The time is about 5:30 am.

Drinks drunk: Quite a few.

Cigarettes smoked: Too many.

Sunrises watched: Just the one.

Lessons learned: Several, the most relevant at the moment being: Do Not Remove Contact Lenses With The Hand You Have Been Smoking With.

Congratulations to all my friends that are moving on from high school to the rest of their lives. I envy and pity you all.

The third time is the charm for me when it comes to posting. I have not been drinking. I did have a beer with lunch, but I don't think that counts at all. How can you really enjoy sushi without a glass of Asahi, Japan's favorite beer? Okay, so they are a bit larger than your typical bottle of beer. But Matt Summerfield was working across the little courtyard in his coffee shop, so technically I wasn't drinking alone.

I have been running around Kiwanis Park trying to reverse some of the damage I have done to my body over the past week. I used to run there all the time, back when I had an apartment down the street from there. Indeed, there was a time when it would not have been unusual to see an angry drunken Guillermo running up and down the hills until he would vomit into the closest trashcan. And the ducks loved him too. I actually rescued a duck once. The wretched creature had a water bottle cap stuck over the tip of it's bill so it couldn't open it at all. The duck refused to move when I got close to it. Either it was too weak from being unable to eat or it was just one bad-ass water fowl. I got within arm's-length and then tried to snatch the bottle top off of it's beak. I was rewarded with angry hissing and a few pecks of the bottle-topped beak. It didn't hurt, but it was a bit unnerving. A few more tries and a few more pecks and I succeeded in getting it off. The duck didn't seem to care at all. That was fine with me, I had just done it for the experience.

I was running last night too. A police officer on a quad had been cruising around chasing people out of the park. What a sweet gig that must be. I must have been too fast for him or something, because he didn't say anything to me.

The park was very nice at 2:00 am this morning. If you had been there you would have seen a sober and not-angry Guillermo running up and down the hills. Life is so hard...

I want you to notice....
when I'm not around

-Radiohead's Creep (If you don't know, I'm not linking you)

Yes, yes, drunk again. I wonder if anyone was up between the hours of 5am and 9am yesterday morning to see the quaintly embarassing post I made? No? Well, too bad it's gone forever. Fifth day I have been up till sunrise drinking? Some would consider that a warning sign. But, as I often quip, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

I was perusing through the blog of a certain Donald Pierson when I came across someone�s lament concerning Sweet Don P�s deletion of Communist Agenda, his Open Diary. It appeared odd, at first. I had assumed that my slug-slow laptop had been at fault for my previous failure to utilize Pierson�s link, but no. It almost appears as if we are no longer meant to have an all-access pass into the boy�s head. But why? He has been so generous before�

Then it struck me. The unrivaled elegance of a private thought. What great weariness must come with constantly being pressured to enlighten, astound, appall, or entertain a vast and ever-growing audience? The joy of writing simply for writing; the chase and capture of something as abstract and fleeting as a thought and rendering it as concrete and as permanent as possible.

�Like�singing in your car. Unless you�re trying to annoy your passengers, you are probably singing just for you. And would I be wrong in saying that you have never sounded better?

Capturing is perhaps the wrong word. To have a bit of your own mind to examine at a later time is not a gain per se, but more of a prevention of loss.

The idea of an Open Diary did not particularly appeal to me when I first heard of it. �How can one be open,� I wondered, �When everyone is hovering over your shoulder waiting to dissect you?�

The previous overtones were a bit ominous, I see now. I do not mean to slip in Freudian-style an underlying paranoia of people. I just mean�

�that it may not be as much fun to sing when others are within earshot.

* * * *
Ha ha, it is now an hour later and I�m not nearly as drunk.

I can find solace in the belief that unabashed free expression is only a few drinks away.

I guess it is a bit sad, too.

There should be a tenth level of Hell. This level would be an endless morning after your 21st birthday. There would be an abundance of direct sunlight and tequila-flavored water.

Upon arriving at Casey Moore's (a bar) last night, I quickly assessed the situation. Harnessing my rudimentary math skills, I calculated that if I had just one drink with each friend there, I maybe wouldn't die. Empowered by my estimate, I bellied up to the bar and got to work.

I was averaging about a shot or drink every two minutes. In the brief period where I was able to notice that the empty glasses in front of me were beginning to outnumber the amount of friends present I realized my fatal(?) error. They were buying me more than one drink each. I don't remember being concerned...

