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February 11, 1997, Tuesday

Cool thing to say today: The Good Old Boy System is the tyranny of coolness grown to adulthood.

I drove the Dart back to Staunton to convive with those who are guilty of spawning me. I'm forgetful though and had to illegally cross the median on I-64 to return to the Dynashack to pick up the reason for the mission, papers I'd typed for my father. On the ride both from and back to Charlottesville, I was listening to a tape Josh had made of one of our sessions back in October. Overall it isn't great music, though I find my guitar playing to be amazingly experimental. It turns out I can go smoothly from one melodic idea to another rather smoothly. And many of the melodic ideas are invented on-the-spot. Josh's drumming is almost uniformly awful, with unnecessary continual overuse of the crash symbol, but at times we do gel into something unified. My singing isn't great, and I have few lyrics in my memory. But at times my singing is helpful and even acceptably good. I plan to use some of the musical ideas on this tape when I get the four track.

I ate four big sandwiches when I made it home. Then I slept until 4pm.

In the evening I picked up Kentucky Fried Heart Attack and a six of Red Hook brew in the commercial zone south of Staunton. The bridge on 871 was washed out in the big floods of the Hurricane Fran (September, 1996), and a new one is being constructed. In the mean time, I have to use 613 to get around this crucial connection between my parents' home and Charlottesville.

During the day a contingent of roosters comes by to court her through the bars of the cage.
There is a senile hen chicken that lives on the front porch of the house. She dwells in a big cage originally purchased to contain Fred the Australian Shepherd/mongrel dog. Since she is senile, the hen is a predictable target for repeated rape by all the horny roosters. The cage affords her some protection. She looks healthy these days, with fresh white feathers and a dazed but pleasant look on her beaked little face. She even is given to breaking into song from time to time. My Dad feeds her cat food among other things, much to the displeasure of The Kitten. During the day a contingent of roosters comes by to court her through the bars of the cage and to eat birdseed fallen from a nearby bird feeder.

After raiding the house for foodstuffs, vitamins gobbled on the spot, and alcohol, I headed back to Charlottesville, sipping on white vino the whole time.

I went to Jenfariello's place to install fonts on her computer. I also introduced her to Sam 'n' Ellas Punk Rock Chat.

underlain with magnetite and attracts an inordinate number of meteorites
During the 2 hour pre-work nap back at my house, I had a very vivid dream with a unique premise and structure. I dreamed I was in China, in a fictional "Shensu" (or "Jensu") province northeast of Bejing. It seems I was watching events through the eyes of someone else, a Chinese girl I think. I've never been someone else in a dream before, though other characters in my dreams are not infrequently hybrids of various individuals, species and genders. All the characters in the dream were entirely fictional, with no counterparts in reality. These characters had minimal interaction with me. Apparently, in the dream, this region of China is underlain with magnetite and attracts an inordinate number of meteorites. These rain down as tiny pebbles at high speed. I was caught in the middle of a field during one such shower and felt my head aching with the impacts. Shouts went out from the edge of the field from others telling me to seek cover. I found refuge under a small but new American car that just happened to be in the field. As the pebbles rained down they made no sound. But my headache continued despite the shelter and I feared for my long term prognosis. Other things happened in the dream. A man named "Manshu" was apparently a personality of local distinction. He took someone (me perhaps, in my dream-persona) as a bride but didn't have the full "bride ransom" required and so owed money.

After this dream another followed in which I was in the old Rising Sun Bakery, energetically telling the tale of the first dream to an enraptured audience. I awoke from the dream voluntarilly, which means it was a lucid dream of sorts. I felt like I had traveled and had a very real experience. Perhaps it was the Niacinamide (vitamin B3) I took in such great quantities back in Staunton.

At work I created a somewhat simplified and diagramatic Spins page telling some of what I know about online web search engines.

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