Mitch Hedberg is dead of an overdose at the age of 37.

Damn it.

I've set up a Netflix account in my name. This means twice the DVDs in J208, only this quarter I'll have a class to attend, and hopefully a job. This will be abated in part once Alex gets a DVD burner, but there are busy times ahead.

Watched In The Mood For Love and The Ruling Class. I recommend both films, albeit to different people.

That gum you like is going to come back in style.

There were plans for a big essay thing, a real self-loathing marathon, loaded up with self-awareness about my inevitable future as a music critic. I'm now too exhausted to type it, there was a lot to it.

Instead I'll say that I ended up accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish. Job application handed in, short story submitted (and oh my god that rejection's going to fucking suck, even now as I expect it there's still some hope left but fuck no rejection rejection rejected) and Underworld finished.

Books on my bookshelves that are unread: Mishima, Confessions Of A Mask. Faulkner, As I Lay Dying. Faulkner, The Sound And The Fury. O'Connor, Complete Stories. Nabokov, The Stories Of Vladimir Nabokov. McSweeney's 15.

I am tired.

And shit: That mix I made of the music of 2003 designed to be both autobiographical (it's limited to what I heard within the year) and a best-of left off The Shins' Young Pilgrims, didn't it? Fuck. That's better than most of the songs on there. The issue is that I ripped the song for the express purpose of putting it on there, but in all the hustle I never put it on the playlist. Crap. It's not even like the sequencing on that disc is that good. Oh well.

Here's a quote of someone else paraphrasing something Patton Oswalt said, re: why he's no longer on VH1. "They want you to come in and riff on these talentless celebrities, and they give you these questions to answer... After a while, I just wanted to say, 'Paris Hilton is a cunt and I hope she dies of AIDS.'"

As for the news: I don't care about the girl in the coma so much as I care about the fact that Bush signed a law when he was Governor of Texas that allows for the plug to be pulled on people who can't pay, regardless of the family's wishes. I honestly can't imagine anything more evil-fuckerish, and I want to punch that guy in the scrot. I think he'd appreciate the comedy of me doing so, what with his frat-boy background and all.

Yesterday I got sprayed with a fire extinguisher by some drunk asshole. Fire extinguishers spray this white powder chemical that soaks the air, tastes fucking terrible, and covers everything with an invisible grainy texture.

I've heard the new Beck record, mastered and sequenced, and it's not very good. When did he become a scientologist? Because if it was after Midnite Vultures, then I'm blaming that for his decline.

The Thunderbirds Are Now! album isn't very good, nor is what I've heard of the Bunky record. Many of the reviews make it seem promising, but the songs I've heard from mp3 blogs and the band's website were so shitty I didn't even download the full record.

New Sleater-Kinney's good. The Enon singles comp is considerably better than the Les Savy Fav singles comp from last year. (which I actually bought, like a sucker) Only the first song off the next Broken Social Scene is available so far as I know, but it's a good one. I haven't heard all of the Stephen Malkmus record yet. I imagine it'll be okay but I will never want to listen to it, not unlike Pig Lib. Generally I'm thinking a better year for music than last year.

Oh yeah, so top ten records released last year that didn't make the Pitchfork list at all, in no order.

The Mountain Goats- We Shall All Be Healed
The Hold Steady- Almost Killed Me
Beauty Pill- The Unsustainable Lifestyle
Black Eyes- Cough
Black Dice- Creature Comforts
The Blow- Poor Aim: Love Songs EP
Girl Talk- Unstoppable
Liars- They Were Wrong So We Drowned
!!!- Louden Up Now
Deerhoof- Milk Man

So if I were in Philadelphia right now there'd be a Salvador Dali exhibit I could be seeing. And if I were there in May, I could live Alex's dream, as there's a night where there's a Caribou/Junior Boys show, and then right after that, at the same venue, there's an Autechre show. Two separate shows, but Autechre tickets are cheaper if you see Caribou. In May plans are to drive down the coast and see California, Evie, and The Boredoms. I have no idea how much money this will cost, and I will need to investigate further.

