If anyone reading this is in Olympia and it is not yet January fifth, could you pick up and hold onto my mail? Mostly I'm worried about the new issue of McSweeney's, which I imagine is swaddled in cardboard and sitting not in my mailbox, but in front of my door. That's the McSweeney's that comes with a DVD- you could even open it up if you wanted, as long as I knew you were doing it and you returned it. You would be breaking a federal law, and I wouldn't even care. Other federal laws you could break and I wouldn't even care include drug trafficking and sedition.

I saw King Kong. I enjoyed a lot of it, but pretty much anytime someone talks about something that could be cut from it, I agree- The subplot with the one kid on the boat, those handheld strobe shots, a few shots of Naomi Watts climbing a ladder, if the bits with the natives could be made not-racist, that'd be sweet. Jack Black actually being funny also would've been cool.

But there are parts where a giant ape is punching dinosaurs. Those are sweet.

Oh, and this is bullshit- Bank Of America has a different computer system for California, Washington, and Idaho than the rest of the country, so I can't use an ATM. When I talked to people at the bank today, they were really confused- I need to deposit money so this check I sent my landlord, post-dated for the first of January for that month's rent, can go through and not be overdrawing. I don't know if I'd be able to withdraw money. But yeah, that's something to know in case I ever visit Portland.

For Christmas I got some like fifty-five dollars worth of Barnes And Noble gift cards, maybe forty bucks cash, and a digital video camera.

I continue, I think, to alienate myself from my extended family. Or at least- I don't know, I like cash, but it's not really enough to let me live, and if anyone were to ask if I wanted something that wasn't cash I could say Thomas Pynchon's V or Home Movies DVDs or a laundry list of CDs without even really thinking about it. I don't know if when you read that list of stuff I got, you got the impression of how not fun it was to open presents. My eyes were mostly dead-eyed, because I knew about the DV camera in advance.

I go out to meals with my mom a lot, which gets annoying, just on a "holy fuck you eat out a lot" level. I start to think things like "If you ate out like only three or four times a week, and sent the money you saved to me, I would have an infinitely easier life." Maybe it's not actually that frequent, and it just feels like it to me because I never eat out anymore and I'm just like the Jewiest kid ever?

I have so little to actually complain about, I guess, in the grand scheme of things. I hope something fun (perhaps debaucherous, maybe just maniacal) happens on New Year's Eve. So frequently I am only entertaining myself and just annoying/alienating other people, and that would be a fine way to ring in the new year but I can't do it alone.

You know what would be fun? Having some kind of audio playback device on your person that just yelled shit that either you or someone else recorded at random intervals, as you were somewhere in public. By fun I maybe mean nightmarish. I would love to record one of these tapes for someone- the Brian Nicholson as Horrible Party Guest Disassociated From All Things Going On Around Him Cassette.

Maybe there'd be songs on it, too, but again: Only at random intervals. Songs like "The Classical" by The Fall, or "Gareth Brown Says" by McLusky maybe, but maybe just normal mixtape stuff like Animal Collective or Girl Talk. Imagine that braying from the inside pocket of your jacket. At the end of the tape there would maybe be a sad song, as you leave the party alone and unloved but until then it'd be all "Hey there fuck-face!"

Hey there fuck-face.

So I finally came up with a title for this novel-thing I've been working on, which has had some tentative titles, all of which were terrible. And I was happy, and I wrote it down, and I went down to brush my teeth.

The title I came up with was "Do You Remember When The World Ended?" which I think has a certain charm and appropriateness, it's actually really on-the-nose but that's better than some bullshit abstraction, right?

Anyway, yeah, I was happy with it. Until I said it aloud, and realized the uncomfortable similarity to the opportunistic post-9/11 country song "Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?"

And I smile-laughed outwardly while inside I cursed myself.

The new title is "Have You Forgotten (That Time The World Ended)." Which has none of those problems.

That was a joke, by the way, for those who didn't keep up with every new fuck-the-a-rabs song that comes down the pike.

I don't know what the title should be. "Do You Remember When The World Ended?" is probably too fucking long. And punctuation- probably a bad idea. But seriously, my other working titles, that I never really stood by for a second- much much worse. Or, if they're good, they were better for the things I originally came up with them for that I will probably never get around to doing.

So it's December 22nd, ten days until 2006, but I was laying in bed reviewing my year, and so the year-in-review post can be made. Perhaps this is jumping the gun: When I made my 2005 mix CD, I had yet to hear that Why album which I'm now calling one of my favorites.

But tomorrow I go for an eye exam, and new glasses will be found. We could call this post, 2005 - The Year My Glasses Broke, a reference to that movie, The Year My Voice Broke, that I haven't seen and don't even have in the Netflix queue.

Basically a bad year. I had pinned some hope for redemption onto it- The plan was to return to the East coast, then go up to New York City, see Evie Nelson, and maybe this would magically improve everything. I got to New York, made a call, found out she was in Brooklyn, I went to Brooklyn, made a call, found out she was specifically in the part of Brooklyn known as Greenpoint, went to Greenpoint, the corner of Greenpoint and Manhattan Avenue, made a call, and before I could find out specifically where we stood in relation to one another, her phone died, and I returned to New Jersey with my nose running like it had been all day.

In the days between then and now, my nose has stopped running. It started running just shortly before I left Olympia, so it's not like that was the defining aspect of my year.

The defining aspect of my year, basically, was that it sucked, economically. Jobs fell through or were horrible scams, loans and offers of money also fell through. Class stuff fell apart and I was left with nothing much to do except for write fiction, listen to music, and watch movies.

I saw a lot of movies this year- Alex got a Netflix queue, I took a film class, went to a film festival, and started learning how to be a projectionist at the Capitol Theatre.

The best movie of the year was 3-Iron. I kept on calling it transcendent, kept on thinking about how transcendence is the best thing a film can aspire to. But really- any film that's entertaining is transcendent, since it allows you to think of something else for awhile. It takes you somewhere outside of your own problems. This is true for any good piece of art, essentially. Entertainment is distraction, and distraction is basically all we want.

3-Iron was transcendent, the movie of the year, and truly great art, it how it lingered. Pretty much as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the movie of the year, so I kept it with me, in the back of my mind, and it served as something to think about even when I wasn't watching it.

Comicswise- The stuff I read and enjoyed was more on the arty end than the entertainment end. Like, Anders Nilsen's Big Questions and Kevin Huizenga's Or Else comics- those were good. But for, like, inner calm, more than what I want out of comics, which I mostly didn't get- Michael Kupperman was funny, and Scott Pilgrim volume 2 was awesome and some fistpumping adrenalizing grin-inducing fun but most of what I read, I regretted not going through with that whole "stop reading comics" idea I had.

But whatever, my argument about transcendence and entertainment is basically a supporting argument to my long-held thesis about the distinction between high and low art being bullshit so I guess I shouldn't be too bothered.

But as for this year in review focusing on art- that was the good part of the year. That and the people, my friends, I can't sell them short. But so much of the bonding happened over music and film that I find it hard to oversell that stuff.

Most movies I saw and liked I either made my friends see or we watched them together. So when I talk about how I saw two bad-ass movies Orson Welles made, know that Alex Tripp was in the room both times, and liked them just as much, if not more, than I did. (The Trial and F For Fake- amazing)

Dude was also there for hours of Twin Peaks on video cassette, Little Murders, and a great deal of other things. I saw Mind Game with him, along with Loren and Evan. And I argued for The Wicker Man so more people saw it, and I talked up 3-Iron to people as well.

Music was pretty much the same deal- Loren Thor came through with the new Deerhoof album when I was internet-free, and then we went to Seattle to see them, the day after we saw the Go! Team. I already posted a best music of the year list, and now you can see what webzines are running and how wrong they are.

There was no music and no movies when I was living with Atlanta and Mikako, those few weeks, but they kept me alive. There was no transcendence then, just the feeling of being in the shit and feeling it. I don't want to downplay that either- The sun on my neck and walking back and forth.

Much in the same way that I kept 3-Iron in my head, once I heard Feels, that enriched some shit- pretty much anytime I was around nature, I was whooping up those songs in my head.

And I did some writing this year- finishing up short stories (thanks to all who read them and liked them, once again, holy shit) and trying to start something larger. The year started with that independent contract, and yeah, that went well.

The film class that followed- There was that festival, which I dreaded, and very rarely saw anything good- aside from 3-Iron- but being in Seattle, you know, peers and friendships and whatnot- that was the feeling it, that was the thing I was in.

So much more in it, feeling it, when basically homeless and relying on a stranger's kindness, and walking around a landscape rather than inside.

Inside is, as ever, the goddamn internet, which aside from music stealing, is the bad kind of distraction.

But let me tell you a conversation I had. I argued on behalf of irony- not the "look at my mustache, it is one generally seen on one with less education than I possess," but the good kind. It's the kind of argument where- I don't want to be seen as one of the mustache kids, but I do want to be seen as one of the funny kids, and I don't want to be an over-earnest emo asshole. And there was talk about how irony was basically killing society, getting in the way of honest expression, and I made an argument which was mostly ignored.

Basically- the way I use irony/humor, it's not a distancing technique. It's basically- if conversation is an art, than humor is a metaphor, a lens. What Charlie Kaufman does in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, is dressing stuff up in this sci-fi clothing, to get at what he means, because it can't be done in a more direct way. And in conversation- there's no science fiction there. There's just jokes, but... If it's not quite the same thing, it's damn close.

And from a literary or creative perspective- the line between deadpan absurdism and magic realism is mostly one of intent, not so much a distinction of technique, a conclusion I came to watching that episode of Stella where they start a farm in the floorboards of their apartment. And deadpan absurdism is fucking hilarious, and magic realism is awesome. I could further make the argument that the personality equivalent of magic realism is basically being dedicated to awesomeness.

