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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2008.08.17  03.56 what to post what to post well I have one last semester... all about coffee and I can't sleep nothing to do with coffee hmm bored mew.... why am I too late for everything... shat Mood: discontent

	2007.12.13  14.53 where is my sanity...i mean my keys ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Mood: frustrated

	2007.12.11  19.09 W00t I was trying to think why do I have a lj still...with facebook i mean we have everything, more or less... all I would be missing is some comics that are my friends sometimes they have interesting threads that i wouldn't get by just going to the comic page but then I realized why I stay two words...one might be spelled wrong Julia Balibera

	2007.12.08  02.08 I feel bad some times I test people see what they thinl of me like when you and a good friend play apples to apples and you expect they know you and they put crap down well i asked for a surprise i got pepperidge farm mini mint milano's which you know diecent brand cookies good but not over or under but classy HOWEVER it is mint he fails I'll taste it but mint you know i hate mini more or less okay tasting yeah mint ew but edilble

	2007.11.27  11.43 It is so werid, I'm not anxious, but I haven't done hw in about 3 and a half weeks I'm just sick I'm getting a throat culture on wed. my head hurts lots of things hurt they rotate so i am never completely well but i'm okay, besides the depression and work that has piled up by friday another paper will be added on tho the list of reserch papers that were due and I haven't done YEAH! it's also werid cause an old friend of mine is having bad anxiety, and I want to help 'em but we ain't on the best of terms irony! my house is a mess. and I have been sleeping in my fort because my bed SUCKS ASS seriously seriously Mood: bored