Don DeLillo's Underworld is rather good, only it needs to be read quickly, with all the characters kept straight so it doesn't just come off like a short story collection. I should finish it over the next two days, definitely done before Wednesday.

Also I need to write up a cover letter to print out, staple to this short story, and send off. This needs to be done before break is over. Let's say both these things should be accomplished by Tuesday.

Also to be done tomorrow is hand in a job application to be a custodian of this school's filth.

Hypodermic needles have been found in bathrooms in the library.

I just looked through/reread the short story I wrote for my contract, the long one, that I like more than the others and worked out really well. This is the one I was thinking about making a copy of the version I have printed out now and submitting it places. And then I found typos and grammatical errors and felt my confidence plummet. I'll have to print out the fixed versions for submissions, but just the fact that I found these errors now is disconcerting.

Tomorrow I'll go and hand in all these things, have the meetings with faculty and all that. Perhaps I will take this story with the errors fixed, print it out, and place it into a yellow envelope I bought for just such an occasion, and then perhaps that story will be placed into the mail.

There is almost assuredly rejection in my future but there is rejection in my past as well. I am a fuckup.

Goddamn but I've skirted saying McSweeney's because it feels like some kind of actual-life equivalent of a nerd asking out a cheerleader. But I mean: yes.

The story has its moments. That's true for all that I've written for the independent contract. Everything has its moments, nothing's consistent. This is just the piece where the overall collection of moments is at its most impressive.

I feel sick.

There's a lot of music coming out in the future that I would probably buy were it not for this cable internet connection and Olympia music stores sucking. I'm considering going down to Portland to pick up the new Mountain Goats record, The Sunset Tree, once it's released. I'm also excited about the next Silver Jews thing, and there's a new Broken Social Scene record starting to leak that's the kind of thing I'd buy. It's all very tricky, what with having no money and living in Olympia. Owning records is just great for listening to the whole thing from end to end over and over again, which is really the best way to get into an album.

My plan was to review everything in my 2005 playlist for stuff that's coming out or has already come out this year, but that'd be largely unfair given my listening practices. Suffice it to say that the Out Hud and Trail Of Dead records are not the kinds of record that should be bought. Most other things would give me enjoyment if I bought them and listened to them over and over again.

After seeing Bad Education, I'm even more confident that Talk To Her is Almodovar's masterpiece, at least in terms of how it works out his pet themes that I find interesting. The only thing that lingers is that the version I saw of Bad Education might've been some R-rated cut, and that there might be more footage missing than just cock shots, of which there were none, which was what was supposed to make it an NC-17 film. The characters in Bad Education aren't nearly as sympathetic as those in Talk To Her, which is what helped me love that film so much. There is a really great opening credits sequence and a few great shots. Alex thinks Bad Education is the better film, but he is alone so far as I know.

I just finished watching Kieslowski's Blue. It's a great film, one I don't quite get, as it's obviously loaded up with symbolism, and done with a great deal of deliberateness. As I was watching I found myself distracted by my thoughts. Class registration for Spring quarter is coming up in less than nine hours and my initial enthusiasm for some of the classes being offered has given way now to boredom and a feeling of spinning my wheels. Nothing I've written down to sign up for will teach me anything solid, there are no workable skills to be found. I want to make films next year, there's a program called Mediaworks which will hopefully allow me to do just that.

I was talking a few nights ago to someone about the difficulty of living up to one's potential, because there's just so much potential in a person and a limited amount of youth to expend it. The only way to live up to one's potential is to put oneself in positions one wouldn't normally find themselves in. I could build a blimp in a backyard over the course of a year. I could make films. There's also the possibility I could do shit like become a surgeon or learn the ins and outs of the law.

