The shameful news is in - the USA didn't win a single World Cup game. Only one other team shared this cellar rating: Japan. And things seemed so promising when we beat Brazil in the playoffs - last year's winner!

Feeling lethargic; been unable to get back in to my usual workout rhythm. This morning the early alarm went off, but I was unable to motivate. I think I need a new gym - my current options on-base depress me, but there's nothing else available so geographically desirable.

A visitor is coming - email from G advises he's being sent out here in a few weeks for training at Oracle, up the peninsula in Redwood City.

WARNING: Potential Gross-Out
In ninth grade my friend Doug turned me on: we would get boxes of these translucent red gelatin capsules at the pet store - the product was for ridding your animal of worms, and it was called "NEMA." (White box, brownish-purple stripe.) Inside of the capsules was a clear liquid which smelled similar to acetone or dry cleaning solvent. You take a lunch-sized paper bag, place a napkin or paper towel in the bottom, soak it with the Nema liquid, and breath through the bag like you're sniffing glue. After a short while hallucinations are experienced, along with a sound Doug called the "wong-wongs". His hallucination always involved being chased through the Time Tunnel by a turtle or a frog; in my own, exterior details increased to abstraction. For several moments you're completely separated from reality. This activity was preliminary to pot-smoking; we didn't get ahold of any actual weed until the next year - all we had was tobacco. Speaking of which, today is my ten-year anniversary - that's how long I've been free of the pack-a-day cigarette habit, already beginning in the ninth grade. Smoking one now's almost entirely unpleasant - head-sweaty, and a sensation like a blow to the chest.