celery 77

used to be one of the rotten ones

2008-12-21T23:57:00.000-08:00

Things I did tonight:

Leaning forward, with my ex, whose birthday it was, draped across my back, myself trying desperately to make conversation with N. and M. who were sitting on the bench to my left, because two girls were making out directly behind me, one of them being my ex, heavily leaning into my spine and kissing this girl on my other side in the cramped bar booth in snowy Portland.

I played it cool. I made polite conversation.

but, like, promise you won't tell anyone else

2008-12-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Reasons I would make a good spy:

I'm a natural brooder. From what I can gather, espionage requires lots of brooding -- brooding about just what you think the other spies are up to, brooding about whether or not your carefully crafted plan will work exactly as you want, brooding about whether or not you're actually working for the good guys or the bad guys because the two sides come to resemble each other so much after all the years, all the operations gone bad, all the allegiances made, broken, then sold off to the highest bidder, brooding about whether people are motivated by love, money, pride, whatever -- and like I said this type of brooding is basically second nature to me. I already do this type of stuff for free all over town, no reason why we can't make me a spy and have all this brooding go to some greater good. Give me a trench coat, a haircut remarkable only for its unremarkability, and a smoky, dimly lit booth in some hotel bar where I'm performing surveillance on a suspected double agent, and I'll be brooding before the first drop of expensive scotch on the government's tab hits the back of my throat. If there was one single thing I was brought into this world to do, brooding is probably it.

I'm also a natural at resisting emotional intimacy. One thing I've picked up about spying is is that romance is one of the surest ways to expedite one's downfall. This will not be a problem for me. At the moment, some might even say my life would be better served by having someone close to me, allowing someone to love me and then loving them in return, but still I soldier on, alone, distant, inscrutable, absolutely resistant to this saccharine nonsense of love, commitment, lasting emotional intimacy and other such pop psychology nonsense. Just see the way I already resist girls' advances at parties, or the way I mentally cross like half the female population off the list for their choice in wardrobe alone, or the way I clam up, brood, turn remote and resolutely quiet when people try to talk to me about issues close to my heart. I'm not just a man with discerning tastes in women, I am downright resistant to seduction, immune to intimacy. Sure, maybe I'll fuck a local in some Eastern European farmhouse while hiding out in a family home while on the run to the border from the dragnet of my lethal pursuers, but I won't whisper any secrets to her while we lay in the haystacks, wrapped in each other's arms. I have to leave, I will say. I am sorry, but you won't see me any more. Then I will disappear without a trace, the gentle farm girl left to wonder exactly who I was, what made me tick, and if she would ever see me again. My core will remain rock solid, my emotions completely in check. Like I said, these type of things are every day things for me right now, no reason I couldn't begin immediately applying these skills in the world of espionage.

I guess I love my country, or whatever. That's covered, no worries.

I'm also great at resolving any and all psychological problems through drinking. I'm not going to take out the psychological scars from the horrors I encounter in the field on the Deputy of Operations (or D-Ops -- see? I already have the lingo), I'm not going to emotionally torture my my loved ones at home (because, like we already established, no loved ones), I'm not going to crack up in the middle of some top secret black op because I'm worried if my wife is missing me or anything like that. I'm just going to get shitfaced in the shower of my hotel room alone and leave it at that. I mean, okay, if I'm on some particularly grueling operation in the opium rich areas of the mideast, I can't say I won't smoke a little opium to help the time pass, but I mean it's not like that habit can't be beat with some modern treatment once I return to the warm confines of the super secret spy base back home, and even if I can't beat it, well shoot, then I'll just be the opium smoking spy. I think it's important every spy have their eccentricities, right?

I like suits and dressing well. If we can get me some kind of secret serum which would allow me to grow enough hair on my upper lip to form a mustache, I would be very open to the possibility of growing a mustache. Waxing the mustache in place, we'd have to negotiate.

I'm good at languages. I take a perverse pleasure in willfully misleading people. I've looked at a globe before, and I have a natural distaste for dictators, hegemonies, and oligarchies the world over, unless, of course, they're one of our dictators, hegemonies, or oligarchies, in which case I can easily navigate the cynical philosophical conclusions regarding their exact necessity in the Greater Good necessary to proceed and all that. I mean, I'll be killing people at some point, so I guess this sort of it's wrong but not really wrong stuff I'll have to learn to be comfortable with either way. I like gadgets. I like telling stories.

I'm fucking set up for this shit, that's what I'm saying here. Born for it even. If you know of any clandestine operations you need carried out (with cool secret code names like Operation: Broken Ground or Operation: Red Panda or Operation: Saddlebags only please; I'm not going to mess with some bush league Operation: Get Revenge On My Ex-Boyfriend shit here; I'm a pro), please don't hesitate in contacting me.

is going into an Apple Store always the worst experience of your life?

2008-11-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

The door was guarded by an overweight guy with poor facial hair, some kind of earpiece in his ear. His shirt was orange, perhaps to signal that he was a leader of some kind, or perhaps he was still an initiate, I'm not sure. Spread out behind him was a sea of light blue shirts, dotting the corner of every table, every display.

My first reaction was perhaps the sales associates had taken to kidnapping the customers, forcing them to work in Apple's machine in order to pay off those ridiculous prices, because the employees outnumbered the customers something like 4:1, maybe even 5:1. It was obscene -- an entire phalanx set up to keep me from browsing their product in peace.

I don't think I had even completely stepped into the shop before the orange shirted man engaged me, "Can we help you find something?"

I wanted to give him the "nah," then keep it moving, but then I saw the second line of attack, then the third and fourth draped in that bright blue, more orange shirts roaming free amid the back lines, ready to sweep me up lest I get free. "Ummm ... I was looking for headphones."

"You can find those on the back on the 4th shelf there. Do you need a to help you find what you're looking for?"

"No thanks."

I think I got asked maybe two or three more times on my way to the back wall if I needed help finding anything, all those hungry eyes engaging mine when I made the mistake of looking beyond my shoes, all those Steve Jobites obviously upset that I was walking alone through their store, free of accompaniment. I just wanted to see if they had a specific set of headphones, I didn't need a chaperone! The Apple Store clearly disagreed.

I found the headphone section, carefully angled my back to the rest of the room so maybe I wouldn't be approached again, and started browsing. I looked through the wall. They didn't have what I wanted. Eventually, while looking through the other options, I apparently broke some kind of edict by independently browsing for so long, and I was approached again by another anonymous blue-shirt wearing sales hawk.

"Need help finding anything?"

"Yeah, I'm looking for a specific model of headphone from this brand here. Do you have anything else in the back?"

"Did you look in the online store before you came in?"

What kind of question is that? Was this an attempt at guile? He was going to confuse, then offer to show me the overpriced laptops. I could see his devious salesperson mind working away.

"Well, I mean I looked online and you guys were listed as a dealer, so I thought I'd check if you had what I wanted."

"If we don't have them in stock, you can place an order through the online Apple Store. Would you like me to place an order for you? I'll take care of it all for you. There is free shipping on all orders and it will arrive in 2-3 days."

I didn't know simply walking into a store and getting a product was such a difficult proposition these days. If I wanted to get the headphones online, I would have done that. Apple is hardly the only online retailer in the world. For a store selling a tech-savvy image, you'd think they'd know better than to insult their potential customers like this. I also knew this blue-shirted guy didn't know jack-shit about high quality headphones, no point asking for another recommendation. I knew he didn't give a shit about whether or not I got the product I was looking for, he just wanted me to make a donation to the Church of Mac. I knew I was ready to burst at all the goddamn salesmanship being foisted upon me, and that even if I eluded this pushy online-reserving neophyte, I had nothing but a sea of fellow blue-shirted clones still surrounding me on all sides, being clearly directed by the orange ones to collectively maneuver to eliminate my autonomy. I knew I was defeated.

"Look, I'll just go somewhere else," I said rather rudely, in an attempt to signal my determination to not discuss it further.

"Okay. Let me know if I can help with anything else." He seemed confused now. He didn't know why I wouldn't want to take his pitch.

I locked my eyes straight at the ground and bolted for the door, still being asked if I needed help to find something by the armada of blue-shirters during my interminable 60' flight back to freedom. I ignored them and pressed forward, my resolve to leave this place and never return solidifying with each determined step. The orange-shirted doorman made sure to add as I left, calling out to me beyond the limits of his corporate castle now because I had stalked so quickly past, "Thanks for coming in today! Hope to see you again!"

and I'm not making this up

2008-08-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

So at the baseball game last night, this being the first baseball game D. and I had attended since the previous, the previous game being the one where I got to wear D.'s birthday gift for me for the first time, the Portland Beavers baseball cap, in the previous game the first Portland batter to step to the plate hitting a home run, then the second Portland batter hitting a homerun right after him, obviously a sign that the hat is good luck and D. and I are clearly the reason for the team's success.

Then last night -- the first Portland batter gets up and hits a home run, and D. and I look at each other and say, well, I guess the next guy is going to have to just go ahead and park another one. He gets up, takes a huge swing at the first pitch, and completely misses.

Next pitch he cracks it over the right field fence.

Two batters, two homeruns to open a game, twice in a row now.

You explain that to me without using the words "Tieg" and "D.".

all my shoes are dancing shoes

2008-05-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

Let's fucking talk about it.

Me and D. left the place we were playing poker, and decided to drop by the Tube. On Saturdays they have a DJ that plays lots of 1950s-60s soul and R&B records. If you can't dance to soul and R&B, you probably root for the Lakers (as we all know, a cardinal sin). But here's the thing -- I don't know if you know the Tube (it's downtown, right off Burnside), but it's a hipster bar -- small, cozy, but still unforgivingly hip, so when we got there the crowd was largely seated, off in the booths, along the sides with their hair done, their make-up carefully arranged, and desperately waiting to see if other scenester people like them were going to show up to validate their fashion sense.

So me and D.? We walked in, we set down our bags, and we started dancing. At first, it was the two of us, but obviously we didn't care. Some well-meaning (and obviously decent) fellows quickly joined in; our two person dance party had become five. We danced with even more fervor. As new patrons came in and approached the bar, I made sure to turn and shake directly at them, to let them know -- you are at a place where people are dancing, and if you're not dancing, you're fucking uncool.

And shake, shake, shake a leg we did. We fucking held it down. We did not stop. We absolutely perservered.

By the time we left? There was a full dance floor. More or less the entire bar was flooded with people getting down. We had a few different people come and compliment us, tell us we started the whole thing, mention how we were the police of the dance floor and such. It was ours. It is ours. We own that space.

In a nuthsell that's me and D. We went to a bar. No one was dancing. We started dancing. When we left the whole fucking place was shaking a leg. That's what the two of us did, that's the power the two of us have. Your welcome, Portland, because tonight you enjoyed yourself a little bit more because of us.

fuck a april shower, flowers are here today

2008-04-20T21:55:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time.

The Portland winter came around and kicked my butt once again, trapped indoors, struggling for positive things to focus on, I languished. I think that's the most polite way to say it.

But Spring is here again. How do I know? Is it because I quit my second job and proceeded to have a fantastic weekend in the best weather of the year (riding my bike all across town, getting sunburned even, a little touch of almond finding its way onto my arms, dancing on a Saturday night, ping pong outdoors, basically perfection)? Is it because my other job is starting to come together and treat me well (I mean I was getting flowers delivered to my desk on Friday)? Or is it just more simply because the ducks in my life are getting in a row or whatever it is that those ducks do?

No, it's because I spent the day indoors today, watching sports, playing videogames, watching movies, and little else; I loved it. It's been a long time coming. I'm fed, warm, confident, and capable, and my daily plate is full enough at the moment that taking a breather like today is exactly what I needed.

It's here, kids. Spring is here.

on serendipity

2008-04-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

So apparently the Los Angeles Lakers haven't had a winning season series against the Portland Trailblazers since the 1992-93 season.

I knew there was a reason I moved here besides the cute girls.

dear authorities

2008-04-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

So I went next door to grab something out of D.'s apartment, and stacked on her countertop are box cutters, about 8 or 9 high.

Suspicious? I sure think so. How could I have not known it would be the all-American, "local," lily white, blond girl, who I attended college with and speaks even better English than me. For those who think I'm jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information, did you read about what happened on 9/11? Box cutters might as well be the new secret mafia tattoo.

So now what do I do? I left casually, trying to play it off like I didn't see, but maybe I should have tackled her, started pulling her hair or something? Do I call a number? Is there a number for me to call? In the end I've decided I'm just going to make this post, and hopefully someone with the Authorities will come across it. In the meantime, say a little prayer for me, because I have a terrorist across the hall, who gives me free shoes, lets me borrow her stuff, lends me money, and is good fun in general, but a terrorist all the same.

I wake up early on my born day

2007-12-12T01:32:00.000-08:00

My worst birthday was probably my 24th. Stuck at my mom's house in San Jose with no one to spend it with but my old friend A., I found myself loafing around the tweener apartment complex, with somewhere around seven units, that no less than three of my friends used throughout the years as the first landing pad after leaving their parent's nest, tucked in behind a decrepit old strip mall barely buoyed along by the Safeway stuck in the middle, with the movie theaters I still refer to as the $2 theaters from the days of my youth (despite the fact they'd climbed to the astronomical figure of somewhere around $4 by this point in time), tons of asphalt, stupid stop signs, and a huge expressway nearby. It was a small hamlet of everything I had spent the previous 23 years trying to escape, and there I was again.

My friends were broke so I ended up purchasing not only the meal for everyone kind enough to join me on this momentous occasion, but the booze for all of us as well. Highlights of the evening included a drunken phone call from my then girlfriend over-animatedly wishing me a happy birthday followed by no less than ten minutes of drunkenly slurred confessions of love, a voice mail by a loyal and always well meaning friend who I hear from two or three times a year, and visits from the other apartment complex denizens whom I neither knew, nor cared to know, so that they could smoke some of my friend's pot. The denizens had unfortunate facial hair and terrible fashion. We watched Bad Santa, ate some pizza, and then played Time Splitters 3. No amount of booze could have saved the evening for me.

My best birthday was probably my 23rd (only a year prior, yet the same season somehow so much sunnier). I had lots of loving friends in my life who came to my apartment to fete specifically me, who gave me lots of loving presents, some personally thought out and some more general but still generously offered, dinner was bought and paid for by the most dear person in my life, and I felt good. It wasn't the material goods or the location or circumstances or anything like that, I think it was more that at my party, I felt a genuine circle of love around me from all my friends. It was a warm feeling, a feeling of acceptance and support. It felt like what I thought a birthday party should feel like -- just love.

I've spent other birthdays alone, others aimlessly drinking with a friend or two. In elementary school I remember always being bitter about the fact that other children were allowed to celebrate the day by bringing in treats and getting the class' attention, while my summer birthday was merely forgotten, never celebrated amongst my peers minus a single year when one of the teachers allowed all the summer birthdays to have a day near the end of the year together. Such a small gesture, and still not comparable to being the center of the entire class' attention, yet one I always remembered so vividly from then on.

On my 19th birthday I fought a bull, not necessarily to commemorate the day that I burst onto the scene, but simply because my vacation plans ended up working out that way. I fought the bull and the bull won, so as personal experiences go it's not a terrifically poetic episode, just one to remember. It was more touristy, there was only one true friend there with me, and while it may ostensibly appear to be one of my finer birthdays, it didn't have that same feel of love, acceptance, and support that made the other ones such a high point.

I couldn't tell you at all what I did on my 20th. It's a day lost to memory, like many others -- 16th, 13th, 21st even -- but for those ones that stand out, and they are some of the most treasured, poignant, cherished days of my life.

Birthdays are an important day to me and I catalogue them, compare them year to year. They're the one holiday I seem to feel a real excitement for. Whether it's my own or other people's day to be celebrated, I'm always determined to make it the best day I possibly can.

Other holidays and arbitrary days of celebration have never been my thing, but for some reason birthdays have never paled like the others. I mark them upcoming and I get excited. If it's a person I truly care about I start to count the days. Whereas I generally shun the traditional gatherings of friendship and love -- Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving or whatever -- birthdays feel different. I think there's just something to them that isn't present on the traditional holidays.

Of course there's the cycle of life, the convenient chapter breaks and marking of the passage of time. There are milestones and in many ways I feel that some of my own birthdays were important markers of the end of one period and the beginning of another (another, more private reason the 23rd anniversary is so important to me), but it's not the storytelling that makes me so interested in them. It's something more than just remarking upon the passage the individual has taken to that point.

In the others holidays I feel obligated to feign love and compassion for those around me, but that's not the case with birthdays. Whenever I'm celebrating with someone, I'm there because I love them, because I'm happy they're in my life, and I'm happy there's a day for us to celebrate that person alone. More simply, I'm happy they're here in my life with me, and I find pleasure in the celebration of that simple fact.

Birthdays are for commemorating an individual -- not an institution, not a religious event, nothing like that -- but the person you hold dear. Of course there's some guilt and obligation in making sure you're seen on a person's birthday, but that exists because you don't ever want them to doubt your support of them. It's a day for an individual celebration, the elevation of a single life, enjoying its passage further in time, and I love sharing that with people. For all the people I've loved and all the people who do the same in return, birthdays are the holidays that I love to celebrate with each other. It's your day, it's my day, it's our day together. It's the time to commemorate how cool it is we're all here and doing what we can to get by in life, and how excited we can be about that.

Thanks to everyone I've ever been able to share these greatest of holidays days with, the day we were goddamn born.

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-25T08:52:00.000-08:00

Well it's that beautiful time of year again, with another fruitful and blessed year behind us, and once again I have many gifts to share with you all in this update!

My little PS2 finally spun its last little spin. It was 6 years, but the laser finally called it quits, and the system won't play so much as pong. I'd say I mourned its passing, but really I've played all the games I ever really want to play on it, and it was probably for the best it died when it did. I've been able to discover other things, like going to bars and drinking a lot, in its absense, so I thank it for that!

My music collection grew a considerable amount, as my bank accounts dwindled, my personal expectations re: not stealing took a noticeable slip, and I got connected with some premiere internet music stealing sites. I've downloaded more albums than one could shake a stick at, and this is taking into consideration that they really just inhabit a small number of 1s and 0s on my hard drive. I stole a lot!

(To all the bands I stole from: I'm sorry, hopefully your family got you something nice for Christmas to make up for it!)

The San Jose Sharks remained trapped under the tyrannical yet still dainty thumb of Ron Wilson. Despite being the best team in the league, they lost in the playoffs yet again because, well, that's what Ron Wilson teams do!

The Golden State Warriors finally had the sense to kick that sorry college poseur to the curb, but they also brought back the man that sank the franchise into the dark ages that they're currently trying to recover from. I remain on the fence about this, but still blindly loyal for no good reason besides the fact that I somehow aspire to properly follow an unwritten code of fandom.

(I know you all were waiting for these two updates with baited breath, because it's not like information you couldn't easily google up for yourself or anything. Well there it is, you're welcome.)

Other than that I graduated college, moved, and got a job! Happy Holidays!

you're friggin weird for reading this

2006-11-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not a little weird. Although sometimes I suspect that those who know me wonder this quite frequently, but for me it really takes something special to give rise to the feeling.

Witness: my ride to work. As far as I can tell, I’m the only person who rides a BMX and not some futuristic 35-speed or something, doesn’t have weird, tight, lycra biking pants, doesn’t wear a helmet, and doesn’t have an annoying array of blinking lights situated about my person. As for the first concern, I’m looking into getting a road bike. They’re not free, though, and for the time being my BMX does just fine moving me from point A to point B in a reasonably timely fashion. As for the biking pants, are these people aware how they look? Everybody else on the trail besides me seems to be wearing a pair, they really can’t plead ignorance. As for the helmet, I have to ride four blocks from my house to the trail, and then about five from the trail to my work. The other 90 or so percent of the ride is spent on a bike trail, at its closest about 250 feet removed from any roadway with any traffic worth considering, and I’ve gone ahead and made the executive decision to jettison any concern over the risk of anything catastrophic happening to me on a completely flat, typically empty, extremely well maintained bike path. The odds of me just suddenly falling over while pedaling in a straight line just doesn’t warrant the investment in a stupid-looking piece of headgear. Ditto for the lights, plus jesus is it annoying to ride into one of those flashing monsters at 7 in the morning. I might buy one just so I can flash back at those jerks.

So anyway this somehow makes me unique, even “weird” perhaps. Personally I’m not buying. I personally think it’s much more odd to be terrified of head injury on a flat, straight bike path. I think it’s odd I’m the only person who might be concerned about the eyes of other oncoming bikers. And those pants. I am not, nor will I ever be, weird for choosing to wear regular slacks, no matter how unpopular a decision it might appear to be on my bike path.

But that’s it. That’s all. This is one of my few moments of doubt, my moments where I wonder if I am somehow beyond the norm, but really, we all see the evidence here, and I think we all know the proper conclusion to make. Those pants are weird, not me.

sometimes I really like watching TV and falling asleep, too

2006-10-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

I feel like my life is turning into the scene in Fight Club, the whole "I felt like I'd been asleep" kind of thing, or the whole intro to American Beauty where Kevin Spacey says jerking off is the high point of his day, or any other number of those other films or novels or songs or TV shows about the mundanity of adult, professional life. I work Monday through Friday, my weekly highlights include watching lots of football on Sunday and sneaking a beer at lunch on Wednesday. Friday has become its own little drug, where at roughly 3:15 on any given one you can trust that I'm feeling pretty good. The rest of the week is spent in anticipation of this rush.

For all the bleekness and depression that others have described it with, I don't find it particularly disheartening. It's just a challenge to myself to make better use of my free time.

In my free time I'm planning things like making movies, watching movies, going to concerts, writing, reading, all this other exciting, cultural stuff, but right now I yet to follow through with many of those plans. I suppose if I was better adjusted, I might be planning on meeting my wife, buying a house, and having those proverbial 2.4 kids, but as of right now that still doesn't interest me. I'm worried my kids, at least in the early stages, wouldn't like my record collection enough for me to respect them.

So in the end I stay at home at listen to my music alone when I'm not at work. It's good music. If the people at my work had any taste and let me play it while I was there, I doubt I'd mind going at all, actually. There's something attractive about just falling asleep for a long time, a nice bedtime soundtrack playing, capable of sleeping in as late as I want -- 30, 40, my retirement, etc. I have always enjoyed a good nap.

it's true, I have a college degree

2006-10-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

I've lived in Portland over four months now and I still hadn't taken my bike on the bus yet, not because I didn't want to take my bike on the bus, not because there weren't times where I definitely should have taken it on the bus, but mainly because I was terrified that I would go to put my bike on front rack and completely fuck up and be totally mortified. I think the possibility of being out in front of the bus, in the perfect spot for every passenger to stare out and marvel at your ineptitude is is the part that really makes it terrifying -- all those people whose schedules would be held up while you fumbled and fought and tried to get your bike on but failed, failed at a completely elementary task, just placing a bike on a rack, that even third graders should be able to handle with ease -- and all the passengers witness to your inadequacy.

