june 20

some very wise person once said "a little knowledge can be dangerous". you may think you know what you're doing, but there is something waiting to trip you up and show you you don't know squat. i accept my defeat - i erased everything i did this week with an ingenious script that was meant to make my life so much easier. after i did it i felt like the biggest putz, but then i realized that people who use computers do this kind of stuff all the time, no matter the backups and precautions. the gods have fated that our own creations will turn on us and give us the raspberry.

my ego was so shot after that, and i was so raw and free from some sort of complexity that i was back to the basic me, close to true, and probably could have gone anywhere and met anyone.

so i did what any person in my situation would do - i went to the bank and cashed my paycheck. they, however, did not see that i was very much myself, and had me put my right index fingerprint on the check. then the teller checked my driver's license against some catalog she had in the back to make sure it wasn't a fake. protocol does not have a provision for empathy.

i was looking forward to telling everyone back at the apartment about my day, laughing about it, and putting it neatly away, but by the time i got back they knew. i'd told chuck's dad, who emailed chuck, who emailed wayne, who greeted me at the door, and when i gave him the my day sucked sigh, he gave me the ya, that must suck response. technology's a bitch, sometimes.

but then we all went off to see the x-files movie, down at jack london theatre on the riverfront. the event was not so much the movie, but more the wait in line before it. the eleven of us ate our dinner in it, and cathy taught me some swing dance steps, and we only hit the guy in line ahead of us a few times. somewhere behind us there were people smoking pot. there were rumors that the trailer for the star wars prequel would be shown.

this was the latest of the x-files cults that i was in. the first was in boarding school, where we all had to go to the assistant-housemaster's apartment at least ten minutes ahead of time, cuz there was hierarchy and assigned seats and you sure couldn't miss the intro and whistle along when they turned the lights off. if you talked at all while it was on people hushed you with the utmost expedience, and commercials were like a big release, when people tried to figure plot out or even just open the door. then it was senior year, and royal and i tried to watch it in our room, which was almost always dark. we had a tv that faisal lent to us and later gave me to pay off a sixty dollar debt, and save him from taking it back to saudi arabia. freshman year of college i almost never watched the show, and fell way behind in the plot. sophomore year it became a gathering force again, and we watched in the lodge, with food usually and maybe the christmas lights on, and hopefully all three computer monitors turned off. it was storytelling time with images almost as good as the imagination and anxiety that usually resolved itself in an hour. it was american entertainment of truth and freedom. i'll probably do it till it goes off the air, cuz it's fun.