A few things I've wanted to say. Not my thoughts- these are Grant Morrison's predictions. In brief: The next big thing will be psychedelia. In the underground, and then it'll later boil over into the mainstream. Of course, psychedelia is such a vague term, it could be good or bad... I don't take it to mean jam-band shit but maybe that's my optimism. Oh and Morrison also predicts a new dark age. I don't know for how long though. Maybe when the psychedelia hits the mainstream it'll end. And of course, shortly after that happens... 2012 apocalypse. Psychedelia could be good though. The good kind. Surrealism, I'm fond of. I kind of think Arthur will be essential cool kid reading but it's a very specific kind of cool kid. I don't know. Sometimes I like to think I am on the cutting edge and will end up ruling the world, inheriting the Earth. I don't know though. I'm writing with fuzz on my brain like I'm on drugs but I can actually write so I'm not completely useless.

Oh and I didn't see McLusky. But I liked The Incredibles a lot, which isn't surprising. The next Pixar thing, Cars, looks ass though. The Incredibles: very pure superhero poetry. I don't know if anyone will get what I mean by that, or if that many people will understand the appeal. Kicks the ass of all bullshit live-action superhero movies... I was thinking as I watched The Incredibles about all the CGI and fuck it all, just go straight to animation. I mean, early Superman serials, I think I read, switched to animation for certain scenes, like where he flies, and it's a jarring distraction. So just pure animation, fuck this live-action with CGI nonsense. Other stuff... Like I said, fuzz on the brain. So I'll stand by my "pure superhero poetry" comment. For the kids, for the mainstream. And of course it looked amazing but that shouldn't even have to be said. The obvious: If you're inclined to like this sort of thing you'll love it. The only complaints I have are things that couldn't be avoided. I don't know if anyone would go into it not expecting to dig it and come out converted, but that's totally just me not understanding people from different perspectives. I'm even more inarticulate than usual right now. Sorry. My mom thought the commercials looked dumb. She doesn't get the superhero appeal. Damn I should write her an e-mail about the movie actually. She told me to tell her what I thought because she wasn't feeling the commercials. It seems to me that if you're not psyched by the commercials you're not going to be feeling the movie, although obviously it works better as a film than as commercials. It's not fucking Star Wars, you know? It's got a plot and the best parts are the big action set pieces, not the short jokes that can be thrown into a commercial. I don't know. I like superheroes and I'm kind of a moron. Aren't you the same kind of moron? Are you with me on this? Batman fucking rules, right? Dudes getting kicked, things exploding, and it all looking awesome... These are great beautiful things, yes? I don't understand people at all. I'm not as psyched on it as I was on Triplets Of Belleville, but Triplets was all french and sweet and it had grandmas instead of superheroes so it had a broader appeal to non-nerds while at the same time had this distinctively niche vibe. Anyway. Alex called The Incredibles the peak of Pixar and doubted they would ever make a finer film. Granted, he did it while drunk, and we don't know their future plans. I liked it, Alex liked it. Alex isn't as nerdy as I am but he does concede that superheroes are pretty goddamn cool and you may or may not be with us on that. I am getting repetitive. Sorry.

I am tired. About an hour ago I was talking about riding out a sleep-deprivation high. I talk crazy talk. I'm ready to pass the fuck out. You should all go see The Incredibles because maybe some of you won't like it and that would be interesting to me, as you're all friends of me and shit.

I've been really into The Mountain Goats lately, and last night, while laying in bed I realized that didn't make any sense. There's no reason for me to be feeling the Mountain Goats. It's all about lyrics, in the same way that other people like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are all about lyrics and I just don't get that shit at all. The lyrics are "literate" but straight-forward, not particularly lyrically breathtaking. And yet somehow it works. Even though the musical backing is frequently just an acoustic guitar and tape hiss. Maybe it's that where John Darnielle is coming from is closer to where I'm coming from than hippie territory. He's a music critic and not a poet. But it doesn't seem like that should be enough.

Still, it makes it speak to me... Sometimes there's humor, it doesn't seem to wallow in sadness. (although the sad songs are frequently brilliant.) Then there's the concept album type stuff, which I guess I respond to. That kind of over-arching narrative gives stuff more of a purpose. It rarely seems self-indulgent.

Yeah... I am not a critic at all. I like what I like and sometimes I can justify those decisions. John Darnielle's voice isn't annoying like Bob Dylan's. And he's not political.

Other things that might grow into longer posts in the future: Going to see The Incredibles today and maybe McLusky in Seattle if all goes well. Also: My class is deeply flawed and I am expressing more rage by the day. The other students (and the professors) don't like me. It is all very haha.

I've got this Lenny Bruce autobiography to read for class. It's not particularly good, but the fact that I'm reading it brings stand-up comedy to mind. Stand-up comedy is rarely that far from my mind, but I'm being reminded of it.

Also: apparently there's been a new shift in Catholic dogma. Women can masturbate now, post-coitally, if the man involved in the act (who still can't wear a condom, as sex is for children) didn't bring her to climax. I mention this because I could do five minutes on this that would be hilarious. But then, really, who couldn't? Lenny Bruce might've broken rules and all that, but sex and religion are a short path to comedy gold. Not a lot of effort to be expended there. I mean, fuck, he was able to do it, and he was a junkie!

Elsewhere: http://www.artbomb.net/detail.jsp?tid=504, to be precise, Matt Fraction reviews Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, as previously established, my favorite comic ever. This is cool because it seems like Artbomb's only violation of their "we don't review superhero comics, ever, we are for the nongeek public" rule. I could talk about why this is significant and I could talk at length about how it's only right that Doom Patrol should be the only exception (although I could also name two others that should be exceptions) but no one's reading this anyway, yes? No one gives a shit when I talk about comics. (oh fuck it: Watchmen and Enigma.)

For a while I was thinking about writing about something I love in art. Besides just "quality," there's something I really have a soft spot for. And that's this balance of the weird and the fucked-up with a very sweet and lovely core. I thought of this while arguing on the behalf of the poster insert in Jim O'Rourke's Insignificance... my roommate Loren Thor bought the record on vinyl and I wanted to take the poster and frame it in the bathroom. It's an amazing piece of art, so I don't want to describe it, but long story short, Loren didn't want it because it's not the sort of thing he wants looking at it while he poops, and he thinks it's the kind of thing that could alienate potential ladypartners. I maintain there is a sweetness but I said this to Loren in that half-ironic tone that I am known to use when I might very well be talking nonsense.

I cannot find the image in question, and I don't want to describe it to you. But I will say that the other art that comes with Insignificance is awesome too, and even better in the big vinyl format: The cover is a transvestite sitting in a chair, while the record sleeve shows the same transvestite being sodomized by an octopus. The poster isn't as good as the octopus image, but that should go without saying. As I look around the internet, the only images that are easy to find are the covers to the Jim O'Rourke albums Eureka and Insignificance. The cover to Eureka is a naked man holding the head of a bunny to his genitals. If I had a record player, I would buy the album just so I could put the cover on my door, (and the music's kind of dull on that one) so amazing is it. I am willing to entertain the notion that there's no sweetness to the artist's work and it's just my gravitation to the bizarre and alienating coming through and then I try to spin it like I'm somehow well-adjusted. I don't know, you make the call.

The name of the artist is Mimiyo Tomozawa and her work is highly recommended. (apparently she's done some manga but if it exists, it's hard to find.)

As is the work of Ken Kagami, who did the art for Deerhoof's Milk Man, and drew an image I very much want on a t-shirt. It's the kind of image that would ensure I made no new friends ever and would alienate all but my staunchest supporters. It is very much the kind of thing I enjoy as one that sometimes positions myself as being different than normal people. It is also amazing. You can see it here: http://www.kenkagami.com/work/d16.html (Warning: not work-safe, but everyone who reads this blog is unemployed anyway.)

I wanted to talk about my attempts to write stories that balance the bizarre and the sweet, optimism with surrealism, and magic realism with the indie-rock-kid world in which I live. But I got distracted. And to make a long story short, I haven't written anything that does that yet. And it doesn't look like anything I'm working on now will accomplish that goal either. Right now I'm just focused on getting all the boring nihilism out of my writing, and trying to avoid obvious autobiograpy. (At least I've never written about high school or struggling with writing in my fiction.) But if I ever do get around to doing such a thing... Look out world! I'ma kick your ass!

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog Of War, Fast Cheap & Out Of Control) made a commercial for Apple. It features cartoonist/screenwriter Daniel Clowes talking about his Mac. It's bizarre that such a thing can exist, but the reason I find it bizarre is a bit obscure.

Bush got elected. Straight-up. Culture war, good guys lost. Most of America is crazy. But then there's things like this. I don't know. I'm calling this "cultural dissonance." Like cognitive dissonance, but expressed through culture. This world doesn't make sense.

Bush's election doesn't make sense. That Apple commercial doesn't make sense, even to me. Even if Kerry had won, Clowes and Morris are rather "indie." These are things that shouldn't exist, but for completely different reasons. I'm glad that the commercial exists, because there are still good people out there. We are outnumbered. There's not enough of us to make a difference to the world at large, but there's enough of us to make a difference to one another.

Maybe I'm not making any sense. What the fuck am I talking about? I'm glorifying isolation. Why am I doing such a thing, after the democrats lost and the next four years of our lives (at least) our going to suck ass? Because I'm not a political guy. I'm just trying to live. And that's the way to do it, right now. Because if you are a political guy, and you're engaged with the rest of the world, things are going to suck even more. If you withdraw, you will survive. It's easy enough to withdraw. I did it before the election, I thought Kerry was going to win. It's the kind of optimism you need to survive. The argument could be made I've just got my head in the sand, like the president, and that's a bad place to be. Well, yes. But, I mean, Bush seems like a happy guy with his head in the sand. And since a civil war isn't going to happen, and a mass migration will just fuck up our chances in 2008, we've got to live with the fact that the majority of America is fucking crazy. And the way to do that is to do what we always do, seek solace in other things.

We are not the majority, but there's a lot of us. America is going to be hell on Earth for a while. And like any bad situation, it's only survivable when you've got friends. We've got a lot of friends.

