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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   what it's like to be Roman Catholic
Saturday, December 23 2006
Our houseguests all drink coffee, and since this was the first time in over a month that a pot of coffee had been made in the house, I took the opportunity to break my five week coffee fast. I managed to drink two cups on an empty stomach, which didn't turn out to be such a good idea. I felt pleasantly buzzy and talkatively social at first, though not nearly as buzzy as expected. Later, though, I gradually became irritable and anxious, a predictable consequence of coffee drunk on an empty stomach (even by a seasoned coffee addict).
We all went out to lunch at Gabriel's in Uptown Kingston, and I didn't make the mistake of ordering the burrito, the only thing I've ever ordered there (and which tastes like a half-dried bottle of Elmer's Glue-All). Instead I had the falafel wrap, which was delicious. Unfortunately, though, by this point I was experiencing an unexpectedly bad red wine hangover. Red wine (mostly Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon followed by something Gretchen found delicious) was all I'd had last night. I hadn't even gotten all that drunk, but for some reason (perhaps because of how infrequently I drink these days), the hangover today ended up being one of the worst I've ever had. It wasn't even that it was an especially physical hangover; the headache was mild-to-nonexistent and there were no gastrointestinal effects (aside from the toxic cloud that accompanied this morning's numero dos). But after eating that falafel wrap today I sat back in my chair and suffered through a couple minutes of debilitating purely-psychological hangover symptoms. Such symptoms are difficult to describe since, like dreams, they transcended the normal human logical/narrative system. Suffice it to say that I found myself capable of simultaneously holding two contradictory opinions on things. I also felt that I was thinking my way through something of an idea minefield, and that it might be possible to kill myself simply by having the wrong thought. (I guess now I know what it's like to be Roman Catholic.) If someone were to try to talk to me during the peak of these feelings, I think it would have been difficult for me to formulate a logical sentence.
As we left Gabriel's, the weather was so pleasant that one of the customers had decided to sit at an outdoor table. This is not a normal possibility in Upstate New York in late December. "What a great idea," Gretchen said to the woman at the outdoor table, adding, "Not that it's a good thing; we're probably all going to Hell." The woman nodded her head in agreement and chuckled.
I'd recovered by the time we went on a brief walk through Uptown followed by a shopping spree at Kencos (out where Hurley Mountain Road meets Route 28). I noticed for the first time today that Kenco has a large photovoltaic array on its roof, but (due to an non-fortuitous roof alignment and the presence a low ridge to the south) the array faces mostly eastward.

Later this evening, long after our houseguests had set out for their ultimate Upstate destination, I found my hangover coming back to bite me a second time. Interestingly, though, it seemed to be giving me as many abilities as it was taking away. While I experienced unpleasant anxiety and a lack of motivation, I found myself unusually absorbed by scientific content in Wikipedia. I read and re-read passages from the articles about super novas, white dwarfs, and (strangely) neodymium, trying as best as I could to understand what outward force causes super novas to explode instead of collapsing quietly into neutron stars. I've never found a satisfactory explanation for the explosive force and tonight was no different, but I'm a little closer to understanding than I have been in the past.
While I found the scientific stuff so engaging that I stopped obsessing about my hangover symptoms, later when I tried to read material at DailyKos.com, it proved unusually difficult to follow. It was as if my brain at that moment could only accept scientific information.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?061223

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