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last night i was talking with sam from gthing. we discussed search engine optimization, CSS magic, and all sorts of nerdy stuff (pretty much par for the course)... and we talked about guns.

our coversation touched on each of the following five observations:

1. a lot of people carry a loaded handgun as a concealed weapon.
2. one common place to conceal said handgun is the crotchital region.
3. most of these people keep a round chambered.
4. some people even carry these concealed weapons, "cocked and locked".
5. a google search returns over 101 thousand results for "accidentally shot himself in the groin"...

i've lost my faith in humankind.

someone you will never see again. maybe it's an amazingly beautiful girl. maybe you had the best dance of the night at a venue in some city on the other side of the continent. and might never get a chance to visit again. maybe it was some guy you just connected with. someone who'd be your best friend forever, if only you had more time.

what do you say? what can convey those feelings?

how do you say goodbye?

'i could have loved you.'

too cliche, maybe.

'i hope we meet again... sometime.'

'you are amazing. you made my night tonight. thank you.'

like hand scrawled messages in a long forgotten yearbook. in the long run, do they mean anything at all? 'stay cool. have a great summer.'

i don't think you can say anything. only give them a hug. squeeze extra tight for a second, pretend that you might, somewhere, sometime, meet again. and then move on with life, thankful that you even had a chance to glimpse something so beautiful and pure as what might have been.

so i was on a red-eye flight to new york last night. i was in an emergency exit row (an extra inch of leg room!) so i started flipping through the little comic strip "emergency instructions". being a responsible passenger, knowing the requirements of my seating location. (yes, i am willing and able to assist other passengers leaving the plane. yes i am over 15. yes, i can figure out how to pull that red lever that says "PULL" on it...)

the nervous looking woman seated next to me said "i hope we won't be needing that"

i laughed and made a joke about it.

turns out that she was serious.

as we started to taxi for takeoff, she cinched her seatbelt as tight as she could, and folded her coat on her lap. then she buried her head in her coat and didn't move until we hit 25000 feet. she got up and headed straight for the restroom.

Today at work, I went downstairs to microwave my dinner. As I passed the vending machines, I noticed that, as is sometimes wont to happen, there was an ice cream cookie sandwich precariously balanced at the end of one row. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it would actually take quite a bit of force to dislodge it, and so concluded that today wouldn't be a free-ice-cream-sandwich day for me.

So I splurged and actually bought one (it put me back an entire dollar), and continued preparing my dinner. About this time another hapless soul wandered past, and was also caught by the lure of free ice creamy goodness. He gave it a valiant effort, I have to give him that.

i work in the arts building of my college,

in the basement.

surrounded by violin practice rooms.

the eternal torment of sisyphus comes into perspective.

a musician, condemned in tartarus to endless scales progression. just as the end is reached, by some trick of fate and vengeance of gods, all progress is lost and the musician must commence his tortuous journey again.

last night a flautist, a deviant, broke free. used the sacred practice space reserved for strings.

while i applaud her bravery, at the time i could only wish for the eternal scales of the violins.