Commenter yesterday alerted me to my 2nd favorite example of my google footprint. My enduring favorite is the person who found my site with "give meaning to my postmodern life" or something like that. Google oracular. Anyway, it seems I'm number three on a search for "Authentic Experience." Sweet! And, for what it's worth, the post in question does really read like a bad grad-school draft:

bq.. Urban living requires a certain amount of intellectual and emotional buffering on the part of the individual for the sake of survival. You have to be able to be very close to other people and treat them like objects. Coupling that with the observational perspective I’m trying to describe, the view that everything is made up of something else and that this can be investigated, unpacked, it’s easy to get hung up on self-anthropology, a blend of narcissism and the deconstructing gaze.

I think this is part of the reason alcohol is such a popular drug. If you deaden enough of your forebrain, you’ll eventually loose the mental capacity to maintain a critical perspective, at which point you’re free from all this garbage. Problem is that you may find in reaching this point that you’ve scraped much of your personality off in the process, and may be unable to maintain a coherent conversation, an erection, or a number of other things which you might wish you could keep up in the moment.

p. That's pretty good stuff as the archives go. I've corrected some spelling mistakes in this quote -- ah, the days before FireFox told me when I was mangling language; fuck you, phonics -- but otherwise the thought holds up over the distance of a year and a half.

In terms of what's been going on lately I'll have a few good things to crack open when the spirit next moves:

• Halloween and the continuing (and frustrating) quest to rediscover a public libido and overcome the spell of celibacy.
• Reconciliation with my father, who I hadn't seen in more than three years, until wednesday morning.
• Nerding out at BAD Camp.

For now I've got to squeeze out a pretty full workday and get on the road to SF.