  Still on duty, though now the sun is starting to come up. If you could feel what I am feeling, you’d certainly be agreeing with me that 24 hours is a great deal longer than just one day. I just walked outside to smoke a cigarette, walked into the graying air, and my body is starting to wake up as well, chemicals inside telling me it’s that time again, that even though I didn’t get any rest, it’s time to buckle down and to get things done. And yet, I’m not done doing all the not-doing that I spent all night and the vast majority of yesterday on. So I sit back down at the desk, and at my work computer, a lap top with an airwave card, (Thank you, Verizon!). I really wanted to be productive. I told T once, on a day I was being far too productive that my agent had called me early that day, and his call had triggered something in me that spurred this great urge to be productive, like he’d unknowingly reminded me that I had a great deal to do.
And yet, I couldn’t figure out what I needed to be doing, so I set to cleaning. She’s taken to reminding me to be productive in emails and messages. Well, as I noted earlier, it’s impossible to be productive when you’re chained to a desk. The larger part of the night was a waste. I did everything I could to stay awake, to fight drifting into the sleep that the other Joe on duty has lapsed into.
He’s been out for about an hour now, and his DVD player keeps running the opening sequence to Paycheck, a movie I’m only glad I watched because now I won’t make the mistake of buying it. While it did have some redeeming features, an interesting sci-fi twist, on the whole it was rubbage. The vast majority of the night was spent shifting between my bohemian group urlLink New Bohemians , the other, fantasy oriented group I once wrote with and that has been suspiciously inactive these last few days, and other people’s blogs.
I have to say, I’m a bit interested in the resurfaced Andy Kaufman blog. It’s a marvelous hoax at least, and a very pleasant surprise at best. Regardless, it’s a wonderful addition to his legacy, the actual author is immaterial. My personal philosophy towards getting up early, is that whatever woke me up had better either kill me, or get me damn close. Don’t wake me up early unless it’s for a flight, unless waking up early will somehow better my standing in the world. Wake me up Tuesday so I can fly to NYC, wake me up Friday so I can fly to Vancouver, to T. I’m not too keen to be woken up for the flight back on Monday, or the flight to back to Texas two days later, but flights out, flights away are good.
My body, right now, is informing me just how close it’s come to death tonight. I can march, I can run, I can fight, but sitting, eating junk food, living on coke, smoking on a rapidly-regular basis, doing all so sober, it has a horrible affect on the body. The stomach clenches and rolls at the same time. I don’t think I need to tell you just how unpleasant that is. Skin pales, body cools, head starts to hurt, eyes hurt from the constant exposure to florescents, and dry out from being held open against their will. I did every thing I could to stay awake. I walked around. I showered. I took a single of Jack rather quickly. I brushed my teeth. I watched a painful movie. I tried to find people on the internet, but without the ease of chatrooms on AOL, where the truly lonely and bored have nothing better to do than chat, things got lonely. Not that I mind being alone, but company could have kept my attention, could have kept me awake. As it is, from the two packs of cigarettes I bought Friday afternoon, I have five lonely smokes left.
I should run today, but after I wake up I’m just going to be too busy. Funny how life works out like that. Sentenced to a small eternity of doing nothing while just on the horizon, just on the other side of forever, there’s a world of things to do. Packing, cleaning, laundry, phone calls, PCIs and PCCs (Pre – Combat Inspections / Checks). And then I’m gone. I’m free, and running so fast that I’ll ensure that my Texas life can’t catch up with me, if only for a bloated week. Eight days. Eight days of running; it’ll almost be like a revamped, reissue of the old days. Only with jets. I don’t know. Right now I’m just keeping myself company, and I’m certain that my blog is going to suffer from it.
But that’s the point isn’t it? This is what goes on in my mind, in the same language, pounded out without editing, without though, as fast as my long, and practiced fingers can carry them. Thoughts, turned into actions, turned into electrons, and then BAM! Cyberspace baby. Where’d that word go? Why isn’t it called cyberspace anymore? Has the internet lost it’s romantic mysticism because it’s in everyone’s house? Because everyone has their own blog? Because you don’t need to know HTML or JAVA script any longer? I miss those days. I miss dial-up BBSs. But they’ll never be back, and it’s not pointless to look back, we’ve come so far already that we’re being overwhelmed by nostalgia.
Topgun, by BBS of yester-year, was a close-knit family. We chatted, we posted, we’d meet at Denny’s and have coffee and smoke cigarettes. We dated amongst, we fought amongst, we factioned and cliqued, and when it all fell apart, we still all knew each other. Now, how many people do you know on the internet that you didn’t know before you logged on? Throw out the people you meet on dating services. Throw out the kids you went to high school with and found later on urlLink Classmates.com . Now, come up with a number. It’s ridiculously small, isn’t it? The internet is like a giant shopping mall now, if you didn’t go with friends, you’re not going to know anyone there, and if you meet someone there, it’s only cause you’re looking to score. There’s no more digital friends. Those days were gone before the majority of people online even knew they existed. Well, except for the Cassiopeans, but I’m not going to touch them. 
