Hi, this is MorgaN's site and I am morgaN. Please, go ahead and aquaint yourself with who I am. Then, once you know my background, feel free to read my personal rants and musings and such throughout the rest of this page. Come back often, there's always something new.
Also, be sure to check out the rest of SmallTownFreak; this whole site is mine :)
And of course, Have Fun!

My, I get bored when I really want to be doing something online and my service provider is crapping out on me. You're not ever supposed to be offline with cable! WTF!?! Grrr.

Heheh; after I've been eating raisins Hazel nibbles on my fingers :)

I thought of another good thing about my gerbils. When I've eaten the last Oatmeal Creme Pie in the box, I don't have to throw it out; they love tearing it up. Yeah...

I've come up with a new benifit of having gerbils. When I'm playing with them I think "ooh, I'll give them each a raisin" (they like raisins) and then I think "hey, I have a big box of raisins!" and then I start eating raisins (I like raisins, too).

I just caught a bit of The A-Team on TV. My it's odd watching the guy who played Barkly on Star Trek praise the way Mr T says "got no time for the jibber-jabber!"...

Ahhh, I feel refreshed. I just got like 13 or so hours sleep; much needed. Then I did this yoga thing which is meant to be done early upon waking that I was introduced to at one of the con workshops.

The con was great! This one was a lot more mellow than most and it wasn't a particularly large one (about 50-60 people). There were a few people who didn't show up that I wanted to see, but there were many others that did show up, so all was good :) . As I mentioned, I went to a yoga workshop on Saturday morning; it was really great! We did various posses and this nice routine and then listened to this guided meditation tape while lieing down. Very few people made it all the way through that, it being 45 minutes long, very relaxing, and all of us very tired. I fell asleep very smoothly, and it was really deep and nice, though it only lasted about 30 minutes, and then I gently woke up with about 5 to 10 minutes left of the meditation and just shifted right back into it; very pleasant. For the second workshop I simply joined many other people in watching The Usual Suspects. I'd seen it before, but it's a good movie and I didn't feel like being very active at the time.

Coffee House on Saturday night was wonderfull. Maddy, who I don't believe I'd met, was amazing singing and playing guitar. She was seriously impressive. She had played outside at various times as well and sitting around listening to her was so nice. Rick did his act where he hammers a couple long nails into his nose and swallows a really long metal rod. He also ate fire, which I hadn't seen him do before. He decided it wasn't the right setting to breathe fire, though. Nik, Ben, and Silent Bob all performed their wonderfull musical madness. Moo, who is a great person, sang amazingly (appearantly I've inadvertantly delayed her on producing the contact list by writing my sites address with my contact info and thus distracter her.. sorry guys..)! Erin sang a couple songs, including a really pretty one that she wrote herself; go Erin! Oh yeah, there was this hard rock rendition of the Mario Bros. music. Hmm, there was much other stuff which I don't remember right now. I was rather tired at the time and occasionally unconcious, so I'm sure my memories were burning at less than full efficiency.

Nik will probably be moving into SmallTownFreak some time soon (when he finally decides upon a name he wants to use). I look forward to it; Nik's awsome! Alas, he's going to be moving (I wish I remembered where..) relatively soon, and won't be making it to any more cons in this area. I'll have to visit him while traveling. Nik's mom, Anita, is also awsome! She's soo great to talk to. She's got a very possitive outlook. I really like the stuff she was saying during Friday night's worship, about losing people, for whatever reason, from our lives, and seeing it not as a loss but for the increadible fortune to have had them in our lives at all. She said it better, but that was the idea. She manages to uplift me even when I'm already doing great :)

Hmm, I'm sure I'm missing stuff. Devon and I got to hang out a lot (see her page for what we got up to); yah! I got to spend more time talking to Felix than I had before and that was really cool. Ummm.. I got to talk to Peter, from Reston Church, who's a really cool guy, has great games, and gave me a ride there and back. Okay, I've spent enough time trying to remember more. But again, it was a great weekend! :)

Well, I didn't get the Discordian stuff done. Oh well. Some time I should just compile some pages of propaganda and make flyers and stickers and all sorts of stuff to always have available, rather than just creating it all really quickly in a single evening. Whatever. I'll give people there this web address anyway, so that they can come and see that I really did plan making some stuff for them to consume and that those plans just sort of didn't happen very much at all. I'll bring some Oatmeal Cream Pies for them to consume instead :)

And now, off to groom...

I'm setting up mailing list software! :)
It doesn't take looking around this site for too long to realize that I'm big into giving people the ability and oppertunity to communicate their own words. VAXination is an example. As is my giving sites to friends (who never seem to take advantage of it..). I really like communities and I love creation, so it's just something I sort of tend to work towards. The mailing list thing is not quite cooperating, but I guess it's coming along. I don't know if the problem is in Majordomo (which I'm new to, as an admin) or SendMail (which uses the most screwed up archiac config files!!..). Oh well, I'll figure it out soon enough, I imagine.

Devon may be moving into the SmallTownFreak domain soon! T'would make me happy :)

I think I'm going to set up some sort of guestbook system on this server (yet another public communications channel! :) ), or perhaps I'll write my own. I don't know if I'll actually take advantage of it myself, since I've already got VAXination, but Devon wants one and the thing she's got at her current site is rather broken and it's the kind of project I enjoy.

Ack, I'd better get to work on that Discordian propaganda! (it seems like I really ought to set up my own Discordian page, from all the time I spend talking about it. I dunno; perhaps. I just don't want to put up something really lame.)

Bouncing about the HyperDiscordia (a great Discordian site) I just came upon a tract on Rants that I rather liked, as well as a Rant on Lust which is great example of the fine art.

So, I guess I'm going to a con the weekend. That's what prompted me to be looking through the HyperDiscordia and other Discordian pages (not that I don't relatively often anyway), as I'm thinking about compiling and bringing some more material. People seemed to appreciate the four pages of propaganda built from material in the Principia that I brought to the con where I ranted on Discordianism. So I'm thinking, some of these folks really were interested but who knows if they'll stay that way without being fed more (this is a truely consumtion based society, after all) up until the point when their own obsessive instincts take over and they drag up the material for themselves. So, hopefully I get some good stuff together by tonight and print out a few copies (maybe even make multiple different sets of propaganda). Then hopefully I'll be able to track down a copy machine that I can use; otherwise I guess I'll just let the stuff float around whoevers grip they happen upon. It'll also work as a good way for me to send my web address out to even more crazy little freaks (hi guys!) and further satiate my exhibitionism.

I think I'll update my links page with some especially good Discordian pages soon. I have recently put up a Freaks section within that page for friends and other interesting people I've come across.

Why have I been compulsively eating all day? It's getting irritating; but I guess it passes the time..

Appearantly there's a con this weekend. As in, starting tomorrow. It seems like nobody told me about this. I'll have to make my arrangements tonight; I want to attend. And it seems like all my local friends are going even; and yet I didn't know about it. Well, I mostly didn't know about it. I sort of knew about it in a vague sense, but I had no concept of it being tomorrow. Hmm, I'll have to see if I can dig up a camera again.

Oh yeah, and I got the address for Devon's whole page, rather than just her personal intro, which I mentioned yesterday. She mentions me and put me the top of her link page :) Yah Devon!

Looking at my logs I noticed that I suddenly had a bunch of different people connecting straight to my CultureCon pictures. I checked some of my other logs to see where they were coming from and it seems that my friend Devon is setting up her own page and linked to that because there are a couple pictures of her. (Hi Devon! (if you're reading this.)) I put a little greeting and intro on top of the page, for those coming here from there.

So, then I decided to delve into my logs a little deeper, to see where else people were coming here from. Most people just connect directly, meaining I or someone else has told them about it (or, possibly, they got the address from my sig in a usenet posting); a few came from some of my old addresses, such as my old Erols account or my dyndns address. I'm glad to see those connections have become quite rare, since I'm not going to maintain the refering pages and they may eventually disapear. Then there were some connections I found more interesting...
I notice my site being scanned by search engine bots fairly often lately, so I guess I'm becoming part of their databases now. One particular search engine seemed to have a great deal of interest in me: northernlight.com. Now, one of the cool things about referal logs and search engines, is I can even tell (usually) what the person was searching for when they came upon me. I found this to be very amusing, here.
I was connected to by someone searching for ErisWerks, a very cool Discordian site that I've mentioned before. I show up at #27 when searching for ErisWerks and am listed as being a page of "Articles & General Info".. okay... My listing comes up right after The Magic Mushroom Growers Guide; cool :)
Someone connected, appropriately, to my Burning Man photo page when searching for "burning man pics". On their search engine that page is listed as "Directories & Lists"; whatever. I place #2 on that search!
Another search that brought someone to this page was "bleached hair", as I'd mentioned mine when I put up pictures showing it off (it's grown out quite a bit now, but I think it still looks really interesting in a not bad way). I ranked #45 on that one.
And then, finally, the weirdest one. Someone was searching for: "dropped ** sizes pounds lost weight 'before/after'" and I came up as #38. What the hell??

Okay, I've figured out how to spell the name of that place where I was that time. Shenandoah! We (my family and a lot of other people from my UU church) spent the weekend in Shenandoah National Park along the northernmost crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. What a beautifull place! I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with some of my friends ([DAVIN] & [BLONDEGODDESS] amongst them) in a truely spectacular setting. And I wrote I lot of weird stuff in my "Cream and Sugar" notebook which doesn't really make much sense, but fits nicely with the wiring in my head. [ack, i'm still typing while you people are loading my page! maybe i should finish writing before saving... keep reloading this page and you'll see my progress :) oh, and if you haven't got an account on VAXination yet, why not?!? do it right now! :)] I don't really know what to say about it. The whole place was beautifull. We (my friends and I..) spent a lot of time out on some rocks (you know, the bigass kind) at the highest point on the mountain (or perhaps just the highest in the park..), finding ways to get comfortable on boulders and talking about everything. On Sunday morning I woke up a little past 5am (!!) and went out to those rocks around 6am. I was the only one out there. I climbed up a rock face that stuck up seperatly from the more popular area (so climbing it was the only way up, save an amazingly stupid jump). It was soo amazing just standing there and looking up and trying to see it all. The sky was soo huge! The world was soo vast and it was all too much to take in! That was a nice experience :) Then, on my walk back to the cabins, I spoted two deer (there are lots of deer up there) very nearby. I gripped a rock behind my on a steep hill and wedged my feet on another rock as I watched them, when suddenly the rock I was standing on extracted itself from the hill and tumbled down, scaraing off the deer. I'm really glad I was holding the other rock soo well; it would have been a very painfull descent. All in all, I came out of the weekend in pretty good shape I think. I managed to smash my body (particularly my legs) up in numerous ways (some, kind of stupid..), but it was worth it for the experience.

Umm, yes, so that was the weekend. Now, it's back to work (actually, I just figure that sounds better than to say, it's off to get a snack and lounge about; but perhaps not..).

So, I am still planning on writing about my weekend in the mountains and stuff. I would have written stuff last night, but I couldn't remember how to spell the name of the place (still gotta look that up; I didn't remember last year either, if you'll look at my really old entries down below). I'd write about it now, but I'm too distracted, as my new 40.9 gig hard drive just arrived! 40.9g! I'm going to be working on some of the system setup for Sirius now. I'll be ordering a 40x4 and a 40x2 character backlit LCD display soon, so that I can work on interface development. Ahhh, I love being a geek :)

I went to the Herndon Festival tonight and saw Moxy Früvous. What a cool band! I may just have to become obsessed with them and become a FrüHead (if I have time). They're just soo fun and great and wonderfull and other such enthused adjectives :) . I guess I actually could keep track of where they'll be playing and intercept them a lot during my travels. During the course of the show I happened to be watching Jian (one of the four members and, I found, the most entertaining) and he looked right at me and made like actual eye contact. It was really weird, coming from someone on stage who I don't know. Not too long after and without my saying anything, Courtney (who's seen them before and knows more about them and such) mentioned that Jian will make eye contact with basicly everyone in the audience. Huh. They're soo cool! They learned stuff about Herndon and the DC area and talked about it between songs and incorporated stuff into their songs. They even played a song just about this area, which was great; about AOL taking over and all the coffee shop concrete dwellers moving in; hillarious and true... Umm, can't remember what else I was going to say about them; ah well. Oh yeah! They're Canadian!! How cool aren't they?! :)

On Saturday, Courtney will set out to begin her 4-6 month trek of the Appalachien Trail, from Maine to Georgia. Wow! Go Courtney! :)

My search for a VW bus continues...

I'm going to be spending this weekend at some camp place in some mountains somewhere. I'm not great at keeping track of where I am when I'm activities organized by others.. I'll be at the Spring Retreat hosted by my U.U. church. It should be fun; some of my friends will be there and I enjoyed last year's.

Okay, so I'm finding myself considering getting a temporary job...
I think I really need to get to sleep now!

So, I've come up with even more things I can do with my traveling companion computer. I'm contemplating setting it up to also play DVDs. This way, I could rent movies at Block Busters all across the country and watch them on a slick little 11.4" LCD display (what I'm considering buying, now) when I'm not busy with other stuff. I would be very proud to have such a powerfull and geeky setup running out of my car :) . This would probably involve getting a fancy video card with TV out, since that would be the easiest thing to connect to the display. This card could also be equiped with a video tuner; that way I'd be able to connect it to an antenna and watch TV, too. I would also need an mpeg decoder card for watching DVDs, since this box will probably be running at 200-233mhz and software decoding would most likely leave a lot to be desired. And, of course, I'd need the DVD drive. For control of the mp3 jukebox while driving I could have a little 4x40 (or similar) character LCD readout mounted in the dash along with simple, standardish controls. Additionally, I could have a remote control that could also control the jukebox AND could control the DVD software. And finally, there would be a wireless keyboard for maintaining my online presence (SmallTownFreak updates and email) and tweaking the system. The LCD monitor could then be mounted somewhere in the back part of the vehicle (I'm not going to be watching it while driving, after all). I won't have guests watching DVDs back there while I'm driving, though, as I don't imagine there's much shock protection built into a computer DVD drive. Hopefully a modern bigass hard drive and a DVD-ROM drive wouldn't be too much for the power supply I'm looking into getting. So long as the LCD monitor runs off it's own seperate connection to the vans power system, I think I ought to be fine. Oh yeah, and I'm considering installing an auxilary battery in the van (ack, I haven't even found my car yet, and I've done all this planning. But that's a good thing, I imagine :) ). I would have the computer and any other peripherals I throw in that might be used while the van isn't running be connected to the auxilary; that way I wouldn't have to worry about draining the battery and being unable to start the van. And I could have this extra battery wired into the engine similarly to the regular one so that while the van is running it'll get charged back up. I'm pretty sure this can be done (I read something with mention to VW bus camper-conversions sometimes being rigged up sort of like this). I'll talk to Charly, he ought to know the feasability. Ack, I just wrote a lot about that, didn't I? Does this stuff belong on the Sirius page? Whatever.

(do I ever sleep??)

Oooh, enthusiasm! A Burning Man group, Fusion Valley, is coordinating a computer network called PlayaNET that anyone in attendance may tap into! This is exciting news for me. I guess I'll have to investigate getting a wireless network card (something I was vaguely considering anyway) or a really long length of coax to run out the van's window.

