Having just woke up, I’m remembering giving a friend advice last night. Specifically how fucking stupid that advice sounded. I think the quote went something along the lines of:
“Say you take a blank piece of paper. You write the letter ‘A‘ at the top, but twice as tall as normal, so it goes across two lines. But then you write the letter ‘A’ huge across the whole piece of paper. The second letter ‘A’ is still bigger. That’s how you have to look at experiences.”
Boy, what a breathtakingly insightful parable on the nature of perspective, self. My excuse is that I was about to fall asleep during said conversation, and had just polished off a pint of Sapporo.
Some of us have been living our whole lives trying to be the best character in a story. We build our self assured moral structures and finely-hone our infectious eccentricities, a lifelong preparation for that moment of recognition.
The story will never be written. Every little bit of self-enrichment, every album you listened to over and over till you knew every word, every silly hat you considered buying because you thought one day you could wear it to a party and start a conversation with it, every wager you place against pessimism is for naught. To dream is to convince yourself that you are better than your present lot in life; That you are a failure. That you need to work harder. Sometimes that hard work sweeps you up in a current, the dream quickly disappearing from your sight on the horizon, a distant memory of a time you fell and almost drowned.
Sometimes the hard work does not defeat your dream. But the dream has to be huge. You have to throw away a lot of baggage to be light enough to hang onto something so insubstantial. To come at it with nothing. To pay into it bit by bit like an account in an uninsured bank, leveling up the character in your party who might leave at any minute. To fall in love with a ghost. To write her love letters on your blog, buy things for her to give to her later, investing in a flimsy hope that there will be a later, cuddling a nothingness in your mind as you drift to sleep, convincing yourself that the nothing is something, that ideas are real things that merely lie in the future, that you are paying into a destiny with every hour worked and penny saved and craigslist apartment ad bookmarked, that future you will look back with nostalgic thanks, that the story will mean something, that there is an audience, that there is a God.
But like the fear underlying religion, you try hard to push one thought out of your mind. You fear it is a universal truth: Wanting something harder doesn’t make it more likely to be true. Every hour of your 50-hour work week might merely drift away into the ash of the bonfire of time, obliterated completely, leaving as little a mark on history as the hat you never bought for the party you never went to. Without the fire of that dream, you wouldn’t even have been able to work this hard. I don’t even know if that counts as irony.
Tonight I ate dinner with my family for the first time in months and, as they left, felt a bad headache coming on. It drove me to bed around 9PM. I woke up in the middle of the night–around the time I usually find sleep in the first place–from a nightmare about Logan’s Run. This re-imagining of Logan’s Run was split into three acts. The first act and the last act were familiar, telling the stories of the Carousel-worshiping village, and life after the escape to the upper world, respectively. However, and even though I was familiar with the entirety of the story while in the midst of it, I was stuck in a phantom second act where I/Logan tried in vain to escape the compound. Everyone I knew in the underground city had been evacuated or killed by act one, and I crept along industrial hallways and crevices between metallic structures, cleverly avoiding the paths of maliciously reprogrammed robots. Being alone, my only companion was the everpresent, disembodied voice of whatever force was trying to kill me, as it threatened me over the speakers of the compound. As afraid as I was, I was driven onward because I knew that a glowing, green world awaited me in act three if I could only get there. Finally, cornered by three robots, I remembered my path to escape was to swim! Below me was a pipe, and even though I didn’t think I had enough time before the robots got me, and even though the pipe didn’t seem quite wide enough, I pried off the rubbery lid and dove inside.
I never found out if the pipe had an end, or even if I drowned. I woke up instead.
Today, I made a man with only one working hand dig through the garbage for me while I watched. He was in the middle of eating lunch too. So what have you done for the lulz today?
I got a new phone finally today. As to whether this was a worthwhile expenditure, I’m still debating. On the one hand money is tight by design these days, and I’m still fabricating the bootstraps with which I will pull myself up. Looming close on the horizon is a mandatory housing change, meaning I should be putting away pretty much everything I earn and buying next to nothing. The necessary unknown of living somewhere else in a month and a half is both a stressor and an excitement, and the only thing I feel I can do right now to reassure myself is have lots of money waiting.
