This screen capture was taken at 4:03PM, MST. Looks like ol' Steve-O got hacked to me, unless "27. Illuminati. Form a secret society to ensure that things always go your way. Eventually take over the planet to guarantee you’ll never have to work again." is actually a way to boost your productivity that Steve would endorse. Vulcan logic? Voodoo? Scooby snacks? Too weird.

So. It's 4am and you're waiting for the snowplane to see Ms. Amazing, but first you have to visit the Famazing and the three crazy FamSibs to make this holi-journey complete. Ambling towards the currently defunct McDonald's table colony, you plug a hipster Mac into the AC jack and buzz on the You tubule, best site for random vid-shots bar none thus far. Ms. Amazing would appreciate this, this... flow, this kundal-indie psychoesexual enermotional expression like only a group of Canadiens can wing it. Champions, champions with synths and 'tars, rock us now and make us fall in love anew.

Sorry I haven't updated this in a long time ya'll, it's been one hell of a spring! Some current items on the P'SAL plate: Plunge Artist, the company I started with Gwen, is rolling right along. We're steadily picking up design clients, and just had our first personal growth plunge victim (hehe) yesterday. If I could sum us up in one sentence, it's that we help clients get in touch with who they really are (whether it's an organization or an individual), and then find ways to best express that, whether through a logo and copy writing or a change in personal behavior and goal-setting. In other news, I've been going for a lot of walks. We live in a historical section of town, and each block has an alley serving the backside of these rows of historic old houses. I love alleys: they're like hidden fissures or seams within the "official" streetplan of a location, linking secret spaces all the way across town, like a ghostly infrastructure no one talks about but everyone enjoys. Speaking of ghosts, and inanimate objects, I've been really probing what the latest philosophical superstars, the Speculative Realists, are all about. Check out Graham Harman's fascinating take on Object-Oriented Philosophy, or this video of the awkwardly brilliant Ray Brassier (currently at work on a book called Nihil Unbound taking on Heidegger and Deleuze. Equally intellectual but much more pragmatic, Thomas P.M. Barnett's Blueprint for Action has come to dominate my offline reading habits. His is a fascinating SysAdmin take on global security and economics, and reason enough for hoping that the current Mess-o-Potamia might sort its damn self out. And finally, Yoshi's Island DS: it rocks.

Check out the Polysemy team chatting (via Skype) about the Joshua Bell experiment (wherein the famed concert violinist played a free concert amidst the noise of rush-hour in a DC subway). Seth Godin responded to this a while ago too.

These guys... wow. They played last night in Denver, I forgive if you couldn't make it, but DAMN. If a naked tribe of Beach Boys worshippers was one day found in an East Coast art school basement speaking an entirely new language, it might sound a bit like... Animal Collective. Drums, electronics, yelps, little whelps in the front row; the scene was set for some sort of surreal collective transcendence, where un-miked floor toms and vintage synths competed against drum machines and the little discs Panda Bear (the singer on the right in this video) kept shoving into his digi-thingie for the attention of weird-raving, indie-hipp(ster)ie fans. And don't even get me started on Dan Deacon's amazing Crystal Cat video, which what happens when video game addicts try karaoke to their own internal Top 40. Look, I don't know where any of this hipster/weird/avant-hippie neoprog surrealtronica shite is going, and I don't know how it directly benefits the world. But I remember a girl once telling Stephen Malkmus that Pavement's music made life worth living: if an artist can provide that at a bare minimum, it's worth the $12 to see them.

Yeah yeah, so ol' Paul was a bit slow to move on the "microblogging" trend blowing up at Twitter. But better late than never. Check out TwitterPOET, my latest project. The idea is simple: answer Twitter's "what are you doing right now?" question in poetic, abstract, weird, experimental form, rather than just posting a link and telling you I'm at Starbucks. I'll try this for a month; I like the restriction of the 140 words, and the ability to phone or IM my responses in. At some point, I'll read the best ones in public. So friend me already!

"Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen." -- Dr. Robert Jarvik

At about 12:20 am last night we heard some bangs and shouts upstairs. Thinking it to be the usual 20-something weekday partying from the kids upstairs, we thought nothing of it, until we heard one of the girls scream "FIRE!". We scrambled to our feet. "Get the Macs!" screamed Gwen. Casey stumbled out of his room, grabbed a half-filled fire extinguisher to fight the blaze. Gwen ran to wake the neighbors, and I called 911. The fire trucks were there about five minutes later, four or five in total. Police came, Red Cross, concerned neighbors. Gwen sat across the street and took a photo of the house with PhotoBooth. Casey assured the EMTs his lungs were ok. Our friends upstairs huddled in blankets and laughed, and cried. The Red Cross was amazing. The girl across the street let us hang out in her living room while the RC led us through about 2 hours of paperwork as we gave testimony to the fire inspector. The RC hooked us up with $180 for food and 3 nights at a local motel vaguely reminiscent of the one from Bottle Rocket, sans pool. The Damage:: Well, the kids upstairs lost everything, including a piano, a clarinet, a laptop, dozens of paintings, tons of clothes, and everything else.The Plunge Artist office suffered major damage from water -- bedrooms and kitchen just got smoke. We lost two desks, a futon, desk chair, rug, lamps, stereo, backup drives, files, files, files, and more. Clothes and beds no doubt smoke-damaged. Anyways, life is impermanent. Every day is a plunge, sometimes voluntary, sometimes not. This would be the latter. If you have a place in Boulder, let us know. Donations gratefully accepted.

This is 5 of the 6 residents reflecting on the Best and Worst parts of the fire. Me with the glasses.