(Oh, you know what was great, this year- Getting into the Best Show On WFMU. I might have heard the Timmy Von Trimble bit before, and some other stuff, but this year I actually dove into the archives and the whole bit.)

(I feel the need to clarify that when I talk about magic realism so fucking much, I'm not talking particularly about Marquez- who I first read this year!- because I'm not the biggest fan of his and I wish he'd push the weirdness/magic further- but rather, other people who I associate with creating good art.)

And a dedication to awesomeness, you know, that's the thing to strive for. That's my aim.

I hope I ring in the new year something fierce. I've never done that, and that's probably not going to change this year. Being home for the holidays... Bleh. Fine for Christmas, but for New Years, I find it antithetical to what I want.

A brief flash of insight:

There are, at the core of my personality, maybe two warring impulses, two perhaps incompatible parts. Parts that, if isolated into other individuals, I would find insufferable due to the other part within myself.

There's some kind of sweetness, which I hate to attribute to myself, as it seems so simple, but I mean: I do try to be a good person. And I mostly succeed.

But then there's the fuck-it-all-anyway aspect, the cynicism, that manifests itself in stuff which is, I guess, perhaps innately destructive. Although as I write this now, I guess I doubt that part.

But anyway, warring impulses, same person.

What's weird is that I guess this can be found in children, albeit in a different form. The cynicism isn't there, and the destruction and malevolence comes out of the same innocence that I tend to associate with the whole trying to be a good person.

Maybe it's the self-awareness that leads to the isolation of these parts, but the nature of those human roots that make them impossible to get away from? I don't know, I didn't start writing with a thesis in mind.

But as I started typing this I started to think that maybe it this reason that makes noise pop the best music ever. Or, obviously, the best art is going to have to address both these aspects, but noise pop does it at a basic level of sound, rather than just lyrics? Or it gets back to childhood, by putting the sweetness of melody and the destruction of force right up against each other as something pure.

Contained here is basically the root of an essay I will probably never write about My Bloody Valentine- the sweetness of the melody of romance, combined with this content of sex and lust, reflected in a sound that, in all its powers, has the rhythms of fucking in it, the catharsis of orgasm, and sounds like the inside of the womb, with the sound of male/female harmonies as pure as children. This is a pretentious way of pointing it, but it'd work itself out, I think, as a longer essay.

Meanwhile, in Olympia, the music scene is so fucking backward-looking to this idea of childhood- faking a purity in both ways, and coming off naive or autistic. The eighties twee stuff, obviously, but the new avant-garde noise kids have this whole "bashing something expensive" aesthetic thing there- still so earnest but just... I find both annoying and dishonest and possessing a schtick. Neither side is as complex as actual childhood, and all the more annoying knowing that it's being made by people with all the horrible hang-ups of adulthood.

Let me write this down, mostly as a note for myself: There are similar themes at work within John Barth's The End Of The Road and Jules Feiffer's Little Murders. Little Murders is probably the better work, funnier and more complex, but The End Of The Road is a book that, at the time I finished it, I was ready to declare the best book I'd ever read. It's not, but it's still something.

Anyway, yes, if you haven't done so already, you should watch Little Murders. It's directed by Alan Arkin, came out in 1971, is based on a play, and stars Elliott Gould. Donald Sutherland shows up. It's a black comedy, one that is a predecessor in many ways to Larry David's stuff, but it has more to say about the human condition and how to live your life. It's my favorite movie of the seventies.

Man, I love reading reviews of Jesus Is Magic. For those who haven't, the general gist is "Sarah Silverman is funny, and I'd bang her. The fact that I'd bang her makes her even funnier. However: Is making jokes that I totally laughed at a good thing for my morality? And what about the morality of the nation?"

Also, I watched the documentary Devil's Playground, about the Amish practice of Rumspringa. It's every bit as good as you'd want it to be, completely fascinating. The main character looks like a Culkin, then gets addicted to crank. Amish girls don't change their manner of dress during their free years, although the boys do. Oh, and running around and sowing your wild oats basically takes the form of being a white-trash dumbass.

I finished reading Salvador Plascencia's The People Of Paper not too long ago. I started reading it not too long ago- Maybe three days before I finished. Oh, compulsively readable books. I love you so.

It was good- I was anticipating it quite a bit, having heard some hype, and the introduction of it's amazing, and after that it kicks in with typography tricks that looked fun.

It's a break-up book, in some ways- ways that are obvious when you read it. Not that it doesn't have other things going for it, but I mean- If that's the mood you're in, especially if you're male, (It's pretty specifically male- Again, not like it's not good or whatever, but for reading a book that shares some of the feelings you're going through at any specific time) feel free to give this one a go. Or, to be fatalistic about it, keep it in mind for the next time this mood strikes, along with that Why? album I'm so struck with.

Anyway- The title refers to two things: Fictional characters and actual origami people brought to life. The book splits the difference between magic realism and metafiction. The magic realist stuff has a heavier emphasis on the fantastic than Marquez, to the point where it's outright fantastical actually; the "magic realist" label is probably just coming from Plascencia's Mexican origins and his literary pedigree- the book was published by McSweeney's.

The fantastic elements and the magic realist elements are basically inextricable, which makes the question of where Plascencia's going next kind of interesting. I prefer the magic realist stuff- I'm pretty sure the making yourself a character in a fictional book is a trick that can only be used once, which I guess would mean that the only thing would be a straight-up memoir, which would be dull. The more... god, I want to say the more fantastical elements, but that's not quite what I want to say- The fictional character bits are very human, and even though the imaginative stuff is aces, I don't not want to talk about the character bits.

Yeah, it all works, it's all linked up. Nothing can be jettisoned really, from this book at least. It's imaginative and beautifully written and very human. It's clever, but the cleverness is necessary for what it's doing.

It's really great- not the best book I've ever read, but a great one.

All The Real Girls is the good kind of indie movie, not the bad kind. It actually works and is funny and moving and individual and not hip and condescending and... It's just so much a collection of individual scenes, and the scope of how it works, it comes off more like an album loosely based on a concept and a narrative like a more recent Mountain Goats album, or maybe a book of haikus based on a theme.

I want to say it's the last indie movie I've seen to really work for me and affect me since Lovely And Amazing, but Me And You And Everyone We Know was more recent. I guess I'm thinking Nicole Holofcener because this feels smaller. Or because Lovely And Amazing is just closer to the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say an indie movie in reference.

As for the bad kind: Does anyone think that Brokeback Mountain will have scenes of pudding being eaten? And I mean that literally, as a South Park reference, than as pudding as meaning semen.

For better blogging, you should be reading that myspace thing. I bring the laughs something fierce.

But yeah, see All The Real Girls, if you get the chance. And by "if you get the chance," I mean pursue it, because it's not a hard movie to see- It's on DVD.

A conversation with Alex at the corner of Harrison and Division led to the creation of a myspace profile, which is not in my name as such a thing would be hopelessly lame. However: http://www.myspace.com/rupertmurdochmustdie for all your internet phenomenon needs! If you are on that site (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, by the way- that is the gag) or know someone that is, they should befriend me because that's how you become an internet phenomenon.

A post like so many I feel I've written before: Took my short stories that I started writing upon coming to college and that I think I'm finished with and put them into one file, for a theoretical book, called Youth And How To Waste It. It was really satisfying to do this, and look over that stuff, this weird little overview of my mind for basically two years and the reflections I had, the veiled autobio, etc. I wish I could format it in Wordpad so the couple of stories that I saved doublespaced could be single-spaced like the rest, but mostly I've got something printable. Not really publishable by other people, but if I were to take a bookmaking class and make a chapbook or something, I'd have a fine little document- The stories are put into a particular order, and it starts off awkward and gets stronger, and I think by the end there's enough that's happened for an affecting payoff. It's weird and all over the place but it's a portrait of my head from a variety of angles.

Movies watched recently, a brief rundown: I saw Sideways, which I thought was overrated- my least favorite Alexander Payne movie yet. I'm thinking my favorite is About Schmidt, perhaps? That's got some moments that aren't so awesome, but it actually feels like a movie to me, and there's that strong (although weird and abrupt) ending. Sideways felt like TV to me, never as funny or as tragic as it should've been. The happy ending felt false.

Speaking of About Schmidt, I saw Broken Flowers, which felt like a companion piece to that film, coming at similar subject matter from a different angle. It seemed like most critics and everybody else was disappointed- to me it felt very Jim Jarmusch directing a late-period Bill Murray movie- deadpan and minimal but not annoyingly so. It wasn't as funny as such a thing could maybe be expected to be, but it was cool- The bits where Murray listens to music in his car are similar to bits in Ghost Dog, and yeah, a lot like About Schmidt- old people roadtrip movies, reconciling with their pasts.

Saw Kim Ki-Duk's Bad Guy, following my becoming obsessed with him after seeing 3-Iron at the festival. I was confused by the plot's movement, character motivations, etc. but I liked it- I had low expectations, or maybe just weird ones- I expected crazy violence and shock tactics. I also saw Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring, which I don't know if I talked about here- I liked the first segment, which raised my expectations a lot. Also I knew a lot of the plot beats ahead of time, so that kind of detracted.

Um, I saw The Warriors. Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Mirrormask. Belle De Jour. I watch a lot of movies. You all know how I live- Like Bruce Springsteen once sang, something something sitting here trying to write this book.

I bought my brother the R. Crumb Handbook for Christmas, and hope he'll like it. No idea what to get my mom but I am very poor, too poor even to really get something for my brother so maybe shit'll be excused.

I finished Libra- my DeLillo affair is kind of done, I think. Underworld is really well-written though. I'm reading this McSweeney's best-of, and I'll be finished that soon enough.

Mostly everything is the same as it ever was and is, soon this year will be over and maybe 2006 will be different. Mid-term elections to look forward to, and with such things come hope, I guess. Maybe jobs, financial aid, classes that don't suck, maybe making a movie, maybe making music, all those things I am always waiting to happen, maybe those will finally happen.