On the other hand, one must play to one’s strengths, and looking back on the last few months it’s easy to see how important my phone has been as an anchor of sanity in my life. A little TweetStats combing last night revealed that there has only been one day so far this year that I haven’t tweeted. Feels good m… no, actually, I don’t even know that that feels good. But holding a phone with a touchscreen and a camera, with no chipping paint or cracked screen or layers of dead skin cell grime peeking out from the cracks, and knowing that it is mine and that I earned it has dribbled a significant amount of joy into my day. So I don’t regret it.
I also believe in omens, and I felt that the past few texts on my old phone were a good way to put it to bed. You see, my phone would only hold about 150 incoming texts, and since the summer of 2008 I’ve been saving all the best ones, the ones that I just couldn’t hit delete on. It’s been a difficult battle, scrolling through old messages, evaluating the importance of arbitrary points in my life versus the ability to receive new data. I’ve had a fluctuating range of 7-3 spots open for new texts on my phone since I left for Cali. And keeping that up has been tough. This has been my partial motivation behind tweeting someofthebesttextsIget, because I can then delete them from my phone.
Plus the new phone was like twenty bucks after rebate. So lay off me, me. Though the guy who sold it to me duped me into buying a 30 buck car charger. He was the owner of the bum hand, and even though it maybe makes me an insensitive bigot, I couldn’t stop from being intrigued at his dexterity in popping off battery cases and switching out sim cards. After the purchase, I ate at a Togo’s occupying what was obviously a halfheartedly-repurposed sports bar and which smelled faintly of urine. There, I tried to activate my phone, only to find that I needed an activation code for a second time, which I’d left on a post-it at the cell phone store. So back I went, and into the trashcan our hero fished with the same hand he then used to eat his oatmeal cookie.
And so I’ll leave you with some choice texts from my old phone, now serving only as an electronic memory bank:
I’m in a car in mexico, MO with a CONVICT. REGRET 02 Jul 2010 11:15pm
sender: withheld
Woke up to gay sex. WHERE ARE MY SHOES 06 Jun 2010 9:57am
sender: withheld
[name omitted] is currently explaining bukkake to his mom 15 Apr 2010 8:23pm
sender: jth005
I threw up so much Spider-Man mac and cheese last night. Luckily the girl in my bed was just a friend. 28 Mar 2010 12:44pm
sender: withheld
New hypothesis: i passed out on the chair and vomited all over myself and the chair, took the shirt off and went to bed. That shirt was full of vomit. Trashed. 23 Nov 2009 6:44pm
sender: withheld
Midnight tall boys in honor of WTC? 9 Sep 2009 8:36pm
sender: morningcrafter
Would you like to hear about the world map again? Yes/no 21 Jun 2009 10:43pm
sender: zoomz6
Getting out of jail at 1130a, sleeping til 7p, is this win? 13 Jun 2009 7:13pm
sender: nerfdude3k
Dear Job Muzak: This is, in fact, not the last worthless evening that I’ll have to spend, and so I’ll thank you to quit reminding me of the fact.
It’s been an especially stress-filled day. I feel like I’ve done a good job not letting the stressors get to me, but the comedy of retail store errors I’ve experienced today has been a bit over the top. Now Blogosphere, you know I don’t like or advocate drinking alone. But I wanted to provide my self with what I thought was some well deserved positive reinforcement for a full day’s work put in. So this evening, blog, let’s unwind together, and talk about what’s on our minds.
Stacy’s Pita Chips: Now with less-subtle 420-friendly marketing.
As I drove home tonight, my brain finally left to its own stewed-up thoughts, I again found myself with a hankerin’ for a bloggin’. I think I think a lot of my best thoughts while driving, and that’s the thought that I thought about tonight while driving and thinking. And that got me thinking about all the thoughts I’ve thought while driving in the past, and thoughts that made me think I should get in my car and drive and think, and what I thought about the outcomes, and where I thought those thoughts and drives would lead me. And what I think those driven thoughts have brought.
