Ballet

I'm going to the ballet.
How very strange.

I wouldn't have thought of it but... it may be interesting.

The Cauldron Of Lost And Confused Souls

Amidst the sea of confused identities, I plodded along, untouched and unimpeded. I arrived late as an unwanted guest. I sampled the atmosphere then wondered over the dichotomy of their fear and bravado. But they'd never admit it, even to themselves. Perhaps I don't belong in the Cauldron, after all. Or perhaps I've completed my finals.

This is a new state. Not new, exactly, but a refinement of an aborted state. A strange turn of events turned stranger and I transcended it. I don't understand why there are such different levels of perception. The nature of Nature shifted. Or so it seemed.

Heigh ho
Off to fetishwear I go?

White Picket Fence

My singles profiles are constructed to filter out most women. I don't want to spent time on dead ends but I also don't want to mislead. I've discovered that most women seek a "male provider", regardless of their claims of independence. Often they don't even know it themselves, particularly the younger ones.

I had doubts that this approach is too harsh, too pessimistic. Acquaintances suggest that I broaden my scope, skirt the truth, accentuate the positive. But the past few weeks have validated my approach.

Sometimes it's good to revisit the past, to see what was right about it and why it changed. I'm glad I went to Vogue Night at the CHAC but I'm also glad I didn't stay long. None of us knows why we walk the path we do. I surely don't.

Inflection Points

I spent five hours on methodology & development this morning. My motivation has declined steadily for the past few years, this week is my first flash of interest and excitement in quite awhile. Perhaps I really am back on track doing something worthwhile.

I've probably passed through my own "Life" inflection point. I measure things in terms of time, uniqueness, annoyance. I chased after geegaws but their value declined, a mirage in the desert, an empty cup.

The turnover on The Stranger personals is higher than I'd have imagined. Of twelve profiles I tagged to follow, nine were discontinued after six months. Of the remaining three, I wonder if at least one is a permanent single. Of course, I'm probably a permanent single now, too. Well, at least I'm finally have some good sex for once in my life. Damn, it really is good for once.

I suppose I'll dump a few hours into The Stanger Personals, almost certainly a waste of time.
Maybe I'll stomp around Capitol Hill tonight.

Age

Age is the real source of eccentricity; money is just an accellerant.

My first artwalk through Seattle was different than I expected. Less structured, broader and diverse and it was surprisingly easy to meet people. At Sake, the monsignor sat alone on the stage, an unusual state for him, I think. Agents of the Hands of Kali stalked me from room to room, I couldn't stop chuckling and my partner wondered why.

Quotes

"We don't understand [the meme theory on] your website" - facetious banter from a vendor.
"Then you're only reading the personal entries" - my retort.

A backhanded compliment but it's a nice validation from experts.

What do honey, velcro, duct tape and ice have in common?
They were in my bedsheets last weekend!

Q: What's more amusing than being branded "crazy" by myopic software perfectionists?
A: Being branded as "crazy" by manic-depressive, love-starved Wiccan witches!

I'm busy. The change in clothes and glasses made a difference. Flirtations are more frequent and more direct. Two women in their twenties asked me to dance and when I declined (with a smile), they gyrated against each other to motivate me. Tonight, a shy gaggle of girls sent an envoy to buy me a drink. Early tonight I met Kelly. Normally, I ignore the young ones but Kelly is a Kirkland waitress with an unusual spark, a poise or attitude, I'm not quite sure.

Yes, there's been quite a few. Sometimes it's a strategy of proximity, placing themselves into my line of sight, engaging in attention-seeking antics. Sometimes it's direct conversation. Sometimes it's a smile and a wave. Last Friday it was another Kelly and a Sara Lynn.

Damn.
I just realized how many women I've talked with in the past two weeks.
About a dozen.

Probability

Most women aren't worth goofing with.

I'd reached that conclusion several months ago but the more dating I do, the more it's validated. The vast majority are afflicted with "white picket fence syndrome".

I'm having the best sex of my life at the moment.
But I can't see that I'll get married again.

The River

"And like the rain, I have been carried here to where the river flows"

I am alive, in the here and now.
I don't understand the how or why of it.

2008 is starting out okay.

Information Vectors

It's easy to think of information and memes in terms of broadcast bandwidths, resolvable to a few vectors. Sometimes it's a good high-level model.

Have you ever walked through a mall and watched how people move and act? In a crowded mall, there are constant course corrections and averted collisions. Few people can move along a well-defined path for very long, even if they're not shopping because other shoppers inject unpredictability into the near future. There's not much of a plan, mostly instant (and sometimes delayed) reaction to sales signs, flashy geegaws, companions, noises, children and other shoppers.

All those channels of information are not instantaneous, they occur within a context, a landscape of shifting movements, decisions, appearances. Strategically I can resolve all those information vectors into a final result but that result is meaningles in the here-and-now to navigate the real-time information stream. They live upon two different time scales.