Sadly I'm pretty sure those Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows I was looking forward to are 21-up. Seriously kids, 2006. Perhaps that will be our year.

This is my rough top 25 albums of the year 2005. A really great year for music. It's rough in terms of how it could basically be shuffled in groups of five- Any of my top five could be number one (especially the Why?, holy shit) and any of my last five are pretty "enh, respect is due." A lot of order is due to ambition, which is why The Hold Steady are just barely outside the top five- oh man, how I love their lyrics, and I listened to that album a fucking lot, as well as the works of Lifter Puller. This was originally posted on a message board, and I'm kind of archiving it here for my sake only. But if you're thinking "I should buy something Brian likes," I wholeheartedly support that thought process. But a very good year for music, and maybe not so much for any other creative medium, and probably not my life, maybe. So this is, a day late, what I'm thankful for in the year 2005, along with the love and support I received from friends and family, and the good times I had. Mostly I am ungrateful, and that combined with the poverty that marked this not a very good year (which, by the way, can be blamed in many ways on the election of Republicans which made this a shitty year for pretty much everyone poor) is why most of these records haven't been purchased by me yet. Someday, when Democrats are in office and there are jobs to be found, these records will be purchased, and that will be a good year. Here's to that happening before the world ends!

1. Broken Social Scene - s/t
2. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
3. Deerhoof - Green Cosmos EP
4. Animal Collective - Feels
5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - s/t
6. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
7. Prefuse 73 - Surrounded By Silence
8. Need New Body - Where's Black Ben?
9. The A-Frames - Black Forest
10. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
11. Psychic Paramount - Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural (this is where it is mostly due to its sheer force, which makes me place it higher than other things- It probably isn't better than the Black Dice, but it's just so violent)
12. Deerhoof - The Runners Four
13. The Evens - s/t
14. Enon - Lost Marbles And Exploded Evidence
15. Black Dice - Broken Ear Record
16. The Books - Lost And Safe
17. Jason Forrest - Shamelessly Exciting
18. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
19. Fog - 10th Avenue Freakout
20. Broadcast - Tender Buttons
21. Numbers - We're Animals (I haven't heard this, actually, just giving the respect due their live show and the fun times I had therein.)
22. Wolf Parade - Apologies To The Queen Mary
23. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
24. Caribou - The Milk Of Human Kindness
25. Page France - Hello, Dear Wind

Happy Thanksgiving, let me tell you about the dream I had last night. It was very narrative.

It starts with me going into a restaurant and being greeted with a woman saying "oh my God Jim Belushi!" and they were very excited to see me, being as I was Jim Belushi, giving me little kisses on the mouth. They were waiting for Jim Belushi, anticipating him. There was a flyer for a show at the Yes Yes where Jim Belushi was opening. The contact information was the comic shop in Olympia I go to.

Later I guess I got into a relationship with this girl, one of the two at the restaurant. She had fins on her sides and was quite the swimmer. We went to have sex in an elevator at Seminar II at Evergreen.

Then a cut. At some point things stopped happening from my perspective and started to happen like I was watching a film. Anyway, after the cut there's some kind of underwater training in a cylinder. The girl with the fins is quite the swimmer.

There are a lot of references made by people to bad teen thrillers- Swimfan was mentioned, although this had nothing to do with her being a swimmer, just a guy saying "Dude, Swimfan was good."

Later on I'm in nature, on a trail with people. Moose are running about. The people I'm with are killed by nature, but not attacked by animals I think. Following that I am in a series of tunnels, running through a maze. That girl is trying to kill me in some complicated way.

When I am running through the tunnels, Alex shows up and I tell him that I'm watching a movie. He says it looks gay. The narrative mostly falls apart as reality fractures and I maybe start to wake up a bit. The only narrative that ends is basically a Simpsons episode which was maybe the movie's ending- I think it played out live-action.

There were townspeople on a beach, and there was a mayor. Jewelry washed up onto the beach, in a way that basically signaled the end of everything- Either the end of the oceans or the burial of dry land. A song was sung, a happy song. People ran out into the ocean to grab whatever tey could grab. The final shot was an oyster reaching for a pearl, only to get smashed. Or that was the gist of what happened, symbolically- I think I saw different imagery, but that was how I understood it.

When Jeff Mangum had a show on WFMU, he opened his first show with a sound collage. It's the thing that gets talked about in that old Pitchfork interview, not like the stuff on demos. I'm listening to it now, it's really good.

I gots that feeling. That one where there's writer's block so the stuff I've been writing I can't quite deal with, but there's still this kind of nervous energy that can only be solved by making art. I wish I could play music, or draw, or something like that, something more rocked the fuck out than deliberated over.

I had an idea the other idea, but that was one that required someone else, and because of the fact that my only real talent is for coming up with ideas, very few people are down for that kind of musical collaboration- even people that would benefit from it the most, people without ideas.

Don Delillo's Libra is mostly not very good, and soon I will be done with it. Most books I have that are waiting to be read I am not particularly down for.

I want to shoot film, or video to be accurate about it, and I want to edit the shit out of it and oh I just have all these ideas, and they're fucking bursting but I don't have the tools at hand sonofabitch. Son of a bitch. If I don't get a short film finished by the end of this school year, what the fuck am I doing? It needs to happen. I need to have something to show, something other than short stories and this novel in process. The whole "living life solely for the sake of your own creative output" only works if art is created, and I mean, I'm not depressed, I'm not minding the whole "only joy or really only thing at all is social interaction and art consumption" but that is mostly sad.

So, Tony Millionaire, cartoonist of the not-very-good-at-all-actually alternative paper comic strip Maakies, said some cool/interesting things in an interview. This is about a Maakies cartoon for Adult Swim, following in the failure of the SNL shorts: Probably be called Maakies’ Tavern. Dino Stamatopoulos — he was a writer on Mr. Show and wrote TV Funhouse with Robert Smigel. He and Jay Johnston are writing the script now. [...] Those guys are both big booze hounds, they love the world of old men in bars, fighting. When the hipsters come in, [in crazy old-man voice:] “My god, these hipsters are coming in ruining our bar!” At the same time the hipsters are bringing all of these young women, and they’re, “But look at her. Look at her boobs . . .” You throw Uncle Gabby and Drinky Crow into the mix and you’re all set. This is from the LA Weekly, by the way. In the interview, he also sings the praises of A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh stuff, pre-Disney, and it ends with this: Some philosopher — I don’t remember who — his theory was: You’ve got to give kids really beautiful children’s books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they’re young, when they grow up, they’ll see the real world and say, “Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.” And then they’ll fight, and they’ll have a revolution. They’ll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they’ll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That’s the job of a good children’s-book illustrator. Kind of too bad about his actual work not speaking to me at all, but there it is.

Haven't been posting here as frequently as I once was because stuff I would write about here I write about on message boards instead. For example, I saw Numbers live, with Cars Can Be Blue opening. That was a very fun show, and Cars Can Be Blue are really nice people who you should give a home-cooked meal to, if they come to your town. They drive around in a vegetable-oil-powered van and sing simple, yet filthy, songs. And Numbers was just a noisy party. There was dancing and violence.

I went to a party the next night held for Capitol Theater volunteers, and was mostly awkward in ways that were occasionally awesome. I brought up a J.D. Salinger short story to people who hadn't read it and was told I was good at party talk, in what I thought was sarcasm.

Also: Someone who lived downstairs from me in the dorms last year now has naked pictures of her on the internet. On Suicide Girls, so it's not a sad raped-and-photographed situation. Just a funny one, because I made fun of this being her ambition, and she denied it. I haven't seen the photos, but I think Loren's seen her tits in real life, as well as John Samson and maybe some other people I know.

I am still unemployed. I'm doing some writing- I got some comic book criticism essays put up on a website I'm not going to link to, written partly to develop my critical voice, and partly as an end in and of itself.

I wrote a top twenty-five albums of the year 2005 list and posted it on the Last Plane To Jakarta forums. Broken Social Scene's self-titled was number one, but honestly, the whole list could be shuffled in groups of five, and any of the first five records I listed could be my favorite.

HBO's Carnivale is not a very good show, but it is self-satisfied, and that's enough to fool some people. I was all "hey, Carla Gallo's on this show, she was on Undeclared." And then all she did in the first episode was be topless, which I didn't think is the kind of thing you get put in the front credits for. Yeah, I won't be watching more episodes of that show.

My plumbing's all fucked up. Bathroom, not internal. But yeah, pipes are crazy. If my internal plumbing was my bathroom plumbing, I'd be ejaculating bloody urine.

I've been listening to the new Why? album, Elephant Eyelash, with some frequency. It's really great, a breakup album for surrealists. It doesn't bear any of the annoyingness to be found on Anticon stuff, it's really indie. I recommend it highly. God, what a great year for music 2005 has been/is.

I'm still trying to finish that chapter I hoped to finish the night of my last post. This record... it's helping and distracting.

Alex and I wrote up a list of 100 records for 2005 to run in the school newspaper, accompanied by three words apiece. They're not in any order, though, although that's how the paper ran them. The paper really sabotaged the intent quite a bit, but in a way that's really flattering. It's kind of funny, actually.

The teachers of the class I'm not registered for have learned that I'm not registered. One teacher, the one I deal with the most, as he reads my papers, said he doesn't mind that I'm there if I really want to be, but he's unsure of that. Then he says he doesn't mind as long as I'm not being disruptive. What's disruptive about what I do?

My papers. He didn't say they were actually disruptive, but my papers and the things I read seem opposed and confrontational which... yes. The discussion was the same as one I had with my Framing Film professor, that of my putting too much opinion into my work, rather than just stating what other people believed.

Anyway, I was also told that I probably can't register for the class at this point, and so can't get credit.