This morning I wanted to hear that Passion Pit album on the way to work. It’s a fair driving album, and I have a lot of good associations with listening to it in Kirksville while cavorting around that last semester, having included at the time it in an MP3CD of albums I had downloaded (in b4 RIAA LOL) and wanted to get to know better. Squinting at the California sun, I rifled through my now post-post-post-ironic ATO CD visor, and my you-didn’t-opt-for-the-iPod-hookup nook below the radio in my car, but the CD was not to be found. I was already running late for work, and at this point I wanted something familiar, but not the same-old new stuff I’d been listening to.
Right at that thought, I pulled out a CD marked CUL8R. It’s a particularly significant and great mix in the context of my life, but just like a mess in the corner of your room so old that your mind forgets that it’s a mess and starts to process it as furniture, it’s a CD that I haven’t thought to listen to in months. It’s an un-finalized version of a heartfelt goodbye mix I crafted for easily one the closest and most important friends I’ve ever had in this worldline. My solid rock, yet a whirlwind I got too swept up in; A liberating pair of wings that I too often confused for crutches; A personality so epic, I often felt dwarfed in its shadow. Every time I pull this disk out of the visor, I remember that giving it an inappropriately-lighthearted name like CUL8R was a hilarious inside joke to myself. God, I really like, get my sense of humor, me.
Now, you gotta understand, my car/room/iTunes/life is just littered with mixes I’ve made for people. I know it’s a cliché, but I am the Mixtape Master, still struggling to pour sacredness into Frankenstinian audio creations during what is now a post-cassette and post-CD world. The thing about re-finding artifacts such as these mixes is that each so encapsulates a time in my life. Creations become memory receptacles that way, be they photos or mix CDs or paintings or blog posts.
Now, a few perturbations on this model vis-à-vis CUL8R:
My mixtape mastercraft has, over the years, evolved into a bit of a model. The necessary elements are:
Some time-tested favorites of the listener’s. These are the easy targets. The low hanging fruit. The empathy trigger.
Some songs similar to the first category, but which you consider to be obscure enough that your recipient is unfamiliar with them. Feigning ignorance in the recipient’s musical knowledge is acceptable in this category.
A song or two from your favorite bands, even if they have the thinnest of justifications for inclusion. (Read: Depeche Mode) This is kind of like leading the horse to water, making it drink, and then waterboarding it until damn well likes whatever you tell it to like.
Some new stuff that fits with the flow seamlessly. This establishes your credibility, and implies that you might be the harbinger of good things, new or otherwise.
But CUL8R doesn’t conform to this model. It’s made up of all old favorites, selected very very carefully for nostalgia and significance. So it comes off as less subversive and more timeless than anything else lying around.
Mixtapes as a genre themselves tend to provide a lot of surprises in the replay-value aspect, because they are one person’s harnessing of the creations of others.
This wasn’t the finished product.
And, not being the finished product, the song that I was struck by on tonight’s drive back home was one that was left on the cutting room floor. This is mainly because all of my friends hate Sheryl Crow. But because of its soon-to-be-discarded presence on a primordial version of expression, tonight I was presented with a song that reminded me way too much of the significant drives of my life. While driving. And thinking.
Ever since college, driving for me has accumulated weird connotations of independence, fear, wrongness, rebellion, comfort, and above all the undeniability of emotion. For years and years I’d sneak off on weekend jaunts in my car, seeking friendship and the big city, but hiding it from my parents. I got so thorough in covering my tracks that I’d be sure to leave my local friends in the dark about what I was doing, to spread the umbrella of defensive ignorance. Every moment in that car, flying down those dark and all too familiar highways there was an empty ache of fear in my heart, that a deer or a flat or a cop’s ticket would establish my existence somewhere that I shouldn’t be, like a phantom blip of a stealth bomber on a radar screen. It was, in retrospect, a needless worry held up by the architecture of my own immature lies. But it left its mark on my psyche nonetheless, mixing the flavor with a joy and freedom uncomparable to anything I’d ever known.
About a year ago, I found myself run over one weekend by an unexpected truck of emotion. These relationships we get into in our silly lives…. We pretend they’re no big deal when they start, but that’s only so that they’re approachable enough to start up in the first place. My silly-seeming-at-the-time flood of feelings still feels justified today. But I digress. The point is, I was faced with a startling view of loneliness and futility, and all I could think to do was drive. Things got better, got resolved, and I had perhaps the best summer of my life. But a few weeks later, I was again driving. This time it was the 28.4 miles to the Iowa border, and it was the only way I knew to focus enough to listen through all of CUL8R as a sort of proofread before the final product. The symptom had become the cure, and I’d come to respect the effect that driving and thinking had on me.
