So my last post was silly; this is because I was totally and completely wasted when throwing it up. (Also, not worth going back and looking, it's just a link. A useless one really.)

I didn't mean to get drunk the other night, but boy howdy, did I. I'm terrible with stress and anxiety — I magically hold it in, letting it take root in me in various ways — the end of last week and through Wednesday I managed to dream about work*, managed to feel the tension (again) in my jaw, managed to totally be a walking timebomb.

Drinking on Wed fixed that, sadly. It's a terrible solution to a stupid problem. But today, right now, I feel good. I felt good yesterday. I drew on Tuesday; I made a terrific leap with a project last night. This morning, I wrote.

That's the biggie, the one that matters right now. I've been at this job for a year now and have never gotten into a schedule or pattern that made me happy. But the last few weeks have been course correction on that.

I'm actually unsure how many words I've thrown down; it isn't enough, but I was also doing some tedious editing. I've got a plan for the next 8 or 10 weeks and it's pretty badass.

* I think I dreamed about work last night too. This time it didn't seem to have anxiety attached to it, which is nice. But honestly and seriously: I do not believe, not for one moment, that is acceptable, in any fashion, to have entire dreams about SQL tables. In fact, there are terms that should never appear in a dream. I'm not exactly sure what the list entails yet, but I think I know what I'll be trying to compile today.

Morning all! As usual, I have too many tabs open. Here's some stuff I've been poking around:

• Bi-sexuality in animals:
  

  What is more, homosexuality among some species, including penguins, appears to be far more common in captivity than in the wild. Captivity, scientists say, may bring out gay behaviors in part because of a scarcity of opposite-sex mates. In addition, an enclosed environment boosts an animal’s stress levels, leading to a greater urge to relieve the stress. Some of the same influences may encourage what some researchers call “situational homosexuality” in humans in same-sex settings such as prisons or sports teams.

• Obama voted for the wiretap bill last week. This one hurt me a lot — I haven't seen anything discussing what his defense is but it's certainly questionable since Clinton voted against it and McCain didn't vote.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may fail. This is insane. I haven't followed up over the weekend on this, unsure if things are looking better or worse this morning for them.
• Ok, crap. Money issues, politics and now fires have destroyed 1/3 of the avocado crops in CA? One more thing to my growing list of "shit we are running out of": oil, bees, bats, seafood, bananas, money, rice, corn and now avocados. It's a wonder I'm sleeping at night still.
• Good news though: Engineers at MIT have found a way to improve solar panels — at a 40x increase. Oh hell yes.
• And Aubrey — this is up your way — literary tattoos.
• And finally, an article on passenger trains in America. I ride a train every weekday now, have ridden from Washington DC to Montreal (back in 1994) and have the 'oh, if only the high-speed train between Sac-town and LA existed already' too often.

Hm. That's a depressing set of links. How about an awesome set of E.T. cartoons to help balance it out? Wo doesn't love E.T. and Soundwave sharing a slurpee?

wanna be a writer on lost? wanna see how they write scripts at least? trust me, the format for the lost scripts is unorthodox. or, at least, rated-r.

Wikihistory - a (very) short story where time travellers hang around on forums discussing how they fix history, Wikipedia-style.

[via: brunns]

Someone at work today mentioned "Breakfast of Champions" and asked if I had read it.

I had to not only say no, but also that I have never read any Vonnegut.

I believe this might be my most embarrassing secret. Seriously. After I finish reading "Omnivore's Dilemma," I think I have to correct this travesty.

He brushes his hair aside, out of his eyes, out of the time, place where he met you. It isn't easy but that's okay, not much ever is. He rises up, by the bootstraps, feeling the bottom, feeling his feet leave the bottom of the pool, scraping against the coral and the sand and the rocks that cut his forehead years ago when he had slipped and scarred himself, tiny white flecks now that mark him, his skin. He squints, wondering when he is, what he is trying to prove by being out here again, pushing his body through water as thick as jell-o, trying to keep the sunlight off of him, crouched in the water, a tiger ready to pounce if the sun comes close enough to him, close enough to touch, to feel. Dots, birds, gulls, circle the yellow orb, the clouds, moving through the air, talking to each other, never noticing him. Today will be the day. He knows this much. This is it.

Given a dizzying moment of cessation, I set about the cumbersome work of forgetting. E's quiet legs; the desert expanse of his shoulders and the soft taper of his back; the domesticating animal of the body he's claimed. The few strained and truncated conversations with C; the weighty tears after talking to K. My fullest self, scattered like ashes or expelled like waste somewhere between here and New England (Detroit?). Now that so much has been so painstakingly forgotten–or will be soon–what's left to be so urgently felt? It's no news: we begin and end at Point A, with no room for trajectory, and no excuse for it.

Tomorrow, I will tattoo a word and a date onto my bare forearm, and spend the coming weeks loving the ink, and mourning the needle's loss.