"You're overstimulated. Let's get some beer into you and put you to bed."

Serious bad juju at work today. They started selling Red Bull out of the vending machines. For cheap.

"Oh hay I'll have one," I say. "I'm feeling kinda logey and I'd like to stay up all night later tonight and play my fun multiplayer videogames until they shut the servers down at 9 AM. Because it's my day off tomorrow and because I'm worth it."

Then I says to myself, I says, "My that was nasty-tasting, but the effects are nice! I think I'll have another."

Halfway through another Red Bull I suddenly realize I have gained the power to SEE THROUGH TIME AND SPACE.

Then charva pokes me online. "Sin City, 10:50, Not-So-Fresh Pond?" I can barely type out a "HELLS YEAH" before it's time to leave work and meet up and go see movie.

The film is, of course, exquisite and horrible and beautiful and unflinching and thrilling and noir and quite literally the most faithful graphic novel translation ever. It's long on style but short on substance, and Clive Owen really is seemed to be the male equivalent of Andie MacDowell, but we cared not one whit. Also slightly marring the enjoyment was the fact that Not-So-Fresh Pond (also known as "Hey, Free Parking") can't keep things in frame worth shit and one of the speakers behind me was giving off a dog-calling high-pitched buzz, but honestly, it couldn't ruin the fun tonight. (Our previous film experience together was Be Cool and, well, Constant Reader will remember how well that turned out, so honestly anything would have been more enjoyable, relatively speaking.)

After nearly two and a half hours of high-contrast black and white with only a sprinkle of color here and there, the world outside positively glows. Traffic lights cast large red and green neon auras around the area, and the car's headlights make the street signs glow electric blue and green. Every color is more vivid and pronounced. I am fascinated with this psychotropic effect as, usually, when one wants to experience this, one has to ingest strange fungal products. Oh, wait, does Red Bull count? I guess it does now.

charva pulls up to my house but she's in the middle of a cracking story, so we decide to drive around the block until she finishes it. As we head down Summer Street towards Union Square, there's a sudden bright flash in the sky somewhere between us and Market Basket, and then the entire neighborhood plunges into darkness. Transformer explosion? Most likely. The streetlights flicker back on briefly, but there's another flash in the same place and everything goes back to quiet, dark and still. Intrigued, we drive around to see the extent of the outage. Pretty much Summer Street from right past Lowell (my house was on a different grid, and thankfully spared) all the way up to the laundromat by Union Square, Somerville Ave up to the Dollar Store/Papa John's block, and then parts of Highland Ave from Lowell to Central Street. The streets, which were already empty, now look positively eerie and abandoned. charva parks the car on Highland next to the Armory, and we sit and talk for about an hour. Really hadn't caught up with her in a long time, and we talk about a lot, comiserate with each other about our respective romantic entanglements (or lack thereof) and watch a couple walking their dog in the Armory lot with a glowy blue LED light.

Finally we drive back to Davis and stop at the new "Bread & Butter" kon-venience store in the shell of the old White Hen on Mass Ave, and are amazed at the way the setup now gives the place so much space. At least, I'm amazed at that. I stock up on some quick-cook food, having missed dinner after all this, and realize I'll be eating dinner while going back to play my multiplayer videogames until the sun-up hours of the morning.

I buy another energy drink thingy.