Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kevin MacDonald's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
5:31 pm	I bought glowing juggling balls from England. Four of them cost me almost $400. They're great. I'm glad I was introduced to juggling, although it did zonk out piano practice. Last night's birthday party for Katie was great fun. So many beautiful people. She is full of wonderful energy that draws good people to her. Things for me to learn there. Plotting our move to Capital Hill. I think it will be great fun to share a big house with friends. I hope we can pull it off. Snowboarding is coming along great. I'm getting better. The old body doesn't let me down. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 19th, 2005
11:47 pm	My computer screen is before me, and my piano is behind me. And that's the way it is most of the time. Maybe I should ditch the piano. Have I improved much in 10 years? Not really. In fact, I've forgotton how to play most of the limited repetoire I had. I sat down to play tonight and I had so little motivation it was a complete waste of time. Blah. What am I teased with just a little bit of talent and not the drive to take it anywhere? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 3rd, 2005
4:21 pm	Had a very straightforward dream last night. I was minding my own business, then a woman suddenly entered the room and in true Hitchcock style tried to stab me in the heart with a big kitchen knife. I woke with an "AGGGHHHH..." and E comforted me while I re-assembled reality. Then, I was scared of the dark making my way to and from the bathroom. At least it all makes sense. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 30th, 2004
2:07 pm	I QUIT MY JOB TODAY! Yes! That's right. It's official. I'm off to greener pastures. But not before a trip to Mexico. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004
3:24 pm	bored bored bored bored bored (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 22nd, 2004
9:13 am	A view into my life over the next few years has remained shrouded in uncertainty. I know I am going to Mexico for S & D's wedding in January, and I know that I am getting married in March, but beyond that life has been a mystery. What comes next? Kids? Travel? New job or same old job? And what if I freak out between now and my wedding? I advised a friend recently: men seldom lie in relationships, and when they do it's blatantly obvious. But they will sweep you away with emotion, and then withdraw that emotion suddenly. I have done that before, more than once, and although I could argue the situations and present convincing data that my actions have always been above reproach and justified no analytical wheedling can change the fact that I am capable of overturning the table and sending the pieces flying. So that's the element of danger I bring to a relationship. It's a learned trait however; a culmination of my past. Here and now I feel that I should overcome any jitters I have and power through. See if the mind can overcome the minutia in the interests of my future happiness. My, but my brain does race off on topics these days. I feel like I've been gaining a new awareness of how my mind works lately; the spinning whorls of thought and imagery that carry me off for moments here and there, sometimes leaving me a little frightened and worried, sometimes leaving me with a sense of peace and joy. I wonder if I have always done this but now recognize it more readily. And perhaps I am more accepting of it. That is the key I think. If I gain a new acceptance and love for the foibles of my own mind I will be able to derive greater joy from my own weirdness and revel in it, and be able to direct it as a positive force of goodness in the world. So, back to the topic at hand. My path over the next few years is less cloudy. I may be able to incorporate a wonderful mix of relationship bliss, travel and career development into my life such as I have never done before. foibles and fibbles. direction and chaos. My friends believe in me. It is an amazing gift. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2004
10:03 am	Unhappiness manifests itself in me differently now. Am I lucky that when unhappiness comes it is nebulous; no clear donkey on which to pin the tail? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
9:43 am	Using an RSS feed I can scan down long lists of both my own entries and those of my friends, quickly taking stock of the first word of each entry. Here's a matrix with vertical rows representing un-named individuals. I am on the left. Using I tired I've having I http I Mon an I Over Even My here Feeling Opinions It The still I Once I I my E Well - Where starting For My How Clarity did As I'm I got plugging Now My http bread at I Feeling http I today http Sitting I god is In It's Well I I I I http I I Some On I There ever Lady I http burning happy As There's I So wow I In Where Another at I I'm Something I'm life I It's http This so I I We So strangest I I The Exercise life The I I sunday we I Flying Jan. my just (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 10th, 2004
9:57 am	If you make a fool of yourself in front on 3 people, is it really any worse than making a fool of yourself in front of 1000 people? Is this the secret of public speaking and politics? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
