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Forwards in time

Safe in the hotel in Copenhagen. I've felt like I'm in bizarro world the whole trip over so far - my brain refuses to accept flying forward in time a day and a half, and working from a hotel here while leaving my home behind in the US. It's really screwy - I just couldn't process the moving map display on the plane because it felt instinctually too much as if I was headed the wrong direction.

I've already had a couple of international conference calls since I landed, and haven't been able to process the time zones. Still don't feel like I know where I am.

Burning Portland

Sitting in the airport lounge at Sea-Tac, and I wanted to get this update out before I fly off. A thick smell of kerosene - jet fuel - just washed through the place, and it brought home that I'm flying again, this time three weeks in Copenhagen.

It'll be good to see Denmark again, and especially good to see Cecilie, but must admit I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to get mentally prepared for this trip. Still a lot of work needed to get the apartment in Seattle together, and flying off now feels like I'm leaving something undone.

Back here in November.

I drove down to Portland the weekend before last to visit my old friend Samantha & her boyfriend Ian. The night I arrived they took me to an all-night warehouse party thrown by the local Burning Man crowd. (Cheers guys, it was the kind of party I haven't seen for a long time)!

UV lights and music. Art & DIY industrial design everywhere, a post-apocalyptic fashion show (only this one pic from my crummy phonecam came out, but you get the idea). In the other room they were doing suspensions, pushing hooks through peoples' backs, lifting them up into the air and swinging them around. And there were tug of war games where they hooked two or four people together so they could try to pull each other off the floorspace. They looked like they were having a lot of fun. Adrenaline junkies.

It was a young crowd and I'm just so happy to see that the torch is still burning out there. I've never gone to Burning Man, and Sam was telling me again how much I've been missing out. Must look at the calendar, see if there's a way I can pull it off.

Thanks again guys, I needed that.

The Golden Horde

Hot. I just got a take-out menu in the mail from the "Genghis Khan Chinese Restaurant" down the road.

Who names their restaurant after Genghis Khan? I love it! I guess the Russian joint next door should be named "Lavrenti Beria's Gulag & Blinis." (You could go pretty far on this thread once you get started.)

I like this city more and more.

Something strange

I must have eaten something a little dodgy last night because I was having these surreal dreams - something about China in the distant future, a lot of technology I couldn't understand, field arrays in blue light. Free-floating Mandarin characters outlined in blue.

The only part I remember in detail was in the present day - I was in a coffee shop with my ex-girlfriend Wendy, explaining Ben Bernanke's strategy for incenting the Chinese & Japanese governments to hold on to their US dollar reserves and dollar-denominated assets in order to keep the value of the greenback from sliding even further.

It seemed like a brilliant strategy as I was explaining it, but I can't remember the details now. Wendy just sipped her coffee, listening to me politely, but I could tell she was bored. I haven't seen her for ten years, I wonder why she popped up now?

And what the hell- Ben Bernanke? I think I need therapy.

Gore is in the house!!!

A to the L to the G-O-R-E! He's faster than lightning! Sweeter than candy!

Congratulations to the Man. Aww yeah, Big Al is in the house. He was a terrible candidate, but a great Vice President and an even greater issue advocate now that he's out of mainstream politics. It's funny how that works sometimes (look at Jimmy Carter).

I think this is a great event, and well deserved. Between the Gore Nobel Peace Prize win and the stem cell Medicine Prize win though, I can imagine the conspiracy theories that must be zipping through the extreme right community in the US right now.

I just hope he doesn't try to jump into the presidential race now... no good can come from that.

(Photo credit - New York Times)

Metric show

Man, work has been kicking my ass since I hit Seattle. But that's no cause for despair - and no excuse for not taking advantage of the great night life around here.

I drove down to Portland over the weekend for some good socialism - more on that later. And tonight I've just gotten back from the Metric show at a downtown club. I was so exhausted all day but it was worth it. Crystal Castles opened the show - I hadn't heard of them before but will definitely track them down on iTunes. They were playing this gorgeous fucked-up atavistic glitchy shit - God I loved it.

I felt like I was yanked through a wormhole back in time, to the age of strobes & MIDI. The age of glitch as technique - back then when you reached the outer envelope of your technology's capability, and you needed to go yet farther, your only choice was to break something and modulate the result.

Glitch.

Glitch.

And Metric will always have my heart beating in their post-rock hand. They're just such a great band and I was afraid I'd never see them live (I thought they might not be big enough to make it over to Denmark, but now I've come to them). Hopefully Seattle will be a regular stop - we're close enough to Canada, right?

When I read Spook Country, I couldn't help but have the visual image of Emily Haines, Metric's lead singer, as Hollis, the book's main character. I know the timing doesn't work out - "Curfew," the band in the book, broke up at the turn of the century while Metric is still going strong, but something about the character feels the same.

So many good things come from Canada. How can one place deliver so much goodness to the world?