	2007.11.18  16.20 Will we be defined now as the facebook generation Facebook is getting more and more recognition as a mover of ideas, friends, society,, and money. It is a key player in a lot of things and its influence is gambled to be just the tip of the iceberg. :poke:read this article http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-facebook18nov18,0,5950019.story the social website started by a Harvard dropout is stealing the spotlight from Google. By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 18, 2007 PALO ALTO -- -- Google Inc. is used to being the center of attention, the giant that executives at other Internet companies wish Silicon Valley would shut up about already. For the moment, they've got their wish. People here can't stop talking about Facebook Inc. Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg click to enlarge Related Stories - Famous names back music on social media Web sites Commanding their attention: the social networking site's rocketing growth, cheeky business strategies and staggering valuation. Microsoft Corp. last month took a small stake in Facebook that valued the company at $15 billion. The deal may have positioned Facebook's 23-year-old co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to one day supplant Google co-founder Sergey Brin as the technology industry's youngest self-made billionaire. Brin, whose company lost the bidding war to Microsoft, downplayed the defeat at a recent gathering for analysts, saying, "We don't feel at a higher level that we need to own everything successful on the Internet." Maybe not. Google's spectacular success has made it the seventh-most valuable company in the United States. Still, after years of all-Google-all-the-time, it's Facebook's turn in the spotlight. Started in a Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago, Facebook spread like wildfire among college students. Last year, it opened membership to the world, and the wildfire is still raging. Facebook now has more than 54 million users, second among social networking sites behind only Beverly Hills-based MySpace. And it's sucking up Web traffic and Silicon Valley engineering talent. Presidential hopefuls and entertainment heavyweights seek out Facebook's executives. Venture capitalists and software developers stalk its employees in coffee shops and on the site itself. Users post love songs about it on YouTube. Programmers and marketers pack conferences devoted to understanding the site better. Stanford University even offers a course in creating free software for Facebook. One ex-Google employee who recently joined Facebook's ranks called it "that company that shows up once in a very long while," meaning that it is bursting with the creative intensity that set Mountain View, Calif.-based Google apart when it was smaller. As Google aims to organize the world's information, Facebook aims to connect the world's people. On Facebook, high school and college kids mingle with baby boomers and retirees, squeezing their social and professional lives into minimalist profile pages they load with photos, games, polls and updates on their activities. Half of them visit the site at least once a day to announce hook-ups or breakups, send friends virtual gifts and cocktails, stump for political candidates or support cancer patients and survivors, all of which generates an average of 2 billion page views a day. Offering a new gateway Facebook has become such an integral part of some people's lives that it's replacing e-mail. That's exactly what Zuckerberg has in mind: his site as the starting point and focal point of the Internet experience. On a recent afternoon, the Harvard dropout sat in a Facebook conference room, wearing his trademark uniform of hooded sweat shirt, jeans and Adidas flip-flops. His boyish face, framed by curly brown hair, lit up when he talked about Facebook's potential to transform how people connect. "The things that are most powerful aren't the things that people would have done otherwise if they didn't do them on Facebook," he said. "Instead, it's the things that would never have happened otherwise." Like his role models, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs and Google founders Brin and Larry Page, Zuckerberg means it when he says he wants his company to change the world. Despite his young age, he has risen above rivals and confounded skeptics with a string of strategic moves inspired by his goal of making good technology and keeping users happy. He rejected takeover offers that would have netted him several hundred million dollars, girding instead for an initial public offering that investors have said could happen in about a year. He secured $40.7 million in funding from top private investors, plus $240 million from Microsoft. Zuckerberg keeps a tight rein on his fledgling company, trying to avoid the kinds of mistakes made by past Internet highfliers that crashed. And he waited to milk the site for serious advertising revenue until this month, when Facebook unveiled an ambitious plan to harness word-of-mouth advertising and turn users into spokespeople for brands. Members already alert their friends about the things they love and hate, including movies, restaurants, clothing and cars. Now advertisers can feast on all the information they share, and even attach commercial messages. They can do this when users befriend a product on its Facebook page or engage with the product on sites run by Facebook partners. For example, members can tell their pals when they add movies to their rental queue on Blockbuster.com or sell items on eBay. Tracking what users do and buy online could help marketers direct more relevant ads to consumers and ultimately sell more products and services. That's one big reason advertisers are expected to nearly triple their annual worldwide spending on social networks to $3.6 billion by 2011, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg click to enlarge Related Stories - Famous names back music on social media Web