So I studied. Anytime someone approached a bus with a bike on or near their person, I would watch like a hawk. It was critical that I saw all stages of the operation for the inevitable time that I braved the very process myself. How did they place the bike? Did they communicate with the bus driver before performing the operation? How long did it take them? Did they look comfortable doing it? Did everyone inside the bus stare and judge? Would I be stared at and judged?

This morning was my turn. It was raining, I couldn't realistically ride my bike home in the weather. I definitely thought about riding home, not just because I wanted to save $1.70, but because I wasn't entirely confident I was ready for the bike loading process. It's been four months and I still wasn't sure if I was ready. I wondered if they had buses without the bike racks and maybe I could get lucky and just take it inside the bus. Why didn't they just let people take their bikes onto the bus? When I ride the MAX I just have to take my bike on, it's painless and easy. Still, the weather was really much too bad for me to ride home -- not just the rain, but there was likely a wind that would be blowing against me the whole way home -- and there was just one easy bus to take me home, so despite my fears, the bus it was.

I rode out to the stop and waited, mentally prepped myself for the impending taskt. Eventually the bus approached. My time was upon me.

I wish I could say that loading my bike onto the front rack was a painless process, the multiple rides of studying allowing me to just easily lower the rack, place the bike on, and then board confidently, but no, it wouldn't be so simple. There were confusing instructions:

v PULL HANDLE v

which seems easy enough, but let me tell you the arrows were not pointing to any handle. The handle was missing. This was the first step in the whole process and the handle was missing. Where was the handle? Why did it all have to go wrong on the first damn step?

I started panicking. I didn't know what to do. I'd honestly been building this moment up for months and here I was, in the moment of truth, and it was all coming to pieces. It was raining on me and the bus was waiting and I couldn't decipher a two-word instruction. I pulled everything I thought those arrows were pointing to. I pulled hard, I pulled softly, I pulled upward, sideways, shoved a little down or side to side or anything, something had to be a handle, somehow I had to pull it.

I looked to the busdriver inside for help and this is what she said, "PULL THE HANDLE!"

Then she pointed downwards.

I looked, that's exactly what the directions said. Her help wasn't very helpful. I looked up again, "PULL. THE. HANDLE!" and she pointed. I sort of wished she had just started the bus and ran me over.

Eventually she jumped outside to help me. There was a handle, it was hidden behind the ad, below the signs. I'd like to say it wasn't obvious. I really don't think it was very obvious. When she finally got out to help me, she said, "I bet you have a college degree."

Is it because of the glasses? Is that why she said that?

my triumphant return (with really old writing)

2006-10-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

This is an old assignment, but I was re-reading it recently, and I remembered that I liked it, and that I liked writing, and that I should really be writing here more often, so to hopefully re-invigorate my own interest in this space, here's a quick copy and paste job.

Playing Around

To begin our semester, our class read an editorial by Phillip Pullman, called “Common sense has much to learn from moonshine: It’s time English teachers got back to basics – less grammar, more play,” which I will now admit to liking quite a bit. Not simply because I want to fool around in my future classroom and skip the tough lessons, but because the man has a point: “It's when we fool about with the stuff the world is made of that we make the most valuable discoveries, we create the most lasting beauty, we discover the most profound truths. The youngest children can do it, and the greatest artists, the greatest scientists do it all the time.” Pullman argues that playfulness is a necessary element in any discovery, any time someone sets out to create meaning. The fact that we currently choose to emphasize hard work, high standards, and standardized knowledge in our schools seems to contradict what our greatest creative minds already know about learning and discovery. It is not only possible to have fun while learning and creating meaning at the same time, it is often the most productive method as well. Many writing teachers have (hopefully) already discovered that these two things – fun and meaning – complement each other very well. Isn’t it about time we taught our students this lesson, instead of keeping it to ourselves?

Much of the writing we currently expect our students to perform is terribly dull and uninspiring – science reports, compare/contrast essay, literary analyses, argumentative essays. Certain voices are valued while others are discouraged. (I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I will admit to personally cussing considerably more during my real-life arguments than I have in any of my argumentative essays to date – and having more fun while doing it.) Somewhere along the line a lot of us learned that composing is an uncomfortable process, best left to the famous, old white men and the angry, darker-skinned women who don’t like them. This has not done much good for our general attitudes and approaches to writing. I’m personally very concerned about getting my student’s interested in the process of writing, considering the likely attitudes they will enter my classroom with.

Yet how did this negative approach to writing happen given the expressive composition theory of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s? Revolutionary teaching was catching hold, and suddenly student writers were the stars! Everyone’s voice was important and belonged in the writing classroom. James Berlin, in his essay “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class,” describes the expressive ideology, “[Writing] is an art, a creative act in which the process – the discovery of the true self – is as important as the product – the self discovered and expressed” (27). This sounds like something students should like, right? This approach to writing is also meant to cover all instances of putting word to paper, “The most important measure of authenticity, of genuine self-discover and self-revelation, furthermore, is the presence of originality in expression; and this is the case whether the writer is creating poetry or writing a business report” (28). This approach sounds like it could be playful, fun, a positive happening in a student’s life. If we agree that we want our students excited about writing, why has expressive theory fallen out of fashion in contemporary composition theory? Was it, as Pullman loosely suggests, the grammarians that did us in? Or are there more sinister forces at work? What happened to our true voices, our personal-political revolution, our writing classrooms full of music and love?

Well, a lot of things. For one thing, people began realizing that there are more types of writing than the personal narrative, and expressive pedagogy over-emphasizes this genre. Writing teachers were encountering too many confessional essays, and too few academic ones. This approach also didn’t find favor with conservative forces, both inside and outside the university, who were more interested in issues such as “rigor” and final grades. If a teacher’s goal is to have her students realize their true selves, how can the teacher know when this occurs? Will the student have a certain, definable glow and demeanor that only professionals can recognize? Or is it all a bunch of hooey? These are some of the issues and questions I’ve been dealing with as a student in one of my own English classes this semester, which I will tell you about, here.

Inventing Good Work – Writing with Little Direction

My class is designed as a writer’s workshop in the expressive mode. In my class we are, rather ironically, required to sit in a circle every class hour; we are currently spending two days a week in peer response groups to work on our writing which responds to the prompt: “Write whatever you want, just as long as you write;” I received a hug from the teacher on the very first day, and most importantly, there are no wrong answers. There are no topics which are considered off limits in our writing. I have read peers’ stories concerning the struggles of being alcoholic, the joy of smoking pot with a little sister, wanting to cheat on your boyfriend, waking up drunk in a stranger’s front yard (oh wait, that one was mine), losing your boyfriend, looking for a boyfriend, looking for somewhere to belong, etc. Based on this sample of topics, full of drugs and cheap romance, it would appear our unofficial prompt is “college life.” These are our lives, what we should be writing about – or so we’re told. As a class we are strongly encouraged to take pleasure in our writing, but I’m still having a hard time with that. Because in actuality, if we’re expected to be developing any useful skills for writing within the academy, or in any context outside of our loving and accepting classroom, I would say that our teacher is doing us a great disservice, and I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed.

For one, the looseness of the structure and open-ended nature of the class policies leads most students to simply taking advantage of the relative generosity when compared to the typical classroom setting, the phrase “taking advantage” being used in the negative sense. When I heard that there are no due dates, besides the end of the semester, I heard (as most students in the class have, judging by the recent flood of submissions) that I won’t be doing any real work until May. Because we spent an entire class period where the teacher was advocating against letter grades, I now have no real fear of my final grade falling below “passing.” I need only make a very minor effort and my 3 units will be secured. How could my professor fail me, knowing how crushed and demoralized that institutional reprimand might make feel? Basically I realize that this open-ended, supportive, and loving classroom is something of an anomaly compared to the worlds both inside and outside of the university. “I might as well take this class off so I can put my time and energy toward more demanding pursuits,” seems to be the prevailing attitude in the class.

Another concern is the effectiveness of the peer response in a class where we’re frequently reminded that everyone is a great writer. I’m reading other students’ prose, which can be terrific at times, terrible at others, but worst of all I’m receiving their non-expert, largely untrained feedback on my own work. From my peers I mainly hear “I really like this” or “this part is really funny” or “I think you need a dash here” or “yeah, it seems done to me.” I’ve occasionally taken to hiding noticeably terrible pieces of writing in my work in order to see what kind of response I will get to it. I rarely receive any, besides the expected encouragement. About half-way through the semester I had discovered which students in the class offered the most useful feedback, and I’ve since made it a point to work with them whenever possible, despite the professor’s constant urgings to always work with new people. Perhaps if we had done more in the class to cultivate a more productive climate of peer response – reading about response, modeling response, talking about response, etc. – then I might be more willing. But as it stands, with only one half of a class hour during the entire semester ever put toward defining effective peer response, I see little need to work with as many different untrained responders as possible. I also see little improvement in my writing.

Based on the unofficial prompt offered above (“college life”), you shouldn’t be surprised when I tell you that the majority of writing produced by students in this class is easily categorized as “non-academic.” These are not papers that we will be handing in to any of our other professors. I have yet to see a “works cited” page in this class, nor do I think one will ever be required. Often very little meaning is produced in our work, besides that most college students are eager to meet new people and frequently use controlled substances to facilitate that process. In short, we are learning very little about writing except that “writing is good!” which probably does not require an entire semester to cover.

But perhaps my greatest disappointment with the class lies in the fact that I’m a fraud, and my peers don’t seem to recognize it. The writing that I bring into class is often heavily influenced, if not entirely modeled after, the authors that I personally read and admire. The truth is that I have no real voice of my own, I’m only singing along. That short story playing with sentence structure and verb tense? I would never have though of it if it wasn’t for the David Foster Wallace story I was reading at the time. I can’t even bring myself to finish that piece about working as a porn clerk because the on-line author who inspired me to write it in the first place has already completed it much better than I ever could. My latest piece is simply an extension of a joke in Sam Lipsyte’s newest novel, completed in a voice borrowed from the work of another student in the class. I’ve learned the best way for me to work up the desire to write for this class is to go back and read my favorite authors and copy their style. So whenever I receive compliments from my peers I inevitably feel undeserving and end up telling them, “If you think this is good, you should really read the piece that inspired it.”

This is why I know me and David Bartholomae would be friends. He knows that, more than some people would like to admit, writing is an act of imitation. In his essay “Inventing the University” he notices that, “[Students’] papers don’t begin with a moment of insight, a ‘by God’ moment that is outside of language. They begin with a moment of appropriation, a moment when they can offer up a sentence that is not theirs as though it were their own” (49). I admit to experiencing a certain thrill when reading that last sentence, the same thrill of opening the local paper to the article about you on page C7, the thrill of recognition. That’s me he’s talking about! If Bartholomae were in my peer response group, he would surely see me for the fraud I am. Despite being an extremely creative and original thinker in the field of composition studies, he even admits to his own need to imitate; “(I can remember when, as a graduate student, I would begin papers by sitting down to write literally in the voice – with the syntax and key words – of the strongest teacher I had met) (49). Bartholomae recognizes that imitation is both necessary and productive. And despite what the teacher of the class discussed here may tell us, most other professors will expect a certain voice in their students’ writing, an academic, discursively defined voice.

One thing my loving, and accepting English professor and David Bartholomae will agree on is that to teach writing is to teach power, though Bartholomae sees that not all writing has equal power. Bartholomae argues that if a teacher isn’t teaching students how to adopt an academic voice – say, teaching them instead to write about their own lives in whatever genre they deem most appropriate, whatever voice feels “truest” to them – that teacher is, willfully or not, disabling the student. That teacher is not giving the student the skills that the university – the professors and seats of power – will expect of them. Whether the writing teacher sees the skill of being able to use an academic voice as important to the development of “self” or not, the skill will still be expected of prospective students. Bartholomae tells us that there is, in fact, a necessary loss of one’s “true voice” as one enters academic discourse; “To speak with authority [the students] have to speak not only in another’s voice but through another’s code; and they not only have to do this, they have to speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom” (58). Perhaps writing a poem about my frustration at failing the GWPE and failing to earn my degree will help me feel better about it, but it won’t help me pass the damn test. What will help me is learning and adopting the powerful voices in academic circles, and being able to employ them on my own. I agree with my current English professor that forcing this voice upon myself may have a painful, uncomfortable, and limiting effect on my writing, but I don’t see any way to get around it.

My Girlfriend Hated Writing, So I Dumped Her

As I’m walking to school my ex-girlfriend comes up behind me. There is enough space between our previous relationship and now that we can politely speak with each other, and enough shared history between us that we both feel somewhat obliged to do so. One typically safe topic of conversation for two students to share is their current class workload, and thus our polite conversation begins.

She asks me what I’m working on. I reply, “A ten to twenty page paper, due in an extremely short amount of time.”

“God, I’m glad I’m not an English major,” she says, recalling our disagreements regarding our choice of majors, an embarrassingly sore spot in our youthful relationship.

“Yeah, God forbid you might have to do any actual work.”

If my readers think that I will pass up an easy opportunity to poke fun at the Women’s Studies department simply for the sake of politeness toward a previously loved-one, I regret to inform that they have given me too much credit. Need I also point out that, predictably, she didn’t find too much humor in this jab at her politically-leaning major?

“No, it’s just that I hate writing.”

In this response, there is no sarcasm or humor, no petty back-biting. (Point to her, for maintaining class. Dammit.) She hates writing. If she were to compose anything while we lived together, I was more or less required to leave the room. I might be simply sitting on the couch, nose buried in a book for a class of my own, but I was constantly accused of looking at the screen and judging her writing, until I finally learned the best thing to do is position myself at such a distance from the computer that viewing any component of it would be physically impossible.

“You’re looking! Don’t look!” She would always say.

“I’m not! I’m in the damn kitchen! Who cares, anyway? Somebody’s going to have to read it at some point if you want a grade!”

It is around this time, readers, that I began developing a true appreciation (and deep confusion) regarding the seemingly irrational and invincible mental blocks created by unconfident writers, an obstacle that I would certainly one day face should my composition teaching career progress as planned.

“You realize that I, should I read your paper, won’t simply tear it to shreds. I realize that’s unproductive. One of the best revision strategies is to have someone else read it. I do it all the time in my English classes. This means your writing would get better if you just let me read it, and maybe we wouldn’t be having this discussion every time you sat down at the keyboard with me in the same room.”
Was it this supportive attitude or the clever women’s studies jokes that finally drove the spike between us? I will not say, but instead let my readers decide for themselves. (Or possibly it is a heretofore unmentioned third element, much too dangerous to mention in these pages? The intrigue deepens!)

But the one thing that we can know for certain from this scene is that some people, at the very least my ex-girlfriend, find composing a very painful act. (I can tell you, my fellow netizen, that this work itself, the one you are reading right now, was not born with any ease or grace or welcoming parental love, and not simply because I am talking about my ex.) This seems exactly the phenomena that T.R. Johnson is attempting to describe during his extended composing-as-masochism metaphor in his excellent essay “School Sucks.” He puts it much more succinctly and clearly than me, in my story about my ex, when he says, “[…] the writing that people do in school is very rarely pleasurable and, much more often, causes pain” (641). He sums up many of my own feelings when he frankly admits, “[…] the only pleasure that [students] know is when they can breath a sigh of relief and feel ‘glad to have it over with’” (642). Where does the students’ uneasiness come from? What creates this masochistic drive among us to continue composing, only look forward to that point of completion, despite our reluctance to undertake the project in the first place?

It is exactly the academy itself, argues Johnson, encouraging us to participate while reminding us that they are the ones in control. It is exactly the assigned task of “inventing the university” without any real guidance from our mentors, and the accompanying strong possibility of rejection from the university, that lingers in our minds as we struggle to compose. I admit that I like Johnson for his ability to sympathize with me, the frustrated student: “[The students] must strive to submit to a body of rules and conventions that they can only dimly perceive or understand, and they know that they are likely to fail and provoke the censure of that body, an experience that will be embarrassing and painful” (643). When given little guidance on the nature of academic discourse – encouraged to write instead about sex, drugs, rock and roll, etc. in the genre of their choosing – the students can easily feel overwhelmed. Writing inside the university becomes inscribed as a painful process, and people like my ex-girlfriend will go to great lengths to avoid it. When finally required, they will fight through it in privacy and silence, desperately struggling to finally “have it over with.” This approach to writing, all theories agree, is not ideal.

Although Johnson does not presume to know the solution to the problem, he does offer some ideas for us to work with. He encourages us to promote “nonsense” in classroom activities, a feeling of play and renegade dialogue within the academy, showing the students that meaning is not absolute and creating it can even be fun. (Perhaps he and Pullman should be friends.) “Instead of organizing ourselves around a central, transcendent ideal of ‘academic discourse’ as that which names, masters, and controls reality, we need to sensitize ourselves and our students to the openings, cracks, and fissures that occur in every discursive act, the holes in our flags through which the play, laughter, and general slippage of meaning flows” (638). As my narrative scene above illustrates, “play” can be a terribly liberating act in the process of composing. Previous to typing out the scene above, I had locked myself in my room for hours, pouring over previous class readings and scribbled, often incomplete notes, trying desperately to begin this very paper. My ideas were dammed up behind an internal sense of impending failure, uncertain where to place themselves on the page. Not until I allowed myself to play with that personal scene of a few days past, an awkward meeting on the walk to school, was I able to begin composing.

Yet I still remain extremely reluctant to allow myself to play in this essay. What will the academy think? Surely my professors don’t care about awkward encounters with my ex-girlfriend. They have more important things to deal with, like generating another brilliant idea I could never think of, or writing – finally – an exam so tricky that even Jesus would fail. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps my playfulness does belong here. (I really hope it does, because I’m rather committed at this point.) I have Phillip Pullman’s eloquent arguments on my side, and he seems like a smart enough guy. The truth is that I am consciously imitating the voice of certain writers and thinkers that I admire, a voice that allows for play and humor, while actively engaging in the creation of meaning at the same time. I agree with Pullman and Johnson that fun, play, laughter, and the “general slippage of meaning” are showing up absent to most composition classrooms, and I will now force them back in, unwelcome, if I must.

As a prospective teacher I hope to help redress the composing-as-pain model with my students, but not simply by placing my students in a circle, removing deadlines, and giving them hugs. Instead, I intend to be honest with them – writing will hopefully be fun, writing can unfortunately be painful, writing is a recursive process, creativity is good, imitation can also be good, the Clippers will always be a bad basketball team, and we will all die alone. (Okay, I might leave that last one off). Perhaps more importantly, I intend to have my prospective students read articles and essays that are not only actively engaged in the creation of meaning, arguing important ideas and making intelligent points, but articles that have fun while doing it. If I expect this somewhat rare type of writing from my students, this playful yet academic voice, I had better provide some examples.

Reading is Fun, Why Isn’t Writing?!

I once had an acquaintance at San Francisco State University who frequently advocated for increased use of the exclamation point. He saw that this symbol of excitement and strong emotion was noticeably absent in most academic writing, and he made it a point to include at least one “!” in every college essay. He said there should be an unspoken rule that anyone who used an exclamation point in a college essay should be given an automatic A, because unlike most students with their predictable periods, somewhat erratic commas, and occasional semicolons, the “!” student cared. Then in the Spring semester he convinced a large number of his friends that he had gotten married, strung them along for a month or two, complete with wedding band and lengthy heart-to-hearts, before revealing the hoax on April Fool’s Day. In my opinion, he was a brilliant man.

The point being that, for the title alone, I am a fan of “Protesting All Fiction Writers!” by Tom Bissell, an essay from the fourth issue of The Believer, a hip, young literary / culture review publishing out of San Francisco. The subtitle of this piece gives tells us what the essay will cover: “The Underground Literary Alliance believes literature today is ‘out of touch with reality’ and the publishing industry corrupt. Are they prescient revolutionaries or scary stalkers?” Not only is this a smart essay written by a smart man for a smart audience, it’s also terribly funny. I laughed out loud on numerous occasions. I found another Tom Bissell in the back issue I then decided to purchase, “Nazis, Nuremberg, and Gold-Digging Women.” This one covered reality television shows such as Joe Millionaire, the Bachelor, et al., but tied this in to our cultural treatment of the Holocaust and WWII in general. Again, I laughed. I will now admit that Mr. Bissell is a prominent figure in the Group of Certain Writers and Thinkers I Admire.

Because Tom Bissell quoted David Foster Wallace in his reality television / holocaust piece, I decided to read the entire essay. I found the essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” in a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace, titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Not only was I impressed by the arguments contained in the writing, I laughed an awful lot. I hastily added Wallace into the Certain Group I Admire. This experience repeated itself. The more I followed up on the contributors to the magazine, or the authors being discussed, the more I realized that there were lots of people writing like this – like it was important, like it was fun. I was excited to read again. Oddly enough, I also found myself excited to write again.

Finally I was encountering a writing voice that allowed for personal expression, humor, and big ideas, instead of the typically objective and detached academic observer. For me, this was successful writing that I could now imitate. I think this feeling of mine is what Juanita Rodgers Comfort is getting at in her (unfunny, but still good) essay “Becoming a Writerly Self” when she says, “The most successful student writers in my experience learn how to move beyond merely imitating the prose styles and interpretive schemes of disciplinary discourses. They animate those discourses by inventing complex and versatile writerly selves who are able to place their extra-academic worlds into a carefully constructed relationship with those discourse communities” (524). She is arguing for an inclusion of the self as a necessary component of good writing. Not just good creative writing, but academic writing as well. I agree, although I would also add that if I am playful and like making jokes, that belongs in the academy, too. It is inconsistent with our typical images of school to imagine our teachers laughing and having fun – like, ever – and that disappoints me.

I disagree with Comfort when claims that she doesn’t want her students “imitating the prose styles and interpretive schemes of disciplinary discourses.” What I think she means is that she doesn’t want them imitating the traditional prose styles and interpretive schemes. Instead, she wants them to look at non-traditional voices, those of the black feminist authors she admires, in order to begin to understand and appreciate new approaches to academic subjects. “My [black feminist] essayist course afforded my students a measure of comfort and a greater sense of strategy in developing their own ideas, which I think can be transferred effectively to the undergraduate writing classroom” (536). In her opinion, not only will the students in her specifically designed course benefit from reading these authors, but students across the curriculum. This claim I heartily agree with.

