kamden has been assimilated whether he likes it or not.

just thought i’d let everyone know that i’m still alive. i’m still up in maine on “vacation” and shall continue to be for about another week.

maine is very cold.

other than that, there isn’t a lot to do here. i’m on an iBook on my parents’ kitchen table (the only available phone jack in the house is in the kitchen and i only have a 2m cable) working over a very slow dialup connection (the misery). but i guess that’s better than nothing.

other than sleeping, eating beaucoup mac+cheese, and drinking beer the highlights of my vacation have included:

getting contacts

having peripheral vision is something i haven’t experienced in over a decade. very neat. you really forget how much of a handicap glasses really are until you get rid of them. unfortunately, it’s taking me a while to get used to them. i apparently have superhuman blink reflexes. when i first got them, it took the eye doctor about 45 minutes of poking me in the eye and swearing to get them in. it was taking me an hour or so to get them in or out by myself until tasha let me in on the secret to getting them out quickly: just stick your finger in your eye and jab it around until they come out; surprisingly effective. now i just have to master getting them in.

new year’s eve

yet another spectacular party at Jere’s. got to see lots of friends who i haven’t seen in way too long (kara, zeb, anthony, matti, heather, tasha, nigel, elliot, jesse, etc), got to finally actually meet kim in person after having known her online for the last 3 years. and of course, we managed to consume enough alcohol to mortally wound a small herd of elephants. driving for six hours through “whiteout conditions” in the worst blizzard we’ve seen in a while was just icing on the cake.

right now i can’t feel my feet (the kitchen doesn’t seem to be as well heated as the rest of the house) so i will write more later.

and I thought I’d found some pretty good junk.

this taken from the asahi evening shinbun on my return flight from tokyo:

“GUWAHATI, India — A wild elephant pulled a man down from a tree, trampled him to death and for two weeks has refused to part with the corpse, police in northeast India said Sunday.

The man climed a tree to escape a herd of wild elephants rampaging through his village about 140 kilometers from Guwahti, the largest city in Assam.

One elephant grabbed him, pulled him to the ground and broke his legs.

“The elephant must have got even more irritated as the villagers were trying to free the man,” a forgest ranger said. “It trampled him to death and took the body along with him.”

That was two weeks ago, and the it been carrying the body around ever since, police said.”

wowee.

some people have a religious experience when they talk to god. I had one the other night. I talked to pikachu. not that silly new nintendo crap, the real deal: it turns out the lady that does the voice for pikachu is the aunt of my current host in tokyo…

so the other night at dinner they whip out the phone and in three minutes Im on the horn with pikachu. she pikas at me for a few minutes, which almost killed me — I was laughing so card I almost peed the carpet, which is a no-no in any culture I think.

anyhow, I still dont understand the appeal of pokemon, but I think Im forever changed.

i’m heading back to maine immediately after my last final tomorrow. i’m taking a laptop with me so i should have some internet connectivity over break, but in general, i wouldn’t expect much from me for the next 3 weeks or so.

i’ll see everyone that i’m seeing when i see you.

everybody behave yourselves while i’m gone.

So Shu lives again. I like how he finds me the night before I leave for Tokyo.

Hmm… what could he possibly want?

Anyhow. He’s getting fscking married. Everyone who knows him, drop a line. Or at least show up at the wedding (more importantly, the B-party).

a funny thing happened the other day which most of you here may find interesting..

i have a messageboard, and i posted something about going to Maine this Christmas. this chick posts something the next day about how she’s going to Maine for Christmas as well, with her fiancee. she says he’s from Machias.
i tell her Anthony’s from Gardiner..
she talks to her fiancee and then asks, “is his last name by any chace DiMacro?”

crazy. so anyway, the fiancee is Nick Bergeron. :) i’ve never met him, but i assmue many of you here know/knew him!

i have progressed even further along my path to the dark side. with the help of my friends Julintip and Sheela, i purchased a nice black Kenneth Cole suit today. after seeing my combat boots, i received several threats to the effect of “if you wear those boots with this suit, i will have to kill you”. so i got some nice shoes too.

before you berate my silliness, go watch “American Psycho” and “Falling Down”. suits can be badass too…

and if any of you have any plans to be in midtown manhattan anywhere near the holidays, drop them now! crowds drive me nuts. i almost had to go postal.

it’s 1 am and there is a marching band outside my window playing “living on a prayer”. shoot me now.