--What are we going to do tonight, Brian?
--Why, the same thing we do every night, Bob... try to take over the world!!!!

        Me: sitting in front of the computer, looking at the screen.
        I look at my notes for *30*.  Whatever notes I had are utterly useless now.  *30* has grown way beyond its parameters.  This epilogue is almost as long as the whole of the main text.
        I crumple the notes.  I throw them on the floor.
        I hadn't planned for the World Trade Center.  I hadn't planned for another futile Gulf War.  I hadn't planned for paranoia and artificial politics-- well, okay, I had, but not to quite this degree.
        I'd planned to get in, and then get out.  Three years and then nothing more: 1999, 2000, 2001.  Clear and concise, cut and dried, simple.
        But instead, what I'd gotten was:
        A bloated, unending monster.
        I suppose that tells me something about myself.
        I lean back in my chair.
        30: Ceaseless, grinding, elephantine, unleashing wave after wave of unfocused bitterness on an indifferent world.
        Part of me thinks this is funny.  Another part, not so much.
        I stand up, and I look out the window.
        Outside:  The sun beats down on a parkinglot filled with cars.  I look at the other buildings around me.  I look at the tree to my left.
        I'd bought this condo partly because of that tree.  It covers a quarter of my balcony, and so I can go out onto my balcony and sit behind the tree.  From there, I can watch people on the ground without their being able to see me.  Beautiful.
        But right now they're stuccoing my building, and because of this they have had to remove the balcony railing, so the balcony door has been locked.  I can't even open it to let air blow through the screen.  Even with the two bedroom windows open, the apartment is becoming stiflingly hot.
        The universe at its most basic is the function of a waveform.  Or maybe several waveforms.  That part is unclear.
        The waveform exists in all states simultaneously, it exists as potentiality.  But then the potentiality gets locked into a form, and here were are: space, time, matter, stars, people.
        If the universe is, at its core, simple potentiality, if it possesses all this potential, infinity, fluctuating potentiality, unlimited potential, why has it locked into a form that is so Goddamn--
        "BORING!" I shout out my window.  "BORING BORING BORING!!!"
        I hear my voice echo off buildings, bouncing in all directions.
        "SHUDDUP, DICKWAD!" comes back to me from somewhere below.
        I sit back down in my chair.
        And, suddenly, I want to play nothing but Death Metal at earbleeding volumes and feed my enemies to the lions.
        I spent 45 minutes outside in the sun the other day-- 45 whole minutes-- and my face and arms got burnt.  And now they're itching and peeling.
        45 minutes.
        Not even a full hour.
        Crank the Dying Fetus, blare the Nile, the Neurosis, Benumb, Suffocation, Human Waste, Human Remains, Napalm Death.
        I know some of these bands are actually Grindcore, but I don't give a fuck.

And so, I sit in front of the computer and look at the screen.
        I sigh.  I grind my teeth.  I rub my face.
        I look out the window.

I stand up.
        I look at the computer screen.
        I look at my bookshelf full of books.

I clear my throat.  I want very badly to get drunk.  I look all the CDs stacked beside my computer.
        Paralysis isn't funny.

I walk out of the computer room.  I walk into the living room.
        The walls of my apartment are white.  Even though I've been here for almost year, now, I still haven't had time to put up posters or paintings or any art whatsoever-- with the exception of a sketch of shoes and a backpack that my cousin Tracy did for me, Christmas of 1994, back when I was unemployed, out of school, and having a small nervous breakdown that no one but one Taoist friend noticed.  (He noticed because he's attuned to energy.  Or something.)
        Tracy's sketch is hung above the fireplace, on the brick chimney.
        There are also two bookshelves and a tv in the livingroom.
        But, still, the virtual absence of art makes the walls of my apartment seem as if they are closing in on me.  Squeezing me.  Crushing the breath from my lungs.
        I turn on the tv.
        George W. Bush, looking either happy or confused.
        Probably both.

I flip channels.
        News scroll, music video, infomercial:
        It's a woman reminding me that in order to be truly happy all I have to do (other than buy her self-help books) is "Live each moment as if it was your last one on earth."
        So she wants me to shit myself with fear, curl into a ball, start sobbing, and go "Oh God Oh God Oh God I don't want to die?"

Paralysis isn't funny.

