Packt in the Bottom of a Bag

Rough day. Disaster struck on my way to work, so that I arrived shaky and had to head home and sit numbly on the sofa for five hours. Then I had soup. Then I read a lot about algae near Hawaii.

Went to Pennington's birthday celebration at S4*, and as our group was the best dressed in the club, people watching was rather dull. (And we weren't even trying. But Friday is the night a lot of straight people come out, aside from which a lot of the gay scene here is as shitty-jeans-and-tshirt as the rest of the city. Although James did get to ogle an exceptionally built cocktail waiter.)

Pennington has just founded a liberal think tank; the area could certainly use one. This is the first time Pennington has ever seemed my age; I'm used to thinking of him as ten years older. (He is older, although I don't know how much older.)

I miss Val. Part of it comes from reading Post Captain, which is about a very close friendship, but part of it is just missing the person who is in many capital-R Romantic respects the great love of my life. I'd feel better about it if I knew we could choose to live in the same city again soon, but we can't really. Maybe in three years. As James and I have already agreed, I need to hurry up and be successful enough to employ us all.

* Largest gay club in Dallas. Employer/ex-employer of several friends and acquaintances.

Cement Postcard with Owl Colours

Today mostly unremarkable. Worked, read fanfiction, punched back an episode of Charlie Rose that felt alternate reality white is black disorienting. Not in an entirely bad way, but . . . strange. It was with Ehud Barak, currently the Israeli defense minister. I don't know whether to believe him and be hopeful or to be angry with him for jerking me around. (I leave aside the comments that were casually inflammatory.) I don't know why I should have a personal stake in the Mideast peace process, but for some reason I do take it personally. (You can watch it or read a transcript here, if you're interested.)

(It is strange to me that I am so emotionally affected by politics, but don't have an impulse to put energy into it -- to run for office, hand out fliers, volunteer at polling stations, or even write letters to the editor about it. I suppose one could argue what I'm interested in is not politics, but Extremely Contemporary History.)

I also left the interview process with a sinking feeling that Barack Obama could pass healthcare, restore the economy, fix education, fix entitlement programs, fix the deficit, end two American wars, and negotiate peace in the Middle East, and then lose reelection to some postmodern Republicans appealing to what "everyday Americans" know. The fact that such a thing seems plausible to me is horrifying, and I will have to lock it away in my "things not to think about" file. I have so little faith to fall back on these days.

Fortunately, the day ended with "Acadia Sessions," a Maine public television program that profiles local bands in Portland, Maine. Their quality is mixed, as you might imagine, but I always feel like I'm getting away with something, and I get to casually behave as though of course I know the lineups of local bands in Portland, Maine. Today it was Phantom Buffalo, some pretty fun indie neo-psychedelia by art school grads.