The Lowfat Apocalypse

OH NO NOT AGAIN

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:38:11 GMT

So I've started having the painful dreams again. Two nights ago I dreamt that my hand got all torn up by a hook on a wire that I was trying to grab (for some reason) while I was falling. Then tonight I swished with some kind of drain cleaner and spent the rest of the dream rinsing my mouth and spitting out thin, watery blood. Good times.

So last night, I brought a book to a bar. And I read it. And, lo, it was good. Some guy who was drunker than he initially appeared gave me this strange, halting spiel about having seen Stevie Wonder at the, uh, Wachovia Center (never quite sure which bank owns half of this damn town). I'm starting to think that he (the drunk, not Stevie) was unclear on the definition of "rap." I thought it was a sharp, striking motion, like "rap, rap, rapping at my chamber door."

Oh and I got me a shirt that bumps me a little further up the Kinsey scale. (The hotness)

Adventures in PR

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:33:10 GMT

Never mind why, but I've been all over various local Delco paper websites these last couple of days, hunting down phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. It's been pretty dull, but one thing has stuck out. They're all owned by the Journal Register Company. All the websites have the exact same layout, which on the one hand is kind of nice, because I don't have to look very hard for contact information link. On the other hand, it's a little frightening to see all these local county newspapers, Borg-like in their homogeneity. Same color scheme, same layout, right down to how the elements of the page load in the same order. Freaky shit, believe you me.

I remember back when I did that baby internship at the Citypaper during my junior year of high school, JRC bought Montgomery Newspapers, CP's parent company, and it was like an anthrax scare. My boss, Frank Lewis, would tell someone "JRC just bought Montgomery," and they'd get this wide-eyed look of terror on their faces and scurry off to the bathroom to shit a white-hot coal of concern for their job security.

Oh, to be once again young and stupid, unconcerned with matters of the world apart from who would replenish my weed supply, and how I was going to lie my way into the next piece of ass. Shed a tear for days of malt liquor and yore, when cause-and-effect was just some vague idea, and time passed so slowly.

This feeds into my whole anti-Starbucks position. Now, it's not Starbucks specifically – it's more or less all chain restaurants (except Taco Bell – y'all lay the hell off the Bell) that overstep the limits of logical proliferation. Starbucks is the worst offender by a pretty long shot. You don't need that many. You hear about places in Manhattan, Seattle, whatever, where you can stand in the doorway of one Starbucks and see two more without craning your neck very far. That's absurd. Even in Philly, we've got more than we need. I don't like my landscape to be so uniform.

The distasteful epiphany, where the vague sense of unease I had felt for some time finally gelled into a real palpable Fear was when I was at some kind of daylight party (perhaps a pool party) at Tracy Schreiber's house sometime around age 17, out in Lansdale, PA. We were out walking her dogs, or going to get some ice cream, or some such thing, and I realized that, had I blacked out elsewhere and woken up there, I wouldn't have known where I was, at all. There were no regional signposts. It looked the exact same as my sister's subdivision in Roswell, GA. I guess I could have looked at the local flora, but I'm no botanist. In Georgia, you can look for kudzu and fire ant mounds, and the towering Waffle House signs will at least tell you that you're below the Mason-Dixon line (IHoP to the north). And I suppose I could have listened for the accents in Lansdale, which would have told me that I was somewhere in Southeastern PA, but like I said before, I was young and stupid. None of that occurred to me. I had to sit down, to take it all in. Knowing me, I probably didn't shut up about it for the next entire week.

And now you know one of my vague fears. The others are the usual, you know, drowning, centipedes, dying alone, etc.

Legalized prostitution

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:59:31 GMT

I really want a bamboo bike frame. They run from $1,600 up to $3,600.

I'LL SUCK YOUR DICK, ETC. I SWEAR TO GOD.

So how am I going to make this work? Put up a webcam and gyrate in the nude?

It's not like my original strategy worked. You know, the one where I get a job, put in my hours, and save up the loot gradually.

So I've decided to resort to executive dicksucking.

You know how to find me.

P.S. I'm going to need some fancy wheels too.

Should I be scared, or just enjoy it?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:32:28 GMT

Lately I've been taking niacin to flush my system of any traces of the demon weed. Apparently it's good for that. The bottle said that it "supports a healthy blood lipid profile," which I take to mean that it speeds up the leaching of THC from your body, fat-soluble as it is. I just interviewed for a job with the city (public defender), so I don't want to take any chances in case they spring a piss test on me.