I flip channels:
        Bush, Bush, music video, Star Trek, Jerry Springer, religious show, Bush, weather, X-Files.
        Bush, SARS crisis.
        Music channel with commercial for trendy hearing aids.
        Staring at the images of perfect people wearing flesh-coloured ear buds.  The hearing aids are tiny, fit right in the ear canal, are semi transparent.
        All the people wearing them are young professionals, men and women, in their early-mid 20s.  Maybe early 30s.  They look like supermodels.
        The implication of course is that people are losing their hearing at younger and younger ages.  But that's okay because we can compensate for all the noise, fix your hearing so you can continue to shred your eardrums with ever-increasing walls of sound and volume.
        That sounds okay to me.  There are some aesthetic effects that can only be achieved at extreme volume.
        And, besides, if I get a cochlear implant, or cyber-ears, or something even better, after my eardrums are totally useless, if I get something that feeds the sound directly into my brain, then I can experience an ever greater sonic and aesthetic overload, and maybe even hear different sounds, sounds I can't hear with normal ears.  And when the technology breaks down, I'll just get something newer and better.
        Ditto with my eyes.
        It'll open the door to all new kinds of art.  Which is about the only thing that makes life worth living, anyway.

I get bored with the tv.  I turn it off and walk back to the computer.
        I check my e-mail.  Nothing.  No mail.
        I surf the net.  Nothing.  Nothing interesting at all.
        Someone once said that the Internet is so vast that if you ever get bored with it you've just gotten bored with life itself.
        I yawn.  And continue to surf.
        And the next webpage I go to is blank.  A message comes up on the screen.  The server cannot be found.
        I go to my bookmarks and find another webpage.  The same message.  The server cannot be found.
        I try my own webpage.  It try Google.  The server cannot be found.
        I check my e-mail.  The mail server cannot be found.
        I look down at the lights of the modem.  They're off.  Then they're on, again, and blinking.
        I go to Google.  Google's there.
        I go to my own webpage.  The server cannot be found.
        I try Google again.  The server cannot be found.
        The lights on my modem are off again.
        I check the modem and find a loose cable.  When I wiggle the cable the lights on the modem come on, and then when I wiggle it again the lights go off.
        I walk to my phone.  I phone the cable company.  I tell the guy on the other end of the line I'm having a problem with my modem.  I tell him that when I wiggle one of the cables the lights on my modem go off and I'm kicked off the Net.
        He tells me:
        "Then don't wiggle the cable."

After 25 minutes on hold waiting for a technician, I hang up in disgust.
        I walk back to the computer.  The lights on the front of the modem are flashing.
        I go back to the tv.  I consider turning it back on, but I don't.
        I look out the window.
        I go outside, I get in my car, I drive around town.
        Sitting behind the windshield, the world feels like a big videogame.

Driving around, I reach for a cd.  Merzbow.  Time for Japanese Noise.
        I pop the disc in the slot, turn the volume down to 3 so my speakers won't rupture, and wait for the blast.  Seconds later, the car is filled with walls upon walls of sound.
        Waiting at a light, fifteen minutes later, still listening to the first track, I see a car pull up beside me.  I turn the sound down for a minute.  I don't know why I do this.  I just do.
        There are two fat little white kids with brush cuts and backwards ballcaps in the front seat.  The blonde one is driving.  The one with dyed red hair is bobbing his head in time to the beat.
        They're listening to Rap, and it's clear to me they both think they're Eminem.
        It's funny, how lame and weak Rap sounds after listening to Noise.
        And these two little wannbe rappers wanting to be so dangerous and cool, all the while to their funky "phat" beats, or whatever the hell they call their funky beats now.  It changes every month or two.
        And the babyfaced little fat white kids are bobbing their heads to:

bip thump-thumpo
bip thump-thumpo
Muthafuckazz in tha houuuse
Muthafuckazz in tha houuuse
bup bip thump
bup bip thump
Muthafuckazz put a cap in my ho-meez ass
Muthafuckazz put a cap in my ho-meez ass
bip thump-thumpo
bip thump-thump

        And my car is rumbling and roaring and screeching and the fatfaced white kids look at each other like they're trying to comprehend what they're hearing and seeing, but can't.
        And then the light changes and they race off.
        Muthafuckazz in tha house, indeed.

I drive downtown.
        I drive past where the coffeeshop used to be.
        The paved lot is being made into a Starbucks.
        It's just a shell, right now.  Some girders.  A bit of a roof.  But there's no doubt.
        Also, the big sign doesn't hurt either:
        "FUTURE HOME OF STARBUCKS COFFEE."
        And, it turns out that I don't really care.

And now I'm driving around the city, driving in circles, turning endless corners, around blocks and blocks, closing my orbit, and spiraling inwards, tighter and tighter, circling nothing, around and around, going faster and faster, like an atom sucked rotating into a singularity, looping, spinning, inward and inward, tighter and tighter, faster and heating, blurring, wishing for an event horizon, trying my hardest to make a black hole.
 

Next:  The smartest man in America....