Entries this day: AM_Dream Angelique_dream Gin_in_Holland cant_touch_this

AM Dream

3:15am HST Friday 14 February 2003

With two cute girl-friends of mine, one new and one kinda old, and I was trying to decipher the meaning of the screenname of the newer girlfriend. It was like ah-pl8-gr8 or something and I kept trying to attach English words to it like English, but she gaave me a hint that it was Spanish, and that changed the whole paradigm, of course. (thanks g).

And it turned out to be something like aloha hombres, piscica amore something something yadda yadda but I couldn't quite get it and both girls were like patronizing and the old girlfriend was getting frustrated like that I couldn't get something and I was getting *really* frustrated and embarassed and wouldn't even make eye contact with the old girlfriend anymore, just trying to ignore her comments and finally I was all, "I'm sorry, I've got to go." and grabbed my shoes and jumped off the roof to the ground and they were all, "wait don't give up" and I turned around and just started to SCREAM yell "One of my shortcomings is that I'm can't memorize little tiny few FUCKING WORDS AND I'M REALLY FUCKING SCARED THAT I WON'T BE ABLE TO LEARN LANGUAGES AT ALL AND IT'S NOT FUCKING FAIR AND" and they got scared and both of them walked away from me and I was like pissed that they wouldn't listen and like wtf, do they thinnk I would hurt them? Obviously they've never been to my I-group to know and trust that I can be mad at myself and express it through yelling and not hurt another person.

When I woke up and realized it was a dream, I knew what must have been part of the problem in memorizing the phrase: the letters kept changing since they were dream letters and not actually a screenname in reality.

- - - -

previous dream:

TIME Magazine had a party in their offices and wanted to invite the general public, but they didn't advertise the party in their magazine. The only way people could have known about it is by knowing one of the staff members. They were having a meeting trying to discuss the success of the party and talking some inane BS like, "oh we should offer things the public will like" and whatever, but no one hit on "we should advertise the party," so I raised my hand to tell them that, but then for some reason didn't tell them (either the dream ended, or I figured they wouldn't listen and I didn't care enough to tell them)

- - - -

previous dream.

A TIME Magazine article on how a woman "used a newsgroup message and a binary editor to change her web browser to self modifying code." and the search engine used the browser and replicants of the browser to do a faster search, and to actually better itself in some way. And people weren't impressed or didn't understand the significance of self modifying code; this was the beginning of computers writing their own code, when suddenly the humans would begin to lose track and lose ability to understand the code for the computers won't have to document the code, nor even write in a high level language. But no one understood these types of implications, and were just caught up in the apparent triviality of the search which google could do already. "wah wah wah google already does what this new search engine does." but that wasn't the point.

Angelique dream

9:10am HST Friday 14 February 2003

This dream was probably around 4 or 5 am, before the first rooster started hollerin'.

I was chatting with Angelique from back in my UH days at the dorms. We were being all flirtatious and may have been about to hook up or go on our first date when she said something like, "well we can date if you don't mind sometimes ending up in the restroom in Paris in a puddle of vomit" or something equally unattractive.

I was like, "ummmm well I guess we can't date cause I won't be interested in anything like that."

And we had a brief period of mourning realization that we had just broken up before we even got together and we both felt sad. I said like, "well we are both still good people, and your choice is your choice and mine is my choice," or some wisdom and such but we still both felt sad and I was crying.

Then she was all, "hey I want you to meet this guy," as a man was walking using a cane very slowly across the street to her parents house. "He's the author of a book" etc and she thought maybe he could help me do something interesting in my life.

So she introduced us and he no longer had a cane and I cleared up my apparent sadness and I was all, "HI, I'm Rob Nugen and I'm going to Japan in March. I heard that you're an author, and I wonder if you'd be interested in coming to present something on your book."

But it turned out the book was on social economics of the 15th century or something equally too detailed for beginning English readers so we decided it probably wouldn't be worthwhile.

Gin in Holland

11:33am HST Friday 14 February 2003

This is from my friend Gin in Holland:

Hi there friends! What a strange day in history.

 In good Roman tradition the empire has picked the 5th (Nones) of the
month to announce their plans to go to battle (the day was also the
announcement day for the month's festivals).  I have not written very
much political commentary in the past years' e-mails.  I have tried
not to because the problems are obvious.  American politics have
gotten so hideous, due to things like blatantly hastening a third
world war over things like cheaper oil, that it is hard to make
anything out of this travesty.  This war is a perpetual psychological
war against every individual.  I have spent years pissed off about
corrupt American politics. I guess our "officials" think the American
people are too uneducated or segregated or overworked or addicted or
brainwashed to care about what our tax dollars are being spent on.  I
don't think we are living up "to the republic for which we stand" what
ever that means. I thought we stood for democracy- which is at least
somewhere in the ball park of majority rule.  I think things like the
electoral college need to be taken out of the articles. I do write
letters to politicians who i hear don't read them.