That said, the stuff has as one of its side effects what a warning on the back of the bottle refers to as a "temporary flushing reaction." In other words, I turn red and my skin burns a lot and itches a little for about ten, fifteen minutes. The first couple of times I took it, this didn't happen. Then the first time, it was just my upper back, face, and neck. It was a little stronger the next time, and this time (it's just wearing off now) my whole upper body turned bright red (except for the part of my left elbow where I busted up my arm a little over a month ago), and burned so much that I couldn't tell whether or not it was unpleasant, since there was no pain, just heat. I could feel my pulse in my eardrums.

What I'm trying to say is that this would be kind of cool if it didn't get a little stronger each time. That's the part that worries me. Oh well, at least the pills are apparently vegetarian.

King Nicholas I, Lord over all Faux Pas.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:53:44 GMT

It's not that often that I get invited to parties. It's not exactly unheard of, either, but I think I can understand the relative rarity of those invites after last night. Let me explain:

(And as it was a party, and I was a tad liquored up, I might get the order wrong, or I might have blocked something out intentionally, so correct me if you were there)

0) The first sign that something could have been wrong was when I saw a couple of people who I'd seen earlier at Lauren's surprise party. I walked over and said "Hey, don't I remember from Lauren's surprise party?" which was met with this strange, knowing laughter. I thought nothing of it, but in hindsight this kind of set the tone.

1) (spoken across a keg, on the roof)
Me: Hey darlin', could I have a pour?
Girl (no hair): Sure thing!
- So, is the top of your head cold, up here?
- I guess so, but I've got this nifty hood.
- You know, I've thought about shaving my head, but I worry that my skull is misshapen.
- Well, actually I've got alopecia.
- Oh my god, I'm sorry, I had no idea.
INNER VOICE: Which is quicker, asshole? Leaving down the stairs or leaving off the side of the roof. Choose wisely, fuckhead.
Girl: Well at least you know what alopecia is, without me having to explain it.

It didn't go SO horribly. I mean we talked about public service and that kind of thing, and it wasn't until I started going on about giant ants that she made her excuses and disappeared.

2) (I'm sitting on the arm of a couch, talking to a guy in a chair, and then this guy seated on the couch with a girl gives me a tap on the arm)
Me: Yes?
Guy on couch: Could you get your ass out of my girlfriend's face?
Girl on couch: Yeah, really, jesus.
(So at this point I wonder if that's really the issue, or if this is just a sign that my luck has deteriorated even further, and I'm the lucky winner of the ire of some burly, vindictive douchebag who likes to cope with stress by punching faces)
Me: I'm, uh, sorry? (squats on floor next to arm, continuing conversation with guy in chair)

3) (again, spoken across THE KEG OF MISERY)
Me: Hey, you're Andrew, right?
Andrew: Yeah. Do I know you?
- You smoked me up at Bar Noir and I lost my mind pretty soon after.
- Oh yeah, you were RETAAAAARRRRRRRRDED!
- It was really fun trying to get home.
- Oh, you really skeeved out my friends, by the way.
- I'm, uh, sorry? (second time spoken that night)
Some guy: (walks over) All I heard was "You were RETAAAAAAARRRRRRRRDED!"
Me: I get that a lot.

Oh, and I almost forgot what really got the ball rolling that night:

-1) I was at a bar, and I had to poop, as is kind of common for me. I LOVE FIBER. Anyway, I'm on the can, trying to figure out the lock on the door. I soon realize that it doesn't work, so I try to hold on. Nonetheless, some guy pulls on the door, and before I can get out an "OCUPADO!" he wrenches the door out of my grip, and there's this frozen moment, where he starts to push into the bathroom, not realizing that THERE I AM, COVERING MY JUNK WITH ONE HAND AND REACHING FOR THE DOORKNOB WITH THE OTHER, LOOKING LIKE A FRIGHTENED WOODLAND MAMMAL WITH EYES THE SIZE OF DINNER PLATES. One foot in the air above the threshold, he finally realizes that the cries of "HEY! WHOA!" are coming from INSIDE the bathroom, and so he slams the door. Right on my fingers.

Just beautiful. I wonder if I've seen the last of it all. Like, the girl in whose face I apparently put my ass will turn out to be a hiring manager or arresting officer.

You'll all be the first to know if I have any more episodes of comically bad luck. Good night, and I hope this wasn't THAT entertaining.

BLOOD+URINE

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:13:37 GMT

By the time we got to Planned Parenthood, most of the rain had evaporated out of my clothes, but I still smelled kind of moldy. It didn't get any more comfortable once we were buzzed into the clinic, and the roaring blast of the air conditioner gave me goose bumps and caterpillar fuzz while I checked off the boxes on my intake forms, scribbling the date at least ten times.

White. Male. 8/6/84. Condoms, and then over to the right of it, None – not sexually active. No symptoms. No history of trouble. No medications. No problems at home. No income. No burning or itching sensations.