Looking back on it now, that drive was like THX1138, whereas my trip to Cali was like Star Wars. The morning when I packed up all my stuff and left was pretty out of the blue however you look at it. But maybe there’d been a littlewarning that something bigger was coming.
Oh God how did I write a blog post this long and not mention my new friend Cool Socks‽
Perhaps I’m just not familiar enough with the typical lyric content of the softrockscape, but I’m pretty sure whoever programmed the muzak for this pharmacy seriously had their heart fucking stomped on. Each is a bitter, self-loathing anti-love song, filled with either inner congratulation over kicking a lover out, or enthusiastic delusions about getting back with a girlfriend who’s been gone for five years. I mean, is this the subject matter that we as a culture have decided is vanilla-content? Everybody knows that muzak is there to not be noticed, to exist as an absence of silence, but through fulfilling this societal norm of finding poppy-yet-inoffensive music some weird artifact of perpetual heartache got picked up along the way. I mean, what response is this muzak-engineer trying to achieve here? Perhaps, “Thanks for making me relive all my failed relationships today, pharmacy. I just wanted some damn q-tips.” Additionally it’s fairly unsettling when, in the midst of unenthusiastically restocking tampons and grumbling to yourself about the malaise-inducing lovesick auditory mindfuck, a song comes on that you actually like. And you realize it fits in the all-too-specific mold perfectly.
Remember all those sweet middle school urban legends about what was really up with Seal’s face? I heard he had horrific night terrors and clawed at his eyes while he slept.
Exacerbating the unnecessary nostalgia of the pharmacy are the products themselves. Part of the magic of living in a consumer culture is getting product-based nostalgia in inappropriate settings. Especially the cheap shit, because the branding never gets updated. First it’s that can of hairspray that the one girl used to use. Just as I’ve convinced myself that Duncan Sheik‘s stupid lyrics were having no effect on me, I see it sitting on innocently on the bottom shelf there, and immediately I can taste it in the back of my mouth. It tastes like being late to a party, creaking open a shitty collegeland apartment bathroom door after a justification knock to find a fog of chemical hair fixative thick enough to haze my view of the mirror across the room, but in it is the reflection of a girl who looks so good that I realize I don’t even really care where we go tonight, and anyway there’s the rest of the bottle of Boone’s Farm to finish before I leave and what am I oh fuck right I was straightening Isle 10.
Each isle holds these hidden triggers of remembrance, and the boredom deprives me of any shield to their power. Hell, every time I go down the makeup isle I yearn for a time, now past, when I could get away with painting my nails without probably-job-ending social repercussions. Plus, kicking around this stupid step-stool is bringing back to life slumbering muscle memories from my grocery store job of 2002. It’s a near-perfect storm of connotation.
Having thusly ranted, I should mention that the pharmacy is the job where I actually feel like I fit in. The hardware store, on the other hand, is the straightest thing I’ve ever voluntarily been a part of. It’s a world of burly bros lifting things, heavily-makeuped girls flirt-cashiering, gritty workmen with empty stares setting nameless metal components on counters, and then me. And because my teensy pale frame and fabulously quaffed hair wasn’t quite ironic enough in this environment, fate decided to cram in a few more lulz for me and give this barren, ill-lit unadorned warehouse of a store an 80s synth-pop muzak station. I mean, when I think hardware store I think southern rock. But no. Instead, I find myself trudging my way through one of the most heternormative jobs imaginable, and I can honestly say I’ve never heard more Depeche Mode songs in a public setting past seeing them live. It’s fucking bizarre.
Why don’t I blog anymore? Blogging is so awesome. Oh man, I have done some shit and seen some stuff since we last spoke, internet. I have two jobs. Two. Also, I partied in the Castro tonight. Well okay. Last night I partied. Tonight I found a chill bar with an open air section at a major intersection and people-watched and read Red Mars. It was pretty wonderful. I then went inside for drink two (or three, whatever), and started up a conversation with the barkeep. Yeah I was that guy. But dude, whatever. Also, when I left, she offered her name and I didn’t give her mine. How baller is that.