A lot of my thought lately has been going into what sort of computer setup I'm going to arrange for my travels. I've had all sorts of different ideas on the matter and I really ought to narrow it down so that I can start aquiring hardware and building up the software side of it more. I'm definetely going to have a computer in the van - Sirius. I haven't decided yet if it'll be the only computer though. If I found a cheap enough laptop, I might consider that. Alternatively, I've been contemplating making Sirius a sort of awkward laptop, by giving it a battery input in addition to it's standard ability of feeding off the cars power. Then, when it's back in the car, the battery would recharge. The nice thing about this would be for when I'm getting online at payphones. I'm going to have to get an accoustic coupler - one of those cool little devices that you strap a regular phone handset to and connect to a modem. This'll be necessary for updating SmallTownFreak and for sending/receiving email. If Sirius doesn't leave the van and I don't have a laptop, then I'll have to set Sirius up to automatically dial and then do it's little send/recieve thingy after a brief delay, so that I can throw a length of phone line out the window and run it over to a payphone along with the accoustic coupler. I wouldn't want to leave the couple on the phone while I got back in the van. This would certainly work, but it'd be a little awkward. And if I were able to take Sirius, or another computer, to the phone then I could do all sorts of cool things, like making long distance "phone" calls to home and friends over the internet without paying more than the cost of a local call to my national internet provider. I would even be able to rig up video calls. But this is all just extra fun stuff that I don't actually need to do. Of course, I will have to be somewhat carefull with running Sirius in the vehicle while the engine isn't running; I don't want to kill my vans battery reading emails and updating my web journal. Then again, I can have the computer read the email to me via a voice synthesiser while I'm driving and not worry about it... Soo much to think about!! :)

Hotmail seems to have eaten a whole bunch of my email lately without ever letting me read it. This is not good. I've finally been given more than enough reason to start seriously using my own email system. So, from now on, email me at morgan@smalltownfreak.org. I'll still check the Hotmail account, but not soo frequently. Also, if you've sent me anything in the past week(s?) or so and I haven't responded, consider that I may or may not have actually received it.

I've got it going! Check out the FilthCam Memorial page!

I've pretty much got all of the code worked out for the filthcam memorial page and it's looking really good. Now I've just got to finish sorting through all my old captures to figure out which ones'll make it into the archive. I'll be making it public really soon, and when the actual filthcam is shut off (real soon now :( ) I'll redirect traffic from there to it. So many memories...

I'm back home in VA again. I wasn't in Ithaca for as long as I would have liked; but I'm certainly glad that I got to spend the time there that I did. It was really important to me that I got a chance to see everyone one more time before they move on from this part of their lives. I needed to say goodbye. That isn't to say I intend to let them out of my life by any means. But, the story has diversified, it's no long the whole that I knew it as.

Ugh.. On the drive back I got a speeding ticket. Woops. I've gotta learn to use the cruise control!

The FilthCam will be going offline in just a couple days. I was affraid that I would take it home with me (it is my cam) and that would be the end of it. But, good news! Sarah and Ian will take responsibility for it, and move it to their new place along with them. Yah!
I'm also still working on the FilthCam memorial site, which should hopefully be ready to replace the existing site as soon as it shuts down.

Made it. Six hours on the road; not bad at all. No accidents this time either.
Everyone here seems to be asleep...

Well, I'm making my way back to Ithaca again. This should prove to be interesting...

Oh wow! I've just been browsing through some old files and I found my old web site, from years ago. It wasn't originally a journal site, but eventually it became one and ran between December '97 through September '98. What a trip through time. It's also got a few other sections, but some of them were lost a long time ago (I recall that I only just managed to recover what I did). A bunch of the links outside are dead, too. This is just a historical snapshot, basicly; I'm not going to alter anything. I love the menu bar I'd made for it! The text.. well, most of it's pretty cheesy; but hey, maybe that's the case with this site too and I won't realize it for another two years. Anyway, I've put it up on here, so check it out!

I'm working on a FilthCam memorial site. This weekend will pretty much be the end of the Citadel, and along with it goes the FilthCam. I've been going over all of the pictures that I managed to save from it during the course of it's life..
It's quite a trip, sorting through all those memories...

I've been rendered virtually speechless. I just watched 10 minutes of The Dating Game. What a sad, sorry, sad, sad, sad, display... How.. how can people do that? I'm baffled. I've just witnessed how far humans can completely remove themselves from their integrity. Wow...

And yet I wish I could qualify to be a contestant, and sit there and mock the questions and the host. And maybe break things. I'm not into destruction, but it would really be fun to be on the set for The Dating Game and break things. :)

Mom or Courtney, if you happen to read this: I'm still in Virginia. Various things going on in Ithaca. I'll probably be going up there for a short time on Wednesday; so I may even see you back here before I go.

More Pixy Stix musings: Try pouring pixy dust under your toungue, it's really weird; kind of unpleasant, actually, but also lots of fun :) (is this Pixy Stik masochism? Hey, at least I've never snorted them!; unlike some people...)

Well, I didn't make it to church this morning. I didn't stay up all night, either. Around 6:30, I think it was, I ended up crashing and I've only just gotten up after escaping a rather terrifying dream. I haven't left for Ithaca. That's not happening today. Oh well. I'll work something out, I imagine.

So, after allowing myself to be all upset last night, I calmed down, and then had a great time going happy-crazy. Noone else is home, so I turned on my music really loud, singing along really loud a lot of the time; turned my strobe light on and my regular light off; and danced and pounced about my room (with a minimum of destruction to the various things coating my floor). Then I lay down on my futon with my journal - strobe and music still going - and wrote page after page of weird ranting.. Mostly stuff that goes with my philosophies and Discordianism and stuff. Happy stuff, essentially, anyway.

Now I wake up and find myself confronted with reality again. Hopefully I'll manage to carry my philosophies well in my mind as I deal with this stuff; I certainly prefer being happy when dealing.

Oh well, whatever. Emotion and thought don't seem to be coinciding well in my life lately.

Back to more fun things: I had a great night with Davin earlier. He came over and we talked computers and watched the Fifth Element and stared at WinAmp plugins and downed a whole lot of Pixy Stix. I'll be going to church in the morning and then I can hang out with him some more. Hopefully I'll get to hang out with Margot there too, but she indicated she might not come. Grrr. Ahh well, Conner (sp?) ought to be there, I think.

I expect I'm going to be up all night. I don't feel like sleeping. Besides which, my futon is covered in stuff that I thought would be going up to Ithaca tomorrow..

I've made a new discovery with Pixy Stix. This is something that may not be desirable, since they're soo nice to consume slowly (plus eating them slowly'll make them last a lot longer), but.. If you tear off both ends, carefully, you can pour the whole thing into your mouth really quickly! However, if you have a beard-thing you might find it raining pixy dust when you tip your head forward again, even if you thought you were being carefull.
And why is it that blue is by far the rarest flavor in the pack, when it's clearly the best!? Fiends! And then, of course, purple has to be the most prevalent! Gah!

Please disregard my previous post containing happiness and pleasant anticipation; it was out of place and premature.

Sometimes I wish I could vent or lose my temper or something. This is just a really boring and unfulfilling sort of frustation and upset.

I love random little interactions. I just had a very entertaining (if brief..) conversation at the grociery store with the clerk and the next and only person in line. The focus was upon what I'd carried up for purchase: 3 bags of Pixy Stix (yah!!!), 2 boxes of macaroni, a bigass thing of cherry Koolaid, and a 12 pack of Coke, oh, and some other sort of candy thing that caught my eye and cost way too much. The cashier had fond memories of downing Pixy Stix on street corners. The other customer had fond memories of Kraft macaroni being supperior to her mothers (and she hasn't even had it when I prepare it!). It was nice :) . My total was a whole lot higher than I had indended, though. I only went up there to get the two boxes of macaroni (I've been starving all day and finally decided to make the walk), which would've been $2; but I ended up spending $15. Oh well, it'll help keep me alert and crazy on the road when I drive up to New York. Oh yeah, I'm planning on going back up to Ithaca some time tomorrow, for my final visit to the Citadel of Fuzzy Thinking / Den of Filth.

If you bother to look around the rest of this site, you'll have noticed it changing around a bunch recently. I just can't decide what I want the whole thing to look like or how I want it all organized. But it's getting there..

Also, I've just started developing the system I'll use to update these pages once I'm on the road and really traveling. There'll be a new page which will index all of my posts with brief descriptions of each. I'll be able to upload my new stuff as individual posts & descriptions, rather than editing a whole lot existing HTML and inserting it. The index page will be generated by a script that I'm working on (I've already got an early test functioning really well). It'll be all organized and easily accessable and straight forward and other such good (in this case) qualities. I just need to figure out what I want it all to look like..

Ahhh, but now it is time for me to go make some of my excelent macaroni.

Todays lessons:
Don't let the thrill of succesfully completing the migration of a heavy dresser blind you.
When throwing used Coke cans into a box, be sure that they are actually empty before tossing them.

So, anyone out there have an aircooled VW bus they don't need anymore?

I just crossed 1100 hits for this page (the journal itself, not my whole site). I marked passing 1000 on the 6th. This puts me at like almost 8 hits per day, averege. That's not bad for an unadvertised personal log : )
Thanks, guys, for continueing to come back; it's nice to know I'm being heard.

Ugh, the remaining VW bus on my list, the '79, was "just sold"... That's the one that appealed to me the most, too. Oh well, I guess I'll have to keep looking..

My Burning Man ticket has arrived!! Yah!!!

What a great day it's been! :)

Kyle MacLachlan (of Twin Peaks(!!!) and Blue Velvet(!!)) was on The Daily Show tonight. Appearantly there's a new, indie Hamlet, with him as Claudius. The clip they showed really made it look interesting. It's a modern adaptation (yeah, another modern Shakespeare..), set in New York, retaining (of course..) Shakespearean dialogue. It seems that it's already out, but I don't know where. Maybe it just hasn't reached the cool DC theaters yet. I really want to see this!

I see you checking my page, Plotkin :)
So, what's the plan?

I called a couple people about their VWs today. I called the guy who's ad sounded the most appealing first: a '79 bus for $1800/obo. Alas, no answer, and I really don't know what sort of message, if any, would be appropriate here. Then I called the guy with a '78 bus with camper interior at $2150. No answer there, either. Then I called the guy with the '57 mystery VW at $????. He was there. Turns out it's not a bus though, it's a little car (I think he said it was a Passat; did they make those back then??). He told me all about for a while, though. It's a show car. The underside is painted with some Hawiian beach scene and the engine has a similar horizon painted on it... He said it was appraised at $20,000, but they normally sell for like half. Ugh, not what I'm after even if I could afford it; but still kind of cool to hear him praise :). I called the first two people later on. The one I'm most interested in still didn't answer. The other one answered and told me that theirs was already sold. Well, my options are certainly narrowing... I hope the cheap '79 bus hasn't sold and turns out to be a good, solid vehicle. There's also an '87 Vanagon camper, but I'd really like one that isn't camperized and which isn't newer than '79 (I really like the classic hippy busses) . Then, two, there's an '82 Vanagon for only $500/obo.... maybe I should buy it as a backup bus.....

I've had to educate myself on Volkswagens a whole lot for this. There are lots of web sites out there on VWs and there's a wonderfull community of enthusiasts; but actually understanding all of their vocabulary and stuff takes a bit of research and patience. This is some of what I found out that's most relevant to my situation:
The buses are Type 2 VWs. Beetles and similar cars are Type 1, there are also a type 3 and 4. Within Type 2 exists T1, T2, and T3 (do they try and make it easily confusing?!). The early buses, from 1949-1967 are T1. The windshields on T1s are split down the middle. Various things people may call them: barndoor, microbus, splitscreen, split-window, splitties, early bus. Buses from '68-'79 are the T2s. They have a full windshield. They're also known as: bay-window, wraparound, late bus, minibus, big window bus, hippie-van, and breadloafs. T3s are from '80-'83, and are generally Vanagons or Eurovans. There are also Westfalias (Westies), which are buses that have been converted by the company Westfalia into campers. There are other companies and individuals that camperize buses, but Westfalias seem to be the most prominent. What I'm after is a T1 or T2 (they're soo cute!!) (I'd really love a Deluxe Microbus: 4 skylights and a 7 foot sunroof!) that hasn't been turned into a camper. I want to fully customize the inside myself and I don't want all that extra stuff (built in fridge & stove, closets, internal water system). I want to create my home to match my desires myself.

I'm having a remarkable amount of fun playing with the VA DMV's license plate generator! It's crazy some of the plates I think of as things I'd find amusing to see on the road, that people appearantly already have..
such as (ane I'm sorry this is a pain to read): SOBER (DRUNK simply isn't allowed :)), HIGH, STONED & STONER, WASTED, TRIPPER, TRIPING (I'd like this one, actually), LSD-25, MRY-JANE, CANABUS (hahhahahha love it!), PRN STAR & PORN STR, DRIVING, ASLEEP, SPCD OUT, PLEASE (awww), CORRUPT, MY PLATE, CHAO, ERIS (grr, another one I'd like), GOD, GODDESS, GRUNGE (sorry, Hugh; it's taken.. INF MNKY's available though :)), NOW WHAT (oh man, I want it! that's become like my moto!) & WHAT NOW & WHAT NXT, WHY (that'd be a nice one), WHY NOT (as would that), WHO AM I (who has this???), AVALABL (hehe), EASY, TALK 2 ME, IM COOL (hahahha), HELP ME (hehhe), WHOS NXT (someone has this?!?), FLY W ME, SWT DRMS, FEED ME (oh well, that could've come in handy), DONKEY (can you believe it Sarah!? it's taken! FRKZILA'S available though..), NOT NRML (I like it), HOME & MY HOME (oh well)

There are some that are still availalable that would also really amuse me to see on the road: DRUG BUS / DRUG CAR / DRUG MBL, POT SMKR, VIRGIN, SEX (it doesn't filter that out??), FUKC (hehe), FUCK BUS (now how does it let that through it's filters?!?), KIDNAPR

C'mon people, get these plates and make me laugh!

More my style: SUBSTNC (goes with the "Give me some substance" phrase I've had in my head), FRE&K, FREA (umm, okay, maybe not..), STF (SmallTownFreak!!) (I wish I had stf.org; my plate options offer me just one more reason I wish I had that domain.), GEEK BUS (probably not, but I kind of like it...), ACT SANE :)

Okay, that'll have to be enough for now, I'm falling asleep.

I need to think of what I want my license plate to be!!!

I think I'll call a couple people selling old VW buses tomorrow and find out what I can. Then I'll talk to Charley and figure out when he'd be free to check 'em out with me; he's been into automechanics for a very long time now and I totally trust his opinion in that field. I really want to get this vehicle soon!!! :)

Sarah P. will be visiting on Wednesday.. Yah! :)

Wow; I slept for 15 hours! *yawn* Now, what to do with the rest of the day...?

Since my sister has continued to not mention to her friends the set of programs I wrote for her and them, I'll open it up for public access...
Check out VAXination, my weird little community which I'd like for you to help me build. There, you can input whatever's on your mind and anyone else in the community can read it and post their own musings too. Create an account, it's seriously simple! I spent time writing that thing! (I may even spiff up the interface if people start using it regularly...)

Okay, nap time...

I've begun to feel a little bit tired...

I want to own a whole collection of Pauly Shore movies. The Wea-sel! :)
What?! He was in 'Hefner: Unauthorized'?? I saw that movie - twice! - and didn't notice him! Of course, it took us a while before we even realized that we were watching it a second time; we were kind of baked...
Hey, here's something weird: Pauly was in 'Encino Man' (which I watched earlier today) and his dad played "Prehistoric Man" in 'History of the Word: Part I'...

Productive all night coding is soo wonderfull!!! :)
Alright; off to church...

Sleep is for the sane!!

MorgaN is churning out mad code!! :)

I watched most of Reefer Madness on my computer last night. It wasn't as good as I'd expected. But then again, I was sober.