The media isn't that liberal. The news, especially, would be better were it more liberal, if it engaged the rest of the world (i.e. the red states, the majority) and was able to convince them how shitty the world is. There has been some talk of a media elite, of a bubble. And I guess that is true now. But I don't have that much of a problem with it, because it's the same bubble I'm in, and it's a rather encouraging bubble. It's not great. I don't know, I need to work this shit out better.

Well, no, not really, I know where I stand: The media shouldn't be more liberal. It should be more vigilant in its reportage of facts. Really, the more facts people know, the less inclined they are to vote for Bush. But that's not because the facts are liberal, you know? Facts are facts. Facts don't come with points of view. I guess the main thing I want is less opinion, and less discussion of opinions, of polls, of spin, of shit that's not news. Yes. Wait. Um. I'm contradicting myself, as I said I liked the opinions because they convinced me that I Was On The Winning Side.

Goddamn it, what was I talking about before...

The rest of the media, the stuff that's not the news... That's encouraging to me. That's where my friends are.

How amazingly on-point was the Daily Show tonight (or last night? November 3rd.) So on-point. The funny that hurts, in a way I rarely feel.

This post is so goddamn unclear. This is not an essay, you know? It's a collection of stances. I stand by them all, (except for the unclear stuff) but not all of them have that much do with each other.

I'm really fucking tired. I started this blog so I wouldn't have to say the same shit to everybody as a conversation starter, engage me. If you do, I think I might be able to work out my stance and my guides to happiness for the next four years by the end of the week.

The soundtrack to November 1st was Brainiac's Electro-Shock For President. On a similar mood, last night I listened to GZA's Liquid Swords on headphones. Today, as I feel rage and disgust towards America, McLusky Do Dallas loud rock music with sarcastic lyrics is the perfect accompaniment.

Let me be the first to ask it:

So... what do we do now?

I don't have a solution yet, I just wanted to be the first to ask the question. Bush has this fucking mandate from, no shit, the majority of America. And Republicans I think won some seats in the house and Senate, but I don't know. America chose this shit. The youth didn't vote. Which is fucking sad. I now see why politicians ignore the young: Because we're fucking dumb.

Anyway, now for some shit I've said on message boards:

It seems like a lot of people are saying that they voted for Bush based on "moral issues." And it's easy to mock that, to say "fuck morality, vote on policy" but... As far as I'm concerned, voting for Kerry was the moral thing to do, you know? And that's even when you take in supposed judeo-christian morals like killing dudes being bad, as opposed to just my own personal set of morals. I'm confused that people are saying moral issues are important and the majority of those then vote for Bush. I mean, yeah, vote on policy, but policy is a reflection of morals. And Bush's policies are immoral as fuck, are you fucking kidding me? See... what they could've done, I think, was to talk about morals without talking about religion. Because Kerry is morally superior to Bush, in that he's not a fucking hypocrite. That wasn't a point that didn't get out, at least from Kerry. Or it wasn't made into a moral issue. And I don't think that would've pissed off the current liberals in the Democratic party, because everybody likes to feel morally superior.

Speaking of feeling morally superior, my roommate Luke is going to riot today, supposedly. Not because Bush won, or because the way he won was corrupt. No, he was going to riot even if Kerry won. He's going to riot in downtown Olympia (where we elected Democrats) to send a message about the things that aren't being addressed in politics. It's radicalism and it serves no fucking purpose. None at all. I mean... rioting's fun. But if you're going to destroy a place, why destroy Olympia? At least when there were riots in Seattle, they were opposed to something nearby. This is just foolishness.

But again: What do we do now?

So here's the thing I want to be the anthem of the left in the near-future.

Do you have a ballsack? Because if you do, you really should be shooting your metaphorical jism all over the place?

(i.e. call bullshit. There's a lot of bullshit to be called. Why isn't Kerry calling bullshit? I want Kerry to go on TV and say "the only reason Ohio and Florida will go to George Bush is because of extreme corruption.")

I voted. When I woke up, the morning felt better than last night. I like thinking the part of my brain connected to the collective unconscious is telling me something about how people are voting on the East coast. Let's see how I feel tonight.

It is now Election Day on the East coast, where my family and many of my friends live. The East coast, where the swing states reside.

I am on the west coast, and I am freaking the fuck out. Raw psychic tension is in the air like radio waves. I'm not where the riots are going to be. And I would almost bet money on small riots, at least in the swing states. I hope there's no reason to riot, but for fuck's sake, the past four years have been reasons to riot. Starting with the voter intimidation in Florida. That's the type of shit that I'm talking about, regardless of election results. But yeah, those results. A lot of people fucking hate Kerry. I don't encounter them ever, but they exist.

I need catharsis. I want to go vote and then go to a shooting range, partly for fear of a second civil war, partly just because I'm just going to need some kind of release. So much bad shit is in the air. So much fucking fear. I want to break glass.

This is my first election. Truly we are blessed/cursed to be living in times such as these.

If there was a second civil war, I am confident that the hillibillies would win. I don't want a second civil war, but I would fight in one.

There is the possibility that I will be ashamed of these words a week from now, no matter the outcome. I find it necessary to document the tension in the air.

God fucking dammit.

Vote Kerry, for the love of God. If you absolutely must vote for Bush, because you're a billionaire or something, and a Bush presidency would really work out for you, I suppose I don't have any problem with that, as long as you don't try to intimidate blacks. Also, if you could try to talk your yacht club buddies out of fucking with poor areas of swing states, that'd be great, I'd appreciate it.

If you're not a billionaire, and you're voting for Bush, you are fucking dumb. Trust me, it's not going to work out for you at all. (The New York Times reported that Bush told his supporters in a private meeting that he'll try to privatize social security once he's sworn in for his second term. I know that The New York Times is the liberal media or whatever- Which is funny because it's also the most respected newspaper in the country- and the Bush white house has attacked it, but the Times is sticking by this, and fuck, extremist conservatives do want more government agencies privatized, so it's not like the Times pulled it out of their asses)

Is John Kerry a tool? I don't even know anymore. Well, wait, yes, he is a tool for the Democratic party, a total piece of blandness. But what the fuck ever, that's the kind of tool you build a house with. Third parties are the kind of tool that means penis. And George Bush... he's the kind of tool that tears down a house. He's beyond being a tool, he's the fucking devil. Seriously. And that's a stance I would stand by, even if I were talking to a schizophrenic. I wouldn't even qualify it. Attention schizophrenics: George Bush is the devil.

Attention voters: Vote for Kerry, please please please.

I want to go downtown and just have shirts that say "Hugs for Kerry." And I will just hug people, no matter what their stance is. I will hug them, because a hug is something good and pure and George Bush is probably opposed. I will be the happy face for the Democrats. I'm just hugging, you know?

Although if Bush is re-elected, and the riots start? If that happens I will be the face on the bottles of poison for Kerry, the Yuck face. And I mean, I'll still give hugs, because that's just how I roll. One love!

It's going to be hard to calm me down over the next twenty-four hours without the aid of hard alcohol and hard narcotics that I am not inclined to take part in. Blowjobs won't even help, so intense will be my mind-state.

To the best Alex and I can work out, "I Want Pussy" off of Ol' Dirty Bastard's Nigga Please is the song where a main part of the beat is ODB fucking a girl on top of a bass drum.

My paper for class... it's not a review, but the teacher got the impression. I make the argument that it's the apex of hip-hop. This is a controversial view, because the album's rather offensive, and others might prefer something more politically conscious. My stance is that 'conscious' hip-hop is frequently boring as fuck and I am infinitely more amused by people just talking about themselves and how awesome they are. The point of my paper is that the reason that an ODB album is able to be the apex of hip-hop is because hip-hop is really fucked-up.

The record's also hilarious. I don't know how much of the hilarity is intentional, but it doesn't matter. It's never unintentionally hilarious because the music is bad. The music is pretty fucking solid, the beats accompany ODB's flow (which is insane, but GREAT and listenable) well. I don't know how much of what is being said is jokes and how much is just straight-up real ODB bragging. "Girls want to fuck me when they smell my underarm?" I don't know. "I take the cocaine, it cleans out my sinuses?" That's not true at all, but I still don't know whether he means it or not.

But yeah, good record. If you see it in a used bin (and you might... it had a hit single, but it's fucking weird, and most people are dumb) buy it. I'm pretty sure it's a party record but I am not a partier. Maybe play it at a party where you don't know everyone there. It can function as a conversation starter, while also making it seem like there's a crazy drunken crackhead in attendance at your party, i.e. spicing it up.

Oh yeah, and the original title was The Black Man Is God, The White Man Is The Devil. It also probably could've been released under the name Big Baby Jesus, as ODB had announced that's what he was switching his alias to before the release of the record. That's a lot of religious imagery for an album predominantly about fucking.

The election's in less than a week. I am alternately filled with dread and exhilaration.

This is great:http://www.salon.com/news/letters/2004/10/27/youngvoter/ It's at Salon, so you have to watch an ad, but... it's very encouraging. It's a letter from a black 21-year-old. The giveaway that he's a liberal might be that he's at Salon, but... he's also young, and he's black. So there's no way he's going to support Bush. It's a great piece, and I'll just quote a good bit from early on: "I saw Ann Coulter on some show where she was literally speaking for black America. Being that she is an aging white chick with poorly dyed roots, she obviously got it wrong. Those polls saying how Bush will get 16 to 18 percent of the black vote are just wrong. To quote ODB, "Nigga please."

There's other, more encouraging things. That quote just makes me smile. Because it's about politics and it quotes Ol' Dirty Bastard. I wrote a paper on the album Nigga Please for class. It's a pretty fucking great record, for many reasons.

There's other stuff on Salon, and elsewhere, about the GOP's plan to shut down the black vote. God, I wish that news would break.

So yeah, swing voters: Yes, they're dumb. But what's funny is the idea that they're waiting for something. Waiting for one of them to do something amazing, or maybe to eat a baby or something. And the funny thing is... That could totally happen. If the news I just mentioned broke? God. Of course, the mainstream media totally isn't covering shit like that, shit that will henceforth be referred to as "important news." They're covering campaign stops instead. And the Red Sox.

