Serious caffeine withdrawal this morning. I woke up, like how I usually do (except when I'm dead), but with one thing different: I could practically hear the blood flowing into and out of my head through my neck. It felt as if I were trying to circulate a medium sized melon through my blood vessels, and I was blinking in surprise and pain for about 20 minutes before I realized that it wasn't just a headrush. Then I remembered: I had run out of Coca-Cola the day before and hadn't gone out to get more because I felt it would be a waste of valuable time. Well. I was certainly paying for my caffeine dependancy now. I got dressed as quickly as I could and went out to QFC in the EXTREMELY BRIGHT AND PAINFUL SUNLIGHT to buy a jolt plus several Coke Nodules. Relief followed soon after. Note to self: DO NOT FORGET THIS VERY IMPORTANT SUPPLY EVER AGAIN.

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I found out that my Mom is moving out of her house in less than 45 days. That house is the house I lived in the longest, though I never considered it a "real" home. For one, it was only one story. For another, the towel rack kept falling off the wall. My current towel rack does that, too. It makes me think of home and roll my eyes as I pick towels up off the floor.I am going to have to make an emergency trip back to Hawaii to help Mom move, offer moral support, and rescue anything of mine that I don't want sold or thrown away. That includes old gaming systems like the SMS, NES, Atari 2600, the two C64s that don't quite work all the way, much documentation of my youth, and the mammoth SG guitar amplifier that my Dad handed down to me when I first started playing guitar. After being loaned to Bronson for a day or two, the amp stopped responding properly and in fact would only make one noise: "BUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH". And that at about 900 decibels while the tubes crackled with purple lightning, which is not normal behavior for vacuum tubes. Repairs would require me to find zener diodes or germanium transistors or some other strange and specialized components. I will ship it to Seattle and find one of the bazillions of techies that know everything about amplifiers and pay him to fix it.

Executives are scary. Like sharks or bears, they'll mercilessly tear you to shreds without hesitation. Then they'll turn around and be fatherly and inspiring. That's why executives are where they are: killer instinct. I don't know how much dehumanization is involved, but I know that they have thick skins, thick like tree trunks, and brains like halon triggers, ready to spring into fatal action on a single certain impulse. They must have to carefully seperate their business from their personal lives to avoid hating themselves. I mean, my conscience bothers me when I realize that I have an extremely good job. If I got paid ten times as much for being able to seem impassive while saying the words that could end the jobs of thousands of my employees, I'd need a special Dorian Grey portrait to put all my guilt into, and that would self destruct in a month or so. Maybe someday I'll have the poker face for it. I guess I'll keep practicing on telco employees and DSL vendors.

I guess I'd need an MBA from Harvard too. Like Dad had. I'd ask him what kind of secret mind tricks they teach in those classes, if he were still alive. I'm sure there are seminars on negotiating and dealing that involve practice exercises like finding random people on the street and convincing them that the sky above is actually yellow (not hard in LA, but I'm talking Boston.).nOT THE. drOiDS i'M LoOKING FOr.

Extra note: After we checked out the recording studio on saturday, we stopped at Northgate to get food. Kris was about to order at the Japanese place, but then he noticed the menu at the sandwich joint next door. More specifically, he noticed that they had a sandwich called the "HAM EXPLOSION". We all sat at the table eating, me with my Kidd Valley Chicken Wafer, Brian with his Kidd Valley cheap burger, and Kris with the ... well. When he ordered it he ordered a Ham... (meaningful pause) Explosion. The counter guy didn't blink, though. I guess it isn't as funny after three months of that. Kris, however, took it to heart. We chatted and ate, as is typical for social eating. Every time Kris looked up to say something, he would punctuate it with a short pause and then (raised eyebrows) "...Booooom." "Man, I'm getting lettuce everywhere...Boooom." I think he should have ordered it that way, with moderate hand movement to convey explodingness.

Action food had always been one of our lunchtime obsessions. Piping hot soft drinks, Ham Explosions, Pop Rocks... Pop rocks. What word in pop rocks sounds like something to eat? It says ROCKS right on it. Jeez! Before they perfected that "popping" reaction, did people just eat "rocks"? "Rock Candy" says "Candy", at least. ROCK EXPLOSION is not appetizing. Uh, I like using "explosion" as a pronoun now. So much so that Kris is trying to make it my nickname. Time for toothpaste explosion and then sleep explosion.

3 Years ago: I had just moved out and purchased my first MOP.

<- Click to listen Button (orig. ASD)(Realaudio G2 28.8K) Vocals by Brett & Andr00 & various other dorks. [Brett:] This is a very boring video right now. [Andr00:] Need a techno soundtrack [Brett:] Nothing! [Andr00:] Nothing. [Brett:] Nothing... The Nothing button!