So Ms. Comfort suggests that studying black feminist essays will help students understand how to negotiate “the writerly self” in academic discourses. I would suggest that studying writers who allow themselves to play around and have fun, while still actively creating meaning, will also help our students. I know that it has greatly helped me. I hope to laugh a lot in my future classroom, and talk about myself. Hopefully my students will see, through our reading and discussions, that intelligent writing can be fun to read, as well as write, and that their voices do belong in the academic discourse. A student can – no, should – attempt to include stories about a previous relationships while discussing an academic topic. A student shouldn’t be afraid to exclaim! something in their writing. A student should know that if other writers can do it, so can they. A student should know that Phillip Pullman has something when he says, “[…] the only reason for writing is to produce something true and beautiful.” And that it can really help to play around when trying to do that.

hey you! I suck!

2006-05-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

If I were to sum up my time in Arcata in one scene, this would be it:

I am walking to campus, along the pathway at the main entrance, when I stop for a moment to sip from my drink. As I stand in repose, a white mini-van pulls up alongside me and I hear this:

"Hey Tieg! You suck!"

I turn to look, a person's head is leaning out the passenger window, perhaps a male, perhaps a female. The person has dark hair and large sunglasses, making identification difficult. The voice does not seem familiar and I don't know anyone who drives a white mini-van.

Confused, I raise my hand and flash a peace sign at the bus. The head hanging out the window smiles and waves back. I know neither who that person was that knew my name and waved at me, nor why they think I suck.

And with that, my four years in Arcata were over.

the most fucked up shit

2006-04-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

This is sort of breaking with what I've been trying to do here in the blog, as this post is mainly a big anecdote, but I spent a while typing this up to post somewhere else so I figured I wouldn't waste the effort, and drop it here as well. I don't know how funny it'll be to read, but I think it's funny as hell. Fucked up shit, indeed.

So a few Thanksgivings ago I went to stay at my friend D.'s house for the holiday instead of visiting my own family. I knew him from the liberal college town we both lived in, and we were going to stay with his family in an extremely small (like 1,000 people), conservative town a few hours away.

As it's a small town, there's lots of space, and his parent's house is pretty big. It's two stories, has a big kitchen, huge yard, nice big deck for bbq'ing and the like. We get there two days before Thanksgiving around dinner time and his father has bbq'ed up some steak for dinner to go along with all kinds of beautiful fixings. As I'm a relatively poor college student, it's not often I eat this good, so of course I'm pleased. I also don't eat that much meat that often. It's rare that I make a whole meal of just steak or whatever, and I typically stick to chicken and fish, if anything. So here I am confronted with huge slabs of steak and obviously I'm going to be eating some.

D.'s father, though, likes his steak bloody, and I mean like 60% red on the inside. Not a little bit of pink surrounded by light brown, not just a couple little patches of red, I'm talking really really bloody, lying in a pool of blood on the plate bloody. So I want to eat the steak, but then again, not so much, because I'm not so sure exactly how it's going to affect the piping. D.'s dad, though, is a funny guy who really likes teasing and antagonizing people, especially squeamish liberal people like me.

"D., you didn't bring one of those long-hair types home, did you? You're not one of those ones who can't take a little meat, are you? Eat up! I know this is the best meal you've had in a while!"

I want to make a good impression on my hosts, and I don't want to refuse their great generosity or offend or anything, and it's really not very often that I get to eat steak, bloody or not, so I eat up. And it's good, oh so good. There's steak and fixings and wine and everything, it's grand. I absolutely fill myself up to the point where I really can't eat anything more, I mean, I'm stuffed.

When dinner's over we settle in the newly re-carpeted living room and start playing some games, me just awaiting the onset of the inevitable. It doesn't take too long to come around; I need to take a shit, a big one, an epic one, a memorable one. I'm actually a little concerned with this one, because here I am, a guest in these very generous people's homes, but I know that whatever bathroom faces my wraith that evening will have to be quarantined for quite some time. Luckily for me, this house has two, one downstairs and one upstairs. In what would seem like a clever bit of courteous pre-planning, I decide to head to the one upstairs, as the downstairs one is a little close the kitchen and an office and all that, and I figure why risk cross-contamination from the downstairs bathroom when I can safely hide the fumes upstairs where no one is hanging out. I mean, this is going to be a big one, a little precaution is in order.

So I head upstairs and thoroughly enjoy the next 5-10 minutes of my life. I mean, I earned that one.

I enjoy it, that is, until I try to flush the toilet. Of course it's clogged. I begin looking around for a plunger, looking everywhere in this foreign bathroom, next to the toilet, the wall-cabinet, the mirror-cabinet, the hallway, and I find nothing. Eventually I realize that I have to face the music and head downstairs to ask my friend D. for a plunger.

I hang my head and ask him for one, trying to keep it a little hush from the folks because, like I said, I don't want to make a bad impression. He supplies me and I head back upstairs. The job itself is no small task. I begin plunging with little success. I mean, I've had to plunge a fair number of toilets, and this is really not going places. I'm doing everything I can and there's just this really backed up pool of poop-water floating around the john. At some point, after lots of hard work, I think there might have been a minor breakthrough, so I decide to flush again to see if there's some minor water movement.

Obviously, there's none. The shit-water starts rising up and pouring all over the bathroom floor. I'm in a pretty bad state at this point, as I've only been at these generous people's house abour 4-5 hours and here I've gone and flooded their bathroom with the water from one of the most epic shits I've ever taken in my life. I start panicking and head down to get D. again, completely forgetting to turn off the water valve. I have to give him some line like, "Uhhh ... there's a situation upstairs and I would appreciate your help." This is all, like 15-20 minutes after I've excused myself from company to use the bathroom.

D. gets upstairs and the whole bathroom floor is covered in nasty shit-water. He turns off the water valve, we use a generous number of towels to clean off the floor, and then we both get to the serious business of attempting to plunge the blockage. We start taking shifts, going back and forth, critiquing each other's plunging techniques and offering advice, switching out as we get too tired from all the fruitless labor. Finally, after 4-5 minutes of solid plunging, I mean rigorous, serious, desperate plunging and no progress at all, D. takes the plunger in hand for his shift and says, "Okay, if I don't get it here we're going to have to go downstairs and tell my parents we're going to need some real help."

I am, of course, mortified, but I realize that he's right as well. We can't just plunge for the whole of the Thanksgiving holiday, and I might have actually created a problem that requires a professional's help. Thankfully, for whatever reason, maybe because some Christian who I didn't know prayed for me, or perhaps because Satan grew tired of his little trick, D. finally breaks through. The seal breaks and the shit-water that still left filling the toilet to its brim begins heading to the place it was meant for. I am beyond relieved, I can return to just hanging out with everyone else and stop worrying about this huge shit. We do the final little bit of cleaning up and head back downstairs.

I settle into the couch in the newly re-carpeted living room, eager to have my life return to normal. Unfortunately, I feel a small splash of water on one of my ears. I turn to look, there is a few spots of water on the couch beside me. I look up, and there is a large build-up of water in the ceiling slowly dripping down, the ceiling obviously being the one separating the living room from the bathroom I just flooded above. This is my shit and piss water dripping into their living room.

So we had to get a big pan to catch the water and a can-opener to poke holes into the swelling to get it all to run down. At this point, I just felt like I was on some sit-com or something, and I realized that pretty much nothing more embarrassing could realistically happen during that stay. I had made my first impression, and hopefully they'd understand.

The rest of the break went great. We got shit-faced and D., all of 5'7" and 135 lbs, arm-wrestled his soon-to-be pro NFL lineman of a neighbor. On Thanksgiving Day we ended up going out to a forest with some locals, lighting tires on fire and rolling them down a hill. Food and drink were great for the whole stay, and in the end I got a pretty funny story.

the secret to my power, pt. 2

2006-04-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Scruples. Trust me, you can't break any hearts without them.

And actually you don't need to keep this one secret, because people seriously need to know about this. Scruples -- learn 'em, love 'em.

a short list of people and/or things I am hipper than:

2006-04-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

(1) Homophobes
(2) Sublime fans
(3) Peanut butter and jelly that comes together in one jar ... that shit is tragically unhip
(4) Lakes fans (especially when the Lakers are winning)
(5) Tom Cruise ... I don't care what his total box office is at or who his baby-mama is, I'm still hipper ... scientology = not a good look
(6) This guy:

(7) Nuclear bombs ... tools of mass destruction = not hip
(8) Malvolio from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night ... and not just because he's a Shakespeare character, but also because he's a dick
(9) Bio-regionalism ... hip in certain circles I guess, but I'm hipper than those circles anyway.
(10) Televised poker ... and yeah, okay, I've watched my fair share, but I maintain I'm still hipper

And keep in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive list, just a quick round-up of some of the noteable items that have been on my mind lately. I'd go on, but even writing about them in this fashion has started putting a palpable damper on my hip level, so I decided to stop while I was still ahead. Trust there's plenty more (Prof. B. I'm looking directly at you).

it will all work out, I'm sure

2006-04-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

From the pot-smoking Brazilian DJ to this. While I might have grown tired of P. and his dirty bedroom talk (although the story about his father taking him to a prostitute at age 13 was a good one), I'm not certain if I'm currently doing any better with the unemployed CDF man leaving a nearly five year relationship.

He's a good kid and all, don't get me wrong, even more interesting musical taste than P. (because, really, mid-90s hip hop can only go on so long before you get tired of it), but he's now got another CDF guy crashing on our couch. Fine by me, lessens the rent, and I get to say in one concrete fashion that I am indeed tougher than a firefighter, because whereas I slept on the iron futon for months with minimal complaint this guy pulled out an inflatable roll-out to put on it after one night. Wuss.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is this: last night the two CDF men came home at the same time and compared their daily workouts, talking about their backs and their quads and their delts and the number of reps and the weight amounts involved and other things which mean little to me. So instead of discussions about sex, porn, and prostitution, I get chatter about heavy lifting and various muscle groups.

It's a brave new world I'm living in.

white people, dancing

2006-04-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

There's a game I learned from a friend at a club once, it's called the Dance Like That Person Game. What you do is choose somebody else dancing in the club or the party and then you try and dance like them. It's great fun, and it allows you to covertly mock people from across the room, the real reason anyone ever goes to parties.

So last night I went to a party where I didn't know anyone minus my friend who invited me. It's the best strategy for leaving the house at this point, going places with as little familiar people as possible, and these people were definitely unfamiliar.

Well, their taste in music did strike a chord. Their CD player was playing a mix of Beck, Modest Mouse (at a party, I'm serious), and G. Love and the Special Sauce. Now, I really enjoy G. Love, but even I have to admit that there's a certain undeniable frattiness about his music. I had always wondered what other types of people listen to his music besides me; now I finally had my answer. I can't say I was too far off in my estimation. These were the type of people who (a) get kegs of Mirror Pond for a relatively small party and then (b) do keg stands making them all (c) very drunk. This was the first time in a long time that I had seen an entire party approach high school grad night levels of intoxication. People who were already noticeably trashed were doing keg stands, barely able to stand upright once they were finished, with "I really gotta hold it together so I don't puke" written all over their face. It was all very novel for me.

I should mention that there was some hip hop on the stereo as well, which under other circumstances might make me glad, as it's generally my favorite music to dance to. It wasn't a groovy, dance-y mish mash of hip hop tracks, though, it was only Atmosphere, the whitest of all white people rap. I counted, the song entirely about how much Slug likes Minnesota was played a full two times, exactly two times too many. Still, the people at the party would dance to Atmosphere, because, hey, it does have an easy to follow beat. As much as I wanted to play along and dance a little, I really had no choice but to sit down during "Shoes", the song whose chorus goes, "You've got your shoes / I've got my shoes / We've got issues." I'm sorry, but while there may be a few noteable exceptions, it's still a pretty safe rule that songs about past relationships are not the best dance material.

Thankfully a live band showed up eventually, some bluegrass ensemble complete with a washboard percussionist and a guy with an upright bass. They played upbeat bluegrass and the dancing started to pick up, except I must admit, I have no clue whatsoever how to dance to bluegrass. Something tells me colla poppin' is not the move of choice in this context. So I resorted to the DLTP Game, studying these keg-standers, these Atmosphere dancers, these McKinleyvillains (my friends confirmed it, there were definitely natives present), trying to mimic their bluegrass moves and enthusiasm, and I realized that I was terrible at copying these people. The hostess had these feet moves which, for me, were impossible to recreate, simple maneuvers like arm-in-arm hoe-down stuff was more of a challenge than it seemed it should be, and I kept waiting for the breakdown and build-up to try some of my faux poppin' and lockin', but it never came.

So last night I bombed the DLTP Game. I just couldn't keep up with the bluegrass and the Minnesote love songs. Although everyone was very friendly, I had a good time, and I liked all the people at the party, there are few times I've felt more out of place.

ping pong + internet = genius

2006-03-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

So I've come to enjoy this new youtube.com service that the kids are so fond of. Today I had the brilliant idea to search for ping pong related videos, but imagine my horror at what I found. Loads of stupid home videos of people butchering the sport. I mean, look at this shit -- this is embarrassing for everyone involved. You sir, are only like Forrest Gump in the sense that you're retarded, and despite that girl's protests that other point most definitely did not count.

Why did you bother to upload that to the internet again? Just to cruelly torture me as I watch you butcher my favorite sport in the world?

Thankfully, youtube still came through. This is what ping pong should look like. I could watch that thing for hours on end. That's just a beautiful display of the beautiful game, and a good reminder that, although you may have to wade through some depressing shit along the way, the internet is still the greatest place in the world.

on 69 love songs and a sunny day

2006-03-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

So this is an old post that I wrote about a year ago, but I always kind of liked the idea and meant to update it. Since I was writing about music and friendship again over the weekend (and since the same post helped me stop caring so much about my stupid privacy really, it's not like my secrets are that great), I finally found the inspiration to approach it again, and what you see is the revised edition. So yeah, the real reason I complain about writing about music and writing about myself is because I know deep down that's all I really want to do, and I'm ashamed. Anyway, here you go, hope you like it reading it (at least half) as much as I like writing it...

Once, on a spur-of-the-moment road trip during the middle of the summer with some of my best friends, our driver insisted on playing a tape of the Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs, despite my constant demands to "listen to something fun, for Christ’s Sake." I was having some difficulty with my girlfriend at the time and the road trip was definitely being siezed as an opportunity to just get away and enjoy myself, forget about all the stress I was accumulating. Forgeting about my relationship was definitely one of the goals for the trip, and the Magnetic Fields definitely weren't helping me fulfill it.

Despite the differing taste in music I ended up enjoying myself on the trip to Oregon. My friends S., L., and I didn't do much besides enjoy each other's company for an evening and it was grand. We made drunken phone calls, we smoked in a California bar just to say we smoked in California bar, we ate fast food, and I befriended a very creepy Clipper fan when they had the gall to leave me alone. As long as I was outside of Arcata, I was able to easily forget about the troubles I was having back at home, no matter how much the 69 Love Songs tried to depress me on the road up.

Following the road trip, the relationship between the driver, S., and I continued to deteriorate, perhaps because of a difference in musical taste, perhaps because outside of those few days we always had trouble agreeing on exactly what constitutes "fun," perhaps because we just lost interest in each other. Before it was ping pong and chess at every opportunity, gossip and banter, but it moved towards uneasiness, and that uncomfortable feeling of being sentimental and loyal toward someone despite a lack of real reason to do so. We saw each other less, both of us finding lots of different distractions besides one another, and when we did get together it didn't have the same spark as before. I missed our friendship as much as I was annoyed by it, and that made me sad.

Despite my previous insistence upon the fact that there is indeed one objective "fun" to which I hold the key, I’ve decided to momentarily lapse my hard-line stance for the sake of this writing. Perhaps some people really enjoy the Magnetic Fields, and find it completely appropriate for a sunny summer day on the open road. The extent to which the reconsideration of my previous conviction coincides with my reading of Rick Moody’s appreciation of the album in my favorite magazine, The Believer, should not be understated. It’s not often you bother to read a 10-page meditation on an album you don’t really like, especially when you consider writing about music a questionable endeavor in the first place. Rick has done some smart things in his essay, such as whittling the 69 Love Songs down to only 31. Perhaps if I only listened to those 31, I could become a convert and fun would be had. (Although I notice "Reno Dakota" is #4 on his compilation, the song being one of the stronger impressions on my memory of what I just couldn’t "get into" on the album). He also admits a certain relation between some of the songs and the traditional musical, always a key sticking point for me. I, like Rick Moody, can’t stand musicals, so I admire his honest approach with the subject. Still his somewhat defensive (and realistically pretty weak) distinction between musicals and ballads does help me reconsider the album with less prejudice, at least a little bit. But even with Rick Moody on their side, a man whose writing and intellect I greatly admire, I still can’t bring myself to enjoy the Magnetic Fields.

And I realize it’s somewhat taboo to admit personal biases when "objectively" critiquing the merit of art, but that’s what I’m doing. Even though I will now also think of Rick’s love for this album every time I hear it, I will also never forget my friend S. and our relationship, our summer drive and everything else between us. If I were to say what the Magnetic Fields makes me think of, what distinct impression the music leaves upon me, those places it takes me to and the people it reminds me of, I would say, "S."

I recently "starred" in a student film alongside the lovely S.. One of the most obnoxious aspects was that it was a student film, and they didn’t have much film stock to shoot with. As such, all scenes were one-takes and if you screwed up one line you might wreck the whole damn project. What’s obnoxious about this is that S. and I would have been at our best if they just let the cameras roll, and just allowed us to joke back and forth. S. is one of the few women I’ve met who can not only stand up to my rude humor, but give it back as well. We have a strong relationship and part of the fun we always have together is trading wit back and forth.

And of course it's not just the jokes between us, or the ping pong or the chess. Of course there's more. I've listened to some of her personal ramblings as she found her way around, and she's put up with me at some of the lower points I've ever reached. It's odd on one hand feeling so close and so indebted to a person, yet having such uneasiness and frustration lingering between us as well. Maybe it is exactly this close relationship that engenders such animosity. In many ways, S. is more the family I never had than any close personal friend; I love her and I'm loyal to her, but our friendship hasn't been without its points of mutual frustration.

It is most likely these exact types of personal associations the 69 Love Songs has built its popularity upon, but for me it’s an insurmountable hindrance. And why is that? On S.’s last birthday I spent a good deal of my time at her party sitting at her typewriter, typing up a note explaining just how much I love her, and I meant every word. I’ve never written a love note before, and I never intend to again. (See what can happen when you start listening to the Magnetic Fields? Take this as a warning.) And it’s not that I regret the note, or our relationship, or anything like that. I'm as grateful for these things as I am grateful for S.'s continuing friendship. I actually think it has more to do with that sunny summer day, and our drive to Oregon, and our playful banter about exactly what "fun" is, and how much I want to have a day like that again.

And I know what you’re asking yourself, “Just what do you consider fun music to be, then?” Well, I could give lots of examples -– AC/DC, the Roots, Johnny Cash, Outkast, etc. –- but I would never say the Magnetic Fields. If it weren’t for that day on the highway, I would never think of sunshine when I heard their music, I would never get a smile on my face or laugh about private jokes. I would never be glad to reminisce and pine for a dear friend.

And now I know this is exactly what that album stands for, lost friends and old relationships and fun times that actually hurt a little to recall. Maybe that’s why I’m mad at S., because now I feel warm and nostalgic every time Claudia Gonson chews out Reno Dakota in that damn song mentioned above. That stupid “Dakota/iota/quota” rhyme doesn’t represent forced, trite, traditional-musical-esque lyricism, but instead a sunny stretch of open road, a dear friend like I'll never have again, my real family that I've discovered instead of inherited. I can’t say exactly why that upsets me, only that it does, and that I miss you S..

my stereo

2006-03-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

I just got a stereo and the wire so that I can play all the music off my hard-drive. All I've done today is sit inside and listen to my stereo. It's awesome.

initially, I love everyone, or at least I try

2006-03-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

All in all, moving to Australia for three months to stay with my dear friend P. was actually one of the better things I've done in my young life. Sure, I had my qualms with Brisbane (I mean, the weather was hot as hell), and yeah, it was all a little irresponsible of me looking back, but I really believed in what I was doing and I did it regardless. If anything, I'm mainly ashamed of my lack of resolve in following through with my desire to really travel around that part of the globe.

One of the traps I fell into in Australia was remembering how good a friend P. was, realizing that I didn't want to move on as much as I just wanted to hang out with him. We'd met in Denmark, finally mingling on one of the last days of our orientation there. We had both recently beaten Resident Evil and we could both recite our favorite verses from Enter the 36 Chambers, so it was resolved pretty quickly that we should become fast friends. Recently I wrote a rather lengthy piece about how much his friendship means to me (but I didn't post it here as it definitely dipped its toes into the private end of the sharing pool ... I might revise it a little and put it up, we'll see, as this whole thing is going to definitely illuminate my privacy a little as well, why keep pretending?) so finally seeing him again in Australia was a very big deal. Basically P. is one of the most influential people I've ever met in my life, so spending time with him in Australia was a great thing.

One of our rituals with each other was watching this weekend program, I can't remember what it was called now, but it was just hours and hours of music videos, and instead of the incredibly lame, short-term memory deprived, teen-oriented programming which saturates all the MTV channels, this station would dig into vaults to choose videos I was actually interested in seeing. Another cool thing was they would allow guests hosts, usually American bands who were touring Australia at the time, program the whole show to their liking. Probably the best one of these that we saw together was the Black Eyed Peas, before they had that album with the Justin Timberlake single and all kinds of commercial success, when they were still interesting musicians and a cool rap group and not some cheesy pop group with a token hot chick singing about humps or lumps or whatever it is. When they were still cool, is what I'm saying.

That night the Peas' programming was great. If there was a song that they sampled or borrowed from, they would play it, tipping their hand to all kinds of basslines and hooks they had used. They also programmed just lots of great hip hop stuff because, like I said, they were still a good hip hop band at this point and they had good taste to back it up. One band they played, which they neither sampled from nor was it hip hop, was Stereolab. I had maybe heard the name before, or had someone recommend it to me, or maybe I just thought the name Stereolab was instantly cool, but I remember that one video very much. It wasn't your typical video, with a performance or some weird story line, it was just animated lines and designs, with large bricks of solid color moving around and lines jumping in between, and a really interesting song to keep it all moving along. I was intrigued.

I eventually returned to the States and I missed P. I was more settled, earning money now so that I had a little disposable income, and I started a long flirtation with Stereolab. I had decided that I wanted one of their CDs, but I wasn't sure which one. Every time I went to the record store there were lots of them, and they all had beautiful covers like this:

Straight lines and solid colors and cool design, I was definitely drawn in.