Oh, yeah, so the election night drinking game. It requires two kinds of liquor. For every thirty electoral votes that go to Kerry, take a shot of happy alcohol, whatever that might be for you. Like it's a party. For every thirty that go to Bush, take a shot of something else, like you're drinking to forget. I don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to say rum for Kerry, whiskey for Bush. But it depends on your preferences.

So in between all the politics shit... I'm in this class that isn't very good. My teacher doesn't particularly like me, I figure, but I arguably bring it on myself by making my distaste for the class known. The class is just wrong and based around bad ideas. I don't want to seem like I'm just casting myself in a rebel fuck-all posture because I think I'm so bad-ass, but... I mean, fuck, I disagree. No one else speaks up. Story of my life? You know, maybe.

Also: I saw some movies. I Heart Huckabees, Team America: World Police, and Shaun Of The Dead. Three relatively different movies. They have a few things in common. One is that they're all mainstream enough that I can see them in shitty-ass Olympia, even if I see them later than other people. The other thing is that they're all comedies, and they're all funny. Yeah, I Heart Huckabees is a bit pretentious. But it's funny. And Team America's overall position is one I disagree with. Shaun Of The Dead... is pretty fucking solid, nothing wrong with it. Not all the jokes work, but I definitely laughed a good deal. Of course not all the jokes in a comedy are going to work. But all these movies had enough jokes that did work that I can recommend them as comedies.

There are times when I'm at a movie and I'm laughing at shit no one else is laughing at. You know what I think is key to enjoying comedies, to knowing whether you have a good sense of humor regarding comedies? Show up early at the movie, watch the pre-film programming. This includes the trailers and the stuff before the trailers... Either big expensive shit, like you're watching TV type stuff, or the ads on the screen and an unrelated pseudo-radio broadcast. In all of these things you should find things to laugh at. If you can find anything unintentionally funny, you are smart enough to judge comedies. If you can't, than you don't get irony, so I don't know what you're doing seeing the movies I just recommended. I know that most people reading this get the idea of unintentional hilarity. I'm just sharing my litmus test with you.

That new Alexander Payne thing doesn't look very good at all. Sideways? God, the commercial even has a bit of "naughty girl, might have to be spanked" dialogue. What the fuck? Does anyone think that's edgy? Does anyone think that's funny? Has anyone not heard this a million fucking times before? Granted, it could be a matter of the funny jokes being too offensive for TV. But... God, that shit is just played out. It's fucking played out. And then when you see the actual trailer about the plot and shit... It looks like it's for boring old men. But the criticism has been made than About Schmidt is for boring old men, but I thought that movie kicked ass.

The Life Aquatic looks awesome though. Oh my god. Maybe a bit more jokey than previous Wes Anderson movies, but that's probably all down to editing, right? The trailer for Royal Tenenbaums had some obvious jokes that read subtle in the actual movie. But even if it is more jokey... I like jokes. It just looks fucking great. It opens on Christmas. I hope my brother and I live up to our Jewish heritage and leave before the Christmas dinner to see it.

So sometimes I think about the Pitchfork best of the 90s list, the second one. I always think about best records lists, but that's the one closest to my tastes, most reflective of what I like. And I mentally formulate my own list. Tonight I made an attempt to write that list down. It's awesome in that it really betrays me as a guy who only likes like five bands. It's also great in how quickly it falls apart... By the time it gets to Archers Of Loaf, it is abundantly clear that I am talking out of my ass and don't know anything about music at all. There's three Flaming Lips records in the top twenty, and Zaireeka is really just there in theory, because I only heard it once. It's hard as hell to make lists like this, because you ask yourself "Do I (a) more than (b)? Yes. Do I like (b) more than (c)? Yes. Do I like (a) more than (c)? Well... depends on my mood." And it falls apart as an exercise rather quickly.

So I just realized that people seem to be upping the number of fists to express new levels of awesomeness. Three-fists, four fists... The current peak is five fists, found in the title of an upcoming Matt Fraction comic.

Dude.

All you need is two fists.

I've got some viruses on this here computer. They can't be removed by anti-virus software, and I can't find the actual files yet. This could be a problem. So far the only thing I've been experienced was my computer wanting to show me gay porn... Not the most effective virus in terms of the large percentage of the population that wouldn't be bothered.

So when you do searches for files in Windows XP, the default setting involves a cartoon dog looking through a book. It is rather disturbing. It can probably be turned off, but I'm torn about whether I really want to do such a thing. Sometimes the dog looks up from the book to stare at you with big wide eyes.

So bizarre.

I should really be asleep.

Two words which will define the future: Gorilla Foundation.

Don't try a Google search. It's not on the internet yet. All in my mind. I'm writing it down because I sometimes forget the "foundation" part.

I like hanging around drunks because it drunks up my thoughts.

No essaying today, kids. Just some notes on the quick.

So a while ago (a week maybe? Probably more) my computer's hard drive died on me. It got replaced. But all the music I had on that old hard drive is now gone, as is a lot of writing. Beginnings of novels, journals of ideas, that kind of thing. So what can I do now, but come up with new ideas? The failure of the laptop led to my thinking about the failure of technology we nonetheless depend on, which brought to mind an old idea, which I then fleshed out, and long story short: my mind is a constant spring of disturbing imagery.

Class is okay. I disagree with the teachers in regards to several of the principles the class is based around, but in discussions I can make my fellow students drop their jaws. (I've done it to two separate students on two separate instances, and both times it was fucking amazing, because you can control your jaw, so there's no reason for that to ever really happen.) So there's that.

Oh, and the current goal of dorm J208 is to beat Sonic And Knuckles all in one go before October 19th. For that is the ten-year anniversary, you see. We realized this once one roommate (John Samson) put in some Dreamcast game compilation. While playing it, I made an offhand reference to 1994. Alex said he thought the game came out in 1996 or thereabouts. So he looked online and found out it came out on October 19th, 1994. This led to the decision to beat the game before then, and a lot of remembrances of the past ten years, growing up and shit like that.

I bought a belgian waffle iron and it is the smartest investment I have ever made. Or at least it will be until it breaks, which hopefully will never happen.

So the new Pixies songs... they're rather good indeed. Not the shock of the new, and they won't save music or anything, but it's one more good band in the world. They're still a good band. Their first new song has the chorus "bam thwok, oh, love, bang, wakka wakka wakka"which sometimes runs through my mind at times of intense joy. It's the joy of the fact that the Pixies are making music again, you know? It's nice. The Warren Zevon cover is good too, but it's not an original song with the chorus of wakka wakka wakka which means it's a lesser song than Bam Thwok.

So, back at Evergreen, haven't done any blogging, or any social interaction. Social interaction is more of a priority. Sometimes I'm on the bus and there's stuff I want to blog, but when I return to my dorm that urge has passed. So now, my passion is gone. So I'm going through the motions. But anyway, yeah, Let's talk politics goes so good with beer. Or: Everyone is retarded except for me.

So, the current Republican talking point is to label John Kerry a... I'm going to call him a waffler, because the term they're using is FUCKING RETARDED. "Waffler" makes me think of waffles, and even though it's still a dumb term, it's not one that the entire media have jumped upon. Anyway, the reason they're using this terminology... It's not to galvanize the Republican base. To do that, you just keep on calling him a liberal. Whatever. It doesn't need to be done. It's not going to get Democrats to defect and vote for Bush. (or more likely, get them to not vote, or vote for Nader, or something else that's not going to happen, because Bush is too fucking terrible.) It's done to make him not look like a good leader in the eyes of swing voters. Swing voters. Swing voters, whose minds aren't made up. Who, when the polls vacilate between 41% and 48%, it's their fault. People whose opinions constantly change based on the facts being presented to them.

... Do you get where I'm going with this?

It doesn't seem like an effective tarring tool. Leaving aside the fact that the reason Kerry might vacilate is that he's learning, and understands nuance, which is what editorial cartoonists seem to be picking up on. This is what the Republicans seem to be saying: Hey, swing voters. Kerry's like you. And you'd make a bad leader.

What's weird is that... this might be the Republican stance? The closest I ever came to agreeing with Ann Coulter was when she stated that swing voters are dumb, because if you're an adult, you should know your beliefs and know whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Even that I'd only agree with on a tentative basis. I mean, yeah, you should know which economic policy makes more sense to you. But, in terms of shit like war... Wars are easier to either justify or regret after the fact. Also: War wasn't always the Republican thing. That's a neo-conservative thing. Back in the seventies, Bob Dole denounced Vietnam and World War 2 as being Democrat wars. But I'm getting distracted.

You know who I agree with more than Ann Coulter? Chris Rock. In his last special, he called bullshit on the breakdown of conservative/liberal, of Democrat/Republican. His stance was that, if you're sane, you don't automatically agree with shit before you hear the issue. If you're sane, you don't tow the party line. (This is not to say that Zell Miller is sane. As has been previously discussed, he's completely fucking off his gourd, and as such, doesn't realize that he's registered with the wrong party.)

As I type this, I realize these are two separate issues, and I'm kind of going against my original implied definition of a swing voter. So, um, damn. If my presentation of ideas was done backwards, it would've read like this: Swing voters are okay. And how funny is it that Republicans, in their quest to win the swing voter's favor, just talk shit on the idea of them? I think it's probably the secret resentment that political parties feel for swing voters bubbling to the surface in a subliminal way.

In brief: I'm now anticipating my return to Olympia. I guess this kicked into high gear after my last day of work, and realizing that I'm now in the home stretch. The fact that the mugging made me afraid to walk a street near my house at night might've helped.

I finished my short story, Drawing In Frosting. I don't know how good it is. I'll be sending it someone's way soon as my laptop is back connected to the internet.

I bought some CDs today, and found out there's a new copy of Arthur available. I had an audible reaction. I forget the first thing I said aloud, but I know that the last thing I said was "hellzapoppin'." The cover feature was an interview with Grant Morrison, conducted by Kristine McKenna.