I played laser tag at a local Ultra Zone last night. Such a great game. Alas, it wasn't nearly as great as Zone 3, in Perth, Western Australia. I seriously miss Zone 3. It was soo intense! Darcy, Kingsley, Jeremy (who worked there), and I were on a team for Thursday Night Comp, a weekly tourney. We were good :) . Three teams of only four players each; the same teams came every week (with a playing rotation though; so not always the same matchups). You got to know the various opponents; their styles and tactics. You also seriously got to know your teammates. We won the first tournament we joined; with Julian's (a local friend) team very close behind. We never did get the Zone 3 t-shirts that were meant to be our prizes (I'm still bitter about that, whenever I remember to be)! It was fierce competition, and the games could come really close. In addition to the tourneys we played occasional Midnight-to-Dawns; being 12am to 6am. Sleep deprivation, sugar/caffein high, and lots of adrenalin make for a very intense night... There were some pretty cool alternative play styles we went with during MTDs, too. Elimination was great! We would have much fewer shots than normal before needing to run to a recharger. Rate of fire was seriously reduced. Any sensor hit would register as a full kill; even a hit to the gun. Six deaths and you're out of the game. Running accross the length of the arena out of cover in one of those games is such a terrifying rush! I miss that place soo much!!!

Courtney reads my page, but she still doesn't mention my VAXination project which I created for her and her friends...

News Radio time...

Maybe I should get a Volkswagen hippy van. I think it was my original plan, before the school bus. They certainly have a lot of character, too. Plus, I could actually park them within a single parking space (unlike an RV...). I think the crazy paint job my friends and I are going to treat it with would probably look better on a microbus than an RV, too. AND I'd be a whole lot more likely to be able to afford one. A quick search on Cars.com found quite a few VW buses within reasonable distance from me for between about $1500 and $4000 (well, there certainly are more for even more money, but I'm not going to bother looking at them.). I'm at like $5000 now, I think (maybe a little less). The hardware for Sirius could very well run up to about $500. There are all sorts of supplies I'm going to need to get. And beyond all that, I'm going to need money for gas and food. I ought to be able to carry on for a little while before I need to get little jobs though. Then again, little jobs might be kind of fun, in some of the small towns I happen upon.

I guess being productive means dealing with obstacles...
So, what shall I chose to live out of and drive around the country in now?
Can I get it within the next two weeks? In time to drive back up to Ithaca one last time before my friends graduate and disperse?

MorgaN is not happy!

Sirius now has it's own page on SmallTownFreak, as well. It's the mp3 jukebox system that I'm designing for use in the bus. The page mostly describes my intentions right now. As time goes on, it'll follow my progress and eventually contain usable code as well.

I've added a SchoolBus page to SmallTownFreak, wherein I'll cronicle my efforts in getting and eventually (hopefully?!) customizing a short school bus/new home. Watch that page if you're interested in my progress with the bus, as I won't be talking about it too much on this page.

Random musings of the moment:

"This has got to be some kind of sexual fetish." -- Margot, at Friendly's, while her, Davin, and I shared a banana split sans silverware. Sorry for biting your cheek, dude :-)
Margot, do you recall what I said that we decided we mustn't forget and ought to write down?

I never wrote on here about how throughout the course of my relationship with Hugh I was constantly underfed and generally very vague and without energy, did I? Ahh well, perhaps best to not mention it.

Oh wow, I just realized that I'm like some sort of exhibitionist 8-)
I should keep that in mind the next time I'm talking in front of a group; that I actually like people hearing and seeing what I have to express.

Why am I still up? I'm trying to be productive while I'm home; I don't imagine being asleep half the day is helping me to get things done. I need another soda. Ugh. Stop it, morgaN!
Hmm, that worked :) . No more soda for me tonight. I was doing so good about not consuming excesive carbonated or caffeinated beverages (while away from home, with no spending money..)!
I need some sort of vice to keep me company while I'm home, though! Aarghghrhg!

Happy birthday Margot!

You, AOL user, you just knocked my counter up to 1000 hits! :)

So, now that I'm out if Ithaca again, I've been checking out the FilthCam to see what everyone's getting up to. I've caused some amusing trouble by seeing certain things on it in the past... so I thought, hey, might see something entertaining again. And indeed I did. This time I get to share it with everyone (it's not controversial this time). So, check out some pictures I saved of my friends bouncing about for the camera. I rewarded their performance with an array of News Radio sound clips playing off the computer there. The .gif files are animated versions of what they were up to (the same clip, in ascending order of crappy quality); far too large for what they are, but if you really feel like it, they are pretty funny. Anyway, back to the code I was working on.. (which I might talk more about later)..

This is just a quick post to note that I made it home without difficulty, some many hours ago. I left at 1:45am and made it in only 6 hours; I'm getting good at this :) . Now, however, I am extremely exhausted and about to collapse. Down I go...

Home again, home again.. I'll be departing Ithaca - once again - some time this evening. I'll wait for people to get home from work and whatever classes they still bother with, so that I can say goodbye. I'm going to really try to make it back up here once more some time before they all disperse. I've got too much life and too many emotions vested in this place to just let it go. I'll figure something out.

Ahhhhh, sleep is good! I really needed to collapse after yesterday.

It's so beautifull outside! I'm really happy with this recent weather, it caters well to good moods. I think that I'm in a good mood right now. I only just got up, though, so I'll have to make sure of it.
Oooh, I've got snacks left from the drive up! Those should ensure a possitive state of mind :) .

Hmm, I need to put something up here more than unexplained emotions and incomprehensible ramblings. How about some mixed drinks!? :)

Laura and I came up with the drink name "Kool-Aid Death" a few nights ago, and decided we would have to create this morbid concoction some time. The night before last, there where many people hanging about the house, and we decided it was time to give it a shot. Actually, Sarah P and I are essentially the ones who created the drinks, but everyone present helped to curtique and perfect them.

The first drink, Kool-Aid Death, was largely my creation; with much input from Sarah. The second drink, Kool-Aid Heaven, was mostly Sarah's. Both are very potent. Sarah and I both like Kool-Aid Death; there were varried opinions from the others. It's really strong, and you can tell, but it's still very drinkable. It's a somewhat dark purple, and I think it looks pretty cool. Kool-Aid Heaven was universally (or at least kitchen-wide) approved of. It's very smooth and light and easy to drink. And deceptively strong. It's a nice, light, happy purple. There have been many possitive musings about incorporating these into a future party. Nadia and I have discussed the need to create Kool-Aid Hell; which of course would have to be with red Kool-Aid and, once again, very strong (though probably more noticably so). Laura has dubed just plain Kool-Aid to be Kool-Aid Limbo :) . Here follows the vague mixing list that Sarah wrote up (after already having a bit to drink), with some extra notes from what I can remember:

Kool-Aid Death:
* Purple Kool-Aid - premade, but with excesive powder (which'll mix with all the alcohol)
Roughly in order of quantity, starting from the highest:
* Coconut Rum
* Peach Schnapps
* Jack Daniels
* Vodka - Just a little bit
If it's too strong too drink, then more Peach Schnapps should probably be added, and maybe a tiny bit more water (it's part of the Kool-Aid, after all).

Kool-Aid Heaven:
* Purple Kool-Aid - Premade, regular strength. About 1/4-1/3 of the drink
* Coconut Rum - About 1/3
* Sweet White Wine
* Peach Schnapps
With ice.
I'm not sure of the quantity balance between the White Wine and the Schnapps. This can be a very pleasant drink.

If we come up with a Kool-Aid Hell, or any other interesting drinks, I'll post them here too.
Ahh, the things I learn at college; and I'm not even paying tuition!

Oops, that last post was kind of inacurate, but I was rather confused about what was going on at the time. I didn't take Hugh to the airport; that was the original plan. I actually drove him home. There was a death in his family and he got the call this morning. I'm not going to go into that any further, here.
He lives in Irvington, which is near NYC. It was supposed to be a four hour drive, but we managed to make it take eight hours by going in the wrong direction for a very long time at the very start of the trip. Woops. We did make it eventually, though, with a couple minor adventures along the way.
I managed to get back up to Ithaca in only three and half hours, which is appearantly really good time; and this was amidst rain and occasional fog and stuff. So, that's been my day. I'm really sorry to those who thought that I wasn't coming back!; I just didn't have enough time or forethought to make what was happening clear.
Now I'm somewhat crazzed from caffeine and sugar and, well, general crazyness. I'm also truely exhausted and I'm going to sleep now.

And then, amidst it all, one suddenly finds himself crashing face first into reality.
And the whole world spins by, without even moving.
And time no longer works properly.
And it's too much to take in; too much to try to make sense of.
And you manage to make it stop; And you look around; and it's all the same! but it's stripped, left bare and exposed.
And one finds himself looking face first into reality, amidst it all.

I'm going to be gone much of the day; I have to drive Hugh to the airport.

"Happiness is not a place to get to. It's a way of getting there."

I managed to aquire a journal. Laura actually gave it to me, upon hearing of my quest. Thanks, Laura :)
I started writing in it earlier today, and filled up nine pages before deciding I couldn't spend all afternoon at it, and put it away to go outside. It was such a nice day out! I'll get back to writing in it later. Sorry, it seems that not everything in my life gets shared with all of my audience.

Anyway, I could probably come up with all sorts of things to put here, too, but right now I'm just in too good a mood, and with too much energy, to just sit here typing. I like that quote I started with (I only just came upon it); good way to look at life. And now, it's back to "getting there", my way.

*muted*

I don't actually really have anything to say, I just felt the need to say something. I feel like I really want to talk, and say some important stuff, but I can't seem to think what that stuff would be. As such, I'm kind of rambling about nothing in particular. Oh well.

I think I need a notebook - a journal, I guess. One with a good amount of pages and sturdy covers. I want to be able to write stuff seperately from always typing at computers (I don't care if that's grammatically a bad sentance). I'm realizing that I often find myself wanting to express things, and there's not always someone there to listen, or not the right person. And I can't always put everything I'm thinking into this online journal, for one reason or another. Not everything. I've managed to aquire the slinkys I'd set myself questing for a little while back, I think I'll now make getting this journal thing my new goal.

The days here can be really long sometimes. Everyone is all busy with classes and jobs and stuff. I, on the other hand, have a couch to sit on, a linux box to play with, and an assortment of News Radio tapes to rewatch. It gets to feel like Nothing is taking an increadibly long time to happen. This certainly isn't always the case. Sometimes there are lots of people around. Sometimes I take advantage of my energy and get up and do stuff. Sometimes it's really nice to just lay in the yard and do nothing for a long time. But when I don't feel motivated enough to entertain myself and noone is around to ammuse me, it gets kind of boring... Of course, if I were back home I'd be in my bedroom all day, in place of the couch here, and none of my friends would be living in same house, coming and going and sometimes spending time with me. Oh well.

Hmm. Now what?

Thank you, Sarah P. :)

It's another wonderfull day! I love it when it's nice out. I sat on the porch reading inspiring passages from the Principia. Then I came in and, once my eyes adjusted to the dramatically reduced light, cooked some mmaaccaarroonnii, and went back out onto the porch with it and a glass of lemonade. I've just come in from lieing in the yard for a fair length of time, daydreaming. It's just so great and happy!! Life is so wonderfull.
I think I'll now walk up to the video place where Sarah B/K works and rent the old Muppet Movie. :)

Ahh well, life is still good...

AAaarrggh!
Frustration runs so deeply right now, and due to circumstances, I can't even say why!! Ugh, this sucks!

...........................................................................................................................................................

Sarah and Ian are married! After Ian managed to wake me up (last night was a long and draining night) we all got dressed up in fancy clothes and acted all excited and stuff. I borrowed a nice suit from Ian, it was definetly a different look for me. I managed, with much help, to find a razor I could use; another good thing. Then Sarah P, Jascha, Ro, and Laura all headed out to buy flowers and rice. Sarah B(K), Ian, Hugh, and I walked a long walk, being joined by a photographer and witness along the way. We traversed some treacherous but beautifull trail down into the gorge, alongside the rushing stream and amazing waterfalls. It was raining out, but not too heavily; very pleasant. We must have been an interesting sight... We eventually made it to this really cute stone bridge that goes over the water, where the ceremony was to take place. We watched and waited for a little while, for the other group to show up on the large metal bridge that crosses and overlooks the gorge. Eventually, we just decided to press on without them. Sarah, Ian, and I stood in the middle of the bridge; I was facing up stream, and they, naturally, were facing the other way. After Sarah stopped laughing :) I managed to find my voice and begin reading (hopefully I'll post the words up here, later). They had written what they wanted me to read, and it was really pretty stuff. I took the rings and held them out. They each, in turn, took the appropriate ring, read their vows (which they also wrote), and presented the ring to the other. I pronounced them husband and wife (!!!) and they smooched. I finished my part with reading a slightly modified Apache wedding prayer. Sarah threw the flowers into the stream and as we watched them float away, we looked up and saw the others just arriving on the bridge above. The added flower petals and rice to the rain, and took photos and cheered. We were all pretty energized I think. Then they came around to the path we'd come down and we began climbing. Somewhere halfway up we met up with each other and many more pictures were taken. I'm eager to see them, they should be really nice (hopefully I'll get them on this page, too). And so we walked back home and everyone was in a very good mood and, yes.. happy stuff :)

So, this day has been a very unique one for me. Perhaps I'll preside over other weddings in the future, I haven't a clue; it really was a fun thing to do. Sarah and Ian were soo beautifull together. Ahh, I'm in a really good mood! And now, they're out at a concert. And later tonight (10:00ish) we'll be having a party here [watch it!]. What a crazy, wonderfull day.

Well, it looks like I'm gonna be in Ithaca a little longer than expected. It seems that my good friends Sarah B and Ian have decided it's about time the two of them got married. This means that I finally get to excercise my ministerial powers. So, this up coming weekend, barring logistical complications, I will be wedding the two of them. It should be fun; interesting, certainly. And then, after partying a little bit, I guess I'll be returning home. My dad will be home from Albania for a little while starting early in May, so I'll have to be back for that, anyway. Life is fun :)

I made it! It took me 7 hours to get here (good time!). Well, actually, it took like 7 hours to reach the next road over, and then almost another hour to actually get to the house. One intersection away from where I would turn onto this road, I noticed a stop sign a little too late, didn't manage to stop copmletely before getting into the intersection, and then heard that terrible crunching sound.. Woops. Me and the other guy were both completely okay, fortuneately. My front bumper got knocked loose on one side, and the front-right corner is all scuffed up, maybe a little bit dented (I think the bumper took most of the force, appropriately). The other guy's car also came out with nasty scuffs, and probably some localized denting. His hood is sort of bent up in the middle, a little bit, as well. Ugh. Both cars are still totally functional though, it's just cosmetic, I'm sure. My insurance (I had to call them..) will totally cover whatever expenses the other guy has, through the liability bit. The collision insurance, appearantely, has a $500 deductable. I don't think we need to repair it, it's not that big a deal (not worth the first $500). I'm really glad the liability will be full coverage. I find it appropriate that last night, just before leaving, I wrote out a check to my mom to pay her back for my being added to the insurance. I also got a ticket, unfortuneately, for "failure to yield the right of way". I don't know how much it's for, it's actually a thing where I can go to court with it, or senfill out the back and send it to them as an admission of guilt, and then they'll decide the charges. Of course, I'm going to send it to them (I realize that I was at fault here). Oh well, I didn't let it ruin my day.

The drive up here was actually really great! I left at 3:30 last night. I managed to not realize untill just before it was upon me that the sun would rise during the course of my drive. I like driving on the interstates in the middle of the night; it's peacefull. But when the rest of the world became visible, it was so amazing! The scenery the whole way was just so beautifull! It really reminded me of the Greyhound ride out to Burning Man, where I got 2.5 days of watching the country pass by. I wrote so many pages about my impressions of what I saw (amongst a couple other things) druing that trip in my travel-journal. Alas, whoever stole my bag on the way back has all those journall entries, not me. I'm curious what impression they have of them and themselves when they read that journal. It starts off with my name and address and stuff, because I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't lose it. Then they get to read about all the other passengers I talked to on the way out, and the cafes I ate at and such. Then they get to read about my buying Jeff a ticket to come home with me after I learned of his suicide attempt. Then they get to read my impressions of Jeff's mental state through the course of the way back. Then the journal entries stop and Jeff and I never make it back onto the bus after getting out at a rest area. I wonder if they even make the connection. I don't even know if they've bothered to read it. I hope they did.

