St. Patrick's day massicre. It's a long, shallow, dimly-lit blur for me. I remeber drinking Guiness in the back yard in the afternoon. I remember Sam bringing in a red bucket of popcorn to the bar. I remember some kind of conversation. I remember feeling more sober at 1:30am than at 8:30. This morning I staggered weakly back to consciousness, hurting badly, crapping out mushy black stuff and enduring a cold sweat. I watched the president's speech via C-Span's archival service, vomited a couple of times, took a nap and now at last am beginning to feel human again.

There's a certain point in a long day of drinking where booze acts like a disassociative, where one starts seeing things from an almost out-of-body perspective. This is usually where you do something really stupud, but it can also be a time to realize some things about yourself. The slow punishment of a truly awful hangover inspires reflection, like a moral sentence, a form of pennance, a kind of masochistic meditation. Even more than cheap laughs and animal hijinks, this is one of the things I appreciate about alcohol.

Luke and Mark both emailed me today, which was a welcome surge of energy. Luke sent a lot of poll figures, Mark talks of returning soon from Equador. I stumbled upon a great new source of direct information from Iraq: http://www.kevinsites.net/. It's a been a hazy day, and now I'm off to meet Sasha, who's been supervising the development of the big end of year show the students put together at her school. "It gives chaos a whole new meaning," she says. "It's more reckless than an episode of Cops."

Just so you don't think I'm all mopey and depressed. I had a fabulous date making dinner at my place with Sasha on saturday, today me n' Jeremy n' Frank rode our bikes to Coney Island, and tonight I picked up half a loaf of good vibrations from the Union Square Candlelight Vigil. Life is difficult, but full of personal joys.

Trying a new format here... one lifenote post, one political ramble (see below). The adjustments to new tools continue.

Last night we drank copious amounts of nearly free beer at the Brooklyn Brewery. They debuted their seasonal beer, a dry Irish stout just in time for St. Paddy's. It's quite good. Frank, Andrew, A-Stock and I had a good time sitting on sacks of barley and malt, watching the crowd, letting a tasty cheap buzz wash over us. I really liked the atmosphere at the tasting party: there were a lot of little kids running around, dervish bohemian hellions, children of the beautiful people, a true and honest family vibe. There's something intrinsically earthy about a brewery, something that speaks of salty breeze and woolen caps, long days watching clouds and oceans, of soil and spirit and human-scale connections. It's a kind of home.

Andrew is just now back in the city, getting his feet under him, living with our old friend Sam out in queens, an apparently spacious apartment full of things he procured from Pottery Barn on Long Island. He was very drunk, but full of energy, glad to be back in action I think. It's good to see him again. After the brewery we all (sans A-Stock) went over to Julia's, a bona-fide reunion, the Rubin Hall crew together again. It's good to keep up with people. Andrew passes out almost instantly and we sat about in various states of dazedness just shooting the shit. On the way home Frank and I bought pints of Ice Cream and swapped bikes: me feeling the promise of a finely tuned gear system and a 10-pund frame. The seat was too low and the balance-points made it feel slightly rickety in comparison to my old warhorse, but the thrill of speed was unmistakable tearing up Nassau Ave at 1am.

Today is looking good. The weather is unadulterated beauty. I have a meeting for the next big art show and then a date to cook dinner with Sasha and then into the great wide open.

Maximum Pedagogical Value
It's 3.14 and Einstein's birthday. Do something for science. Christopher of Back to Iraq has been written up in Wired. I encourage you to donate to his fund if you can spare $5. We can buy our own damn corispondent. Also, here's yet another good collection of arguments against war, as if it really matters at this point, but still. Sometimes it all clutches up around my throat, the most bitter satire seems naive, and I feel like this, but today life is too full of truth and beauty for me to be brought down by the ugly misinformation we call the news.

It was an evening and a night and a morning. I went out for dinner with Christine -- ever full of sparkling conversation and good-hearted inquisitiveness -- at delictable cafe gigi. Four cheese pizza with fresh basil, salad with olive oil and balsamic, bottle of wine. It was a good time, in spite of strangely diffident foreigners and the fact that people kept coming halfway in to the over-crowded restaurant, letting in acres of cold wind to wash over us. We talk of philosophy and ethics and war and relationships, only the high points. She gave me some key insight on morality in a way which I want to weave into what I've been writing lately. I let slip my new (and now official) crush, which causes some excitement.

From there, we hit up the Cherry Tavern and various conversations. There was a lot of girl talk, and I started zeroing in on the conversation behind me; a fairly drunk, slighly lisping man making some kind of slipshod pro-war argument -- essentially boiling down to the divinity of American power and might equating with right. I was near to turning around and collapsing his rhetorical house of cards when one of his cohorts vomited all over the floor and they were all obliged to leave. I felt it to be a kind of karmic justice. We put tunes on the juke, talked a bit with a native New Yorker musician and another Portland transplant, small world connections and agreements abounding about the importance of not trying to be someone or thing other than yourself.

