This entry brought to you by Rogue Chocolate Stout:

So I'm clearly losing my grip on reality here.

Not that it was ever that tight to begin with, but I can feel it slipping away from me a lot more lately.

Eventually it will slip away completely, fall to the ground and shatter at my feet. Probably cut me and give me tetanus in the process.

I have such a convenient memory. Such a nice fancy pair of rose-colored glasses. Such a fucking idiotic way of seeing only what I want to see and completely ignoring anything that doesn't fit into these delusions that I use instead of hope.

I should be dead, you know. For a while I thought that the fact that I'm still alive might be a sign that I'm actually getting better. That maybe this long dark Winter was coming to an end.

Hell, I've even managed to convince myself, for short periods of time, that it was all nothing more than overblown hysteria.

But then I look at this picture that I've found. To be fair, the resemblance is fucking uncanny. Her own mother would look at this picture and smile because her daughter looks so pretty in it.

Problem is, it's not her daughter.

It's nobody at all. Just a pretty girl. Just a pretty brunette with glasses who would completely freak out if she knew that, right now, I'm looking at her picture and my eyes are filled with tears.

It's not her I'm looking at. It's not her I see. I'm looking at a fake. An imposter who from that angle, under that lighting, with her expression just that way, coincidentally happens to look like someone else.

But do I care that she's a fraud? Fuck no. My mind won't accept the truth enough for me to care.

That picture is the best link I have to a past that never really existed. To a future that will never happen. I guess it's fitting that it's a fake.

Besides, Beggars can't be choosers, right?

So I'm a little late with this entry. Been doing laundry all day long.

And, I'm sorry to say, this entry is not really worth the wait.

It was a pretty dull night.

I arrived late, a little after 9:00. The first thing I noticed was that the loser area was packed. The second thing I noticed was that it was EwokGirl and her entire posse. So I said a quick "Hey" to her and then moved on.

In Rich O's proper, the entire living room area was full of strangers, and WomanRepellant was sitting at the bar.

That was it.

So I ordered myself a Cone Smoker (1806) and sat at the bar myself. WomanRepellant was eating, so not very good company, so I moved over to the island. The bonus to this move was that I was able to see if the girl I'd seen sitting on the loveseat was as hot as that first glance had hinted.

Ehhhh.

After WomanRepellant finished eating he moved over to the island with me. Then, after a while, CoffeeDude came in and joined us.

And that was it.

I don't think anyone came or left Rich O's proper for the rest of the night except EwokGirl, who came in to say goodbye to me, and this one flaming guy with two hot girls in tow. They came in and laughed at something in the red room then walked back out.

Let's see, my second beer was an Avery The Reverend (90) which I've promoted to yummy status.

At about 10:30 or so I started text-messaging people I was so bored. Nobody replied. That's kind of sad.

My third, and final beer was a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar (75), but I only drank half the glass.

And that was it.

It's been a pretty fantastic weekend here, weather-wise.

I realized this fact yesterday, after RockGirl's incoming email woke me up at the crack of noon, and I made the momentous (for me anyway) decision to (a) get off my ass, (b) leave my house, and (c) maybe even go someplace.

But where?

Why, Madison, Indiana of course.

But why?

Because they were having some festival or such and the NABC had a booth and they had Cone Smoker with them. And, you know, if there's anything better than drinking a Cone Smoker, it would have to be drinking a Cone Smoker in Madison.

Right?

So, basically, it gave me something to do. It also gave me a reason to take my new digital camera.

I've never been to Madison. It's about an hour up river from New Albany. I took the "scenic route" which so-named, as far as I can figure, because it's curvier than the other route.

After I'd driven for 45 minutes or so, my phone started vibrating. It was Awesome Larry, an old pool-playing friend from Omaha. So I pulled off into this ice cream place and talked with Larry for 15 minutes or so.

I know, this is boring.