Hmm, but, anyway, I'm in Ithaca now. I'll be here for some few days; I don't really know how many. Everyone here is all busy their crazy school stuff, or work, or some other time consumer. Now I've got to go, though, we're going to watch a video (at least our social time is well spent..).

Well, I'm getting ready to make my way back up to Ithaca, NY once again. I should be leaving shortly and arriving a little less than shortly..

I spent a long time talking to Hugh last night, online, then on the phone. It was odd, we were acting all serious and stuff, and it wasn't really that fun. Then we started teasing each other and letting our voices wander and we actually started talking like ourselves again and it became really fun. It was rather an odd thing, but appropriately so. Well, now it seems that I'm going to make my way up to Ithaca once again, but only for a few days this time. We've been apart for a while and things were starting to get not so good, so we've gotta visit and talk and be happy. I also really miss everyone up in Ithaca (well.. okay.. everyone I know, at least) and it'll be great to see them again.

I expect it's a good thing that I don't rely on my life making sense...

Sarah B doesn't think I look Perpetually Amused enough on my bio page, so I decided I'd put up this picture of my being amused amongst all sorts of crazy chaos (actually, that's one of the best places to be amused). While I'm at it, I thought I'd also stick up this other picture, which I find to be very cool. I didn't even create it intentionally.. I was moving a bunch of files, and accidently copied some bitmaps into one bigass bitmap. This is my graphic program's interpretation of it. I guess I don't look all that amused in it, but be sure that I was; it's not everyday that my walls turn purple and I turn green! but it's always funny when we do..

Ack! Gotta run; News Radio!!!

I suppose some people might consider it a bad idea to be thinking about how cool it would be to have a prosthetic hand or fingers with an interfacing coupler thingy connected to my nerve endings and able to jack in to computers and ...etc... while pushing a lawn mower..

Hmmm; there's a couple making out on in front of the FilthCam and I don't even know who they are. Not what I was expecting when I loaded the page up to enhance the chat script... Ahh well, at least they seem to be happy.

RANT:

Mythology is an interesting thing. I'm not speaking of ancient mythology, I mean the modern stories and ideas that set up a sort of backdrop to our conciousness. (A growing class of people would relate what I'm talking about to the relatively recent concept of memes.)

People make decisions based on experience. Fortuneately, this doesn't have to be direct personal experience. Experience is taught in stories and learned by observation. Experience comes from parents and teachers, from assorted media, from peers and strangers, from parables and comic books, from history and from children. We need a sort of Mythology on which to build our ideas and make Experiences that we can share. There is a Common Mythology making up this society, generally left unconsidered, which people use to relate information to each other. This Mythology is a great part of our Experience.

Experience, in this sense, is all we have to go on when making decisions in life. We act on what we have learned and know.

I want to put my Creative energy into adding to this pool of Experience. I want my knowledge to serve as information others can use in making life decisions. I want to be a part of people's Mythologies and Experiences.

I think that Malaclypse the Younger did this quite well with the Principia Discordia. He had lessons to teach, and he Created a mythology through which to teach them. The Mythology itself isn't literal, it's a tool. It is Experience and it can be used in life; and in this particular case, used in understanding the rest of his message. I want to contribute to this. I want to use this technique in a similar direction to the one he took.

I want to help build a Mythology that favors my beliefs and values, yet which is accessable to everyone. I want others to have it as a new set of Experiences. I want it to be a mechanism for teaching others the truths that I believe in. Acceptance of my beliefs would still be left entirely up to them, as decisions to be made based upon their Experience. But I want to be sure to have an influence upon their Experiences so that they may at least consider my knowledge fairly, with the right background.

This has worked for Discordianism, on whatever scale it exists at. This has worked for Christianity on a far more visible scale; though they tend to take the Mythology far more seriously than the actual lessons it was meant to provide a foundation for. This has worked subtly or blatantly for all of our social structures throughout history.

I want to be heard and my experience is showing me that to do so I need to help others know how to hear me. I need to build a framework, an accessable Grid of Ideas, with points of reference that others can understand, and then, with that as a foundation to relate ideas to, they may begin to better understand the Meaning of my Knowledge and my teachings.

I've given myself a new directive: Do SOMETHING. If found myself writing it on the palm of my hand a short while ago and I've been thinking about it. I suppose it could go with "Give me some substance", which I copied into my notes file after seeing at the end of a Chemical Brothers video, in the form of graphity amidst rebelion. Well, maybe they work together; I like them both at any rate. But this do something campaign of mine is something I'd like to follow, and does couple well with my Initiative thing I've been working on. As a note on my hand, it was a request to myself for tomorow. What led me to it: I was thinking about the early internet pioneers. I've read the web pages of a bunch of different people who worked at Netscape (Mosaic..) at the very start of It All. They were such amazing people! The worked soo many hours; to the point of coding for days on end, literally, and sleeping at the office for convenience. They were intense! They weren't just cubicle monkeys, they where pioneers and innovators; they built a new age in society and technology! I dream about being a force in such a creative trip. I don't know that I'd be able to pull off the same stuff they did, but how can I know if I don't even try?? That isn't to say that I'm about to go out and get a job and be a Productive Member of Society(TM); that's not the point, and that's certainly not me. I will try, however, to be a productive member of my own life. I want to finish each day by being able to look back at the accomplishments of that day and be proud! I want to be sure that I Do Something regularly.. constantly! I'm feeling very energized and I really want to direct that energy in a Creative way. So, vague as it may seem, I'm happy and excited about my new plan.

Cool, I got both of those problems fixed. It actually wasn't much trouble to install either the POP3 or FTP servers. Yah!

I'm now working on setting up email for SmallTownFreak.org. I've got it working a little bit, but not enough for my taste. I can recieve email at morgan@smalltownfreak.org, but I can only check it from the particular Linux box it's recieved on. Appearantly I haven't got a POP3 daemon installed on my machine, which is what would allow another computer to use an email program to retrieve mail from it. While investigation this I also realized that I don't have an ftp server installed, which would explain why I've been unable to ftp in! Telling the network service loading script to load programs that aren't even present doesn't really do me much good (except to confuse me when it doesn't report any errors..)! Ahh well, there's always more to learn with Linux. At any rate, I seem to have the program sendmail working properly, which I gather can be a truely hellish program to configure (indeed, it's not fun...). So now I just have to install a couple more programs and I should have a much easier time working with this box without actually being at it (which will be important when I'm on the road).

Wow, it's exciting all the power I've got hosting my own site. I was just browsing through my access logs; I've got people connecting from all over the place! Several different computers around Cornell - which seem to have a greater tendency for looking at the Ithaca pictures :) -, a whole bunch from AOL, someone from Virginia Tech (I'm curious..?), someone in Ithaca using dreamscape.com (??), and some that didn't resolve to domain names (and I don't feel like tracking them down). I'm also noticing fewer connections being directed from the Erols account; I'm glad you guys are bookmarking/remembering the new address. Anyway, I'm having fun with my new server setup :) .

Oh yeah, one more thing.
After days on end of beautifull warm weather, last night it snowed! It was soo crazy! It started about when I was just leaving for the con, and went on till dawn. Nothing accumulated (fortuneately, I think), but it was really an amazing sight. :)

I just got up...
Last night, at like 2am, I was in my room, not doing anything in particular, so I decided I might as well take advantage of this "initiative" thing I've been working on and went and drove to the Con (this one was really close to my house, fortuneately). Hooray for doing what you actually want to do! I stayed there till like 8am, roughly. It was great getting to say hi to people who I didn't think I'd see for like another month. Alas, Frannie wasn't there :( [Dude, you've gotta email me or something; you still rule the eskimo school!]. Many friends were there, though, so it was very cool. Oh yeah, and I got more possitive feedback for my workshop last month! It was wonderfull, with multiple reports of people posting my Discordian propaganda pamphlettes in their UU church's youth areas and sharing the knowledge with others (yah!!), and a report of actually going out and purchasing the Principia Discordia! I'm soo thrilled that I actually had a real impact with these people, in an area that I strongly believe in. Hail Eris! :)

Friday evening and much of Saturday I spent with Meghan, mostly just hanging out. She had to leave back to Pennsilvania early Sunday morning. We don't get to see each other nearly often enough (one weekend a month - at most - so far). And, thus far, the only time we'd spent together had been in (UU) churches (at cons), which was getting to be kind of strange. We had a really great time being together, and we didn't have to worry about con scheduling or con rules (hmm, though I guess we didn't generally worry about them at cons too much either..). But anyway, it was a wonderfull couple of days and I am very happy! : )

I'm also really happy about the whole SmallTownFreak.org thing. Another case of me playing with that crazy "initiative" thing. By now, pretty much everyone should be able to access www.SmallTownFreak.org and I'd appreciate it if that were the only server name used when connecting here (as that's the one that will be sure to keep existing..).

Oh, and I've updated my bio page; check it out. I figured it needed an update; it'd been like seven months since the last time I rewrote it. Additionally, I attached one of my spiffy pictures to the top of it.

Alright, that's enough for the moment, I guess.
I'm just in such a good mood!! :)

:-)

Morgan is in a very good mood! :)

Hey, welcome to my new location! I'm SmallTownFreak.org!!! This is soo slick! (I'm happy..) :)
Make sure that you keep coming back to this address [ http://SmallTownFreak.org/persiflage/ ], since we'll be shutting down the Erols account relatively soon. Hehe, now every time you look at this page, you're getting it right off of one of the computers in my bedroom.

Now I can begin some serious development of the Small Town Freak website with all my own server-side scripts and stuff; hopefully I'll actually get around to it..

I noticed, while moving all my files over here, that I've been maintaing Persiflage (that's the name of this journal.. look it up..) for more than a year now! At times I've been slack about updating it, but just the same, that's quite a long time. This is my 74th post. Wow....

I've also observed that I've recieved a whole bunch of hits since handing out my Discordian propaganda (with this pages address on it) at my churches con, after my workshop. In the time since - about 3 weeks - I've gotten like 130 hits. :) I consider that a big number (particularly since my counter won't go up if you look at the page and then look again within some period of time (i don't know what period, but it's not too short..)). Anyway, I'm happy with my site :) .

What beautifull weather lately! It's been soo nice out! Even when it rains, it's wonderfull...

I've just realized that I never yet put up a link here (did I? maybe I should read my own page..) to The Erisian School of Zen Warlockry, a relatively short splurge of Discordian writing, but which I really like. I just wish they had some more material of their own there. Their hosts describe them by saying: "Maybe they're Eristic, maybe they aren't. They seem more like Jedi to me. Or psychedelic samurai with a peacenik fetish..."; psychedilic samurai... oh yeah!! Hopefully I'll get around to writing some parables and such of my own some day; I can do the ranting thing, but can I make up the stories that illustrate my points?..

I've been spending a good bit of time with my VA friends lately. It's soo wonderfull just being with them, they're soo great! Devon and I finally managed to get together and chill; hurray! And Margot and Davin and I have spent more time together as well; yah! I just wish they weren't all soo busy with school all the time; grrrr... Oh yeah, and I saw the church's performance of Godspell on saturdaY; they did a really amazing job with a great show!

Oh, and I'm still working on setting up my web server. Hopefully that'll be done soon and I can finish my part of the migration from our Erols account. Ahh well, back to living my life and doing my things....

Wow! I just went on another Salvia journey last night... What a mind blowing experience! Here's the report I typed up during it. I actually hadn't intended to type anything up this time, but it was very intense, and I think that typing gave me something familiar to do, and a way to communicate without freaking out my family at five in the morning; it sort of helped comfort me. This experience made a lot more sense than the previous ones and I think that I'll be able to use it in my conciousness expansion efforts. It'll be one more reality-grid to hang from my tool belt. Normal, social, openminded-but-cynical "Morgan" isn't going to accept the knowledge from the experience as actual knowledge of another place and other entities; rather he will accept it as a fascinating journey into his own subconcious. But he's still aware that his reality grid is only one way of interpreting existance and he's still a follower of Sri Syadasti. So, philosophically, he'll accept that the reality(s) experienced during the Salvia trip is also completely valid and to be considered available if my current reality grid isn't working so well for a particular situation. After all I was only altered, I wasn't broken!

So, in this new reality, I started out not even as "morgan" at all. I started out as part of a pool of Salvia entity, and there were people using our tools (I called them artifacts) - the Salvia+Nitrous that morgan used, in this case - to transcend their existence and visit ours. I ripped out of the pool and flew violently threw a great many existences... It's not a comfortable experience; each existence exerts it's influence upon me, and trys to get me to stop with it and let it return to where it came from, and by the time I land on any one existance (morgan, in this case) I am increadibly confused by the bombardment of conciousnesses from the others which I passed through; and the new host/vessel (morgan..) begins exerting it's conciousness upon me, through it all. Eventually I become comfortable with which of the mind blowing experiences were not actually part of my new host, but of the other potential hosts I spun through. After making that distinction, morgan becomes a lot calmer, as he's not used to being so many different "people". Slowly the entity-me (this is where first and third person become all mixed up and really don't seem to work very well) steps back to observe and communicate, but not control; and to allow morgaN to take over again. This is a slow and strange experience for Morgan. He's rather aware of the entity (described it as looking over his minds shoulder; I like that), and still not entirely situated behind the neural controls. He's also a lot calmer now, seeing that he does get to become "normal" again, as things wear on.

And now I'm back to being myself; I am morgaN again. But when I remember the experience, I still remember it as I've described; I was not morgan at the start, and I was varying levels of symbiosis during... I can still experience like that; very strange feeling, being multiple conciousnesses. I'm very glad for this experience, it's definetely a step in teaching myself to understand "the Whole of It, What Is" from drastically different reality-grid vantages. I feel expanded :)

MMmmmmm, good food.

I've added the Con photos now, too. Take a look at some of my friends posing, just before being blinded.

Well, here are the photos from Ithaca. Appearantly I'm going out to dinner right now, so I'll work on putting up the con pictures when I get back.

I've been kept rather busy with my computers, setting up the house network to run just how I want it to. I'm working on Elysium now, which is going to become my web server (which'll host this page, eventually). It's fun getting them to work how I want them to, but it can also get rather consuming and frustrating. Ahh well, such is life & obsesion.

Yesterday was a good day. After "church" I went to lunch with Margot, Davin, Charlie, and Margot's recently revieled Secret Buddy, Miranda. Miranda's in sixth grade and seems to be pretty cool. She's very outgoing, at least; she wasn't affraid to be part of our bizzare conversations. Afterwards Margot and I hung out at her place and walked around her neighbourhood. At some point during our walk, the ground opened up beneath me and one of my legs fell completely through. It turned out that I stepped on a little water-company manhole cover that wasn't actually sealed and it flipped out of the way to make room for me leg. I skinned my shin a bit, but was otherwise fine. Just the suddeness with which it happened was really crazy, though. Very odd experience.
Then, in the evening Margot, Charlie (who happens to be her dad), and I went to a bar-thing where a jazz group they're friends with was performing. It was really an amazing show, and the jazz guys were really nice, cool people. A very fun day! :)

My con-weekend plans have developed a little further, to the point where I will (as opposed to "might") not make it to the con (unless I manage a surprise visit; but don't count on that; in fact forget I even menioned the idea). Damn "time". Oh well, such is planning ahead, I guess.

Oh yeah, I've got my photos from Ithaca and the just-past con. I'll sort through them and post some soon...

