The Internet is now complete.

I think we should all shut down our sites and our journals now, lest anyone ever be tempted to use the Internet for a lesser purpose.

I was doing fine. I really was. Even though the place was completely infested by weirdoes. My sister Dina was there at first, and she and I talked for a while. After Dina left, I was able to escape the weirdoes in the living room and join the PBDs at the island. I had three yummy Rogue Chocolate Stouts (2336).

I was doing just fine, for several hours, until this one PBD decided to utter the magic words that never fail to piss me off.

It gets blurry after that.

Kind of an irritated day for me. AlliDay was a bust, as they were too busy in there for me to get more than an edgewise word or two in with BikerGirl. But my woes started way before lunchtime.

I can't shake this feeling that I'm swimming against a current, and that all progress is an illusion. I need some encouragement, some sign that I'm not wasting my time with all this. And I'm not expecting to get any.

I should really be more excited about the holidays than I am. I mean, tomorrow is my last day of work until next Wednesday, then I work three days, then I get nine days off. I should be fired-up about all that time off work, but I'm not. Spending a day working isn't all that much different, fulfillment-wise, than spending a day by myself. So the next couple of weeks won't be that special, I don't think.

The holidays themselves? They're shaping up to be irrelevant, just like everything else, everything except this current that's trying to sweep me backwards.

Maybe my mood will change tomorrow at about 5:00, when I get off work. I hope so.

You know, for such a happy guy, I sure am in a funk.

Today, not much of anything happened.

I worked. I went to Rich O's after work, and got a pizza. I came home, ate some of my pizza, and took a nap. I watched some DVDs. That's pretty much it.

I have this thing I want to write about, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to write the thing without making it seem like I'm being judgmental. So I'm not writing about it, yet. Problem is, it's got my brain so clogged up that I can't think of anything else to write.

Tomorrow is AlliDay. Maybe that will unclog my brain a little.

I've noticed something lately. A change in myself, besides the one I keep rambling about. A more subtle change. A change in my reasons for writing my drivel.

It's not a particularly good reason, but it wasn't a particularly good reason before. Most of the world, I'm sure, hasn't even noticed this change. But I've noticed it. I've noticed it, and I don't like it very much.

A long time ago it happened, more often than not, that I wrote my drivel in an attempt to get a reaction. Good, bad, whatever. It didn't matter to me, as long as a reaction came.

Well, no reaction ever came. No matter what I wrote, it was always wasted. But that was a long time ago. And I pretty much gave up. And my writing suffered greatly. It suffered greatly for a very long time.

But then, then something changed. Both externally, and internally, everything changed.

Now, I don't write in an attempt to get a reaction to my drivel. Nope, I awoke from that particular dream a long time ago. What often I'm doing now - and again, I'm not proud of this, is I'm testing the limits of what I can get away with.

So far, I'm getting away with all kinds of things.

It won't last, though. Nothing ever does.

Eventually I'm going to find, and surpass, the limit of what I can write without ruining everything. Eventually, I'm going fuck this up.

Consider this a preemptive apology. I need to do this now, because when that fateful day comes, I expect to be busy kicking myself in the ass.

One time there was this kid with really cool hair, and he would often play with this other kid, until he almost burned the other kid's house down by accident. After that, their parents didn't let them play together anymore.

The moral of this story is that just because you have cool hair doesn't mean that you're actually cool.

I'm pretty much forcing myself to write something tonight. I don't know what I'll write about. It will probably be boring.

I have a couple of good ideas for entries, but I can't remember what they are. I wrote them in my notebook, though. So I'll eventually get around to them. Maybe.

Today I was supposed to go shopping, but I didn't. All I did was drive around and get pissed at crowds of shoppers and football fans. The latter are the worst, if you ask me. Not that you asked me, but if you had, that would have been my answer.

Anyway, I did something sort of nice yesterday, and it's been ignored. So that bugs me a little. It might bug me a lot except I've had myself a bottle of yummy Left Hand Smoke Jumper (193).

That reminds me. Last night NotHideousGirl asked me how I'd been doing over the eleven gazillion years since we'd last talked. I decided to pretend that she actually cared, and answer her. My answer seemed, at first, to be a load of drivel. But I thought about that answer, today while I was driving around getting pissed at people, and it's making a bit more sense to me now.