When we walked in, some girls looked shocked that we, which is to say two guys, would have any business at Planned Parenthood. "Why would misters need to come here?" "Shut up, they can here you." "Hey, are you here for pregnancy tests?" one of them asks. "Yeah, that's it, actually," I reply.

I stepped out to get a coffee, and while I was bobbling this scalding hot cup back and forth, the front desk guy, shielded behind his bulletproof booth, told me that I couldn't take in any food or beverages. So I tried to drink as much of this scalding swill as I could. Tongue, throat, and roof-of-mouth burns are pretty common. I eat like a hog, so I'm no stranger to it. Once I actually took some leftover darvocet for a pizza burn. But the feeling of near-boiling hot coffee sloshing around in the stomach is unique.

After a while of freezing our asses off in the waiting room, punctuated with rounds of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (followed by Six Degrees of Rip Torn, Six Degrees of Freddy Prinze Jr., Six Degrees of Parker Posey, and Six Degrees of Johnny Rhys-Meyers), I eventually get called up, and the nurse/tech/I'm not sure – her name was Lara – Lara and I swapped facts about famous STD-related deaths. Al Capone and Beethoven died of syphilis, Asimov died from AIDS. She tells me all the relevant information, then hands me a cup to pee in, and indicates the locker to put it in. I do, and I do, and then she takes two vials of blood, and I watch it squirt out into the tubes. It was pretty cool.

By the time I'm done, so is Jamie, and so we paid our bills and went and got some diner food. I had a milkshake, which after burning the shit out of myself, was pretty damn good, believe you me.

I'm supposed to call back in two weeks to find out if I have any STDs. Neither of us thought we did, and I only went to give Jamie some company, but that's what Chloë Sevigny did in KIDS, and she found out she had HIV. I certainly hope I'm not some kind of HPV carrier or something. I mean I don't itch or anything, so that rules out a few of them. At least it'll be nice to say that I've had the test.

Old footage justifies old crushes.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:24:07 GMT

I used to have a huge crush on Bjork. I kind of obsessed about it, made some people uncomfortable. It was pretty monomaniacal. This was for about a year in high school. Right now, I'm most of the way through a google video of Bjork on the Charlie Rose show. I think I'm in love with Icelandic accents. I could just listen to her talk all the time. It's so cute. SO CUTE.

I wonder if I could use it as some kind of meditation/relaxation tool, just listening to her talk. I sort of had a similar reaction to the singer from Mum, when I saw them, but she's no Bjork. Few are.

I guess all I have to do is become some sort of art celebrity, to such a degree that I unseat Matthew Barney. That'll mean I need to work on my abs, too. Dammit Barney, you make it hard to supplant you. Well played.

You can't get enough. Just can't get enough.

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:20:28 GMT

I had a total Videodrome-style sex dream a couple of nights ago. Except, since it was me, that part of the dream was a like two-minute fragment of a four-hour dream.

Why can't I linger on the cool parts, instead of the disorienting, disturbing, or just plain tedious parts of my dreams?

I WANT SCREEN-SEXING!

MMMMMMMMMM YES! PRINCIPLE!

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:08:36 GMT

How to really wed yourself to the idea of celibacy, poorly-advised and impulsive as the decision itself was:

-Just spent five, ten minutes on craigslist personals, perusing the gender of your choice. All that desperation, spite, and straight bullshit, mmmmm, YES. It's like a breath of pure oxygen, a sweet breath of reality firing up your forebrain to do battle with the back+stem. It's just what you (I) need after you've (I've) been sucking the cloying, noxious exhaust of the ideal, guv'mint sending their scare waves through yr TV, trying to incubate the space-centipede larva in your abdominal cavity. YOU CAN'T GET ME. I absorb more radiation than a thousand chest x-rays per diem.

I CAN FLY, BUT IF I SHOWED YOU, THERE'S NO GUARANTEE YOU WOULDN'T SELL ME OUT.

(I can't read your mind yet, but I'm taking a class.)

No, really.

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:18:15 GMT

I was flipping around on IMDb, and all of a sudden, after I click a link for a comments page, this ad comes up:

Al Pacino in CRUISING. Own it on 9/18.

Holy fuck. I thought everyone was trying to forget about this movie. So what I want, nay, need to know, is whether they're actually pushing the release (five days after the fact) on DVD of Pacino's most embarrassing movie (objectively), a terrible gay murder mystery (and furthermore, if this is honestly passing for a classic, of if it's burying the needle on the camp-o-meter), or if it's some kind of hack. If it IS some kind of hack, then it's maybe the funniest goddamn thing I've ever seen out of IMDb. If it's any of the former reasons? These people are fucking morons. MORONS. OH MY GOD.

Okay that's all.