My brother borrowed a copy of Simpsons season 4 DVDs. I got to see some episodes that I hadn't seen before, including what Entertainment Weekly apparently named the greatest Simpsons episode ever.

I think I had more thoughts, at one point.

Another Summer living in Philadelphia, another mugging. This time I really didn't have any money on me, but this time, the robber actually cared enough to run my pockets and shit. He got my wallet, containing two photo IDs, (one for Evergreen, one for Camden County, NJ) my voter registration card, two bank cards, ( one for Wachovia, one for Bank Of America, both canceled now) two pre-paid phone cards, a Best Buy gift card with eight bucks on it, and maybe some other crap.

So yeah I think I can go back to Olympia now. (although the ID shit will need to be replaced in order for me to get on the plane.)

The latest Chris Rock HBO special, Never Scared, is now available on DVD. For a while I was thinking that Chris Rock is the funniest dude around, but after watching the special, I reconsidered that stance. Not that he's unfunny, it's just that other people are funnier. Chris Rock is just the most on-point dude, especially vis a vis the whole men and women/whites and blacks tip. Other people try to be on-point on more political matters, like the overrated David Cross (did you know that Phil Ek and Chris Walla were somehow involved with the audio engineering of his tour? There is no reason for that to be the case) but Rock's great for the kind-of-oversimplifying for the sake of a joke. This is good because it allows for his bits to have payoffs, as opposed to just being riffing for the sake of riffing. The fact that the person I would now name as being funnier is mining a completely different terrain of comedy (Mitch Hedberg) should really speak that I'm not downplaying the awesomeness of Chris Rock at all. Chris Rock's... to say he's more perceptive than funny just seems fucking insane, really. But I always quote his bits, and think of them, and keep them in the back of my mind, whereas I don't laugh out loud when they're said.

Anyway, when I got online, I was thinking I was going to talk about comedians in vehicle movies (long story short: BAD IDEA) and talk about how great Pootie Tang is, and the key to enjoying it. (essentially irony, but more irony of the fact that you are watching a movie called Pootie Tang, about a rap star crimefighter who is too cool for the English language, and the movie's really poorly made but it's not a BAD movie, and many of the jokes just fucking work and are funny.) The irony thing would spin into talking about John Darnielle talking about "ironic music appreciation" in an interview with The Believer, and how it's basically just listening to things that you don't quite "get," but enjoy regardless. This was then going to lead to me talking about the complete fucking insanity of Ol' Dirty Bastard's album, Nigga Please. (It's insane... I've heard he doesn't remember making it, but more apparent when you listen to it is the complete lack of rhymes... I think most people think it's crap, but there's a charisma to it, even when talking shit on whitey and talking about girls on his dick.) Apparently Chris Rock does the intro to that album, but I haven't listened to it, just heard some bits while in my brother's room, looking at a clock. It would've wrapped up with me talking about someone's offhanded comment in Vice (I hate this magazine a lot in theory, but find it compellng and enjoyable as opposed to repellent in practice) that they think that "heavy metal is the new rap" which they probably meant in terms of hipster irony whiteboy appreciation, not in terms of defining youth culture of America... Which seems true and prescient, and I should mention that in that Believer interview, John Darnielle (he's the guy in The Mountain Goats with the zine/website Last Plane To Jakarta) was talking about metal. His fondness for/fascination with the band Deicide came up.

So, I've tackled all those topics, but in abridged form. It's like the cliff notes to my thought process. I am sleepy and have to go to work tomorrow, I should also meet up with both of my parents once or twice before I go back to Olympia, which is starting to seem crazy fucking soon.

There was a family function at my mom's house that my mom might be pissed at me for missing. There's cake in the fridge which might rightfully be mine. There's clothes on the floor of the living room which definitely are rightfully mine, but I gave them to my mom to get rid of because they suck ass. Lots of shirts she gave me for Christmas, I said I'd never wear, and she insisted that I would. Looking back at it now, I should've used the comeback that I'd been dressing myself at least since I was five and that wasn't going to change, but more important in retrospect is that I was completely right and she was full of shit. But to bring it back to a Chris Rock I didn't laugh at, but will be stuck in my memory for all eternity, a man can't win an argument with a woman because a man is concerned with having his argument making sense, which is an obstacle women aren't concerned with. Maybe there are some women reading this thinking Chris Rock and I are misogynists, but in your heart you know that is not the case, even if you are unwilling to concede that Chris Rock is, as ever, fucking on-point.

So, I haven't whored for McSweeney's for awhile. But recently, on the "McSweeney's recommends" section of their site, they recommended not moving. Which... um, yeah. Pain in the ass. Besides the whole packing things up thing, living in two different places and moving twice in a short span of time ends up in me missing many many shows.

Anyway, yeah, back to the whole talking about movies thing.

Watched Almodovar's Live Flesh. When it was over, I realized the thematic similarity/repetition at the heart of the oeuvre that I hadn't picked up from the other three movies I saw. This one put it over the top. I don't know if it's a bad movie, but in a way it's one I wish I hadn't seen because it tarnishes his other work. I imagine that if I'd been following Almodovar all this time, Talk To Her may not have kicked my ass like I did.

Also watched Tom Tykwer's Heaven. Apparently, when someone I knew saw it in the theater, much of the audience was pissed at the ending. Endings that piss people off tend to make me happy, unless it pisses people off by just being aggressively shitty. (like A.I.) This ending made me happy. Most of the movie... The first two-thirds (excepting the very opening scene) seem vaguely thrillerish. Not so much in execution. It's not much of a nail-biter... A lot of people call the movie hypnotic. But it's compelling, plotwise. The final third takes on a more languid tone, vaguely pastoral. (This opinion is shaped mainly by a few shots very close to the end.) The plot stops developing, basically. And then it ends on rather daring note, the kind of thing that I want to call "magic realism" as someone who has heard the term before but hasn't read Marquez and really has no fucking clue what I'm talking about when I say that. Think the ending to Barton Fink, if everybody took my advice and watched Barton Fink. Or that one scene in Magnolia everyone talks about. Basically movies embracing the fact that they are not real life and doing stuff which might not work according to its own logic, but rather, does something that DEFINES the movie's logic as being much larger than the strict realism-with-some-oddity it seemed to be embracing. Realism with some small oddities, but then one GIANT fucking oddity. I love that shit. Eat it up with a spoon.

Um, my brother bought a copy of Drugstore Cowboy so I watched that. Fun sidenote is that one of the movie's screenwriters is named Daniel Yost. I know a guy with that name. I also liked the moments with flying hats. That movie is just okay, nothing great. The kind of thing where you can imagine the director falling off sharply and creating pieces of shit like Elephant, Finding Forrester, and a Psycho remake, but this was made while they were young and hungry. Like, when you're done watching it, you wouldn't call Gus Van Sant a genius, and you wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt ever, but you can concede that it's an alright movie. And, even though it's just alright, he never made anything that good again. So you accept it as a fluke, and chalk the quality up to Daniel Yost and William S. Burroughs, and then you go on living your life. (The moments with the floating hats are pretty fucking cool though.)

I saw Melvin Goes To Dinner. Which it turns out is not a comedy. Some of the cameos in there are rather surprising. I recommend it to fans of Richard Linklater. It's based on a play. One of the special features on the DVD is a scene from the play, which really brought home how I don't like plays as an artistic medium. Ugh. Seriously, why make a play when you could make a movie? Fuck plays.

I also saw Blood Simple, which was okay. Coen brothers doing something not a comedy. Which means... it's okay. I borrowed Miller's Crossing from work and will watch it tomorrow, along with Amores Perros. Apparently it's way better.

I also started watching Spartacus on DVD from work but the DVD crapped out. I liked it though. My brother mocked me for getting it, due to the gayness of gladiators.

There are some people I would like to contact but I'm not sure if the information I would use to contact these people is out of date or not. One of these people is Diana Fanelli. She used to read this, but I don't know if she still does, as a) it's rarely updated and it seems like most people should have stopped reading it, and b) I have no way to get in contact with her so I haven't communicated with her since the posting became erratic. Anyway, if you, the person reading this, are Diana Fanelli, contact me while I'm still in Philadelphia.

Which, for those of you keeping track, means sometime in the next two weeks. If I were in Olympia over the next two weeks, I could see Deerhoof.

So, on reading and writing: I finished Gravity's Rainbow. Yay me. I can't recommend it to anyone though, even though it had its moments. I started Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but yeah I don't know if I really have the drive to read through it, at least in order to finish it before school starts. My brother's been getting David Sedaris books from the library, and my mom's been buying books that aren't crap. (I told her to pick up 100 Years Of Solitude, and she's also bought a handful of ex-hip book-club-style books from Borders' Buy 3, get 1 free table, so she's got the first Augusten Burroughs book, Life of Pi, and some other stuff.) My brother also has some books that he owns and I sometimes think about reading, like William S. Burroughs' The Wild Boys. All of these ae lighter quicker reads than the actually pretty enjoyable and compelling Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And after Gravity's Rainbow, my brain is going to have to decompress on the light quick reads before reading another ungodly long novel. Oh and yesterday I got a handful of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, (best comic ever) rounding it out, so maybe someday soon I'll be able to spend an afternoon reading that whole run front to back. That would be a fucking great afternoon.

Did I ever write about how my mom has some girl from church living in my room? Okay, technically, it's not my room, it's a guest room, with a lot of my shit there. (i.e. comics, making the room important for my Best Afternoon Ever plan) But anyway, yeah, that's happening, which kind of sucks.

Oh and I told my mom I was stopping going to her church (you know, the one I grew up in) because it was too conservative and I felt consistently more and more alienated from the proceedings. I've had differences in terms of interpretation with the church leadership for fucking forever, but now, you know, I gots me a job, so it's one more reason to stop going. These two things combine so I won't be seeing my mom as much as I have been. Which I'm pretty cool with, except for the kinks in the Best Afternoon Ever plan. That's really all I care about.

So, yeah, writing. I am a slow writer. Here's the latest news. The book I had entitled Get Broken has transmogrified and now is being called Powers Of Observation. I'm pretty excited about it, although I should probably do more research before I write any more. The story I called Shoppe is now called Drawing In Frosting, but isn't quite done. There's a part of me hoping I can finish it by the time school's out.