But it's been a year and a half of pursuing writing. I'm done with doing that for school, paying to learn about it. Fuck it. Fuck it in its ass. I might end up taking Faulkner and Friends tomorrow. The reason that's tempting is because I own three of the books on the syllabus, and I'll read them eventually. And at this exact moment in time, that's what makes me not want to take the class.

I'm now leaning towards Framing Film, but I want to tear through the catalog now and find something that will teach me something I don't already know. There's a class about sailing, which, as I thought about it watching Kieslowski's Blue, seemed really tempting.

Goddamn.

These job applications want personal references and damn it all to hell.

These job applications want personal references and damn it all to hell.

The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday is a rather good record, bar band with brilliant lyrics stuff like the first, but I'm listening to it from beginning to end, before I go to sleep, as that's when the urge strikes and I can invest some attention into it. I listen to Beauty Pill's Unsustainable Lifestryle from beginning to end as well. Lyrics records.

Tomorrow I am going to fill out these job applications and read these books, sitting to my left. Maybe there will also be some writing. Monday I had in the job applications and will have to wake up early to do so. Then more writing and reading.

One of the book's sititng to my left is Don Delillo's Underworld, which is one that should really be taking up the whole of my attention. Without all my attention, it is only half-understood. What's bizarre is that it's a book about the latter half of the American twentieth century, and the image on the front cover is that of the World Trade Center. Could a better image be chosen to represent that period of time now? This was accident and happenstance, book design in 1998. It's a decent book, as well.

Yeah, I really need a job. I owe the college over a thousand dollars just for Winter Quarter, and if that's not paid, (by my parents) I won't be able to register for classes in Spring. I'm thinking if I could get a job, I could also get an apartment, and stop going to school for a while... Spring and Summer quarter, just a leave of absence. I'd still owe the college money for this quarter, though, in addition to the student loans bit which I might end up being forced to pay back.

I need a job, plain and simple. I need the money, and I need to move off campus.

I'm also thinking about taking Mediaworks next year. I still love writing, but I'm over doing it for school. And, while I'm thinking about it, I really need to make some copies, copyright these things, submit them. I submitted my story Drawing In Frosting to Barrelhouse. I wouldn't get paid if it got published. Woo.

12:48 AM and depression is settling in for the night.

Tomorrow I will get things done for sure. I'll reward myself with tacos for dinner, and I'll read books on the bus and go to a show and after that's done I'll talk to people.

Got this thing on my computer I need to write more of. And my plan to get things done tomorrow forgot about my paper on James Joyce's The Dead. I'll reread that now.

I never want to sleep in these hours leading up to the time where I absolutely need to be awake. I laid in my bed, thinking about my memories of Sicklerville, New Jersey, where I lived from as early as I can remember to sometime in first grade, and wanting to listen to The Mountain Goats' We Shall All Be Healed.

Mostly my thoughts are about a girl named Megan who had red hair and was baby-sat by the same woman I was afterschool and during the summer months and who I really liked at the time. My memories are of course vague, but I nonetheless hope she ended up being a good person. I was in kindergarten when she was in first grade. I was fond of her in a way that boys are fond of girls before they know what sex is but know that close relationships between boys and girls are both rare and incredibly important, something to be proud of.

After I moved out of Sicklerville I became close friends with a dude I'm now very different than. But the important thing about the story isn't the difference between our friendship in second grade and our friendship now, it's the period where we weren't that close (because I moved yet again) and when we started talking again to discover both of us liked They Might Be Giants and had similar relationships with our brothers.

When I got to Evergreen, there were these two people who were friends when they were both in preschool and ended up attending the same college and becoming roommates after an extended time apart.

These are the kinds of things I think about when I think about the people I will probably never see again.

I remember leaving Sicklerville around what must've been around Christmastime, standing outside an awning, in the hall by the front door, everyone else in the front room where there was no TV, but there was a couch and I would sit and wait for my mom to arrive when there was something I didn't want to watch on TV. (Also sometimes in that room there would be games of Mouse Trap.) I remember telling that room full of people, my babysitter and that girl Megan that just because I was leaving didn't mean I wouldn't be coming back, because my dad would still be living in Sicklerville. I didn't know he'd end up moving back in with his parents in Collingswood. I didn't know I was lying at the time. But when I think back on that memory, I remember a sickly moment, with not bright-enough lighting and a general unpleasantness.

