I am the bearer of the “Grim Beeper” this week, and of course there are all these events and the thing goes off like crazy. The error messages that come to my pager are wonderfully cryptic, such as:

“15342.cust.sjc1.foobaz.com move failed report or system fudge attack roentgen gearhead honkenstein”

And then I call someone on the phone or poke at my computer. It is all similar to Charlie Chaplin’s classic Modern Times but without so much machinery.

The odd combination of daylight saving end plus a gray day makes me feel as though I’m in Northern England instead of Southern California. I had tea today.

Question of the day: Why do health food freaks eat “sea salt” instead of regular salt. Isn’t it all just NaCl?

I saw one of those scrolling marquee things at a FAMILY FUN CENTER the other day somewhere out between Fontucky and Barstow.

It read, in sequence:

GOD BLESS AMERICA
HALLOWEEN HAUNT
100 ROOMS
17 GHOSTS
STARRING..
THE RAT LADY!
GOD BLESS AMERICA…

Together we stand. The rat lady too.

Dear Diary:

I am a 36 year old computer geek. I type unix shell commands for a living. I didn’t shower today. I didn’t talk to anyone hardly except the cat. Will I find happiness?

Hugs,

iggy

P.S. MILKMAN DAN I HATE YOU

broken servers / bad attitude / small red insect bites on hands / poor response to stress / inability to protect homework from dogs / car has bird crap on it / insomnia / spasms in thoracic spinal area / mass of threatening or annoying mail on counter / looming economic collapse / war on turbans / gastroesophageal reflux.

purl, divine whether I’ll alienate everyone at my job as I slide into bofh nastiness
* purl shakes the psychic prismatic sphere…
It says ‘Eat more cheese, then ask again,’ ignatz

And that’s pretty much what I have to say today.

I’m not sure whether it’s my various minor medical conditions or my innate laziness, but I’m always sleepy. I should be sleepy rihgt now (12:35 a.m) but I feel this way any time I’m moving less than 40 mph.

In other news, I made good chicken soup today, figured out I actually can pay the $600 the IRS just demanded (SURPRISE MONEYSUCKING HALGHALGHALGHALG) and I’m about to have a bit of good whisky. Even in a declining empire at war, some things go well.

Nasty rumor of the day: Beck is a Scientologist. Please let this not be true..

What is usually described as an “eerie calm” prevails today, although it’s just because most of the staff is out of the office at work. A cloud of deadly goo appears to have been sprayed over the nation by mysterious terrorists, wars are breaking out all over, and we’re having a police state installed this week.

Not only that, but I missed lunch.

I think I’ll spend the rest of this decade under my bed. Send pizza.

Today I bought a few things. The Sigur Ros album (they’re wonderful!), a hardback set of the Lord of the Rings because I haven’t had a good set of that book in ages, and some food. I cooked and ate the food with my mother. Red peppers, yellow squash, tri-tip and albacore tuna grilled over charcoal. A really, really good meal.

I was thinking as I cooked about the fact that this was a really good day, and realizing that it wasn’t until my successful treatment for depression that I realized good days required some effort, and could sometimes be achieved. When you’re depressed, sometimes passivity is your worst enemy. “Good days” seem to arrive infrequently on their own, like FedEx packages.

Later, if you’re lucky, you find out that bits of the Good Life can be acquired if you’re willing to go find them. In this case, about $20 worth of food cooked and shared produced a nearly perfect evening, and not just because the Gods smiled. Mostly it was a little work and attention, and a desire to make a day work well. Experience is sometimes an excellent teacher!

I have to stuff the thing with food, it gets bloated and lumpy as a result. It gets a bump on its toe, I try to remove the bump, and toxic chemicals burn a hole in the toe. Its liver is acting up and I’m supposed to go in for an oil change, or something. The skin is flaky at times and the damn thing needs daily cleaning. Apparently it’s equipped for a cool feature called ‘sex’ but that turns out to involve all sorts of extra stuff that’s a real pain. Parts of the middle of it miscellaneously and mysteriously hurt. It exudes salty water. And let’s not even talk about I have to go to the trouble of removing from it all the time.

This thing is bogus, it doesn’t live up to the brochure at all.

I think I’ll become a being of light.

What is now routine on television occurs again; bombs, distant lights of explosions, much discussion of military hardware on news channels. It seems all for no good, and any good that comes will be the fruit of some much harder work.

In a happier mode, i cooked well again today. Grilled tri-tip, chicken, yellow squash, and mushrooms. Yellow squash are especially good cooked over coals with some mesquite wood smoke.

It’s odd living in an empire in decline. While I sit in luxury here, I can hear the barbarian wars in the distance..