Answer: Not as baller as last night when I told that 32-year-old former film school student with Dr. Clayton Forrester glasses that she had cool socks, and she told me that she had a phantom dick.
Anyway, so I should blog more. Actually, I have this fully-written-out blog post that I’ve just been procrastinating typing up. I guess I’ll do that.
Oh and I got a haircut.
So to make this an official post, here’s two obligatory inclusions;
A pic of me:
mannerist
A review of something sciencefictiony: Rebuild 1 sucked.
I went to what I thought was a Lesbian Bar tonight. Turns out it was a concert. Turns out it was a concert at a Lesbian Bar.
I had a good time. I haven’t been to a proper concert in a long time, and it made me remember high school. Not in the “recall” sense of remember, but in that more tactile, flashbackey way like when you pass by Bath and Body Works in the mall and get a whiff of some shit that suddenly makes you remember being over at your Grandma’s house one time when you were seven or something. That’s never happened to me I just made that up.
Anyway so I didn’t really meet anyone but I danced a lot. Which is cool enough. All three bands were pretty great, though I admit that I have a tendency to get unnecessarily enthusiastic about bands that I hear for the first time live. With that in mind, maybe I would have gotten buyers-remorse’d if I’d have been able to buy the opening act‘s CD? I’ve been burned by opening-act-CD-purchases before back in my Creepy Crawl days. I really doubt it though, because wow did they have some power on stage. However, not wanting to dance like an idiot while holding a jewelcase for two more sets, I waited until I left to pick one up only to find that the band and its merch had disappeared. Like I said, I’m pretty impressible at concerts, but it’s strange to be taken a way on a personal level in such a public setting. It was loads of fun and a good change of pace for me. I always go to concerts with other people at their urging, and never of my own volition.
And now, a penny to derail your train of thought. My brain threw me an REM wildcard a few nights back and provided me with what I deemed upon waking to be the girl of my dreams? Now I dunno about you (and I’m aware that people’s dream habits vary) but every time I have a dream about–ahem–a lady, it’s generally a real person. Even if the choice is illogical, like that girl who sat behind me in Trig four years ago that I only talked to once or twice, at least my brain isn’t just making shit up. This night though, I found myself falling in love with a girl I’d just straight-up invented. On one hand it’s kind of cool; I’m the type to not know how I’m affected by things, and to keep my feelings to myself, so for my brain to just straight-up inform me of what I’m looking for… that’s actually pretty thoughtful of it. Thanks brain! On the other hand, I’ve got a funny suspicion that my own personal series of tubes just didn’t know what image to process lust as given my current dearth of an IRL peer group, and was forced to make a dummy plug. Sort of a bummer.
In a much better segue of topics, I again find myself infatuated with the dreamy, sexy, and almost perfect Adolescence of Utena. I’ve watched it at least 4 nights out of the past week. This movie is severely under-appreciated, and I can’t help but blame its association with a television series as a hindrance to its visibility. Well, stop using this as an excuse and watch it already. Not only is it stand alone from the series, but dare I say, from its weeaboo genre. Like Blade Runner and Edward Scissorhands, a lot of what makes this movie intoxicating is its alien but fully realized environment. This is a surrealist masterpiece.
No really just watch it. No. Really. I’m willing to beg.
As this adventure (alternate title: life) continues, I’m meeting more and more examples of the “California Girl” stereotype. Understanding that these creatures are a byproduct and undeniable part of my newly adopted culture is kind of like having the realization that the woman you’re in love with is full of gross organs and chyme. They’ve come a long way from the girlfriends in Bio-Dome. (Which, by they way, have you seen this? Have you read about this? The screenplay for Bio-Dome is apparently a modified version of what was originally going to be going to form the conclusion of a Bill and Ted Trillogy‽ This makes me feel funny and bittersweet, like I did when I found out about the secret origin of Snow Day.)
Back when I saved it on Tuesday March 25, 2008, I knew that one day I’d need this picture .
