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The Minneapolis Fringe Festival starts today, and Unicycle Theater (that’s me and a bunch of other unicyclists) have a show tonight at the MCTC Whitney Mainstage at 8:30. I will be cramming fringe shows in all next week as I have time. Let me know if you’re going to some and I’d love to hook up with people.

More photos up on my flickr account. (Thanks again massdistraction!) Most notably a few of my brother’s gallery opening tonight, and a bunch of the sailboating adventure I had today (yesterday now).

I <3 flickr.

So yeah, I also just discovered and then added my photos to the convergence group, and the last two hours or so is history. Interesting tidbit–I’m fairly sure one of the other members is this hottie. She spent some time in our party when I was the only host, and I was far too drunk to tell tell for sure if she was hitting on me. (But boy did I want her to be!)

I am at a friend’s house right now, in the basement being antisocial while everyone else is upstairs watching Sin City. I’ve seen it, and don’t really need to see it again.

Today I bought a Nintendo DS just to play this new puzzle game called Meteos. It truly is awesome, and I agree wholeheartedly with the guy who told me it was just as good a game as Lumines. (Of course, I have only played it a scant few hours at this point, but that is my impression thus far.) Anyway, it is by far the best of today’s game purchases.

As far as I can tell from watching over Laura’s shoulder, the new Kirby game also kicks ass. (We now have all the Kirby games again. *sigh of relief*) I also bought Polarium, which seems pretty cool, but nowhere near as intricate as Meteos, and Zoo Keeper–another Bejewled clone. I still have yet to pick up Mr. Driller, and then I should have all the puzzle games I want for the system right now. I did look at Puyo Pop for a bit in the store, but I don’t really need another version of that shitty game. Pac-Pics also does look interesting, but reviews seem mixed. I want to play it before I decide.

I can’t figure out whether I really like controlling stuff with the stylus or not. Metios would probably not be quite as fast paced without it, but it can be frustrating to get the hang of “selecting” the right piece to move. There is so much to do in Metios, I can’t wait to get home and play it again!

Feelings are so subjective. Today I feel fine. Today I felt not so fine. Today I did not feel felt.

I’ve been trying to write in my journal every day (failing), and also trying to blog more frequently, without resorting to blogging about the things I’m journaling about. The journal is for how I felt today, the blog is for what those feelings meant in the grand scheme of the universe.

The blog is suffering — I feel a lot more than I ponder the universe, apparently.

I’ve been playing a lot of games. And I like games quite a bit. In fact, I was in a house yesterday with literally thousands of games in the basement. It was a shit ton of games. We played three or four of them, and then I went to a party where I was the oldest person there. Actually, I’m not sure, there may have been one guy older than me, but certainly the average age of people in attendance was much lower than mine. I felt old, and also far too sober. (I was driving.)

Point? Oh yes, the point was going to be that I feel the occasional pang of jealousy that I am not as “social” as other people. I don’t “go out” all that often, and I don’t meet new people all that often either. But I guess one doesn’t always mean the other, so I don’t even know if this is what I mean to say. This clearly has something to do with my pathetic obsession with okcupid. Pathetic because I am not single, I am not desperately seeking susan… and yet I check this stupid website at least every other day, not to answer inane questions about my personal romantic preferences, but because I hope that someone I know (or better yet don’t know) will have sent me a message.

I probably have issues.

I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that Laura is going to be out of town for something like a month starting less than a month from now. I’m trying to consider what I’m going to do while she’s away. I’m trying to consider what I’m not going to do while she’s away, and one of the things I’m not going to do is be all pathetic and lonely about spending time by myself. Or rather, that’s one of the things I’m going to spend a considerable amount of time trying to pretend I’m not doing. Probably.

Sometime soon maybe I’ll write a recap of the con, but for now, you can see photos I took last weekend on my flickr account. (Someday I’ll add it to my list of nav links, probably.)

PS, I found Tales of Future Past today, and am both excited to pour over it, and also frustrated that they did it first. (I’ve always wanted to do some kind of survey of “ideas” about the future.)

In between listening to these Boing Boing induced christian mp3s of children singing, and looking at a mildly disturbing diaper fetish site that a co-worker left up on another co-worker’s screen, my productivity is dwindling and my head feels about like it’s going to explode ala scanners.

I’m writing this entry to try and and detoxify my system. I’m also listening to an addictive music mix.

