(Would any tech guru out there like to take a guess at why the feeds for my new journal haven't been updating this week? It's the same exact code as I'm using for The Jason Pettus Instant Locator™, which has been working perfectly, so I'm stumped. Thanks, John, by the way, for letting me know about how to change the URL names of archived entries; I'll be writing you a decent response hopefully a little later this week.)

Last week I started letting everyone know about all the stuff that's been going on in my life that I wasn't able to report during the six weeks my site was down; there aren't that many things to report, to be frank, so hopefully I'll be able to finish it up today.

I'd be remiss if I didn't give a big thank-you to Matthew De George, who recently bumped my Flickr account up to a 'pro' level. The biggest benefit of a 'pro' Flickr account for most is that you can upload a lot more high-memory photos to your account per month; since I'm only posting cameraphone photos there, though, and even compress those in ImageReady before posting, this particular benefit doesn't mean too terribly much for me. The pro account, however, also lets you create an unlimited amount of photosets at your account, which I use all the time, so that's going to be a great new feature for me. Matthew, I should mention, is a long-time reader of mine in Australia who runs a great website himself; he's also been a financial contributor to both of my international tours now, and is a very much appreciated supporter of this site and my projects. Thanks, Matthew!

Hey, you remember my German friend Alamar, right? Oh, you don't? Okay, let me give you a brief reminder...

One of the things I did before my first tour of Germany, in 2003, was use this service called Blogchalking to see if I could track down some young Germans into punk, goth, etc., and see if they could give me some advice on fun punk-oriented things to do while there. (I love my German poetry friends, don't get me wrong, but they all tend to take me out to...um, other poetry things. Which is mostly great, but I still love the occasional night of hardcore bands and too many trucker pills, God help me.) And because of that I met this "dark kid" (German slang for 'goth') named Alamar (not his real name), a college student in the mid-sized town of Giessen, about 45 minutes northeast of Frankfurt. And he and I formed up a nice little correspondence before the trip, and he even rode the train out that year to see my performance at the Frankfurt poetry slam.

So then I had this little nightmare of an experience in Berlin while I was there, as long-time readers will remember, and ended up having to leave the city two days earlier than expected. (Well, I didn't have to leave; I was just miserable, is all, and figured there had to be a place in Germany where I would have more fun than the crap I was going through in Berlin.) And so I sent out a panicky email to everyone in Germany I knew, asking if I could burn up a spot on my railpass and come stay with them unexpectedly for two days instead. And Alamar was the first one to write back, so I ended up spending just some of the most pleasant 48 hours of the entire tour with him and his roommates in Giessen - dancing at goth clubs, drinking cola beer (don't ask), trying (and failing) to explain why Michael Moore got booed at the Oscars, etc.

Anyway, so the news is that Alamar is coming to Chicago! He's coming this September, in fact, for almost two weeks, and is going to stay with me while he's here. Oh man, it's going to be fun! This will be the first time (I think) that Alamar's visited Chicago in particular, birthplace of Wax Trax and still with a vibrant and active goth community; I think he's going to have a lot of fun exploring all the "dark" corners of this city, as well as just getting a dose of Americana Chicago-style. Anyway, lots more updates on this later this summer...and of course, tons of pictures while he's actually here as well.

A random thought the other day, jotted down on my Treo:

Right now, somewhere out there, a female version of me is walking around and living her life. She's a bundle of contradictions, which frequently pisses off even her closest friends: extroverted yet private, full of strong opinions but also a master of compromise, a believer in love but also a believer in casual sex, trying her damnedest not to piss people off anymore but still seemingly doing so on a daily basis. And some people meet this woman and immediately dislike her in this burning, passionate way; and some people meet this woman and have this deep, sincere admiration for her, even as none of them so far in her life have really understood her in the complex, often frustrating way that one needs to in order to really get what makes her tick.

One day this woman and I are going to meet, and we are going to quickly fall into this intense, intimate relationship that will last the rest of our lives. And for her and I, it'll be the moment for which we've both been waiting our entire adult lives - the moment we don't have to explain to another person what's going through our head, explain the reasons behind what we do, but simply have the other person intuitively understand, and love us even more for that understanding. And none of our friends will understand our relationship, and some people will get even more pissed off at us than before - but none of that will matter because we'll have each other, and we'll finally have that person who just naturally understands us without having to exert any effort at all.

I'm not sure if more than one woman on the planet exists who fits this description; I'm positive, however, that at least one does. She's out there even as we speak, obsessing over nerdy stuff and occasionally drinking too much, starting fights when she sincerely didn't mean to, making awkward sexual passes at horrified acquaintances. She's out there, and one day I will find her. I'm sure of that.