Seafood Port, where I would satisfy a welcome craving for shrimp: "You will soon receive an unusual gift. 2 4 31 32 46 . 21" Then, in the second cookie: "Keep your eyes open, and take advantage of the unexpected. 4 14 30 38 40 . 19" Coming as they are from the same source (and as desperate as I am for anything either unusual or unexpected—as long as it's not meant to be ingested—I'm willing to take for granted I can't afford to be picky about the "either-or", either), am I to take this advice, and in this order?

Rhetorical question, of course, but just how far I ought to take bedridden swearing? (The sweating I assume is part of the healing process.) They're like so many politicians' promises, vowing to live life to its fullest and what-not, bold and effusive when the need for them are at their utmost, only to surrender to another episode of 輪舞曲. One nagging thought I had as I recovered yesterday was, sure, excitement and adventure and really wild things are there for those who seek it, but what exactly is my motivation? Myself I am retiring quite the Jedi, and whether you be savior or sadist, you have to care enough about someone else; I simply don't. An opportunity, for example, presents itself for me to justify office adultery by proffering evidence of a philandering spouse. What do I hope to achieve with all the effort? The journey itself? A reprieve from non-existence? Becoming one of them, lowering myself to their base pursuits, just for something to do?

$48,000. (Look up Lot Number 537.) This world must be destroyed.

I doubt there'll be another Samsoon (just as I've yet to see a J-drama to match Beautiful Life), but check out 서울1945! A major studio production that casts the pre-war leftist unification movement in a favorable light? (Or at least, inasmuch as I've seen, the Western puppetmasters are always the baddies. My heart bleeds.) No wonder it's caused such a stir. And good for them. Don't get me wrong: I'll never support that joke of a state up north my father nullifies all his highfalutin principles by recognizing, but art—and no one'd deny the technical and cultural strides their industry have made; personally, I'm stunned, and proud, watching bunny factories like Bollywood make none—can only progress by challenging the status quo, even if it's just colorful background for yet another love triangle. You know how I like to harp on this generation for doing squat with all that's happening. Now this colonial "insurgency" on Battlestar Galactica…

Perhaps a residue of the brain fever that had me laid up the past several days, but I woke up humming the tune from that new GEICO caveman commercial. Too bad it's not on Royksopp's latest album, which I purchased in its entirity on iTunes back then just for the longish track "Alpha Male." (Did I mention that one already? I thought if they ever did a 80's-style Buckaroo Banzai sequel/homage—please not let it be by Quentin Tarantino, please not let it be by Quentin Tarantino—it'd make the perfect theme.)

Well, that was nice. Three days out of work, sick at home with a fever and headaches like the end of the world, not to mention a total aversion to food or drink. (I originally had the idea of flushing everything from my system, any last trace of that horrid stuff, with my fasting, but after the second night I realized it was my memory of it that wasn't going away.) I've only just managed to finish the second half of my emergency can of chicken soup.

You get some pretty wacky ideas when your thoughts are racing a mile-a-minute, or however speeds like theirs are determined, and while most of them were my desperate attempts to recall things I liked eating, one was to put a recent response to my suggestive acrostic through the same filter: S-L-I-T-A-I-H-B-F-A-B-O-A-T-A-S-S-O-W-O-W. Hmm, nothing.

I just threw up for only the fourth time in my entire life. The first memory I have of it happening is when I was a pajama-clad pre-teen, sick in bed. The next two times, in school, from what else but alcohol abuse. The latest culprit, after over a decade of assuming it was excess that brought down a historically invulnerable stomach, having been diagnosed with a "psychogenic" for mealtime nausea, then learning to live with my limitations: Indian food. Hours after eating the awful shit—why, oh why didn't I pass and go back to Chipotle, like I planned—I woke up with a queasy headache and that dry feeling on the sides of my face that it was time. I had completely forgotten the soul heave, the wave that runs from your abdomen up and out, as if you're losing your innards. Two hour laters, and I'm still burping up the taste, obviously the result of devious engineering to make this greasy vegetable matter resist digestion and last for the hungry.

A friend of mine told me to try hanging from a chin-up bar 30 seconds a day to alleviate my back problems, but I had long since concluded that my 34-inch doorframes, which proved too wide for my old one, would require me to go with some free-standing jungle gym. Turns out they do make them longer, though I can't help but worry about the physics of relying on six small screws to support my weight across such a distance. These reviews may be hilarious, but not when you wouldn't be missed for days.

Last entry of the afternoon, I swear: yesterday's Trek redux was "The Naked Time", which used some nicer CG footage of the planet they were orbiting (and nearly became part of), but wasted a great opportunity on the antimatter-implosion timewarp. I guess it might've been too Lucas if they'd gone with an all-out hyperspace effect. Instead they replaced the charming spinning dial-type ship's clock with a digital readout, yuck!

I got the creepy feeling last night, no, not that Republicans would surely skate past their latest scandal unscathed because, after all, they're only acting at the behest of the morally-bankrupt morons they represent (who, like Bart & Lisa getting back on the Itchy & Scratchy ride, voted in a GOP lobbyist rather than the Democrat alternative even after Randy "Duke" Cunningham disgraced himself out of office); and no, not that I wouldn't give a flying fuck, anyway, if I had a life of my own to occupy these never-ending weekends of watching made-up ones on TV; but that enjoying Family Guy as I do just might be making me dumber to the higher, certainly more creative comedy of, say, a Simpsons Season Four or Five. Meh, funny's funny.

I got a free burrito at Chipotle today. The girl rang me up, then refused to take my money after I emptied out my pocket for the right change, and said it was for coming in as often as I do ("See you tomorrow" she left me with, now holding me to it) from the manager, but he was nowhere to be seen, so I couldn't thank him in person. With this kind of luck, something wicked this way comes. Or maybe it's already arrived, and been here all along.

Bigger.
Why I'm obsessed with this ish: Megumi must remind me of Joanna Frank's hair and gynormous chest from "ZZZZZ" (which I've mentioned before).I'm a sad, sad man.

The most effort I could muster to leave the house so far this weekend, apart from running my circuit and getting Long John Silver's afterward, was to the Japanese bookstore on Van Ness to see if they had this Megumi pictorial:
They didn't, so my life is that much emptier. I could be diving for pearls.

My tribute to Lu Feng is just about finished, thanks in part to starting a post about the snag I ran into when the MacBook's DVD drive refused to read Two Champions of Death, without which I wasn't going to complete the whole thing, as it is where I originally got the idea. My options were to burn a copy of the movie onto another disc, and I left a perfectly good stack of blanks at work, or try it on a Mac there, before organizing my thoughts for this entry and checking to see if Mac the Ripper ran on the Cube's Jaguar. Now for some titles (which, wouldn't you know, a hundred Chinese contacts on Skype, and not a single one available at this time to spell-check), and we'll see how long all that copyright infringement will last on YouTube.

I don't know what's so special about Hot Pockets® that they deserve genericized trademark status; I had my first (in a while, at least; I seem to recall being introduced to another brand by an ex-girlfriend, but can't remember which) last night, croissants with "Chicken, Broccoli & Cheese" which neither heated evenly nor could remain contained therein.