Then, later on, almost independent, I was told to go home rather than attend seminar, as there was a paper I hadn't written, not knowing it was due today, as I missed last week's class. I also didn't have a "seminar ticket" (basically a response paper) last time I was in class, due to my misunderstanding stuff that was said which apparently no one else heard.

So kind of fuck that class, is what I'm saying. I really need to get into something good next quarter.

For now my future is mostly open- I want to finish this chapter of this book today, and I want to have seven chapters done before Christmas break. I've got some volunteering at the Capitol Theater, with their film festival coming up. Sidenote: The summaries I wrote for the program guide weren't used, I guess because they weren't bland and generic enough. Fucking Olympia. Seemingly no one here likes opinions.

So this is what I know about the next Matmos album:

There is an instrument played that is not unlike a bagpipe, made from the reproductive organs of a cow (including vagina!).

Antony (of and the Johnsons fame) sings on it.

What. the. fuck.

It will probably be completely awesome.

Just listened to Nina Nastasia's Beautiful Day from I think a peel session from an mp3 blog. I think I've mentioned this before on here but wow what a beautiful thing.

So I haven't been doing much lately. I really need to get back to that, find a job and work it, do this schoolwork (I have decided officially that my class is bad and a waste of time) which accrues. I need to write. I need things to write about. I need more art to inspire. I need all that shit.

I downloaded some new music- Page France's first record, after finding two songs off the upcoming record on mp3 blogs. This album, which I play now, is much more emo than I generally tolerate. Or, more accurately, it's more soundtrack-indie than most bands I like. More delicate, and vocals and lyrics add up to "kind of a pussy" rather than the "kind of a weirdo" that I prefer. The one mp3 blog mentioned Death Cab as well as Neutral Milk Hotel. This first album plays up the former more than the later stuff. Moments? Yeah maybe a few.

Something else that has its moments: Three Kings, which I watched today.

Goodnight America.

I watched Orson Welles' F For Fake tonight. For those keeping a tally, the only bad Orson Welles movie I have ever seen is The Magnificent Ambersons. (which might've been ruined because of the people I was watching it with, the fact that I saw a video that might've been pan-and-scan, or the infamous studio cuts.) This remains the case. F For Fake is pretty great.

To articulate slightly further: It's kind of a documentary but it's completely insane.

It does what I kind of want to do with my writing and (this is shameful) even my talking/interaction. This kind of just kicking your ass with its intelligence. Not beating you over the head with the intelligence, not being pretentious about it, but just wielding it like it's a fucking weapon to achieve results. Those results being to charm you, which seems like it should be antithetical to the whole violence speak. But, no. I don't think so.

It's about magic, filmmaking, acting, art, and forgery. It's also about how Orson Welles is a bad-ass who even in his old age was able to have relationships with attractive women.

So I am late to the game on Nina Nastasia. Found out via Spoilt Victorian Child mp3 blog, as part of a John Peel tribute. Albini liked her so much she gave him the record, and then I heard a song from a Peel session he engineered. This song, Beautiful Day, it's a good one. And John Peel was indeed, as that Steve fellow says, a hell of a man.

So, one thing about DVDs that kind of sucks is that if they are subtitled and you are bored, you can't just have the subtitles on and watch it at twice the speed if you read fast. This is because the subtitles are syncronized with the audio, not the video. And with this fact, another aspect of Douglas Coupland's writing, one of the few things I held onto, ages poorly.

Speaking of books, did I ever mention here about how The Unbearable Lightness Of Being pretty much blows? And by pretty much, I mean I recommend you don't read it. Like if someone told you it was good, just ignore them and read The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting instead. That one is not only shorter, it's also about much more. Also, the asides that are kind of philosophical actually have a point, and amount to something. They're a part of the book, because so much of the book reads like asides and digressions. With The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, that stuff is just a part of the book's voice, and so the stuff that's said (like "metaphors are dangerous, because a single metaphor can give birth to love") not only doesn't mean anything (seriously, did that line I paraphrased affect you or strike you as true in any way?) but makes the book as pretentious as its title. I read that book awhile ago. I'm kind of reading books now, but the stuff I'm reading isn't really especially compelling so I'm kind of not.

Speaking of books, there's a top 100 English language novels written since 1923 up at Time.com and maybe it'll be in the magazine. It's a good list, I would say, although it's incredibly nerdy. Not only is Watchmen on it, the lone "graphic novel" (they're also called comics) but so's The Lord Of The Rings, Phillip K. Dick's Ubik, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson. (None of these I've read, actually.) This is in addition to such stuff as 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, and A Clockwork Orange. It's a good list- both Pynchon novels I've read make it, as does Catch-22 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Also Lolita. Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds made it, which I haven't read, but should.

Here's the link, actually, so I don't just name all the stuff I've either read or just like that's on there: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

It's a really nerdy list. So, I'm happy with it, it reflects my tastes better than most. But it's not necessarily the list I'd read... It does a good job taking my tastes and the canon and making it all seem seamless. There's books on there I should read. (The Sot-Weed Factor- I should read more Barth just as a rule because I liked The End Of The Road.) (Maybe I should read Infinite Jest- I've heard like one bad thing, and that was from someone talking about someone else who'd read it, not their actual reaction. The "year of the Depends undergarment" thing doesn't make me laugh. And I think David Foster Wallace looks kind of an ass in photos, but that's true for most, if not all, authors.)

Oh, and Ulysses doesn't make it, which is funny because it's something I've got a bookmark in the middle (not the very middle... closer to the beginning than the actual middle) and don't know when I'll finish because I'm not feeling it.

EDIT: It actually didn't make it because it came out in 1922. That's funny for other reasons.

In other news, I watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, a movie where people get kicked and blown up and physically fucked up in all kinds of ways, and thought it was awesome. I fast-forwarded through most of the beginning. (Without reading any subtitles, as established earlier.) It's really good. You know what's not good? Oldboy. That's not kung-fu, but it's Korean and supposedly fucked-up but no, it's just total bullshit.

Finished another short story, "Reviewing The Dailies." "Erica Bleeds" I have decided is also finished. So that's it for short stories. The focus should now be on novels, but I'm sure short stories will come up when I become discouraged or think my form needs more work. "Reviewing The Dailies" is my stab at being experimental, and I don't know if it worked. I should really submit it, I'm thinking to Seattle's Golden Handcuffs Review.

So that's nine short stories, although some are very short indeed- I mostly don't count that thing, Rubberband Summer, I posted it on this blog awhile back, but I'm counting it now to make nine, even though it's crazy short, and I could order them into a book if I wanted to. I decided the arbitrary device would be the age of the narrators/main characters, and that ended up working fairly well.

I also have school work to deal with. Hm. Not so much a fan of that. Also, I should get a job, as I'm shit poor. Nothing new there. This is why I don't post so much. Well, that and I've been posting more on message boards and whatnot, as I find that a good outlet for nerd ramblings of those whose own lives aren't really amounting to anything.

So last year I made this end of year mix CD, one part best-of to two parts encoding the memories of the year into a soundtrack. I started working on a 2005 playlist, and it's hard. Because I liked a lot of music, and it's fairly disparate, but I want to work in a lot. And a decent amount went down this year, I suppose. It's not done yet, and many of the things are minor, or if they're not minor, they're not things that effected me personally. It's not like that at the end of 2003 when I ran around with This Boy Is Exhausted stuck in my head.

I know it's going to start off with The Mountain Goats' This Year (the version off the vinyl edition of The Sunset Tree). And there's probably going to be this song off the new Dirty Three album that Cat Power sings on, because of hurricane allusions.

I should maybe do the thing with editing and segueing the songs into each other with fades and stuff. I should maybe not even be working on it yet. I want to put The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on there but it has its own segue built into the end, into the next song on the album.

It's already over an hour long.

Maybe the reason the music's been good is the same reason the mix is hard to make, because of the multitude of feelings and mood contained within single songs: Every song feels like a segue, except for the occasional thing like the Dirty Three/Cat Power collaboration. This really works for albums though. But on mixes, even the stuff where the segue from track to track is smooth, the constant varying mood gets weird after a few tracks.

Yeah, Mountain Goats into A-Frames into Dirty Three doesn't work.

The only song I'm married to is Need New Body's Poppa B. I could maybe make two mixes. That might end up being what I do, that way I can repeat the same band.

Right now I'm listening to The Hold Steady's Cattle And The Creeping Things, going into the Silver Jews, How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down. I almost put Don't Let Me Explode on a mix for my mom, and maybe if I did two, that could go into the Dirty Three/Cat Power thing.

I will keep you posted. Two mixes... Yes, for I contain multitudes.

EDIT: Actually I think it's coming together. As one mix. I might ditch A-Frames (Flies), or Psychic Paramount (Para5), or Black Dice (Street Dude), or switch the Animal Collective song at the end (currently, Banshee Beat) for another that accomplishes the same ends. Right now I'm leaning toward maybe ditching the Psychic Paramount, as it's maybe a bit too long for something that one-note, although it's an awesome note, it might not be the most mix CD friendly one. (It's a note of pure loud rock propulsion through the future, and yes highly recommended.)

Just saw this movie Mind Game, downloaded off Bittorrent. It is completely amazing. Japanese animation, but good. And not good like Miyazaki is good.

Like... I liked The Triplets Of Belleville way more than I like anime. And that might be a better reference point. I don't know, I think it's beyond any kind of nation or nerdiness, and it just kicks out the animation jams something fierce.

The style is forever changing, although the story's mostly linear. And the story, the writing, it's great. It amounts to something special. There's a bit of the weird Japanese attitudes towards sex, and a perverted old man, but that's really the extent of it. Not nerdy in the least. FLCL's got some genre imagery with the robots and whatever, and Dead Leaves has this annoying fucking voice and is really just this vehicle for violence- It's awesome but this is better. And the style is never big eyes. Well, on occasion. That's not the main style, it's just sometimes engaged in for the sake of expressionism. It's really something special and great and HIGHLY recommended. It just started screening in New York apparently, although it was completed in 2004. It is awesome and pushes things forward on like fifteen different levels all while being this populist piece of entertainment.

