10.14.02 - 5:39 p.m.

what to say. i am trapped by eyeballs, caught in a straightjacket of my own design, bound by a self-imposed policy of discretion that keeps me from shouting to the rafters in praise of a sweet-toothed belly-dancing tapas-dismissing young lady named az. mums the word.

last night lina and i went to second sunday at justice league. when they asked for volunteers to judge, our hands instantly shot up. out of respect for our enthusiasm, or perhaps fear that we might burst into tears if rejected, the emcee picked us. judging was fun. after every poem, we stroked our chins, deliberated carefully, then issued our verdict with the utmost of gravity. none of the competing poets were that good, but we tried to be fair and grade on a relative scale. our lowest score was 5.1, for this dreadlocked berkeley hippie lady who got on the mike and delivered an insane screaming bundle of cliches that ended with, "fuck corporate america! we want peace. PEAAAAAAAACE!!" uh-huh.

later in the night, we drank our free drinks (well, the plural is not strictly accurate there, but whatever) and watched a guy beatbox on pan flute. i'd seen him once before at jurassic five, but he was even more amazing this time around. then came some weird hip hop voodoo performance-ritual, and finally the night concluded with excellent poetry from sekou the misfit. his last piece, when i grow up, was my favorite of the night. "i want to be the opposite of darkness, the antonym of void."

other activities of recent days include brunch at baghdad cafe, long walk across golden gate bridge, impromptu dance performance in some random mission shop, puppet shows and battle rhymes between boxing rabbi and a frog, jtsui/angi/balz party (take1 take2 take3 take4), aprons and bed-testing at ikea, donnie darko, pakwan, axom, moving, and laughing more than i have in a while. "i never got the appeal of tapas. it's just fancy nachos."