EveryExtend instead. I haven't been able to find the hidden boss yet, but my max chain so far is 58, which was cool. I also spent awhile with a couple of the games from ABA Games. Parsec47 is like, the most insane bit of twitchy eye-melting madness I have ever witnessed. It's good times. I'm starting to get this feeling that there might be a ton of incredibly cool free Japanese shooters out there. I need to investigate. At least that'll give me something to do in this cold silent internet.

Matt on 05.05.04 @ 01:47 PM PST [link] 

So this weekend was Coachella festival. I really don't know what to think of Coachella festival. On the one hand I had a good time, on the other time I only had a good time after the sun went down. It seems like it should be criminal to run a festival the way they do. Ok, yes I expect miserable heat and such; it's in the desert. The fact that you can't bring in your own water (even sealed) is ridiculous, and they charge $2 for a 16oz Crystal Geezer. Oh but there are drinking fountains available. Or rather, drinking fountain. Yep, one drinking fountain for 30,000+ people (don't know how many people were actually there but it was at least that many). So basically they're charging you $2+ an hour to continue living. Which seems suspciously like extortion to me. But I digress.

Anyway, let me talk about the good stuff. Saw Beck. Couldn't really hear Beck cause I guess they decided that one guy with an acoustic guitar was not as important as having insanely loud bass come out of a nearby tent where no one was actually playing at the time. But I can say I saw Beck. The Pixies were great, they did a ton of songs off Come on Pilgrim which was sort of interesting, since I often mention that album and get naught but blank stares. We were pretty far back from the stage though, which took away some of the magic. Frank Black was smaller than my pinky nail at arms length. Next thing we saw was Radiohead, which was awesome, but we could only stay for half cause we wanted to make sure we had a good spot for Kraftwerk. Again, I can assume from the music being played and the video screens that it was Radiohead. I have very little proof otherwise. Anyway, so in order to get a good spot for Kraftwerk we had to sit through DJ Mark Farina. You know, maybe his albums are better than his live shows, but based on the latter I can safely say that if you like DJ Mark Farina your taste in electronic music, and possibly your entire sense of esthetics, is deeply deeply flawed.

Anyway, Kraftwerk. They were worth it. I can honestly and without hesitation say that Kraftwerk was the best show I have ever been to in my life, and probably will ever see. (Heh, and I've seen Saviour Machine). They started off with like a 10 minute version of The Man Machine and I think I actually got tears in my eyes. It was amazing, it's difficult to even convey how good their show was. They did the new Tour de France stuff, they did Radioactivity, they did We Are the Robots (as Robots), they did By the Numbers which flowed into Computerworld. At the end they all came out in suits with glowing green gridlines on them. They each did a closing solo. It was incredible.

So actually, Pat, and for some reason I have this odd desire to refer to him as El Pat at the moment, so El Pat and I actually only went to Saturday. We had tickets for both days, but after the conditions described above and not getting back to San Diego until 5am, we just didn't have enough Will to make that saving throw. So we actually gave our tickets to one of the baristas at Lestat's, who I understand was absolutely thrilled, and which made us feel like incredibly good people in the bargin. I really wanted to see The Flaming Lips, and Belle and Sebastian, and The Cure, and Prefuse 73, I mean, those are some of my all time favorite bands, but one day was hard enough. My friend Zac was camping up there and he was gonna skip day two.

Anyway, El Pat and I had a good time, and Kraftwerk was an incredible experience. It was all worth it for them. It was even worth sitting though DJ Mark Farina, and that's saying something. Ya tvoy raboti.

Matt on 05.03.04 @ 01:09 PM PST [link]