Not just for anime nerds or kids who want to be japanese.

I asked for high fives DURING the movie, and double high fives afterwards.

It's really great. The first fifteen minutes or so only hint at the greatness to come. And they only barely hint.

I don't want to say I liked it better than Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind or 3-Iron or even The Triplets Of Belleville, as it's very much it's own thing, but I will say that I loved it wholeheartedly and it's... It's better than other films I liked it more, in that it's more experimental and forward-thinking, although it's still totally a populist piece of entertainment. I was moved close to tears of joy at the end. And throughout the middle, I was... My mouth moved in ways I didn't try to control. I spittled and I laughed in astonishment and I was completely entertained.

I loved it. Alex Tripp loved it. Loren Thor loved it. Evan Hashi loved it. These are all the people I watched it with. You will probably love it. You should definitely see it, on a big screen if possible, especially if you're into things like "movies" and "creativity," alone or together.

So I just went and reread some older entries and wow, this thing used to be a lot more entertaining. A lot more angst-filled as well, but I'm considering that bit, the whole "portrait of Brian as a neurotic college Freshman" to be more entertaining than the whole "true tales of my boring life" thing.

The reason I was looking at old entries was to find a copy of this short, one-page love story thing I had written and reread it. It mostly sucks, but so does that Erica Bleeds thing mentioned in my last entry. Let's be charitable and say my writing is just hit and miss.

But, huh, yeah, I guess that's good, the lack of the neuroses, now. I guess this comes down to living with friends in what I call "the pirate ship life." It drains the perpetual nervousness and the "everyone hates me" right out.

Class tomorrow, at night. I wonder how that'll turn out.

So as for writing: I've got these two short stories I've been writing for quite awhile. One's kind of done only maybe not really because it's deeply flawed in regards to pacing, and by extension, characterization, as the pacing falls apart when I can't meditate on the character's beliefs for a long enough period of time. This is a story called Erica Bleeds and it's one of my traditional modern short stories that are very "I like Raymond Carver and want to be literary" and I try to have it be narrated from a first-person female perspective. Only she's really fucked-up in certain ways that probably seem like a cop-out to avoid writing straightforward female characters, but that was not my intention at all. Anyway. I don't know if it's done or not. If anyone wants to read it, and then tell me whether or not it works or if it's deeply flawed, that would be cool. No one is going to take me up on this offer, as no one ever does. Even though "it works" vs. "it seems broken" isn't really hard. Although yeah fuck it honestly I think I know it's broken. I don't know how to fix it besides letting it sit around my hard drive for awhile until I have more stuff to say in this character's voice. Which is unlikely.

Then there's "Reviewing The Dailies" a short story more experimental in nature that I've been working on since April probably, and I could probably just dive into and just write and write and add some words to it and boom it would be done but I'm mostly uninspired and unmotivated.

Then there's two novels. Both in the very early stages. One of which I'm excited about, the other of which is an idea I've had for awhile. I was waiting until the short stories were done to do the novel bit, which I guess I gave up on due to feeling more inspired by this stuff, if for no other reason than the fact that new ideas are forever appealing. Those new ideas are brilliant, let me tell you. The same issue nonetheless persists for these as that of Erica Bleeds, that of needing more stuff for the voices to discuss and to keep it in the voice and oh yeah I mostly don't know where I'm going with this stuff. So basically when those short stories are done (because they're good, Erica Bleeds is good, inherently, at some level, if only as a platonic ideal in my mind, I like what it's doing and what it's about and think it's saying something that kind of matters, and if I can bullshit enough filler, it will work, basically, so I'm not saying it's done yet, although I would like to and it's closer to being done than it ever has been before- it can be read from beginning to end now, with no glaring plot holes, there's just a really fucking weird emphasis on the narrative on shit that doesn't matter at all- the majority of what exists so far is the first section, which is basically characters bullshitting and being filthy shit-talkers, and the main reason it's so long is because such things are really easy to write, whereas insight and internal monologue are way fucking harder, especially as such things need to exist as a way of alluding sideways to a thing which is the key to the story and the character- it's tricky is what I'm saying.) I will go into these novels with vigor. They will take up my time and energy, although the amount of time and energy I devote to any kind of writing is lacking.

Oh and then there's two movies. One's a thing I hope to start shooting fucking soon, and I don't really have a screenplay, just a loose structure and an idea for approach. Yeah. Said approach doesn't really require a screenplay, in my mind. Anyway. The other's a screenplay for a comedy, an idea I got really excited for over the summer, and I know the next couple plot beats but I don't know how to play them for MAXIMUM HILARITY.

Basically pretty much all my shit is stalled for the same reasons, i.e. my lack of insight, coupled with laziness. These are the trials you face when you try for more than strict autobiography.

So did anyone notice/know that three Jim O'Rourke album titles are taken from Nicolas Roeg movies, and that they were all released in the same order? (Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance) I just noticed that.

So last night I did the most ridiculous job ever, received courtesy of the manual labor temp agency. I got in a van and rode four and a half hours to central Washington, (beautiful area, by the way) where there's an airport. Then me and some other temps were dressed in Arab garb ("man-dresses" as it was put my the boss people) and armed with M-16s loaded with blanks as part of some army training thing.

I was supposed to be paid 14 dollars an hour, but transport was nine hours for which I was paid for three, and the work bit (which was mostly just waiting in the cold- I did maybe five minutes worth of acting, most of which was pretending to be dead. I did not fire my weapon.) I was paid for eight hours out of nine, because of a strictly theoretical lunch break. After taxes, I made like six bucks an hour. And had a day of my life (1 PM to 7 AM) sucked away by the military-industrial complex. I will not be returning.

And this morning I did some moving for ten bucks an hour. I haven't really slept, besides a few snatches of nap grabbed on the job in discomfort and cold.

Before I did any work, and was just going with these offers, I ordered the Chris Ware Acme Novelty Library hardcover from Pantheon and the new Broken Social Scene album with bonus EP from Amazon.com.

Today I got two job offers. One is for Wednesday and Friday, courtesy of a manual labor temp agency I applied to months ago. This is for security training. I am not a trainee, mind you. I play the part of a terrorist and get the shit kicked out of me for $14 an hour. I need to be there at 1 PM, they then arrange for my transport 3 hours away, paying for one direction, and I imagine I'll be back in Lacey at 3 AM, if my understanding is correct. Hopefully I will get a ride back to Olympia from a coworker.

Thursday, at 9:45 AM, I do some moving. I don't know how much I will get paid, but I imagine big bucks. This is because professional movers: kind of a scam.

I ordered the new Broken Social Scene record, along with the new Acme Novelty Library Pantheon hardcover just now. Also, last night I heard the Theater Of The New Ear plays written by the Coen brothers and Charlie Kaufman. The Charlie Kaufman play is particularly strong.

This time Saturday, I will have stories to tell. Classes at Evergreen start next week.

I received two job offers today. And I can do both jobs. This is what they are:

On Wednesday and Friday, courtesy of this manual labor temp agency, I will be used in security training. I will not be in training to be a security guard, mind you, I will be what people demonstrate on. I will be playing the part of a terrorist and getting beat up, basically, for $14 an hour. I need to be in Lacey by 1 PM, they pay for the three hours of transit to the place of unknown destination, but not for the ride back, which I believe would begin around midnight. Hopefully I'll be able to get a ride back to Olympia. Otherwise I will be waiting around until the buses start running again.

On Thursday, at 9:45 AM, I'll be helping a moving company move an old woman's stuff into storage. I don't know how much money this will get me, but I imagine the big bucks because oh man professional movers are kind of a scam.

Hope and pray for my safety kids. This time Saturday I will have stories to tell.

With this promised influx of cash money, I bought the new Broken Social Scene record (with bonus EP) and The Acme Novelty Library Report To Stockholders etc. hardcover, out October 4th and tomorrow respectively. This is a sign of getting too cocky but whatever. Classes start next week.

Tonight I went to see Growing play at Yes Yes, then came back and watched Jules Feiffer's Little Murders on DVD. Both of these were amazing. Let me record this for posterity, as sharpness tends to deteriorate. Oh man. Oh, and pay no attention to the Netflix summary of Little Murders, as it blows the ending even worse than the poster for 3-Iron.

I went to the school bookstore to look at my class reading today. It's not too bad- One Brecht play (Galileo, which fits with the astronomy theme and so is at least partially forgiven), one Shakespeare play (Romeo And Juliet), but there's also Sophocles' Oedipus The King as translated and adapted by Anthony Burgess, which I'm excited for. In his version of the play, the blinding is shown onstage, which it isn't in the traditional version. Oh, that Anthony Burgess.

It seems like the class to take would've been the 16-credit Business And Society though, with its use of Vonnegut and Calvino, and possible teaching of real skills. Sometimes I wonder if teachers just assign shit they like and then ask in seminar, "So, what does this have to do with anything we're learning?" Which, depending on how the book or the rest of the class strikes you, could actually work, as certain things effect everything else around them and can serve as a lens for interpretation. But only if you're really invested, sometimes past the point of what can really be condoned.

I also submitted my story For Those Who Lived It, previously rejected by McSweeney's, to ZYZZYVA. Fingers crossed, team. Truth told, in my skimmings of the thing, I didn't find it too awesome, so any rejection shouldn't sting too much. Which is not to say I'm not getting my hopes up.

So I've started writing this novel which is untitled and I don't quite know where I'm going with it and reading over what I've written so far I don't think everything's coming through that I want (like that I'm a supergenius, I don't know if anyone would pick up on that yet even though that was what I wanted to get across early on more than anything else) but I haven't given up on it yet.

I'm also writing other stuff, including two short stories which I really should've finished by now but they are tricky. Also I suck.