3:51 pm	I rented an accordion and played the theme to The GodFather for the party we threw in honor of L. L and I will get together soon and we will do a flute/accordion duo. I have in mind for us to try "Money" by Pink Floyd. 7-4 time. Do-do-do do do do do do DO Do-do-do do do do do do DO MONEY do do do do do DO IT'S A HIT do do ... I'll do the do-do-do and she will do the melody. Should be very cool and silly. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 12th, 2004
1:16 pm	Feeling better this week. No more weird trippy headspace & appetite loss issues. But I still don't feel entirely right. Sort of a fatigued feeling around my head. Maybe I should sleep more for awhile. I will go see a naturopath tomorrow and get a physical and some blood tests. Recently I asked some friends to rate their overall satisfaction with their lives, very generally speaking. I gave myself a 7.5. Their answers were in the same ballbark. 1) Ways I can bump up my satisfaction level: - be in good shape. - simplify my living situation. - have a big workshop to work in. - have no debt. 2) Ways I think *might* bump up the level, but I'm not sure: - be working for myself. - be more popular. - practice more piano. - be actively engaged in a local art project of some kind. 3) Ways I might bump up the level that are probably unattainable. - be filthy rich. - be able to move objects with my mind. - figure out how to become immortal. Set #1 is very attainable within a one year time-frame. No excuse not to do that. Set #2, well maybe after #1 is done I could devote a bit of time to each and see how it goes. As for #3, well I'm already filthy rich by global standards, and if one any one of a million religions is right I will enjoy, or endure, some form of immortality. But damn I really wanna be able to move objects with my mind! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 9th, 2004
1:40 pm	I just experienced something very odd. I went for lunch with E, and while sitting at the table I completely lost my appetite and a wave of un-wellness kind of spread through me, like an adrenaline rush. It was almost mildly psychedelic, but that might have just been the oddity of the experience. It made me think this is what a flashback must be like; the anxious feeling that reality might suddenly come undone. It was both a physical and psychological reaction; very unusual and a bit frightening. Reality however, did not come undone. I did not freak out. The walls did not begin to crawl. Faces did not begin to melt. We finished our meal and I came home while she caught a bus downtown. I've been trying to reason it out, and I think it might be general anxiety over moving and getting engaged and all of the life changes that stem from that. That makes the most sense. Or I could be going crazy, but I will just hope that's not the case. So, what do I do with that? Do I start questioning my decisions and drilling down looking for the source of such feelings, or do I accept them as a fairly natural reaction to significant change? Perhaps a certain measure of gun-shyness to a new long term relationship is expected given my history. Perhaps a certain anxiety over moving into someone else's space with both a mate and a roommate is just cause for a little inner turmoil. I'm going to run with that theory right now, and will try to monitor what I'm feeling and why. I communicated to E what I was experiencing and she asked what she could do. I just said continue to be your wonderful loving self. Right now my body tells me to curl up and sleep for awhile. I will do that and then go running around the lake. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
5:26 am	E and I were out riding a bicycle - I think she was on the handle bars - looking at places, to live maybe. I'm not sure. And as dreams go we were getting lost and diverted and waylaid and separated. All dreams, at least mine, entail some level of difficulty and diversion, humorous or not. So it happened that the bike began inexplicably jamming up and becoming difficult to ride. I wound up dropping her off at some place I can no longer describe and I continued onward, with some measure of mechanical difficulty, for no clear reason, so now we weren't together anymore. But she was reachable by cellphone so it was no big deal really. Apparently my mission was to get the bike fixed and meet up with her later. So it happened that I came upon the house that we were originally looking for. I think the number on the house was 2034, or some such, for those interested in numerology and how it relates. I don't give a flip really. Onward. The surrounding cityscape at this place was rather strange. The house was very close to the edge of some elevated highway with high fences and strange structures all around. It was quite a friendly neighbourhood it seemed so I was not distressed in any way. I approached the house on the last dying gasp of my battered bike, the front wheel squeakily resisting every degree of turn as I recall. I should mention, now that I remember it, stopping briefly along the way at some school-like establishment with very interesting modern architecture, a combination of curvaceous surfaces and Euclidean geometries, where I met someone who was vaguely familiar, a young person. She seemed happy, I think, and somewhat surprised, to see me as was I her. Nothing more to tell about that. So I entered the house and inside was a very busy, bustling, chaotic, colorful, riotously busy and lazy at the same time household of adults and many