sites "Users usually perceive ads as the cost they pay to have a free experience," said Mike Murphy, Facebook's vice president of media sales. "We are trying to find ways to create such relevant messaging that it feels more like content, so that users will actually appreciate it and interact with it more." If users greet marketers with open arms, Facebook could generate "the most valuable data in the history of the media world," Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield said. No one knows if Facebook's audacious bid to compete with search engines for a major share of online advertising dollars will click with consumers and marketers. Privacy advocates have raised concerns about the program. It also prompted some tech industry observers to wonder if Facebook was starting to put its financial goals ahead of users' interests -- criticism that Google, too, has faced as it matured. Facebook may be courting the major brands, but so far the entity benefiting the most from Facebook is Facebook. Zuckerberg has assembled an all-star management team amid the energy and bustle of downtown Palo Alto, not far from where Google first rented offices in 1999. Here, Facebook is stitching together four office buildings within a six-block radius into an urban campus to accommodate its more than 350 employees. Zuckerberg plans to double the company's size to 700 employees within a year. In keeping with the company's focus on people, graffiti murals of faces are sprayed on the walls of the dining hall, stairwells, elevators, even restrooms. Employees dine on free catered food, compete in software hackathons during which they dream up business ideas, and show off their hidden talents and inner snark in "Facebook Idol" contests. The biggest social networking site, MySpace, reflects its Los Angeles roots. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and prides itself on being a next-generation media company. Facebook, in contrast, is a pure Silicon Valley play, betting its future on developing world-class technology. Most of Facebook's top executives have technical chops. Even nontechies can enroll in a basic programming course, FB101, taught by a Harvard teaching assistant whose artificial-intelligence course Zuckerberg once took. The teacher, Andrew Bosworth, is now a Facebook engineer. That hard-core focus on technology has produced two milestones. Last year, Facebook created an addictive News Feed feature that streams onto users' profile pages, keeping them abreast of their friends' activities. Dave McClure, an Internet marketing expert who teaches the Facebook programming course at Stanford, says such innovations ultimately could prove as important to Facebook's success as text advertisements were to Google's. In May, Facebook began letting outside developers create and profit from software and services for the site. In just five months, Facebook added more than 7,000 features, including the practical (booking travel), the meaningful (joining causes) and the frivolous (a game in which friends turn one another into virtual zombies). Google countered last month by launching OpenSocial, a program designed to make it easier for developers to write software for social networks such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Google's own Orkut. But in the Silicon Valley, where success is rooted in cubicles housing engineering wunderkind, Facebook is fast becoming the company to beat in recruiting wars. Blake Ross, who helped develop the Firefox Web browser, and cohort Joe Hewitt recently sold their sought-after start-up, Parakey, to Facebook and joined its ranks. Benjamin Ling, one of Page and Brin's prized engineers who created the Google Checkout service, defected to Facebook in September to oversee its software platform. "We have a culture based on building things," Zuckerberg said. "What attracts people to the company is that it is still relatively small, but you can have a relatively big impact." Strength is in the roots That collective drive toward innovation -- and an IPO -- permeates the company, where employees are the biggest fans of the site they are building. Most were Facebook users before they started working there, and they communicate with one another through the site, even in the office. They use internal Facebook applications such as "Where do I sit?" to post company seating charts on their profile pages and match personalities with co-workers through the "Which Facebook employee am I?" quiz. To help preserve this tightly knit social network, Facebook has a full-time manager of organizational development. And the company offers a $600 rent subsidy to employees who live within a mile of the office. Zuckerberg himself lives just blocks away and has strong social ties within the company. College roommate Dustin Moskovitz is a co-founder and vice president of engineering. Boyhood friend Adam D'Angelo is a vice president and chief technology officer. Zuckerberg's sister, Randi Zuckerberg, is director of market development. Nonetheless, the site has experienced growing pains. Like other social networking sites, it has been dogged by concerns about users' privacy and safety. Former Harvard classmates are suing, alleging that Zuckerberg stole their business concept. Even within the company, it's not all warm and fuzzy. Employees complained when the company moved to change how paid time off accrued. Another hitch: Facebook's high valuation could undercut recruiting efforts and employee morale because stock options offered to new workers will have a higher exercise price than those held by current employees. There is little doubt that Facebook will confront a battery of tests in this tightly contested market, which is clearly headed for dramatic growth and change. Its stiffest challenge: translating its soaring popularity into piles of cash without alienating the fickle young Internet users who have championed it. "It's a big gamble," IDC analyst Karsten Weide said. jessica.guynn@latimes.com Mood: restless Music: manu chao