Rob Schrab's involved with Sarah Silverman's upcoming show for Comedy Central. Rob Schrab was involved with the Heat Vision And Jack pilot which sounded awesome, but I knew about when I was in seventh grade and he was writing and drawing Scud The Disposable Assassin comics. It's wacky to me that dude's done so well for himself and is still involved with good stuff.

I've heard things regarding the syllabus for this class I'm taking fall quarter that instill nervousness in me. Brecht and Shakespeare. Do I sound like an ass when I say I don't like Shakespeare, that he doesn't speak to me, that I find those classical tragedy structures which can be placed on so many things, boring?

Is it at least interesting iconoclasm to go after that and not the language (which I have no problems reading, although I don't find it especially compelling or beautiful)?

Oh well, we'll see how it goes, what we're actually reading, as opposed to just what I've heard.

Paul Thomas Anderson is working on an adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel. He's also apparently assistant directing Robert Altman's movie of Garrison Keilor's The Prairie Home Companion, and he's supposedly really involved in the production, as Altman doesn't get around too good anymore. I'm down for both movies, despite my reservations about the source material. (And Altman, actually.) Dude also got Maya Rudolph knocked up.

The next Terry Gilliam movie, Tideland, is done and on the festival circuit. It's getting bashed, but in a way that still makes me want to see it. The criticisms are different than those being thrown at The Brothers Grimm: complaints of self-indulgence and a dark tone, as opposed to being compromised. People bitched about Fear And Loathing too. People know nothing.

In my last blog post, I might imply that the new Modey Lemon album is more awesome than it actually is. It has its moments, although it's sometimes kind of dumb. It fits with the other stuff I mention it in the same context as, although those records are better.

I had this dream where Johnny Cash did a version of Folsom Prison Blues that was just covered in fuzz and noise. It was really cool. Someone I know should make that song a reality.

Good year for music, this 2005. Seems like every other thing I download is all powerful guitar rocking (Not guitar rocking like riffs and classic rock or even indie with the treble, but a thickness and a distortion to this huge sound like of the Boredoms/MBV type, the kind we call next-level shit around these parts) kind of verging on psychedelia: Serena Maneesh, The Psychic Paramount, and just now, the new Modey Lemon record. This is probably abated by other stuff which isn't like that, but is noisy in its own way, like the new Black Dice, and the new Jason Forrest.

So like imagine that crossed with Folsom Prison Blues and sleep.

More people will be in Olympia shortly. Financial aid hopefully soon. Nothing ever came together, but things are improving nonetheless.

Oh wow, did you know Home Movies Season Three is coming out in November on DVD? Season two came out already this year. I am poor, and so don't have it. But maybe I don't need food. I can imagine myself buying the Season Two DVD tomorrow, is what I'm saying.

Also, did you know that Louis CK, stand-up comedian and director of Pootie Tang, was the voice of Brendon's dad?

I was into this show when it was on UPN. Good God. This show is probably the best thing I was ever way the fuck on top of and leading the curve on. And so maybe I don't have to be a huge geek with all the DVDs, I don't have to prove anything, but I mean, shit. Good show.

And oh man, it seems like I'm starting to see people talk more shit on philosophers, including favorite of piss-poor college professors Foucalt. Plus I saw message board kids talking shit on Plato and Socrates and yes yes yes. It'll never be a total backlash because the pretentious kids will forever be down but yeah what I want is solidarity and I am getting solidarity.

Live your life logically and nicely and never quote philosophers to back up an argument. I occasionally quote the idea that Nietzche once said that everytime you laugh, that's a part of your soul that's died. An idea I don't even completely believe, but find interesting and humorous. That's pretty much it. All the rest of my philosophy talk is based on logic and saying shit I think is obvious. Some people might think this makes me look dumb. Haha to them.

So today I found that the dude who was my best friend in Elementary School is into cosplay. Cosplay is dressing up as characters from anime.

I stayed close to this guy for awhile even after elementary school, and only started to drift in high school, really. When he started to get more and more lame, by my reckoning. So this is sad and depressing, rather than just a fun little fact of someone I was friends with ages ago.

Did I ever post about why I think divorce is so depressing? Because it's just the realization that you were dumb when you thought someone else was going to be like you forever. And the reason marriage is a hard and a weird idea is because you're not counting on them always being the same, because I don't think anyone expects themself to never change. Marriage, you're hoping on someone changing in the exact same ways. Or, that the closeness will make you travel on a similar path. We were never that kind of close. Well, perhaps in elementary school. But then changes happened, and so we grew apart. How things do.

The other old thought is my envisioning how tricky it is to age gracefully, while simultaneously being unchanging.

The post about writing had some ideas from awhile back, when I was internetless, and wanted to write a blog entry against autobiography. One of my thoughts for me is that I'm young, and yet don't want to write about youth. I don't like the idea of a coming-of-age story, because I think such things are misnomers and give false closure. Who ever comes of age? There are rituals for such things, but those rituals are hollow. Coming of age is a continual process, because you never reach the point where you stop changing. I had an idea for a coming-of-age story that would get past these problems by containing paradoxes. Basically, the ritual in the would be the ingestion of heroic amounts of drugs, which is how many people spend their teenage years. They end up incredibly permanently damaged, in a way that is unchanging, they can't grow past this point. The paradox is that the person they've become is basically a child in terms of mindset and capability. The mentally insane are the only true grown-ups, for they're the ones for whom the concept of growing can be placed firmly in the past tense.

Wow, this post was all over the place.

Is it sad and stubborn for me to say either "No way man, I'm going to keep on rock and rolling forever" (because I mean, despite my doubts, that is my goal) and obnoxious to think that I am so very much king shit of the awesomeverse to think that I changed as a person better than my friend (he of the orthodox Christian republicanism and the dressing up as Sailor Moon [I don't think he actually dresses like Sailor Moon])? I have my self-awareness that such things might be the case. (although I'm obviously certain of my coolness over other people, because I mean, you have to be, that's how things go, no one thinks that other people have better taste)

And my interests that I think are so great? How are those, you ask?

Well I am maintaining my grip on my perception of coolness, in that I am keeping up with new music.

Stuff downloaded and enjoyed recently include: new music from Wolf Parade, Broken Social Scene, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, The Psychic Paramount, Serena Maneesh, Black Dice, Jason Forrest, The Double, Sunset Rubdown, New Pornographers, Kanye West (although enjoyment is a bit less on those last two) and old music from the Godz. Oh, and I'm downloading a cassette made by WFMU called The Happy Listener's Guide To Mind Control.

I'm technically still reading Ulysses, although I'm stalled due to the fact that it's not very compelling, but I don't want to start other stuff yet. Other stuff includes such things as Don Delillo's Libra and Paul Auster's Moon Palace.

Last movie watched was the rather good Howl's Moving Castle. I would watch The Forty-Year-Old Virgin had I friends in town with which to see it with. Olympia is basically dead these days.

Have I mentioned that Michael Kupperman's comics, notably his book Snake And Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, are really funny indeed?

So basically I'm a nerd but not the dressing in costume kind. So that's why I think I win.

Hey everybody, I've got the cable internet at my home now (downloading new Kanye West and Wolf Parade records as I type- as a sidenote, that new Broken Social Scene record is indeed really good) but I wrote up a blog post on Monday, which can now be posted.