When I was almost to Madison, I passed the entrance to Clifty Falls State Park. Hey! I didn't know that was by Madison! I'd gone there once as a kid with Boy Scouts or something and I remembered that it had been pretty cool, so I postponed going to the festival thingy, turned around, and went into the park.

I paid $5 to get in. I think I want my $5 back.

When I was a kid we'd been able to climb these stairs all the way down into the canyon. Then we'd been able to actually walk behind the falls. It was awesome.

Remember that scene from "The Last of the Mohicans" where they're all behind that waterfall while the bad guys are chasing them? It used to be kinda like that, except without as much water, and without people in funny wigs shooting at you.

But that was then. It was very cool.

Now, it's pretty much the exact opposite of cool.

Now, you can't do shit.

The stairs leading down to the base of the falls are gone. As near as I can tell the only ways to actually see the falls are to either jump and get a good look before you splatter onto the rocks, or hike approximately 8,764 miles up though the creek.

No thanks.

* drumroll *

And now, without further delay, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Clifty Falls!

What's that? You can't see shit?

Okay, I'll move over to the left and zoom in a little.

And that's all you can see. The falls are like 60 feet tall but you can only see the first few feet, and even that I don't think is the real falls.

It's not even impressive enough to make you want to pee.

So I didn't pee. I just left.

On the way back out of the park I stopped at this one overlook place and took a couple of pictures to test out the 12x optical zoom on my camera. Here's the normal shot:

And here's the zoomed shot:

Pretty cool. If there was a naked chick over there by that thingy, I'd totally be able to see her boobies!

But there were no boobies to be seen, so I left the park and continued my original journey into Madison.

This was the street down by the river where this festival was supposed to be going on. There were about 50 people there. I stopped by the beer tent and had a Cone Smoker (1796) in a plastic cup and talked to Roger.

Then I drove back home.

All in all, I'd say that the day was more interesting than doing laundry would have been, but not by much.

I have the weirdest alarm clock ever.

Normal alarm clocks don't always work with me. I still manage to sleep through them far too often.

For a while I was able to use the alarm function in my cellphone. So great was my fear that I'd miss a call from you know who, any noise whatsoever coming from that phone would find me springing out of bed. So I set the alarm noise to the same ring as the incoming call noise.

But after a zillion years of disappointment, I started sleeping through that noise as well.

Lately, and when I say lately I mean for the last several weeks and maybe even months, I've come to rely on a novel new way to know when it's time to get up. At least on the weekends. On weekdays I seem to be on my own.

What happens on the weekends is that, 700 miles away from me, a girl writes me an email. She writes me an email, and I wake up.

Doesn't seem like it would be possible, does it? I mean, even if she was really pounding the shit out of those keys I shouldn't be able to detect it from more than maybe 30 yards or so. Certainly not 700 miles.

I don't know how it works. I just know that it does. When my friend RockGirl sends me an email, I'm up within 5 minutes of when she hits the send button. Sometimes it's 5 minutes before, so that gives me time to get myself a drink and take a piss and shake some of the cobwebs out of my head. Sometimes it's 5 minutes after and so I postpone those usual morning activities until after I've read the message.

It's a nice way to wake up, that's for sure.

...and I have proof.

After I got home from Madison this afternoon, after I finished my dinner, I went downstairs to shoot some pool.

And I tripped over this:

Luckily, I seem to have killed it by tripping over it. Otherwise I'd have had to move out of my house.

I dropped the pool ball on it just in case.

Yep, it's dead.

Now I have to find my shovel so I can dispose of the thing.

After the hangover I had last Sunday morning I knew that I'd have to do things differently. Unfortunately, this meant that I wouldn't be able to do what I really wanted to do, which was drink at least two Cone Smokers. This is something I've suspected before - there's something about the smoked ales that can give me a hangover even when I don't drink enough to feel anything the night before.

