While Anne and I drove down the freeway today, Just Like Heaven came on the radio.

"This was my first CD," I said.

"I know," she said. "You tell me that every time we hear a song from it."

"And one day, you’ll hear it, and I won’t be here for some reason or another, and you’ll wish I was here to tell you."

While we both pondered the macabre nature of that particular thought, I realized that not only was this album forever linked to my first CD player, but it also gave me hypernostalgic memories of gaming with my group of friends in high school.

"I don’t know what it is," I said, "but lately, I’ve wanted to get together with geeks and do a weekend of serious nonstop gaming."

She glanced over at me. "Oh?"

"Yeah. But this is more than the usual ‘I want to play Car Wars’ thing. This is a serious –" I searched for the exact word to describe the overwhelming longing, approaching psychophysical need to play, and settled on, "Jones. Like an addict, you know?"

I wiggled around in my seat, and faced her, "It’s like there’s — hey, aren’t we taking the 110?"

"Whoops." She said, as she quickly changed lanes.

"It’s like there’s a monkey on my back. A gaming monkey, and he’s rattling dice in my ear."

"Like he’s shaking them in a Yahtzee cup?" She said.

"Gamers don’t use Yahtzee cups," I said, as patiently as I could. "It’s more like he’s holding a bag of dice in his hand." I held my hand up, and felt the invisible bag in my palm. "And he’s rattling the dice around."

"Is it your bag of dice?" she said.

"Yeah! It’s totally my bag of dice!" I paused for a moment, and added, "but he’s not opening it. Because if he opens it, and touches my dice, I will fucking kill that monkey."

I apply the titled philosophy to just about everything I do. In fact, when I get too results-oriented (destination) I can’t enjoy the work (journey) that it takes to get there, and I get unhappy (the).

However, this particular bit of journey vs. destination is a little different, because while the destination is cool, the journey was awesome.

It began on Warren Ellis‘ BAD SIGNAL e-mail list, when I opened up the laptop this morning, intending to start my work.

Warren has brought a lot of awesome into my life via his written work, most recently his novel Crooked Little Vein and comic Doktor Sleepless. Warren also gave me an awesome quote to use on the cover of The Happiest Days of our Lives:

“Wil Wheaton’s made a new career out of doing well that which is in
fact the hardest thing to do at all: he writes, brilliantly and simply
and gloriously, about joy.”

— Warren Ellis, author of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and PLANETARY

Exactly how one person can be responsible for this much awesome can only be proved using an advanced form of quantum physics, the results of which can unfortunately never be observed.

But back to this morning’s BAD SIGNAL. In it, Warren casually mentioned two boingboing-ish websites I’d never heard of, called ectoplasmosis and coilhouse. Both of these sites appeal to the pre-domesticated me, who "I discovered when I was not an
old man and first encountered David Lynch, Alan Moore, William S.
Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. I’ve kept it under control, but as I
get older and closer to the ponytail and sports car years, it
increasingly demands to be let out, like my own personal Edward Hyde." I miss this part of me: the, ahem, edgy part, who would drive from a late-night Christian Ristow performance to a midnight showing of El Topo to an after hours speakeasy filled with protogoths in vinyl and leather fetish gear, listening to Joe Frank and ambient mix CDs the whole way. (Incidentally, the domesticated version of me feels obligated to point out that I spent these years entirely sober, because the people I met and the places I met them were so interesting I didn’t need — or want, really — anything to alter the experience, and does it surprise anyone who reads my blog that the memories I used to patch that description of 1990s me together all happened in autumn?)

I spent a good amount of time reading ectoplasmosis and coilhouse, while I listened to Warren’s podcast The 4am, which I highly recommend adding to your subscriptions right now.

Following various links down the ‘tubes, I eventually ended up at Diesel Sweeties, where I curiously clicked on Rich’s link to Project Wonderful. It seemed like an interesting advertising model, so I investigated further, and ended up at the store for the Adventures of Dr. Macninja. I’ve never heard of this Doctor before, and I haven’t followed any of his adventures, but I sure did enjoy the T-shirts he has for sale . . . which finally lead me back to the Diesel Sweeties store, my cool destination.

The journey was wonderful, and took me through some memories of a different time, where I was a different me. A different me who is screaming at the current me, "You destination is fucking shopping?! Shopping?! What the fuck happened to you?! You used to be cool."

To which current me replies, "it’s the journey, not the destination. When you’re older, you’ll understand."

Current me wouldn’t mind driving around all night, observing interesting people and places, and listening to Joe Frank . . . if he could only stay awake past eleven.

Last night, while checking out Reddit near the end of my day, I noticed that my Reddit karma was a rather . . . interesting . . . number.

It’s during times like these that I’m glad I’m so easily amused.

Today’s xkcd is made from 10 pounds of awesome, wrapped in WIN, and delivered by the nurse from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Oh yeah, you know the one.