A few years back my mom and I drove through the old neighborhood, where our house and that belonging to the babysitter still existed, and the whole town of Sicklerville had this horrible vibe to it that we could sense even from inside the car. Both my mom and I picked up on it, and we wondered if the people who lived there currently were able to feel it.

At the beach with roommates, thinking of bandnames. I came up with a lot, most of which I have forgotten and didn't get big responses. Most were long sentences more appropriate for song titles.

Anyway: Rhymin' and Gar-funky!

Went to the Mt. Eerie/Evens show. I talked with Ian Mackaye about whether or not Horses and Flowers were any good. In awkward form. I ended by just saying "I'm retarded." That said: According to him, Horses are good, he hasn't seen Flowers and thinks they've stopped playing and there's another band to form in the wake of Black Eyes called... Hand-Fed Babies or something.

The Evens were good. I'm retarded.

This was something that almost worked itself into an earlier entry, but I didn't know where to go with it. I need to work this out.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. This says many things about journalism, politics, and America. None of which I'm going to discuss, although I could.

But: I read Thompson's obituary for Nixon tonight, and I was reminded of something that applies today: Objective journalism doesn't get the job done.

Here's the quote: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful. "

This applies to George W. Bush and the fact that he was elected. And of course I would say that. But I mean fuck. There's a reason The Daily Show seems more accurate, despite Jon Stewart seeming like he simply actively wishes for more objective news reporting. Or something. I really don't even know what Jon Stewart wants. I know he thinks of the cable news punditry as something of a debacle, and you know, he's right.

But.

What's the problem there? Is it the lack of intelligence? The inclination to be partisan hacks? That these people aren't shouting at the people in power so much as they're shouting at one another? Because the issue isn't that they're shouting.

Journalism should be less objective, because, in addition to the flaws Thompson cites, objectivity is inherently a lie. My friend Jason's ditched his journalism major for just this reason. (Jason, if you're reading this: Fucking scriptwriting? Fucking scriptwriting? No. If you'd met my roommate who writes screenplays this would be more clear, but fuck all that, the most importan thing is that film/video production means you can do it yourself. You don't need anyone to tell you how to fucking write, you need someone to tell you how to use the tools.)

But yes, I want to work this out. Maybe it's that the place for objective journalism is on TV, but the written word should allow for voices? (BTW, I think this would end up saving newspapers from low sales.) Right now it's the other way around. To see newspapers becoming more voice-oriented would in many ways just be mirroring cable news at this point, and that's an abyss that should not be gazed into. If the voice was a liberal one, that would be something of an alternative. The thing is with newspapers is that in the world I want to live in, the articles are very long. Long articles are hard to shit out overnight.

But no: I want to work this out. I want to fix journalism. I want to know what it is exactly that it should be. (In more ways than simply thinking it should be more informative. There's an easy solution there: Read The Guardian. Did you know the U.S. is creating ads for Pakistani television awarding money to those who catch Bin Laden and his cronies? Because I didn't. Until I read it in The Guardian. The Guardian also had a great Thompson obituary by Ralph Steadman, for those who enjoy reading such things.)

Also what the world needs now is more combative interviews with people in power. Actual combative interviews. No interruptions mid-answer to yell things, but a "You didn't answer the question" after they're done speaking wouldn't be inappropriate. These come off well in print too.

I want it worked out to the point where there's an actual solution and then I want that solution to happen. Come on you fuckers. Some of you are smart.

I've got plans for things that are hatching like eggs in my brain as I type this but I really don't want the fruit of all my bluster to just end up as a zine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1416055,00.html

U.S. soldiers who've fought in Iraq and Afghanistan can take ecstacy in order to combat post-traumatic stress. It's an experiment on the part of the FDA to see if it works, and American fighting forces get to be the guinea pigs.

