2003-01-22 -

Severely Odd Behavior

Almost a week between entries this time. Where does the time go?

Mostly towards sleep, the last couple of nights. I've been taking melatonin regularily (as opposed to my normal "only in case of emergency" stance) hoping that getting three or four consecutive nights of ample sleep will get my generalized brain chemistry back into the zone. I guess I won't really know how well it's working until I go off the pills, which I don't feel like doing just yet. I want at least one day where I leave Julie's and don't want to go to sleep the moment I get home first.

The melatonin has been giving me really strange dreams. Last night I had one in which I ran into an old high-school classmate who told me she was tired of being a thirty-one year old virgin and begged me to deflower her. This wasn't even someone I'd been friends with- my brain apparently just pulled her out of thin air. What the hell is that?

Let's see... last weekend was three days long, which I always like, and it gave me time to finish Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, which I found very enlightening. I had always had some understanding of the role that poverty played in incubating terrorism, but I hadn't understood the degree to which it also serves as a sort of bleed-off valve for other frustrations and a tool for factional strife within the Islamic world. Unfortunately, the book makes it seem that the only hope for ever living in true peace with the dar al-Islam is the growth of an educated Islamic middle-class in the countries that currently sponsor terrorism. Neither the lower classes, the clerics, nor the elites have any vested interest in putting an end to global terrorism. That leaves the US a very small role to play in actually solving these problems- possibly none at all.

I also got to see the ever-delightful Tish, visiting from her new home in Syracuse. At one point I was amazed by how much happier she seems living there- from my point of view, living in New York sucks ass. It seems to have solved some of her problems, though. We were able to talk for several hours without having to obsess over the ever-popular question of "why do men suck so much?"

As a lesbian trapped in a man's body, I obivously hold myself exempt from the presumptions of that question.

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