Space-time continuum

Space and time go together. In this space and time tonight, I was looking at porn. And its beauty compelled me to post.

So I was sitting in my chair at the office today doing god knows what when I was transported to elation... or "exultant gladness," as dictionary.com puts it.

I experienced a similar emotion years ago under different circumstances. Specifically, the emotion comes from transcending time and space... allowing the mind to drool vividly into another time while the body breathes normally. Well... I've done it dreaming and meditating, but only twice that I can remember during either conversation or body... intensive... things...

I opened pandora.com for the first time in a while and was listening to my Ulrich Schnauss station. This song started playing. And I was content to let it... I think it was helping me with my livecycle edits. So... I was editing pdfs and... pretty much fighting them with my bare hands.

Now, the song sort of gets... twinkly... at the three minute mark. It gets floaty. And... I was jamming. Livecycle did something I liked and I got all excited and clicked on something that wasn't meant to be clicked. Windows made its error noise like any good operating system should. But the Windows 7 noises are sorta spacey. They're kinda floaty in their own right, the default sound scheme, anyway.

In an instant, the song's tide gifted a glimpse of the spacial error sound and I was immediately staring at myself from at least a hundred years ago. I said to myself, "Jesus in a hamster wheel! I'm in the future!"

Now, in the past, revelations like this one have been inspired by various substances ranging from Russian combustibles to the stickiest of the ickies. But I had neither today: just PDFs and Windows errors.

I'm sure you all think I'm just batshit at the moment, so let me explain. As a disclaimer, I acknowledge that said "explanation" does not guarantee my personal absence from the mental state of bat...shittery. But I'll continue, since you've asked so kindly.

Here I was, listening to a musical recording emanating from a place few people have ever seen. Can you hold the digital information as it runs through the speaker wire to your speakers? No. You might actually get electrocuted if you try. So I was sitting there staring at glossy finish glass monitors with displays of infinite depth and commanding them with my hands without ever even touching the screens. An unknowing bystander would have seen me engaged and, based on my body movement, probably would have noticed I was sending some kind of relevant information into these shiny, bright things. Even if they had no idea what kind of voodoo was in use, they'd be able to see I was going to considerable mental lengths to achieve some personal result inside the magic window pane. In addition to the computer... sensory stuff, I was listening on overdrive. It's the only setting I have. I'm either listening to crunchy high frequencies that might or might not exist in the original recording or am listening to the barrel tone of the snare drum.

I don't know if you know this, but the human ear can hear a lot. At least the two next to my brain can. Everybody talks about our ability to hear as opposed to other animals. We can hear everything dogs can hear. Dogs are idiots. But convincing our minds that the sounds are relevant takes a little work. At any rate, my brain was lost in the full spectrum of sound. My fingers were electric as they sent commands into the shiny, flashing machines. And I was just enveloped for a moment. Frozen. Mesfin was wrapped up in a .NET blanket next to me while I was lost in the beauty of the present technology. I was absolutely unconvinced that we are not living in the world we all hoped to be in one day. What else do we need? I know a jetpack would be nice, but physical laws suggest flight in numbers is safest.

The average American is able to type five or six letters and click on what they see. It will allow them to see and hear what they want to see and hear. It's brilliant. And all I can do is sit here and consider the disenchantment that must be responsible for the lack of awe and wonder I see in other people. Or are we perhaps just so humanly jaded that we shun the entity altogether because it only appeals to two senses. Look, people. If you click on something, you can see and hear it. That's two senses. Now... access the third by chewing on your keyboard. Access your fourth my tapping your toes on the floor. And access the fifth my smelling whatever in the hell you want to smell. Then, you won't be all that different from two other notorious individuals who pioneered the practice. Anyway, that's my steaming pile of an explanation. It's all I can muster.

Right now, I've used an old dress shirt to tie my headphones to my head. They kinda suck and sound was escaping between the headphones and my head. So I did this. My pigmentation has thankfully remained intact.

The other night, I continued watching Philip Seymour Hoffman movies with Love Liza. It was about a man whose wife recently committed suicide by asphyxiation in her running car in a closed garage. Philip copes by sniffing gasoline. My interpretation is Philip's character wanted on some level to be with his wife in her last moments. And in an attempt to relate to her state, he referenced the only other form of automotive inebriation I can imagine. It also starred Jack Kehler from The Big Lebowski and Stephen Tobolowsky. Any respectable movie viewer will recognize him as the tons-o-fun insurance salesman from Groundhog Day.

Anyway, I saw the summary of the movie and on some level just really wanted to watch Philip Seymour Hoffman sniff gasoline for an hour and a half. And... he sure did it. He sniffed the hell out of some gasoline, model jet fuel... you name it. It was uncomfortably humorous.

Kathy Bates stars as his late wife's mother. The story basically revolves around his inability to operate in reality any longer and his refusal to address the suicide note his wife left. It was filmed very well and I recommend it. It had a pretty good soundtrack, too. He's just a great damn actor.

I'm kind of tired now. It was a decently long day. All the softphones are working now. The temperature gauge in the server room seems to be pretty stable between 70° and 77°. I've still got some Livecycle updates to do and... I have salespeople calling me back to back. I'm researching options for both remote backup and enterprise monitoring software. Many of these salespeople are really, really happy to hear from me. And when they ask if they can, "...follow up in the next few days," they really mean 9am the next morning. It is what it is. I also figured out how to check voicemail on the new phones. Our telephony support group, who in my opinion is just disinterested in telephony, informed me they don't even support the telephone. Thankfully, there is the internet.

>> "For Good" by Ulrich Schnauss on Goodbye