Admittedly inspired by a post on fury.com Here is a list of "where I was when it happened", my location at the time of hearing about traumatic, no-personal news:

• The Challenger Explosion
  
  Gathered around a TV in grammar school with other classes, we were suppose to be gathered there to watch a teacher go up into space. I was huge into the space program and the promise for the future it held and then... whoops! A dozen overwhelemed elementary school teachers and a couple hundred crying kids and a serious blow to my faith in science.



• The Loma Prieta Earthquake
  
  Playing Nintendo with my friend in the garage of my parents house (where I, and the rest of my family was living at the time due to extensive remodeling). The power fitzed out and I was just registering my shock at my game of whatever the hell I was playing being interrupted when I noticed the garage was shaking. We held onto each other and ran outside once the shaking stopped. I just missed watching my neighbors porch collapse.



• The death of Jim Henson
  
  The next day at school, in the hallway I heard about it from a freind. The shock of the genius who had entertained me through most of my childhood dying didn't really hit me until I thought, "Kermit the Frog is dead."



• The death of Princess Diana
  
  I was looking at Yahoo News in my dorm room of my girlfriend at the time. "Princess Di was killed in a car crash!" "Really? Hunh. Imagine that."



• The World Trade Center Attack
  
  I was driving to the Caltrain station to go to work when I heard the announcement over the radio. I was listening as they announced the Pentagon plane hitting for the first time and then rode the train to work, catching what little snippets of information I could from other people's cell phone conversations and then watching the videos of the crashes play on the television in EA's front office. It was the first time I hadn't seen commercials being played on said televisions. (Scary addendum: Some people who were unaware of the events so early in the morning saw the TVs and asked, "What the hell kind of game is this?")

Speaking of Alf: Ein Stuck Von Alf

You know, I never realized that Alf was essentially a modern sitcom version of The Diary of Anne Frank until now. Man I miss Santa Cruz. (Thanks to Jessica for the link).

A junk fax that came in today: "Need toner? We will not be undersold! All copier and fax toner on sale!". Now let's see, what could possibly be making my fax toner run out so very quickly?

Thanks, everybody, fo rthe condolences. To answer the question "Are you okay?" I would have to say "No." if by "okay" you mean "super, thanks for asking", and I would have to say "Yes" if by "okay" you mean "not planning to drink wake-up cup full of liquid drainer".

I'll have to temporarily decline the offers of going out and getting drunk for the time being, but if I could just get those offers of free drinks in writing to use at a later date, that would be just dandy.

It's good to know I have a supportive group of friends. I'm sure I'll meet the former definition of "okay" eventually.

Well.... at least I have something to look forward to.

Well, that's it I guess. I'm offically single. Yes, I'm depressed and angry and scared. No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody yet. Yes, I'm a basket case who would rather make a blog entry about it than talk to an actual person.

I'll start posting again regularly, I'm sure (Yeah, two whole days, what a huge "break from blogging", you pathetic pile of person) but I haven't really felt like doing much other than staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for myself. I'm sure I'll be back to playing video games all the time and feeling sorry for myself like usual soon enough. I went out and bought myself a copy of State of Emergency, because I thought a little mindless violence would take the edge of the uh... what's it called... all-encompassing despair? But the violence was a little too mindless and the game pretty much sucks. Stupid dried-up non-holiday season game market. How am I supposed to cope without a viable escape from reality?

*Shrug* I don't really blame her for not wanting to be together any more. Frankly, I'm surprised girls actually want to go out with me in the first place. Sometimes, you can have a great time together, get along really well, and be the best of friends, but still not have it work out. You just keep looking and looking for what's wrong and not be able to find it. By all indications, everything should be great, but it's not. Something a lifetime of gaming has taught me is that there's aalways a way to make it work, it's possible to successfully complete any task, there's no invincible gelatinous blob at the end of level 1 (assuming I quoted correctly, cool points for knowing that reference). Things may get extremely difficult, but never impossible. In real life, most things are impossible. I know you've heard that nothing is impossible, even a little tiny baby counting all the grains of sand in the whole world in a fraction of a second. Guess what? That's bullshit. It's never going to happen.

But like usual, I'm getting sidetracked. You can't go forcing something if it's just not right. I'll be fine eventually, even though currently I find the chances of being mutually attracted to another woman virtually nil. Don't worry, although I'm sure the site will be more bitter, inebriated or melancholy than usual for a while, I'm not going to turn this into a Goth poetry site with some name like "Exquisite Misery" or another tired myexgirlfriendisanevilbitch.net site or a blog about *shudder* feelings or stuff like that. If anything, I'll retreat ever further into dorkism. Just as soon as the ceiling stops being the most interesting thing around.

...