     One day after years of battling against a big polluting cement
industry and the Texas environmental agency- and all of their fancy
lawyers, i looked up one frustrating day in court and felt love for
the enemy.  I realized that not only had I learned something about
controlling my emotions while fighting for something i believed in,
but i had the loving flash that "they" were the same as "we" were. The
big shot lawyers defending the state and the cement companies had
gotten filthy rich because our little group of about 10 people had
worked for years (and are still working) to try to get more
environmental regulations in place.  I could see (possible
hallucination) for a moment the lawyers felt guilty for working to
promote something they knew was wrong and that science had clearly
proven was dangerous.  The decision in favor of the industry had been
made behind closed doors and through generous political donations,
long before the hearing began. Everyone was just going through the
motions. They knew it, the judges knew it, and even if we knew it deep
in our hearts- there was too much to lose to consider doing nothing.
For them this all boils down to economic "stability", any
consequential casualty is just part of the game.  We lost our
contested case hearing against the state of texas and the midlothian
cement plant, but our victory is our search and work and hope for a
better world.

  I studied history and government at a private library in Switzerland
for a winter.  I had a small bed room at the library because i was
there so often.  I once asked the old librarian what she thought was
an important step i could take towards peace.  She said that i needed
to study non-violent teachings and practitioners. I initially thought
the idea was preposterous. I studied hard for what seemed a long time
before i became convinced. In a response to another question i posed
to her, she told me to imagine a perfect world.  One with a place and
the basics necessities for everyone.  She said that once i had a clear
and attainable utopia in mind, i then needed to fill in the details
between that and our current society/global community.  Last year on
the mountain, after 10 years thinking backwards, i arrived from my
vision to the present.

      I have had the idea that Jesus could be back on earth. I guess i
am not the first pilgrim to walk an insane distance hoping to find
Him. I have even put time and effort into tracking him down. I have
decided that who ever it is I am looking for could be anyone,
therefore might be everyone and so practicing reverence for all is my
best bet.  I even wrote Mr (President) Bush a long letter forgiving
him for what he was about to do. I told him that it is all of our
apathy and our greedy desires that create the conditions to foster
monsters like him.

    I spent a little time with Mr. Bush.  When he was still governor
of Texas i did a 17 day hunger strike on the 'south steps' of the
capitol building in Austin.  Right out side of his office.  We spoke 9
or 10 times.  He never "officially" meet with me, although a state
representative tried to arrange a meeting between us.  I did not have
enough money to get anywhere close to an "official" meeting. I said
almost everything anyway.  I did notice that my one-person non-violent
action (to stop the burning of 550,000,000 pounds of toxic/hazardous
waste a year in a Dallas cement plant) really affected him.  On
several occasions even his staffers came out of the capitol building
to tell me that he had his chauffeur pick him up outside another exit
of the building to avoid seeing me.  He did not talk to me too much
after it was announced in the newspapers that my kidneys were failing,
and he never again asked me how i was.  Some days before I ended my
hunger strike i was coming out of the bathroom and almost ran into him
entering the state capitol.  The man in black next to him said "there
she is...".  Mr. Bush and i talked for several minutes and then
probably out of desperation i told him i would stop my hunger strike
if he would stop the TXI waste burning permit.  He said, "you are not
very diplomatic".  He told me there was nothing he could do about it.
Earlier that week, he had announced to the world that he was going to
run for president.  Within a day people were already calling him
"Mister President".  It seemed like the foreshadowing of the death of
democracy in America.  He told me I was very brave for standing up for
what i believed was right.  But he refused to look at any pictures of
the children from the neighborhood around the cement plant.  I suspect
he gets his nerve because he cannot identify with his victims.  He did
identify with me. He was especially interested in my high school
letter jacket.  I think he can be a sensitive individual.  I believe
that non-violent protest, that he is forced to observe, deeply affects
him.  Who ever it is that openly wants to "control the world",
controls the television and Mr. Bush.  It is our world, and the
majority thought makes the reality we are collectively experiencing.
Even though Bush was not democratically elected, i still tell myself i
am glad he is the "top dog", because hopefully we can learn what to do
by doing what it is we should not do.

