May 9-10

 Random gibberish below, just sort of felt like it, don't get excited.




 So, I bought a vaporizer the other day. It was sort of an impulse buy-slash-belated birthday present to myself. I already owned a hand-held, butane-powered Iolite model and I'm pretty pleased with it. However, it really didn't give me the experience I'd had when using table-top vaporizers.

 So, I bought one. It's a Vaporite brand "air freshener" - hey, that's what it says on the box - Solo Digital model. Plug it in, the little element heats up, do the vape thing, and off you go. Right now, though, I'm going to eat a very late dinner, more out of recognized necessity than anything else. Spaghetti, if you must know.

 Dinner Break at 11:56 p.m.


 Okay, it's ten 'til one, and I've eaten, showered and snuggled with the Little Buddy, not necessarily in that order. He was in dire need, poor feller, as it's Springtime in old New Orleans and my boy's got him some fleas. I may have to run him in to the vet, and everybody already wants all my money. Oh, well.

 Anyhow, I bought a vaporizer, and so far I'm pleased with it. I've been experimenting with different temperatures and load sizes, and it seems like there will be a lot to learn. I do know that that a very small load on medium temperatures makes for a nice, mellow buzz, and a normal load on very high makes me plumb catatonic and paranoid as hell.

 I found myself in a not-quite-but-borderline bad neighborhood last night, me and the dog, almost midnight, engaged in not at all intelligent activities, even if all we did was sit in the ca and wait. On top of that, the high temp/heavy load combo made me Alex Jones paranoid, so I won't be doing that again soon.

 I am sort of digging the whole vibe I'm getting with this vape, though. Rambling, stream-of-conciousness "prose", a bit of the good smoke, a device that looks all the world as a retro space-age water pipe, faithful companion at my side, and a documentary on the Voyninch Manuscript playing in the background. I want to say a Coolrdige vibe, but I'm honestly not that well-read to pull off such a comparison without looking like a total goob.

 My vacation, such as it is, officially began today, as I would've spent my evening making gumbo and cussing God and America otherwise. I do feel sort of guilty mucking with everyone else's schedules, but dammit, there's three of them and I honestly don't believe they really give a shit if I come back or not. I honestly don't blame them because I can't rightly disagree with them.

 That all being said, I am enjoying my little break. I do wish I could have somehow gotten plumb away, but I am really glad I didn't actually go to that goddamn cabin. The hell was I thinking. Frankly, what I really want to do is spend a week (or a couple of months) in Amsterdam or St. Augustine or Greenwich Village or anywhere I can get air conditioning at night, Wi-Fi, decent medicine, a decent chicken shwarma, a place for the dog to run around, and where no one knows me for a 500-mile radius and I didn't have to work.

 I'm now watching a video on "The Real Matrix Holographic Parallel Universes" and I've already seen Robert Anton Wilson spouting his flapdoodle. I can't help it, as much as The Illuminatus Trilogy warped me, that dude trips my bullshit alarm with every other thing he's ever done that I've absorbed. It's probably me. Here, there's David Deutsch. And a bald dude in a saffron robe. Oh, well, what the hell.

 Anyhow, regardless of the lack of a perfect universe, I am enjoying my week so far. I really don't care about spending the weekend doing anything else, but I am looking forward to having some uninterrupted time with the girlfriend, and I know she's up for it.

 Ten minutes into this thing, and it's just clips of different guys saying vaguely related stuff that I do recognize from my own readings on the Holographic Principle and how it applies to cosmology and neuroscience and ontology. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the music. Oh, look, Bill Hicks. Poor Bill Hicks, I wonder what he'd think of how he's used today by folks who'd rather let someone else express the thoughts they wish they could have.

 Maybe I'll try this again. Hold on. It is now 1:20 a.m., and I'm going to try something.

 And we're done. What the hell, no one will read this anyway and I'm not really using it for anything. I don't know why I feel the need to attach myself to various social media. It's a bit disturbing, actually, how quickly I've dipped into all this nonsense since - and let's not lie to ourselves, kids - getting the iPhone. It's a mind-blowing little device, and I'm a bit agog at how cavalierly society treats having what boils down to a science-fiction marvel, a Hitchhiker's Guide and communicator rolled into one, with more computing power than was used to put man on the moon. A properly motivated individual could self-publish a decent web magazine using just the iPhone 5 (and I assume any other similarly kick-ass smartphone, I'm not partisan).

 Of course, I am not that individual. I do feel guilty about that, but I swear, I couldn't tell you to who. Still, I'm feeling the need to be connected, if nothing else than to the vast, yawning chaotic swirl that is the Internet. Minor bits of wisdom on Twitter. Soulful pictures of the dog on Instagram. Art loving and my humanity (one and the same?) on Tumblr. Political grumblings and jeremiads on Google+. Here, the weird but true. I haven't figured out what to do with Sulia nor what use to get out of it.

 I still don't have anything to say. I realize it doesn't seem like that, but trust me, this is all pretty shallow stuff. Maybe I'm building a nest, subconsciously preparing myself for the time that the will turns its head back that way. Maybe I'm fooling myself and just reaching out so someone will hear me bleat and say "there, there".

 Man, hearing high-powered mathematics and super-genius cosmological physics translated into a self-help spiel just give me the willies. Christ, now it's Alex Jones. I don't know what it is about this dude - apart from his whole stroke wrapped around preserving at least one version of the fear & loathing, straight-white-male-patriarchy framework - that sets me off about this dude and guys like him. I think it's the persecution complex they seem to dig on. I don't know if it's something as grand as I don't want to live in fear and anger or if it's just a case of simply no longer wanting to be "that guy", but I can't get on these guys' side, no matter how much I agree with them, inre: the various problems with the U.S. government in particular. I don't think they'd be on mine, frankly.

 Yeah, this thing is a bit more woo than I generally care for. I don't know, man, I simply cannot find enlightenment in this sort of thing. I've had a number of heavy psychedelic experiences and thought me some tremulous thoughts, but I never once thought that it was anything but my own perspectives and perceptions just somewhat shifted. Nothing mystical or magical, just a temporary adjustment at how my neurons connected and fired amongst one another.

 What the hell, Jim Carey? That's how they end it, Jim friggin' Carey giving some sort of self-help speech. I be damned. Here's one on the holographic principle. This guy's definitely a scientists. He starts off with a bad joke, hasn't stopped rocking back and forth, and looks like he'd rather be anwhere else in the world. I just missed his name, but he's doing a good job. I'm fascinated with this shit, this and information theory, and just the whole idea that the universe could be expressed as a computer program and that our physical world isn't really reality so much as feedback from actual reality. Or something like that, I don't imagine I'm getting it close to correct.

 Yeah, that's all I got. Night.