Don't try this at home.

With most of our current crop of work done, Susan and I decided to close the office and knock off in the middle of the day. Having spent much of the last couple weeks immersed in the task of bringing a website online, I felt like I was rising from the bottom of a 32-bit shimmering pool of information and noticing the real world's pleasures again. Having just spent entire days and nights interacting primarily with the world through computer screens, we decided to go to see The Matrix, a film in which computer geeks are the post-Armageddon techno-saviors of the future. It was a lush and savage intensitrip that, without being remotely profound, manages to capture a moment of cultural angst about the parallel informational world we're building up alongside the real one. It was playing at the Uptown, DC's finest theater, which comes complete with tooth-chipping sound and a screen so large that I felt vertiginous for a brief adaptation period. As the final credits rolled, I realized with a shock that I had possessed virtually no awareness of my self during the entire film -- I had merely absorbed the stimulation. This realization was both disturbing and enticing.

Of course, a movie like this comes packaged with slick and meaningless violence. I was particularly fascinated by the fetishization of spent bullet casings, which were constantly being shown ejected in slow motion, clinking to the ground in momentary flashes of quiet vignette before the camera again ripped away to the carnage at hand. Susan and I debated whether or not this served some sort of thematic purpose: shell casings as a symbol for male ejaculate, the eroticization of the gun as superpowerful penis. Or, given the movie's themes of all-is-not-what-you-see, the casing represents the body that must be cast aside for the spirit to see the truth and thus be free. Or possibly, they just looked really cool.

And they looked incredibly cool. It never ceases to amaze me that someone can beautifully and compellingly package human destruction in such a way that I can enjoy it.

Later, we headed out to neighborhood coffee/bar hepstitution Tryst. This is fast becoming a new fave hangout, offering the squooshy-sofa decor of meatstitution Chi-Cha, while also allowing its patrons to wear hats. While we waited for our friend Kate to show, a somewhat bedraggled older gentleman sporting a comb-over and a large plastic bag sat down gingerly on the sofa opposite us. He seemed nervous, frequently getting up to change position and fiddle with the contents of his bag. We grew increasingly captivated by his anomalous behavior, while trying to conceal our curiosity as best we could.

Finally, he drew several books out of his bag, selected one about Chinese medicine, and sat back to read. Kate arrived, and the focal point of my attentions swiveled around to her. Several minutes later, I glanced over at the man and registered mild shock at the realization that a thin trickle of blood was running down the side of his neck. He was holding a toothpick between thumb and forefinger, and was pressing it into the skin just behind his ear. Absently he wiped the blood away with the other hand, smearing it along the side of his chin. He twiddled the toothpick around a few times just as his eyes met mine. I hastily pretended to be watching something behind him that was more interesting than him acupuncturing himself in a bar with a piece of dental ware.

I was sitting too far away from Susan and Kate to communicate this new development with the appropriate discretion, so I just sat there, chewing on the surreal beauty of the scene, not really hearing their conversation. Occasionally I would peer over to steal another glance at the would-be medical practitioner. He was now reading placidly, with the toothpick sticking straight out from behind his ear. It was like one of those "Spot what's wrong with this picture!" games. He had wiped off most of the blood, but the smear on his chin had now dried into a rusty smudge.

A few minutes later, he removed the toothpick, stood up, and came over to start a conversation with a woman who was sitting on the other end of my couch. I assumed she would let loose a quick brush-off, but she showed every sign of being interested in the conversation. They continued chatting as the evening wore on. Hours later, my world experienced minor tremors when they left arm in arm. I couldn't believe it. Mr. Acupuncture was getting lucky! I found myself wishing I'd gandered a closer look at just where that toothpick went in.