Good night, Moon...

Yah, we have cable-net access!!! Ahhh, this feels good... :)
Now, part of moving to a different service provider means we'll end our account with Erols at some point, not too far off. Alas, that's where this page is currently being hosted. As such I'll need to move it somewhere. I could move it to our new provider's server and store it there, and I may do that if timing requires it. But I'm going to be setting up one of my computer as a web server for Small Town Freak and I'd like to host this page as part of that. Now it's just a matter of how long it takes me to get that server up and running properly. For now the address will remain as it is, but stay tuned for when it changes and make sure to update bookmarks when that time comes; I don't know how much longer this address will be valid.

Alright, enough of that.
So, now it seems that I may in fact not attend Spring Con. I was very much looking forward to seeing my friends there, but every year Spring Con is the con used for working out bylaws and stuff for the next year, and that is hellishly long and boring and such. Ugh...! That alone wouldn't keep me from the sleepless nights, though. But Meghan - who I rarely get to see - is going to be in the area - though not at the con - and has invited me to hang out and spend time with her. I'm thinking that may become my course of action.

I just read over my Drug Rant again. I guess it's actually not that bad, for a spontaneous digital outburst. It fits my style of communicating, at any rate. I'm surprised at myself for forgetting to include meditation amongst the influences mentioned. Meditation is often one of the big activities I closely associate with "drug" use. Ahh well, I think I got my point out, anyway.

Hmmm, I just felt like ranting but noone was around that I wanted to rant to. So, I figured I'd type something up; maybe make something of it eventually. I dunno, whatever. Eventually I just came up with a Spontaneous Drug Rant. I really don't think it came out quite how I wanted, but oh well, I'm posting it anyway. Ugh, and people, please don't read too much into this being my topic. It's something that interests me politicaly too, ya know. And I was all geared up for a big discussion about it on Sunday (2 days ago), but that's been postponed or something (it was to be a discusion at the church, and the con is certainly a reasonable excuse for being too preoccupied to running another event immediatly afterwards..) Anyway, one of the unfortuneate consequences of using computers strewn all about my room is my wrists get rather soar from the odd angles I have to place my keyboards at. As such, I'm going to give them a bit of a brake now...

I dropped off my disposable camera at the grociery store last night, so I ought to have pictures by Thursday, at the latest. I'm getting a CD with the images as well, so I'll have top quality digital copies and I won't have to bother with my scanner. I don't think that I got a whole great many at the con, but we'll see. The rest of the pictures on there are all from Ithaca; so all you guys not from that array of outcasts (sorry, I just like the sound of it) will finally get to see my college-fairing comrades.

Alas, I'm not getting all that email that I'd hoped for. C'mon guys... I'm bored! All my local friends are in high school and busy most of the time... Talk to me about anything!; Discordianism, the con, my web site, my life, your life, whatever..! Erin, from the con, has engaged me in a nice communication already, and I'm very much enjoying that. There, now you don't have to be affraid to be the first :) . Anyway, I'm starting to sound desperate ("starved for affection"?), and that's not exactly what I was aiming for. Oh well, I'll putt about the house and my computers and find something to distract me.

Wow, since my post yesterday I've already recieved 12 new hits to this page. People are checking my stuff out; yah! Just remember to come back here in the future, I'm always adding new stuff. I am soo jittery right now, even though I got somewhere between 12 and 18 hours sleep last night. Ahh well, it's kind of fun... Anyway, back to my computers (I'm up to 6 in my bedroom now..). Oh, and again, please email me, I check it constantly and want to here from you guys! :)
Later.

Eskimo!!!

Alright, briefly (I tried..): I made it back just fine (only a 6.5 hour drive; I'm like a pro now!) and made it to the Con without too much hasle (well, a bit of hasle, I forgot something which I needed to have for my workshop and had to return home for it..) about 4 hours late. I got home from New York about the time the con got started, and in those next 4 hours I managed to put together a four page compilation of some of the content from the Principia Discordia and get that printed out; this along with recovering from the drive, getting food, reinstalling my hard drive (which I took to New York with me) so I could get at my Discordian notes, recovering some more... Anyway, I was a bit frantic at first, but I got it all ready to go and I'm happy about the way it came out. Anyway, that was Friday. The rest of the weekend was spent at the con. So, quickly, for those who weren't in attendance: (at many requests) I put this pages address on the Discordian propaganda I handed out and so I'm expecting such visitors to be reading this.....

Hi guys!!! I'm glad you made it to my page and didn't lose my propoganda. Be sure to check out ErisWerks, as I mentioned on the first page of the pamphletty thing; they have great Discordian content, including a (n almost) complete scan of the Principia. Read it. Know it. Live it. Or at least read it and laugh or something. Whatever works for you..

Hail Eris!

Man, the con was great! I'm still buzzing and twitching and stuff. I'm also still really energized about how well my workshop went. I've now got faith in my ability to rant to relatively large groups of people for a rather long time. What fun! :)

Hello all my friends, it was great finally getting to see you guys again (a month - two months.. - is far too long). I've got to send special greets to Meghan, Devin, and Franny (Eskimo!!!); I love you all.

All of you people are just so wonderfull! I am soo looking forward to Spring Con at Reston church (in only 3 weeks!). Oh yeah, Devin, lets hang out!; take over this crazy little town... Hmm, but now I must get sleep; as much as I'm having fun with this creepy buzz, I'm just going to crash all the harder if I'm up any longer. And guys, keep on coming back here, I'm always adding more (ooh, I'll put up some of my pictures once they're developed). Also, email me! I love getting mail and I don't want to lose touch with you guys just because we're spending a few weeks away from the intensely close interpersonal insanity of the con setting.

I'm getting ready for my return trip now. I'm working on getting the last of my stuff packed up and then it's off... Alas, Ithaca has decided to use it's influence in trying to prevent my departure; lots of snow out there right now. Eek. Oh well, I'm told that I should probably be past it completely once I'm not too far out of Ithaca, and then it should be a smooth drive home. Hope so.

I need to get in the habbit of updating more frequently. Oh well, whatever. I've been having lots of fun up here; I love being with my Ithaca friends! I'm going to be starting my return home late tomorow night. I'll rest most of Friday, and then go to my Unitarian Con that evening. I'll be hosting my workshop some time Saturday; eek I'm nervous.

I got a tattoo a few hours ago! :) I'm really excited and happy because of it. It's a Discordian symbol, the Sacred Chao, which is much like a yin-yang ("Discordianism is like Taoism, but funnier"). It's great, I'll probably put up a shot of it on here some time.

Oh yeah, that reminds me.. I keep on forgetting to put up a link on here to a small collection of pictures of myself with bleached hair. I took these right after bleaching it, like 2 months ago (that long?!). I haven't created a page around them, so you can just sort through them and add your own sarcastic comments... Oh, right, here they are.

This is a much needed update, I think. So, I made it to New York. Two days after getting my license I set out with a vague sense of where I was going and some directions and a little map-thing that my mom gave me. I followed the directions relatively well, as best I could. I did get lost a few times though, and eventually just deteremined that I needed to head north and that all would work out. All did work out, albiet more slowly; it took about 10.5 hours, where it would take a more veteran driver on the proper roads about 7 to 8 hours. Oh well, not too bad, all things considered.

Okay, now the big news of what's going on. Hugh and I have split up. I'm still staying up in the house in Ithaca for a while, I have lots of friends here, and Hugh is certainly counted amongst them. This may make things sort of strange; then again, things are always strange, so this may not make them anything but sort of different. I don't know. We'll both survive, though, and we're not going to stop being friends by any means. He probably says it better on his web page. I love you too :)

All right, other news about my life... I just bought two new computers. They're both really old, but that's nothing new to me (ack, unforseen bad pun!). I'm going to be using one of them as a test bed for development of the Linux distribution that I've been planing. The other.. I don't know, I just like buying computers! At the price I got them for, it ought to work out well for me anyway, they cost me less than the sum of their componenets, a great many of which I can reuse. I had wanted to bring up one of my computers from home - Elysium - , but it's running as the house server there and I didn't manage to get it's replacement - Inferno - up and running properly in time. Oh well, eventually...

Hmm, what else. I got a great parking space yesterday! It's right directly in front of the house! Ahhh, having a car creates so many altered priorities. But, since I'm in the very crazy town of Ithaca, I'm affraid I don't get to keep my beautifull space.. I have to move the car to the other side of the road, every night. We live on a big hill, with a fair amount of traffic, and moving the car everynight from one side of the street to the other, and then presumably parallel parking, is just evil!! It's such a horrible pain! And of course if I'm incapicitated on any particular night, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm sure Cornell loves it, though; they get to fine half the people who live on any given road every single night! Grrr, what a bitch.

I've been playing with my Netrunner cards a lot lately. Hugh and I ordered a case of cards. A case includes 10 boxes. A box is split up into 6 packs, and each pack contains 2 decks of 60 cards. That's 7200 cards. That's a whole lot of cards! So we've been sorting through those and having lots of fun with them; appearing increadibly obsessed to the others in the house, but not in a bad way, honest! We recently discovered that there was only one good card box left in all of Ithaca (being used to hold the cards once they're all taken out of they're packs and keeping them sorted and stuff). And these boxes only hold about 800 cards anyway. I've created a truely slick box of about the same size myself, out of a few of the deck boxes that the cards came in. It looks increadibly cool, but I'm a little concerned about how sturdy it will be. I also still need to add a lid to it, so that it's more transportable and such.

Anyway, I gather it's a beautifull day out, so I'm going to go investigate this wonderous possibility.

Well, here I go again... I'm about to depart on my journey back up to Ithaca, NY, alone. I got my license Saturday evening (yah!). This should be an interesting trip (or perhaps just very long and boring, whatever..).

I'm noticing a pattern in what time of day I tend to update my web page. I figure it's because noone else is around, I'm not up to anything else, and I don't want to get up to anything else because I'm waiting for News Radio to come on at 1:00. I love News Radio soo much. Last night I saw an ep that I hadn't seen before.. ahhh, what a wonderfull feeling :) .

Courtney, about that "Cool Jews Against Spanking" magazine cover.. well.. wow! Yeah, that really is very weird.

I (once again) ought to have my drivers license in just a couple days. Yah!

Thank you!, to the couple people who wrote me when I sayed I wanted email, I love hearing from you guys :) . I'll email you Mike. I totally do remember you, but I tend to forget to mail people; hopefully mentioning it here will help to remind me to get around to it.

To my own astonishment it's been pointed out to me that I neglected to mention my friend Amy in the list of folks involved in the play The Lady's Not For Burning. Alas, she doesn't live in the house (The Citadel of Fuzzy Thinking, or what have you..), and performs the increadible task of directing, not acting, so her contribution to the play and life in general managed to escape my thoughts as I typed up the earlier post. Sorry Amy; miss you. And, yeah, hearing from you did brighten up my day that extra bit.

I've become heavily involved in a new project. The inspiration for the project was an article in Maximum PC on building and configuring a computer (known as the Brownworth Box) to run as a fancy-database driven mp3 jukebox for a vehicle. The article and software - Route66, including any updates, are available online. I've been playing with the sourcecode, which is functional but incomplete, figuring out any number of ways in which I may expand and improve upon it. I'm considering calling my version Route666, but that may be too cheesy (one of the computers I'm running tests on happens to be named Inferno, though); I'll have to think about it. I'm also considering any number of alternative interfaces to that suggested by the original creator, Anders Brownworth. His design is wonderfull, but I'm on more of a budget and I'd like to really get creative. I'm considering a simple LCD or VFD display and control panel mounted in the dash of my bus for control while driving, PLUS a larger, graphical LCD display somewhere towards the back of the bus, for control by passengers and for more advanced uses. I'm also heavily researching setting it up with voice synthesis for navigating the menus, so that I could control it while driving without even looking at the display. That, and I really want my school bus stereo to great me with a Sbaitso style "Would you like to play a song?" :) All of this would be running on a custom, home grown implementation of Linux. I don't if I'll be able to figure out how I might afford all the really cool gadgets I want, but I'm going to put a lot of effort into trying to make this whole project come to a very functional fruition.

Anyway, I'm all distracted with thoughts of databases and Perl and killer code. And News Radio is almost on...

I've got another Salvia Trip Report! This time I smoked rather a large bowl (much larger than ever before). After holding it in for a while I began to feel The Things starting to take over my reality... with a sudden flash, like "oh yeah, I remember this from last time! and the time before that!"; the starting sensation of losing control to some force is soo truely strange and it's hard to remember how it feels until it's happening again. I exhaled, took a few breaths, and then inhaled a full breath of Nitrous. Normally I would start counting (it's a fun thing to do with nitrous....) but the Salvia was taking too strong a grip for me to even think of that, and then when the Nitrous hit Everything was completely blown away!! I had the combined effects of Salvia imposing a new reality(s) and Nitrous disconnecting me from my Normal Reality(TM). Add to this the spinning and waves of the one, and the high frequency pulsing of the other, and it was seriously insane! Ahhhh, but it was fun.. sort of; increadibly fascinating at any rate. But any way; read The Report, which I started typing as soon as I was able to during the trip (as I started coming down, but was still really far gone..). Oh yeah, the music I talk about is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The trip lasted for about 45 minutes to an hour; pretty much.

Ugh, stupid sickness; and I thought it was almost over...

Email me people; I'm bored! Actually, Sarah B emailed me, and that was really great to recieve. Hi Sarah! Hi everyone in Ithaca! So, I'm almost done with drivers ed. I probably would have finished Saturday, except this stupid illness. As is I ought to finish sometime mid nextweek. My plan is to make my way up to Ithaca relatively soon and hang out for a while, check out the play that Hugh, Laura, and Sarah P are doing, etc. Then I'll want to make it back home for my UU Con around March 17. I'll work out the bus when I'm home then, probably. Then I'll load a bunch of stuff into the bus and make my way back up to Ithaca again. Hopefully there won't be too many more complications; unless they're really fun and amusing.

Well, I seem to be slowly recovering from this mystery ailment. This is good..

About a week ago I smoked some enhanced Salvia Divinorum. This wasn't the first time; but this time I decided, as I was just begining to come down, to type up what I was experiencing. It's sort of disjointed, but I actually think it's suprisingly coherent considering the state I was in. Anyway, here is my Salvia trip report. Oh yeah, Wilson and R.A.W are in reference to Robert Anton Wilson; a very cool author and philosopher and such that I'm really into; a personal Discordian Saint Second Class. The book of his that I mentioned reading recently is "Right Where you are Sitting Now", which is basicly a volume of mindfuck with some imposition of cool paradigms while you're realing from the confusion. As I read the last chapter the other night - while very tired, granted - I was hallucinating, without any foreign influence other than the book. Seriously cool stuff! :)

I've really wanted to update this on lots of recent occasions, but my computer has flipped out a bit and won't talk to the network. It's seriously frustrating and I'm affraid it's rendered me watching a lot more TV. But even through the hard times, I felt the need to communicate that I am still here. Actually, perhaps I'm not here all too well.. I woke up this morning seriously dizzy and I've been sick all day. It's truely unpleasant, but hopefully it'll go away soon. Anyway, my focus on the screen is disipating, so I'm going to end this post now.

Mmmmm, cheap candy canes.....
I've come up with a new word. First, the real word 'preposterous' popped into my head, some time last night, and I reallized that it's a wonderfull word to say a bunch of times, though (because..) it can become difficult rather quickly. But then I took the word even further, and came up with my own variation on it. This was even harder to say, as I'd already confused my toungue with the root word, but at least I had it solidly in my head, and eventually managed to utter it. I guess it would be the equivilent of the long form 'preposterousness', but I don't like that as much. My word is: prepost'rophy! (and it contains an apostrophy!!)

