zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

#noreason

here i am.

celebrating the 20th (+ or -) anniversary of The Postal Service's "Give Up," one of exactly three good things that happened to me in 2003. this is, most likely, unless...holograms?...the last chance i'll ever get to see Postal Service (yes, and Death Cab) live. and that's fine. i guess. i'm not fond of finality, but the world keeps reminding me that finality doesn't need to be liked. it just shows up. and you must deal.

i hate how old i'm feeling. and the chance of a transformative event in my life transpiring to make me feel young again sounds both unlikely, and if it did happen, intensely painful to weather.

i think i could make it work if i could somehow derive sustenance from music. some albums are banquets, some are a pilfered donut in the break room after everyone else has gone home, others are that meal you have after a funeral and nobody knows what to say. "Give Up" has been, for me, a movable feast that never fails to sate and then make me yearn for more as soon as it all goes quiet again.

brb, cheese

one more before bed, ran into a couple of Minnesota cousins at the family reunion. the purple one wouldn't shut up about Richard Baseheart, and the other two just wouldn't shut up.

lots of amazing costumes. SO many Velmas. a surprising number of Hazbin-ites, which i guess is the new Homestuck??? anybody????

oh, and i got to play a couple of my own personal arcade white whales.

among today's prize gets are: my original SW Kenner "Emperor Palpatine" (encased in lucite) signed by Ian McDiarmid, an autographed Simon Bisley print, and a Pac-Man eatin' noodles.

more tomorrow.

i've heard a lot about this nightclub.

even a temple in ruins is a suitable place for communion.

"what knockers!" "oh! thank you, doctor."

KISSINGER'S DEAD!!!

finally, after hours of back-breaking labor, the tree is up...i'm going back to bed

(currently pictured: cognition processing cores 17 through 372)

it's October. summer's corpse has just begun to turn.

Went to Cahokia Mounds Historic Site today and climbed Monks' Mound. pictured is St. Louis, and i also got a good view of the smokestacks of Alton IL, where my father's family first lived when they arrived in the States. somewhere in the tractless wastes between is where i live, and to the left of that somewhere is the Weldon Springs site--two earthen monuments separated by a short distance, vastly different in composition and intent.

i meditated briefly at the top and thought about place and permanence, how the indigenous people would have thought about time before the arrival of European colonists, about how they might have seen the universe in permanent cycles with change being an occasional anomaly; their world ensconced in an egg of eternity. i'm probably wrong about that. all i have are quasi-educated guesses.

looking out at the city in the distance, it occurred to me that this would be a great place to be to watch the nukes rain down. i'd have, what, three seconds of watching the bulidings crumble into ash and the Arch twisted up like a paperclip until the blast wave hit? what an amazing three seconds that would be...of course, knowing me, i'd be looking at my phone trying to pull up the "Koyannisqatsi" soundtrack, unable to remember if VLC sorted Philip Glass under "P" or "G" and i'd miss the whole thing. fwoosh.

one of the shining stars at the center of my universe has blinked out. Goodbye Pearl, you will be with me forever.

Pearl

SHE LIVES! SHE LIIIIIIIVES!!!

https://youtu.be/Jm-upHSP9KU

at The Pageant, nine while nine and i'm waiting for the Sisters (of Mercy)

i wonder how many people here have a wadded-up character sheet from their 1998 OG World Of Darkness campaign tucked into their back pocket

i suppose it's too much to hope for that i can get Doktor Avalanche's autograph.