I had another dream

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:30:55 GMT

(Reprinted from illegible handwritten notes)

Wed, 9/19 - 3:28 PM

Remember how I had that really fierce, gut-level reaction to the film, "Right At Your Door?" [see entry dated 8/30/07] Well it finally found a way out of the back of my subconscious, punching into my dreams.
--> It was some time after a nation-and-perhaps-world-wide terror attack (more on its scope below). The spore count was increasing, and people were having really nasty reactions. The end was near, was the general consensus. The beginning is kind of hazy, but I think there were several of us who had sealed and barricaded this apartment building.
--> Eventually, we got sick of hiding, and decided to welcome certain death with a kind of hedonistic élan. I was pretty sure that I could have sex with this girl. She was all pawing at me, etc. I figured "this celibacy thing is bullshit, if we're all going to die." So we head to this stadium/convention center-type building, I think to take in a show [of some kind]. Girl excuses herself, which is when I realize that I don't know her name. I turn to one of her friends and ask him. He rolls his eyes at me and says "Ditka." Yes, like the Bears coach. I remember noticing that. When she returns, her face is covered with terrible acne. Everywhere, bright red. (Probably from the spores.) I'm shallow, so I make my excuses and leave.
--> Outside, the ocean has receded and frozen, leaving a wall of ice and rock. I find some kind of binder, listing locations by number, in order of saturation/severity. That's when I learn that it's been released worldwide. That's [also] when I learn that the town of "[whatever] Beach," where I am, is #1, and I freak out and realize that I have to do something.
--> I have a vision of Bush and his cabinet, holed up in some tower/cathedral, laughing their asses off. It appears they've escaped to England.
--> When my mind returns to itself, I'm having trouble breathing, and I can't stop coughing. (This goes on until after I leave the hardware store, later.)
--> I hop on my bike (for maybe the first time in a dream – and it's actually my actual bike [I've had a lot of stolen scooter/motorbike dreams, even though I've never actually driven one]), and head to a hardware store, which is half cleaned out, panicked customers [rushing in and out]. I realize that I need to stop breathing in the spores/gas/whatever. And while I do have a gasmask, it's missing a filter (Also actually true). So I decide to make one, out of gaskets, valves, tubing, some kind of air conditioning filter fuzz, and what I think was steel wool. The idea here is that I had no idea what I was doing. Since I can't assemble it in the store, I ask for some vinegar, to soak my bandana, which sort of helps when I tie it [on over] my nose and mouth.
[-->] When I get outside, my bike is missing, and so I start looking for those orange handlebars, but everything is connected and wound in this same bright orange tubing [that] I saw in the hardware store. It's then that I realize that I'm dreaming, and so I wake myself up, back to the first level of dream (must have passed out – f-ing spores).
[-->] I find my bike right where I left it, and realize I should probably spend my last couple of hours [alive] with my family. So I haul ass over to my old house on Mt. Vernon St. (2218 – the 3-story one), where my mother has been hoarding supplies [in the kitchen]. I ask her why she came back to the old house, which she won't answer. Various family members and their friends start to show up, and of course the dimensions of the place start to change + extend. It gets a little hazy after that, but I recall the creepiest part of the dream as being when the spores finally get to my mom, and she completely loses it, screaming at me and sobbing hysterically.

----> So when I woke up, I went over to I.Goldberg's and bought a gasmask filter for five bucks. That ought to keep out them spores.

Like a very dignified, measured brick to the face

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:22:39 GMT

I just saw "The Remains of the Day." God DAMN. It's somehow even more crushingly sad than the book, and not just because Anthony Hopkins is an acting juggernaut (juggernaut of subtlety - is that possible?). The book was plenty sad, but you have to break that up into a couple of days. It's not exactly a page-turner, even though it is unbelievably good. The point is that unless you really put your mind to it, you have to absorb the destructive blow in installments. If the book is being shot a couple dozen times with a BB gun, the movie (remember it's got Anthony Hopkins) is like somebody blowing up your house with a Stinger missile launcher. Then finding out that your dickhead cousin spent the money for the insurance policy on booze and slots.

I want a hug.

Uh oh.

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:10:05 GMT

I was going to post about this really harrowing dream I had last night, but the fumes in my room are killing me. Silicone polish and this overpoweringly musky "Quentin Tarantino's 'Death Proof'" air freshener I was given last night are combining to give me a fuckin' doozy of a headache.

Ugh.

The apartment upstairs is a million times nicer.