I'm leaving for a UU Con this evening and I'll be coming back on Sunday morning. It should be a lot of fun; they always are. I've been working on figuring out how I plan on running a Discordian workshop at the next Con, but I've still got a month to figure that all out. Anyway, I'm hungry and I'm almost out of candy canes, so I'm going to go forage now...

Okay, one moment longer.. What does it mean, in my really old pocket dictionary; where it defines the word 'forage-cap' as "infantry undress cap"? I'm very confused...
Hail Eris.

Man, it's soo iritating when I bite off a piece of candy a candy cane (the ones I've got don't have a flavor that lasts long enough to warrent sucking) and then I realize I didn't peel all of the plastic wrapper off of it, and I've gotta get my fingers sticky removing that bit. Ergh, how anoying.

I spent today with Simone, who has become a very good friend since I made my move up to Ithaca, and who I've missed since being back in Virginia. She'll be leaving for South Africa on Monday and this was my last oppertunity to see her for a very long time. We had a lot of fun hanging out together. I feel very in tune with her. We both seem to find ourselves feeling very baffled by our surroundings and other people just at random, and we both seem to sort of lose track of what we're saying or doing or thinking and just get very confused. It's a lot of fun, being with someone else who's like this, in so much the same way. I'm really going to miss you, Simone...

Humming computers have very much become a familier element as part of my perception of a personally natural habitat. I've got four computers set up in my room, in an arc around my futon, with three monitors and two keyboards. Two of those computers are never off, the other two are also on a lot of the time. Only one of them presently has it's case on. My room has a very unique and familier feeling to it that I generally appreciate. I wander around the house or the world or whatever; then I return to my hallway and then I enter my room and I am greated by a noticably warmer climate and a mostly steady hummm... I know it well. There is a lot of depth to the noise, each computer making it's own array of sounds. Sanctuary has the most noticable fan, which seems to always be modulating within a short range, and I believe it's also the machine producing the slight high pitched whinning that I tune into occasionally. Elysium's sound is deeper and more steady, always there. When one of them engages the hard drive, I can hear it, and usually tell which one and imagine why. Sometimes I can sense if my monitor is on and asleep, or off. When someone is using the house network, my soundcard picks up a little bit of interference from the network card (poor shielding!) and I can hear the interpretation of the stray data through my speakers. My subwoofer makes a bit of noise itself, when it's awake (it's powerfull enough that it uses it's own energy saving sleep mode), but that sound is all but drowned out. I've come to associate these cues with a feeling of safety and belonging and home. My gadgets have become a part of my natural existence. I'm going to bed now, to sleep in their warmth and dream to their song.

So, my brothers and I went skiing Sunday and Monday in Pensilvania. It's soo [- my own grammatical creation, related to 'too'] much fun, but soo very tiring. I'm still quite sore from it all, but I suppose it was worth it :) .

Life is weird sometimes. It just decides to become a burden. Or my brain lets it seem to be a burden. Whatever it is, it's strange dealing with a flowing mental state. Sometimes the waves seem to become a bit extreme and come out of nowhere. But they always seem to roll back, eventually. I guess I've just got to get used to it; it seems to be the way things are. Oh well, at least it's gentle and fun most of the time.

But now I must run off or I'll miss the begining of News Radio!!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I've passed 500 visits to this site! It's now at 533 and still counting. This totally encourages me to keep working on this site and I'll certainly try to update it a little more frequently...

I'm still here. I've been totally lazy about this page lately, but I am still here. Hmm, what's been going on in my life recently? I've started drivers ed! Finally! It basicly consists of about 12 classroom courses and 7 behind the wheel classes. I've done 4 (5?) classes; 2 private driving lessons, and 1 of the behind the wheel lessons. So, hopefully, I should be able to finish in the next two weeks. Hooray!! Then I need to get my bus. The plan now is for the vehicle I buy to be one of those short school busses; about 20 person regular capacity. I'll remove the majority of the seats from the back, throw in a bunch of my stuff, and then drive it up to Ithaca where we can start fully outfitting it to be lived in. My friend Charley, car guru, said that he's more than willing to go with my when I go to make the purchase; so I'm feeling much more confident about how that's going to go.

Hmmm, not a whole lot else is going on, really. I'm still busying myself trying to blow my mind in ways that'll help free me from my mental programs and let me have more control over "my" actions. It's a fun task, at any rate. Oh yeah, I may run a workshop at my UU churches con, in March, about Discordianism. I would bend it towards my personal flavor of Discordianism, with Taoism and quantum psychology and other fun things being a part of the whole. I guess maybe I ought to come up with a name for my brand of philosophy; a semantic hook that "normal" people can latch onto. I guess the meme is more likely to propogate if people are better able to connect with it somehow. It should be fun (naturally..).

Next weekend there is going to be another UU Con; I'm enthused. Today I'm going skiing, and I'll be coming back tomorow evening; mildly spontaneous trip with my family. Anyway, back to the active portion of my life...

I'm a little dazed right now. I woke up and looked at my clock and thought for sure that it was 6:00am and it took a moment for me to convince myself that it was actually 6:00pm. Woops.

Well, the con went great; they always do. It's wonderfull how so many outwardly very different people can get along so incredibly well. It's also great seeing friends who I haven't seen in a long time; the last con I went to being about 5 months prior. Not much I really feel like broadcasting right now. My mind is hard at work trying to figure out some confusing personal stuff, but I think that it will remain personal for now, as I can't really think of anyone with whom I'd feel comfortable sharing (except those already involved). It will all work out, some how, in the end.

Well, it's been far too long since I last updated this site; but now I'm back. So, what all has been going on?

I returned home to Virginia on the night of the 17th (my last post was just before we left) and have been hanging out here, continueing to make my room as trippy as I can. The hollidays went well; my dad came back from Albania for a little while. I got some very cool presents, like a Soviet millitary jacket, lava lamp, strobe light, Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson books, etc. Then my dad had to depart again. Then my friend Steve left for Ireland, where he's living on the streets and having a good time (hi Steve!). Then Hugh arrived here from his home in New York and has been staying with me. Then New Years came and I spent it at a party at Lana's (one of Courtney's friends). The party went well, I got to see friends from Ithaca again (whom I hadn't seen in, oh, two weeks (if not sooner)) and meet some other amusing folks. Watching this one girl hit on Hugh (which included such things as suddenly sticking her tongue in his mouth, for instance) for a while was very amusing. And so Hugh and I have been spending a lot of time together here, some of it while awake. And yesterday he left back to New York for some obligations of his and to be with his family (I miss you already!). I'll be seeing him again when we both return to Ithaca (roughly the 21st?). Shortly I will be departing for a UU Con I'm attending over the weekend.

I will have to talk about our visit to Centralia (where Hell tries to break through into Pennsilvania, but doesn't do a very good job) some other time. And now, on with my life...

Courtney's explosion egg has just been shown up!

We conducted our own explosion egg opperation. The egg in question was strapped all about with a menacing array of firecrackers, laid in a crack in the road of perfect egg-destruction proportions. The match was struck; the wick was lit. All about the housemates and their guests for the event stepped back in anticipation. Random passers-by stopped to see what all the excitement was about, feeling the tension and seeing the spark traverse the fuse. And then, it happened! Everyone shrieked with delight and maybe a little fear. Chaos rained forth from that brave little egg.

And then silence...

I cautiously approached the site of the event. And to my amazement, I beheld that the egg was still there! With a tiny dent as it's only scar, the battle hardened egg stood proud, bearing it's black stains as testament to the unfathomable strugle it had just survived. All about were merry.

After displaying the egg to those about with great enthusiasm, and the reception of many "oohs" and "aahs"; the egg prepared for it's final conflict. Gripped tight in my fist, I took two steps back and then three forward, and then hurled the warrior into the heavens. A mighty smack! resounded as the egg exploded across the road that had been it's battleground. It had served with honor and expired with pride.

Appearantely I forgot to upload the new version after writing my last update. Woops. Well, I'm back. I went to Iowa; visited my sister at Grinnell. I was actually a lot of fun. I'll be seing her again in a day and half, when she gets home from school. I will be getting home from here later today, myself.

And now, back to packing up my stuff...

I expect to be going back home on the 17th; getting a ride with Sarah P.

We've been watching soo much Buffy and News Radio lately! Buffy is fun (generally..); and News Radio is one of the best shows I know of (if you haven't learned this already, then just trust me; hopefully it will come to you some day as well).

So, I'm going driving today with The Chris and Nadia Team. We don't know where we're going, we're just going to drive. I'll be back in like a day.

I'm back from Thanksgiving. This is just a quick note. We've set up a web came in the house that is very entertaining. Check it out.

I don't know how much this applies to other people, but I've recently learned that if I apply a big piece of duct tape to my forehead for a whole day, my forehead remains red after removing it for at least as long.

So, I'm going home Wednesday. Two days from now. Wow, that'll be interesting. I'll finally get to meet the two new cats. It'll only be a brief stay, but it should be nice to be home again anyway.

Yesterday, it snowed! It was so beautiful (and cold!).

Last night, with a few accomplices, I infiltrated Lincoln Hall; a building undergoing mass reconstructions as they enlarge it. We explored the whole thing, basement up to third floor. We also went up on a flat part of the roof and stood in the snow, with the best view on campus. We did this for almost two hours; it was amazing!

When we arrived home, the power at the house was out, and our housemates had built a fire in the fireplace (of all places..). We sat around the fire muching on snacks and steadilly throwing in pages from the Cornell course catalog and watching them burn. I fell asleep in front of the few remaining burning embers and a little candle, reading The House at Pooh Corner.

It's still snowing; it has been virtually non-stop since last night, very lightly, very pretty. I made a couple pizzas that we all took part in as we watched a movie in the living room. This house really is a wonderfull place.

Lately we've been talking about the feasability of setting up a web cam, and trying to make a little money off a bit of advertising. I don't expect we would make a lot, but it would definetely be fun.

Sara P. and I bought a pair of gerbils recently. They're so cute! Hazel is brown and has sort of spikey hair on the back of her neck; she's our punk roddent. Lily/Twitch (two names) is grey and sleek and really skittery. They may both or each be pregnant, from a male that had been in their cage for a time at the pet store; we'll know in about two weeks. Sara and I are coparents to both of them, and the rest of the house seems to get along great with them as well.

Sarah B. amazed me the other day by spontainiously making a pipe from a Coke can. Inspired, I made a gravity bong from a couple Coke bottles and constructed a beautifull bowl (and screen) that screws on and could be totally reusable. Not that they've had an oppertunity for use yet, but they are fun to construct; and who knows...

I'm planning on going home for Thanksgiving, staying like 5 days, and then coming back up here. Sara P. wants to watch Buffy marathons and drink with me at this time. Then around mid December I'll make my way back home again, for Xmas, New Years, and just generally being home. My Dad will be home from Albania for a time then as well, so it'll be great to see him. Courtney will also be home for the winter break period; another great reason to be there. After the break is over, it looks like I'll be coming back up to Ithaca again to hang with Hugh and everyone for a final semester (or untill I set out on the road).

A UPS guy just came by. On the door to the house is a sign that says "Welcome to Misplaced Happiness". The man, in a very friendly voice, said "If happiness is an illusion, how can it be misplaced?" I was very pleased by this; but distracted when he asked me to sign for the package he was delivering. Their new signiture system is digitally based and records my signiture. He said "..need your signiture here; or the illusion of one." Wow, I really like this guy; very friendly and appearantly with some similar thinking style to my own. It's unfortunate I fell prey to social mechanics and finished the transaction as normal, rather than actually talking to the guy to some more length. Ah well, the world is wonderful and life is grand.

Life is soo much fun here. The dynamics of the occupants of this house are wonderfull. I've integrated into it with increadible ease and they all seem to fully accept me. Lunch was nice yesterday; it was such a beautiful day out.

I'm broke. I have one dollar left, and maybe another two dollars in change that I've found. Hugh has like three or four dollars that he can spend. Some might resonably say that this is not good. Oh well, I'll get by and still come out laughing, so it's not really too bad, either.

Logistics on traveling the country seem to be getting complicated. I gather that several of us, Hugh, Laura, Brett, and I, all want to travel in a van for some period of time, and that they would really like to be able to travel as a group. Figuring out just when and for how long each person intends to do this is rather confusing. Hopefully I will be able to circumvent the conflict by just getting myself a van before any of them have even reached that stage. That way, they can travel with me for as long as they wish. And being moble makes it easy for them to end the journey in the right place when it comes time. I don't have any plans beyond just starting to travel (well.. not any plans that necessarily conflict or are related), and I intend to make this trip last for a very long time.

I'm going to try finding some variety of witches around Cornell. Lately I'm rather interested in magick. I don't put a whole lot of belief into the general spiritual aspects of it, but if it has manifest results of any sort, however subjective, I want to try it. I may or may not accept the power of a goddess or demon or whatever coming into play, but if people experience telepathy or altered awareness then something is certainly happening.

One girl I've met here, who I had a feeling was a witch when we first met and an even stronger feeling when we met again at a party at the house, is indeed an active Pagan. I may look into practicing with her. She is an interesting character, to be sure; she recently asked Hugh if he and I would be interested in a foursome with her and another girl we know (she was, however, turned down, for now). Ahh, people are wonderful.

Boston was a lot of fun. We spent a whole lot of time at Jascha's house; most of it sleeping. He has the greatest house and such nice parents!

Ack, back to this later; everyone is skipping class to go have lunch at the Commons. Whee!

Hmm, appearantely I'm going to Boston. Right now. I'll be back sometime Sunday, presumably. I'm going with a couple of my housemates here and a couple of their friends. Hugh, in fact, is not going. I feel kind of strange about this, seeing as I'm in New York to be with Hugh; but it's only for a couple days, this sorta thing isn't too unusual for me anyway, and, um, I forgot the other point. Anyway, this should be a fun little field trip and I'll be back soon enough.

See you soon Hugh; I love you!

I'm in Ithica, NY at Cornell! Whee! I'm here with Hugh and having a lot of fun (naturaly). His house is great; by which I refer to those who live there. Great group, endlessly amusing. I'm going to investigate the shopping and such area of Ithica soon, which sounds to be nice.

College is an interesting environement. I like the community elements; definetly worth studying in figuring out how to properly create great communities (which would not be dedicated to education in a scholarly sense, though). I've believed in the potential for beautifull communities to exist for a while, Burning Man has made me feel even more strongly about how great it would be.

I've come up with an exercise in intentional mental reworking that I'm going to play with. I've been reading Cosmic Trigger and other stuff by Robert Anton Wilson for a while now (great stuff) and it's been very inspirational on ways of engaging in deliberately induced brain change. The exercise I've thought of consists of scewing my impression of ego to the point where I can think of myself and someone else as being the same person, merely as two seperate units (sort of like the Borg). I'm going to work on this with Hugh ("Hugh of Borg", as it were) as my subject. I'm going to try to reach the point where I can consider "Hugh" and "Morgan" to be two elements of Me. I won't make this my continued belief, but it should be a powerfull way of exploring otherwise totally foreign states of mind and being. Hopefully all of these tests won't render me unconditionally schizophrenic. We'll see.

Well, it looks like I'm going up to New York on Saturday. I'm going to go up to New York City and meet Hugh, somehow. We'll hang out and do stuff there, then go up to Cornell, in Ithica, NY, after a few days. I don't really have any clue how long I'll be there, but I do expect to have a lot of fun (as always). I still welcome and in fact invite people to email me. I guess for now that should be to my hotmail account. If I'm not too lazy, I'll continue updating this page from there.

Oh yeah, I updated my bio page (linked from the top) a little bit, about a week ago; check it out.

I was just watching TV, skipping about the channels at random, when I happened to turn it to the Travel Channel. To my great amusement the host, in some foreign desert with some foreign tribe, was sitting in a pile of pillows, quite thoroughly engaged with a hookah.

