• 3 : 05 A.M. PST
  Hot girl on girl action, et cetera

Today I woke up! Read some stuff about a two language approach to application design! Visited Kris at the newly chumped guitar center! And ate dinner with eight girls!

The waking up part was unremarkable. I got a couple phone calls while I was still in bed, sort of awake, sort of not. I'm never sure what to say when someone calls and asks if they woke me up. It would be one thing if it were 5 AM, but these are people who call at noon. Something is definitely clueing them in to the fact that I have not been energetically accomplishing things since early morn. I think it's probably the tone of voice. Like a drunk, I can't tell what's different, unless it's the croaky, slow articulation of words. Ok, come to think if it, it's probably pretty obvious. I also don't want to say, "yeah, you woke me up, but what you should really be sorry for is making me feel like a dilatory slacker, enjoying my bed instead of jumping up and down and balancing my checkbook/doing my taxes/fighting hunger/saying no to drugs/whatever I'm supposed to be doing right now". So I usually just go with the most forgiving definition of "sleep" and say, "no, you didn't wake me up."

Then I spent some time reading the "Advanced Perl Programming" book by Sriram Srivan.. Srivnav. Uh... Sriram Srinivasan. Jesus. At the same time, I'm poking around on the web for information on stand-alone isolation booths. They aren't for punishing people, they're for sonically isolating something from your environment. In this case, an apartment building full of non-deaf people. Kris called me and told me about isobooth.com(a.k.a. Vocalbooth.com). There's a potential discount involved, since guitar center can probably order him one. Beyond that, I've found Whisperroom and Isolationbooths.com(Gretch-Ken Industries). There appears to be some pretty fierce competition there, but I have plenty of time to research the differences, as it will be the middle of next year before I can lay out the $1500-2500 for a soundproof box with air holes. I had originally intended to build one myself, but I'm not sure I have the engineering acumen to create an acoustically sealed room (sound easily travels through a crack the width of a human hair). More importantly, I probably will not have the time, once I can afford materials. Finally, if I get a pro-grade mobile one, it can travel with me to practice spaces/other houses/jupiter/kris' house/the future if need be, whereas one I built would probably stay where it was built until broken. Who knows, maybe I can get one in February and start recording loud vocals in my own home.

Visiting guitar center was a little sad. Everyone who works there has to wear uniforms now, and the old guard employees huddle together in little groups against the encroaching Wal-Martiness. It doesn't help them, though. They're still dressed in identical grey button-up shirts with their identity badge clipped in the required corner of the lapel, like scientists in a high-clearance nuclear guitar laboratory. It's only a matter of time before a) stupid hats b) buttons that say "ask me about something!" c) shopping carts. They've all been put on a commission system, making some pretty lame percentage in futile pursuit of a living wage ("I can't fade it." -- Kris). When all the experienced employees have been successfully chased out, the store will be nothing more than a 3D catalog. Need help choosing strings? Want to know the difference between a vintage TS909 and the reissue? Oh well. Check out the trading musician. I left after Kris abruptly looked at his watch and declared, "I gotta go have serious diarrhea. Later!" I guess he's had nothing in his stomach but cheap, acidic black coffee all day.

Last thing I did today was go to a birthday party. It was Helen's friend Kate's birthday. She was becoming the same age as I am. She had her party at Madame K's, a bordello (w-h-o-r-e-h-o-u-s-e) themed pizzeria in Ballard. Every single person at our table was a woman, except me. I felt a little out of place, but in retrospect, so was Helen, as the only het[ero[sexual]] girl at the table. After the server found out it was Kate's birthday, she immediately turned around to fetch a crown and magenta boa for her majesty the queen.

I didn't get a crown on MY 26th birthday.

Conversation was wacky and light, ranging from the various perceived accents of people at the table to Bowling for Colombine (one of the other guests grew up in Littleton, CO) (No, she didn't go to Colombine.). When we got the check, the list of items charged ended with "BIRTHDAY ORGASM!!! (-5.49)". That's just the dessert's whorehouse-themed name, of course. The whole menu is like that. (holy crap! you can look up menus on amazon!)