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:31:40 GMT

So I'm lounging languidly in bed at like noon, half awake, in repose. It's one of those things you have to do when you're pretty like me. It's one of those things you have time to do when you're unemployed. All of a sudden, there's this really loud CRASH from right outside my window. My first thought is that the neighbors, sick of the people in this building locking our bikes to the big rusty pipe two inches over their property line, have decided to lay siege to us, with catapults, etc. I mean they leave notes, one on the bike in question, one on our front door, which all contain the phrase "Let's be good neighbors" worked in. I mean who are these people, State Farm? Also they may think they're Beleaguered Responsible Homeowners, but whenever they smoke pot with the windows open (or outside or however) it makes our house reek for an hour. I got your number, buddy.

It takes a large crash to get me out of bet, when there's no imminent consequences for not doing so, and ten minutes later I'm stumbling around in a bathrobe, wondering if I should bother eating before I go to the dentist, and then I hear this tap tap tapping. Now I'm thinking that it's probably a rat or something in the basement, come to ask if it's not too early to turn the heat on, but no, it's some guy from the apartment upstairs with a sheepish look on his face. Come to ask if there's a gate to the backyard. "Hold on," I tell him, "I gotta put on some pants."

It turns out that he's staying with a friend upstairs, and that the air conditioner fell out the window. From three stories up. So since it's our backyard, it landed not on brick but on a soft cushion of overgrown vegetation. On the way down, though, it hit the bars on my window, half-removed to accommodate my own air conditioner. The bars won. So we pick through the overgrowth and trash and ruins of a table to the back side of my window and the poor AC is all bent out of shape, but still kind of works.

Anyway I got a sort of a tour of the place upstairs, and it's a whole hell of a lot nicer than our floor. For one, there's two floors to theirs. And a sundeck behind the kitchen. And a skylight. And a kitty (two). Oh well. They don't have a red room.

P.S. I saw the strangest movie last night, after I got back from Mike's. I don't think it was just the blunt, nor the beer I stopped for at Latimer. This was some kind of EXTREMELY wordy, sort-of-action movie. I thought it was kind of wanky, and that it would lose steam, but it didn't. I thought they'd explain/negate/cheapen the whole thing with a twist ending, and they didn't. It's called Liar's Pendulum. (Which is also apparently a "Magic: The Gathering" card, at least according to Google, where I looked up the name.)

Well, this is CERTAINLY novel

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 13:39:44 GMT

So lately I've been having trouble sleeping. This is a new problem for me. Y'all know that I generally have the opposite issue with sleep. I've been on "slacker hours" (you know, asleep by 4:30, up by 2), and I'm trying to get on some kind of normal schedule (up sometime before that). Problem is, I'm having trouble getting to sleep. It's getting so's I have to really pound the kava kava in order to shut my brain off enough to get to sleep.

And then I have some long, stressful, exhausting dream. I'm really, really, really sick of dreaming. It's enough to make me consider going back to smoking weed ALL THE TIME in order to shut 'em off.

I used to really enjoy sleep. It was GREAT. Maybe I need to lay in a supply of chamomile tea.

I've been in here for like nineteen hours, with breaks for food and water and poop.

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:06:46 GMT

So I was going to write about how I think I've got a crush on Agyness Deyn, and how it's kind of strange to crush on an actual MODEL model. About how we're all pretty well-acquainted with the relationship I have (and the connections I make) between images and sex. About how what you're seeing in a model in photographs is pretty far removed from what they'd choose to look like in the world, and how that itself is pretty far removed from anyone you'd actually KNOW or meet (unless you hang with models in which case careful with that coke, Miss Lohan).

But whatever, she's foxy. And she dresses really...uh...funny-looking, when she goes out in the world. The collision of pure, controlled image with bizarre collage-looking fashion aesthetic is kind of refreshing. Anyway, I had a dream where she was a ski lift attendant.

HOWEVER

Now that I've been doing what I've been doing with the rest of the day, since I put off everything, including textual narcissism, I've decided that I'd rather bitch about that. Namely, Writing Cover Letters. Who can imagine a more contrived, codified crock of shit than the cover letter. I mean it. You go to some FORMAT website, and it's like playing Mad Libs with bits and pieces of your resume in order to get a job. Except it isn't funny (except perhaps to the HR staff who crumple up all your pretty little lies and try to score some sick three-pointers in a game of resume H-O-R-S-E). I guess what it really amounts to is showing your willingness to toe the line and consent to the ABJECT BULLSHIT of THE JOB MARKET.

Guten tag, English Major. Arbeit Macht Frei.

I claim my right to whine

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:02:22 GMT

So thing one that I need right now, and I think "need" is fair, as opposed to "want," is a source of income, viz. employment. People say "like what?" and I say "anything," because I mean it. I'll take something horrible and thankless, because nothing ever comes up anyway, unless you've already got something on your plate. It's like how I all of a sudden become significantly more attractive when I'm in an exclusive relationship. (I'd just love to muse on that, but that's a whole different, longer, and much much wankier exercise in amateur psychology and what I understand to be dualistic analysis.)