I have two more short stories that I've written and finished since taking up the short story form in earnest following being kicked out of my dorm room last November. One's called Of Mice And Men, which I submitted in the McSweeney's August Van Zorn contest and a few people have read. The other's called Companion, which no one has read and I might submit for publication after I'm back at Evergreen. I finished writing Companion before the school year ended. But yeah, still haven't finished Drawing In Frosting, which I think I began writing around the same time as Companion. Actually, probably before.

I'm a slow writer. Don't know what I'm going to do when I'm in a writing class, where presumably I'll have to write fiction. Essays and autobio I can pretty much crap out. Maybe other people are faster at writing fiction because they just write thinly-veiled autobiography, or maybe I just suck. I mean, it's not like I'm slow because I'm meticulously crafting sentences, I'm slow because I have to wait for more insights to write down and pace out the thing. Drawing in Frosting had like a three-paragraph meditation on the nature of marriage. And the rest of the story is all about the interaction between a husband and wife. The husband doesn't quite understand the wife, which needs to be made clear, but it's being written from the husband's perspective, so I can't just declare it. So... that's going to be tricky.

So, computer froze at the tail-end of a long post. Here I go, retyping it.

After my last post, I decided not to write about every movie I see as I rarely have anything to say about said movies.

That said: Gus Van Sant's Elephant is a cinematic abortion, as boring as Lost In Translation and for many of the same reasons. It aims to capture alienation and loneliness, and decides to go about doing so in the same fashion. It's even more bullshit about high school than it was about foreign lands. The other points, when the movie makes the killers players of violent computer games and gay lovers, are even more bullshit. Do not see Elephant. If the point it was trying to make was that high school violence is OK because everyone in high school is a lame-ass with no personality, it succeeded. Holy fuck did this movie have no characterization. I didn't give a shit what happened to anyone. Everyone in the movie could've died and I would've met those deaths with apathy.

That was rented by my brother, along with a copy of the as-yet-unwatched Predator 2. My brother also made me watch Spaceballs. He kept on telling me to keep watching as really funny parts were right around the corner. I left in the middle, feeling sleepy, and mentally added Mel Brooks to my list of dudes that aren't funny at all.

Peter Sellers is still on that list, even though The Party sucked. It was Sellers in slapstick mode. I really don't get the comedy in people falling in water. When Sellers spoke to make jokes, I laughed. But that only happened once.

I borrowed Man Bites Dog and Sunset Boulevard from work. Sunset Boulevard's cool, except for a few elements that I excuse due to when the movie was made. (Melodramatic at parts and the insertion of the score at big moments) Man Bites Dog was good, although I don't like the whole making points about media violence by making a violent movie thing. Yes, I'm sure they were aware of it, and it's a good movie regardless, way better than Natural Born Killers, but... It's really more just an issue of my own idea of what film should be. If I ever make a movie, I'm not going to indict myself and make myself part of the problem. I don't know. If I hadn't seen Natural Born Killers, I probably wouldn't bitch about that element of Man Bites Dog. And again, Natural Born Killers had a lot more wrong with it than just being a part of the problem it railed against.

And I saw Sonic Youth last night. Not as good a show as the one last year. Afterwards I really ironed out the kinks in my whole "hating everything but still I guess loving people" bit. I guess all cultures/subcultures are shit. The only way you can be cool is to pretty much reject all of them, but this doesn't mean rejecting everything, as there are many many people who don't fit into one cliche or scene.

But yeah, try to think of a good culture, because maybe I'm wrong.

So basically, I work, I steal CDs from work, I borrow DVDs from work.

I also read Gravity's Rainbow, which I'm close to finishing. It's not great. It's decent, and I will be filled with a feeling of satisfaction when the book is complete. Even though it's not going to satisfy my desire for books that just break my mind and flip my shit, I'll just be proud of myself.

So, um, movies.

First off, Natural Born Killers is a total piece of shit. Fuck that movie. Tries too hard, not funny, cliche-ridden.

Flirting With Disaster is smile-funny, not laugh-out-loud funny, and cute but nothing more.

Dog Day Afternoon is pretty damn good. Sidney Lumet knows how to do drama.

Alphaville is better than Weekend, but that says very little. Enjoyable, but I'm not going to recommend it.

Vertigo may or may not make sense, or come together. It's also very slow-paced until shit starts happening. The twist was one I didn't see coming. Has anyone discussed Mulholland Drive (or maybe Lost Highway) in the context of Vertigo? Obviously Vertigo's not as over-the-top, but it does have a long segment where you ask yourself "what the fuck is going on here."

Barton Fink is underrated. What a great movie, which I wasn't quite expecting because no one talks about how awesome it is. I liked it more than Fargo, easily. It's not that funny, but it's damn compelling and kind of entertaining.

Killer's Kiss made my mind wander. I guess the shots looked cool, because it's Kubrick, but slow-paced. Everyone likes Kubrick, but who's seen all of his movies? Fucking no one. People just tend to go based on other stuff about the movie they find interesting, which in itself is kind of fascinating. It's weird how most Stanley Kubrick collection sets don't include all of his work. He wasn't that prolific, he made 10 features, not counting Killer's Kiss and the one, shorter movie he made before that. Killer's Kiss has the great line "you're an old man, and you smell" said by a woman to the gangster who... loves her, I guess. My mind wandered. But that's a great, quotable line.

I also borrowed The Party but will watch that tomorrow.

Oh and I bought and read Caricature by Daniel Clowes. For those not in the know: Daniel Clowes is a cartoonist, does a comic called Eightball, which is mainly an anthology of just his work. It was in this that the comic Ghost World was serialized, which sucked as a comic, but he helped adapt into the movie, which was rather good. The new issue of Eightball's pretty damn good, and it's fascinating to me to read the online discussion because of the ambiguities of it, and people having their own ideas of what it's about. It brings to mind discussions of short stories in English class, only everyone involved in the discussion is smart and it's not being moderated by a complete dumbass. Caricature is a collection of short stories, in the Raymond Carver mold, but funnier. I liked it okay.

Someday soon I'm going to need to buy clothes.

Only music I've purchased is Streethawk: A Seduction by Destroyer, and a copy of Black Eyes' Cough on vinyl for Alez. I want to listen to the Black Eyes more, and I want Pitchfork to review it. It's a fucking crazy record. I've stolen a lot of music, very little of it notable. I now have a copy of Gentlemen by the Afghan Whigs, which makes me a minority for my age bracket. They're a nineties indie rock band, but not one the very good ones, and they've fallen out of fashion. Archers Of Loaf are way better.

Like many of my blog entries, this one ends when my urge to shit becomes to much to take. That is to say, now.

Keeping in touch sucks. I suppose it's a necessary evil, but I do not enjoy it very much at all. Today I called up Evie Nelson, talked to her on the phone. Evie will be reading this, and I don't want her to get confused: she is one of my favorite people. Many of the people reading this are some of my favorite people. People I want to keep in touch with, in a certain way. I want to know what they're up to, where their head is at.

But, more than that, I wish I was with them. Right now, I am living my life in limbo. In a perfect world, that is not the case. I am with these people who I sincerely enjoy, and we are doing things and having adventures, having shared stimuli to talk about. Without the constant stream of shared stimuli, conversations become dull and vague, trading in Jungian universal experiences and pronouns. (or movies and tv and news and music and shit... fun but feels shallow) Right now, I wish I was traipsing around California, living some kind of greatest hits reel of someone else's life, talking with her old friends and ex-friends, arbitrarily deciding that some of them suck and telling them so, because these aren't people I'll see again. I'll get yelled at later for it, but what the fuck, fun times, these are the memories that we share.

Or instead of California, it's Portland, or Alaska, or... Not Chichester, obviously, but I suppose I could hang out on other people's college campuses for short bursts of time when the school year starts. In theory. This is not actually going to happen.

Of course, if some one visited me in Olympia I might feel awkward about the convergence of lives new and old. I'm aware that this is true for other people's lives as well, so maybe adventures in someone else's life that is seperate from my own is not what I want. Maybe the different circles of friends should stay home and only the geography would remain. I'd show kids from Olympia around Philadelphia, showing them places to eat and how cheap CDs are if you know the right places. If kids from high school went to Olympia, I would obviously have nothing to show them. But still...

I lamented yesterday that it's fucked up that work is pretty much all I have in the way of a social life. But, in a way, going to work/school, or living near people just might be the ideal in terms of interaction. Something constant. Trading off reading material, knowing the same people and having inside jokes, because you sure as hell can't make new inside jokes over phone lines. Friendship over phone lines, or via the postal service, feels like homework. It's rewarding homework, but still, homework.

Also: thinking about the people I know, and am friends with... The more shared experiences I have with them, the bigger the space they occupy in my brain. The easier my thoughts run in their directions. Complex neuropathway maps of associations. There are people who I think about when I think of high school, when I think of college, when I listen to music, when I think about movies. Keeping in touch segments them off into little compartments, file cabinets full of information about people, "where are they now?" pieces of trivia.

And even if I met up with these people, shared a lunch or something and a conversation, even that isn't optimal because the conversation is about "keeping in touch," the telling of old stories (not of shared nostalgia, although sometimes that occurs as well) rather than the creation of new events.

Basically, I crave adventure, and it's easiest to get excited about people I'll be spending time with in the future. (Alex and Loren: I've got an idea for a movie! Maybe you don't want to be involved, which is cool. But you'll be around when I try to get other people involved! It'll be sweet! Also, maybe adventures in rockbanding? Loren on bass, Alex on laptop, fun times playing shows in downtown Olympia? Goddamn, that'd be rad! Let's fucking rock that action!) Which sucks, as there are many people who I won't be spending time with in the future who I would love to be excited about because they're fucking cool, and I care about them.

So I've been thinking about my recent past in the vague terms of "growing up," looking at myself from not-that-long-ago (high school years) and just wondering about the general what-the-fuckness of it all. I'm not even particularly immature, but just looking at the people that surrounded me and the contradictions makes me wonder. It's hard to articulate.