children. Clearly an extended multi-family with at least 2 1/2 generations of folks doing all the stuff they normally do. Kids standing around with fingers up their noses getting into everything, teenagers looking bored, parents surveying the mess and looking flustered or amused, other adults lounging and talking, or bent over some task which they are in the middle of being interrupted because somebody wants or needs something, perhaps just to stick their nose into whatever thing is going on. Junk everywhere, toys, tvs, dishes, half-finished sandwiches, but the place was not dirty. It's just that the efforts to keep it clean were always one step behind the generation of general mess. The place had an air of happiness and frivolity, nothing silly like domestic bliss. The phrase doesn't apply. There was just a whole mess of people doing a whole lot of general living, both individually and as a group, with no barriers of age or ability, and no particular plan or organization in mind. It just kind of worked with all those people, as places go. Tere was a man, very short, with a bright smile revealing some rather bad teeth, who seemed to be one of the adults somewhat in charge, and I began negotiating with him to buy a bike. Originally he said, "sorry, no, I don't have any bikes for sale. I had one just a while back but blah blah blah". But he seemed unwilling to see me walk away, either because he wanted to help or saw an opportunity to make a few bucks, and je said "hold-on-a-minute lemme go check something" and he started pulling pieces of bike together. And so began this long typically exasperating dream sequence of him cobbling a ridiculous bike together, at the end of which we would have to work out a price, assuming I even wanted it. I became fascinated with the whole process, as had a gaggle of onlooking kids with particularily runny noses. The technology behind the bike he was retro-fitting was actually very cool. It seemed like an air pressure system ran throughout the entire bike, the tires, the seat, the handle bars. Air pressure had some purpose in every major component. It was a colorfully painted lady's bike, the kind with high handle bars and a drooping cross bar. I quite like those. Even though I knew E must be getting worried I had to stick around and see what he produced. At one point, after I had test driven it and in that annoying dream-way the handle bars had come apart so that steering the bike was just difficult enough that I couldn't actually make any progess anywhere. But I wasn't annoyed. It was just part of the dream process that kept me there. At one point a possible fix was to take a leg off a nearby coffee table and retro-fit it as part of the new handle bar, which I admired and just had to see. The exciting part, the highlight of the dream really, was when somebody exclaimed that there was a meteor shower beginning. This coincided with me looking at the sky, and in addition to shooting stars I was seeing psychedelic patterns that did not seem to be hallucinatory. This was very beautiful and went on for awhile, but then there was one of those dream-like scene switches and now I was observing huge structures extending from the ground up into the sky above a great grassy plain. They were crystaline, fractal-like, many miles high and far away. At first I thought they were the trails of a fleet of space-shuttle like ships that had taken off from the ground in formation and then had done maneouvers together. I drew closer and came up to a fence. A part of one structure was closer now, and I could see similarities between it and the Temple of Joy from Burning Man, much more detailed and elaborate in that semi-regular fractalistic way that leftover pieces from some autmoated manufacturing process seem to make. The final part of the dream was the realization that I was observing an alien visitation of sorts. The structures now seemed to be huge landing craft, and from it issued various bulbous bouncy colourful balloon like floating devices, or perhaps living creatures. This was a scene quite close to me now. I stood before a fence that was about eight feet high and only 5 paces away. Part of the structure was low to the ground and branched over the fence like a tree in the neighbouring yard. The balloon creatures varied in size from maybe two feet to ten feet in diameter. One of them butted the wooden fence and made it shake. In some respects they were akin to that big balloon guardian thing from the old British t.v. series called "The Prisoner", but in a friendly and non-threatening way. A few of them kind of rolled over the fence and started bumping into me. It seemed they were vibrating and this was a means of communication maybe, so I spread my fingertips and let them rest lightly on one of them. Another was pressed up against my back and seemed to be vibrating like a drum so that I could feel it through my body. That's all I can remember. I woke up with E beside me. Occasionally I have a dream from which I awake feeling great, like I've figured something out that's profound, from which comes a sense of reassurance that everything is exactly as it should be and I'm in the right place doing the right thing. I should take whatever parts of that dream I can and implement them in the real world. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 5th, 2004
