09.13.02 - 8:03 p.m.

hello

pics from ritual are now up. good times.

i'm waiting for sandeep/angi/cos. we're headed to davis to visit jay. planned activities for tomorrow include racquetball, indoor rock climbing, and (most strenuous of all) sushi.

davis has an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. when we go, sushi-eating becomes an extreme sport. i remember sandeep breaking it down for me the first time i went along: "you have to eat till the restaurant loses money." there is an unspoken policy of mutually assured destruction-- no one gets up till a) all stomachs are horribly distended and b) the restaurant is on the verge of bankruptcy. i myself am a mere grasshopper in the field of competitive sushi-eating, but my crew is formidable. there's a reason cosmo is known as "the closer".

this is my 200th entry. (pauses for celebratory swig of beer)

i was looking at my list of new year's resolutions today. it's interesting to me to see how i've stacked up so far.

1) run in bay to breakers
done, and i daresay we would have finished in the top ten were it not for the fact that we accidentally drank several magnums of champagne. commentator: "ooh, pai seems to losing valuable seconds as he pauses repeatedly to inform us that he 'loves us guys'..."

2) burning man
done. four days in an alternate reality. i've written some notes but they're 16 pages long, and i don't think they really capture what it was like. i'm tempted to say "you had to be there," but really that just means i'm not a good enough writer. i'll put something up, eventually.

3) go to kentucky for kentucky derby
still haven't done, dammit. i want to visit allison and it just never seems to happen. maybe next year. on the other hand, i did win more $$$ at derby party, so it wasn't a total wash.

4) ride my bike lots & be more than just a gutter bunny
done-- well, sort of. i ride my bike to work every day, and did go on one semi-hardcore ride up to grizzly peak with a. i started out cursing her name, but surprisingly my legs held up. the best part was when we raced back down, going so fast that pedaling was pointless. the view was gorgeous.

5) write scads of reviews, try submitting to guardian
i've written some reviews for amazon, but they suck. need to keep working on this.

6) learn how to make rad techno/idm on laptop
done, sort of-- i got reason from sandeep and messed around with it, and did make one tune that was ok. kind of fizzled after that but it's always there to play with. my dj name, if i ever pick it up? djcruelty! duh.

7) screw courage to sticking point & talk to cute girls wherever they are found
recent events have put me in a bad mood so i can't really evaluate this one objectively.

8) continue learning spanish
no seguí nada! ¡que lastima!

9) read leaves of grass, dostoevsky, tolstoy
did read leaves of grass. (OMG USING THE INTERNET FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN PORN. STOP THE PRESSES) i hadn't realized it was so controversial when it came out. ah man... now that i think about it, how far from porn is leaves of grass? (START THE PRESSES. NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG, MOVE ALONG) checked out crime and punishment but only got a third of the way through it before i had to return it (in the dead of night, cos i kept all the books i'd checked out for so long that the library assumed i'd lost them and then slapped me with $200 worth of fines. i'm surprised they didn't put a bounty on me and send out fucking boba fett.) no tolstoy yet.

10) maybe remembrance of things past? don't think i'm ready yet
this was a correct assessment. maybe someday. i wish they would put passages from swanns way in BART stations, instead of advertisements for stupid movies starring eddie murphy. when i think of how many times i've seen the poster for "pluto nash"... i could have read an entire goddamned novel by now!

11) get piercing? for a long time i resisted because it was so trendy and i didn't want to feel phony. but now it's so common, nobody's even going to look twice
wavered, but ultimately decided against. i just don't care enough to bother.

12) find something worth going back to school for (woodcraft? spying?)
major failure here, and that depresses me. try harder.

13) volunteer for global exchange. for real this time! seriously. never going to get nonprofit experience if you don't focus more. need to learn about fundraising & advocacy.
did volunteer for them a little, but not enough. worked with GX Colombia, but didn't do much aside from entering addresses into database. try harder.

14) listen to confield & black dog
done & done. the former is boring and unlistenable, the latter i really like.

15) cook delicious and exotic meals, all the time
well, i've cooked a few.

Sarah sent me a package that arrived yesterday. It was a great package. I bet you're jealous. YES YOU