I got to Rich O's early, a little bit before 8:00. I was feeling sociable and I wanted to try and grab a seat in the living room area. I guess the place was fairly busy, but it was mostly people I knew. I sat on the sofa and talked to PhotoDude and MusicalHippyDude and GlassesGirl. There was one of the PBDs that I don't really know there as well.

My first beer was, of course, a Cone Smoker, but I only had a half-glass (1780).

We mostly talked about DaveFest and how surreal it's going to be for me to see people wearing t-shirts with my picture on them. Surreal, but cool. I emailed the picture to the artist yesterday. He says he's finishing up the design. I can't wait to see!

GlassesGirl told me that she'd seen Dina's friend SpoonsGirl out front, but I hadn't seen her when I'd came in, and I'd failed to spot her during a piss break, so I figured she'd left.

But she hadn't. She came wandering back into Rich O's proper and spotted me. We ended up talking for the rest of the night about various fluff.

My second beer was a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar (70) which I hadn't had in a long time. It was much better than I remembered, so that was nice.

People came and people left. Specifically, CoffeeDude came and PhotoDude and the PBD I don't know left. I told CoffeeDude about how I'd gotten a hate-comment from one of those chicks that had been there the last time I saw him.

My third beer was an Avery The Reverend (80), which just keeps getting better and better each time I drink it. I may have to promote this beer from good to yummy.

SpoonsGirl gave me shit for her nickname. I explained that I'd had to pick something, and that night had pretty much been the defining moment of the ten or so years that we've known each other. We explained the nickname to the people sitting around us, so now everybody can call her SpoonsGirl. That's funny to me.

My fourth, and final, beer was a Smithwick's (746).

Once SpoonsGirl left I hung around for a while talking to my friends. GlassesGirl told me that she'd had some Rogue Chocolate Stout the night before! At Rich O's!

I wondered if that meant that the DaveFest kegs had arrived. If so, I wanted to see if I could spend a few moments alone with the Rogue Chocolate Stout keg. The bad news was that it had not arrived yet. The good news, the good news was that they had it in bottles.

Yay!

So I bought myself six bottles of incredibly yummy Rogue Chocolate Stout, and now I can't wait until the next time I feel like drinking at home.

Yay!

Once in possession of my six new best friends I went to White Castle and came home.

Woke up very dehydrated at 4:00 and I've been up ever since drinking water.

I went to Rich O's after work today for a Cone Smoker (1770), and PhotoDude told me about this:

That's the blackboard over at the Sportstime side of things. Nothing written on the Rich O's side yet, but maybe they've decided to go with neon, or maybe a blimp.

Dancing girls would be cool too.

---

I found a picture today that makes me sad. This is good timing because the picture that I used to use for that purpose only makes me happy now.

I'm weird, I know.

On nights like this when the sea is calm and the breeze is cool and the sand is still warm under my feet, I can understand why I came back here.

I walk along the shore and I see what gifts the tide has brought for me. I keep my head down though, or straight ahead. I dare not look to my left, where the jungle's illusions of safety and refuge beckon. I must not look to my right, where the sea still shines with the last vestiges of sunset, and where the reflections of the night's first stars blink at me from each ripple in the water. Speaking to me in code that only I can understand. Calling to me.

Pieces of driftwood deposited at my feet in swirling foam. Some I ignore, and some I hurl back into the water, and some into the trees. Others, others I carry with me to make sure that the next receding tide doesn't reclaim them.

These are my most cherished possessions.

For I know that, on those days when the sea rages against me and sweeps my feet out from under me and pulls me away from my beach, I know that these treasures I've collected will keep me afloat until I can make my way back to shore.

For I know that, on those days when the beasts of the jungle emerge slobbering to attack and devour me, I know that these treasures I've collected can be wielded against them and can fend them off until they tire and move off to seek easier prey.

It's not such a bad life that I find myself living. I walk this beautiful beach and, though I am alone, I am safe.

I can understand why I came back here.

It's paradise, after all.