Last night I went to an awesome party/gaming night hosted by this guy who randomly posted on BoardGameGeek.com about wanting to meet more local gamers. The eight people that showed up were genuinely interested in board games, and that made for a really great night of gaming. I played El Grande for the first time and loved it, also played one called Shadows over Camelot that was pretty fun (and looked really cool). Interesting premise too, in that you all play against the game rather than each other, although I sort of think this takes some of the fun out of it.

Tonight after family dinner I’m going to try and come up with some kind of Pirate costume for this weekend. I’ll also probably spend some time reading War of the Worlds. I started it last weekend and was furiously trying to finish reading it before the midnight showing on Tuesday night. I only got about halfway, (although we did also watch the 1953 movie on Monday night in preparation). But then on Tuesday night we went to two theaters before midnight before we found out at the second one that Paramount had canceled all midnight showings. Apparently all the newspapers had the correct listings, but most (some?) online ticket vendors hadn’t updated their databases. Of course Nate saw it last night without me… and what with Convergence this weekend, I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to either a) finish the novel, or b) watch the new movie.

One of the guys last night was the person behind the blog yearofglad.com, and I went to his site this morning on a whim. Good poetry there. Prolific too–made me feel like a slacker. Now I just wish I knew which guy it’d been. We never really connected faces/names with emails, and that’s all I have to work from. It’s an interesting head scratcher.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of hidden dystopia. By that, I basically just mean any version of the future where the people either don’t know, or don’t realize that they’re living in horrific (dystopic) times.

It feels like there are several types of hidden dystopia. Some elements or categories are repression (control of social norms or mores through heavy dogma or peer pressure), mental and/or physical control, censorship and/or selective/nonexistent media, and finally a heavy class divide. In the latter case, there are most certainly some elements of the populous who know it is dystopia, but another part of the population is either unable or unwilling to see the larger picture.

Some examples of hidden dystopia include: Rollerball (the 1975 version, I just watched this last night), Logan’s Run, The Time Machine, Brave New World, perhaps Brazil. I feel like I should have more book examples, but I can’t seem to think of any off the top of my head right now.

Of course, the question begs to be asked… Are we living in a hidden dystopia?

I spent the last weekend unplugged from the rest of the world. There were strange and subtle ways that I missed my internet connection, namely very minor fact checking and phone # lookups, and things of that nature. Of course, I jonsed for my email, (and okcupid :P), and I wanted to blog, but didn’t really have time for that anyway.

I came home from work today at 1pm to meet the cable internet person, and he was already here, working on the pole in the alley. My internet was back within 15 or 20 minutes. Apparently the line to my house was “mislabled”. Now I have to call them and get a credit on my account for the down time…

Well, for a while there I was all excited about having someone to watch cheezy Kung Fu action movies with me. But of course that fell flat as fuck, and now I have a bunch of accumulated movies to watch. High on my list are Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, The Bride with White Hair, A Chinese Ghost Story (including the two sequels), and Swordsman (Also including various sequels.)

Tonight we are (hopefully) going to watch the season finale of the new Dr. Who. It’s the last episode with the 9th Doctor in it, and of course there are going to be more Daleks.

I also just got and hope to watch Immortel. I had thought it was going to see a US theatrical release (I read sometime last year), but a few days ago I was just surfing around and found it on Netflix. It arrived in the mail today.

The weekend after this one is convergence. Laura is helping plan a Space Pirates versus Space Cowboys room party. I was appalled they hadn’t chosen to show any movies, so I took it upon myself to plan some bad sci-fi flicks. Friday night (Saturday morning, really) at 2am we’re going to show Westworld, (full of robot cowboys, yay!) and Saturday night (Sunday morning) at 2am we’ll show Ice Pirates. These will both be good movies to fall asleep watching, but anyone who hasn’t seen them may also stay interested enough to stumble bleary-eyed back to their rooms at 4am. (Also, don’t miss the party’s scavenger hunt, the prizes are going to be awesome!) See you there!

Yesterday was the longest day of the year. Tonight is a full moon.

It made me feel good that within hours of posting my last entry I had someone offering their condolences via IM. Just now a good friend called me to make sure I was ok. Thank you both.

As for the rest of you slackers, get on the fucking horn! No, I’m kidding. I’m fine. Seriously, I knew this was happening for like two weeks now, and at least part of me is quite glad it’s over. I really don’t like when things are just up in the air.

I had all kinds of other stuff planned to write here, but my roommates just got home and distracted me with talk of zombie butt sex. (I saw a sneak preview of Land of the Dead tonight.) Now laura is snoring softly, but still hasn’t taken her clothes off. I’m going to go tuck her in now.