I spent a long time flipping through bins, going to different record stores, comparing prices, seeing which ones had the most songs and all that. I hadn't known anyone who was interested in Stereolab, no one who had recommended them to me or told me about them or let me listen to them so I was more or less on my own trying to find my way into their catalogue. Eventually I settled on this album:

I have a very strong memory of it because I got home and was eager to finally listen to the band that I'd been flirting with for the past month or so. I'd purchased a few albums that day, but Stereolab was definitely getting the first listen. I went home and settled in, preparing to play some sort of video game on my PC while I listened to my new music. Actually getting something done while listening to Stereolab, though, was wishful thinking. I think it's totally appropriate to say that I wasn't prepared for how much I would love this band.

Within two or three minutes of the first song I had to sit down and just listen. There was bizarre retro sounding instruments, there was musical self-indulgence as the first song went on for 9 minutes just building around this repeating French horn blast, it was jazzy and dance-y all at the same time, vocals were sparse, the song kept building throughout, and it was absolutely unlike anything I'd ever heard before. I was hooked.

I sat and listened to the entire CD front to back without doing anything else. I remember telling myself that even if the rest of the CD was garbage it was all okay because of that first song. Of course, it only got better from that first song, and by the time the album was over I had developed a new love. I was having a difficult time understanding how this music had been out there all this time and no one I knew had told me about it. What kind of friends did I have that would allow such a thing to pass me by? What had I been doing with my life when I wasn't listening to this stuff? Were all the other albums as good as this one? How was this not the most famous band that ever lived? Beatles shmeatles, in one listening I was ready to name Stereolab the greatest band ever.

I went to the record store first thing the next day and purchased two or three more albums. Even though the urge was there to just buy the whole bin, I realized that I would have to work my way through the albums slowly, taking the time to learn and absorb each one. I mean, maybe you think all this description here is stupid, but I'm dead serious about all this. I really fell in love with Stereolab that day and it really was a pretty profound moment for me, and I really have spent a good amount of time since then acquiring and obsessing over their albums. Maybe it's a problem with me, maybe it's a problem with everyone else for not getting it, but in a completely non-ironic and hopefully not overly cliche'ed way, I can say that Stereolab is one of the most influential things I've ever encountered in my life.

Now that I've lived with Stereolab for a while it's gained all those personal and sentimental ties that music inevitably does. I can't help but think of E. when I tell the story above, because I remember being super excited to tell her all about what I had just discovered. Of course there's P., who starts the story, and now there's L. and D. who I've discovered share my love (to an extent), R. who was the first person wise enough to get me some of their music as a gift, and all the other passing characters in my life that end up connected to the music. There are the places which get pulled in, like my room when I first heard that album, the numerous record bins I've dug through (I can specifically remember purchasing the brown covered album above in the Amoeba on Telegraph), my sunny, small apartment where I probably spent the most time listening to the band. It's what happens with all good music, but because Stereolab has been such a constant for me these past few years it's managed to work itself into an awful lot of my personal associations.

And so I recently had the opportunity to see Stereolab live in concert. My frothing fandom has died down a little (but as evidenced by this very post, I mean just a little). It was a good time, Laetitia Sadier became my new Offial #1 Celebrity Crush, and the music was beautiful.

But to be honest in the end I was actually more pleased with getting to see my old friends in the Bay Area. Spending time with M. and L. was the real highlight.

The reminder of what it's like to see dear friends inspired me to head to Portland in the last week as well. N. was up there and I missed him. It was simple for me to head to Seattle and spend some time with S., and even if we haven't been in constant contact with each other before last week, it was of no concern. When I'm around the people dearest to me it's always easy to remember our relationship. Things come easily and I'm always made happy without even trying. And again, I don't want this to be too cliche'ed and I don't mean for it to be ironic or anything, but there's nothing I value more than my friends.

So in some ways I guess Stereolab is another friend of mine, except they travel with me wherever I go. Sometimes I go through stages where I don't listen to them that much, but then whenever I do throw an album on all my other music suddenly starts sounding pale again. They're no substitute for my real, breathing, living, thinking friends, I know, but they're pretty good filler when no one else is around.

When I got back from the concert I obviously hit the back catalogue pretty hard. I made it a point to listen through all the Stereolab albums again without listening to anything else, and there's lots of albums. While this type of obsessive listening habits might make most people sick of whatever music they're hearing so much, it just makes me love Stereolab that much more. One of the songs that I got the opportunity to hear again was K-Stars, from the Peng! album that is their early material, good but not nearly as inspired as their later stuff. And for those of you who have read this far, this would more or less be the point of this whole post, the thing I'm trying to get at, the real connection I'm trying to make. K-Stars has great lyrics which always make me think of my beautiful friends, and how much I miss them:

They were young
in their mid-twenties
some in their teens
They were intelligent
and some believed
were geniuses
They were passionate
wildly in love
adventurous
Well they were exuberant
capable of hate
extreme anger
They were drawn
towards the exceptional
They avoided work
but worked hard on their laziness
and evermore
it seems they walked
wandering through Paris
was a genuine art

Now I'm not really one for bad poetry or false sentiments, but this song has always struck a chord with me. It's succinct and direct and it doesn't appear to have any winking or nudging or disingenuousness in it at all. It's an un-self-concious description of what I think we all dream about at this age, being inspired, finding an art, making a difference, being with other people who can help us along the way. Nobody wants to be ordinary, and I know I definitely don't want to be haning out with ordinary people either. I have my whole life ahead of me and I wouldn't mind if I was able to do some great things with it, whether it is on a large or a small scale, just something, on some level, which breaks from our stale everyday routines.

I've known great people -- R. who's off in New York now, A. who's finding happiness in the Santa Cruz mountains, D. and H. who are sailing in South America, N. who's finding his way in Portland, ditto for M. and D. and H. up there, P. who starts the story who's now moved on to Tokyo, our M. in San Francisco who, despite her craziness, probably has it more together than I ever will, S. who I just saw in Seattle making things happen like only she can, E. at the bookstore who might still have some love for me, A. and C. and D. and N. and R. and A. again here in Arcata trying hard to make a difference. There's a lot of people I've known in my short life, struggling through our youth in much the same way, trying to do something genius or inspired or novel or new, and I swear, if we could all just get together in one place it would be as simple as can be.

So even I'm not certain exactly what point I'm trying to make here. Maybe it's an attempt to eulogize my wasted youth, or perhaps it just illuminates my recent loneliness, or maybe I just want to flatter my distant friends who take the time to read these things, who knows. Mainly it's just talking about myself, which is secretly everyone's favorite pasttime. At least I can say that it is all in earnest and that, at least a little, in spots, with unknown degrees of real success, I'm trying for once.

on debate and discourse

2006-03-25T01:53:00.000-08:00

I've rarely gotten into verbal fights. Despite what my readers may think of me, I generally have the self-restraint to avoid getting into heated, venomous, personal, angry arguments. I'm very good at just shutting my mouth and walking way, creating the iciest wall of pure hate that I can in the process.

This is why I thought I should share two of my favorite phrases with you, stock replies for any good argument. They are my favorite bitter replies by far, as they're near universally applicable and I'm of the opinion that whoever manages to use them first always wins.

The first:

"You don't fucking know me."

The second, even more fun, always a winner:

"Keep my name out your mouth."

And of course, if you haven't predicted it already, there's the one-two combo, the perfect synergy between the two, the unbeatable pairing to win all heated disagreements, heretofore knows as the Irrefutible:

"You don't fucking know me so keep my name out your mouth."

There's no right or wrong way to employ these phrases, really. Any time you're arguing with someone and you're getting tired of it feel free to use any of them. Some people subscribe to the school of attempting to come up with witty jabs, or directly attacking specific traits about a person, but I'll tell you from what I've seen those people always end up on tired fallbacks themselves -- "shut up bitch!", "fuck you asshole!", "kiss my ass, fucker!", etc. -- and you can do equally well just throwing these out there.

I suppose it might be a little foolish of me to be tipping my hand on the internet like this, but the truth is that I so rarely get into arguments that I hardly ever get to use these phrases. Seriously, try saying them a little. It's fun. Imagine you're arguing with that one chick who thinks you said something bad about her last week, and whether or not you said something bad she deserved whatever she got, and you just want the conversation to end, and you drop the line, "Keep my name out your mouth." Or the person who is accusing you of not really knowing what you're talking about, or subscribing to a certain belief you don't actually hold, out comes the sure-fire winner, "You don't fucking know me."

So yeah, since I haven't been in a yelling match with anyone in quite some time, and since I probably won't be yelling at anyone any time soon, I wanted to be able to take what few opportunities I have to use these phrases. Try 'em on for size, you'll thank me later.

on talking to yourself

2006-03-17T21:08:00.000-08:00

I was walking around Portland today and I was thinking about how much I enjoy writing dialogue. It's really not something I get to do that often in my academic writing, but those few times I've ever managed to work it in I've been terribly pleased with myself. There's just something about writing speech that is novel and fun, something that feels like a departure from the write-by-numbers holes that I always feel trapped in, something playful, something I actually like writing.

After I had been walking around a while, checking out the neighborhood, I turned toward N.'s apartment again, still thinking about the problem of finding ways to write more dialogue. As I walked by a large house with an interesting Virgin Mary display I said to myself, "I really need to figure out a way to get more dialogue into my blog. That's a great place to do things like screwing around with that type of writing."

But quickly I knew it wasn't the best idea, "You work it in when you work it in. You can't just go forcing it in where it doesn't belong."

"Look at the non-fiction writer you're reading now, though. He has dialogue all over the place -- extended pieces all from one person, short snippets in the middle of his voice, all kinds of stuff in all kinds of places. Why can't you do something like that, just fit it in where you feel like?"

I had to think about that a while, because what is really stopping me from writing dialogue when I damn well please?

"Well, I don't typically have extended quotes from people. And part of the reason for him to include the dialogue is obviously to be able to temporarily move into another voice. He's great at that, finding the different speech patterns and creating characters just from the dialogue alone. Those times that I do write dialogue I'm always convinced that no matter who I'm speaking for it ends up just sounding like myself."

"That's true, but how are you going to ever change that if you never try? Hey -- I have an idea! How about you make a whole post about writing dialogue, and then you can really fool around and enjoy yourself with it. This is -- like -- exactly what you're talking about."

This idea made me nervous, though. It seemed a little too obvious, just making a post about dialogue full of dialogue. I had to talk myself out of it, "Come on man -- that's just one extended high concept joke, and like most high concept jokes probably wouldn't be very funny at all. Do you really want to bore to death those few readers you have just so you can feel clever? And the point of writing dialogue like you're talking about is to help you discover natural dialogue, and this would be a forced excercise that would ultimately fall flat. I mean, it's corny man. You're best to leave it alone."

"No, trust me. It will be fun. It's clever, people like clever stuff."

"You're crazy man, but whatever -- it is just my silly blog. I guess we can do it, but it still seems crazy to me."

Then I got back to N.'s house, picked up the book which had got me started on it in the first place, and eventually found my motivation. I would make a post about dialogue. So anyway, I did, and I still can't decide if it's just obnoxious or if it has some humor value.

a thing that should not be, pt. 2

2006-03-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

Last night I slept on a leopard print futon, beneath a leopard print blanket, with my head lying on a leopard print pillow, with some extra leopard print pillows I couldn't use on the floor beside me. Surprisingly, I didn't have any bad dreams, although I did wake up from being cold a couple times.

a thing that should not be

2006-03-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

I went to the Quality Food Center (which will now be called QFC) with N. recently and made a disturbing discovery. QFC charges $7.99 for a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In cans. And yes, that's American dollars. Bottles of High Life were (on sale) $7.49 and I got those instead. So anyway, these QFC people seem a little fishy to me, just thought I'd give you the heads up too.

my privacy, pt. 2

2006-03-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

As most of us probably know, there's a service called myspace.com and it's pretty popular with the kids. There is, of course, the whole entertainment of watching a new little mini-culture be formed on the internet as people discover their various comfort levels with using a service that essentially an online stalker's dream. I've known people who have met significant others through myspace, I've known people who get into bitchy little gossip contests through the comments space, I've known people who have had parents check up on them through myspace, all kinds of interesting stuff. This very blog you're reading is linked through my very own myspace profile, so perhaps you're only here because of your little stalking jaunt gone wrong.

Either way, what I'm constantly surprised at is how people make use of the "comments" section of myspace, the place where you can leave a message to someone that is viewable by everyone who visits that profile. What I'm particularly surprised at is the frequency with which people don't realize that there's a private message feature, where one can send the exact same message except that it will only be readable by the recipient. Well, without further ado, I present a comment that I read off a friend of a friend's myspace profile, which I will now label Exhibit A in "Exactly the Type of Message You Might Consider Sending to the Person Privately":

i am glad we don't hate each other. but i still think we should be friends. we usually end up at the same after parties. even though i am pretty much over that. i need to focus on myself and my beautiful sister. we are going to la and japan this month. i hope you are doing well, riding that damn bike. that is your life. glad you found a girl who isn't a bitch like me. :) sorry i just wasn't ready to date or whatever the fuck we were doing. anyway i am really busy see you soon

Is she aware that I can read that as well? Are people really so free that they're unconcerned with what information others might have about them? Is there any sense of private messages, intimate communication, business which belongs only to the two participants involved? Do these people even have any sense of distinguishing between their private life and their public life?

Maybe it's just me, but I distinguish greatly between those two things, and no matter how much information I might disseminate about myself on the internet, trust I'm still making great efforts to maintain my privacy. Life wouldn't be too much fun for me without it.

sign o' the end times

2006-03-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Today, the day that my spring break begins, it snowed in Arcata. I was sitting in my last class before my freedom, forlornly staring out the window, imagining all the amazing things one could be doing in the wide world of freedom (even if it was raining) and suddenly it started snowing. It snowed for a good bit, and then that turned into a very solid, continued rain of hail. Eventually the grass and the bushes were tinted with a white color, covering most of their area. Eventually the sleet stopped, but its reminders were still there when I got out of class. People in the quad were making ice balls and throwing them at each other, every car I passed was coated with a good layer of ice, and the path I walked featured another person's footprints routinely printed ahead of me in the piles of white. It was pretty cool, although part of me can't help but think it would be a real bitch to bbq in this weather.

on symbolism

2006-03-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

So as I was walking home it started hailing and I was actually enjoying it. It was pretty small hail and I was wearing a ballcap, so in truth it was actually better than the rain because I wasn't getting wet and I got to watch all the little white balls of ice -- they almost look like salt pieces -- bounce against everything. It's disorienting to switch from the small splash of a rain drop to the sudden short hop of a tiny ball of ice, but disorienting in a good way. I was proud of myself for enjoying the poor weather instead of morbidly trying to find some way that it figured as a depressing omen for me.

Then as I stepped out of the Jolly Giant Creek trail and onto the road heading to my house, a truck drove by, through the rather large puddle right next to me, splashing a whole wave of water across my body. It was just like in the movies, the innocent bystander, the giant splash, the resultant large watermarks on my clothes. Only, for whatever reason, I had the presence to just continue walking. I didn't jump back, and I didn't raise my hands in disbelief, I didn't yell or scream or act outraged in any way. I just continued exactly as I was the moment before the wave of water struck me.

So anyway, if there's a point, I guess it's that my life is so full of depressing omens, I don't even react to them any more.

the dangers of music obsession

2006-03-07T22:04:00.000-08:00

(1) THE OBVIOUS:

The love / hate relationship I have with every good record store. On the one hand, there's only certain shops I even consider worth my time or money, but on the other hand I know if I step foot inside I'll inevitably buy at least something, while talking myself out of 5-6 albums all at the same time. While it can obviously be very rewarding, it's also very costly and nerve-wracking.

(2) THE PETTY DISAGREEMENTS:

I've been cataloguing all the songs that my history professor opens class with. He, for some reason, thinks it's cool to play a song in the time before class as the students enter. So far, I've attended when he played Beck's "Where It's At", The Who's "My Generation", a song title I didn't know by the Foo Fighters, a song title I didn't know by the Gin Blossoms, and a song title I didn't know by the Dave Matthews Band. I know this because I've obsessively taken a specific note at the beginning of every class so that I can have an accurate record of all the various ways this specific professor has wronged me.

There's also the weird, completely irrational reactions I have toward certain music just because I'm a bizarre obsessive. I take note of how people feel about the Beach Boys v. the Beatles. I have difficulty feigning politeness when people recommend Sage Francis to me. And of course my difficulty with all things Belle and Sebastien (which I will give something of an explanation for below, although I can't promise that it will seem a particularly reasonable one).

(3) THE LONELINESS:

When you just go ahead and let yourself slide away into musical obsession, you can drop pretty far. It's rare that my friends ever want to just sit and listen to whatever music I spend my time obsessing about -- Stereolab, the Books, Prefuse 73, Slum Village, MF DOOM, etc. They're too busy leading healthy lives, interacting with other people, making something of themselves, to be too concerned with the reasonably hard to find Jay Dilla track with a beat made from a Stereolab sample I found. This is the type of stuff that can make a whole week for me.

(4) THE VULNERABILITY:

Those few times that you meet someone who does, or at least superficially appears, to share your musical passion, you're in trouble. You will inevitably over-value this person for this otherwise completely arbitrary reason. As I am something of a music obsessive, I am required to believe that there is something about musical taste which offers an insight into a person's values, philosophies, kiss-ability, etc., but it's always a constant struggle to not let that cloud my vision too much. J. is obsessed with classic rock and nothing else. This is okay, we can still be friends. Just because K. has good taste does not mean you have to sleep together. S. likes weepy emo crap way too much, but she's still a good person. As long as you bring something dance-y to her party so you don't have to suffer through her social selections, you should be fine.

(5) THE BACKLASH:

Whereas you will have spent years connecting your beautiful music to private moments, that one voice to that whole era in your life, that brilliant interlude to the conclusion of that one novel, when you meet someone else who connects with your music, you're screwed. Sometimes you may be happy about it. For example listening to Brian Wilson's Smile is one part musical appreciation, one part remembering the fun times with my friend J. Other times it's going to suck. Based on a whole series of specifics (I won't really get into here) from a previous relationship, I honestly hate listening to Belle and Sebastien. Whatever opinion I held of the music before is now completely covered in a cloud of hurt, anger, and lonely musical obsession of the worst kind. I've sometimes had to go great lengths and work for years to be able to enjoy music which gets tied to things I don't like to remember, and it's all just lame bizarre obsession.

So anyway, I'm spending more time inside listening to music. I'm getting albums through various means faster than I can listen to them all and it's gotten me a little worried. Writing this should be a good reminder to just listen to some fucking Judas Priest from time to time, stop taking myself so seriously, and everything should be okay.

Also, as most of us probably know, writing about music obsession is pretty obsolete following Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. For those who haven't read it (or seen the movie), it's an incredible book. Funny that he also wrote Fever Pitch, which is a book about sports obsession that resonates with me all too strongly as well (both movies for that one really sucked, though (yes, they really tried and failed twice)). Both books serve as great ways to relieve some of the personal anxiety as I realize that I'm not the only person with such weird habits, while re-enforcing them by clearly defining and making them all too real for me at the same time. Oh well, I shouldn't think about this shit so much. I'm just going to go back to listening through all my Stereolab CDs while I watch the soccer game I recorded earlier today, and not worry one bit.

the sound of young america

2006-03-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

I've heard a fair amount of sex in my time. And I'm not talking about in porn videos or whatever, I'm talking about two people getting down. There was that guy that lived above me in Australia and would occasionally come home on a weekend night with a girl. Just the other night my neighbors in the apartment I'm in right now were noisy enough to become audible over the TV. I've probably heard every roommate I ever had at least once or twice. Who knows how many times I've been overheard, but I can't really imagine it was never.

Most recently with P., there was a night where he was so noisy he actually woke me up from a drunken slumber. I can't say I was too happy to wake up dehydrated, with the beginning of a decent headache, still a little drunk, with nothing to drink besides tap water in the house, and a noisy couple going at it upstairs. Then the next morning P. and N. went over all the raunchy details, most of which I was none too happy to be hearing, especially given the way P. was talking about the women and some of the stuff he did. Fast forward to a few nights later, when the girl is coming over to hang out with P. again, and of course it's someone I know. Of course this relationship went on a while and I would hear them more times. Eventually when I knew P. was upstairs late at night I would just slap my headphones on and fool around on the internet. In the breaks between songs I would catch a little noise, quickly covered up as the next tune kicked in. Eventually P. would come down and see me in the headphones, flash me a thumbs up while grabbing some water before heading back upstairs, and then I knew it was safe to take the headphones off and lie down to sleep.

The loudest I ever heard was my old roommate M. It wasn't the participants as much it was the apartment. It's an old one that shakes and sways easily when you move around in certain parts, plus it didn't help that he had a poorly constructed wood frame bed from Ikea. It was another drunken slumber, only this time I woke up alarmed. There was a huge, incredibly loud banging above me, while the apartment was shaking below me, and it took me a few moments to even realize what was going on.

There was even one time when I was just walking on the sidewalk past an apartment complext I heard some very loud sex. It sounded as if they were right next to me. I don't know if they were in their enclosed backyard or just had a door or window open. I kept walking, a little curious, a little scandalized.

That's the thing, though. There's something weird about hearing sex. You notice it when you hear it and it becomes really difficult to ignore it. No matter how much you might try to tune it out, it's right there and it always makes you feel a little weird. Part of you is curious, part of you feels ashamed for prying in someone else's business, part of you is a little excited about it, part of you wishes there was some way, any way, to ignore it. Minus headphones, I haven't found one.

Also, before you go wondering about what makes me spend lengths of time writing about this, I was woken up at my friend L.'s place this morning by his roommates having sex in the room next to me. I had wanted to sleep in, but now I was awake and I couldn't fall back asleep as long as that was going on, so I had some time to think about it. I'm not some weird, perv-y, creep who likes to write about the sound of people getting busy.

on sports injuries

2006-02-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

There was a definite turning point in my life when I became horrified of seeing sports injuries. Somewhat odd, I know, considering how much I watch sports, but it's really become quite a phobia. Anytime I see a player crumple, I immediately look away. If I've recorded the game, I'll start fast-forwarding immediately, covering my eyes so I can't even see anything in the sped up replay. Even if it's nothing, just a light scrape, a bit of soreness before the player returns to their feet, I still refuse to watch. If it's a highlight show and they announce that they're about to show an injury, I immediately change the channel. Without even seeing the clips, I still become upset just imagining what it might have been.