Basically, I look at myself from not that long ago... let's say when I was in ninth grade... Four to five years ago. In many ways, I'm a different person. In many ways, I'm innately the same person. Which is an interesting contradiction, but not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is how, when viewed as a narrative, I don't quite know how I got from point A to point B.

The thing is that I viewed myself as having my shit together at that time. But I've viewed myself in such a fashion for a while... Probably since I was eight. This is pretty much how everyone operates, I figure. But, in high school, also thrown into the equation is this feeling of "it's all downhill from here." Not in terms of "these-are-the-greatest-years-of-my-life"... From that perspective, nowhere to go but up. But in terms of having a fear of the loss of ideals, that people associate with maturity.

When the film Waking Life came out, a lot of people seemingly dismissed it and the ideas put forth as being sophomoric. A lot of things are dismissed as sophomoric... i.e. dick jokes. Waking Life was being trashed for having an idealism about it's ideas and being in love with philosophical discussion in a way that people felt like they had outgrown when they left their dorms. Which kind of proves my point as mentioned above. I mention Waking Life also because these are ideas that are kind of touched upon in one scene. But yeah, sophomoricism, I guess, encompasses both philosophical discussion and being a fan of dick jokes. (What's sad is the low level of discussion I've encountered even at my hippie college... It rarely goes on as is, if this is the high point, no one on Earth has any reason to exist.) Usually it's because being a sophomore (I was always unclear as to whether or not this referred to college or high school) is often synonymous with getting high. (Which I guess could account for the low quality of the discussion, but the implication seems to be that if people didn't get high, they wouldn't think about anything larger than themselves ever.) Anyway, as anyone reading this knows, I am a fan of both the philosophical discussion and the dick jokes. These things seem pretty goddamn innate. (Seriously, if it's not my sense of humor and the thinking of deep thoughts, what the fuck are the defining elements of my personaity? Bad social skills? Fuck, I thought that was something I was getting over...) I don't think I'll outgrow them, and at this point in my life, I don't want to. But the idea of personal growth looms on the horizon like grim death.

There is of course the possibility that my life isn't going to make sense as a narrative until I am very old, which I don't want to consider because it goes against my belief that I am on top of my shit right now, at age nineteen, and as self-aware as I ever will be. (It is the self-aware writer part of me that laments the use of parentheses in this and the previous paragraph.)

Oh, more movies I had rented, but had forgotten to discuss.

El Topo: I had an even more lukewarm to this than I did to Santa Sangre, as this is more rambling and not as tight in terms of narrative. So it produced moments of "what the fuck" in that way, not the good way.

Dead Man: This was cool.

Last Temptation of Christ: I guess I'm just not feeling the Schrader/Scorsese team. Which is disappointing.

Um, I also watched my brother's copy of Fistful Of Dollars. I was often confused by what was going on. I'm thinking that the western, even the cool kind of western, not the John Wayne killing people who are darker-skinned than he, is not my genre, no matter how much I would want it to be.

It would seem that my coworkers are the closest thing I have to friends right now, in that going to work is all I have in the way of social interaction. And it's not like I even like all of my coworkers. And I doubt any of them consider me anything more than a weird dude.

So, that's a sad state of affairs.

In the absence of real events we talk about movies, and in absence of criticism, we just throw some shit out there: I saw 2LDK, Lady Snowblood, and Human Nature. 2LDK was good, I wish I had fast-forwarded through Lady Snowblood. (there was a bit in Coupland's Microserfs about everyone being so busy at work that they couldn't watch tv, so instead they would record it with subtitles on, then play it the next day, fast-forwarded while they ate lunch, and the idea of doing that with foreign films has stuck with me. Not the artsy kind, but martial arts movies with long periods of tedium, like Lady Snowblood kind of was) Human Nature was underrated, and I enjoyed it a good deal.

I would like to apologize to anyone reading this for having wasted their time so thoroughly. I wish that instead of these journal entries you could just see footage of me working at work, edited in such a way so all you get is my non-stop cleverness.

I could write a whole letter to Alex just about music and pitchfork and shit. In brief: David Bowie's Low is not that good, neither are the Fiery Furnaces. Funkadelic's Maggot Brain is pretty damn great though, not funky/danceable at all really... I've heard some of their other stuff that is more in that vein and I'm not feeling it as much, but Maggot Brain is pretty solid. Also: Some crackhead came into the store yesterday selling stolen CDs. She had good shit, but sometimes the good shit was just the packaging and different things were contained therein, like a copy of the first Godspeed record in the case for Spiderland. What sucked is I thought she had a copy of a Destroyer record, but when I looked at the CD, which had very little information on it, just a map of constellations, what I took to be the label and the CD number corresponded to something completely different, what it was I don't know. Also: A copy of Fennesz's Venice, which I kind of wanted to see if I could buy on the cheap then send your way. Oh dude, and the good record store in Philly actually sells a copy of Girl Talk's Unstoppable. And there's this band that played in Philly called Growing that are from Olympia, but are apparently signed to Kranky, they're like harsh drone stuff, ex-hardcore kids or something like that.

This computer... the keys don't give as quickly as I would like them to.

My doppelganger from college came into my store not that long ago, which was kind of weird. A group of people from high school stumbled in as well, that same night. That was a crazy night, in a way, but disappointing... these were not people I was friends with. this was an altogether different clique. I've seen other people, on South Street, who I didn't hang out with either.

So yeah, I might've said this before, but I'll say it again, because it seems appropriate for me not to know whether or not I've actually said it before: I am living in limbo.

At some point, I stopped looking like a clean-cut nerdy kid. This is if experiences with people where I work are anything to go by. Like when drunk girls ask me if I'm tripping, and it amuses me to say yes. They then ask what I'm on, and if I can get some. They later compliment my shoes.

Or today, when I left work at 2:15 and ran into a customer and his wife on the street. The customer in question frequents the store, asking for help to locate several CDs, then buying maybe one. In the past he's tried to pay in cigarettes, but today he apparently tried to pay using a piece of paper with a girl's phone number. Anyway, I run into this dude who asks me if I have any rolling papers on me to roll a joint. I say no, I don't smoke out. The wife inquires as to the phrase "smoke out" and why I say it. I admit that just heard it somewhere and thought it sounded cool. Anyway, yeah, they proceed to ask me if I smoke weed. I say no. They ask if I do shrooms, then they ask if I do hash. I say no to all these things. Then the wife asks if i'm working tommorrow, and if she can borrow a dollar until then. I tell her no, because I swear to God, I don't have anything but pennies in my pocket. She shakes my hand, which the husband had already done. I think she told me I was hardcore, but that might just be something I really wanted to imagine I heard.

I also lended my stool to the very young daughter of a woman with a giant yellow mohawk in the store, despite my sleepiness. This has nothing to do with people thinking I'm a drug dealer, but everything to do with me thinking I'm a bad-ass.

I was quite tired tonight.

Latest coworker is a thirty-two-year-old, which is odd because she's someone who I feel I could list a few personality traits and come up with a stereotype, based on people at Evergreen. The stereotype: Vegetarian lesbian ex-goth who smokes American Spirits. Do you know what that means, or do I just create stereotypes because I am filled with hate? Anyway, doesn't respond to my deadpan humor... Although I'm not sure any of my coworkers do with any regularity... she wore a Liars t-shirt her first day and a Sonic Youth t-shirt today, so I guess that's someone I can be cool with. Today people were listening to Big L and I was wondering if she was offended, because hot damn, Big L is some hateful shit. She was in fact offended. I agreed that it was offesive, but then she said some rant about people just saying offensive things to be considered "cutting edge" and asking what illiterates could listen to something like this, and I explained that I was dead inside, no longer offended. She said something about "when did it become cool not to be offended" or something along those lines, and I just told her I disagreed and refused to have such thoughts because they seem very "old dude way of thinking." Weirdly enough, when I said this I wasn't thinking of the age difference. I wasn't viewing her as being 32, I was just viewing her like those kind of people at Evergreen who are offended by things.

I am rambling, but that is because I desperately need sleep.

Been meaning to write something in this, open letters to a few people. Blogging really isn't that easy when you don't have a computer with a cable connection. I might just try to contact people individually.

Anyway, the latest. My dad had a heart attack, but didn't die. He'll have to eat healthier now, although I don't know if he will. I wonder if he's done coke. Which is a weird thing to wonder about your dad. Most people know if their parents have done coke, or have no reason to suspect. My dad hangs out with strippers, so I'm thinking he's been around coke. Can't really ask him about it, though. My mom got fired from the inner-city Christian school she worked at, essentially because she doesn't understand black people. She might put it differently, but I mean, holy shit, she really doesn't understand even the barest bones of the culture, I think. I want to ask her if she knows how important Malcolm X is to most black families... He's known for being militant and muslim, so I'm sure my mom dismisses him. She says dumb shit. Moving on.

Saw two movies in theaters, both sequels to films I haven't seen. Spider-Man 2 and Before Sunset. Both are good if you like that kind of thing. I like the Before Sunset kind of thing more... Richard Linklater's great. I've wanted to see Before Sunrise for ages. It seems like it would be Lost In Translation done right. Before Sunset is a very talky movie, but in a way closer to everyday speech than most talky movies, in that much of the conversation comes across as fairly banal. None of the high-minded discussion of Waking Life finds it's way into the movie. And yet, it's still good. A few scenes are great, like the fact that the movie ends the way it does. It seems kind of defiant.

Before leaving Olympia, some people wanted to know my e-mail address. I told them not to bother, because I wouldn't be getting online that much. Even when I said this, it was partly a lie, partly wishful thinking. But no, I'm online a bunch. My e-mail address is embarrassing, created as it was when I was in sixth grade, a reference to an obscure comic book I loved then. But here I am, in Philadelphia, on my brother's computer, which resides in the room I sleep in. It's his studio. I sleep on the floor. My stuff is crammed into one small corner when I am not asleep. When I am asleep, I spread sheets across the open part of the floor. Looked at people's Livejournals. Thor met Stephen Malkmus and saw Need New Body. Need New Body live in Philadelphia and I've yet to see them. I have no real reason to meet Stephen Malkmus, but I'm sure that if I did, it would be the high point of the month.