The California Girl wears designer hoodies that, unbeknownst to her, were associated with skaters and surfers in the 90s. She chomps on gum and texts on her pink-enskinned iPhone while complaining about how hard Community College is. A combination of makeup, tanner, eye liner, razored eyebrows and hair highlights make her almost post-racial in a completely backwards way as she aspires instead for some alien aesthetic. She actually, legitimately gossips about the car of the boy she’s sleeping with. In a way, it’s kind of cool that a culture so tied to change and diversity can beget such mediocre homogeneity. But it’s also scary to worry…. What if the scores of coffee-colored people that we turn out like, you know, really end up sucking and stuff?
The tinny tones of the cell phone alarm vibrate from the desk. In my freshly awoken stupor I catch my foot on one of the sheets of protective painter’s paper taped to the ground while trying to get to the phone. I hit snooze and bring it back to bed with me. When it blares its warning again next to my face ten minutes later, I turn it off, and without leaving the covers, pop a chocolate espresso bean. There’s a plastic container of these set within reaching distance of my bed and they’re my secret weapon in maintaining a normal person’s schedule. One of these babies and you’ll find yourself trying to fall back asleep but merely thinking about the dream you’d like to be dreaming. Three, and you get the horrifying experience of feeling your heart try to beat its way right out of your ribcage.
I get dressed and brush my teeth, and then it’s time for mouthwash. [At this point, I'd like to ask all attractive females with even the vaguest chance of ever making out with me to skip to the next paragraph.] Now I have tonsiliths, and I loath them to an obsessive degree. Most of the activities that make up my life, like driving, working, walking, et cetera, are merely tricks to prevent me from thinking about them constantly throughout the day. Internet research on the topic is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s indescribably godawfully vile to read about or look at. On the other, it’s educational and morbidly fulfilling and it’s good to know that there are others out there like me to give me pointers. Kind of like that movie Crash. No, not the one about race relations. Two of the helpful tidbits I’ve learned are 1. pushing down just below the spot on the tonsil can make them get dislodged, as long as you don’t trigger a gag reflex (it kind of works!) and 2. mouthwash seems to impede their formation. So now I Listerine like a madman, and as of late I’ve been trying to hybridize the techniques. Mouth full of wash, I cram my finger back to my tonsil and push, and in my mind’s eye I see a computer-generated tonsilscape out of a commercial, the crypts flooding wonderfully with refreshing minty disinfectant death. In the mirror I watch the tears form in my eyes while dayglow teal goo dribbles down my chin.
In the kitchen I grab a quick breakfast. Retrieving my water bottle, I pull open the freezer and grab some of its internally manufactured ice cubes. Sometimes I feel weird about just grabbing the ice with my hands, but then again the other day when we were talking Jane opened up a jar of peanut butter and started eating it off her finger, so it’s probably chill. I then fill the bottle up with the world’s most delicious drink:
1 part water
1 part cranberry juice
I tell myself that I’m using a metal bottle because I’m another ecofriendly hipster worried about microscopic plastic residue leeching into my digestive system, but in reality we all know the feeling of sweating metal against skin just seems more refreshing. My stomach isn’t hungry but my brain knows it should be, so I grab a blank hamburger bun that will go to waste otherwise. I take a bite of it as I walk out the door to chase the multivitamin.
The drive up 280 is beautiful every time I take it. On the way I listen to that Mountain Goats album about his dead methhead friends.
After the best parallel parking job of my life, I walk a few blocks to St. Whatchamacallit’s, greeting Guy-Who’s-Name-I-Forgot as he sweeps the entrance to the garden. I’m about a half hour early and start washing dishes, but when we finally circle up it confirms that we’re pretty short-handed today; Other-Guy-Who’s-Name-I-Forgot, That-Cute-Short-Haired-Girl-Who’s-Name-I-Forgot, That-One-Nun-Who’s-Always-Around, Those-Two-Nice-Older-Ladies-Who’s-Names-I-Forgot, and Steven are all missing. I kind of end up enjoying the rush though, because sometimes getting lost in hard work can be a kind of escape. And anyway I have a good time talking to Guy-From-Brazil-Who’s-Name-I-Forgot, Guy-Who-I’m-Starting-To-Think-Might-Be-Gay-And-Who’s-Name-I-Forgot, and Guy-Who-Is-In-Charge-Of-Wednesday-Shift-Who’s-Name-Starts-With-An-Ess-I-Think. The latter and I talked about his recent graduation from a theological school, and he told me that I’ve essentially been washing dishes more thoroughly than is necessary, saying that I “need to have faith in the system” vis-à-vis dish sanitation. I think I took his advice as more of a metaphor than it was intended.
