Odd thought of the night to strike me.

Have been spending last few nights actually doing work (*modestly* I was working on the fringes of a billion dollar deal. Really. And I'm saying that because of the pitiful, but definitely tangible satisfaction in being able say things like that even if your role in such a deal is to provide two pages of Powerpoint slides). That, and talking to people online, in fact, I realise that more and more of my PC time these days is spent interacting with humanity, whether through sporadic bursts of blogging or posting on bulletin boards or tagboards or forums, or through long, breeze-shooting conversations online with the few friends I have.

But why does it all tempt me? Why can't i just be content to stay offline, and finish watching my first season DVDs of Alias, and Ali G, play Deus Ex: Invisible War and Lords of Everquest, while waiting for Legacy of Kain: Defiance (PC version) and Thief 3, finish reading my Robin Hobb and Dumas novels, all of this interspersed with gratuitoius masturbation and the occasional swim? God knows these days time is a valuable commodity I fight for every second; even the non-work portion of it seems increasingly devoured by picayune errands and paterfamilial obligations.

All of the sensory and intellectual stimulation I need I can obtain on my own terms sans the friction of dealing with other people. So why do I still feel this insane need for human interaction? Why am I still whingng on this blog entry, if I *know* it arises from the usual stereotypical need for people to emotionally preen, whine and posture online, to open one's self up to being judged by those reading who think the fragments of text give them some clue as to what's really going on with the person writing it? How many times have I myself just as blithely laid down the simple aphorisms to people, "if you have a problem with people reading, don't blog it; just as if you have a problem with what people are writing, don't read it." I feel like one of those apotemnophilliacs (another the word to look up, people, it's a *good* one) I was watching in a documentary a while back; the sheer compulsivness of their behaviour is bizarrely juxtaposed against the bewilderment they feel in the wake of their own personal awareness as to how insane their own desires are.

Isn't genuine catharsis what a real diary which no one reads is for?

coda for the night: "Cigarettes. Pornography. Bitching to strangers. Hollow grave, wt."