It all changed a few years ago when I was watching Sharks hockey. One of my favorite players was flying down the ice heading into the corner when, at the absolute worst possible moment, he lost his footing and slid feet first into the boards at probably 15-20 mph. I immediately realized that it was a dangerous play and I was already hoping young Marco Sturm had had time to react, bend his knees, twist his body away from the impact. The camera quickly cut to him lying on the ice, at an angle perpendicular to the camera, his body in a vertical line up and down the screen, his feet facing toward me. Before I had time to think about anything else, I noticed that his right ankle was noticeably off. Below the knee, just above the ankle, his leg jutted out from the rest of the neat vertical line that his body was creating on the screen. His hands, trapped inside the padded and awkward hockey gloves, futilely reached toward his askew limb. On his face was an expression of pure terror, his eys locked on the same improbable angle which had just upset me, and he was noticeably screaming. The producers quickly cut away and sent it to ads.

After I saw this I turned the TV off and sat alone in my apartment for about an hour. The only thing I was concerned about was getting that image out of my mind, but it wasn't as easy as just wishing it. To be perfectly honest, just typing that paragraph above rather upset me; the image is still horrible to me.

The reason I bring it up is because I just caught a replay of a soccer game I watched over the weekend. In it, the bright young Man U talent Alex Smith suffers a broken leg and a dislocated ankle. Again, I noticed something wrong during the live action. Again, I had to desperately fast forward through the replays of the accident while trying to keep my mind from creating too many gruesome images of what might have happened. Alex wasn't screaming, I think because he most likely passed out within a few moments from the shock. When I was flipping channels and saw the replay of the game tonight, I realized that it was at the spot roughly 2-3 minutes away from the injury occuring. Without any hesitation I quickly turned the TV off and began the fight of trying to keep the terrible images out of my mind. I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch sports again without this fear hanging over me, but right now, no matter how stupid and insignificant you might think I'm being, it's one of the worst fears I've ever known. Public speaking is like meeting the girl of my dreams compared to seeing another sports injury.

So anyway, I ended up typing this because I got freaked out again, but if there's a lesson to be found here let it be this -- sports are fun to play, but goddamn you can fucking mangle your body if you're not careful. Please be careful.

on my knees

2006-02-20T02:15:00.000-08:00

So to go along with becoming a movie star, I also managed to win one of the coolest ping pong points of my life over the weekend. I had to scramble after a good shot and was forced to lob it back. I've learned with some time that lobs can actually be reasonably effective if you get them near the endline; most people I'm playing with don't really have the tools to punish a high bounce that far back. So I successfully got the desperation lob to the endline like I was hoping and S. wasn't sure how to deal with it. Instead of going for the kill he played it short back to me to catch me off guard which worked okay. I was set up deep for a smash against me so I had to run up and actually hit my knees to dig the shot out and get it back across. Because S. had chosen not to kill it and I was able to stay alive, I was suddenly back in the point after two shots where S. thought he had me. I wasn't about to lose this point. The return came and it wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse so I decided what the hell, why not just keep flexing my game in the point? I hit a nice chop deep into the forehand corner (didn't know I had a chop, did ya? I like to keep 'em guessing) and the return came back into the net. Point - Tieg. So yeah, I won a point after desperately lobbing a shot that was mostly past me, getting the next shot over from my knees, and then finishing it off with a chop. Made my whole month, really.

on becoming a movie star, pt. 3

2006-02-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

So last night I went to a reasonably large party and someone walking through at some point said, "Hey -- good job in that movie!" I stared at him for a while to figure out if he was a friend of mine just messing around or really some random person who recognized me and decided to say hey. As far as I can tell it was some random person who decided to say hey, so there you have it -- I've officially been spotted. That didn't take long. Now only if this whole thing can turn into that cheap tail like I wanted...

on becoming a movie star, pt. 2

2006-02-18T02:22:00.000-08:00

Apparently I was on the big screen at the local theater on Thursday night. The short film I starred in was screened during the local filmmakers' night. I had no idea, I just found out because my friend C. went on a whim, saw me up there, and then asked me about it today. You'd think someone would have informed me. I could have found some red carpet and headed down to the show. Who knows how many people saw me up there, admiring my good looks, marvelling at my wit, quietly falling in love in the darkened theater?

And then the even funnier part? I still haven't even seen the movie myself. The final scene (the unscripted one) is supposed to be good, that's what I keep hearing. So anyway, here's to hoping that some stranger recognizes me around campus or something. This could be my big break.

self-awareness

2006-02-18T00:52:00.000-08:00

It was our friend Descartes who rather famously tied our consciousness to the seemingly unique gift of self-awareness. Pretty brilliant insight all in all, except that I'm not entirely convinced that all of us are really that self-aware. If we were really to apply this litmus, we might find a considerable set of subhumans among us. At the very least for a few hours a week every one of us falls below Descartes' expectations of us. Sometimes we do dumb crap that leaves us to wonder how much we really reflect on our own behavior.

But more specifically I'm talking about you, you little hipster punk who I loosely know, who chose to open our conversation at a recent party with this question:

"So you used to date L.?"

This was literally the first thing out of his mouth, with at most a brief "hi" beforehand, although it might have just been a mute headnod. This is the space that most of us expect a "how are you?" or a "haven't seen you around" or a "still playing ping pong" or something else softball and polite like that. This is how most people who barely know each other interact, with vague, polite, largely non-personal small talk, not in direct questions about 4 year relationships that ended quite some time ago.

But yes, of course it's true. I used to date L. I'm not certain why you might choose me to confirm this with, considering you barely know me and anyone who's even been loosely affiliated with the local scene for more than a year could fill you in on most of what you wanted to know. Here is a list of the questions I thought to myself, but had better sense than to ask out loud, because I'm aware of how they would reflect on me:

"Who are you? Why is that any of your business? Are you completely unaware what a stupid and obnoxious question that is? Don't you typically reserve questions about someone's past long-term relationships after you've met them for more than a total of 10 minutes or so? I suppose I should have been tipped off by those two terrible lip rings -- seriously, who gets two lip rings? One wasn't enough? -- that your self-awareness isn't all that high."

But then I shouldn't be so cruel to the young buck. Most people who weren't around when L. and I were still dating seem surprised when they find out about the relationship we used to have. I guess we don't seem like much of a match anymore, which is funny for many reasons that I won't really get into here. But I know the Arcata scene would cannibalize itself within a few months if there weren't these new crops of kids to bolster it every Fall, so here's a new one that is still finding his way around. Cute. I believe this was my response to the original question posed, word for word:

"Yeah."

I'm aware that I can get pretty icy when I'm upset or annoyed, sometimes on accident sometimes on purpose. This time I was purposely being as chilly as possible in my reply, no accidents here, because when I go to a party with a certain set of people that I consciously chose to start avoiding more than a year ago, and some new kid in the room who only loosely knows me chooses to greet me with inquiries into my past relationships, I feel I have a right to freeze him out a little. So here's the next topic for us to discuss:

"Well I made out with her last week."

I have no idea why you chose to tell me this, you overly-lip-ringed, cliche-blonde-highlight having, carefully-organized-unorganized-hair grooming, obnoxiously unaware, frigging cookie-cutter-young scenester you. Did you think I would care? Even if I did care, I still don't see why you would bother telling me such a thing. In the end it just made me view you in a negative light that I had never really considered you in before. Are you aware of that? I guess I could let you slide since, as I've mentioned above, you don't really know me at all, so perhaps you were trying to display some awareness that this might be some information that I was interested in. Well you can rest now with the knowledge that I truly don't care about what you do or don't do during the weekend, and you'd be best served in the future by not bothering me with questions about shit that doesn't concern you. Think about it, be a little self-aware.

my privacy

2006-02-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Oh internet, what can't you do?

I was just reading some poor 19-year-old's frustrations with his long distance, 16-year-old girlfriend. Although I could easily link any readers to the source of my entertainment, I feel that I should spare you the shame. It was as pathetic and misguided and wrong-headed as you are imagining, trust me. But the real coup de grace was when the guy posted the lengthy "where do we stand?" love letter for all the public forumers to read and critique. I suppose not even critique, as he had already sent it, but either way, I was privy to someone's intimate writings to one of the most "important" people in his life. It was a little weird.

And I think we all know and love the private spying that the internet can afford us, but let's be honest here, it gets weird after a while. Personally I'd rather live my life not knowing that some poor 19-year-old is spending hours stressing out and obsessing over the fact that he followed a myspace comment chain and suspects his 16-year-old long-distance girlfriend might be involved with another guy. It's funny at first, but if you really think about it, it's just depressing.

Either way, let this be a lesson to all of us. Although using the internet to spy on the lives of other people can be entertaining at times, it's pretty much guaranteed to depress you sooner or later. Better to just head outside.

the new world

2006-02-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

I've made it something of a point to try to keep this space light-hearted -- short anecdotes, quick jokes, funny observations in general. I've wanted to avoid the high-minded seriousness or overt weepiness that one might find in other blogs (well -- minus the summer's worth of movie reviews, which was really just an attempt to prove to myself how easy such writing is (as well as keep track of just how much time I waste watching movies (which, incidentally, I did learn my lesson from, as I'm now only watching 2-3 movies a month (which, noteably, tend to be only of the good and/or interesting variety (so there))))), so please allow me a moment while I dip my toes into the field of music criticism, a field which I will admit finding rather obnoxious and ultimately pointless, but at least for today irresistible all the same.

I don't think it would be terribly insightful of me to point out that listening to music can be highly meditative. Certain music puts you into a certain state of mind, and as such certain situations seem to call for certain soundtracks. Drinking alone on a Thursday afternoon? I hope you have some AC/DC at hand. Getting high on the beach on a sunny day? You could do worse than Bob Marley. Crying yourself to sleep? Cat Power or Portishead should take care of you, if they weren't the ones to send you there in the first place.

(Side note -- for all you hipsters that play your synthed out, intentionally campy, painfully ironic crap for me to dance to at your parties, I hate you. There's dance music, then there's what you play at your parties, and no matter how drunk I might be in order to tolerate you in the first place, I still ain't dancing to that shit. Get some goddamn James Brown or stop inviting me over.)

The point being that today was another "head down to the court and huck the ball at the rim" day. The weather was nice (sort of nice) for a change and I wanted to take the opportunity while I could. Another highlight of heading out to the courts is the walk there. My favorite place to play is in Redwood Park, with a nice 5-10 minute walk through the redwoods leading up to the beautiful court tucked away in the middle of the trees. All in all it takes about 30 minutes from my house, so I was certain to select a CD I wanted to hear and I headed on my way.

Today's selection was Feed Me Weird Things by Squarepusher, a drum and bass, jazz-influenced, electronic-y, kind of jungle beat, industrial-type-thing, very modern, reminiscent of big factories, sweaty clubs, neon lights, dingy street corners, skyscrapers covering the skyline, subways, taxi cabs, what have you. Excuse the listener-response, impressionistic description but I have to admit that I personally connect this music with the modern city. Sorry if we're getting too touchy-feely in our music criticism, but then again I prepped you in the first paragraph this was coming, so stop crying.

(Another side note -- I've noticed much of my favorite music reminds me of the city, my favorite place to live. Coincidence?)

So as I was walking through the redwoods up to the basketball court, listening to chopped up drum loops and hectic sampling, I couldn't help but feel that the music and the setting were at odds. Typically when I think of lush green forests and the music that accompanies them, I think of Joni Mitchell or Jack Johnson or (worse still) Enya, and I can't help but think of Squarepusher as being on a vastly different end of the musical spectrum than all those groups (which some may call the 'good' end of the specturm, but I won't make such judgments here).

Yet I'm not certain why I think of things that way. I personally was terribly content listening to Squarepusher amid the towering trees. I don't see why I don't envision the forest and the outdoors as being as terribly hectic and confusing and threatening and disconcerting as the Mission in San Francisco, or the night clubs in Harlem, or the subway in London, etc. I'm pretty damn lost sometimes when I head outdoors for extended periods of time, spending my camping trips playing my Gameboy, or wondering about sports scores, or nearly drowning in the river, etc. So I've decided to try and rethink the metaphor of the forest that I keep in my mind -- less celtic, harp-y, folksy nonsense will fill it up, more chaotic, threatening, yet ultimately pleasing thought will take its place. Maybe thinking this way will help me get out of the house more. Maybe.

And a P.S. for those who still care -- While I was playing basketball on the court amid the trees, a jeep full of chiefs came roaring by on the road right beside it, a green jeep with a loud engine, all the men surely calculating the exact width and length increase implied by such a 'cool' ride. As they passed it should be no surprise that they shouted something at me, little me playing basketball all by myself, both on the way up and the way down.

(Last side note -- I've even been meaning to write something here about people shouting dumb shit at me as they pass in vehicles, because there's been a real rash of it lately and I consider it one of the most obnoxious behaviors in the world. God bless N. for trying to throw a brick through the windshield of some such characters once; he'll forever be in my good books for that.)

Anyway, as I was walking back through town to return to my apartment, I came across the same jeep, parked in somebody's front lawn this time with the same crew of chiefs out attempting some kickflips on the sidewalk. It's Arcata, it's a small town, and yes I did know one of them. Not only did I know one of them, but I knew some pretty intimate pillow talk about him (remember -- Arcata), such as he likes to have women spit on him and spit on them back (yes -- in the sack), and, most desicably, he's very potentially a date rapist. So the next time you see a jeep full of assholes drive by and shout something at you, your assumptions were correct. Also -- ladies, if you've got the hots for a guy because he drives a kick ass jeep, just remember -- he's probably a spitter.

backpackers beware

2006-02-01T23:51:00.000-08:00

As I was standing in line at the bank today I felt a tug on my backpack zipper. I turned to see who might be interfering with my personal possessions, assuming it's someone I know (it's a small town, you see them everywhere). It's actually a stranger, an older women who looks to be roughly around 40-years-old. She's about 5'3" with very light blonde hair, probably died, which is tucked under a round, felt hat before running down the sides of her face. She is otherwise wearing rather unremarkable Arcata garb -- a dark, heavy coat for the rain along with a long skirt which hangs down to her feet. I'm not certain what to make of the fact that she just tugged on my backpack; I assume the smaller pocket must have been open.

"Ummm ... thanks. It was open, huh?" I'm trying not to be rude.

She mumbles something, something vague and polite, I'm not certain. I turn around again, standing quietly in line, waiting for my turn to make my withdrawal.

She says something I can understand (to my back, it should be noted), "So what did you think?"

I turn around again, beginning to realize that there was more to this innocent backpack tug than I had originally realized. "You mean when you tugged on my backpack?"

"Yeah, what did you think?"

"Well, I thought my backpack was open. Didn't you just zip up one of my pockets?"

"Nah, It wasn't open. I just opened it and zipped it up again. I figure everyone needs to be messed with everyone once in a while."

I'm not entirely certain what to do at this point. Typically the response to being "messed with" is to be rude, mess with the person back, not stand quitely next to them in a line at the bank, even though all I want to do is to stand quietly next to this woman in line at the bank. Truthfully, I had somewhat suspected that she wanted to somehow be friendly and chat me up when I initially turned to her following the initial zipper tug, that's why I had turned completely away again, in an effort to politely ignore her. Aside from her admitting that she just wanted to mess with me, and wasn't closing an open pocket on my backpack, I'm having some difficulty getting over how rudely she had ignored my polite attempt to ignore her. She asked for attention in the zipper grab, I denied it. Now she had resorted to asking me directly, trapping me in conversation.

And like you might guess, she provided most of this conversation by herself. I swear to you I was in line with this woman no more than 120 seconds, but she managed to tell me all sorts of information I never cared to know. Apparently she lives in Trinidad. She finds Arcata very charming; she's only moved here three and a half years ago. She had just been in the bank, but had to come back because she had left her ID in the car. She found all the dreadlocks around town to be very cool, and they weren't anything like back home. If I had been in line for 90 seconds more, I might have found out exactly how many failed marriages and subsequent children she had, but thankfully a teller finally opened for me.

I don't think it will surprise anyone, either, if I admit a rather strong suspicion that this woman was either heavily medicated, on drugs, or just a little drunk at one in the afternoon. Not only was she obnoxiously weird, but she seemed to slur certain syllabes.

But perhaps the worst part was to here her praise Arcata and to have to politely agree -- "Yes, those dreadlocks and the people here are so interesting. Yes, I just love it here. Oh yes it's a great little town." -- because to disagree would further invite her into conversation, would announce that I had something to say and in some way wished our exchange to continue. Having met many different people in many different places in many different contexts, one discovers that simply nodding your head and agreeing is often the quickest way out of an uncomfortable situation. So for two minutes, in the middle of downtown Arcata, in open public view, I could be seen agreeing with a 40-something local yahoo that all the dreadlocks around town were in some way charming or non-revolting in any fashion, and I'm truly sorry for that. No matter how ashamed you feel of me, trust that my own shame is much worse, much much worse. If anything positive comes of this whole sordid situation, let it be this: the next time you feel your backpack being tugged, don't turn around.

sorry for the whininess (is that a word?)

2006-01-31T20:49:00.000-08:00

I think we're all occassionally guilty of eavesdropping on conversations merely to hear how obnoxious people can be -- when you see an old couple eating at a table next to you, or a mother arguing with her child in the supermarket, or the roommates bickering the campus dining center. Even if you claim to never engage in such behavior, I have no trouble admitting that I do it regularly. Just the other day I was completely feigning interest in my friend's conversation just so the people I was eavesdropping on didn't realize that I was intently listening. My friends didn't even realize I was faking interest in their banter until we'd moved a ways away and I was able to tell them about the conversation I just heard.

Today I found myself trapped in the local CD shop. I occassionally stop in if I have time to waste, to see if they have something that I might be looking for at a good price. It usually takes me about 45 seconds to re-remember that they never do. They don't have that Cage CD I'm curious about, and even if they did it would inevitably be $17.99 or more. They only stock two new Prince CDs, both overpriced and ones I already have, and then 5 copies of the same used one which I don't want (at least at this point -- I still need Sign O' The Times before I move onto his weird religious stuff). But there's a conversation I can't resist:

"I think we need those anarchists, you know? Without them there wouldn't be anybody to keep Dick Cheney in check, you know? Those aggressive people in the front lines -- but not violent, not any violence -- just good non-violent anarchists ready to fight for what's right."

I know for certain they won't have the Res CD I'm curious about, but I still look for it.

"I think it's ridiculous that they want $300-400 for a place to live. Like, and I have to share a bathroom. Why would I pay that much to be cleaning up after other people? I need that money for other things, I can't be wasting it on some unsatisfactory place to stay."

I know Res won't be in the rock section, but I look there anyway. I even go back to check the used rap section to see if that has the Cage CD (as if anyone in this town has enough taste to buy such a thing to even be able to resell it).

"Yeah, our band is the Ravens. It's just like some rock and roll. We do shows around and everything."

Eventually I realize that I'm just getting cruel in my enjoyment of this man's failures, and every time I settle on a new CD to browse for and not find, I'm reminded of how small and obnoxious and limiting this little town is. This guy was much more amusing 2-3 years ago, now he's just depressing.

decisions decisions

2006-01-23T23:33:00.000-08:00

As I'm walking home from school today my friend J. comes up alongside me on his bike. He's on his way to the bank and he has an important decision to make. He's just recently receieved his financial aid check and he's trying to decide what to do with it. He's already told someone that he would buy 64 grams of hash at $10 a gram, which he knows normally goes for $15 a gram and that he could easily move at $12 a gram, but he's not certain he knows enough people interested in hash. He asks me if I know anyone who might be interested.

I don't, so we review the situation further. Obviously he would get a fair amount of private usage out of the supply; it's not all for profit. He knows lots of potheads, but he doesn't know that many people that regularly crave hash. Even he admits that smoking hash isn't as enjoyable as good weed. Plus he's already told the guy that he would buy it, and he doesn't want to go back on his word. But at $12 a gram surely people would be interested, right? I'm helping him the best I can, offering what little knowledge I have about hash, hash smokers, and the drug trade in general (which as you may have guess, is very little). J. is on his way to the bank right now and obviously this is a difficult decision to make.

You know what wasn't a difficult decision to make, though? Throwing my plant out of a second story window into the alley below. That one was made hastily and with little second thought, with no input from me. That one I wish I had input into.

kids can be so cruel

2006-01-23T00:20:00.000-08:00

And oh yeah -- I visited my old house again and my plant wasn't there. I asked about it. Apparently it was thrown out of the window (a second story window) for shits and giggles. I bet my plant didn't think it was very funny.

the ether

2006-01-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get headaches so bad that I cry, little tears running down my cheeks and pouring into the pillow I'm inevitably pressing my head into. I have various positions which I've determined help reduce the pain, both arms wrapped around my head, hands grabbing in the back, with pressure being applied against either temple, or one arm laid across both eyes, pressing against the temple which gives me the pain. Sometimes I just bury my eyes in my hands and press like that for a while.

On Saturday I was laid out with one of these headaches. I was actually kind of pleased about it, as I didn't really want to do anything with the day and now I had an excuse to just lay around. I ended up watching a marathon about Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, which actually might not have been the best idea, given the state of my head and the amount of cranial punishment I would see in the various boxing matches. But I just couldn't stop, Ali is amazing.

The marathon culminated in showing the Thrilla in Manila, Ali v. Frasier III, very likely the greatest boxing match ever fought. I don't care if you're a sports fan or not, this is a spectacle to be admired regardless. The storyline leading up to it -- the cocky Ali torturing Frazier with taunts of being a Tom, an ugly gorilla, the completely contrasting styles represented by both boxers in the ring, the preceding fights setting the stage for an epic showdown. I shouldn't bother writing too much about it, because I rest assured that someone else has done a much better job of it that I ever could. But let it be said that the fight was amazing. I spent Saturday lying on my couch, hands pressing against my temples, tears running down my cheek, knowing I should be resting and not watching a fight from 30 years ago, still watching and cheering for Ali all the same. It was a pretty good Saturday in the end.

my big purchase

2006-01-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

I made an important purchase today. It was a long time coming and I really have no one to blame but myself for its delay. Its necessity has been known by me for a few years (yes, a few years) but I've still avoided the inevitable. But today I did it. I purchased a set of nail clippers.

Now you might be wondering what happened to my last set of nail clippers. In truth, today's nail clippers were the first I've ever purchased. My original set were a white elephant gift at a Christmas party when I was 10 or so. My strongest memory was not understanding what a white elephant gift was, then figuring out that it's a present from a stranger, and then realizing that it was a lame-ass set of nail clippers. As I was at the age when biting and tearing your nails were completely accepted grooming practices, I wasn't too excited about the gift. Eventually I found the appropriate use for them and I enjoyed them very much. As a matter of fact, eventually they became one of the best gifts I ever received. I took to responsible nail care and got more use out of the white elephant gift than many other gifts I might have clamored and cried for. Unfortunately I also found an inappropriate use, clipping the extra wire on my new guitar strings. I'm not certain where the wire clippers I should have been using were (probably in the garage and I was just too lazy to leave my room to go get them), but once I realized this new use of the nail clipper set I couldn't stop.