Three hours later I’m back in South Bay, now looking silly wearing a suit and marching into a corner store, asking a random isle-drone to see the manager by name. When you enter a store for the first time and go immediately past the “Employees Only” door, you forget how disorienting the transition from polished to unpolished should be. Ascending the staircase, my the voice of my inner child chirps up, suggesting that maybe I’ll get to see the other side of a shrinkage-preventing 2-way mirror, which is always neat. No such luck though. I walk in the office and sit down, the manager across the desk from me getting out “have a seat” just after my dress-panted butt hits the chair, probably making both of us feel awkward. At some point during the interview my pen flies out of my hand and rolls under the desk, making me stoop nervously to grab it. I get the job almost immediately. Somewhere in the distance a Neko Case song played faintly from a ceiling-mounted speaker.
In the parking lot I call Ben to tell him the news, starting the conversation with a blunt statement instead of a greeting, because that always feels funnier and more satisfying when “something important” happens.
Back home again, I finally have a chance to call home to wish my father a happy birthday. After talking for about five minutes or so I’m told that they are going to have to call me back soon as dinner is almost ready, putting an official fanfare on what I’d meant as a simple greeting call. But this is fine, and even anticipated. Interacting with family is like racism; You have to approach the situation with a blank slate, expecting nothing, but a meanly pessimistic part of the back of your brain tells you to anticipate what you always anticipate. I watch a bit of the news with Jane. But, as my family’s definition of “soon” is again showed to be different from mine, I decide I have time to pursue my new project.
I’m planning a new triptych of oil paintings, but before I can start on them I need to turn two (2) discarded 22-inch-long shelves into four (4) 11-inch-long hunks of abused wood. The transition is to be sloppy, and executed with this hatchet I found in the garage sitting on a shelf above where the soda is kept. Jane, while indulging my weird plans, wisely says that I need to wear safety goggles for the operation. Neither of us can find a pair in the house, but after some rifling around in his room I locate a pair of notjeremyjones‘ old swimming goggles onto which I tape my prescription glasses.
The process in the side yard is louder than expected, but goes pretty well. It feels good to sweat.
After a characteristically-longer-than-an-hour conversation with the family, some general internetting, and an afterthought late-night snack, I get ready for bed. Now usually my sleeping routine involves watching something before drifting off. My initial choice tonight is an audio-less double feature of Shamanic Princess* episode 6 and The Adolescence of Utena* while listening to the newest episode of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Problems arise:
VLC 0.9.10 has a glitch that makes the playlist feature unusable**
for some reason VLC has also been glitching up when trying to play mkv files recently**
I’m still awake by the time the podcast ends
So I remember that last night I’d turned off all the lights and listened to the Super Metroid soundtrack. Expecting to be gently lulled to sleep by comfort-zone instrumental music, it had instead scared the shit out of me.
Which is awesome. So I decide to do the same thing tonight.
*Inclusion of Evanescence AMVs not meant as a condoning of either Evanescence or AMVs (because I’m not a nerd loser***), but merely to amuse deletedearth.
Someone make me stop listening to this Mountain Goats album. It’s devastating me. It starts slower than most Mountain Goats albums, and so I hadn’t really let the lyrics process on previous listens. It encapsulates a brand of loneliness that I’ve never heard articulated before, but have certainly felt.
I had a pretty good day today. I’m finally getting my room cleaner in anticipation of a new triptych of paintings I’m planning.
So I had to take a drug test today, but I had no pee in me. First I got a soda, and then drank a hilarious amount of water in the clinic waiting room. On the cup, I drew a self-portrait. It’s weird that culture’s niceties allow, in certain situations, for handing women you’ve never met before open-air vessels of your own urine.
Oh and speaking of loneliness, I finally watched Silent Running a few nights back. I almost hate to say this, but I was kinda bored by it. So I followed it up with the very unboring Godzilla vs. Megalon. So unboring, in fact, that it begged I make an animated gif of it. I heeded:
