Kid walking into the coffeeshop wearing sunglasses, which fog instantly: Is there anyone here?

I stand here, at the kitchen counter, listening to you read stories, other people’s, telling about their lives, growing up – they’re stories of fear, of silence.

I’m sorting blades, and pen tips – hundreds of sharp edges, a mistake will make me bleed. I never do.

I know you’re reading stories of other people, but they’re your story, too. All of the stories are about you.

I think about the box of blades and pens, I look at what to me are innocent tools, and I know that they can represent to much more. Precision tools, precise symbols of things that can’t be said aloud.

Now you tell of your own story, and of wanting to be done telling it, for the story to have an end. The end isn’t written yet – is anyone’s? – and you go on, even if you are just searching for how to close the chapter, wondering if there’s another one after.

Cook an onion in oil, hot, until the edges start going brown. Toss in some chopped shiitake mushrooms, then add a splash of water so the onions cook through. Mind the steam!

Add a splash of soy sauce, a dash of balsamic vinegar, a couple pinches of ground clove, and some black pepper. Serve over pasta.

Today involved a ten mile bike ride to watch the arraginment of someone who was harassing me a month ago; he pleabargained his way out of a sentence, assuming he can keep his nose clean for a year. I’m not upset by this — I figure it’s a pretty fair sentence, considering how light the harassment was. It was a neat process to watch, though, and I’m glad to know more intimately how the courts work, from incident to sentencing.

On the way home, I blew out a tire. Such fun. At least hitching with a bike in a county with more trucks than cars is really easy,

The MPEG artifacts in some of my music are driving me nuts.

On the other hand, the new Rhythmbox finally got tag editing working nicely.

After about 25 hours of toil, my house now roughly resembles the state it was in when crystalhellion moved in.

I’m beat. And it’s only 10.

Dear Political Organizers, (Moveon, I’m talking to you)

The change from sucess-story-plea-for-funds is definitely a nice change. Be new and different! Encourage people in ways never used before.

P.S. The attempted guilt trip was pretty sassy. Go you!

• Make out with hot girl in laundromat

Dysk says “btw, surround panning is a pain in the ass. Most of the audio software assumes you’ve only got two output channels.”

Aria says “Oh, ew.”

Aria makes a note to self to fix that if she ever writes video|audio software.

Dysk says “One or two programs specifically offer surround fun, but they’re still cludges on stereo. For example, you can’t specify that the speakers aren’t in the optimal places.”

Aria says “Meh.”

Dysk says “And there is my rant for the day…”

`echo deb http://au.ubuntu.cafuego.net dapper-cafuego bcm43xx | sudo dd of=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/cafuego.list

sudo apt-get install bcm43xx bcm43xx-firmware

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

` and re-login.

Today, we got the earliest snowfall I’ve ever seen that was more than a few flakes. We got three inches, and Ouray got eight. Took out trees, which took out power for a good number of hours. It’s been loads of fun. Pretty, though!

“I think I need to go.”

“I know.”

“I’m … I’m going to miss you.”

“I know. I am too.”

“I feel like I’m going to be missing you forever.”

“I know. Me too. I think in some ways, I always will.”

“Yeah.”

“So when are you leaving?”

“Right about now.”

I’m alone right now.

And it’s the right place to be.

Home suddenly feels at once like home again and totally foreign. Strange.

I think there should be a simple rule for “related” links: make them actually link to related things. I just looked up some lyrics on a site, and this is what it said at the bottom:

Visitors interested in The Dresden Dolls Lyrics may also interested in:

• Green Day Lyrics
• My Chemical Romance Lyrics
• Good Charlotte Lyrics
• Eminem Lyrics
• Avril Lavigne Lyrics
• Mariah Carey Lyrics
• …

Now, if it’s automated, I can understand getting a few wrong, but there’s something really wrong about suggesting a bunch of pop divas known for hollow lyrics, a rap star, and an altrock band, when the source page is lyrics for an obscure, angry, instrument-and-voice duo who’ve opened for bands such as NiN.

Let’s see, folks, “popular on this site” is not the same as “related to this page”. It baffles me that people can be that dense when designing a site.