As you might predict, my nice set eventually dulled. Around 18 or 19 I finally had to come to terms with the fact that I'd ruined my nail clipper set, actually one of the finest gifts I was ever given, due to repeated misuse. It was a sad day.

But as the initial paragraph told you, I didn't buy any new clippers until today. What then have I been doing all this time in between? Did I resort to the nail biting technique? Have I gone Howard Hughes and just let the suckers grow? Did I begin paying for weekly manicures? No, I was much more clever than that. I've managed to live off other people's nail clippers. I've had roommates with nail clippers, girlfriends with nail clippers, co-workers with nail clippers, friends with nail clippers, everything I can get. As my nails would grow to unkempt lengths I would scramble to find a nail clipper that I could use. There's been points in my life where I've made specific stops at friend's houses just to use their clippers; it's been that bad.

But no more. I now stand before you a responsible, independent man, who is able to clip his nails at any time, in any place, and for any reason. I don't own any guitars any more, so I won't be clipping any more strings. I also think that, as part of my debt to the various generous people who provided me with clippers all these years, it is my duty to attempt to clip as many different people's nails as possible with my new set. I'll have to keep a careful eye on my friends' nails, always ready with the clipper in my pocket, in my backpack, perhaps swinging from a chain around my neck: "Oh, I couldn't help but notice that one of your nails is slightly protruding from the tip of your finger, dear friend. Perhaps you'd like to clip them with my clippers?" There's years of debt to be repaid, and it's going to take lots of work to even begin closing the account.

PS -- And for those loyal readers who suffered through my plant post a few entries below (I wrote that when I was drunk and then re-read it a few days later -- jeez if there was ever an entry in sore need of revision in this place, not to mention the damn whininess, but I'm kind of a believer in honesty as well. (Note to self: minimize drunken entries)) there is no conscious metaphor in this nail clipper entry. While you're welcome to give it the old Freudian analysis to your heart's content, I can't say there's been any deliberate construction on my part. That's probably why this entry isn't as obnoxious as that damn plant one, although it might just be the booze.

Sarah, I hardly knew ye

2006-01-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

I just received a text message on my cellphone. It says:

Hey sexi ~sarah~

This is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I don't know any Sarah's. In fairness I do know a Sara (I actually just double-checked to make sure the one I know drops the "h") but I don't think she has my cell phone number, she lives in Texas, it would be rather unprecedented for her to suddenly text me "Hey sexi", and the number that sent it was a (707) number anyway. It should also be added that I don't think I currently know anyone else that would refer to me as "sexi". I would expect to notice someone like that, not only because I would be a little concerned about this person's spelling ability. With their spelling so bad, perhaps they just mistyped the name, too, and it's actually Steph or Jenny or Neal or Joey (but then again, Joey doesn't have a cellphone). Who can know with such obvious disregard for basic English spelling, anyway? But like I said, I don't think I can honestly say I'm currently rated "sexi" in anyone's book.

And then the second dilemma -- what if I do know or have recently met some Sarah here, perhaps while I was drunk (although I haven't even been drinking very much lately) and she's attempting to make a polite request for attention? The note does appear somewhat flirtatious, so if I don't respond will I terribly crush the poor girl? If I can't remember or even know who she is, should I really be concerned if my response is crushing? Would it be completely uncalled for to send a message along the lines of, "Do I even kno u?" to get to the bottom of this mystery?

But I think the easiest explanation is that I'm not the "sexi" person this message was actually intended for. The friendly young Sarah probably just mistyped a number when preparing the message and by whatever stroke of random chance it ended up becoming my telephone number, so I'm just going to ignore it and hope that keeps the general embarrassment level, all things considered, at the lowest possible point. But then ... what if? Maybe it was for me ... I could be sexi to someone, couldn't I?

mad hot ballroom

2006-01-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

Teachers, it should be noted, are a strange breed. I, of course, have strongly considered a career in teaching, I'm currently studying in preparation for it, and I also figure that I'd be very good at it should I ever apply myself, but I still have serious doubts if it's a profession I would feel comfortable in.

Witness Mad Hot Ballroom, the documentary about competitive ballroom dancing in NYC public schools. It's an amazing film and I recommend you watch it. The pressures and expectations and completely bizarre stuctures and justifications that we adults make for how we treat out children can be completely impenetrable, yet completely fascinating to me. I suppose I can accept that our school system and our teachings can simply never be perfect, but I'm also stuck wondering just how often it's down right terrible, and where I might fit into all that should I ever apply myself.

I frequently joke -- in that fashion that it's really just a truthful admission but other people find it odd or funny, so I can say pretend I'm kidding -- that I consciously and actively attempt to black out my childhood. I could recount some of the more terrible memories to prove why it might not be so outlandish a proposition, but that would obviously involve revisiting those times, which is something I just told you I don't like to do. In the end all that's really important is that I got through it and it brought me to where I'm at today, so in retrospect I don't feel too bad about it. But I also don't feel too bad about leaving it in the past and never revisiting it. There's not much to miss about it.

As I admitted in an entry a few posts below this one, teenagers make me nervous, particularly when they're in groups. Seeing teenagers interact with each other is an unwelcome reminder of all the anxieties that tortured me back then as well. Yet as I admitted in the beginning of this post, I've seriously considered making a career of exposing myself to these harbingers of pure dread on a daily basis, and then attaching that dread to my paycheck. In part I feel a responsibility, a debt to these children to save them from as many of the horrors that I faced, but on the other I fear for myself. In all likelihood I am one of these insane weirdos determined to continue the cycle of adult-teenager abuse. Who's to say I'm really fighting for the good team? And it's a huge responsibility taking care of America's future by the thousands and I already have a hard enough time sleeping as it is. I'm not certain I need to encourage my insomnia.

So instead I avoid sleep by watching films like Mad Hot Ballroom. I get the thrill of seeing institutional success, the dread of watching the teenagers fight through tough times, and the anxiety about what, if anything, I owe to these children in return. At this point, I think I'm just going to continue volunteering at the polls. That's been fulfilling my sense of civic duty pretty well up to this point, and at least in California the pay is okay.

blind loyalty

2006-01-12T21:23:00.000-08:00

It has recently come to my attention that blind loyalty seems to have taken quite a beating in recent times. When discussing the topic with my friends, I seem to be one of the few who still feels there's something attractive, something endearing about irrationally supporting something or someone. Sure, I'm not about to blindly stand in the corner of a friend who steals from me to pay for heroin and I would have quite a hard time supporting the Warriors should they trade Jason Richardson tomorrow for some 2012 second-round draft picks. In more benign matters, though, I will stand by my friends purely on the basis of the fact that I call them my "friend". It's blind loyalty, even if it might not be reciprocated, and it's pretty cool to me.

I would encourage you to try it for yourself some time. Just choose something innocent at first, like Kevin Smith films for example, and decide that you love them no matter what. Defend Jersy Girl to a friend, see how it feels. I hope you can learn to enjoy it as much as I have, because blind loyalty, you'll see, can be a powerful thing.

my plant, I'm worried, is dying

2006-01-04T01:36:00.000-08:00

When I moved here to Arcata one of the first things I purchased was a plant. It was a plant recommended as being an ideal houseplant -- easy to care for, highly resilient, and eager to grow. I particularly understood at the time that accepting a new plant is always a serious commitment. You can't just purchase one and expect it to grow on its own. There's lots of maintenace, lots of care and love, lots of attention that must be poured into it.

So we brought it home, L-- and I, and began its care. I won't lie -- I was a little neglectful to begin with. I didn't care for the plant as much as I should have. We set up a weekly watering schedule and, although I was aware of it, I rarely kept it. It was mainly L-- that completed the required watering. No matter who decided to water it, the plant continued to grow. It was stong and positive and eager to show that it had done well by moving out of the plant shop and arriving in our home. Sometimes we bought plant food for it; we really wanted it to grow, and we helped it as much as possible.

And grow it did. Eventually we were buying larger pots and updating our watering schedule. It began noticeably leaning toward the window in the room we kept it in, and I felt a certain amount of paternal pride toward it. Was it short of sunlight, or was it just finally beginning to reach out toward its own sustenance? At this point we might occassionally miss the watering schedule but the plant seemed to continue undisturbed. It had moved beyond our on-going maintenance. I began to wonder if it really needed us in the first place (it did, I know, it was was just trying to show a little independence while it could). We continued to care for it and it continued to grow. It was a beautifully reciprocal relationship and I was very happy we had decided to purchase a house plant. I have to admit that initially I was very nervous about the purchase -- if we bought a house plant first thing and it died straight off, that would surely be a pretty terrible sign. But not only did it survive, the beautiful little thing actually thrived, so any nerves were easily laid to rest.

Eventually L-- moved out and I became very neglectful toward our lovely plant. Although I was aware of the weekly watering schedule, I was pretty terrible at maintaining it on my own. I had faith in the plant's resilience and decided that the strict watering shedule might in fact be too much for the poor thing. I opted instead for a more liberal schedule of watering -- watering only when I noticed the need for it. I would usually only notice when the plant began to look a little rundown compared to its previously chipper and upbeat spirit, which means that I was really just barely remembering to water as the plant finally started to show signs of serious distress. Either way, the plant was a goddamn trooper and continued to soldier on through all these troubles. Our relatinship wasn't perfect, but it worked. Every time that the plant began to look a little rundown, a couple bottlefuls from an empty Gatorade container (the older, more illustruous specific watering instruments from the L--+Tieg Era having been replaced by the more common, readily available empty bottles which seemed to litter the household on any given day; it wasn't just the watering which suffered) seemed to restore it to its previous luster. Every two weeks or so the plant and I would go through a cycle of it feeling grand and alive, followed by a period of it becoming disappointed at my shoddy maintenance, finally inspiring my renewed maintenance leading to a period of fresh prosperity and happiness, only to lead right back to the circumstances that began the process in the first place. I suppose I was aware of these patterns while they were occurring, but I can't really say I took the necessary steps to correct them.

The love/hate, maintenance/neglect cycle kept up for quite a while between the plant and me. Every time that I began to seriously chastise myself for neglect of the plant, wondering if I had, in fact, gone too far without watering this time, it would seem to rebound beautifully, allowing me to continue further along in disillusionment about its general well-being. I feel guilty now.

Eventually I moved out of my apartment and left the plant behind. I had nowhere to take it, no matter how much I wanted to. I believe that I actually offered it to L-- at one point, secretly hoping that she would take it without explicitly verbalizing the importance of the whole affair to her, the continued survival of one of the most speical plants I had ever met, hoping she would care for it like she used to without me having to pathetically beg, alleviating me of the guilt which I had been accumulating by continuing to roughly care for it. Basically a pathetic, half-hearted stab at repairing the neglect and guilt I had accrued toward the plant during the time L--, the plant, and I had been separated. It really deserved better. But like I said, I never made the point of guilt and neglect too explicit; I more just let it hang there and hoped that the plant would survive all the same. So yeah, in the end I just left the plant behind and hoped for the best.

For a while the plant carried on without me present. Someone, I'm not sure who, from my old apartment was caring for the plant while I was gone and this gave me an awful lot of relief. I usually made it a point to put a little water on the poor creature whenever I returned to my old house, guilt still hanging on me like a bad credit report, but I couldn't solve everything. The plant deserve better. The plant seemed to be holding on even in my absence and dreadful neglect (even though my previous continuing presence hadn't exactly been stellar for the plant's care) and all of my visits were one part for seeing my friends and one part for checking up on my gorgeous flora.

But who's kidding who -- we were definitely on the down-turn by now. My glimmers of hope would be screaming distress compared to the luxury of the plant's early days.

And so tonight I returned ... I visited my plant ... and I saw it in the worst shape I've seen the thing in its entire life. I'm gravely concerned its dying. The roomates seem oblivious to it and there's a cat running loose to terrorize it. I wasn't certain if I should pour water upon it or not during this visit because that might only extend its suffering. I still have no solid way of saving the plant as my current residence might actually be more inconducive to plant care than the residence I left behind. So I sat in the room drinking Pabst, watching the absolutely choking amounts of pot smoke pour into the atmosphere surrounding my long-time friend, wondering how the hell I reached this point, remembering the vigor of the plant in previous times, desperatley hoping that it might find some way to rebound from its current situation, but more just trying to accept the fact that my plant was finally dying. There was a paper-clip on one of its leaves. I have no idea what the paper-clip was doing there or why anyone would ever put one there in the first place. Obviously it hurt the poor thing.

But I think it might be a losing battle ... my plant, I'm concerned, is going to die.

And yes -- the is undoubtedly an extended metaphor about my time here in Arcata. Feel free to read between the lines, search for double meanings, and make all the Freudian assumptions you please. But when you're done with all that know that I am seriously worried about my plant's welfare. I'm seriously considering making some phone calls in its regard, first thing tomorrow.

different day, same result

2006-01-04T01:29:00.000-08:00

I took a specific note as the act was occurring:

"He's a soldier. If it's a hairy ass, he'll still tear it up."

This is a conversation in reference to Rocco Siffredi (please don't google him). I believe actually that he was referred to as Rocco Sifferelli (or something). I know they definitely didn't get his name right when they referred to him, because I personally marked it as hilarious.

When my roommates spoke of Rocco, it appeared that they approved of his work. I began to harbor serious doubts about their critical capacities. My only experience with Rocco is renting out his work to scores of pathetic losers who were looking to live out their sick fantasies through disgusting porn videos. All of the tapes these people rented were marked with a silver dot, as Rocco was in fact granted his own section in my previous place of employment, his own section of ass fucking, european orgy-ing, reverse gangbang-ing, and woman degrading in general. It wasn't just any ol' porn section, it was Rocco's special section of twisted male fantasy and extended debasement of women.

My roommates made special note to remark upon how when Rocoo demanded that women suck on his toes in the video, they sucked on his toes.

The whole thing made me rather uncomfortable. See previous post for inferences as to why that might be. But this was some special kind of uncomfortable -- not only were they talking about incredibly degrading porn that I am all too familiar with, not only were they approaching this man's videos as anything besides extended, perverse male dominance fantasies, not only were they talking about all these things as something desirable and admirable, they were talking about the silver dot. I know way too much about the silver dot -- the things it represents, the amount of money it makes, and the people who rent it -- for its discussion to pass uncommented upon.

I'm living with people who like watching the silver dot.

cats, dogs, and beer

2006-01-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

This is how it begins:

"Hey man, taste this beer. It tastes like pussy."

A few times now I've wished that I had a tape recorder on me when my roommate strikes up conversation. I'm going to have to look into this. And for the record, I've never tasted pussy which tasted like beer.

My roomate's response:

"I dunno man. I don't eat pussy no more."

This is the opening prompt for a 8-10 minute conversation between my roommate and his friend re: the various strategies, tactics, and requirements of cunnilingus. P. apparently doesn't do it any more, because he dislikes the taste. M. says he always does it on the first sexual encounter in order to set a good precedent and then he never does it again. M. also claims it's a good strategy when you know you're real worked up and you're only going to be able to manage 10 seconds or so of intercourse. It's best to get the girl off a few times before jumping in for your brief release; this way she has nothing to complain about, M. explains. P. agrees that while these points may be valid, it's still not a good enough reason for him to eat pussy. M. relates the powerful feeling that occasionally overcomes him which just makes him want to eat pussy more than anything. According to the emphasis M. places on the description of this emotion, I would have to assume that it can be a pretty powerful one.

Frankly, I've never engaged in such crude discussion as the one described above. Living with two men has, in the past few months, introduced me to such randy bedroom talk for the first time in my life. I sit mute during these times, with nothing to add, feeling uncomfortable and confused. It's middle school locker room talk all over again. They aren't going to ask me about my experience, are they? Will I have to make up a lie to satisfy them? Is he fucking serious that he thinks his beer tastes like pussy?

I simply can't speak that crudely about the topic of sex. Even between intimate partners I have a relatively toned down and personalized vocabulary to discuss our bedroom relations. Whether it's for shame of my own sexuality or respect for my sexual partners that I can't approach these topics in the manner of P. and M., we may never know. All I know is that I really need to start shopping for a portable tape recorder.

"Orick is completely cut off from the outside world"

2006-01-02T00:43:00.000-08:00

I recently installed Firefox on my computer, finally subverting that evil Bill Gates and his ridiculous IE. It's a good program and one of the fun things I got for it was a constant weather report which updates in my status bar. This was fun for a little while, until I realized that there were constant "Severe Weather" warnings coming up. I know the weather is kind of crappy where I live, but I don't know if we have to go around labeling it severe all the time.

What I do know now, though, is that they weren't joking. There was indeed severe weather on its way. I went to bed around 4 am on Jan 31st, looking forward to sleeping in before celebrating the New Year's. There wasn't much sleeping in, though, as I was awoken around 9:30 by what I believe would best be described as "Severe Weather." Wind was absolutely tearing around my house, and there was no way to sleep through it. Occasionally there would be a volley of rain against the front wind shield as the wind turned in that direction and threw a spray of water against it. Rather eerily my door began making occasional thumping noises as the wind hit it. My gas heater developed a bizarre humming which I still can't understand how it relates to the wind.

It should also go without saying that the power went out. This happens rather regularly up here; I wasn't too concerned about it.

When I finally decided to get my day started I called David, seeing if there was power near him or not. He had no power, and there was no power near him, in fact no power in all of Arcata. We made plans to go out to lunch, over to Eureka hoping to find somewhere which was still had electricity. Our electric stoves weren't going to be much help in food preparation. We discovered that Highway 101 was closed between the two towns and there was bumper to bumper traffic along Old Samoa Road (where typically one can easily reach 70 mph without even realizing it). Trees were down everywhere and water was filling in gaps and reservoirs that it doesn't typically fill up. It was a bizarre scene.

Eventually we found the one restaurant in Eureka that was still open. It was predictably incredibly busy. I felt a little bad for the staff, but I also felt pretty hungry. After a bit of a wait we were finally served. The meal was okay, but not nearly the quality the price might suggest. Then again, who were we to complain? This was the only lunch being served in town.

While waiting I was able to call my friend. My cellphone had become the only electronic distraction available to me and I was certain to get all the use from the battery life I still had. She told me that power was out in the whole county, 60k people unplugged. There were 150 mph winds measured at various spots during the morning and much of the coastline had felt it. I wished her a safe New Year.

Before we left Eureka I wanted to stop by Myrtlewood Liquors. I wasn't sure if they'd be open, but we'd try. Fortunately they were still selling their goods, with the entire business in the dark except for the cash register which had been hooked up to a truck's car battery out front, red and black cables running through the entrance and up to the counter. I can't even begin to imagine how much business the place had been expecting with the New Year's traffic, and obviously the owner was determined to make as much money as possible. This little weather incident had the potential of really wreaking havoc on this poor business owner.

Back in Arcata I didn't want to be alone. Sunset was approaching and it was going to be dark, better to pool what little disaster resources I had with someone else. Eventually I headed over to Joey's house, Safeway was still open and it was on the way. I'd be able to get some beer and celebrate the occassion properly.

Safeway was the busiest I had ever seen it, despite having extremely little power. They were using generators to power the row of cash registers at the front of the store and nothing else. Every single cash register, roughly 12 or 15, had a line of 3-4 people. Every aisle was full of people shopping. The power had only been out for 6 or 7 hours but people didn't let that slow their expectations for the worst.

As I headed to the back of the store to find beer, I realized how much like a dungeon the beer section is. It's slightly set into the back of the store with a lower ceiling, meaning that it was the darkest section of the entire store by far, but on this holiday also one of the busiest. It was too dark to be able to easily see the brands, and you definitely couldn't make out the prices. I realized that I still had the section somewhat memorized -- higher priced, quality beer on the left, cheaper American brands on the right. All I wanted was Pabst but I couldn't find it. How many times had I been there purchasing it and I hadn't memorized where it was located? It could also be that they were sold out. The alcohol was moving briskly. Some shoppers even came through the section with a flashlight, and I was able to use the brief glimpse of light to grab what I wanted.

In true American form, the cash registers worked great and I was able to pay with my debit card. The cash register told me she had been working since 6 in the morning (it was about 4 now) and I couldn't say anything to her. There's no real way to pretend that would be enjoyable.

In the parking lot Rico's Tacos was still open. They had a gas generator sitting outside with a line running into the kitchen. Inside the restaurant they had a line outside the door.

At Joey's house I was able to sit, drink, and await the sunset. Once it went down the town went dark. There was nothing on. You could see all the major roads as cars drove up and down. Old Samoa looked like a spotlight because of the constant stream of headlights pointing at Joey's house traveling along the road. Once it got dark, it got extremely dark. Going to the bathroom became an adventure, a novelty, something you had never done before. This was going to be a New Year's to remember.

So there, that's basically just a quick description of some of the more important things I want to remember about the night. Obviously the power is on again. Around 9 in the morning it came back on, meaning we had a completely dark New Year's Eve. I don't know how terribly interesting all these details are to any potential readers, but it's something I need to put down to save for later. Hopefully I'll be able to work some fun story out of all of this, and I'll be sure to throw it up here.

Anyway -- for whoever is reading this, Happy New Year's.

Bloom County, tea, Opus, and regret

2005-12-18T23:36:00.000-08:00

I can say with little doubt that Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed is one of the most influential works I've ever read. My father got into the comic strip when I was about 11 or 12, bringing all the collections home for me to discover once he was through with them. I read all the books at least twice as a young, impressionable adolescent, and I loved them. My understanding of the 1980s, as well as much of my sense of humor, is largely tinted by Oliver, Opus, Binkley, Bill the Cat, Portnoy, Lola Granola, Steve Dallas, and the other Bloom County residents. Although it may be a cliche expression, in this case it's true -- I just wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't read these books.

So imagine how glad I am to purchase the Honest Tea flavor Peach Ooh Lah Long. It has Opus on the bottle. The bottles come with some explanation of how Berkeley Breathed complained that he always had to add sugar to the tea, why didn't the company just do it themselves, so they said they would if he let them put Opus on the bottle, so they put Opus on the bottle. It should be noted that aside from beautiful Opus gracing every bottle, the tea is very tasty itself. The Peach flavor is far and away my favorite, and -- yes -- that just might be some subliminal conditioning because one of the icons of my adolescence comes with it. Either way, I've come to drink a lot of this beverage. It's tasty and it has Opus, how can I resist?

