It never looks quite right when I pour the Kraft Easy Mac™ cheese powder onto the microwave-cooked macaroni. Instead of the shadow on the mound of cheese being black or even dark orange, it’s a strange shade of grey! It looks as if it would glow under a black light. Eerie.

Ugh??? I think I overdid it with those grilled cheese sandwiches???

You can learn a lot about fluid dynamics by watching a mug of coffee after pouring in some cream.

As a lot of people have, (I’m as sure of this as I am that this comes as no surprise to anyone who’s a semi-regular patron of this sitewhich is as frequent as one can be when it comes to semi-regularly updated sites) I’ve been giving a lot of thought to subject of happiness, what is by meant by the term exactly, and how to go about achieving it. I’ve had a three-tier model with contentment going through my mind for some time, and have now been able to base a theory on itthat being that it’s impossible for one to be completely happy.

The three tiers I just alluded to are being happy with one’s self, being happy with one’s life , and being happy with the world. I like to think of it as a center-to-outward approach, though I’m not necessarily certain that a former tier must be true before one can say that a latter one is, e.g., one might not necessarily have to be happy with one’s self to be pleased with their life. Anyhow, that’s how I see things, and I feel that it holds true for me.

Personally, I am happy with myself, probably moreso than almost everyone else. I’m no one if not a narcissist. Mind you, my self-perception is separate from how I believe others ought to regard me. I’ve done all I could over the past few years or so for me to be happy with myself.

I am not pleased with my life. There may be aspects of it that I’m happy with every now and then, but as a whole, I can honestly say that I hate it. I am working on it, however, and I believe that my strong sense of self-love (which is ironic, since I don’t believe in an actual “self”) holds as a strong foundation to build my life upon, or rather my satisfaction of it.

I want to be content with how my life is ASAP, so I can work on improving the whole world at large. Given this tall order, no one can be fully happy, at least not until a distant-future utopian Nanotech Age (we’re still in the dawn of the Information Age). There’s a joy in improving the world that just isn’t present in helping your self-perception or contentment with life. It isn’t really more satisfyingit’s just different. I think that if you try to experience that pleasure, without getting your life straight first, you won’t feel all that great about it. But making the world a better place after having made amends with yourself and those around you will augment the immaterial rewards that come with doing so.

It’s all the difference between plain old fucking and truly making love. Yup.

Even at Burning Man, I was a loner.

Mmmm??? I just made some good ol’ grilled cheese sandwiches. You can get the recipe at Epicurious.com . Be sure to read my review!

I am now at a Kinko’s in Salt Lake City , Utah. We’re going to be staying here for the night and heading off to Black Rock City, Nevada tomorrow. It was nice having a shower after being on the road for as long as we were, and I look forward to sleeping in a bed. I’m kind of tired now and not much more to say. Again, I’m paying for time here??? blech. Utah’s lovely??? it’s like the background art from the roadrunner cartoons. There was a wicked lightening storm last night in Wyoming. I hope that we go for some sushi this evening. Can’t wait till we get to the playa.

This is so cool??? I’m typing this from some internet booth that I found in a roadside stop in Iowa ??? yes, that’s where I am as I type this–somewhere near Des Moines, I believe??? we’re a bit behind schedule??? on our way to Salt Lake City??? can’t say much??? this thing’s on a timer.

Er??? that’s it for now??? we’ll be in Black Rock City, Nevada by Sunday afternoon, I think??? laters

This is it??? I’m leaving for Burning Man tonight??? it’s like my whole life has built up to this??? I’ll definitely have a lot to say here when I get back, not to mention nude photos of yours truly! Oh man, oh man.

Lately, my sessions with my personal trainer at the gym have involved intellectual excercise in addition to physical exercise. Not that he gives me hard math questions or anything. We merely have conversations in which I strongly stand by my convictions of Logic et al. while he proceeds to wonder and question about various things that he believes hints at something supernatural or beyond science in whatever way.

What I find intriguing, not only of him but of a lot of people, is that his stance is inconsistent with what he preaches by professionthat being fitness, nutrition, and having a healthy lifestyle. Whereas in that area I go by the conventional wisdom (e.g., hitting the target heart rate for maximal fat-burning), he is very skeptical with what doesn’t completely concurr with he latest findings in his field of expertise.

During our last session, he said that it was intersting how I have a scientific point of view and the he doesn’t. I didn’t say anything immediately after that, but I have been thinking all this time as to what I could have, or should have, said. And I finally got the best come-back to thatasking him if he meant that he didn’t have a point of view or if that his point of view was non-scientific. By saying that I had a scientific point of view while he didn’t implied that I had a fixed (i.e., rigid) worldview that he needn’t worry about. Maybe that was exactly what he meant, but if so, he’d have been wrong.

Where’s Socrates when you need him?

I just remembered that my personal trainer actually said that I “have a very scientific mind” and that he doesn’t. So it’s mind , not point of view. My response above may still apply, though not in the same exact way. Oh well.

The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” assumes that everyone likes to have the same thing done to them as what you would like them to do to you. But that doesn’t seem to apply to sadomasochism as well as other dominant-submissive or superior-inferior situations. Maybe the rule should be changed to “Do unto others what they prefer as you would have them do unto you what you prefer”. That makes more sense, doesn’t it?

Even on the Internet, I am still a loner.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to say anythinganything at all. Either I struggle to bring something to the forefront of my tongue, or I draw a complete blank. It doesn’t matter whether it’s uttered or written–like here, for instance. There’s a million things that I feel I need to say and there can be times when I feel I have to say all of it in one go. So it’s ironic that when I have an opportunity to say whatever it is I must say, that I’m speechless. Damned silence???

Of course, the phenomenom isn’t completely unaccounted for. I’m in many ways passive by nature. I’m more likely to react to something than be the one who initiates it. That goes for expressing my ideas verbally. A lot of the time, all it takes is for someone else to say somethingregardless of whether it’s to a particular person or a general audiencefor me to react and state my opinion. More often than not, though, I speak only when spoken to. And it’s not to observe that rule that people give to children (who should be seen and not heard, anyway ), either. It’s just that it takes a certain amount of assurance that my two cents would be appreciated, or at the very least solicited, for me to speak up. If you ever see me being quiet, in real-life or on this web site, keep in mind that it’s because no one is saying anything to me. And the vicious cycle continues???

Similar to how my dishes are the breeding ground of some nasty strain of bacteria that smells so bad after awhile that I just have to wash the dishes (after about a few weeks or so), it can just be a matter of time before I actually say something all on my own.