want to talk about writing, as writing is something I'm interested in. That first sentence isn't a well-written one, and neither is this one. It's too self-aware a beginning. Any sixth grade English teacher will tell you that starting off with that kind of declaration of intent is a bad idea. And they're right, which is why I tend not to do it in my actual writing-writing, the non-blog stuff. Which is a venue where I generally tend to avoid discussing writing, as it seems too autobiographical, not veiled enough. I view the blog as the best place to put stuff like this, the direct thoughts, the declarations of intents, and the insertion of real anecdotes as they happened.
I'm kind of hoping that the whole blogging thing for today's young writers ends up being a good thing for the future of their work, as the blogging will provide a venue for autobiography and ill-informed political opinions and so their actual fiction writing will be freed up for any weirdness and insight they may have. There is the possibility that the blogging will just encourage their solipsism and self-indulgence though, and they'll write books written in the half-assed style I'm writing now. The fact that there are books being published that are nothing but collections of blog entries probably suggests the latter, more negative possibility is the one that will come true.
There's a new Kurt Vonnegut book out, which I didn't know until today. It's kind of bloggy, actually. It's his thoughts on this current political situation, and there's advice and stuff. He doesn't have a blog, so he writes these kind of books. It's kind of repetitive- there's stuff he says in there that he said as recently as in Timequake, and probably numerous times before that. These things are forgivable from Vonnegut for a number of reasons. One is that he doesn't have a blog. The other is that he's an old man, and should be allowed to repeat himself. Also, he has a voice people want to hear. I would read his blog, but he wrote this book instead, so I read that, for free, in a bookstore. Kurt Vonnegut's basically the kind of grandfather I'd want to have. I am certain I'm not alone in this sentiment. But a man can only have so many grandchildren, and so he writes, and fulfills much the same purpose for a lot of people. And according to his memoirs, he's not much of a hugger, and not one for saying "I love you" to his children. This is not to say he's emotionally distant, but rather to say that for the people like me, the ones for whom he is but an imagined grandfather, so what if he is? Art and media gets to serve as family for the emotionally distant. Kurt Vonnegut's one of Jon Stewart's favorites. Jon Stewart's another imagined family member of mine. And I'm fairly emotionally distant, you know? I'm not saying media's all I need, but it helps enough. I mention this kind of stuff because it's for reasons like this that I want to write. In the new Vonnegut book, Man Without A Country, he talks about how creating art makes the world a better more human place, and as such is a good thing to do. To this I say yes, although he gives more allowance for bad art. Which I guess is acceptable for him to say, as a man who is a grandfather to so many people. Best to be supportive in a position such as that.
Then I looked at Jonathan Lethem's book of essays, The Disappointment Artist. I had looked at it before, but I thought I'd use this as an introduction to talking about Lethem's The Fortress Of Solitude, which I read in something like three days, but was unmoved by. Reading the essays I find a lot of stuff with which I'm familiar. Not through first-hand experience, but through writing of other people. Lethem's got the tastes of many other writers, including more than a few music critics. He doesn't really seem to have particularly interesting life experiences. There's nothing that sets him apart, really. He's just a pretty average dude. And The Fortress Of Solitude reads like a book that any number of people could've written. However, that doesn't necessarily include myself. Although it comes close. I haven't lived the stuff he's lived, although that is not to say his life was more interesting. He had artistic parents and came of age in the seventies. That's what makes him different, basically, although that says very little. He's lived a lot of stuff I've read about, basically. That's not to say he was there in the shit, just that he was less removed from it. Like he was really into the Talking Heads. He was not in the band. I don't even really like the Talking Heads, but I've heard a lot of talk of their importance. Basically, The Fortress Of Solitude feels like a book that have of my brain could've written. The part that hasn't had experiences, but has just read stuff. It could've then extrapolated a book based on a handful of concepts of that which makes up a great American novel. There's no spark of the maniacal in The Fortress Of Solitude. And for me, there wasn't even really a shock of recognition which is so key to good writing. It was more of a dull bath of recognition, like talking to a long-time friend or something similar. The only shocks occurred in the prescence of stuff I didn't recognize, a handful of moments that didn't feel real. The most notable of these would be when the two best friends start to jerk each other off. Basically I came at the book from a weird place. Paul Hornschemeier, a cartoonist who's coloring an upcoming Omega The Unknown comic that Lethem's writing, said in an interview that Lethem's one of his favorite writers, (along with Kurt Vonnegut and Kelly Link) but sometimes he's not weird enough. I haven't read enough of Lethem's stuff to know how weird he can be, and I don't necessarily know how Hornschemeier meant the word weird. But I can imagine how that would happen, basically.
Anyway, now for an anecdote and political opinions.
I saw Richard Simmons on CNN. Last night, as the scroll-feed told me that William Rehnquist was dead. I was saying "Oh shit." And the reason Richard Simmons was on CNN, talking to Larry King, was about another kind of oh-shit type of occurence, that being the hurricane which ripped New Orleans the fuck apart. I talked to my mom yesterday, and the hurricane came up. She seemed wrong about a lot of stuff, her perception of the events. She was aware of the thing about FEMA predicting a hurricane hitting New Orleans as well as a terrorist attack on New York City, so I guess that's made the mainstream media. Although that the Bush administration kind of told FEMA to fuck off and shut up was news to her. These predictions that FEMA made were presented as being two of the top three most likely disasters to occur. I've talked to a handful of people about this fact, and a lot of them knew it already. No one knows what the third one was, and neither do I. We all want to know. I imagine it was the concept of peak oil and the moment when we're all shit out of luck when it comes to transport and the economy. But that's not as direct people-getting-killed so it probably wasn't that. My mom has gone on mission trips to Jackson, Mississippi. No one in Jackson was killed by the hurricane. My mom found it interesting, that in Jackson, where there's a ministry she knows about, nothing bad happened, but in New Orleans, all hell broke loose. I just had to say "Mom, no," as a response to that, over and over again, telling her to stop thinking like that, and then pointing out that her conception of the south is extremely limited and narrow (a point she denied but I mean come the fuck on) and that stuff like geography really should be taken into account- like the fact that New Orleans is a city that exists below sea level. But that's just a digression from my point. My point was Richard Simmons, who was on CNN because he's from New Orleans. And Richard Simmons said, in regards to his city and what has happened there, and I quote, "The south will rise again."

So there were a few things I wanted to talk about of dubious importance. Like it turns out that the title of that Shining album is a reference to The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, a book that's not very good. And I learned what the Matmos title "...And Silver Light Popped In His Eyes" was a reference to, but then forgot it, which annoys me. And Speed Levitch, from Waking Life and Live From Shiva's Dancefloor, is the voice of Hoop on that new Adult Swim show. I watched it to the credits because the voice seemed familar, but yeah, that's really odd.

Also: I found a copy of the paperback Daniel Clowes Llloyd Llewllyn collection, and it's piss-poor. My new least favorite Clowes thing, replacing the not-too-enjoyable Ghost World. Luckily it ran me like... seven bucks or something inordinately cheap.

That is all. I hope this finds you well.

So here's the latest on the job front, which serves as a prelude to an e-mail I sent to my mom stating the VERY latest on the job front.

I got a job. Actually, I got two jobs. The first was working at Quizno's. I went in for an interview two weeks ago, and then I got hired, and was told to come back next Wednesday to be put on the schedule, as the schedule for the next week had already been made up.

Last Wednesday, I got a call from Evergreen Housing, about an application I had put in months ago. They asked if I was still interested. And I was, because it's best to keep your options open. But I explained that I was going in for something today and would have to get back to them.

I go to Quizno's, in neighboring Lacey, and see the schedule I have been placed on. I would get six hours, the week following, which would be two weeks after my initial hire. I would be paid every two weeks, and I would be paid minimum wage.

This offer basically sucks. So I call Housing, and I talk to them. They say I can get forty hours, but I can't work another job at the same time. I say that I was put on the schedule, and would maybe be screwing over Quizno's if I didn't come in, so maybe I would just work those three days and then come in on the following Monday. They say my time would just be training, and so Quizno's probably wouldn't want to bother anyway. I tell Housing I'll get back to them after I talk to Quizno's.

So I talk to Quizno's. They tell me not to come in. So I didn't have to pay to take a test to get a food handler's permit. And I got started yesterday, and for that day, I got paid more at that first day than I would've my theoretical first week at Quizno's.

Today, what would've been my first day at Quizno's, I got fired from Evergreen housing..

Do I want to give details? No, not really. I will.

I was cleaning a bedroom on the sixth floor of A-dorm, where I used to live. Not the room I was cleaning, but the floor. I was talking to a friend of mine, who started working today, about books we were reading currently and had read in the recent past.

A woman, Heidi, comes in and says she has to have a conversation with me. Heidi is the woman that called me after reviewing my application, and who I talked to about the Quizno's situation and the whole thing. She works in the housing office, she's not someone I work with. I don't even know her last name.

I follow her down the stairs. We don't go into her office, rather, we go outside. She sits, and says I can sit. I sit.

I don't remember her exact words at this point, but the gist of it was that some complaints were had about my language and threats.

I had no real idea what she was talking about. The language thing seemed plausible, although I would justify my language by the fact that I wasn't working with the public- I was working pretty solely with their abandoned toilets. I imagined almost all of my coworkers were current Evergreen students. I don't really remember saying anything that bad.

She told me. The situation in question happened that morning. By threats, read "non sequitur" as that was the joke of what I said.

We're all in an elevator. There's like eight of us. I think I yelled something like "Elevator, elevator!" Something inoffensive, at any rate. It might've been someone's name. I don't quite recall.

This guy, whose name I thought was Scott although my memory was foggy, says "You're going to have to stop yelling, this is a crowded space."

I reply, blithely, "Well, if I can't yell... I'm going to have to grab your balls." I proceed to not do anything of the sort.

He says "You better not, because if you do, I'll kick your ass."

Upon going through this little flashback in my mind, I say to Heidi "Wait! I made a joke, it wasn't really a threat. He threatened me in response."

She says "I'm aware of that."

I say "Is he going to be fired?" Although I didn't really think he should be fired, you understand. I made a joke, and his reply seemed like a joke made by someone kind of humorless.

She says she can't tell me.

I say I don't think he should be, I believe I say this numerous times, but I'm aware that if I'm getting fired, I can't be expected to be able to decide such policy. We go back and forth and there's some exposition. Basically, Evergreen takes a zero-tolerance approach to matters of threats and sexual harassment (And yes I realize that if it was anything, that's what it would be, as "balls" isn't really that inappropriate by my reckoning and it wasn't really a threat. I find calling it harassment harsh but if someone wanted to say "hey that's inappropriate," I would concede the point. I certainly wouldn't have made a joke about grabbing a woman's genitals, as doing so would be charged with all kinds of implications and overtones I wouldn't want to deal with). So I was being fired, no second chances, and the fact that I had to quit a job to take this one meant nothing. The way Heidi viewed it, she had to jump through hoops to give me the job. So I don't know if the implication of her saying this was that I made her look bad, but I don't know her and so this should not be the case.

Anyway.

The moral of this story is that I live in a world where people aren't big on common decency.

The ending of this story is that I'm out of a job. Which, in a world where there's not a lot of common decency, is hard to find.

Where the fuck were you all last night, as I sat in my living room watching the video for R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet Chapter One? I wished in my mind that pretty much all my friends would show up, the funny ones, at least one of them, and none of you magically teleported in. It sucked.

I haven't written in this thing for ages, and there are some people reading it who have no idea what I've been up to. I stayed with friends for much longer than I expected, moving out on July 2nd, to across the street. I got screwed out of a roommate and am paying a lot of rent until September, when Alex'll show up and reduce the cost by half. I got a job, but it was a horrible scam, selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. I didn't get paid, my coworkers were horrible, and then I quit. Now I look for work.

I just got cable installed on Monday. I don't have internet access at my house, and probably won't until shortly before Alex arrives, because of the expense. I go to the school library for computer access every day. Before there was cable, I read a lot. I still do, I don't watch a lot of TV, but there was a lot of reading. I bought some books when I had a job I thought would pay me: Borges' Collected Fictions, and Franz Kafka's The Complete Stories. I had a friend who said I could buy stuff at one book store using his credit while he was gone for the summer: This is how I got Steve Erickson's Days Between Stations and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Also I steal books from Barnes And Noble, which I'd been doing for awhile, then stopped, but started again and got copies of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49 and James Joyce's Ulysses, as well as a copy of Daniel Clowes' Ice Haven. Plus there were the last two issues of McSweeney's, as well as a backlog of stuff- I've now read The Sound & The Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress Of Solitude. I'll limit my opinions to saying that The Crying Of Lot 49 was much better and easier to read than Gravity's Rainbow, and that the Collected Fictions translation of Borges by Andrew Hurley is much better than that of Anthony Kerrigan found in the copy of Ficciones I bought and read last summer.