Thing two that I need/want (it's a little more ambiguous here) is to get laid. On the one hand, I took a vow of chastity (so to speak -- I didn't make it with any kind of higher power, and it wasn't so dramatic as a VOW), but I'm wondering if it just might help to restore my objectivity a little bit, because I'm going a little crazy, here. Of course, wanting and facilitating are two different things, and the vow had more to do with stopping the want, because I'm not very good at the facilitating.

In other news, I need to start sleeping less. These ten-twelve hour nights are really making the dreams come back. And until I start dreaming about something interesting (sex dreams woooo!!!) I'd prefer not to dream of anything at all. Recently there was some REALLY long one, a large part of which consisted of me waiting for the train in this empty lot while this little eight-or-whatever-year-old kid chased me around with a revolver and threw lit M-80s at me. Every now and then the little bastard would flip one into my pocket somehow and I'd have to dig it out without blowing my fingers off. God I hate dreaming.

Nobody knows what they're talking about

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:15:24 GMT

I just saw Right at Your Door today. As per usual at the Ritz, I brought a quart bottle of Yuengling, and I barely had to sneak it in, because there were a total of five (maybe six) people in the theater. Perhaps that was a bad idea, because up to a certain point, liquor can increase the emotional resonance of a movie experience.
I found the end of the movie deeply disturbing, and as some of you might be going to see it, I'll not give it away, but I will say that for a movie about the effects of a terrorist attack, it was decidedly more a Katrina movie than a 9/11 movie. Here's why: for all its 9/11 imagery (smoke over LA, toxic ash raining from the sky, cellphone networks overloaded with calls), it was about breakdown of information, more than anything. See, for most of the movie, there was a radio on in the background, giving constant updates on events "as they come to light." And so tiny bits of actual information are given, and of course speculation is taken for information, and everyone starts freaking out over what they perceive to be the situation.
Naturally, everyone looks to "the authorities" for some kind of guidance. It will become clear at some point that nobody knows what to make of anything. And so what can be "sensible advice from the authorities" at one point can become dead wrong as facts come to light. The question arises: if the authorities don't know what's going on any more than you or I, then what authority do they really have? My answer is always going to be "they have guns, and that's all the authority they need, once everything else breaks down," but that's the closet anarchist in me.
So the film becomes an appeal to be prepared. Not with bottled water, generators, and firearms, but in knowing how to think, and to analyze information, or the lack of it. What's "supposed" to save you can end up killing you, if you follow it without questioning the parts that don't fit together, that don't make sense. Knowing when to stop following directions when their source has no more credence than your own eyes.
I mentioned Hurricane Katrina. On the one side, it's "proceed in an orderly fashion, the authorities will arrive shortly," and on the other, it's Bush telling Mike Brown that he's "doing a heckuva job," and realizing that if you don't get yours and get the fuck out of town, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. It's "foraging" versus "looting," and the only difference being your frame of reference.

So that said, anyone with some firearms experience want to take a road trip with me to a gun show? I need a large-bore rifle, a telescopic sight, and at least a hundred rounds of ammunition. We're taking to the hills, and I'll be fucked sideways if Uncle Sam's going to stop me. We've put far too much faith in the infrastructure we've got, and it's time we made some of our own. It's like that Clash quote from "Guns of Brixton," from which I'll spare you.

(The rifle is for zombies.)

Struttin' naked down the boulevard, freezing as I go

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:21:58 GMT

Well, enough pseudopsychiatric rationalizations, blame directed towards the classes for being dull, or for my bed for being comfortable, or for the weather being ugly, or for feeling like I've lost a quart of blood in the night.

This is hard for me.

I guess I'm just a bad student.

Oh well, not for long. I realized that these next couple of weeks are going to be the worst that it gets for, like, at least seven months. Barring unforseen tragedy or medical problems.

I don't WANT to do any more of this, is the bottom line. I want to make a SNOW FORT, or bake some cookies, or watch movies, or write a letter, or sleep for sixteen hours. Anything, really.

I'll probably be pretty torn up from lack of sleep in a couple of days, so I bet time speeds up accordingly.

Oh and by the way I knew I was in bad shape last night when I was watching A (that Aum Shinrikyo documentary) and I thought, Hey, maybe joining some new age pseudo-Buddhist cult isn't such a bad idea. At least they keep vegetarian.

Bad Timing isn't just a Nicholas Roeg movie

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 02:51:22 GMT

You know what I haven't done in a while? I haven't played "Never Have I Ever." I love it. It's my favorite drinking game/kiloton-level icebreaker/nerve-wracking trust exercise. I found myself going over things I've never done whilst I was walking to the library.