I have a part-time job working in a really shitty record store. It's owned by a fat dude. He buys things cheap from flea markets and stuff then marks them up. It's really terrible. I get paid... I guess six bucks an hour? And it's part-time... For two days work, Saturday and Sunday, I got fifty bucks. This would suck, except: Because I am sleeping on a floor in my brother's studio, I'm only paying $100 a month for rent. I also have to help him keep shit clean, but that's a good deal. Oh, and there's soon going to be a second store, so I can work full-time. It's seriously absurd that he can open a second store. His is the worst record store on South Street, and there's a lot of competition for that title. It's open late. That seems to be the only thing it has going for it. It has diversity, but mainly because the owner's retarded. Still. I'm getting paid, and it's a reference to put down. Is it weird that they don't call themselves a record store, they call themselves a CD store? Even other places that sell nothing but CDs seem to call themselves record stores if they market themselves to a very music-savvy demographic. (i.e. Tower Records) This place doesn't. It's a store for retards. Someone asked me where the oldies section was. I told them we didn't have an oldies section, but if she told me what she wanted, I could find it in the existing sections. What she meant by oldies: "like the old Biggie and Tupac." No one I tell that story to laughs at it. It's fucking hilarious. Biggie and Tupac aren't even old-school hip-hop. Ready To Die came out in 1994. But, hey, they hired me. I didn't have to fill out a job application, either. Just walked in, gave my name, phone number, and told them I was eighteen.

Every time I walk home I want to drink milk as soon as I get back. The Freudian interpretation of this is that, when I work, I feel like an adult and want to drink milk to bring me back to childhood. A more practical explanation is that I have a very poor diet, lacking in calcium, and after I do work, I need calcium. Before I got the job, my roommate said to me "Nothing like a cold one after a day at work," and I just kind of agreed in a vague sense. You know, how I do.

When I go to sleep, I dream that I'm still at Evergreen. None of my friends are in Olympia, though.

Philadelphia isn't living up to its history of being awesome. I wish there were shows to see. I wish there were independent films to see. I need to eat more food. I've been eating at Lorenzo's a lot, which I missed, but it's not the full experience. I've also had water ice once or twice. Also: the comic shop on South Street is fucking weird, too. It caters to a bizarre demographic. I believe the term is "buppies." Only they're not that young. I mean black people that seem stereotypically white. I did overhear a comment about the racial politics of an issue of G.I. Joe, but... it's just weird. It's like dads. It's probably the only shop, comic or otherwise, I've been at the same time as a uniformed cop. Oh, and their selection is pretty crappy as well. It's really generic superhero centric. If you're a black cop in your thirties/forties who really digs The Flash, it's the fucking store for you.

On the good side: TLA Video has copies of El Topo and The Holy Mountain, as well as Eraserhead on DVD. I need to see those. TLA Video is something I missed about Philadelphia. I also got to see Pedro The Lion doing a little acoustic set behind Spaceboy. I missed Spaceboy, but I haven't bought anything from there yet.

So, where is the grass greenest? I want everybody to take a picture of some grass in their area. I mean "grass" in the literal sense, and you are not clever if you photograph marijuana instead. I want those photos of grass to also include that which is awesome about the area in which they're at. This idea just came to me, and I don't think anyone's actually going to do it. I don't even know if anyone else would find it at all amusing to do. I'm just typing crazy type.

So, my thoughts over the past few hours have concerned themselves with the question of whether I should go to sleep or not. I'm going to be hitting the road at 5:30 AM. I figured I'd fit in some sleep. So I packed up the computer and hit the sheets. Sleep didn't come. I thought about my diet, of eating one hearty meal per day then coasting by on simple sugars for the rest of the day. The sugars shouldn't be found in beverages, and only water should be consumed. I call this the cheap bastard diet. It works for me, but it's probably really unhealthy. What sucks is it's not going to work for me tomorrow, due to lack of availability of both hearty meals and simple sugars. Damn you airplanes. Also thought about how I'm going to spending six hours in Chicago. If only I knew people in Chicago. I also came up with the idea that there should be bus services that run, constantly, from airports to the downtown area for people with long stop-over flights, and people who needed to get from downtown to the airport for one reason or another. I think this idea would work perfectly, and make a shitload of money for both the bus and the downtown area. For all I know, there's a bus set-up like this in Chicago, and I'll end up doing shit in Chicago. Here's hoping. Anyway, with all of my thinking, sleep didn't come, and then my upstairs neighbor turned on music. Which made me think "fuck sleep." So I got up, stripped my bed, pulled out the laptop and the ethernet cable. Of course, almost as soon as I got out of bed, the music stopped. Hence keeping up my tradition of not being a person who does smart things. And, really, this isn't facetious self-deprecation. I might be known for being a fairly intelligent person, but I'm also kind of known to do the dumbshit.

God, I hate my hair right now. I liked it nonexistent, and I liked it shaggy as fuck. But right now, the length it's at, combined with my general style of dress of wearing white t-shirts, I look very... manual labor. If I wear a button-down shirt, I look prep school as all hell. Mainly I don't concern myself with my appearance that much, but that's because I generally don't look like anything, really.

I really don't like the current airport setup that stops people from waiting at the terminal. I hate getting off a plane and just walking to the baggage claim, and just thinking "at some point I'll run into the people who are looking for me." What the fuck is with that? Oh, and having people wait with you to board a plane is nice too, as opposed to the whole set-up of just dropping you off and saying your goodbyes then.

Don't know what I'm going to read on the plane/in the airport. The food issue is a bigger one, though.

Hm. I'm thinking now that I'm going to turn off the computer, put it back in my bookbag, and start reading Invisible Man. Maybe I'll end up finishing it in 24 hours. Maybe I'll just do some writing. Maybe I'll end up falling asleep in spite of my saying "fuck sleep."

I probably won't be able to post for awhile after today/early tomorrow, but right now my mind is in that manic state it sometimes gets, so maybe there'll be enough of my witticisms posted to tide you over.

When I was looking at colleges and expressed an interest in going to Reed, I would get all kinds of shit from them. Some of the things I would receive would be little more than postcards or flyers that did little more than kill the earth. I got one of these that had a Dorothy Parker quote on it. You know, amp up the kid's excitement with a little Dorothy Parker, so they'll be more willing to give this college their money should they be accepted. I wasn't a fan of the practice, nor of the sentiment expressed in the quote. The quote was "The only cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

That's the quote I'm talking about when I think about wanting my epitaph to read "Fuck You Dorothy Parker."

A thought occurred to me last time I was flying over Pennsylvania, down to the Philadelphia airport. The cabin pressure would naturally build on the plane's decline, so there were adjustments made within the cabin. I'm not sure what exactly caused the feeling in the air. At the same time, I was leaving college, and going back home. My feelings regarding that situation were confused as well. Somewhere around 24 hours from now, this situation will be relived. And I share with you the thought I thought better than to share with my neighbor on the plane this past December:

Is this a release or a buildup of pressure?

Thought I was done my packing, everything could either now be put in luggage or thrown away. Then I remembered some other stuff, on top of my dresser. Two small speakers which are essentially dead to me, unusable, and I need to see if I can give away. Also, detergent and fabric softener, which I can pack but that might be kind of retarded. Also, now that I think about it, cleaning supplies under the sink. My hippie neighbor's listening to a mix that's surprisingly listenable. I paid attention during Beulah, opened all doors. Then Reasons by Built to Spill came on, then something that sounded like Neil Young maybe then something that sounded like Jimmy Eat World maybe. Now, Dramamine by Modest Mouse. Yeah.

No quarters to do laundry. Dirty clothes on the floor, to be thrown into luggage. Big money in my wallet, enough hopefully to cover one month's rent.

Summer reading list, growing. I've kind of given up on the Paul Auster. Invisible Man still looks likely to read. After that, I'm thinking Gravity's Rainbow. Also: Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Something Happened by Joseph Heller. I saw that for like a quarter at a bookstore downtown, but declined to buy it thinking that it might've been the sequel to Catch-22, and fuck that action. But apparently, Something Happened is fucking brilliant, so I should check that out. I've also been meaning to read Ficciones by Borges. Also, in the realm of poetry, still want to read David Berman's Actual Air, and Maldoror, eighteenth century surrealist poem about nature of evil or somesuch thing. I think my uncle owns a copy and has read it. That one's kind of a low priority.

Have I ever declared my goal of wanting to read Ulysses before I turn 21? If not, I'll do so now. That won't happen this summer though. But it will happen eventually. I'll probably start next summer. I wonder if I'll give up and say "fuck it" fifty pages in.

Pyramid Song's playing now. I've got more cleaning to do.

So, most things are boxed up and in storage now. Everybody's gone. This is nice, in a way, because it makes it easier for me to reconcile my present status with my near-future status. When all my friends were here, it made the summmer hard to imagine. Now, it looms larger, and is easier to conceive, if not necessarily to look forward to.

I'm listening to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists right now. And you know, experimental record and a punk background aside, this dude is really fucking classic rock. Sure, there's the politics, and the literature references, but I just can't get into it that much. I can get into it easier than I can get into, say, actual classic rock, and I might still want to see him live, but my actual response to the records is one of almost ambivalence. There are some enjoyable moments, but mainly, it just doesn't speak to me.

It seems like I should be able to tie those things together, and yet I can't. I am tired, tomorrow looks to be a fairly busy day, I am anxious about the future and annoyed with music. There's a Brainiac song that's been running through my head as of late, and it sums everything up: Nothing Ever Changes.

Today, I told my friend Loren the only thing that would make me stay in Olympia, so I will now tell you all. The only reason I would stay in Olympia post-graduation would be if I opened a record store. Now, owning a record store isn't a dream of mine. It's just something I think I could do well, and much better than the two other stores that currently exist in this town. I am pretty sure I could kick their asses and run them out of business.

