(GD anthem!^*)

Wild mood swings lately. Serindipity's been riding high as well, me calling out to people just as they were doing the same otherwise. Strange connections across the lattice. I feel kind of like I'm coming out of a shell; little cracks and breakthroughts and then, oh man, slow down, I'm beat.

It always comes in fits and starts, and my overactive superego isn't helping much. Sans bike I've been reading on the MTA a bunch, picking up The Dharma Bums for a little brain-candy, and C.G. Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul for a little more substance. They make an interesting combo, but they're helping, no doubt.

Also a relief: I've been sweating this bachelor thing this weekend, but it all seems to be coming into focus. People piling on to help out, being major sports about getting into the act. It should be grand fun.

Still excited about getting my ass in motion, but starting to think about the people I won't be seeing, even just the neighborhood I won't be able to walk around in. Gives me a bit of pause. It's typical Koenig -- all jazzed up to be on the move and only later on really thinking about what's been left behind. Oh well, c'est la vie.

^*I found that music above -- and clearly that other link to the same artist -- via my old collaborator Johnny Nichols (who's on my MySpace now, natch) who's getting effing married himself. Cheerio there.

Maybe I should stop reading Glenn Greenwald. He's so damn efficient at rendering the insanity. It's a hard time to be an American. I wrote a post a while back called "In it for the Country?" in which I sort of outlined why I still expend the psychic energy to pay attention to politics:

[C]ommunity is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics.

Basically, you can't get away from politics without going off the grid -- either as a hermit or in some kind of Pirate Utopia -- and I don't think that's really a feasible way to live for me (or for anyone, but God bless you if you try).

So I'm in, but it gets harder and harder to see how we're going to pull this stuff out, how we can set it right. I find myself so amazingly turned off -- not even angry anymore, just limp and tired and sad -- at how the Bush administration comports itself, at how cheap, petty greed runs the congress, at how what passes for "debate" is almost pure, uncut psychobabble. None of these are things I want to be a part of.

I feel like I'm back in high school a lot of the time, watching people vie for popularity and unfluence under terms that are barely comprehensible. Why do they do it? How did they become so powerful? Why do so many play along?

I want to make a break; not to drop out, but to go forward on my own terms. I think a lot of people feel that way. In the end it comes down to voting and deciding how to use power, but the process for determining how and why this is done seems deeply and (I'm sad to say) irrevokably fucked to me. I don't believe that the late-20th/early-21st century combine of big media and big money politics will ever right itself. We need another way.

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

This is what I hope to accomplish with the summer's writing, video and book stuff.

After Friday night's alcoholocaust, I didn't sip a drop of coffee all weekend. That may have contributed to the sensation that I was living underwater -- I don't even try to pretend that I don't have a caffeine addiction -- so this morning I'm having some Earl Grey tea.

I don't have any real desire to quit drinking coffee, but I think perhaps there's something to be said for de-escalating my chemical dependence, even as a little experiment.

This is actually classic addict behavior, by the way. It's a well worn trope for individuals conflicted with their chemical relationships to "take time off" or "dry out" for a week or a month or six, after which they generally return to their previous modus operandi.

I make no value judgements here. My experience studying the phenomena of addiction has left me deeply ambivalent about it's cost vs. value. Individual circumstances vary enormously, making this sort of calculus very difficult to generalize upon. Non-functioning, slavish addiction, the obvious kind, seems easy to judge, but in real terms this often has more to do with the addict's financial resources than with the depth and depravity of their habit. It's another well-worn trope for social elites to decry addiction among the massess, while simultaniously engaging in essentially the same behavior (with premium brands, of course) under the notion that they have their habits "under control."

Subjectively, I get a lot out of caffeine. It makes me feel like me. You might think that's immoral or unnatural, but I don't. It's also not a very large health risk, and it's hardly driving me broke or interfering with my ability to carry on a productive life, so I don't really worry about that fact that I get withdrawl symptoms. Your mileage may vary.

Pan-European Music Contest Winners Are Hard Rock Monsters From Motherfucking Lapland.

I think that's cooler than anything i've seen from American Idol.