Jesus Christ, could Window’s service pack 2 be any more of a pain in my ass? It is taking forever to download and install this thing. I have decided to be pissed off for part of today. I rarely let myself get really angry, it’s best to let it out in small volleys. I don’t have any scheduled interactions today so why not be a grump. Damn it, now I am chuckling. How can a person sustain any kind of anger when they are always laughing at themselves?

I have been chastised by an online journalist for treating my computer like a toaster. I should think of it instead like a pet that needs regular maintenance – it’s more like a tamogochi. So if we extend this metaphor we could say that I had a bad pet that wouldn’t behave, I subjected it to intense shock therapy destroying the problematic personality traits and virus-laden willfulness and now I have the poor bastard in Mirosoft’s re-education camp. No. My computer is more like Steve Austin who was nearly killed in a virus related crappy operating system accident (that was rushed out and foisted off on unsuspecting dell buyers in 2000), but now we can rebuild him, faster, stronger, better. We have the technology.

Mary just called from the runway in Sacramento – she suspects she’ll be in around four. She suggests that the Columbia offer of disembodied leg management might not be good, nor is the returns counter at Sears a good idea (even though that’s where Salt-n-pepa met producer Hurby 'Luv Bug' Azor).

She does think that a haircut would alter my consciousness in useful ways. Perhaps I’ll soon endure the knife. I’ll be like all those sophomore women in college after that first big breakup – well, perhaps I shouldn’t condescend. Oh what the hell, I condescend to you – you silly hair cutting sophomores. Your radical break with prevalent style as an outward display of your personal wound is instead the playing out of a universal trope that makes a mockery of free will and keys us into Shakespeare’s observation that you are playing out a prewritten drama (as are we all).

Chuang Tzu made a similar observation several thousand of years earlier in China. His advice was simple. Once you realize that your life is a pre-written drama you are then free to embellish the part. Unfortunately Chuang Tzu was only a butterfly who was dreaming that he was an important an insightful philosopher, in reality he was a colias occidentalis chrysomelas.

Ok. What part am I playing? My last successful disguise was that of an English Professor. Now I’m more the half-hearted intellectual who can’t quite sell out cause nobody is buying what he’s got. The New Age wants me, but I don’t want it.

I could be a “self styled humorist”. I could impersonate the literary styling of David Sedaris, or the humorous daring of Eddie Izzard. Angela asked how I defined success. If I knew the answer to that one I’d at least have something to shoot for. Until then I guess I’ll go this way really fast, and if something gets in my way I’ll turn.