There's asymmetry in the I/O of human beings. Quantitative measurements of the absolute and relative I/O could be useful in the design of teams and organizational structure. It seems fairly obvious that great majority of bandwidth is incoming data, very little output. A quantitative breakdown of incoming data by sense would be useful, as well as a description of I/O differences between the sexes. If women are more observant about details, what does that mean? More detail translates into a bigger slice of finite mental bandwidth. Is that extra bandwidth in men used for something else? Does too much data create analysis paralysis, a tendency towards inaction in fast-moving environments?

LRS

I came upon The Little Red Studio when I first arrived in Seattle, part of that loose affiliation between the goth / artist / sex-positive communities. Last night's opening of "The Psychedelic Show" was my first attendance, though.

It was surprisingly fun, even for a square like me. There's purposeful intent and structure in the play's conduct... greeted by performers, mingling with other "guests" in a foyer, then small groups are escorted into the play as if guests arriving at a party, all designed to set nervous minds at ease and merge performers with guests.

And it worked.
Even for me.

By mid-show, I was wearing a black evening gown.

I'm not sure if we were invited to an after-party orgy.
Perhaps I interpreted too much into vagarity and mood.

The House Redux

Better photos of the "rental" house. A realtor and buyers traipsed through unannounced last weekend, they've very lucky I was wearing clothes. In response to one of their questions, I told them I'd be quite happy if the house sold and they wondered why.

"Aren't you getting a good deal?"

Well, yes, I am.
But it's not a good deal for the owners and it can't last.
An apartment in Renton would save me about $300 per month and a few hours of commuting time.

Columbia Tower

Today's mission was to explore the Columbia Tower.
Visibility is zero on the 73rd observation deck so I took these photos from the Starbucks on the 40th floor.

Rice A Roni

I don't care what you do or say
I'm going down
To Western Town
Anyway

And depending on circumstance and price
I might buy a bowl of her fermented rice

A karmic apology to save her face
A warm liquid donation
To somebody
Someplace

Malaise Mon Dieu

The average person might characterize 'The Malaise' as a mental aberration, which is misleading and simplistic. It doesn't explain the beginning or end of The Malaise or the associations and probabilities of its events. The Malaise probably began with the Bill Carlson Event, completely unrelated to my mental state as I approached that new assignment exactly as I approached ASPEN. The difference was not me, but Carlson and the staff at Boise State engaged in a Mormon Conspiracy, a conspiracy I never suspected until I traced it down using Carlson's birth certificate, military records and other information.

In fact, The Malaise is often characterized by my lack of paranoia and suspicion, even as the darker motives of others swirled about, undetected and unsuspected by me. The followup event to Carlson was Third Wave, a fraudulent company engaged in kickback schemes at the City of Las Vegas. My knowledge of and involvement with both events was a result of my marriage, not my detective acuity. Unmarried, I would have walked away from Carlson & BSU, unhappy, ignorant but unscathed. And I would never have set foot in Las Vegas.

On the surface, The Malaise is a conglomeration of apparently unrelated events, my marriage, the Internet boom, my own information experiments and American culture. The level of deliberate ignorance and "accidently-on-purpose" fraud in American culture is finally undeniable in the real estate/mortgage/sub-prime/securities meltdown now in process. But those things were visible even in 1997 to innocent observers/victims like myself.

The Malaise intruded on my consciousness in 2003. In keeping with my Isle Of The Dead motif, I am often a coward. Unfortunately, I am an unpredictable coward and that year I changed course and tacked directly into The Malaise. Perhaps I didn't know it at the time. Perhaps I didn't care.

I know components of The Malaise. What I don't know is its true nature. Was it simply a confusing conjunction and interaction of events and forces? It seems unlikely. The odds against just the Carlson Event seem quite high. The Wiccans implied that Dark Forces co-exist with us, but on a different plane of existence and somehow I attracted those forces onto myself. It's possible. As I've mentioned before, The Malaise is unlike anything I ever experienced before and while it may not have conscious thought, it did try to quash or kill me. My meme experiements carry some blame but could they carry all? When I think of my experiments and The Malaise, I'm reminded of the Krell Monster from Forbidden Planet. Is it a coincidence that non-Americans find greater value in my thoughts than Americans?

The Pleasure Seekers appear to have an affinity to The Malaise, or its duality; a love & hate relationship with pleasure and pain, selfishness and altruism, an odd balance of interaction and isolation which I don't understand.

It was the strangest period of my life, as well as the most productive. The Malaise produced my website and finally decanted my meme theory, over a decade old, into words, pictures and presentations. And I transitioned from passive measurement to active manipulation, perhaps out of necessity.

I write about The Malaise in the past tense.
I believe I've beaten it.
Or perhaps I outlasted it, like a ship in a storm at sea.

I sat at The Triple Door last night, the victim of subtle flirtation by two young waitresses. The backdrop of The Malaise are Knowledge Domains bonded together by degrees of interactive feedback. When you're young and inexperienced, only the direct domain matters. Later, as you learn side-effects and behavior, the indirect domain becomes apparent to some. And the third domain, the land of synchronous events, is probably off-limits for all of us in some manner or another. Our capacity for perception of cause-and-effect is limited.

I understand bits and pieces of The Malaise.
I wish I understood more.

State Change

Well, it was probably building up for awhile but my work and sex lives have taken dramatic turns. Realmeme Blog may be taking a long vacation.