If only I could read the mysterious entrails of the current entry I would be a very wise man indeed.

Y


esterday, Elly's online journal had its first entry in weeks. Overjoyed, I left a kind message in her guestbook welcoming her back from the dead. She wrote back an even kinder message suggesting that we bury the hatchet. I quickly agreed. So now it seems I'm out of the Elly wars. But this isn't to say I won't continue to read and be fascinated by the strange accidental surreality of her journal.

Further adding to the Elly mystery is the fact that her last name is now Melvin, not Jordaan. Mr. Planet Gregory and I are wondering if perhaps she got married. Something strange is definitely afoot; if only I could read the mysterious entrails of the current entry I would be a very wise man indeed.

---

THIS JUST IN (8:53 AM EDT): Peggy is in labour! we are expecting the imminent arrival of her and Zachary's mutual spawn. Peggy's parents and Jessika are both headed down from Malvern for the event. As we know, there is currently a sun-moon opposition. Sun is in Virgo and the Moon is in Pisces. Expect a little anally-retentive tight ass with insipid, tearful emotions.

---

ONLY ON THE INTERNET! Read Rory's account of his recent crash. For a different perspective, re-read the newspaper article.

---

I


n the afternoon, at Cocke Hall, I upgraded my art pages by adding page-to-page navigation in the manner of this journal. Now it's a much more fun section of my site to tour, not that I really think I'll ever sell any of my paintings. Touring the gallery, I realized that many of my paintings have scurried off to points unknown.

When you have no social skills you have considerably more computational power to devote to other things.

Back at Kappa Mutha Fucka, my house, a cute little chocolate brown puppy sat on the front porch, shyly wagging her tale at me. What a perfect little dog it was, complete with bowls of food and water. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a meteorite slashed past me and replaced the puppy with a smoking crater. (Just stay calm and ignore him folks, that's Ricky, my tendency to fictionalize.) I hoped foolishly the puppy had moved in with us, but (thankfully) it turned out that she was just a temporary guest. Her name was Reba, and she belonged to Grace, Leah's older sister, who was visiting from Richmond.

I drank beers with her and Deya for a little while until Leah came home. After that, the two sisters mostly sat on the front porch talking privately. I later learned that Grace thought Deya and me "surly." I never win: with girls, either they think I'm surly or I'm hitting on them. I overcompensate from one time to the next. Social skills are more complex than transcendental mathematics. That idiot savants can calculate square roots to 24 decimal places in their heads is no mystery; when you have no social skills you have considerably more computational power to devote to other things.

Matthew Hart showed up. He had an unusual giddiness to him, no doubt related to the uncomfortable issues of yesterday. He and I sat together inside the house drinking beer and wondering if Peggy had yet delivered her kid. He called the birthing center every 20 minutes for news.

He and I bought more beer, ordered a pizza, and socialized for a time with Leah and Grace. The energy in the house isn't nearly as bad as the circumstances would imply.

But nothing is simple or straightforward. Even more than usual, Matthew wants to get drunk and stay drunk. He suggested buying scotch. I would have, but then his plan morphed into one of buying champagne and going to visit Peggy at the birthing center. By then I was bloated and tired, so I crept off to my room and took a prework nap.

I awoke with a start at one point to Matthew announcing through my door that Peggy's kid was born, and that it was a healthy baby boy. She'd called the thing "Baboose" while pregnant, but I don't yet know what it's post-uterine name is.

It's a fascination in the perverse, like my various fascinations in the socially inept.

T


onight here at Comet, I had a long phone conversation with Katie, the girl from South Carolina who visited me on September 1st. She told me about her adventures with a group of "fratboys" who work at a Coors plant and share a house near hers. They're not real fratboys, they just look and act like fratboys, and she's developed an odd fascination in them. It's a fascination in the perverse, like my various fascinations in the socially inept.

Also, the article by James Plummer about these musings is already on the Cavalier Daily's website. It's a nice positive article, which is refreshing given the beating that online journals usually get in the mainstream/non-journal media ("they're weird," "they're petty," "they're self-indulgent," etc.). I'm always surprised that people aren't more shocked by my lifestyle. Plummer is about as shocked¹ as anyone, but buried in my vice he finds virtue, which he distills into a spirit of enviable individualism. Of course, it bears noting that Mr. Plummer had already been a musings fan for some months. He says Lucy Huntzinger was the one who originally gave him my URL. That's interesting, because although he and I live in the same town, the recommendation to see the musings came from hundreds of miles away. It's a cliché I know, but really, it still blows my mind that the Internet has in some respects rendered the concept of place irrelevant.

To me the Internet still seems like a dream state, something from which I "wake up" when I leave the computer.

On a related note, today I received in the mail a Zip disk from Alan of heinovision (who insists that I not capitalize the h). The disk contains the entire heinovision archive. It's always strange for me to have a real-world manifestation of an internet action, especially a manifestation as tangible as a package in the mail. To me the Internet still seems like a dream state, something from which I "wake up" when I leave the computer. To the reality-checking part of my brain, it's like dreaming of an anonymous nubile maiden only to wake up and find that she's mysteriously materialized in bed beside me.

---

Private note on the public web to Kristin & Kathleen: What's your email address(es)? Matthew Hart and I might come visit you Saturday night.

---

¹Hold on a moment, since when is interest in astrology lumped together with alcoholism and petty crime as a vice?

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?970916