Recuperating in the basement after an unusually-brief movie night at my house (the screening was an accidental success - a bad dub of
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (
and this blue screen is where we flipped sides on the laserdisc) but it was a first for that movie for a number of people. Some trivia, some
Gilliam conversings afterwards, then people went home. (What, no second movie? This is highly unorthodox!)
somewhere around here is where the second ghost parenthe closes.)
2 am. ICQ flashes its heraldry in the bottom right of my screen. For the record, and since it's not listed anywhere else here - /me is #70134945. Join the rarified ranks of iDEATH among my occasional extra-Everything Everythingite conversers! I fire it open. Travish asks if I'm awake. Since a lie would be amusing but only mildly, I ask what he has in mind. A bike ride. In the rain, I ask? Why not? Good enough for me.
A half-hour later I'm out in the night. I think I hear the nocturnal stirrings of waterfowl but a few blocks later discover that what I actually heard was Travish's cow-shaped noisemaker as he was trying to catch my attention and catch up to me.
We ride. We ride and ride and ride. We ride near and we ride far. We ride a little and we ride a lot. Granville Island, Burrard Bridge (we could break into Josh's parents' boat!), Kitsilano, Dunbar, UBC, Wreck Beach...
we are on the beach and in the woods and in the middle of a city and we are alone and it is glorious. And we talk.
I talk, and he listens. The whole gamut is run; schooling (and lack thereof), online communities past and present, (wow, next time I'm wearing gloves - my hands are soaked!) Everything's (positive) impact on my view of the Internet's community-shattering influence, creativity, a number of excuses I have used and continue to labour beneath, (he's getting cramped, we slow down) the more-recent Michelle, why what happened and what didn't happen may have elapsed the way it did and did not, and a recall of a past conversation with him which he absolutely denies - punching a hole in the very basis of my attempted ego-destruction of last year. I am glad to learn of the flaw. The more flawed my views are, the more human I feel.
Know what? I'm starving! Where can we get some breakfast?
Nothing's open yet, it's 5:30 am.
Shit! We've been out in the rain for three hours?
I'll bet steaming loaves are being unloaded from bakeries as we speak
Yeah, but they don't open until 9 am.
Benny's bagels?
Not 24 hours anymore, the fuckers.
What then?
Denny's.
Shit.
With no alternative at that hour we make time through brilliantly devoid streets, discovering the air-resistance barrier of our two-wheeled conveyances until eventually we get to the diner.
God damnit, why do wait staff always have to second-guess my requests of a banana split and milkshake for breakfast?
Despite having much nicer gear (the Spandex shorts, gloves, a sanded frame, clippy pedals, the whole she-bang) than I (street gear, spare parts-cycle) my co-conspirator is not as accustomed to rides of such duration or intensity so upon his grease intake we part ways and I return home through the dawning traffic where I burn, sleepless, waiting to hear from a friend who is waiting until she thinks I'll have had a long sleep to get ahold of me. As a result, I hold out until four hours earlier than she calls me (noon) before falling asleep, in which time I, in only a passing lucidity, decide to engage in some etext cut-and-posting.
I must be more aware of the potential ramifications of my actions. The posting of two Oscar Wilde stories in this spree results, I am told, in my inadvertently leading two people at work to tears. Must remember to only node the equivalent of Muzak (background thought-content?) during working hours.
Sometime today a queer everything milestone was passed: I now have 50 (only 50? out of 4000?) write-ups of over 10 reputation, so everything on my page-of-first-50 when I user-search-query myself is over 10 rep.
Wow, what a load of garbage.
Note: that last comment applies to my first-page-user-search nodescape, not the contents of this writeup. At least, not subjectively.
in our last episode... | p_i-logs | and then, all of a sudden...