So today I bought a bottle and brought it with me into my favorite burger joint in town. I just sipped a little on the way, deciding to save the rest for later, as there would be a drink with lunch.

At this point it should also be noted that another interesting quirk of the company is its insistence on printing pretty weird little affirming quotes on the inside of their bottle caps. They're usually pretty asinine, cheesy liberal type quotes, and I read them to see what trite piece of wisdom they have for me that day. This is today's quote:

A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

--John Barrymore

I only highlight this so we can understand the true sadness of my story's approaching finale. When I finished my lunch I got up and left, completely forgotting my barely touched Peach tea on the table. When I arrived home I wanted my tea, realized it was gone, left behind most likely to be thrown in the trash, and I regretted it. I am growing older.

And for the reader of this story -- what the hell does that Bloom County opening have to do with anything? Perhaps you, like me, are now harboring regrets, regrets about wasted time, poor reading choices, and ever-looming boredom. Why exactly did you just read that crap about some comic strip just to find out I left my tea behind and felt bad about it? I'll tell you why -- so we can all grow old together.

my roommate, the brazilian dj

2005-12-06T00:31:00.000-08:00

There are certain advantages to living with a dj; I obviously get to hear a lot of music. Thankfully my roommate is also primarily a hip hop dj, usually spinning some mid-90s NYC stuff, which I can dig. He also has some old soul and funk standards, like any good dj should. It's always fun to catch an early sample or just hear one of the classics from time to time.

There are also some disadvantages to living with a dj; I obviously have to hear a lot of music. Sometimes I'd rather listen to something mellow -- not that bumping hip hop -- but I don't always have a choice in this matter. There's also the issue regarding the apparently requisite dj pot habit. You don't even need to see my roommate digging through his crates to know some hip hop is coming on, you just have to check the smell in the apartment.

And then there's the beauty of getting to live with a Brazilian man who spends roughly 3-4 hours a day listening to American hip hop. In the end, he's probably more up on contemporary slang than I am. I don't ever have to clean up my sloppy English or avoid slang idioms, repeat myself or clean up my diction. If my roomate can make any sense of what Ghostface is saying, he can obviously keep up with me. And can he ever cuss up a storm. It's been noted that I have a rather strong tendency to swear myself, but I tip my hat to my roommate's cussing game. He's got that shit down.

I remember when I lived in Denmark cussing in Danish was one of my favorite pasttimes, as well. There's just nothing too remarkable about saying "for fanden" or "for helvede" or "for satan" or "fisse" or "koes" or anything like that. Do those words look vulgar to you? They don't look particularly vulgar to me, either, and boy did I ever like saying them. But that's neither here nor there. We're talking about my roommate.

So my Playstation 2 is starting to die -- like really really die. I almost took a hammer to it last night. And I'm starting to have some serious concerns about the negative effects of daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes quarter hourly, coat of thick, heavy, dark, stinky pot smoke on the machine. When I complain that my PS2 is dying, my roomate points out how he had to go through two Xboxes because they kept breaking on him. I don't bother to point out the possible correlation between incessant pot smoking and subsequent hardware failure. He's usually too busy spinning records to be concerned with such trivial matters as the failure of my $150 hardware.

Which brings us to the real point of this post -- how much does fucking Sony hate consumers? I reckon it's a lot. Fucking assholes.

the secret to my power

2005-12-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

If I haven't told you already, now you know: it's my wisdom teeth and gray hair. Don't tell anyone else, though, because like the title says, it's secret.

among the lucky

2005-11-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

I've never been one for motivation. One of my greatest fears in life is working for someone who has one of those ridiculous motivational posters on the wall -- the kind with "teamwork" or "integrity" or "strength" written below some "inspirational" picture and then a very cliche, Hallmark-esque description of the concept written alongside. I simply couldn't respect a person who would non-ironically hang such a thing their wall and expect me to still respect them. Even a person who hung such a thing ironically on their wall would have a rather large respect gap to make up for it. Those posters are just trite and obnoxious, and it boggles my mind that anyone might miss that aspect.

That said, I'll now admit that I've taken to collecting fortunes from various fortune cookies and Chinese restaurants in my wallet. I'm not collecting the bland, non-specific ones such as "You will soon recieve a large gift" or "An old friend will soon be important" or some such nonsense. I'm not collecting them for the numbers on back in an orchestrated strike on lotto or anything. No, I'm collecting those ones which obviously pertain to me. Let's take a moment to review the collection so far, beginning with the most recent entries and going back to the first:

-- Nothing can keep you from reaching your goals.
-- You out distance all competitors.
-- You are admired for your accomplishments.

And perhaps you, my dear reader, think these fortunes are of the bland, non-specific variety. You may be correct. But then I would then turn your attention to the genesis, the foundation, the fortune which was obviously destined to find me, and me alone:

-- Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.

Obviously fortune cookies understand who I am, and they are sending a carefully orchestrated message to help me in my path in life. So let me take a moment to thank you, fortune cookies of the world, for all the inspiration and motivation you've provided me (not to mention the sweet, after-meal snack as well). If all you've told me is true, then perrhaps one day I'll have my own office where I can frame and display you, in an organized effort for others to share in your wisdom.

high class adult entertainment

2005-11-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things I would associate with the phrase "high class adult entertainment": going to a musem and simply wandering for a few hours, eating at an expensive restaurant where the price is reflected in the flavor of the food as opposed to the size of the portion, attending an international film festival, going on a hike in an incredibly beautiful location, or spending an evening in with your loved ones and enjoying every minute.

So imagine my confusion as to the sign above Club 71 alongside Highway 5 -- a suggestive silhouette of the female form along with the slogan "high class adult entertainment." This, my friends, was a stip club strategically located along the highway to attract the ample trucking crowd. This does not necessarily strike me as very high class.

What the sign really strikes me as is being guilty of protesting too much, as if we wouldn't wonder about such signs as a "BBQ Chicken Shack: 100% Ecoli Free" or "Haul It Movers Company: We Won't Steal" or "Local Catholic Church: We Love Children the Right Way." Suffice to say I have my doubts about this Club 71 and exactly what class of entertainment it really provides.

my name is Tieg

2005-11-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

Everything contained in this post is in fact carefully rehearsed and readily available stock answers and anecdotes to all questions concerning my name. I pretty much can't meet anybody new without having to employ at least one of these in our conversation, so I've decided that, in a time saving effort, I'm simply going to list them here and, in the future, refer any and all inquiries re: my name to this post. Enjoy:

1. No, it's not short for anything.

2. No, I don't know why my parents chose it. They're weird. My brother's name is Adam.

3. It's actually an intentional misspelling. It's supposed to be "t-e-a-g-u-e" like "league." My parents figured they'd save me the vowels.

4. No, it's not "ethnic." I have no idea what my "heritage" is. I've been told that it's Celtic, but really I could just be making that up. I can't emphasize this enough, but it really appears that my parents just pulled it out of their ass.

5. No, it's Tieg with a "g" at the end. I'm not some idiot who runs around referring to myself by a single consonant.

6. I was told it means "man of poetry" which is ironic. Of course I am an English major who enjoys writing, so it's fitting in that sense, but I also really dislike poetry rather specifically. And I didn't know about this meaning of my name until I was 18 years old, meaning that instead of spending my teenage years wearing black, scribbling in journals, listening to the Cure, and getting all kinds of tail from naive women who wanted to fix my tortured soul, I listened to heavy metal, became a hockey junky, read a lot of science fiction, and developed a debilitating video game habit. But hey, thanks Dad, for finally letting me know. I'll have to figure out a way to work it into my online gaming profile.

7. I've met two other Teague's. One was a guy and one was a girl. The girl was hot as hell, and the guy was just someone who opened a rental account at Tower in San Francisco when I worked there. I definitely entertained fantasies of how cool it would be to date a really hot chick named Teague, and how it would have to be a rather epic relationship based on the name thing alone. She was just a (hot) waitress I met once at a restaurant in Santa Cruz, but I still feel pretty cheated that the chance for a "Tieg and Teague" relationship passed me by. She might have been the One, for all I know. I mean, she had a great name. We could have named our first child Tieg (or Teague), regardless of its sex, and then s/he could say that s/he was named after her/his mother AND her/his father. How cool would that be? Maybe I'll search for her on the internet when I'm done with this.

8. In Santa Cruz I actually went to high school with a girl named Teagan. In my second semester there we ended up having a class together and it was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. When handing back papers, the teacher would say "Teagan" and I'd think it was for me. It was this extremely profoud moment where I finally had my first glimpse into the lives of the John's and Sara's and David's of the world. For the first time ever I was around someone with a similar name and it definitely shook me up a little bit.

9. One time I searched my name on the internet, to see if anyone else had the exact same spelling. What I found was a picture of two little boys, one Tieg the other something like Bronwen, weilding large swords in a field. There was subtitle something along the lines that "Tieg's favorite armament is the Broad Sword" or something like that. Basically, there was another one, and that one was a Ren Fair dork in training, and his parents were weird hippies who chose a fucked up name because they thought it would be cool, and he was going to fuck my name up for me by dorking it up all over the place, and I was going to have to be extra super duper cool in order to counter-balance this Tieg's ultimate lameness, and it might actually be the best idea to simply track him down and smother him in his sleep, before he got too handy with those broadswords, because in the end there can only be one.

Although now I'm myspace friends with another Tieg, letter for letter, same name. He's younger than me as well, so once again I'm the first. When I found his profile we exchanged some e-mails back and forth venting about the struggles of living with a weird name. It was pretty liberating, really, knowing that someone else out there knows my pain. He's in a band and he seems pretty cool -- perhaps cooler than me, who knows -- so I'm pretty glad to know there will be two of us bringing glory to the name. I'm not going to have to smother this one.

10. When answering the phone at jobs I can always tell if it's a customer or not on the other end, because only people who know me actually call me Tieg. Typically people are glad to chum it up with Steve or Pete, and one time I even got a Craig, but there's never once been someone who actually picked up my name correctly when I say it over the phone. Doesn't really matter, it's not like I'm actually telling them my name because I want to be the customer's friend. It's just something that my employers generally make me do.

11. Because it's a weird name, there's a rather high rate of retention in the people I tell it to. What that means is that people often know my name and I've already forgotten theirs. It's not fair, really, because mine is highly memorable and theirs is Jenny or Lisa or Leah or something, how can I be expected to remember that? Or perhaps I'm just rude and really crappy at remembering people's name. We'll never know.

So there. If any readers have further questions about my name, feel free to ask and I'll be sure to answer. Everything you ever wanted to know will be answered in this space, and then hopefully never answered again.

young adults

2005-11-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

I'm never comfortable around young adults. I'm not sure what it is. Even when I was one, the 12-17 set always made me nervous to be around. And it's not like I'm opposed to them as a concept or anything -- like I think we should discover some way to scientifically skip those ages in the future generations or something -- but I can't honestly say they really give me any peace of mind when they're around me.

So today I decided to head up to the high school before the sun set so I could shoot around a little bit and watch the sky turn pink. Little did I realize that today was the day for basketball tryouts, and even at 5:00 the high school would be swarming with identity-confused youngsters. But I'm an adult now and I should be able to hide my nervousness around them, right? So I head out to shoot around, regardless of the little monsters literally surrounding me on all sides. But still, every time I airball or clang it off the side of the rim I have to remind myself, "Nobody is looking. Nobody saw that. Nobody cares. You can legally drink beer. They cannot. You are fully grown. They are not. You have an in-depth knowledge of English linguistics. They dont' even know what linguistics means. You have touched a girl's bare breast. They have ... no wait ... kids these days, they're into all kinds of freaky things. They probably have done that. Fuck." etc.

And eventually one of them approaches me. He appears to be 13 or 14, obviously not fully grown. He has on blue shorts with a matching blue Jordan shirt, something he's probably very fond of as it aptly displays his status as a "cool" person, something he is undoubtedly eager to broadcast. He would like to shoot around with me, and I'm forced to relent. To begin the process of healing, I'm going to have to accept one of them in my life eventually.

I try to play it cool and not let on that his kind is my enemy. Unfortunately there are two girls who come in tow. This might pose a problem. The male-female young adult dynamic is always more troublesome than the simple unisex one. What if the girls start teasing the boy and make him feel bad? What if I'm exposed to pathetically awkward young adult flirting? What if he gets nervous and starts missing all his shots and gets all embarrassed in front of the girls? What if the girls talk to me? This new dynamic has the potential for trouble written all over it.

Thankfully I was bailed out by the girl's conversation with each other. They begin talking about how much they get grounded. Actually, one girl talks about being "grounded" and the other one says "put on restriction" which is extra funny, because you can see the different parenting philosophies at work and how these young lives are still largely defined by the adults who govern them. Now I can relax, because I have a concrete reason why I'm cooler than these girls. I can stay out as late as I want, I can talk on the phone as long as I want, I can date who I want, I can go wherever I want in my own free time, wear the clothes I want, and no one can tell me shit.

So see? There's no reason to be afraid of young adults at all. They get put on fucking restriction.

the birder's world

2005-11-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

Today I decided to eat my lunch in Harry Griffith Hall. I don't typically frequent this building on campus. I've only had two real memorable experiences there, and I can't say they've been memorable for good reasons. One was the second worst class I've ever taken in my entire life, and the other was a volunteer survey about violence in video games where they had me play Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for a while before they asked me a bunch of silly questions. But it remains that there is ample table space and good places to sit and eat, so I decided to drop by. Luckily for me, my Harry Griffith luck was about to change.

At the table I settled into was a copy of Birder's World from December 2004, a magazine dedicated to bird watchers and their bizarre hobby. The cover promises thrilling articles on such topics as "Arizona's least-known trogon hotspot" and "African Birds - Amazing Flamingos", as well as the "Special: Sparrow ID Foldout." Needless to say I was intrigued.

So I settled in and began reading, here are some sample passages:

From the Editor:

Just how many birds can you see in winter? This issue should convince you that there are plenty [...] the birding can be spectacular: Bohemian Waxwings flying in from Cape Breton by the hundreds, Long-tailed Ducks floating off shore by the thousands, Iceland Gulls loafing just about anywwhere, and inevitably, one of these winters, a white-morph Gyrfalcon.

From the readers:

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams wrote that time is the longest distance between two places. Pete Dunne's "Closing the Loop" brought back memories of birding the loop at Bentsen-Rio Grande and, with the help of the Gambles, seeing my first Blue Bunting. In the '80s I was a young birder by myself in south Texas, and Red and Louise not only guided me around the area for two days, but had me over for breakfast in their trailer. I will never forget their kindness.

From the contributors:

Sometimes the great moments come and pass and only later does memory confer upon them the shine of greatness. Other times, an encounter is so great and so singular that only a fool (or a nonbirder) could fail to recognize it. This was one of those encounters.

So yes, I took the magazine with me. This is one of the finest prizes I've struck in some time, and I fully intend to read this magazine cover-to-cover. Ads for expensive binoculars, birdhouses, and various foods to attract the creatures fill the pages, constant use of the noun "bird" as a verb -- as illustrated above -- litters every piece of prose, and lonely obsession simply reeks from every page. This is my kind of magazine.

local politics (aka hippies having sex is gross)

2005-11-02T12:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a quote from the local paper re: the issue of recruiters on high school campuses, which is shaping to be a key issue in the upcoming local school board election:

'When I was in high school, a trade school told us that their school was located in an area that had a population of seven girls to every guy, ' [candidate Steve Lorenzo] wrote. 'This is a method of persuarsion that is not appropriate.'

Well speak for yourself, Steve. This would appear to be exactly the type of information that a prospective applicant of any school would truly need. If I was aware of this community when I was in high school, I might have attended this trade school, and I might have actually learned a trade, and I might actually be doing something with my life instead of just going through the motions to complete a non-paying liberal arts degree, and I might actually have met some hot chicks along the way, and that actually might not have been as bad as he seems to make it, and I don't actually see what his problem is except for the fact that he made the mistake of passing on this trade school as well. Don't believe the hype, hippies are just playa-haters dressed in the clothing of peace and love. Just because you fucked up, and the crowning achievement of your life might be becoming a school board member in politically outrageous Arcata, doesn't mean you have to take that out on the next generation of prospective students just looking to get laid.

other children with happy childhoods

2005-10-31T23:29:00.000-08:00

My mother never allowed me to trick or treat when I was younger. Well, there was -- I think -- 2 years that I was allowed to go. But I had a time limit and only one certain area that I was allowed to go in. I have to say that it kind of fucked me up. Now I hate Halloween, and all those other kids who have happy memories of mountains of candy. I just remember resentment and anger. And as such I don't really dress up, the whole affair usually creeps me out, and the only real advantage is that is generally overlooked when you're really hung over the next day.

what David Sedaris said

2005-10-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

David Sedaris said this in his interview for the newest Believer. It's a funny quote:

"When people say they're not afraid of dying, I just assume that they haven't given it much thought."

Haha.

strangers with cannabis

2005-10-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

So I was walking to my friend's house this evening, when riding past me comes a dreaded white man who hadn't shaved in quite some time. Without any previous conversation between the two of us in either of our lives (as a matter of fact, this was most likely the first time either of us had ever seen each other), he decided now was an opportune moment to politely inquire, "Do you smoke cannabis?"

I replied quickly, "No."

"Well neither do I." And he continued riding off into the distance.

I find it a slightly odd conversation starter to kick off our relationship. You would think he might ask me something like what my name is, or how I was doing, or how my family was or something, but for some reason he wanted to know about my personal habits. On the other hand, it is refreshing to finally meet someone else in Humboldt who doesn't smoke weed. People like that are a really rare breed up here. So maybe I'll see him again and we'll be able to introduce ourselves, comment on the weather, and go more in-depth about our mutual choice to avoid marijuana consumption. Or perhaps not.

But seriously, is it too much to ask for one week where a stranger on the street doesn't offer me some kind of illegal drug? Just one week?

my body, the temple

2005-10-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

I've begun to think that -- at least in my case -- the cliche "my body is a temple" does not really apply. From my understanding, temples are holy places that people treat with reverence and respect. In that case, it's definitely a poor metaphor for my body. If anything I'd say that my body is more like a double-wide, or a flophouse, or a '87 Honda Civic backseat. I put pretty much whatever I want there, and I sure as hell don't approach it with any kind of extraordinary respect. I suppose it's only appropriate considering I never go to church anyway. Maybe if they served Pabst there, I'd find the time, but as it stands those self-righteous, pious do-gooders can kiss my ass.

crossword clues

2005-10-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

Personally, I'm against crossword clues such as this: "45. Pulitzer winner Welty." They do nothing but test your memory of asinine facts. And even if I don't know (which I don't), we all realize that I can simply type "Pulitzer winner Welty" into google and get my answer in about 2 seconds. It's simply not that engaging of a clue.

my notes are better than yours

2005-10-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

Personally, I enjoy reading old notebooks of mine. Usually the notes I take are cryptic and incomplete, and aren't very useful outside of a three-month window or so. Anything that I do bother to take a note on, though, is usually worth my attention. For example, here is a note I discovered flipping through my notebook from this summer:

"Dayton: I fuck girls for money. Yeah I've done ecstasy and fucked down w/ some girls."

I have no idea what that means. I have no idea why I wrote that down. I can see why it would appeal to me (who the hell says "fuck down"?) but I have no clue what the context is. For such a great note, it's pretty disappointing that I've forgotten its relevance. So I'm going to request the help of any readers on this page. It's sandwiched between notes on Rush Hour and Metroid Prime 2, if that helps you at all. If anyone has any insight as to why I might have taken this note, please send me your theory. It would be greatly appreciated, and if we're lucky we can all unlock the mystery of this tantalizing note together. Thanks in advance.

NBA basketball

2005-10-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Although the confession won't be shocking to many people I know, here it is for what it's worth: I'm a basketball junkie. There's no way to sugar coat it, no way to rationalize it, no way to understand it except to say that it is what it is. Warriors pre-season basketball tips off tonight, and I'm ecstatic.

H.E.R. (who Common famously used to love)

2005-10-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Things Fall Apart is easily one of the most personally influential albums I've ever heard in my life. For almost my entire senior year of high school I was listening to that album 2-3 times a week, sometimes directly in a row which is something I typically avoid doing at all costs. I loved it. But I was always confused about Common's verse in "Act Too...The Love of My Life." He was rapping about a woman in this very direct way, and I couldn't figure out what that had to do with the song at all. "Her daddy would beat her / Eyes all puff / In the mix on tape niggas had her in the buck / When we touched it was more than just to fuck." It continues in this vein, and I was always a little frustrated by it. Why was Common just talking about some weird relationship he had when the song seemed to be about the power that hip-hop had in our lives?

So imagine my relief when I finally got Common's Resurrection, featuring the infamous "I Used to Love H.E.R." Finally I realized that he was making reference to an earlier song in his career in that later song I loved so dearly, and the extended metaphor of hip-hop as a woman we all have a relationship was being used in both. That line above about getting beaten and having puffy eyes? Yeah, that's a direct attack on P. Diddy and his crap brand of commercial hip-hop, not some bizarre extraneous details about this phantom woman's sordid life.

And finally having this one piece unlocked, I realized that this was a metaphor commonly referenced in all hip-hop. All these songs I knew and loved developed a second layer of meaning because I finally found this metaphor. I probably never go a week without listening to some song that talks about "H.E.R." or calls hip-hop a woman or something like that. This is an extremely influential metaphor and song in the genre, and it's important to know when listening to extensive amounts of hip-hop. Trust me, everything can be really confusing if you never listened to "I Used to Love H.E.R." You should really do that, if you haven't.

the hat on the man buying two tubes of lube and a bottle of whiskey from Safeway at 1:30 in the morning

2005-10-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

The stories this baseball cap could tell would probably produce at least 20 best-sellers as well as a large catalog of spin-offs for the hardcore fans to enjoy. It has probably heard more country songs than I have in my life, or that I would have the will to endure. Shit, there's probably a country song about this very hat. At least the hat fits, because his shirt doesn't. I suppose he prefers the larger shirts in order to absorb more dirt. And his jeans seem to be a close relative of his hat; they've definitely seen things that would make me cry. I don't know exactly where all these items are going, but I think it's safe to say that I would not like to go there myself.

your education

2005-10-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

Your education will not always be enjoyable.

cancelled class

2005-09-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

There are few things greater on God's green earth for students -- nay, human beings -- than cancelled class. The outpouring of positive feeling and love that accompanies every cancelled class should no longer be ignored. I think it's time we begin advocating a federal 'Cancel Class for Cash' program, wherein teachers are given a small sum every time they cancel class (sums should work on a sliding scale depending on how much the teacher sucks, with more money going to the crappiest teachers). The resultant well-spring of happiness and good-feeling to be found in every college town across America would be well worth the price. George Bush are you listening? I know you never went to class; this is exactly the pet-project to place your legacy upon.