      On the Dutch home front, things are going well.  New Years Eve i
realized i could carry on some kind of conversation in Dutch.  My
teacher said that one needs 45,000 words to command a language.  That
fact did nothing to cure my culture shock.  After New Years Eve i
decided to make fudge. Dutch people do not know about fudge. I took a
big plate to all of my neighbors and introduced myself.  This was
obviously "not the custom" around here, but i was well received by my
neighbors and i feel much more comfortable now.  I even went to the
bar!!!  That was quite a step for me.  Who would ever think that i
would be too shy to go to a bar?  The bar man had played Zwarte Piet
(Sinter's slave) at the local elementary school when Ron was Sint
Nicolaas (the Dutch cousin of Santa) on Sinter Klaas. (Sinter Klaas
falls on December 5th and is almost as big as Christmas.)  I was
sipping a beer watching a version of billiards that i have never seen
before and the bar man wanted to introduce me to his wife.  He did not
know my name, so he introduced me as "the girlfriend of Sinter Klaas".
The bar fell into a moment of silence and everyone turned to look at
me as one guy at the bar said slowly "the girlfriend of Sinter Klaas?"

    My Dutch is coming right along, not at 45,000 words a year, but I
am studying.  Ron and i went to a party Sunday night.  We were the
last guests to leave, and the host and hostess wanted us to stay a
little longer, they said they had taken the next day off of work.  I
said something like, "that is nice, you will be able to sleep in"-
"inslapen".  I can add 2 more words to the vocabulary list, because
"inslapen" means to die, pass away, be deceased.  "Uitslapen" means to
sleep in.  Sleeping in, sleeping out...whatever!  I had to wiggle my
way out of that one.

   50 years ago last Saturday night there was a huge storm in Zeeland
(southern costal province of Holland).  The storm, combined with the
highest tide of the month broke 138 dykes, killed over 200,000
animals, 2300 people (1835 here,307 in england,22 in belgium and 132
on a boat) and left 72,000 Dutch people homeless.  Before the living
folk could be evacuated most of them sat on the roofs of their houses
for days in the cold rain.  It was months before the water was gone.
People from all over Europe donated mountains of excellent quality
stuff and money to the disaster victims.  People sent copious
quantities of everything, Sweden even sent a bunch of wooden
houses. The very old queen who is still alive even had flood victims
to stay at her house.  All the evacuated people stayed in strangers
houses all over the country.  It was a little effort on the part of
most, a big effort on the part of some and the result is an amazing
science in polder making and an inspiring example of human
compassion. Because of all that we now have roads to the island on top
of some of the worlds longest dams.  The sea is of course higher than
the polder.  The science is the delta works. Holland has since been
the worlds leading experts on how to make swamp land and sea into
neighborhoods and farm land.  Although lots of people died in the
immediate villages surrounding this village, it seems that our little
village was the only area (besides the dunes) on the island that was
not under water.  Yet, the plaster in the kitchen pantry keeps flaking
off the walls due to the salt content.  I later read that it was the
Germans toward the end of the war that flooded the whole province!
War has no limits.

     It was a year ago today that i woke up at the house on the
mountain thinking that the sun was coming up a different color than
usual.  I opened the curtains to see flames of the forest fire i had
been fighting for 3 days, over 10 feet high- and less than a foot from
my house.  I ran outside and and patted out the flames- practically in
my birthday suit.  It took me hours to control the fire to a point
where i could run to the neighbors and call the fire fighters again.
They said they were on their way, but did not come.  I later asked the
inspecting police officer why they did not help. He said the police
chief ordered the fire fighters not to come up because we, the
mountain people, were too "marginal" to help. During the blaze my
neighbors shut off the water supply to my house because i had used
about half the tank while trying to put out the huge tree on fire
right in front of the house.  I ended up spending two weeks in the
hospital with severe smoke inhalation.  I have been trying to find a
place in my life for that episode.  I guess the thing that makes it
much easier is that i lived, i know what a close call it was, and i
love life.  It was quite a medically educating experience. There is no
justification or rationalization that makes marginalizing a person or
group of persons anything less than it is.  The idea that some people
are expendable is an atrocity in every instance.  Any kind of
marginalization reflects on us all.