	2007.11.06  14.41 So not much to say umm I hate school actually miss san fran annnnnd riverside...who misses riverside I know ummm my tongue hurts and we have ginniea pigs hiding in our house I don't have enough redheads at UPS I'm kinda high and on painkillers also cnn is kinda sucking right now ahhh that chip was particularly flavorful

	2007.10.24  11.51 You Think I Would Learn... But I don't. Sigh. I need to stop being attracted to the Scotts they be bad news bears. Next attractive scottish person I meet I will prod with a ten foot pole and say "see this pole, ten feet, ten feet" And hopefully this won't hope thrice... Sigh

	2007.10.20  08.47 Awkward...or maybe Stalkward huhuhuh yeah I know do your paper

	2007.10.14  16.54 I neeeed to write a paper, but my anxiety is all meh and i have been watching football al day. Fuck. Well I did have a good convo with my next door neighbor frat boy who is an art major and i just want to be like why are you in a frat? Oh well, A game right, right sooner or later. I just wish my head was clear and i wasn't nausious

	2007.10.06  22.58 It's natural Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

	2007.10.02  14.33 it's art .

	2007.10.01  21.32 screams into a pillow... no body but nemo hears

	2007.09.18  10.20 nobody expects a wednesday I'm naususe errrrrg errrrrrrrg I've been awake for too long about 4 hours and I'm nauseus. I have to write a paper by 5 tomorrow but I have secret agent man in spanish in my head-Thanks tracy thanks. I know I' m a difficult person to read sometimes but it is strange when you meet someone quite like you who you have problems with such as reading them and you are like ergggg and then you realize shit I'm a kettle and they are black....something like that. So they are hard to read so are you and you understand them thusly. It still doesn't make life easier...you know what makes life easier sex, good sex. Man, why does everyone who would sleep with me be in socal??? okay I'm sure people in tacoma would sleep with me but they live in tacoma have you met anyone who spends their free time in tacoma.........yeah I thought so, even at school there are like 10% of the pop whi is interesting how many of those who have not left...ah ryan and will, do i find atttractive and can talk to...shit like that hits when you least expect it to like on wednesdays...no one expects a wednesday.... sleep away ahhhhhh I took a walk in the rain walked to a quite little bar...no gin but three differ types of cider. I was alone and actually enjoyed myself, watching football stats ad reading the stranger. however when people tak to me I get deffensive unless its the bartender. a person offered me a drink as I was leaving i left taking a cig from the person-I meant no offense but I ony accept drinks from friends or interesting people...maybe next type ....till then so long space cowboy

	2007.09.14  19.16 Okay so I'm alive...I think. I'm trying to get my housemate matt to write this entry for me but he is being a butt. So today my twin brother is actually being the butt. We had specific plans to visit home and spend some time with our female family, which is rare, and yet he blows this plan off to be with his very unstable gf who ALWAYS is feeling lonely or moody. Anyway i'm having a great weekend; i got a lot of things done this week and feel very accomplished. Next week will be a party week, but this week i want to make sure that i have everything understood from my classes and then i will be on track academically and have no doubts while partying it up next weekend. So stay tuned for the wild tales of Lisa and her Wild housie Matt! He is green crazy and will probably turn this place into a random, bright or neon, dance club with lots of naked women running around with clothes on. lol. Meaning of course that they are not naked, but still running, which i find sexy. so yay. Have a great weekend people and tune in later for more of Lisa'charlie' rantings about random things. yay!!! he's listening to techno and whistling and you all know how I feel about whistling...damn commie bastards. Well.... In the mean time I live in a big house, I'm back at UPS if anyone didn't know and I live with beth, ben-some met them they came to SF a whiles back and Erik from my honor's program and then a transfer student charlie who makes me the second oldest (and steals part of my nickname)...and Matt who is a twin and a butt. well he wrote stuff now and we see that his twin is infact the butt

	2007.06.21  14.38 i'm sick and my computer is out of commision look a bunny!

	2007.06.05  15.42 Soma or Zucchini lalalala lalalala lalalala FUCKING A MAN la oh by the by checked out the r'side and LA they both are still in socal and thus suck. But I had fun and more some. I wasn't as lucky as a Zucchini BUT REALLY HOW MANY OF US ARE??? I lost my lip ball holder thing but I made a fort with rhonda and mike m. SOOOO it kinda all was pretty good Need to sleep more tho MORE DRUGS OR LESS DRUGS -that's what it comes down too

	2007.05.24  13.01 I'm Alive...I swear no I'm not just saying this cause I got a gun to my head OFF to fail another final yeah low brain copacity!!!! yeah math sucks but I NEED TO SHOW up cause if I pass then w00t last math class of my life unlessyou basterds include global economics...which I kinda do This week Tacoma Next week Riverside Then The world muhahahaha or maybe Santa Cruz, we'll see how it goes I be rolling with the punches FUCK I NEED TO STUDY...final in less than 27 mins.... ww00tt

	2007.04.24  16.29 time kills and cures I should feel so lucky. I should. I mean I have a decent education. A good home, a mother who has adapted enough to know this is not a phase, her daughter is just strange and still loves me. I'm decently smart, people trust me for important things/life. I own a rat. I have a huge house in SF that will be mine, all mine in the future. My mom has a good income, so I don't have to worry too much. My friends, my good friends generally love me. people I barely know and people I really deeply know think I'm awesome. yet, there is a yet. There is no peace. I think I am a bit closer to coming to terms and taking control of my life. Of being hopeful for summer and what it will be. of the future, thinking of the suture and it's possibilities not the past, in the past there are no possibilities, on what is and regret. Next year in taco-ma it WILL suck. but it is only two semesters I can handle it. And then the rest of my life and sure it feels like I will be missing an arm by letting go of certain things in my past but with time, I realize that the arm was trapped under a rock and keeping me down plus bah arms like those don't grow back! Mood: contemplative