8:17 am	For my next trick I will build a 500 sq. ft. workshop with peaked roof inside, windows all around and skylights. It will double as a sound studio where I can practice to become that famous jazz pianist I've always wanted to be. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 30th, 2004
4:29 am	The adventure of my open brain As I lay mildly awake on this calm and unsupposing evening after having briefly arisen to quench a thirst and relieve a burgeoning bladder my head happened to be lying upon my open hand, fingertips pressing with a force equal to the approximate weight of my brain case divided by four upon each digit. My hand, perhaps due to the beginnings of some impending dream as twilight sleep threatened, underwent a brief and light yet rapid sequence of slightly increased pressure against my temple as it cupped and supported my head from squeezing my cheek into an uncomfortable posture against the edge of the mattress. With a distinct snick!, perhaps accompanied by a schiffff! of slightly lubricated surfaces moving upon one another a panel of somewhat oval dimensions proceeded to make it's here-to-for unknown presence known in the previously unbroken shell of my cranium. The motion had several parts, or components as it were. No, better, perhaps more clear and correct to say the transition of its position from closed, or non-existent!, to open was composed of several choruses of both sound and motion. The snick! was a motion outward from the skull. The schifff! was a swinging through approximately one hundred and eighty degrees as it swung clear of the vacancy in the temple surface thus created, and a barely perceptible whirrrr!, which is perhaps why I failed to mention it previously, as it retracted again in a direction radial to the supposed center of my seat of consciousness to thus render it tightly flush with the surface of my head. So there I lay, not of course being able to see, my eyes being firmly rooted in their sockets and no mirror positioned correctly to reflect the dim light in my unlit room from temple to eye, but nonetheless perceive! the transition via imagination, sound and sensation, and even no doubt the slightess tinge upon the air of a new odor, I had cause, great cause indeed, to wonder upon the gaping not-wound that had opened itself unbidden - ? - upon the pleasantly crisp and unstifled air of my dimly lit room. And now, with the mind's eye mind you - I shall not say again I could not directly see these events unfolding - I stirred my head slightly, sluggishly, fighting gravity, the mudiness of broken sleep and no small measure of trepidation to raise its weight perceptibly off the digits pressing there and leaving indentations in the temple surface that fade quickly in both colour and form. In doing so, from within the murky interior of the hole, its greatest dimensions being perhaps the width of my thumb, the thickness of the various layers of my brain casing being such that its contents were cast in even greater shadows than currently afforded by the ambient light, a single almost clear drop of fluid, slightly milky and amber in colour issued forth. Gathering mass slowly as thin tendrils of unknown substance afloat within a slightly translucent medium flowed from within the shadows to a single point on the surface, gathering there and threatening to begin the downward plunge to my cupped palm I decided action was required. I tilted my head, pivoting it upon the neck in counter-clockwise fashion as I was in fact lying upon my right palm, and you might well concur this odd early morning drama was unfolding upon my right temple, I coaxed the glistening drop back from the precipice such that it receded back into the depths from whence it came. Having prevented one supposed tragedy, at least it was such in my troubled imagination, my next task would seem logically to be to reverse the series of events that had caused this offending door, this impudent hole, this vile mind opener from having made it's unwelcome appearance upon my otherwise uneventful evening's sleep. Once having done that I could at my leisure contemplate the possible benefits of this new feature of my physical being. Thus I began trying to summon remembrance of the precise twitchings and playings of my finger tips upon my temple. I wondered perhaps erroneously if fingers one and two had in fact played a fugue against three and four, brief and not worthy of putting to paper of course, and as such wonderings are wont to do even there in my predicament my mind came to wandering away from current events to images of an ancient, dusty figure, A Bach-like creature as I imagined him to be, sitting before a harpsichord or some such instrument within an ornately appointed Baroque church positioned upon a hilltop surrounded by magnificent city in early morning light. Gently rolling hills in the near distance issued forth folk in elaborate dress making their way slowly up the hill to the great doors on their way to celebrate the dawning of their day of rest and listen to the intricate mathematics of musical form lightly tilting the air. A temple, a beautiful place of worship. And a music, O the music!. In the temple... The Temple!!! My mind slammed back as rightfully it should back to the task at hand, and I knew it was quite impossible to summon the sequence of impulses that I reasoned had triggered this opening in my unsuspecting brain. So gently I pried upon the door. Knowing that logically it must lift first, then swing, then recede back into position I applied a slight