     To prevent my further marginalization i have been working on
capitalistic schemes.  The first thing i did was to write a resume in
Dutch.  I have a staying permit for a year, but no working permit.  I
took my resume to the organic farmer and proposed a barter trade. The
idea was appreciated, and he said i was more than welcome to trade
weeding for veggies, in the summer.  I got the bartering idea from my
mother when i was a child and she was a midwife and bartered home
birthing babies for things. Bartering is cool, but it will not put
food on the table until summer time, so on to idea #2=eBay store.  I
hate to promote anything, but i would like to keep studying Dutch (and
Kirlian photography, color puncture and bio-resonance) then finish my
pilgrimage next summer.  I most humbly ask you to consider passing on
my little ebay store address to someone you think might be interested
in Dutch gift baskets, hand made moisturizing creams or fun long hats.
The address is: http://www.stores.ebay.com/gnometreatssurprisesfromholland

Thank you for your attention.  It tickles me to no end that someone
besides my mother likes my stories.

Love,Strength,Hope,Luck,Patience,Compassion,Health,Solidarity,Ideas
and Action, gin

cant touch this

7:38pm HST Friday 14 February 2003

I just added the monkey sticker to my computer. He's so cute! I got him for my skate helmet, but he ended up here. I'll see him more often this way, and my helmet is running out of room for stickers.

Today we kicked it around the hostel and got some grub and then Zach showed up 20 hours late, though he said he came three or four times even though we claim we were here (painting toenails and reading Tarot cards). Anyway, he's alive and we're all glad for that.

He drove us to the end of the road on the west side, but the dirt road at the end of the road was all flooded so we didn't go to the beach there. Drove back some and stopped arbitrarily on the side of the road. Climbed over the dune to the beach!

Janette played "don't get my feet wet!" like those little birds who run away from the waves. She was cute. Zach and Reenie went for a walk. I found a spot where the waves reached sometimes and dug a hole there, using the sand to build a wall around my hole. During construction my hole was breached about 4 times, but the water drained away pretty quickly.

Once construction was complete, I had a hole big enough for me to sit in with my legs outstretched. I sang variants of MC Hammer's "Can't touch this" including the finishing line "This is the beach that... you can't touch."

Water got in anyway, once from the back, so I stacked up my back wall a bit higher, and once from the front, for which I did nothing cause I was hoping for more exciting water breaches. I kept hoping for a monster wave to come over like the end of Two Towers, but it never happened before the others got bored/hungry and were ready to leave.

I was quite coated in sand so I ran out into the ocean to rinse off. I had asked Janette to put sunscreen on my back, so the sand stuck there quite effectively and was hard for me to reach and wipe off. I removed my shorts cause they had been sand logged, and there were only like 2 other people on the beach for hundreds of yards. Plus my undies cover more than a speedo.

The rental car is a sandbox now in the back.

- - - -

We stopped by a store labeled COLLECTIBLES for Janette to see if they had anything she'd like to resell in Austin, but they were closed when she tried to visit.

Listened to Jeff, the proprietor of Aloha Dude Internet Access, on the radio; he was doing a Valentine's Day show, subbing for some other DJ. Jeff used to have a show on Saturday mornings at 6am, but quit it after a year for obvious reasons. Funny that one of the first things he did was thank the folks at Aloha Dude Internet Access for helping sponsor the show.

Back into our city (Kapa'a (*)), we stopped at a mexican food place which was closed for 5 more minutes (open for lunch and dinner, not in between) so Janette and I visited Cold Stone ice cream place, which was the same idea as Marble Slab, but a lot more cheerful as the servers would all sing a song every time someone put a tip in the tip jar.

Cold Stone
You're at Cold Stone
The place for tutti fruity ice cream treats
When you put tips
In the tip jar
We'll sing in perfect harmony

Or something like that.

They also had one to the Hi Ho song of the 7 Dwarves and something else.

I got a big ice cream cone of banana and cheesecake ice cream with M&Ms. Janette got coconut with macadamia nuts.

Then to the Mexican food place where BA„OS is spelled with a tilde over the O instead of the N, and the fish burrito is HUGE, and could easily feed me four meals. Janette and I split it and maybe finished 1/2 of it. I put the burrito in a to go box, but it basically fell apart and will be a lot like mush in the morning I'm sure. But I'm also sure I'll still be glad to eat it.

Janette and I walked back home to the hostel, stopping by a shell store where she decided she could buy any of the shells for less in Corpus Christi, home of Colleen Crotty.

I found a shell on the way home from there; maybe she'll be able to sell it on the shell shelves of her shell store.

- - - -

Went up to the roof to take a shower and discovered that the loud door slam I had heard this morning or yesterday morning was not the door slamming against its frame, but the door ripping off its hinges and landing on the roof. Whoooosh!

10:37pm HST Saturday 15 February 2003

(*) Ironically Ka'apa is spelled with two a's in the front. Irony is that I bitched abut misspelling banos.