	2007.04.15  21.54 I have gotten into a habit of choking on my words with certain people. There is so much I want to say, but we live so far away, but we have known each other for a long time, forever it feels like, and yet we can tell each other just about anything and although we know each other so well better than most people, we choke, we pretend, we suffer silently together hopeful for the best. yeah, so...in other words for things that take action look at rhonda's post. Think of what you think our shittyish weekend was and add the improbable. EVERYONE AND I MEAN EVERYONE, bring your friends... starting the weekend of the 26th and the following weekend there will be the play i have been working on. even if you don't like the theater COME give it a shot cause you know it is sf state it has everything and it is pretty good and amazing...there is awesome sets,a real plot, high heels, and dancing, what more could you ask for???

	2007.04.12  20.48 it worries me “Does Carbon-14 disprove the Bible?” The answer: “When a scientist’s interpretation of data does not match the clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinterpret the Bible. God knows just what he meant to say, and His understanding of science is infallible, whereas ours is fallible.” I liked it better when I assumed everyone I knew believed in evolution, or at least I liked it better when I thought my mom believed in evolution

	2007.04.12  16.28 erg erg erg. this is why I wanted to leave for spring break. Cause yeah I saw allie and mat and that was cool, but now I am on day two of sleeping in and watching movies, I have resorted to watching tv too, it bites. But everyone else is busy, they had their spring breaks and now school is finishing up and teachers are throwing in assignments they forgot. Plus most of the people I really want to see, and never get to see are in boston-MCLA, or tennessee. BALLS. and the kiddies who no longer are in college for now they suck too with their jobs and their drama and yeah. i wish i could drive, drive away go to some city and explore for the day. you can't do that if you don't have a car or someone to drive you. I want school to be over, I want my degrees, I want a life

	2007.04.04  01.58 jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk jk omg lol

	2007.04.01  23.17 I won! Joe: what you been up to me: mainly just dealing with boys Joe: yea Joe: boys are stupid Joe:thats why i like girls me: and occaionally enjoying the fact i can go to bars Joe: true Joe: 21 now? me: eh but girls can be so annoying me: yup Joe:lol Joe: eh we can all be Joe: girls are prettier tho me: but girls don't have a penis Joe: yeah you got a point me:exactly Joe: well Joe:do have a clitoris which is tecnically a penis-like bodypart me: yeah but come on in a fight between a clitoris and a penis whose side would you be on Joe:true true I thought things were going well, I guess it was the calm before the storm, maybe i'm lucky and half the storm is over and the calm was the eye of the storm...maybe FUCK thing were going so wellish. now now i just want to cuddle in bed. I can't even enjoy smoking as much as before, both smoking. I also haven't been drink too heavily, but 2 (?) nights ago I did 4 shots of VERY cheap vodka (salvadorian 3 dollar vodka that I bought duty free, so yeah CHEAP) and then some. I don't think i'm going through a depression like i did 4 years ago. I am just so frustrated. we had worked so hard for our friendship and now now things are all crazy. It is even do i dare say Mayonase crazy. Mood: frustrated Music: vandals

	2007.04.01  00.53 "your family is made of meat" They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "Meat. They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat." "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?" "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines." "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact." "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines." "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat." "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat." "Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage." "Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?" "Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside." "Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through." "No brain?" "Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you." "So ... what does the thinking?" "You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat." "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!" "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?" "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat." "Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years." "Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?" "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual." < 2 > "We're supposed to talk to meat." "That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing." "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?" "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat." "I thought you just told me they used radio." "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat." "Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?" "Officially or unofficially?" "Both." "Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing." "I was hoping you would say that." "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?" "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?" "Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact." "So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe." "That's it." "Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?" "They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them." "A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream." "And we marked the entire sector unoccupied." "Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?" "Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again." "They always come around." "And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..." by terry bisson extra points for knowledge of title ref.