There's an Oakland Art Murmur this evening, this being the first Friday of the month, and a free concert in Jack London Square hosted by The East Bay Express later at nine until midnight. Oh, and Mr. S's band is playing at Ireland 32 in the city at nine. You go through days of no excitement and then you find yourself with more excitement than you can handle. I'll get to the Art Murmur, I created a section with a set of images last month for Here in Oakland based on pictures taken then and anticipated to be taken today. I need to be there if I'm going to finish the section and use the headings that include “August 6th” in the title. Have I mentioned life is complicated? Too many times? Well.

The computer is still acting flaky. I picked something up from a web site some time back and I've bitched about it numerous times since. I thought it might have come from a Facebook app, which doesn't really make sense, so maybe I just got unlucky. Or stupid. I don't search out strange areas on the Internet. I use Google to look things up: spellings, local events, directions to festivals and such, but I don't go out looking in strange places for trouble. I hit the same news blogs daily, run by local and national news groups that have been around for a while, so I have no idea where I got it. Other than Facebook. And that doesn't make sense, something that big allowing a virus to slip through their gate.

So I've been fighting the damned thing. It's called the Google redirector virus or something similar, a malware thing that repeatedly changes its name so as not to be easily found, blocked or erased. My Spyware Doctor and registry cleaner will kill it for a day, for a few hours, but then it comes back. I.E. won't connect to the Microsoft software update site, says there's no such place, the same or another virus managed to hose that down and my Google browser will no longer work or install. Otherwise all is well in this kind of it works, it doesn't work Dingle-Dell.

You were once a well paid computer geek working for a large corporation. Do you expect anyone to be sympathetic?

No, no. I don't feel particularly sympathetic myself. You buy your ticket, you take the trip. I'll knock it out of these days. Meanwhile I paddle along here in my fog, taking it as it comes.

Later. We are to meet later in the city at Harrington's before heading out to hear the band at Ireland 32, so I'll do the Art Murmur and then head over to the city. What the hell, take a cab home when I get back to Oakland. There's no buses to where I live after about eight and I'm not sure I want to be standing in downtown Oakland waiting on a bus at midnight. Just, you know, in case. Hell, I'll drive and park in a monitored garage. Costs more, but so what? Why even think about it?

I'd guess a good shrink might be able to tell you why if he or she were to analyze all of this.

If that ever happens I suspect it will be years in the future after we're both long gone, a case study for a college text. “He laid it all out in a journal, for god's sakes. A real piece of dumb luck!”

Don't take yourself too seriously, now. All this is but a blip on a small screen, a screen of many screens with many many blips. Your head really does appear to be stuffed up.

You have no idea.

Later still. A walk over to the lake to sit for a while on a bench, deciding to take a bus downtown to sit out at a table in the City Center and then to walk over to 9th Street to check out the Friday farmer's market. A picture or two. A walk then back to the City Center for a Jamba Juice (strawberries pureed with a bunch of other stuff) and then a walk to a bus stop. Oh, and to get off the bus early for a package of M & M's. Remember they said lay off the chocolate? I got the almond kind figuring they'd have less chocolate inside. Sounds about right, doesn't it? Wanting chocolate when they tell you not?

The Art Murmur now in another hour. The day is rapidly coming to a close. Mr. E has just flaked on the meet at Harrington's, so maybe I'll go down later to Jack London Square. Still have the problem of parking down there at night so my guess is I'll flake on Jack, spend the evening after the Murmur working on the pictures. We seem to be picking up steam here, getting ready, maybe, to enter a whiz bang weekend.