Oh, didn't there used to be a thing being passed around blogs about putting itunes or an ipod on random and then listing the first twenty songs that came up? Because I did that this Friday, didn't ever list the songs. I started off with the first song, then put it on shuffle, it ended up much better than I expected, being listenable all the way through.
McLusky- There Ain't No Fool In Ferguson
The Kinks- Sitting By The Riverside
Parliament- Tear The Roof Off The Sucker
Sleater-Kinney- Things You Say
Wilco- I'm A Wheel
Yo La Tengo- The Sea Horse
Ween- Sarah
The Kinks- Animal Farm
Jim O'Rourke- Get A Room
Nathaniel Merriweather/Lovage- Anger Management
Beck- Side Of The Road
Mirah- Advisory Committee
Husker Du- Dreams Reoccuring
Fugazi- Latin Roots
The Books- All Bad Ends All
David Bowie- Warszawa
Fennesz- Rivers Of Sand
Prefuse 73- Coming Into Something Better
Quasi- Repetition
Sufjan Stevens- A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Today I saw two movies at the Capital Theatre- Secret Things and Spartan. Secret Things... Not sure it had a point/went anywhere interesting. Not sure the relationship between the two main characters was that realistic. A little over-the-top. Well-photographed. Fairly pornographic, I guess, but somehow avoids male frontal nudity (even when there's an orgy scene). Basically as mediocre as any number of movies I've watched on my own, but with more nudity to make it more enjoyable, and more over-the-top than the average mediocre indie film. (could be because it's French) When I talk about it being over-the-top, I'm mainly talking about the end. After the antagonist dies (who's Very Very Evil, and in an incestuous relationship with his sister) an eagle picks at his flesh. And, like, the eagle belonged to this woman whose silhouette showed up at certain points in the movie? Was that the deal? I don't even know what that was, really. I really thought the silhouette thing would end up being awesome, but I guess it was just a woman with a bird. The thought now occurs to me it could've been symbolic, but of what, I have no idea.

Spartan was surprisingly good. Almost wanted to leave early on, then got interested. Val Kilmer is a huge fucking asshole, and sometimes says some very action-movie type shit. Still, good, with lots of twists. Some people apparently talk about how political it is in that it condemns the person in the White House. Which, on one hand, is total bullshit, in that, with the exception of a reference to terror and the prescence of some muslims, there really isn't the slightest connection between our current real president and the fictional one. Wag The Dog, also by David Mamet, is way more fucking political and related to things that were occurring in the White House at the time of its release. Although, Wag The Dog serves as an interesting parallel if Spartan is viewed as being political. Wag The Dog was much more political, but it was also a satire, which seemed to fit with the time of the late '90s. Spartan's a thriller with lots of shooting, which seems to fit the modern zeitgeist. It's an interesting note, but if Spartan really did nail the zeitgeist, I think more people would've seen it. Who the fuck saw Spartan? Jason did, because Jason cares about David Mamet. Unlike Wag the Dog, I don't think anyone saw Spartan based on the press it received. Which is weird, as it really is a fairly effective thriller. Maybe reviewers were bothered by how big an asshole Val Kilmer plays. Or, more likely, people heard the retarded premise (President's daughter's kidnapped! Hey, I saw that episode of The West Wing, and it seemed cliched then, as well.) and wrote it off. But it ends up having more twists and being much smarter than that premise.

Also, yesterday I finished writing this short story, Companion, that I'd been at for awhile. I added very little to what was already there, but the little I added constituted an ending. The day before that, I began writing Get Broken.

I also started reading Paul Auster's In The Country Of Last Things, which I'm not sure I'll finish. I thought that would be my summer reading, and after that I'd start reading Invisible Man but this book isn't that great, and the tone is depressing. If a book's going to be depressing, it had better be fucking brilliant. I really don't think this is. So I might just go right to Invisible Man. I'm also thinking that after that, I'll give Gravity's Rainbow a go.

I have a bowl that I stole from the school cafeteria. I planned on returning it, but the cafeteria's not going to be open this week. I guess that means I keep it forever. C'est la vie.

So, I've been viewing things in terms of a one-week threshold. Like, a week from yesterday, I'll be on a plane headed home. A week from today, I'll be worrying my ass off in regards to finding a place to work. Holy shit.

I'm not done my packing yet.

I woke up this morning with The Blow's cover-with-new-lyrics of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic stuck in my head. It hasn't left. It's really good. The only thing better than women singing about fucking is women singing about fucking with sapphic overtones, I reckon. Song's not on any records, she just did two versions of it live on Monday night. So, it sticks.

I have all my CDs packed. I also had my last class today, a party at the beach followed. I packed while listening to Deerhoof's Milk Man, and the urge to jump up and down and dance and spaz out came.

Watched Rushmore again last night. I had forgotten how it ended, which is a common occurence, but I'd forgotten a lot of the film. Wes Anderson movies get better the more you watch them, funnier. I really need to watch Bottle Rocket again, as that's another one I've mostly forgotten. Ah, Rushmore. I just watched it thinking "This is such a great movie" and laughing at things I didn't laugh at the first time.

Also, if I ever get a book published, I expect everyone reading this to steal a copy. I would give out comp copies, but no, I recommend stealing.

Things are coming to an end. I had my last seminar this afternoon, finished reading White Noise, found a box large enough to hold most of my books and packed it and sealed it with duct tape.

More importantly, I found out that a really good friend, my first at Evergreen, is leaving. It was up in the air for a while there, but now it's sealed. Not only is she leaving, but two of the dudes in my class I got along with (probably the best) are leaving as well. What sucks is that this really isn't surprising: At this college, the people I befriend are the ones who are most likely to dislike it. Because, you know, there's a lot of bullshit at this college, and the people who don't see it as bullshit I want nothing to do with. I see the bullshit, but... There's a lot to like about this school as well. There's also a part of me not sure how I'd fare at a regular college anymore.

Some people I'm friends with are staying. My two best male friends at Evergreen will end up being my roommates come fall. Still, I'm going to have to make a lot more friends, and am going to have to work my ass off to find people that awesome. And they'll probably leave as well, once the horror strikes in. Fuck, I had a good program, and I had it all year. There's the possibility that I won't be as happy this time next year and will be fed the fuck up. I really don't know how the program I'm enrolled in is going to work out. Granted, I didn't know how Looking Backward was going to work out, and that ended up working out quite nicely. I blunder my way through life.

Loren and I watched The Dirty Dozen. He got it from Netflix thinking western, ends up being a World War II movie. Either way, Loren and I watched it, as ambassadors from Man Country to this here hippie college. A problem I have with World War II movies, or any war movie, is their glorification of the military, and by extension the whole "fall in line" mentality. Fuck the military. Some of you are now going "haha, you go to a hippie college and you fit in there, jackass" but: While I was bored/annoyed for most of the movie, when the Germans got fucked up and shit went BOOM the movie became all worthwhile.

During it, my mind turned to something weird to me that probably shouldn't be. That being: I'm pretty much done with my program. I have to do the whole self-evaluation bit, but that is it. The rest is packing and preparing to go back to Philadelphia. The weird thing is this: I'm coming back. Not in terms of the whole friends thing, although that probably adds to it in that it gives me less to return to, but in terms of... I'm going across the country. To the east coast. Then, come September, I'm back here. Not the same thing as last fall, where it was a big momentous move. It was an event.

All I feel now is a vague disconnect basically. Rather than taking the form of alienation from those around me, as it has in the past, it's more of a feeling of confusion as to my future. Way more than last year, when I knew where I was going. I didn't know what it would be like, but my life had a feeling of purpose and direction. It seems like a second year of college will just feel like limbo. Or at least that's how it's looking to me right now. It makes me regret how little writing I got done this year.

A life in limbo. High school felt like that too, I guess, but then I had a lot of friends, and a lot of enemies, and just basically knew where I stood. Those friends... I rarely talk to them. And I'm in a different place than they are, nowadays. Literally and figuratively.

And this summer I'll be living with my brother, probably seeing none of those friends, and probably not making any new ones either as I will not have that opportunity as I'll be living life through the filter of my brother. And most of my books and all my records will be in storage in Olympia. I'll have the laptop I'm typing this on, and a shortbox with some comics, maybe a few novels, and a notebook and a pen to call my own. I might not even have a bed. My only insistence is that I don't have the same job as last year, working with my dad. I expected the Summer to be spent in limbo, in isolation. That the fall will be much the same way is kind of a bizarre thought.

Yes: I know this is how life works. I have free will too, and that's kind of a bitch in a lot of ways.

Saw The Blow tonight. Other people played as well- Anna Oxygen, Tiger Saw, and Viking Moses. Hadn't heard of the latter two. It turned out they sucked, especially Tiger Saw. Anna Oxygen I had heard of, but hadn't heard the music... It was all really bad new-wave disco electro pop type stuff. I guess new-wave disco might not be the best description, because... imagine eighties Madonna but more avant-garde in terms of a stage show. That's my impression.

The Blow was cool though, even though she mainly just sang along to some karaoke beats. The beats were pretty nice, and there was some lyrical improvisation. In the absence of karaoke beats, there would be people either singing like "oh-oh-oh" or, for the first song, nothing but a capella. A capella but with a heavy hip-hop influence for, you know, some Olympia white girl on K records. It's more dominant live than on record... The record is good though, and although I didn't know quite where I stood at first on the karaoke beats, by the end I considered her a good performer.

Saw so many vaguely familar faces, from going to this school, riding the bus, going to shows, and eating burritos. Small scene in this town. It's kind of bizarre knowing so many people at least by sight when you view yourself as an outsider. I'm sure that I was but a few steps removed from the other people I didn't know, if I count the musicians as being people I know. (and I did in terms of my discussion of familiar faces)

I walked to the show and got a ride back, in the process of the ride back kind of meeting new people who talked to the musician people etc. (one girl got the number of the singer from Old Time Relijun) I like viewing myself as an outsider.

One of those things that I view myself as something that I might not necessarily be. Viewing myself as anti-social, or many other things along similar lines. Always kind of bizarre when I find out that people think I'm confident, as that is not how I view myself. Once it's pointed out, I accept it, rather than dispute it, but I'm nonetheless thrown for a loop.