Okay, so I'm being lazy on that story. I'll get around to it eventually, maybe. I got back my pictures. I don't actually have a great many from the festival; the two rolls that I got developed were allready fairly used up. I did use up another roll entirely at the event, but that was in the camara that was in my back pack that got away on the Greyhound when I was dealing with Jeff, and has not turned up. Hope is rather lacking on that one. Hugh took a bunch though and they're great. I'll scan those in eventually, as well.

At any rate, here are a bunch of the pictures that I took at in Reno and at Burning Man.

I got back from Burning Man yesterday evening and I've got some amazing stories to tell. I kept a journal while traveling there and back, but the bag it was in is gone; hopefully it will turn up at some point. For now, I'm resting. I am seriously exhausted. I intend to write up a story of all that went on over the past two weeks. Considering just how much happened, though, (plus my being a total slacker) this might take a little while.

Burning Man was amazing. The two weeks refused to taper off. Every time I thought my trip was finally over, something new, big, and very strange would find it's way into my life. The biggest example would have to be my friend Jeff deciding to kill himself in a restroom stall at a roadside rest-stop. (And then it got weird...)
I saved his life. Had I not done many very amazing things, he most surely would have died. (I'm not going to set aside ego on this one, I am a fucking hero!) The entire situation kept growing more and more surreal as it progressed. I'll explain all of this in far greater detail later, when I write up the story.

I'm heading out for Burning Man in about four hours. My main bag is fully packed; fully... It's massive! I'm amazed that a bag that one carries on their back could be made to hold so much stuff. I've got an assortment of clothes, a tent, a sleeping bag, far fewer toys than I would like, and some assorted survival stuff. I've also got a backpack totally full of food for the ride to Reno and, hopefully, a while after. I've thrown in a few books as well, for whatever travel time is not spent in sleep. Getting about in Reno for two days with all this engulfing mass will certainly be.. an experience.

I expect nothing less though, this trip will be a total submision to chaos; a trip in the most righteous sense of the word. This is the begining. This is the very begining of the begining. In two weeks, I'll be home again (assuming events continue to flow that way), with a grand array of stories of this most incomprehensible journey. For now and forever, let's all enjoy the madness.

A couple of Courtney's friends, Sarah and Em, will be arriving here tomorow (today, whatever..) afternoon. They'll be staying with us for just over a week. Umm, yeah.

In case you we're aware, I've been going out with Hugh for about 2 months now. He just left the DC area again, school and such. We will, however, be together again for Burning Man. Yup, I'm actually going to make it this year. I've been talking about it, and now I'm gonna do it. I've got my ticket for the event, as well as my Greyhound (do not trust their web page! all of the schedules and special deals are lies!) tickets both ways. The way it's going to work is: Hugh and I will both leave for Reno on the 26th (me from DC, him from NY). We'll arrive on the 28th, in the evening; me like 8 hours earlier than him. We will survive 2 nights together in Reno, with no plans or forethought (I love this life). On the 30th, in the afternoon, some guy Hugh hooked up with online, will pick us up in a car he's renting after flying in. We'll drive around for 5 hours or so picking up food and endless quantities of water (appearantely, we're supposed to have like 120lbs for the course of the event!). Then, we'll finally drive in to the Black Rock Desert, to meet The Man. After 8 days of pure madness we'll find rides back to Reno. Actually, Hugh has to leave like a day earlier so he doesn't fail everything (he's allready going to miss like a week and half of school for this; yah!). From there, it's back home, on another 2 day trip of transfers and transients.

Life can certainly be fun.

Oh yeah, I cut my hair a bit. I'm not sure I'm done cutting it; may still do some touching up. I'll put up some pictures eventually, for now, here are a few pics of what it looked like while I was still screwing around with it.

I got the bridge of my nose pierced! Woooo!

BLAIR WITCH IS FUCKING SCARY.

I've been lazy updating again, but this time I have something of an excuse. I was sick. I was really sick. I didn't eat anything for a week and lost like 17 pounds, which is very dramatic for me. I was seeing things one day and had a fever of 104f. The emergency room doctors gave me medication that made me worse. All in all, lots of fun, I assure you...

Anyway, I've returned from the dead and I'm back to the webpage at last. Actually, I'm too distracted to put up much right now, but I am working on a new project, which I'll explain in greater detail later. For now, check out the work I've done on it's web site: Small Town Freak (note that the email address there is not valid).

Oh yeah, hi Steve!

Hey Hugh!

Hi Liza.

I just spent the weekend in Pennsylvania; somewhere in the middle, i think. This was yet another church trip; UU's always have more to explore. 13 of us squeezed into a 15 seat van, plus lots of sleeping bags, pillows, backpacks/duffel bags, and a few big tents. Very crowded/cozy/friendly. We stayed at a riverside campground that's entirely themed around Yogi Bear; rather disturbing, but a nice place just the same. The entire weekend I ate with far less than acceptable nutritional consideration, even compaired to my normal munching habits.

We visited/toured Joseph Priestly's house. He was friends with Ben Franklin, to give time reference. He was a Unitarian, but one of the early ones: religious, pretty much christiaN, but believing JesuS to have been mortal; generally more rational people than x-tianS. He did lots of experiments and discovered/isolated/something oxygen. He killed lots of rats in these experiments, putting them in containers filled with whatever gas (he called them all "airs") he was experimenting on. Kind of sick. They sell rat finger puppets in the information center next to the house. Very twisted-slick.

We attended the Sunday service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Susquehanna Valley, a very nice little church with about 100 members. Our group filled up a good amount of the place. The service was excellent which included a great sermon entitled "In Search of tolerance." Definetly worth the trip. One of the members tipped us off to a PagaN gathering in D.C. Monday, promoting tolerance in the millitary of the growing number of paGan groups; a couple of my friends and I ended up attending.

We did lots of stuff. We visited a train restauraunt and some other train place where we rode and I got lots of pictures of my friends. We visited the largest inflatable dam, an amusing thing to think of as an attraction, but a nice place for the group to hang out and cool off (it was SOO HOT!). We also visited John's parents, John being one of the two group leaders and the whole general area we were in being where he grew up. We visited Hershey's fake factory; scary, scary, scary place!!! We went to an amusment park, I don't recall the name, but it was lots of fun. Anyway, I had a lot of fun this weekend; fascinating place to visit with friends.

I am in a very good mood. I strongly encourage everyone else to be so as well.

I thought I'd put a brief summary of what my plans are, though I think that most of my readers (ie, family, their friends, and my friends) allready have at least some idea of them. Oh well, here they are any way:

Basicly, I've got a three month time limit to get several things done. Namely, I've got to learn to drive, get a license, and get a car, probably in that order (there are many other little things that need to be done, too, but they're just part of the process for those three main things.). Then, towards the end of August, I'm going to drive to Nevada, hopefully with Leigh and anyone else who really wants to go, for Burning Man. One week is spent there. Then we drive home, as anyone with me who's a highschooler will probably miss the first week of school as is. After that, I don't know how long I'll stay home, but it won't be too long. Mostly, I'll be prepairing (*gasp*, morgaN? preparing?) for my next trip; the big one. This time I'll set out in my car (which I don't have yet) again (again, with anyone who wants to join me invited) and just start driving. I don't have any destination in mind, I'll just go... I'll make stops in various towns a come across during my travels and talk to people, learn how they live and what life and everything means to them. This whole time I'll be writing. I don't know if I'll come by a laptop or similar device, so I may have to resort to actually using pen and paper (*gasp* again!). Hopefully my writing will be at least mildly coherent; at best it would even be entertaining enough that others might actually enjoy reading it. But we'll just have to wait and see, on that one. I don't have any clue how long I'll spend on the road, it could be months, it could be years. I'm not going to even try to prescribe a time limit on this trip; when/if it's finally over, I'll know.

Well, there you have it, my plans. If you have any encouragement, suggestions, requests, ideas, etc.; wish to come with me, donate to my cause (whatever that may be), offer temporary living space while I'm on the road; or whatever, you may always email me. While I'm traveling you'll be able to reach me through some other means, such as my HotMail account; though I probably won't be able to check it all too often, I would truely appreciate any email while I'm traveling, but more on that when the time draws nearer. And now, I must return to maintaing the present timeframe of my life.

I'm back. I went to the Shanandoa (spelling forthcoming..) Mountains. Wow. What an amazing place. It was so truely peacefull and beautifull and serene. Claire and Lauri (isn't it endearing (....) how I just throw in names of people you probably don't even know?) and I spent many wonderfull hours together. Sharing a good thing with good friends always seems to make it even better. I watched the sun set on Saturday; it's amazing the sheer diversity of colors that exist which can all be classified as blue or orange, and then to think of all the other colors you know, and all the shades they can encompass. Clair (hmm, what do you make of my orthographical inconsistency?) said (paraphrased) "People who consider suicide need to see more sun-sets."; (I use my own grammer rules too..) I absolutely agree. I'm going to keep the trip in mind for a very long time, I hope, but I'll write of other stuff now..

What minority are you? Are you a minority of sexual orientation? Gender:sex orientation? Race; class; status; nationality? Height; weight; size? Religious; political? Style (dress/musical/lexical/...?); taste (musical/alimental/...?); artistic (dress/lexical/...?) minority? Physical; mental; social minority? ANY other minority, including the ultimate minority of you?

Everyone is a minority. It's inherint in our uniqueness, our individuality. People need to embrace this fact, revel in our differences and how it makes all people, as a whole, so much bigger, more diverse, and complete. Take away any uniqueness, and the whole becomes simpler and sparser. Encourage difference and individuality, and the limits are pushed away, and life and energy are allowed to float freely. Help others to be who they are and allow yourself to be who you are. Be free, and take humanity with you.

I'm off for the weekend; little retreat thing. Gosh these things seem to sneak up on me. Anyway, I'll be back Sunday and you probably won't even notice I was gone.

Oh yeah, hi Aaron!

Geez, I really wish I could think of something to say.

I finally reaquired the drivers for my scanner and now you may check out the JFK assassination conspiracy evidence (kinda big) handed to my by the cool paranoid guy just outside of Boston.

Quick note, in case you were, for some reason, wondering: my sister is still not gay.

Odd time of day for an update, no?

Well, I'm back from Boston (in case you even realized I was gone..); I got back Sunday (5-22). I went with my church-group-thing; about 25 of us, I think. We stayed at the UU[check this one out] church in Quincy. It's (one of?) the oldest Unitarian church(es) in the US. It's age shows. There is scafolding everywhere, presumably for renovation not just holding it up, but it's hard to say. There's a crypt with two US presidents, John Quincy Adams and, um, I forgot the other one.. A nice place, to be sure; atmospheric and all. The latenight games of wink were definetly fun (Wink, in short, is a game where everyone sits in a circle, in pairs, with one person on their own: the winker. The winker arbitrarily points to these pairs, one person of which tries despretely to force their way across the circle on hands and knees to reach the winker and kiss their head before anyone else makes it; the other person of the pair tries to stop them. To be blunt, this game appears rather violent and one does end up very soar and rugburned. However, it is a beautifully fun game to play and people try quite hard to not hurt each other.).

Most of our time was spent eating or wandering the cities in little groups. I spent most of my time in Cambridge, primarily in Harvard Square. The restaurants and cafes we went to were all truely great (except the few coffees I got at various locations were all really crappy, and the iced-tea wasn't great either; oh well, I'll live). Wandering around with a few good friends, with no destination in mind and open to anything is definitely fun, and this was definitely a great place for it. There were street perfomers (buskers!) everywhere, adding even more to the atmosphere of the old city.

At one point, a crazy street fellow walked up to us, handed us a piece of paper, sayed "Here's something they won't teach you about in your history class" and then kept walking, up to the corner. The paper was some JFK conspiracy stuff. Intrigued, Conner and I approached him, got another copy of the paper (he had a big bag full) and started talking with him. Fascinating person. He didn't actually seem to be crazy, and from his clothes and grooming it looked like he had some place to stay other than the streets; he'd mentioned his brother does conspiracy research with him, pershaps he's staying with him, or another conspiracy nut that he's networked with. A few of the others from our group join the conversation, which lasted near-on 20 minutes, I'd say. He told us of some theories Kosovo and other things. Appearantly he travels around a lot; he commented that he sticks to two-lane highways (? Odd comment. It's been suggested to me that they have shoulders, where bigass interstates and stuff don't. T'would make sense if he sleeps in his truck (which he'd also commented on)). People are wonderfull and I highly recomend going out and getting to know some, even if you'll never see them again (that can be motivation for reduced conversational inhibitions..).

Motivational thought (quote me on it!): "These are the days." Live today as you would want to remember it tomorow. Live!

I just saw the new Star Wars for the second time. Very impressive! I guess it would still work as a very cool movie for people who haven't seen ep's 4-6, but the way it ties in to those is amazing! If you see it (as society will make you...), see it twice. So many cool things are learned later in the movie; and watching it with them in mind adds a whole new dimension (but watch it without knowing them first!). Also, take a couple hours after watching it the first time to just ponder over it with someone who thinks like you - in a complementary way. As the preview for the new Austin Powers movie says: "If you only see one movie this year, see Star Wars".

I'm leaving for Boston tommorow (today) afternoon, until Sunday; so this page won't be updated any sooner than I would probably normally update it anyway. Um.. nevermind.

Some time ago (April 15) I was up late at night (wait, it gets better...). I considered, as I have on other occasions, that my writing for essays for school always turned out best when I had no time left to work on it, I did it with no sleep, and I was crazy from too much caffeine. I would churn out pages of prose and then collapse. I would wake up later to discover that I had finished my writing and that it was actually pretty damn good. This also seemed to apply pretty well to programs that I wrote, though with those it generally helps to have some memory of what I had done and (more importantly?) why. Now, on this night I was truely at the edge of collapse from sleep deprevation and excess caffein. I thought to myself, why waste this wonderfull, sickly state I've worked myself into; why not create a masterpiece instead, to be later discovered by myself. I did just that... sort of. I created three seperate blank text files, closed my eyes, and typed. Tonight I came across what I had writen that night (morning, actually..), after two months of being forgotten. I present them here, now, in unedited form, with their original titles and text (encapsulated in html so that the text wraps, rather than just trailing..). Be affraid:

nothing ever ends.txt, 8:30am (blah, nothing new there...)
likening.txt, 8:38am (hehehe)
wHAt.txt, 8:42am (I like this one..)

I've thought of all sorts of things I've wanted to say here lately, but none of them are coming to me right now. I'm a bit distracted at the moment too, so this should just be a quick update to show that I'm still alive and all. I went to prom this past weekend. Perhaps I'll talk about it the next time I feel up to writing more.

My hair. I haven't cut it. I really like the way I thought it would look, but I'm not so sure any more that it's how it actually would look. Being as my hair is rather curly, cutting it too short to tie back could mean that I'd either have to put a lot of work into it every time I washed it, or end up having an awefull mushroom-fro (again..). I may still see some hair stylist person to see what they think could be done with it, but for now it's not much different (if you even knew what it looked like before..).

New friend! Hiya Draqquar. Merry meet and all that to any of you other folks if you happen to have found this page somehow too. Check out his page for a nice little peek into what someone else chooses to share of their life. Ah yes, the net is wonderfull. Of particular interest to me (if you know me, this shouldn't be a surprise) is the section on dlaci, a very cool language he's created. Ahh, the inspiration begins to flow again.

Alas, I'm too distracted to write more just now. As such, i wont.

Should I cut my hair? I hacked a bunch of it off last night, towards the front, so that I could see what it would look like. I can still push this back and look mostly like I didn't do anything to it; it'll grow long enough to be part of my pony tail again soon anyway.
Here's what I'd look like (I think) (281KB of pictures, just so you're warned.)
Please tell me what you think of it.