Never have I ever:
-eaten veal
-broken a bone
-driven a scooter or motorcycle
-had sex with a boy/member of my own sex (how to play that one depends on your audience and how much liquor you've got left)
-shaved my head
-shaved my naughty bits
-had a "falling" dream
-been to asia, asia, or australia
-been a salaried employee
-ridden in an ambulance
-failed a class (though i haven't gotten my brazil grades back)
-done a cartwheel correctly

and so forth.

There isn't enough time in the day, nor strength in my body to do anything cool. Back to the paper shuffle.

P.S. I'm actually going to the Tenant Resource Center tomorrow, after considering it for over a year. Maybe it's not too late. TENANTS UP, KOZAK DOWN.

Materialistic discoveries.

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:42:47 GMT

Re: Laptops. Travelling some distance cross-country in the winter? Turn a laptop on and toss it in your backpack/messenger bag/whatever! It's probably not very good for the machine, but it'll keep you nice and toasty. Right now I'm at Helen C. White, and so many people are here for the free wifi, that it reminds me of a much less interesting version of the interzine typewriter bar in Naked Lunch (the movie).

You know, it's kind of embarrassing to look back over old posts I've made on here. On the one hand, I was crazy and miserable half the time and I probably put too many drugs in my body (not that I was some kind of raging dope feen, but I'm fragile -- not like the other boys -- and so I probably sould have taken that into account), but on the other hand I had a lot more to say. Hmph. So I guess the key to content here would be more foreign chemicals, less happiness, and lots of horror movies and sleep deprivation, to bring back the crazy.

Pfft, mañana, mañana.

So this week's getting all ready to suck (academically), and that's all I really need to say about that, but I want to tear it up on Friday. And then on saturday. Anybody got any clever ideas for a last-minute costume? My original idea was that Lindszy and I could go as the Avengers, but neither of us has any time to go find a catsuit, a regular suit, and a bowler hat. I can whip up a Pyramid Head in no time, but I used that last year, and the head was so big, it was like trying to steer a boat through a crowd of people. On the other hand, it was like a CONE OF PRIVACY. Couldn't see a damn thing though.

I really should be getting some work done, but I've been totally addicted to Escape Velocity Nova. It's ridiculous. It's been about ten years that I've been into this game in some version or another. I love mac shareware.

okay bye

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:46:17 GMT

1. Movies: The Proposition was really good, if unbelievably brutal at the very end. Guy Pearce is really good at looking more dead than alive.

2. Movies: If you have 3.5 hours to yourself and really like Peter Greenaway (REALLY like him) or experimental film, or birds, go see The Falls. It was SO COOL.

3. Chemicals: Kava keeps my shit together.

4. Bargains: I found cheap tickets to San Francisco. All I have to do is raise the money (i.e. malt liquor from Midway for a while yet)

5. Utensils: I finally found some metal Korean chopsticks. Hot damn. It's kind of funny about the Asian markets down on south Park. There's Midway, which is a little bit of everything, and a little bit of Mexico, and a little bit of cheap horse-piss with an 8% alcohol content. Then there's Oriental Shop, which is all Japan, all the time, and then there's the nameless Korean market across the street. S'cool.

6. Bargains: Assuming I'm right about the extent of the relevant damage, and assuming we don't drop it, I might get a free television from my boss, for helping him move it. Rad.

7. Domestic: The living room is sort of rearranged, and it looks pretty (er).

8. Still lazy as fuck.

9. Movies: Anybody ever seen Mondovino? I thought it was overlong, overrated, and overused the zoom lens (like a kid playing with a camera, or a trombonist). I have to write some stuff about it for a class, and it's just not happening.

10. Shows: I finally went to one, first in months -- Tilly and the Wall @ Union South. Lots of high school kids in the audience. Sure, they're funny looking, because they haven't stopped growing, and they try a little to hard to affect the look, but it's kind of neat to see that many out at a show. Suffice to say, I felt old, even though I'm not.

11. I guess that's about it. I don't post anymore, really, because I'm busy and tired most of the time, and my life is largely the same every day, and all the interesting thought processes have been ground out of me. I'm kind of an automaton with a beer gut.

They like dots

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:30:35 GMT

- I found Miles' secret cache of bandanas under the counter at work the other day.

- Went on a ten-mile bike ride (or so--I can only do relative distances) yesterday and my legs are still sore.

- My new laptop came in the mail, and it is most definitely the hottness. I don't deserve it. Now to get me some of that internet. I wonder if the Echo Tap has wifi? I could drink myself into a stupor while staying up on my 2chan.

- The Onion's new offices are on my block, across from the Echo. They try to camoflauge it, but if you put two and two and two together, you get the truth.

