Now that we have warm introductions set aside, I'm going to download a handy guide on publishing Voxel-Based Morphometry results, head over to my polling place, wait in line with my headphones on but my music player off, and vote me some Democrat.

The 'why' for me is obvious.

I like money.

I like rich people giving me more money.

The idea of Sarah Palin ascending to the throne if John McCain dies scares the ever-living fuck out of me. Palin '12 is a reverse orgasm with jumper cables.

These are three of approximately 30 reasons.

Em and I are watching election coverage with M&M. They live two doors down from us, so this makes carrying over snacks convenient. We made mint brownies accented with mint leaves (my thing), and red white and blue jello salad. All we need now is a bong and a dead hooker and it'd be a real American party.

I'm working over at the VA again on the calorie restriction study. On the plus side, I get to do all the analyses involving some physiological data I brought in. However, one of my potential projects got co-opted by a post-doc. I expressly asked for it yak yak yak you're informed. There's plenty of other things to stamp my name on before I get my Ph.D. and get out of this redneck outhouse of a department.

Actually the department is fine, I'm mostly just done being my advisor's student. I've learned all I can. It's just about getting papers out now, and thankfully I'm working adjunctly in a lab where they want to get stuff out pronto. Like end of year pronto.

My friend from West Virginia is moving someplace resembling civilization. Her general sentiment, not mine. I'm happy for her. Her life has been a series of bad luck turns and trauma burns. My central complaint is variations on a theme. It's unfortunate I never got to meet her. To this day I mostly don't regret lending cash to help with food expenses. I figure if she made it through, cool.

My friend Katie seems more disconnected than usual. (She was the undergrad in the abnormal psych course I met some years back. She's in Montreal. We mostly talk about Shamanism and weird shit. Em wouldn't understand, and most people have no personal experience to really make the conversation useful). I've tried to send her word a few times, but I'm not sure what's going on. It costs a fair dinero to call Canadia. I hope to hell she's not regressing back. I know what it's like to fight a disease of the mind. Mine is a hell of a lot easier.

I've been meaning to talk to my ex-roommate Brian. We parted on I'm-not-sure-what-the-hell terms, mostly on account of a lot of shit going down on both our ends. I've generally let burned bridges sift to ash and meander up into the winds of time, so I can catch brief glimpses of slow cloud memory that dissipate like a twilight drawn to infinity.

Nicholas seems to be doing rather well. Cut a trailer for his first novel. I still need to read that thing. I still need to get that thing, corrected. I've gotten the 1st chapter on at least half a dozen occasions over the years. Cronenberg, Craven, Lynch, and afternoons of reading Dennis Cooper tended to cancel out the light hours. And nighttime in Detroit is just an excuse to cuddle up with ghosts in burnt out brick recluses while telling the moon I'm only mildly intrigued by the current situation. Camera in hand, naturally. Maybe that'll be my XMas present.

Haven't heard from Hillary in years. Still occasionally think about her. She was my best friend for awhile. I wonder if she finished med school. Probably has. Used to think of her as another Ashtray Girl. 6 of 1, but we're idiots dying in front of other idiots and attempting to persuade and dissuade this fact from pervingly opening its trenchcoat.

Got a message from T recently. Hadn't expected it. I just jumped into the promise of that one and lost myself for a little while back in the day. I've been trying to find the time to call her, have a long talk to catch up, ask some important questions that might not be, table tennis. I went back and read her entire collection of poems. It'd been a long time since I sooted my hands on the intricacies of creative word flow. I mean there's the game but that's different. I was inspired, as you might've noticed. It was touching. I want a chance to convey that much. I have no idea how the thing'll go. I mean a body doesn't have much shawl to hide the blood-bone signal of shadow semaphore when I say I was in love with her. It was the beautiful fatalities set against those brief pulses of white-hot joy she related that were transfixing. So familiar it was fucking painful.

So it's in essence a journey to relate all of this without sounding like a clueless asshole. Long time coming.

Bean tried to re-establish contact awhile back, but she's 80% anti-social and I guess her experiment with regularly talking to others didn't bear fruit. I can relate.

Jack has likewise been missing for some months. But he'll be back someday or another.

The Lemony one, however, I have heard from. She probably has a cache of interesting things to say.

Insert transition, flip to side B.

I've spent entirely too long at this, but I needed a Dland nightcap.

I'm off to bed to let sleeping dreams lie and hopefully not get poked with a stick.

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