It should be pointed out while few things are better than cancelled class, there is one that springs immediately to mind: cancelled classes. That's right, I have 3 classes today and they are all cancelled. Requisite celebration forthcoming.

no, I didn't forget this was here

2005-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

So obviously I've let this space fall into disrepair with my return to school. Mainly I stopped watching so many movies, but I also stopped being in extremely close proximity to an internet ready computer every time I watched one as well. I'm typing this from a computer lab on campus, as that stands as the only place I have to get online. But in an effort to hopefully prevent the continued neglect of my otherwise productive blog, I've decided to switch my goals. I will now be reviewing whatever I deem worthy of review -- the lunch I ate that day, a discussion in one of my classes, the persistent itch on my ankle. So to begin, here are a few reviews:

the new entryway to HSU campus

frankly, I'm a fan. I understand that there are critics, questioning the necessity of a $350k image make-over for a school trapped in a budget crisis, but those are the same critics that will criticize something regardless. Frankly, they should be thankful for being given another target for their unending negativity. But personally, I really like the gates. They give me something tangible to throw my empty beer cans at, and that's worth the money right there.

teaching plays to high school students

Personally I'm a fan of play-action, due to its intriguing deception and potential for large gains. But of course you need a good running game to even get this started. Otherwise, simple posts, curls, and out routes are a good start for the passing game, and you would probably want at least one counter and one draw in your running plays. Also, you should never forget that many games are won and lost in the special teams. Jeez, there's a lot to do.

Ghost World

2005-08-16T01:53:00.000-07:00

For all of you desperately wondering what my Five Favorite Films of All Time are, I present them here:

1. Happy Together
2. Hoop Dreams
3. All the Real Girls
4. Ghost World
5. In the Mood for Love
5a. Traffic

I know you, reader of this very passage, have been dying to see this list yourselves. Well, here it is. Nit-pickers might point out that there are six films in my Five Favorite Films of All Time, but I can only say to them that "they just don't get it."

Anyway, Ghost World is one of the finest films I've ever seen. It attempts, in its own way, to puncture the bubble of cynicism, irony, and sarcasm that engulfs suburban America. The central scene of the film, in my estimation, occurs when our main character, Enid, receives her first exposure to personal, beautiful, non-ironic artistic expression when she hears Skip James cry with all his soul in "Devil Got My Woman." The realization that there are other people who feel the same as she does, and who find profound ways to express an important personal feeling, begins her search for a new way of living.

This film, then, becomes the same thing as Skip James' beautiful music. It becomes a piece of art that means an awful lot to me -- a reflection of many of the same troubles and feelings that I wish at some point to express myself. I say with no irony or sarcasm whatsoever that this film inspires me.

Gosford Park

2005-08-10T01:33:00.000-07:00

Robert Altman is absolutely one of my favorite directors for one, if only one, peculiarity: he actively tries to bring to life numerous characters in his films, forcing his viewers to recognize that every character -- minor or major -- has their own complex story to tell. When one views an Altman film, one must become aware that there is more than one narrative worthy of being told at any given moment. Eventually Altman must select one story to stick with, but he'll be certain to remind you that there are others you may be missing along the way.

This theme is particularly critical to me, because it's an active reaction against the all too prevalent self-involvement that most Americans suffer from. Yes, our individual lives are important -- especially to ourselves, of course -- but we shouldn't forget that every person we see probably has that same feeling. The person I stand in line with at the supermarket suffers just as many daily troubles as me. The person tailgating me on the way to work has his own story to tell. The person making my hamburger is just as afraid of death as I am. There is something profound about this to me, and I sincerely believe that more people could benefit from wrapping their head around the concept on a more regular basis. (Myself included).

Which brings us to Gosford Park, where in two hours we meet an actor and producer from Hollywood, a WWI deserter, a pair of sisters with one dead and one orphaned child, a neglected wife who was married for fortune, a socialite's daughter dissatisfied with parlour games, a British movie star that his own family can't endure, and many, many others. It's amazing how he's able to breathe life into all these characters simultaneously.

And although there is a mystery to drive the plot, if you ask me the film is hardly about that at all. It is a brilliant class critique and amazing period piece. The cast is stellar and the setting is beautiful. I've watched the movie numerous times knowing full well the outcome and I remain completely drawn in.

So in the end I love Bob Altman for the films he creates. They are singular and amazing.

Deadwood: Season One

2005-08-09T22:52:00.000-07:00

It's pretty fun to rent HBO series and just go on a marathon of viewing. 12 episodes in 3 days means I've watched all of it they deem fit to show me on DVD. It's a good series, set on the frontier. For all the anarchists out there, I bid them study periods and places such as this, where there was no legalized government. Violence, sex, corruption, and greed run rampant, and somehow in the end people's lives are lived and countries eventually formed. Anyway, because it's 12 episodes, it's difficult to sum up whole thing. Perhaps one major constant is the prevalence of the word 'cocksucker', which is used roughly 30-40 times an episode, I reckon. Anyway, if you have the time watch it. The first episode is a little slow, but it picks up, and I've been thinking about growing a mustache.

Kung Fu Hustle

2005-08-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

Shaolin Soccer is one of the funniest films I've seen in some time. So I was rather excited to be able to view the new film from writer / director Stephen Chow. I missed it in theatres, despite a strong urge to go and see it. But anyway, obviously the universe corrected myself and I was finally able to watch this film. It is something of a disappointment following Shaolin Soccer, because it's just not as funny. Not to say it's a bad film, but I just couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. In the end, though, there's some crazy-cool fight sequences and some funny characters. If you like kung fu, I recommend you watch it.

Cruel Intentions

2005-08-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you what hurts me more -- this film, or the fact that it spawned two sequels. No matter which hurst most, they both hurt very deeply, in a way that will never truly heal.

I was originally thinking that I should adopt a 'say something good about your rivals' approach to this post, where I would find something positive to say about this film despite its numerous flaws. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing positive whatsoever. I can't even fake it. If I'm not mistaken, the final sequence attempts some kind of Usual Suspects-esque ending, but it's not entirely clear what is implying due to the overwhelming cloud of shit hanging over the rest of the entire film. If I don't watch a good film soon, I might lose all hope. Seriously.

Ryan 'I actually can act, just not here' Phillipe: "E-mail is for geeks and pedophiles."

Eurotrip

2005-08-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

My summer movie watching thread continues knotting itself together as I watch the second film in a row with an absinthe drinking scene. The Green Fairy teases me, yet will most likely remain elusive for some time. Is absinthe legal in Canada? Because if it is I'll have to organize a trip soon. Many of America's greatest men were heavy absinthe drinkers, and due to draconian alcohol and drug laws, we'll never know if the green tincture is what I'm missing. I might have written the Great American Novel if only I could imbibe some wormwood. I might have started and ended World War III if it wasn't for those prudes back in the '20s. I suppose we'll just chalk it up as yet another reason to move to Europe - perfectly legal hallucinogenic alcohol. And - oh yeah - the movie was horrible.

Matt 'What the Fuck Are You Doing in This Film?' Damon: "Scotty doesn't know!"

Alfie

2005-08-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

I particularly enjoy when my random sequence of movie watching provides fruitful counter-balance. After watching Guess Who? which annoyed me with its rather overt man-hating, I unintentionally chose to follow it with one of the more female-unfriendly films I've seen in a while. How can Jude Law's fiancee be upset about him sleeping with the nanny when she's most likely seen this film? The guy is a player and he has no remorse. Oh yeah, the movie does try to predictably show us that Jude Law learns that the womanizing is not really the path to happiness, but its hollow and forced. The film enjoys itself the most when Jude is appraising women's physical features and decrying the dangers of committed relationships. There are some clever sequences and interesting photography in parts, but it's mainly just a Jude Law womanizing marathon. Best viewed when one is angry at women in general.

Jude 'Alfie' Law: "I myself subscribe more to the European philosphy of life, my priorities leaning towards wine, women and... well that's about it."

Guess Who?

2005-08-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

I find that in my dogged determination to watch as many films as possible, I invariably end up watching one that I just regret. This picture is one of those. I just want the time I spent watching it back. It takes the default tilt toward the feminine perspective found in most romances and increases it ten-fold. The women are never expected to say they are sorry, and it is explicitly stated and repeated that they are always right, and men are always wrong. I might have to declare it my life's mission to make a romantic comedy where the woman pulls some BS, and the guy fucking dump's her stupid ass. If being in love means never saying you're sorry, we have the clearest indication that I did not love this film, because I'm fucking sorry I watched it.

Chinatown

2005-07-31T15:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not certain what to say about this film except that it is great. Jack Nicholson is in fine form, Roman Polanski is a strong director, and the story line is very effective. I'm not certain that there's too much of a greater theme besides the straight-forward mystery and boy-girl entanglement. There's some class issues and some gender issues, but nothing too poignant. Good flick, though. Really good picture.

Jack 'Super Sleuth' Nicholson: "He's rich! Do you understand? He thinks he can get away with anything."

The Deer Hunter

2005-07-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

This movie is extremely long. In protest of its lengthiness, I'm going to make this very short.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

2005-07-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

Having been outside of Humboldt County for a few months now, I became worried that I was getting a little out of touch with my hippy hatred. I was reading a message board debating the love children's contributions to society, and although I felt a touch of hatred, I can't say it was the typical wellspring that arises. So, to that end, I watched this film to hopefully rekindle my dislike for the hedonistic, selfish, drug-addled movement which eventually guided us into the Reagan years. What ended up happening is that I just remembered how much I love this film. It took me a while before I finally began to understand this film, but watching it now I thankfully can see just how great it is. And also hippies are horrible people. Here's a lengthy quote, which kind of says it all:

Hunter 'Raoul Duke' Thompson: "We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel."

XXX: State of the Union

2005-07-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

There's a good 30-40 minute stretch around the center of this film without any explosions. They try and compensate this with egregious cleavage shots, but you can only do so much when you're shooting for the PG-13. And while there is the explosion-free desert in the middle of the film, there are other scenes in the film with copious amounts of fire and kinetic force. What really needed to happen is that some of the boom from these other scenes needed to be spread across the film in order to maintain my attention. You don't really expect me to care about your horrible dialogue and stupid plot, do you?

But seriously, this movie is horrible. Don't watch it. I hardly did. I was busy doing something else the whole time. I've been told the original has a certain camp appeal, but I can safely say that this film just sucks. I can't say this strongly enough - don't watch it. You get no lines, because they were all bad.

What the BLEEP Do We Know?

2005-07-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

For the record, I watched this film a while back, but I just ran across what I wrote about it, which is very appropriate to post here:

Although I admire highly philosophical films, and have a certain love for movies searching for the Truth, (much like the love an engineer has when testing out their world-changing creation for the first time, knowing it will either fail miserably or save the world, but they will still love it all the same), I still have to admit that I really didn’t like this film. Instead it serves as a reminder as to why most people don’t usually make films concerning the Truth, because usually they fail. Simply finding a single truth (lower-case ‘t’), while equally challenging, seems to have a much higher success rate. The first word that came to mind after watching the final credit fall away was “terrible,” but I have to admit that is a little unfair. It’s no Cars That Ate Paris or Sweet Home Alabama or Pearl Harbor, but being better than those films still does not make it good. So more fairly I would have to say it is just “pretty bad.”

Typically reviews (at least most good reviews) attempt to give some justification for their judgment. Aside from the obvious nitpicking with the filmmaking technique, which isn’t good, but still secondary to the real meaning of this film, my larger discomfort lies with the philosophical conclusions being made. For those looking to make a beginning critique of this film: Why were all the people interviewed white males, with the exception of an Indian man and a woman who was really only the medium for a person named Ramtha? Why was there never any mention of culture, and how that affects our brains and/or social order? And to what extent can you take seriously such an openly biased and one-sided presentation of a contentious field of knowledge? And what’s with all the really bad musical cues?

Without writing out a lengthy rebuttal of my own, because I rest assured other people have already made their own, I’ll simply mention some of the more blatantly questionable claims made within the film. Yes, I still have serious doubts that there exists a picture of the same particle IN TWO PLACES! I also seriously wonder about the scientific merit of an enlarged photo of a water molecule supposedly altered due to its proximity to a piece of Japanese writing. I also simply refuse to believe that Native Americans couldn’t see approaching ships until a mystical shaman tapped them on the forehead.

In the end, I would give a conservative estimate that at least 60% of this film is hooey, and that doesn’t bode well for its overall effectiveness. I am more than willing to accept a little hooey in my films, but when the hooey / quality ratio is that high, it becomes increasingly difficult. But please don’t feel obliged to take my word for it. For those who have read this far, I would like to add this story:

I have a friend, an extremely dear and important friend who was extremely influential on me in my younger, developing years. He was absolutely fascinated with quantum physics. When we went to bookstores, he would head to the science section and sit and read the books there for hours (he was too cheap to buy them). I mean literally hours, inside a busy bookshop, working intently on this text. As we grew older, he began to get increasingly odd. Whether this was due to his abusive father, his love for the Cure, or his obsession with quantum physics, we will never know. What I do know is that after a lengthy gap in our relationship, I ran across him again at a party at my brother’s house. He told me that the last time we were in contact he was going through some very serious psychic trauma. He was constantly being dumped by an imaginary girlfriend, among other things. Unfortunately this imaginary girlfriend was all too real for him. Eventually he attempted suicide which led to his psychiatric care, after which he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, manic depressive. This did some to explain his inexplicable behavior at the time when we originally lost touch. He seemed very happy to see me, and very eager to hold on to our relationship. He seemed to intimate that this might have something to do with helping him not slip back into some of his old psychic pitfalls. Reconnecting with me would be a way for him to help remember past, present, and future, and keep them sorted out.

What the above story has to do with quantum physics and What the BLEEP Do We Know is uncertain, except to say that I will continue to remain highly skeptical of the philosophy contained within that film.

Solaris (2002)

2005-07-25T02:53:00.000-07:00

I think there's been something like 5 genuinely good science fiction films ever made (and for the record, I only count The Matrix as a good action flick). When I initially watched this film, I didn't think it would be one of the few, but I was wrong. This is absolutely one of the best sci-fi films I've ever seen. It questions the existence of God, the expansive universe, our consciousness, and our existence in general. How many films can you truthfully say that about? Plus it looks great and has a good romance as well. It's fantastic, and I'm tired, and my mind is mainly running with contemplations on my existence (which I won't bore you by posting here). I would also like to point out that Steven Soderbergh is not only a genius director, but he does his own cinematography (crediting himself as 'Peter Andrews'). If I were to rate him solely as a cinematographer, I would think him genius -- not to mention the fantastic films he makes. Oh yeah, he did the editing (under a pseudonym) and the screenplay, too.

Also, imdb.com tells me: "Steven Soderbergh is quoted saying that if the audience does not enjoy the first 10 minutes of the film then they might as well leave." That's fuckin' gangsta.

Gibarian says stew on this: "We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything -- solitude, hardship, exhaustion, death. We're proud of ourselves. But when you think about it, our enthusiasm's a sham. We don't want other worlds; we want mirrors."

The Family Guy

2005-07-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

The link below is an article which is a rather scathing review of The Family Guy and, by extension, its fans:

I won't lie, I agree with most of this.

I realize that I'm somewhat unique in this aspect, but I take humor pretty seriously. (Yes, that's an odd phrase.) When something makes me laugh, I want to understand where the humor comes from. When something tries to be funny and fails (in my eyes), I will wonder what it did wrong. Aside from the man who wrote this article, I am the only person I know who actively dislikes The Family Guy. It is not funny. I find its attempts at humor talentless and empty. And it does bother me a little that I'm the only person I know who sees this in the show.

Which brings us to my next point, which will make much more sense if you have read the article above. (Pardon me a moment while I climb upon my high horse. Ahem - always a nice view from up here.) Ironic detachment, cynicism, and, yes, even nihilism are some of the more alarming trends I see in people my age. Am I crazy for agreeing with this article and finding the popularity of The Family Guy as just another marker of this trend in my peers? Perhaps I am.

Fuck it, I'm going back to watching movies. And yes, I cried during Jim Brown: All American.

The War Room

2005-07-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

I honestly believe that I will never see as good a president as Bill Clinton in my life time. The man was a genius, and when high ranking decisions were made you were still left with the impression that Bill had something to do with it. He was never some puppet that truly Machiavellan people were manipulating. And he did extraordinarlily well with his time in office, all things considered. And what I wouldn't give to get a blowjob in the oval office. But he had to get elected like every other candidate before him, and this movie shows James 'The Ragin' Cajun' Carville in full form. It further re-enforces how sad the last democratic campaign was. Kerry never seemed like a legitimate candidate. I also watched this movie yesterday, but I will be watching it again numerous times. Apparently the same filmmakers made The Perfect Candidate, which is admittedly a better film - but seriously, watch them both if you have any interest in American politics.

Ragin' Cajun: "It's the economy, stupid."

Jim Brown: All American

2005-07-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I actually watched this movie yesterday and I forget exactly what it was that I wanted to say about it. I remember liking Jim Brown, and it was a Spike Lee film and I liked that, and towards the end I cried at one point (although I won't explain why, you'll have to watch the film if you want to try and solve it for yourself (although I doubt anyone would cry at the same spot that I did)). Really I'm just adding this entry because I want an accurate record of just how many movies I watched this summer, so here we are. Anyway, it's a good film, and even though I love Barry Sanders, I'm going to go ahead and say that Jim Brown is the greatest running back to ever play professional football.

Rules of Attraction

2005-07-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, if it wasn't for Tom's heavy plugging of this film, I probably never would have found the proper appreciation for it. Because of Tom's frequent recommendations, I now think it's absolutely fantastic, and one of the most scathing and necessary reports on American college life I've seen. There was definitely a point when watching it the first time where I said, "So this is what we look like to Tom!" And that was a good point, and I thank Tom for bringing me to it.

James 'Sean Bateman' Van Derbeek: "Since when does fucking somebody else mean I'm not faithful to you?"

Wedding Crashers

2005-07-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

Although generally it would be fair to say that I'm anti-wedding, I also happen to be extremely pro-Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. I went into this film perfectly prepared to not enjoy it. I went to a cheap theater and a late showing, insuring a small crowd and a minimal amount of guilt should the film be horrible. What I was happy to discover is that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are just as funny as I remember them. I'm also becoming a little concerned for myself, because increasingly as I watch romances I really want the main characters to end up together. I'm not positive what is causing me to go soft in the heart like this, but I can definitely mark it as a recent trend. Previously I turned my nose up at the contrived romance scenes, but now I find them cute and - dare I say it - 'heartwarming.' Anyway, I'm not about to answer this dilemma here, so I'll just end this entry now. Unfortunately, I can't accurately remember any lines, so I'll just offer this:

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn: "Funny funny funny."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2005-07-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

This officially marks the first time that I've watched this film and not become rather depressed. Not to say that there is no hint of sadness on my psyche, just that it's nowhere as pronounced as it was upon previous viewings. I can only blame Mr. Beck Hansen for convincing me to watch this film, because he performed the soundtrack song at his concert I just attended which reminded me that I should watch this film again (even if it is horribly depressing). This is one film I'm fairly certain will age well, and 20 years from now I'll still be dusting it off to watch again. It's amazing.

Jim 'Joel' Carrey: "Sand is overrated. It's just tiny little rocks."

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

2005-07-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

At Hollywood Video I am frequently required to watch a preview disc while I work. During the preview for this film they use the joke where someone asks Steve what the scientific purpose of killing the Jaguar Shark would be. He says, "Revenge." In the preview, they edit the dialoge so the question occurs immediately following the response. Now this is shocking to me, because in the film (and why the joke is funny) there is a lengthy pause before Steve responds. It is exactly the pause that creates the humor in the scene. So they're previewing the scene because they think it's funny, but they're butchering anything that was funny about it at the same time. It's amazing how stupid you can be and still be given work, apparently. And this give me hope.

Steve Zissou: "I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it."

Casino

2005-07-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has read through this page won't be surprised when I admit that I'm a huge fan of Martin Scorsese. I don't see much need to comment beyond this.

Constantine

2005-07-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

If I was religious, this film might offend me. Also, if I was a fan of good cinema, this film might offend me. If I was a fan of Keanu Reeves acting very poorly, then I would probably enjoy it. If I was a fan of cleavage, I would be sorely disappointed. (You'd think demons would drum up some more sex to entice me, wouldn't you?) If I was a fan of special effects, I would have a lot to look at. If I was a fan of confusing meta-scriptural BS plotlines, I would be jerking off every 5 minutes as I watched this film. If I was a fan of Shia LeBeouf, I would be a little pissed at the paltry attention paid to his character. In the end, though, all I really should say is that I'm not a fan of this film.

Keanu 'Psst, act!' Reeves: "This is Constantine. John Constantine. Asshole."

Man of the House

2005-07-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

I actually watched this on Friday and forgot to post about it. Because the movie made such a deep impression on me, I've forgotten nearly everything about it. It had Tommy Lee Jones, who was pretty funny, and some cheerleaders. They were at the University of Texas, and scenes at the football games piqued my desire to tailgate at a large NCAA football game. Here's a line, though, that I pulled off of imdb.com:

Tommy 'Gangsta' Lee Jones: "Hell, I loved myself when I was drunk. It was the other folks that had the problem."

Immortal

2005-07-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what this movie was about. Now, some might say that is because I slept through a large portion of it, but they would be wrong. The reason it makes no sense is because it's a crappy movie. I officially decided that zonking out would be the right thing to do when some Egyptian god was raping a girl. There were a lot of computer graphics, which I generally enjoy, but there was no discernible plot to be found, which proved to be a major problem. Oh yeah, because I read the back of the box I know that it takes place in 2095. During the parts that I was awake there were no robots hoping to understand love, so it at least avoided that sci-fi pitfall. But it did have some weird human vs. mutant race war that was dumb and ill-defined. You can't win them all. Anyway, this movie is dumb, and if you should ever find yourself watching it, I encourage you to fall asleep. It's much better that way.

A Very Long Engagement

2005-07-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

Based on my viewing of this film, I've reached a few conclusions. Firstly, when making a war / romance / mystery film, one will inevitably short-change one or all of those components, thus undermining the overall emotional impact of the film. Secondly, Audrey Tautou is still one of the hottest women in the world, even when she is (supposedly) missing a leg. Thirdly, Jeunet has way more talent than to be making confused films like this. And finally, all French are deserters, cowards and sissies who cannot win wars without American help. Okay, I'm kidding about the last conclusion. Also, it's in French, so I have no lines for you.