It's been too long since I've updated this, but I guess I've done worse on previous attempts at this same sort of journal-site. Big things have been happening in my life recently, and I think I like it.

One day, about a month ago, while cashiering at Best Buy, I got into a brief conversation with a customer about web development. He was buying some web authoring tools and I happened to mention that I always do all my work manually, in the actual HTML code. He told me that he hires people to do web stuff and that I should give him my phone number; without thinking I gave him my email address instead (probably better anyway, though). About two weeks ago I got an email from him, saying he was working on starting a new company and that they needed someone to do their website; would I be interested. Naturally I said I'd be more than interested, but for honesty's sake I mentioned that I've had no commercial design experience. Being the amazingly cool guy that he is, he told me that it didn't mater, that just going out and doing it is the best way to learn anyway.

The site he wanted me to design was for a new startup called XML Tek (no link to them yet, I'm not done!). The premise for XML Tek is, they supply content (news, articles, documentation, tutorials, etc.) on XML - an emerging new technology that a bunch of people seem to be very excited about - and make money off of ads that run on the pages. Okay, so the entire business is centered around their one web site. It's my responsibility to make that web site. (at this point, I'm trying to come up with the appropriate expletive to demonstrate (hmm, does the word demonstrate have any etimological connection to demon?) my reaction to this, but really it involes a lot of bizzare noises, raising in pitch, and sort of a blurry dancing in circles, as I try to comprehend the responsibility this entails and the potential (there's that word again) that it offers me.). I enthusiasticly accepted the daunting challenge.

We met a few days later to discuss just what I would be doing.

I was dressed like I didn't want to wear a suit but wanted to look like a professional internish person. I looked kinda dumb. Like a nerd from the 50's, except for the long hair, beard-thing, pentacle-on-chain necklace, ball-chain bracelet, etc.

He looked good. He did a good job of not wearing a suit and still looking like he was a profesional. He wore all black. Fancy black slacks making him look businessy. A big black sweater making him look casual. A black leather coat making him look young and hip. He pulled it off well.

He gave me a general idea of what he had in mind for the site and what other sites were out there allready. He said he'd supply the content later, all I had to do was make the site that would contain it. He told me how much he'd pay me, I've been smiling ever since.

I worked almost 20 hours in the first week, on my own computer (the one I write this stuff from), hoping that I was doing the job that he'd had in mind for me. We agreed to met again yesterday morning, to discuss my progress (which he had, as yet, not seen any of). The night before I spent about 2:15hours more making the site presentable; rather than just a single page and a lot of notes on how the other pages would look, I quickly put together all those other pages, also full of notes on how they would evolve. This got me very little sleep before I got up to get ready for our meeting, two hours I think (I work well with little/no sleep though, it gives me a buzz). I spent the morning clearing a path in my room from the door to the computer; shoving my pile of clothes into the corner and covering them with blankets; making sure no dresses or anything was sticking out. I didn't even consider what inpression the 50 CD's and motherboard-jacked-into-African-head-mask and other such works of art I had decorating my walls would give him. He said nothing of them. He did, however, complement me on the giant space-shuttle-in-orbit mural-wall-paper I have covering the wall behing the computer, as well as the surround-sound setup with the machine.

This time I looked cool. I looked comfortable and in charge of myself. I was the one in the dark, good-looking outfit. He looked casual, light colors and open sandles. I respect that our relationship doesn't involve suits or last names, that's definetly not for my type of geek-self. I showed him the site I'd worked up, which didn't take long (uncomfortably quick, actually) and told him about how I envisioned the content being placed around within it, and the various areas which were still very open to change if warrented. He was impressed. I could finally relax. I had been doing the correct job all along.

Big things have been happening with the company over the last week, appearantly. This company that had nothing really but potential (interesting scenerio for the power of potential here) had just partnered/aquired/been-aquired/SOMETHING-businessy with/by another company called XML Solutions, and my boss guy (or is he my client?) has appearntly become CEO, or something. This XML Solutions bunch has been around for more than a year and actually does stuff with XML technology. Now it's no longer just a niche company, we have at least 2 distinct entities mutually coexisting (is that redundant?). There were plans for other sites allready, but this other group is concrete, they've been around.

And now, it seems, XML Solutions aren't thrilled with the state of their web site. Guess who my good friend convinced them to give the job of redesigning it to.. I'm spreading!!! They have a graphics team that I can use as a resource.. I have a graphics team!! These sites pretty much give the audience a plain hyper-text presentation of whatever content they carry; there's also some future plans for a new site using some bleeding-edge stuff for serious video/audio + slideshow delivery for the intense geeks that want it all; I'll have fun with that one too...

Every once in a while I recall that I'm also going to get paid (very well) for all this fun stuff, and that just makes my hopping, sputtering, spinning dance even more excited. I figure I'll buy a bunch of music and lots of gadgets; both to fill my room with. I keep thinking about this wireless, deskless, gyro-mouse thingy that Diamond sells. I'd like to toy with VR stuff too, sometime. Hell, I'm even considering building another new computer, just for fun.

Beyond this, who knows? At any rate, my foot is in the door and I'm walking through proudly. What's on the other side might just not be so bad.

Oh yeah, I'm going to senior prom with my very excelent good friend Tina. Heh, never thought I'd end up at one of those...

I want a place of my own. A sanctuary. I want to invite my friends to live with me; to come and go as they please. I want to pay for it since I have a job, and any of them that have or get jobs could help pay too. It would be our own community, with our own rules and expectations, or lack thereof. We would play together, eat together, sing and dance together, live and love together. A little commune in a big house (or a small appartment, if that's all we could afford). Honesty would reign, feelings and emotion would fly free. Art would surface and spread. Life would be fun and beautifull.

Just a dream, yet.

I'm working on a nifty little navigation bar for the top of the page, hopefully I'll be able to come up some content to navigate to.

I've got quite a bit to say this time, plus lots of links thrown in for fun. Read the whole thing, I might be interesting!

We had an interesting guest speaker at the Unitarian church's senier-high group today, a representative of Regeneration, a christiaN group that works to, um, make gay people straight. Yuk. Well, the guy who came (I don't recall his name) was actually very nice and not at all confrontational (he wouldn't have lasted long amoungst us liberal youth if he were otherwise). He told us his life story, or at least the bits that he found relevant (took a while..); of how he was gay and had a great life. Then he sort of "found" goD. Then when his boyfriend of six years dumped him, he was crushed (gad, imagine that.. *groan*). But then he got together with another guy and that lasted for four years; but this relationship too came to a painfull ending (um, yeah? so? is this supposed to surprise or shock us?). Then, due to religious guilt (hehe, I got him to admit that it was guilt), he felt he had to get rid of his 'compulsive habits' of masturbating and seeing men as objects. He then met some other christiaNs who had 'gone through what he was going through' and that 'helped' him. Now he says that he is no longer gay; he no longer sees men as objects and no longer goes out with them, though he does have male friends with whome he has very strong bonds. He isn't married. He doesn't really seem to be attracted to women. What a silly, dilluded, repressed christiaN.

(all of this is what he told us..)The group that he was representing does not do outreach stuff. They have no aggressive tactics. The serve people that come to them. They don't even try to make all the gay people that come to them "straight". They try to help them cope with their lives, as they're presumably having issues, and if it's desired by the person, the group trys to help them to become more christiaN and less queer.

Now, certainly we have fundamental differences in values and morals, what's good and, in this case, what's percieved as bad. But just the same, I have great respect for this man for his nonagressive and well-intentioned approach to living and promoting his beliefs, as well as his willingness to intelligently discuss and debate them with a group that would obviously not agree with him most of the time. In many ways, I actually think he is quite a good model to follow.

I only wish that I had worn my skirt.

Oh yeah, I intend to go to Burning Man this year. If I know you, or maybe even if I don't, and you'd be interested in going with me, be sure to contact me.

I'm strongly considering adding a section to this site where others can tell their stories of who they are and what lives they lead. This can be a sort of personal-bio, like mine (or not like mine, even), or it could be a "day in the life"/journal kind of thing, where you could spew out whatever's on your mind, like I do here. Please, if you'd be willing to, send me some email with whatever you have to say and I'll look it over and probably post it (mention if you want your name, email, homepage, whatever published). Put "Morgan" as at least part of the subject so that it's clear that it's mail intended for me. C'mon, be the first!

Hi Courtney! My wonderfull sister, Courtney, has been so kind as to mention this site on her own pages and I thought I would return the honor. Check out her site at Grinnell College; it's always good for something, but there's never telling what...

Egad, I was so happy last night (this morning) when I was watching Sesame Street (almost as happy as Blues Clues makes me), but now I've got a truely irritating Elmo song stuck in my head (about the parts of the face). Grrrr, I can't stand Elmo!!! Why did they ever introduce that stupid little poseur!?! (ahh, taking out anger on muppets could probably prove a very safe and healthy(? or scarry..) form of therapy)

Another thing to be upset about (even compaired to Elmo?!)... I now have to register for the Selective Service! Gads, is there anything good about turning 18 that I'll ever encounter?! They're making me submit my name to their big 'ole list of 18-25 year old males, so that if there's a war within the next 7 years I get the chance to: a) tell them I'm morally opposed to virtually all forms of military action and that I'd be more likely to kill myself than an "enemy" soldier (bloody waste of a uniform and weapon, no?); b) tell them I'm queer; and c) dodge (actually sounds kind of fun..). What a waste of time and energy. Not wanting to be arrested or have someone else screw up my future for me, however, I will register. One could certainly look upon that act and consider it's relation to the effects and influence of potential. Look at their site, their explanations of why females aren't required to register but males are is hideous, beurocratic, almost catch-22 nonsense! They basicly say that the situation has been analyzed and found to not be sexist on the basis that females in the military are not allowed to fight on the front lines anyways. Not sexist?! Perhaps if some laws and regulations became sex(etc.)-equal, others might follow! It certainly makes my desire more potent for the truth in Unamerican's predictions of the decline of this countries ruling systems. We'll see...

I have a bunch of ideas for little things I could add to this site, like a guestbook or bulletin board system. However, these would need to be things that I code myself, and I don't think that my ISP would allow me to run my own server-side programs (neccesary for database management) on their web server. I intend to host this site from home; or if that proves too popular (HA!) and bandwidth intense, at least the server-programs and database parts of it. (Actually, I DO host it at home, sometimes, if you bother to try my IP address (good luck), but that won't offer much of a difference from this, except that you might see my uncompleated updates as I write them and read through them prior to uploading.) As soon as I get around to finishing the wiring for my home network, thus allowing all of the computers here to be online at the same time, thus no longer requiring me to ever disconnect (to switch workstations), I will start implementing such new features. In the mean time, you can still try my personal server, if you know my IP address (heh..). If I'm on your ICQ list, you can tell if the machine (Sanctuary) that runs the server is on and see what my current IP is, but I don't let just anyone add me to their lists.

At any rate, what I was trying to say is that eventually this site will probably have some fancy new features that I will create and run myself. end.

(I've noticed that my little title, greeting, graphic thingy is screwed up. When I get my computer I created it on working properly, I'll fix it up.)

While it's on my mind, Unamerican Activities is definately a site worth checking out. Insitefull, perhaps, amusing in the least. Basicly, the authors believe that America is falling apart and that planting the seeds now to whatever comes next gives us the oppertunity to make the world a better place in the future. Plus they sell some great bumper stickers and stuff!

For quite a while now I've debated with myself over how to interpret 'potential' and how much stock to place in or against it. Finally I actually was thinking about it at the same time as updating this little public-journal of mine; and now I invite all to consider it as well. Is it worth the effort to do something with the result of gaining the potential for something else? This would probably be too broad to be answered without going to a case-by-case analysis; but it is interesting to simply try pondering as a broad catch-all.

Consider school (I certainly have..). Most people think that an education is entirely worth the effort. Revise: Most non-student-adults think that an education is entirely worth the effort. What about the student? Certainly someone close to graduation would be more likely to find it personally worth it, because they've allready done most of the work and have comparatively little more ahead of them. But what, say, of someone in middle school, or maybe 9th or 10th grade? Do the actually want to be there? Ask them, ask yourself, or think back, depending on your situation. What say should they have in how they lead their lives? What if they decide that the future gains in potential are not worth the present effort?

Just how far ahead should one plan? If all one does is plan for the future, they won't have any oppertunity for living in the present. Even if that future arives, what of all the time they spent creating it? What of the immediate-potential for enjoying their lives that they had missed out on? "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Hmm. So many people work so that their futures may be bright but yet daily complain of how ill their lives are. Sad. Then again, one should probably consider that living for today ("carpe diem!") may have it's failings, when one runs out of being able to live off life alone and crashes face first into reality; and they realize they're not prepared, that their present situation becomes a bleak one, with little potential of it's own. Not neccesarily always the outcome for such a situation, certainly, but something to perhaps consider before giving up on ones connection with the scheduled world of attempted intentional self-predestination. [was that redundent? Oh well, I like the way it sounds :) -- 3-15-1999]

Something that warrents much further thought (and has undergone lots that just escapes me at the moment). At any rate, I will now sacrifice my pleasure of writing this and whatever else I may get up to so that I can sleep; thus making my future day of work more bearable. A day of work and struggles so that I will eventually recieve a pay-check; which I will eventually spend on various things, usually of trivial importance and interest. Is all this really worth it?

This past weekend I spent in Pennsilvania (I think; I tend to lose track of what state I'm in, though) for an inter-church (Unitarian Universalist) conference (Con). What an amazingly fun thing to do!! The con's theme was identity and personal masks, but that didn't really stand out very well.

We were expected to attend two workshops (from a small selection) about this theme. However the little group i was hanging out with (hi guys!) decided not to attend the first, instead trying to hide somewhere that we could sleep (not realistic, but fun). The second workshop, on identity, was absolutly depressing. We watched a video that talked about O's and X's as the people that make up society. X's are the vast majority. They make up how the world as a collective thinks and acts. O's are the unique ones, who, according to the video, do not fit in. It gave three possible approaches for O's to take to get by in life: 1) try to conform and ultimately fail; 2) hide behind the achievements of an X and never get very far; or 3) overachieve, for a very temporary success, and end up totally cracking. Our little group was notably upset with this view of life.

Asside from that, however, everything was amazingly fun. Between Friday and Sunday I got about 2 hours of sleep; not consecutively. In the couple days we spent together, I grew very close to my con friends. Discusions were truely fascinating, as well as frank and honest, but will not be repeated here (sorry). The skirts and hats and makeup were all a great deal of fun. I cannot wait untill the next one (another month!, arrgggh!).

And oh yeah, I just turned 18.

Recently I have been, appropriatly, infected with the meme-complex of the Church of Virus. Explaining this occurance would essentially be pouring out a bunch of memetic buzzwords. For the best understanding of who they are and what they believe, check them out for yourself. Very fascinating group and, unless you're fundamentally alergic, easy to sympathise with. Also of note is the essay on why Lucifer's not such a bad guy after all; at the root of the same server. I'm not fully bible-literate, so I'm not going to go around after reading this telling people to praise Satan; but I do like the image painted of Lucifer through this persons perception of biblical mythology.

I've been contemplating my connection with techno-paganism, shamanism, witchcraft, etc. and my iconoclastic, anti-faith nature. I've decided I'm not going to assume that any of that stuff actually does work. I will, however, remain open to the possibility of magick-esque aspects to reality. If I find the time and motivation, I am considering doing research and conducting controlled tests on the mater. Even the propossal to do such, however, brings back my synicism that would once have laughed at anyone doing such a thing and actually taking it seriously. So, to get past myself, I'm not going to take myself seriously (I rarely do anyway). I'll do real research and make real recordings of any experiments I perform, and I'll remain open to possibilities, but I'll have fun with it too and laugh at the results when I'm finished, regardless of the conclusion.