- I had a can of starfruit juice from Midway Asian Foods yesterday, which had SALT as its last ingredient, and not like trace amounts. Shit tasted like salt in yr fruit juice. Who the hell DOES that? I'm reading labels from now on.

- By the way, Midway has the cheapest malt liquor (canned, tallboys) in town. Like 3.05 for a four-pack of Olde Englishe, etc. It's a neat little microcosm, because directly across West Washington, you see all the heads parked next to the Monona Bay Park Rec Pavilion (title mine) sucking on drinks wrapped in brown paper bags. Careful crossing West Wash with a head full of high-grav, brotha.

- I slept through like three alarms this morning. That'll teach me to stick to the "Just one cocktail" plan, regardless of who's at the bar, and what goes on at the stoop party following. Living so close to liquor is dangerous. I am equidistant from a liquor store and a bar. Ouch.

P.S. Anyone know a good bittorrent client for Mac? I need to make up for all the file-stealing that I missed, what with being abroad and coming home to no internet, followed by a busted computer (water damage dripped into the vents, corroded the logic board. Looking at MPM AND Palisade rentals on this one. You fuckers are on notice.)

I forgot to mention that I'm back in the ONAN

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 01:23:36 GMT

I just found out last night that my cat Sinistar is a girl. I thought she was male. For a couple of days, we just used "kitty!" as a pronoun. In any case, she sucks down catnip like a true party girl. It's nuts. I saw this ball of compressed catnip + some sort of starch at Madcat yesterday, but Lindszy vetoed it, because she felt like an enabler.

I think someone stole a couple of bucks out of my tip jar. I blame Natalie. She was the last one in the store before it happened. Hmm. I'll just have to "Forget" to bring a payment method next time we're at the bar. It oughta square us away. Speaking of which, I got absolutely smashed last night with wenchynuggets and Ben Bailey. We ended up at Brats, which didn't thrill me, until I got inside, and they have a STOCK TICKER which charts the values of different drinks, based on how many people are buying. That's COOL. I asked the barkeep, and he said that it was programmed specifically for them. Too bad they only do it for the various specials, or the six or seven drinks they're trying to push. It would be cool if it was for EVERYTHING. They could clean out that bottle of Pimm's that's been sitting there since Clinton was president, no doubt.

Anyway I passed out and Lindszy had to drag me to bed. I went to Spanish this morning, and decided that I was far too hung over to deal with Portuguese. Went home, back to sleep, and then to work, where I had my tips stolen.

Oh and my busted computer turned out to have a corroded logic board, a victim of "spilled fluid," the man said. It was either dripping from one of the water blisters in my room (goddamn slumlords), or speaky10k poured a Diet Pepsi in there. I released scorpions in his car as a precaution, though it was probably the water dripping that did it. Over six hundred bucks to fix, so I'm in the market for a new computer. And a new bike. My bike is one of the few things I own which does work (my projector does not -- anyone know where I can get a digital projector looked at and fixed? I think it's the power supply -- she won't power on), but I'm looking to get an inexpensive cruiser for Lindszy.

I need a shower.

Whining whining whining all the way from the beach...

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:47:06 GMT

Travelling with my dad is frustrating. I want to be more patient and less of what I feel is like an ungrateful little shit, since he is, after all, footing the bill. On the other hand, there's always been friction between us. My mom says it's because I make him uncomfortable. Sounds good to me, though people say things they don't really mean after they separate. We see eye-to-eye on a lot of things -- we just don't get along so hot, unless it's talking about something neutral, like film or current events. (Yes, current events are somehow neutral.) But this is old hat to everyone who knows me, and insufferably boring to everyone who doesn't.

I fell off a curb in Salvador, and sprained my ankle. That was fun, rolling around in the street and screaming, grinding asphalt and rust into my hands. (I managed to resprain the thing today, marring an otherwise great day at a fantastic beach, Porto de Galinhas -- Port of Chickens. I had a piña colada inside a pineapple but blah blah blah.) When I finally got back to our hotel, the malaise (yeah, malaise) in my stomach got steadily worse, until I flopped out of bed, and half-hopped, half-crawled (second half of the way) to the bathroom to throw up for the first of several times that day. My theory is that I got the lucky shrimp when I ate some acarajé from a street cart the day before, and won myself a mild case of food poisoning. Fuck YES! Two for motherfucking TWO! HE'S ON FIRE!!!

So I think it'll be a long time before I eat shrimp again. Jessica B. called them "rats of the sea," and I think she's right. For now, anyway, until someone busts out the shrimp cocktail, stateside. (Note: Bring quail eggs to next potluck. Makes me seem cultured. Will win friends and influence.)

Nine days and change until I see Lindszy. I wonder what her haircut looks like, these days.