so, just for a change of pace, my computer isn't working again

I feel like this huge weight is sitting on my chest, and every time I go to play Snow Patrol on iTunes or open a Word document I suddenly want to work on or catch up on the two weeks of LJ that I'm behind, I stop mid-motion and could almost cry that I can't. Which I realize says more about my gross dependence on my computer than anything else, but we antisocial fannish types deserve nice things, too.

It's like being a teenager and losing my car and phone privileges all over again, except I haven't done anything. And frankly, I've been too old for that kind of punishment for a long time. So it's over.

( Read my kiss-off to Microsoft and all the Windows product purveyors who have hurt me. )

never before or since paid 11 Euros for a drink and found it worthy

Flipping through a back issue of The New York Times, I came across a story about - and this is why I love New York - the trend of Asian-fusion hangar-size nightclubs in the city, which frankly baffles my little mind that automatically envisions standing room-only pizza places and bodegas, not Publix, being the norm in Manhattan.

But here we are, and the inside photo was of the Buddha-Bar that opened in Manhattan recently – apparently the franchise's second incarnation there, and I could tell you immediately why it didn't succeed. It is unsexy and derivative, like a partner who learned his technique from porn.

Gone is the decadence that sets in immediately upon walking into the one in Paris, as the impeccably styled bellboy's sneer transforms into a smile when you say, "Oui, I do have a reservation." There's too much light and too little space - more like trying to vogue in an posh lobby than relax in an opium den. Just standing at the top of the wide entrance staircase in Paris is dizzying, and then the deep bass – not the jarring kind from cruising teenagers' cars on South Beach - begins to seduce your pulse and all but massages every stress from your shoulders. The dimly lit dining room is ringed with a catwalk nightclub of people with their hands in the air or lounging on artful chaises, the whole place hazy with smoke and Asian house music and opulence not for show, but genuine pleasure.

The thing that made my night at 8 Rue Boissy d'Anglais M. Concorde possibly the best of my life is that it put me in a wholly new headspace. I'm a chronic overthinker - as a smart introverted kid, I remember contemplating existence before I could even pronounce words like philosophy. In a (mostly) non-material way, I've always been about more and deeper and better and harder and what's next.

But on that night, somewhere between the second and third bottles of wine, maybe during the exquisite sashimi or one of the ridiculously rich desserts, after toasting Paris but before the embarrassingly earnest confessions of love, I discovered the happiness that comes from being free of want. The simple, thorough, utterly carefree space of love for the world just as it is that I've since doubted exists on a daily basis.

But I did have it, and I think the ultimate problem with New York's sister to this den of exquisite iniquity is that it's in perhaps the one place on Earth that truly doesn't believe in that mindset.

(Not that it does the place justice, but this photo provides an overview of the Paris Bar's ( dining room. )