Without internet access, I don't hear as much new music. There's a lot of things leaking that I'd like to hear, but might just have to wait until they're released, when hopefully I'll have money. This is stuff like the new Silver Jews, Deerhoof, Animal Collective records. Also Wolf Parade. There's lot of stuff. I have two Clap Your Hands Say Yeah songs off an mp3 blog that I really like.

There's shows and parties and the feeling of getting ever closer to a scene which just confirms my suspicions more and more: That these are people who don't actually like music. It makes me uncomfortable, although the girls are pretty, which is to be expected. Sometimes I find myself at random parties which suck completely, or are good but the decent people have terrible friends. I saw a Mount Eerie show that was awesome: Electric guitars and backing rhythm section. I bought No Flashlight. The other new music I've heard was the Prefuse 73 Reads The Books EP, paid for by trading in CDs that mostly I forgot I owned, like a Mogwai EP.

The movies I've seen have been limited- Went to the Capitol Theater for free because someone didn't show up so I did their job and saw Kontroll and Steamboy, neither of which were particularly good. And I saw Batman Begins, and wished the same wish I had during the R. Kelly video, although for completely different reasons- Well, not completely different, I was there early and ended up seeing all twenty minutes of The Twenty, and wished for friends and sarcasm.

Oh I wanted to talk about Sports Night. I like that show, which is something of a joke out here in Olympia with all the people who heard that one mostly-accurate joke on Family Guy but have never watched the show, or at least not at length. My point was that not only do I like Sports Night, I like it enough to be happy when I see those people in other things- the one dude with the Six Feet Under success, Felicity Huffman was in Magnolia, and just last night I saw the other anchor dude making an appearance on an episode of Stella- The first I'd seen due to my lack of cable. Speaking of which, in my absence from the world of TV I missed that Comedy Central's hired a new racist working-man type, only this one's Spanish. I also missed Jon Stewart taking some asshole to school on The Daily Show, which saddens me for different reasons.

Most things are lame. I think a good deal about the apocalypse, and how the possibility that enlightenment would happen on December 22nd 2012 that it seems that most people familar with that date are hoping for could very well just mean the end of all life on earth, since everything's just going to get worse and worse up to that point.

Also I do some writing, short stories and a novel and a screenplay for a comedy. All slow-going. I really need a job. I got hired technically by this temp agency but that only kind of counts. On the fifth there's this job fair for this big movie theater opening in Lacey. That's the job I'm hoping for.

My family's been keeping me alive by sending me checks and stuff. I have mixed feelings towards this, but mostly it just tempts me to give up. I signed up for a class in the fall mostly so I can get financial aid and credit. I'll try to make films on my own on the school's dime, using their equipment. Speaking of the school's dime: I saw a website listing professor's salaries. Almost all of them are overpaid. Or in reality, all of them are overpaid, but I don't resent all of them for this.

I've been thinking about writing but not doing any writing. As I waited for the bus, I was thinking I would just write a blog entry as a prelude to doing some actual writing, the kind I want to do and have to put thought into, but I waited for the bus longer than usual, and now there is just exhaustion. But briefly, my day:

My day was exhausting. I didn't go to sleep. I watched The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse instead. Today is day one of the moving days. Two more roommates are gone now, moved out. The one roommate still here may or may not do a ton of work and pull it all together within the next twenty-three hours. I've got most of my stuff in storage. It weighs a good deal.

Tomorrow I'm gone, and the phone number you all have will no longer be of use. It's a phone number I've given to prospective employers. Now, I can only assume that I didn't get the job at Brewery City, nor did I get the job at the assisted living facility. Even if they were willing to give it to me, they won't be able to tell me.

The job prospects currently: I have an interview at Goodwill on Tuesday at 10:30. That might not lead anywhere. I have been given a job selling satellite dishes on commission. It seems sketchy, and the more I mull over the details, the sketchier it seems. The office is upstairs from a Papa Murphy's Take and Bake Pizza. If I'm actually able to sell people on the superiority of satellite dishes over cable, then there's some money to be made. Otherwise I am fucked. The head of the sales team is a mustachioed man. The company may or may not have phones yet installed in the office. Once that happens, the job will segue into telemarketing. There's the possibility I should continue to pound the pavement, let's say.

But then there's the house search. Moving out tomorrow. Staying somewhere for a few days, but don't want to rely on that. There's a sublet available, and I talked to the woman subletting, and it would be fine, regardless of the lead-based paint and whatnot, but I might not get it. More people still to talk to. I'm stopping by there Tuesday evening.

I've got a new mailbox downtown for the time being.

We should have more food in the house than we do, at least some milk for the cereal, or something, but no, because I'm gone tomorrow. I imagine my diet's going to be odd for the next few days, which makes for a bad combination with the physically exhausting moving activity.

God. I don't know. The loss of interaction with friends who play to my best/worst/most instinctive instincts will be tough. Especially if I'm doing sales work. Hopefully I'll be able to make good money and have a place and just coop myself up and do writing, if the dayjob isn't too exhausting. I guess I'll have to force myself. I kind of want to force myself now but I don't know if I got any REM sleep this morning, and I doubt I got any in my many nods off on the bus.

I've got some ambitions though, believe you me.

Also, I'm afraid this computer's going to overheat soon so I'm going to post now and then be done with it.

job search house search forever with the nervousness i am behind future uncertain ah! ah! ah!

It's all interviews and job applications and no calls back ever. I dress in button-down shirts and black pants and feel awkward for it.

The only thing that gives me confidence was my saying with certainty that no, I am not returning to Philadelphia for the summer. It's the only option to my future I chose to seal off, a fallback plan I'd rather not have, an awkward scenario I won't have to live. Saturday I move out. I don't know to where. My things will be in storage if nowhere else.

Today I had an interview for a job selling vacuums, and I thought it went okay. There were some awkward moments that might've been what resulted in my not getting the job- I couldn't remember the phone numbers or the addresses of either previous employers or personal references for the paperwork, as I usually take applications home- but the interview said it was mostly down to the one-on-one interview, and maybe that didn't come off so hot. I thought it went alright. There were no returned phone calls.

There've been other jobs to seem like sure things that have fallen apart for my lack of a car.

Tomorrow I hand in an application to Goodwill, which will probably not pay as well as a job selling vacuum cleaners. Tomorrow I will look once more to the Classifieds ads.

I almost wrote a post a few days ago about my mom. I realized she didn't share a last name with me, and as such could be a personal reference if she was willing to just vouch for me and lie up an anecdote where she was not my mom. I think this kind of thing is completely acceptable: You'll lie to a kid, why not lie for them? But my mom's all about that kind of morality which goes against most people's ideas of decency, and as such she refused. I don't want to be the kind of kid who hates their mom, the kind where it's all they talk about and they're not particularly well-adjusted. But my mom's personality just grows more irritating with every day. I can only hope that she is starting to realize that the way she raised me did not lead to me having the same morals as she. Hopefully she realized this eons ago, with her getting all up in arms in regards to obscenity and offensiveness and all the other things I hold dear. She's funny: She realizes and probably assumes that I'm drinking booze and smoking drugs, but probably thinks I don't watch South Park and things she finds offensive, which I totally watched anyway when I lived with her. I really wonder what things she think stuck. Maybe the Christianity, but my conception of God is completely different from hers.

I submitted a short story for publication awhile back, and today I learned that I should've included a SASE with that submission. I'd resubmit it tomorrow if I had an address I'd be living in two months from now. These are hectic times, and the hits just keep on coming, but like a sack full of oranges, they leave no bruises behind.

So, following City Of Lost Children and Jean-Pierre Jeunet going on to do Amelie, Marc Caro directed one film. A four-minute long porn short. I haven't seen it, but... That's interesting.

So, tomorrow morning, I'm headed off to Seattle for a week. This means that, unless I am attacked by thoughts and cannot sleep, this will be my last update for a week. When I come back, expect a thing about the film festival, which will hopefully translate to a list of films to look out for, and not a general statement of disgust about the state of filmmaking in the world. I'm blaming a lot on the tyranny of old white women in regards to the art-house set. This has more to do with my teachers' taste than anything. I really disagree with them about pretty much everything.

But you know what is good? Music. Holy crap. The upcoming Sufjan Stevens record, Illinois, is very strong for what it is, but the thing to most fill me with excitement is the new Deerhoof EP, Green Cosmos. Most of the lyrics are in Japanese. It sounds like Deerhoof, but the sound palette is expanded to include samples and synths and all kinds of good things. I love it.

What I've heard from the Need New Body record is really good as well. Right now, it's in weird territory, but mostly, it's just such a feel-good record. Just this joyous summertime hoo-hah. It's not a transcendent Neutral Milk Hotel kind of joy, it's a summertime parties on the roof of Philadelphia, eating BBQ and drinking and smoking weed, sun is shining, everybody's funny and enjoyable and all about being awesome. It's happiness more than joy, I suppose, but it's a cartwheel kind of record. So's the Deerhoof EP. I can't do cartwheels. But these records make me want to do them, to express my feelings of happiness. And I mean: there's elements of weirdness to both, because that's the kind of person I am. But there's an emphasis on rhythm and good times. So I vote yes.

Oh, and that Sleater-Kinney record's about to come out, and that's pretty good too. It's a good year for music. But I mean, it's springtime and school's out and sure there's a lot of vibes to any given time, but if you have the vibes conducive to listening to a lot of Need New Body and Deerhoof, it's going to be a good summer.