Eventually I got the call from the afformentioned crush -- sweet divinity carrying me further south and into the lower east side. How that neighborhood has changed as well... it's not nearly as standardized as the East Village, but in some ways it's even more upscale, reminds me of where SoHo was at before it became a designer shopping mall. I met up with Sasha and we saw a friend of hers perform: Baby Dayliner. It's one man singing along with his own synthesized pre-recorded back-up band. I really dug it, a sound like Modern English, a style and performance as intentional and specific as David Bowie, and a surprising amount of heart. This kid conjures imagery and has a fantastic voice. The whole thing gave me the resonating urge to create.

So now I'm getting all lubricated with my coffee, listening to Bob Dylan in the sunshine and feeling perversely optimistic about the world. It's a dark time in many ways, but I sense an edge of opportunity rising amidsts murk. It's cool to think about things and it's cool to work hard and it's cool to be live and real and true. Now more than ever. Monkey emails are flying in preparation for this years OCF. I'm smitten with a girl who seems to be smitten right back -- I want to make art with her and do crossword puzzles and cook food and furiously engage in all the vagarious business of living. It's an incredilbe time to be a human being, and in my minds eye I can already see and smell the fresh-cut grass of summer, the dust of progress, the candle-lit dinners of revolutionary consciousness, a rickety wooden house on a hill with lanterns and candles and banjo-pickin' moonshine-driven storytellin' escapades. All this and more in a great wide open future, the pace and pitch of which sings in my bones and makes sweet midnight promises to my blood. I'm a lunatic and my spelling sucks and I'm in love with everything.

In yet another happy accident of browsing the web, I found out that William Gibson has a blog. He's a writer, that cat. I've always appreciated the fact that he invisioned a whole science-fiction future based on kids playing pong, then slapped it out on an old-school typewriter. There's something pure about that -- people who are deep into tech are often too deep in to see the forest through the trees.

Speaking of machines through which we communicate, I've been noticing how implementing this blog tool has changed my style. It's increased the frequency of my posting, but also made it more broken-up and topical. I'm not sure if I like it like that, but I'm also not sure what the alternative is. Since this little experiment is at least 50% for you, the people who take the time to consume my etchings in the ether, what do you think? Check the new poll.

Well, since I didn't have much real work to do and last night Sasha was asking me to explain what it is I do, I've been scratching a creative itch all day. Passed the 6,000 word mark on Praxis, and I've gotten great visions for what I want to do with it to communicate the vision to the world. Flash animation. I'm going to try and get Jeremy to do some illustrations (I'll pay him back by agreeing to work on his site some more, I suppose) and maybe crank out a few small bits. It will likely feature me reading selected portions as wells a on-screen text. Maybe music. I want to have the whole thing done by my 24th b-day, which is in about 2 months.

As someone who was sickened by the savekaryn phenomena, here's something I can get behind. Christopher Allbritton wants to report from the field in Northern Iraq, and he's asking for donations to get him there. I've chipped in. This is what it's all about, people: tired of corporate media whoring? Buy your own damn corespondent!

I might whip up some banners to start a campaign.

So this war is a permanent knot in my shoulder, yet I'm relatively realxed this morning. She might have something to do with it. I don't want to tip my hand here, but I'm a bit giddy. Smitten, even. I fear that I might start prancing around at any moment. I'll go to the gym and work on a project. Center myself.

Blasts from the past coming through loud and clear. Eric Murray and Sammy Hammonds have websites. The square world trembles and I am transported back in time to that crazy summer between middle and high schools. What a laugh-ridden era that was. Simple scatological humor and an appreciation for timing. Nothing finer for early adolescents.

In other news, God bless the Jurrasic 5.

This Polish brew packs quite a wallop. I had 3 pints.

Savage drunk last night, and reason escapes me. I was about ready to call it a night at 8, but I had to wish J-Mo a happy birthday, and I got started in on some hearty Polish beer. This precipitated an adrenaline-soaked ramble through the midnight streets. The pavement is choppy these days after so much snow and ice and salt, and I'm still a little gun-shy from last weeks accident. Still, this didn't prevent me from simultaniously weaving through traffic, eating a slice of pizza and nodding my head in time to Grisman and Garcia, a new addition to my mellow weekend music mix. Clearly my fear of death has dissapated.

Spinning back down to earth in Brooklyn with a dizzy head, I took a relic of the holiday season -- a charmingly anachronistic Santa -- down off a telephone poll, scribbled what I'm sure was a barely intelligable note and delivered both to the doorstep of a girl. In my impared state, this seemed like my best woo to pitch. To be honest, I'm a little out of my element, up against a challange. I'm also divided as to how and what to chronicle here in public. Romance is sometimes well served by enigmatic behavior. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited, nervous as to how to proceed.

However, the Santa gambit was a success and I have a date for Tuesday. I feel quite high. "...and I stumbled to safety."

I took some ok photos yesterday in the sunshine.