pressure to coax it in that direction. The edges of the.. hatch? were slightly damp to the touch with that amber fluid and with some feelings of revulsion I worked my fingers underneath it to begin the process of lifting. Now, having one fingertip partially placed upon the inside surface I was able to lift, and I shall not describe the texture I found there. Upon me came a great need to finish and be done with this unfamiliar process, so much to my relief the apparatus moved with only slightly spring-loaded resistance through the motion whence it arrived and then, having swung it through perhaps one quarter circle it began to move of its own volition! It hastened through the rest of the journey under some unknown impulse and snicked, schiffed and whirred back into place. My skull closed, my head fell and I returned to well deserved sleep. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 13th, 2004
9:55 am	Now that BM is over I have infinite amounts of free time. There are no holes to drill, no brackets to weld, noone's work to coordinate, no design issues to worry about, REI shopping to do, no spare parts to acquire. I have nothing specific planned in the near future except for social events, parties, weddings etc. E and I got engaged at BM. I proposed. She said yes. Now we begin the process of planning that massive party at which we will be married. We are very much in love. We survived a BM at which we both had huge projects on the go, and we managed to be supportive of each other before, during and after, and emerge even more in love than before. Camping at a kick-ass camp of hard-working hard-partying individuals also helps. I was cracked out for a week. Yay! So here's the engagement story. On Tuesday I decided to take a few precious hours in the afternoon away from laboring over the dogdish and go for a bike ride. I popped into the dance floor and told E what I was doing. She said she wanted to come too. So I ducked into the tent and grabbed the ring! We cycled out into deep playa and found a little shade structure of unknown artistic purpose and crawled inside. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. She cried. We both cried later. I think I will plan nothing in the coming year. Note how BM is my new year's. I have to get married, fix the dogdish, move in with E, play more piano, get in shape, build a workshop, do some travelling. That is enough I think. I've been married twice, soon to be married a third time. I've never had a big wedding. This one will likely be 150 to 200 people. E's mom has expectations. They're also footing the bill. Not sure how I feel about that, but I have no strong requirements about how we do it, so if it makes her and the mom happy then who am I to intefere? Between the two of us we're in a position to pay off E's house and live mortgage-free. That is a great wedding present. And one giant step towards loosening the bonds to the necessity of having a 9-5 job and figuring out what I really want to do with this life of mine. We'll be pretty drained, but saving money will be easy after that. Life is good. I wish the world wasn't so fucked and life wasn't so bad for so many. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 10th, 2004
7:50 pm	I am reading a series of essays in a book entitled "An ordinary person's guide to Empire". The writer takes a high view of things, of world politics and global corporation and other dark trends. If I try to take even a higher view I see our species as rats in the proverbial glass box. As resources dwindle we, as a mindless species-animal, vie and gobble for the remainder with ever-increasing stark madness. Dark times lay ahead I fear. There is no end in sight. The passive rats will be gobbled by the aggressive ones until disease, starvation and war take care of population pressure for us. All other problems are petty by comparison. Our lives are meaningless meandering slime trails left by blind slugs on the surface of a translucent glass bowl lying face down in a pile of shit. The next rain sweeps away the slime so noone remembers, and the sucking shit sinks the bowl a little deeper until it disappears. But not before our eager, panicked little faces pressed against the tinged glass can see the sworling feces grinning at us as they work at the edges. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 20th, 2004
3:45 pm	Gonna take my friends for a ride http://www.gravitybowl.com/blog/2004/08/blue-lights-and-motor-testing.html (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
10:29 am	In my walks around downtown Seattle during my lunch break I've seen artwork here and there, on the harbor steps etc., very often in steel. I suspect there is grant money available to artists who seek it. After burning man I should put together a little portfolio of stuff I've done and research that. Maybe I can put up some funky art piece around town. (Comment on this)
10:29 am	me smart I had a one-on-one with the boss. He intimated I would probably be promoted to "senior" software engineer in September. Every time I undertake a technical position I wind up rising relatively high amongst my peers working not terribly hard. So why do I worry? Of course, I do have that little problem of getting bored and antsy after a few years at one place, or in the same career. I've been doing software for about 6 or 7 years now. Time for a change soon or will the golden handcuffs keep me tied down? (Comment on this)