It's funny that this this was in The Guardian (and it's kind of old news, I found it on the Arthur blog) and not an American newsource, but, well, yeah, there's probably reasons for that. I wonder what the reaction will be once people hear about it.

Oh and while I'm being political: Remember before the election when The New York Times reported that Bush was in a meeting with big donators and said his big thing following the election would be a move to privatize social security? And then the White House denied it, and most people didn't talk about it, but the fact that it was the New York Times (as everyone knows: A bastion for the American left. They're in New York. The "New" in the name has been replaced with "Jew.") was somehow taken as making it disreputable, not like it's the most respected paper in the nation or anything. And then, after Bush won the election, he started talking about "Social Security reform," i.e. privatization?

Next car with a bumper sticker that says "I don't trust the liberal media" is getting its tires punctured. And by next I think I mean "all of them forever." (What's funny is that the media really should be more liberal, what with it being filled with people who went to college and should be informed as to what's going on. That's why I find it funny when conservatives also talk about the liberalism of academia and college teachers: Dude, they're smart. They might be out of step with the rest of America, but they know what they're talking about when they are.)

Hunter Thompson died. I heard about it and just started contacting people I thought would care. My roommates were gone so I just called Star 69 and told the people who called the house last, while telling people over AIM. It was too much for me to really process, but I had to get it out. Then I walked the streets to tell other people in person, and on my way, I yelled the news to groups of people, who should've cared, but probably just thought I was insane.

It's weird to process things like this. I feel much the same way I did when ODB died, deaths that the news tends to bring out the insensitive "what-did-you-expect" side of people but I am deeply moved by. I'll feel better when the details come out. People who do shitloads of drugs but survive, and are entertaining about it, should live forever. Let's call it the Keith Richards rule, although if he were to die, I wouldn't give a shit. He's an old man. (Doing drugs doesn't kill people. Being awesome kills people.) Hunter Thompson was only 67. (He's the kind of guy that no matter how old he was, he would still only be that age.)

He also had a bit of that Johnny Cash old-man monument thing about him. These are people who live forever because they're old. But then they end up not living forever, as that is not how life works.

I wonder if there's a note, and I wonder how it reads if it exists, which is a weird thing to put on somebody.

I imagine cause of death having something to do with being in a house filled with guns while on drugs and seeing the things on the news. Which was the case for awhile. I don't know. When something's that inevitable, it seems like it'll be avoided after he's made it so long.

Reading other people's responses seem to postulate that he was just killing himself because that's the way he should die, rather than be claimed by old age, or cancer, which it seems likely he could've had.

I saw a documentary where he made plans for what to do after his death, to cremate him and fire his ashes in a rocket from a statue of a fist with two thumbs.

Um.

May he rest in peace.

I wrote something tonight which I'm going to work into a piece of literary criticism/music criticism for my independent contract. It's one sentence but it sums up a lot, serving as both a guide to life, a guide to writing, and an explanation for why I will never send my mom a short story of mine to read, despite the fact that such a gesture would mean a lot to her, regardless of the storie's content. (Another reason is that just the gesture would mean a lot to her, regardless of the story's content, so her judgements would mean nothing.) It's also a big key to an essay about Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady:

The trinity of debauchery of sex, drugs, and rock and roll that boring people like to think makes them interesting is but a poor substitute for the combo of sex, death, and blasphemy that's necessary for a story to even kind of matter.

If anyone can think of any exceptions to that rule, I'd like to hear them. I write this all the time but no one ever takes me up on it. And granted, I don't have a comments section, but I'm easy enough to get in contact with. I guess people might just think I'm being smug, but no, seriously: If there are flaws to my broad sweeping statement, point them out. The key is to define "blasphemy" really broadly, but I think that's fair, as it's a catch-all term.