I was awoken by my roommate, Mai Linh. She was taking it upon herself to see that I made it to my 9:00 final. I hadn't set an alarm or anything the night before. That could have been bad. So I slurm out of bed to the stark realization that I am still drunk. And not just kind of drunk. Can't walk in a straight line drunk. I had stopped drinking around 4:30 in the morning. We had all gone back to my house to continue drinking after the bar. I remember throwing up on the walk back, and then cracking open a forty and playing beer pong with Matt when I arrived. There was some more throwing up later, but for some reason I was still drinking up until I must have passed out.

So I found myself stumbling to my class for my final. Mai Linh and Matt had driven me to school because I was in no condition to drive. It was fairly obvious to the rest of the class that I was drunk. I'm sure they were amused. The professor handed me my final kind of chuckling to himself. "It's not my fault that my 21st birthday was the night before finals!" I said in my defense. He just laughed a little more. I'll bet he was jealous. I was living out the American Teacher's Dream: going to class drunk.

I finished my final before anyone else. We shall see if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I came home and slept.

I awoke, showered, counted my injuries, fixed my bathroom sink, picked up all of the stuff I had knocked around while trying to take out my contact lenses. Yes, I'll admit it, I fell completely over trying to take out my contacts. It looks as if I tried to grab the sink as I fell, knocking toothpaste, toothbrush, my razor, soap, and my contact solution onto the floor. I landed partly in the shower where I lay there, only managing to get up after two failed attempts. Yay 21...

Now I'm feeling slightly poisoned, very sore, and a little wiser.

But older? I do not yet feel older.

What possible harm can come from sitting down to write without a specific direction?

I'm sure that the only one to suffer will be my backspace key as I grow increasingly frustrated with 'train of thought' ramblings. It isn't late for me, but I am weary. The darkness encroaches like a gaggle of roaches. Last night (Tuesday?) a few of the crew was over at my place. There was drinking. I had a few things on my to-do list for the following day such as preparing to moderate a panel discussion and memorizing questions and answers for my Italian oral final exam. I'm still not too clear on how it happened, but somehow playing drinking games, getting burritos at Amado's, and torturng myself with a cold shower made it to the top. I hate cold showers. But I do love Amado's and drinking, so overall the night was enjoyable. Ah, Tuesdays.

Wednesday morning found me a bit sodden. I slurmed out of my bed somehow and made it into the shower. Cold again.

I got an A for my mad moderating skills. My instructor noted that I "asked great questions." That was probably because I hadn't finished the brunt of my research and honestly didn't know what the hell everyone was talking about. Fortunately, moderating doesn't necessarily require knowledge of the topic. As long as everyone else knows what they are talking about, you let them yammer on until you get tired of their voice and then try to get that pretty blond girl to talk because everyone (and I mean everyone) is looking for an excuse to give her their attention.

Yes, my fellow classmates carried me on their shoulders like a hung-over hero.

Life is so hard.

Kevin Spacey on Inside the Actors Studio. Pretty sweet. Watching it makes me almost consider ordering those VHS tapes of the show. Almost. Maybe when I have more cats.

Oh, in the Stuff I've Been Hesitant To Discuss category (which is broad, but nothing compared to the Stuff I Sho As Hell Won't Discuss,) I am turning 21 on the 12, the day after Mother's Day. My mother lucked out on that one, because I had turned eighteen the day before Mother's Day and gotten my Batman tattoo. My mom said it was the worst thing I had ever done to her. Yes, happy Mother's Day to all. No, but this way she'll be able to have a nice Mother's Day, and then early Monday morning come and bail me out jail for whatever fool thing I am going to get arrested doing after my power hour.

I forget I have a tattoo sometimes. I see it in the mirror and it will surprise me. It has been the same with my pending adulthood. Several times a day I realize that I will be turning 21. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

So this Sunday night, my power hour. Are you in? And if you're worried about finals the next day, give me the name(s) of your professor(s) and I'll talk to them, see what I can do.

As I said, Life is so hard.

This would be the crazy guy who liked to sit next to us at on the train in San Francisco. I suppose that he found us more interesting than the characters in his head.

And here are Merik and Josh Hagler realizing that they don't like each other: