You walk up to her
ask her to dance
she says hey baby
I just might take the chance
I believe that Weezer's Only In Dreams may be the best rock song of all time. My current experiment is to put it on one-track repeat on my discman and see if I get sick of it. So far its going pretty well.
Oh, I forgot that last Saturday I saw Cannibal Holocaust with Eskil. Its the most disgusting, gory film I've ever seen. I'm glad I've seen it - once. It was much like Blair Witch, only made better - and made by an Italian exploitation film director :-)
I bought headphones on Sunday. They are Sony MDR V-600s. They're very nice. I also got some CDs on the weekend and a bunch of import stuff from Amazon today. Paul Kelly is a genius. Thats all I can say...
Oh, and I'm working on translucent panel applets.
This weekend was another great weekend. Friday night I went to star (Robin) and Taska's place for drinks. We were celebrating the fact that Robin is joining the staff of an Evil Empire. His new job sounds like a lot of fun and best of all is located in the Mission area. mjs and stephane brought the gang along. We mixed crazy martinis. When I got home eskil, Andrew, Gautam and Dave turned up so we went up to their place. I woke up on Saturday on their couch at noon :-)
Dan's neighbours in Oakland held a party Saturday night. Once again it was a night of extreme fun. A band called Breast kicked off the party. They were really cool. The the DJs started spinning all kinds of stuff - lots of fun. We ended up going to bed^H^H^Hcouch when the sun came up. It was the end of daylight saving so we got an extra hour of partying.
I'm enjoying my life a lot these days.
... falling asleep to Coltrane's Blue Train ...
I've had a good couple of weeks. The 15th was my birthday. That night I went out to the Outback Steakhouse with eskil, Arlo, uzi, jlbec, Amy, Tracy and yosh. Dinner was fun. Ate too much cow. Drank too much beer. Afterwards we stumbled across the road to the Peppermill. I love that place. People began feeding me drinks. I had a pink squirrel (after hearing about it from robey), two Zombies and another drink - possibly an apple martini, though possibly not. Much of the night was blurry. Eskil and I were both very very drunk. Joel and Amy were very kind to give us a lift home and put up with our drunkennes, though I'm sure it was amusing to them at some level. I was reminded again that I need to make an occasion for Amy to mix lots of cocktails because the has both the enthusiasm and the training for it :-)
That week I ended up feeling pretty depressed about my life. I don't think it was the "I'm getting old" depression or anything. Seeing my friend Bec from Perth cheered me up a lot. She stayed at my place from Thursday to Saturday. It was good to catch up, talk about old times, find out what people are up to. She is teaching English in Tokyo and had stories about living there. It sounds like a facinating place to live for a while but I have the feeling that it would annoy me for a lot fo the reasons that San Francisco does (ie: too crowded and uptight and too obsessed with work). I would like to live in Japan at some point but I should probably move somewhere else between now and then.
On Saturday night Dan had a party. It was sort of a birthday party for his neighbour Amy, but it was mostly just a party. I had a really great time. Dan's roommate Cyrus his a DJ and so are some of their neighbours. We drank and danced till about 4 in the morning. Then we went next door where one of their neighbours has an awesome little studio set up. I would have liked to go to the Danger party that night, but I was already overbooked. We crashed on Dan's floor and in the morning BARTed back from Oakland to San Francisco and went to the Kilowatt for a beer on the way home.
Last night I went out to dinner with raph, chema, yosh and nullity for Ethiopian in San Jose. Raph and Chema are in town for the OSDN printing conference. It was good to catch up with them both - and I hadn't seen Seth for quite a while either. Then I caught the train up to the city, taxi-ed home, dropped my crap off, changed my shirt and taxi-ed back down to Popscene. Dan was there and so was Molly (a girl I met at Dan's party). It was the regular popscene crowd (fun) and the regular popscene music (fun, too much Morrissey).
Who knows what the weekend will bring...
war: The Whitehouse and the Pentagon don't have concrete goals in this "war on terrorism". Thats perhaps for the best. I guess one of their implied goals is killing Osama bin Laden. By killing Osama bin Laden they can make an example of him - to discourage others from being involved in terrorism. Sure five or ten more terrorist leaders will rise from where he fell, but making an example is important - especially back home. As the bombing raids go on I become less and less convinced that they'll get him. He is well funded and doesn't seem to mind hiding out in the desert. I'm not particularly sure that he is still in Afghanistan. He could have easilly slipped away to some former-soviet islamic republic to the north, or west to Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia. If he does get away and does survive this sends a pretty scary message to the American people and future terrorists - that the entire might of the American military can't catch one guy. Perhaps this won't happen. Perhaps US military intelligence knows whats going on on the ground, know where Bin Laden is and are planning to take him out some time soon, but we haven't seen any evidence of that so far.
On CNN this morning they were talking about how there are plans to use helicopters over Afghanistan. I'm glad I'm not going to be there...
life: Goes on... Caught up with my friend Dave Chinnery from Perth at Popscene. I really like that club - I just have one suggestion: morrisey must die.
I'll be catching up with another friend from Perth this week - my friend Bec who has been living in Japan for the last few years.
Today is my birthday. I got a family phone call at some ungodly hour this morning. I'm not used to having birthdays somewhere where I only know a few dozen people well. I'm used to big birthday parties.
world: The talking heads on CNN are becoming a parody of themselves. Their refusal to consider negotiations with the Taliban who're making very reasonable offers, while cutting deals with the military dictatorship in Pakistan would make me sick it if wasn't so funny. Australia is heading towards and election. Politics in Australia are pretty broken. Before this S11 stuff the biggest issue in Australian politics was the fate of Afghani and Iraqi refugees which the government claims aren't really refugees. People don't seem to see how these issues are connected. To quote Can't Hardly Wait (I've been on a teen coming-of-age movie binge this weekend) "You're all sheep! Baa!".
I'm sad. The "civilized" world has chosen war rather than peace. Rejecting the attempts at a diplomatic solution offered by the Taliban means we'll never know if we could have resolved this without killing more innocent civillians. It looks like the people responsible for the murder in New York and Washington will never be brought to justice in court. The people being accused of these crimes will simply be killed in their beds or while hiding in caves. Even Tony Blair admitted that the evidence against Bin Laden and al-Qaeda wouldn't stand up in a court as he presented it in the British parliament. So describing whats going on right now as justice is simply a joke.
I wish I could remove myself from what is happening in Afghanistan, but I grew up with stories from my parents of their travels through Asia. I assoiciate the places that were bombed today not with terrorism, but with stories of wonderful people.
The world hasn't fallen apart thank god. The Onion's issue this week was amazing. For some reason however, the Whitehouse has decided to speak out against humor and criticism. But thats only the start of it. The discussion about allowing wiretaps without the approval of a judge isn't about whether it should be allowed or not, but how long it should be allowed for - for five years or indefinately. Perhaps I'm just stupid but wouldn't it be better to make judges more available to give their approval. The government here still refuses to try diplomatic means to get Osama bin Laden. What is it that he'll say in a court that they don't want him to say?
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