I've had a psychologically rough past couple of days. Stupid subconscious. It started with a recurring bad dream where several people I know are assembled at my dead best friend's parents house. There's barbequeing, and one of his unlce's is pestering me as though I were a four-year-old child -- teasing -- the rhetorical equivalent of pigtail pulling, that sort of thing. I lock myself in the bathroom to get away from him, and when I come out, everyone has assembled around the sofa, and things get quiet. A door opens on my right and out wheels Jasen. As it turns out, in the multiverse, he was really just badly injured in the car accident after which he hung himself from a tree with his belt seven years earlier. He didn't want to be a burden, so he just stayed in his parents' basement making electronic music and writing books about JavaScript.

I know it's totally juvenile, but waking up that way, drenched in sweat at 4:26a.m., really put me in a somber mood. My mom called me around noon to tell me that my grandpa, to whom I am very close, has throat cancer. I came home from work to find a dead baby bird right in the middle of my sidewalk. I took pictures. Who does that? Was I channeling Sylvia Plath? I found it oddly beautiful. I described it to my friend George. I told him about the hooked beak and long claws -- how I thought it was a baby hawk. He said it was probably a starling, they need long claws for perching. That makes sense. So uh ... who's going to give me a hug already?