The thing is, once Ed voices his opinion, all of us dumb ants instantly revise our personal beliefs to be compatible with his. So thinks Julie. Perhaps not at this moment, but at the end of the show I saw a couple of nights ago, I am positive that that was her angle. Actually, it may not have anything to do with any of us, but that's the way she saw Kris' mind change. I think. Ho ho-oh, the same lament has been voiced by others, but with Julie in Kris' drivers seat. Usually it's when Kris exhibits a behavior or idea that the offended party does not want him to be responsible for originating.

So I guess that means everyone (both of them) thinks his brain is a mushy pile of old bananas. Poor Kris, not allowed to have an opinion of his own. I don't think that is the case. It may be true that he takes the path of least resistance when presented with a choice that does not concern something he considers important, but if it's something like the relative merit of a show he's just seen, it won't come down to which answer impresses a particular person. It annoys me that he is as wishy washy as he is, but it annoys me more when people start LOOKing for evidence of increasingly severe flakiness. Without talking to him, even. It's akin to getting angry at someone over an imagined slight something you've managed to get all fucked up over without talking to them about it at all. Everyone I know has done this, and denying it is pointless.

Julie seemed disappointed when I acknowledged that I was part of a big group of hypocrites. Sorry, I wish I could be righteous and good.

A recent issue of "The Stranger" (Seattle's alternative weekly paper) ran a cartoon which satirized comic strips. One parody was a one-panel style "Far-Side" knockoff featuring a couple of bland looking businessmen talking. The captioned dialog took up the entire right side of the page and was a musing on how the speaker would feel about humans if he could read their minds. On one hand, he thought he might love them all once he understood the basically human motivation behind even their selfish-seeming actions. On the other hand, he thought it more likely that he would hate everyone as he perceived the selfish motives behind what passes for altruism. I'm not sure whether it was meant to be humorously neo-pretentious (like that, right there) or whether it was supposed to be some kind of profound observation (actually, this ambiguity is one reason it's easier to write your big, heavy, possibly stupid deep thoughts in a humorous context) (like this also, I guess) BUT it misses the most common reason that people do things (if they're anything like me) which is "for no goddamn reason at all". When you absent-mindedly tangle the phone cord up while teleconversing, it's not because you're going for the big win. I think that kind of arbitrary action is the most common, when categorizing by motivation.

It doesn't make me feel any better about being here. In the world, I mean. And by "it", I mean the cartoon content of The Stranger. I may as well be working for a technology firm known as "Fluke". Based in Everett. Interview this week sometime. Good segue, good segue. Handshakes all around.

Changing the subject mid-idea like that is a kind of seasick way of speaking. It's time to go to bed. Ed's already asleep, he stopped heaving the big "your stupid typing is keeping me awake" sighs about ten minutes ago.

Mm, sometimes I hear my own name in the sounds my breathing makes.