Oooh, let's have a snarky soap opera of a blog for once, why don't we?

It's not like my relationships are any better than anyone elses. For the most part I have no relationships, but being surrounded by various kinds of unhealthy couple moments this weekend made me for a moment proud to be single. Or rather, it made me feel gross and uncomforable, which in turn evoked a kind of reactionary, atavistic bachelor pride.

This bravado was summarally deflated when a girl approached me at the bar on Friday night and I went to pieces like a 16-year old.

She was a stranger to me at the time, but I gather now a friend of a friend. She looked at me just as we were walking in and there was a spark. I thought I knew her from before, she looked roughly similar to that girl I'd talked to on the phone a couple times but who'd decided not to ever meet me for a drink; tall, dark hair, possibly a slavic hint to her features. I panicked and walked past.

She followed very close. I could feel blood rushing to my head, the heat of her body behind me, a flustered sensation to say the least. This just from walking into a bar. I was aroused and excited, but then paranoid and defensive at the same time. Where the hell did this come from? Showing desire is declaring vulnerability. What the hell was happening here?

In any event, I mishandled it. She passed me, tugging at my hand. For a blissful second I didn't even think and went with her through the crowd. An elated sense of coming unstuck overccame me, but the power of doubt quickly took control and I started lagging. She glanced back once, let the light grip on my hand go and continued on to the back. I started after her once; checked myself. Looked back to try and see where my friends were. Looked at her again, stutter started and then finally headed on back to see what was what.

I was scared. I don't know what of, but I was not relaxed. "Do I know you?" I said in a highly accusatory tone.

"No... I just thought you were cute," was her quiet response. She slipped past me quickly and out the front I presume. 90 seconds later when everything made sense again and I realized the score she was gone. I couldn't see her anywhere. It was all over, all in the span of four minutes. So many things I didn't want to be worrying about then... who wants to be uptight? That little axe-wound of tension between my shoulders is killing me.

So I sit here, stewing slowly in lust and regret and Charles Mingus. Happy Halloween. Maybe I'll dink around with Friendster for a little bit. Lots of girls down here put up their Burning Man photos; a lot more squares too; interesting.

Maybe I'll think about what I aught to be able to be doing, engage my identity crisis in a bout of grappling, map out a plan of action for taking over the world. Maybe I'll think about taking care of myself for a change.

It's a rough time, you know. We've got a lot of problems; a lot more than we used to, it seems. We're quickly learning that we're not invincible. Though some still try to resist the lesson, the question on eveyone's lips is, "what do we do now?"

It's ugly to contemplate, to fully let in the awfulness of this world. But believing you have the power to change anything means having the guts to look at how screwed up it really is. If you want to get the high highs, the low lows come prepackaged, friend.

It's time we shifted gears here; got to start increasing our power ratio or we'll burn out in first. You gotta believe. Feels like a throwaway line at times, but it's also the fucking truth. You do indeed gotta.

We've got to bring more people into this process. We've got to engage another section of the population. We're doing really well, but if we settle in where we are and start just running on what we've got, the results are in doubt. We need to make a couple quantum leaps if we want to insure the full revolution.