What I said was that I was happy for the most part, but that sometimes I was sad. That wasn't the drivel part. The drivel part was when I went on to say that I'd done some sort of weird 180-degree flip. Instead of being a sad person, I was a happy person. Instead of being a sad person who, every now and then, got into a good mood, I was a happy person who was subject to the occasional bouts of sadness.

Wait, that wasn't the drivel part either. The drivel part came next.

What I said was that the contrast between my varying moods seems to be a lot stronger now than it was before. Like, back when I was sad and I experienced happiness, it was noticeable, but nothing spectacular. Except for one time back in May. But now, now that I'm a happy person, those moments of sadness really stand out to me. Affect me. Turn me into an asshole, some might say. Or a dolt, NotHideousGirl might say.

It's contrast, like I said last night. Black spots against a white background vs. white spots against a black background. They should be the same, more or less. But they're not. Not even close.

I have a theory about this. I think that maybe I'm not really happy at all. Maybe I'm just not sad. I hate to use this word, but maybe I'm content. Maybe I'm lying to myself, and recent events have not quite lifted my spirits as much as I've thought.

That would suck, I think. If all I could manage was content. Because, seriously, I don't think things are ever going to get much better than this.

---

Okay, I guess that answers the question of what I was going to write tonight. I was going to write crap, apparently.

Ta-Da!

Yesterday we had snow and sleet and freezing rain here, pretty much all day. This was strange, because Al Gore keeps saying that won't happen.

I spent my day at home. Messing with a web page design for LaptopGirl in between power outages. I'd planned to do my Christmas shopping, but I didn't feel like dealing with the idiots on the roads. They're bad enough even when the weather's good.

Anyway, a few times in the past, when it's snowed, people have been known to puss out and cower in their homes instead of going out. And, when Rich O's is really dead, they'll close up early. I was a little fearful that they'd be closing early last night, so I went there very early. Like at 6:00 or so. I figured that if it was dead in there I could at least buy a growler to take home.

But it was okay. The place was fairly full. A bunch of people I know were in the living room area, and for some reason they saved the throne for me. So that was nice of them.

I had myself a pint of NABC Cone Smoker, and enjoyed that immensely while I talked with TremensGirl and MusicalYuppieDude and NotHideousGirl. NotHideousGirl and I have agreed that we will each pretend that we share fault for our crumbling friendship. This is a good compromise, I think.

At about 8:00, I remembered that it was the Ides of December, so I got myself into a bad mood. I briefly toyed with the idea of just going home. Actually, I obsessed over that idea for quite a while. But eventually I decided to just have another Cone Smoker (2881) and stop being a baby.

At one point during the night, I observed this conversation:

I will never understand women.

I had the brilliant idea to text BikerGirl and invite her to Rich O's. I'd thought that maybe having NotHideousGirl and me both there might be enough to entice her. This thought helped to slow the descent of my mood, and I ordered another Cone Smoker.

But then I remembered that BikerGirl was working.

I drank about 2/3 (2895) of my beer, but I saw no point in staying any longer, so I came home at 10:00 or so.

Last night, I was late getting to Rich O's, having gotten caught up in some work bullshit exciting opportunity that took longer to resolve than I'd hoped. I didn't get there until after 9:00, an hour after HatGirl had texted me inquiring as to my whereabouts. I feel bad for making HatGirl wait - she does enough of that already.

When I first arrived, it was pretty crowded. So I stood at the end of the bar and chastised PearlGirl a little for almost getting me into big giant trouble the other night. PearlGirl had some cute girl in tow. I forget her name.

Anyway, after some strangers left, and after some preliminary seat-shifting, I found myself in the throne. I had myself an NABC Naughty Claus (43) and talked with HatGirl and LuckyFucker for a while about various nonsense. I also watched the door a lot, out of habit more than out of any sense of optimism.

At about the time HatGirl and LuckyFucker left, I ordered a second Naughty Clause (63). I like this year's version. UPSDude had moved to the loveseat at some point, and I spent the next hour or so babbling to him.

That was pretty much it. The place was only about half-full for most of the night, and it was almost all strangers.

I had most of a glass of Schlenkerla Marzen (2289) and came home a little after midnight.

I am imagining a surfer, who catches what he expects will be a really good wave. He stands on his board, and he rides toward the shore. But the wave never becomes more than a swell in the water. It never rises. It never curls. It never breaks. It's a nice wave, it provides a pleasant ride, but that's all it provides. It is, once everything is said and done, a waste of his time.