Oh the night we had. The day we had! The past twelve hours were some kind of amazing. In the afternoon, two of my roommates began tripping on DXM. During this time, I finished the paper that I have to hand in tomorrow, and made large amounts of headway on this short story I was writing, as I listened to Bright Flight by the Silver Jews and Beauty Pill's Cigarette Girl Of The Future EP. These were great albums for the mood I was attempting to get across. Soon I'll finish the short story, and I think I'll put Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea on the stereo. The last time I listened to such a record was, weirdly, the last time Alex did DXM, as I was in the room when it was on the stereo and Soul Calibur was on the television. Months ago.

But, Alex walked in as I was typing away my short story, and once the Beauty Pill EP was done, all of the good roommates who are currently living here went down to the beach. As we walked out the door, we heard the sound of a party that seemed like it was raging, like it might actually be a good party for the first time in Evergreen party. We continued to the beach. A group of people walked by and were all "where are you going? We're going to the PARTY!" and we laughed them off and made our way into the woods. There was a lot of comedic riffing on the walk. It was a good night for the woods, a good night for the beach, a far cry from the creepy vibes there've been in the past. There was some thought that the tide might be up, as the waves were loud. But no, that was not the case, and we stood on the beach and saw bright flashes like explosions in the sky in one isolated spot on the other side of Puget Sound. I stood on the beach, peed once, then sat on a branch for a while and wondered about what was going on. There was a moment where I counted off two thirty-six second intervals between the flashes, but once this was announced, the flashes occurred with less frequency. This added still more mystery to these things that the first thought out of our mouths said were UFOs. Before this attempted to find a pattern where there was none, I said that we should make piece with everything, and Alex said that it was a good night for it. And it was. I'm not really getting across the full extent of it, but there was a good feeling in the air. These are the nights of Neutral Milk Hotel (and the days of Animal Collective and Boredoms) and ending short stories that strive to communicate what it feels like to be connected with life.

Today I also read an amazing interview with Alan Moore about craft while listening to Alan Moore interview Brian Eno. This is mentioned, for those who know about Alan Moore and Promethea 12 and all that, as a prelude to the next bit.

A few nights ago Loren had his tarot cards read and the tower came up. The tower is being struck with lightning. This is what that feels like.

Today there were Netflix. We watched Mr. Show, laughed, and in doing so, got called racists by our new roommate who thought one bit went too far.

The bit in question was about Hitler clones becoming servants of Holocaust survivors as a reparation for the Holocaust.

It was hilarious. To us.

But to him? Offensive!

So we all got called racists. Including me, the Jew, and Evan, the Asian.

What minority is he, you ask? I didn't know. So I asked him if he was gay, or black. He said "No."

Then I pointed out that David Cross was Jewish. He maintained that the skit was racist.

Later on, during another Mr. Show skit, there was a reference to the Vonnegut novel Hocus Pocus. Alex said it was the only Vonnegut novel he had read. To which the new roommate replied "Not even Catcher In The Rye?"

So we set him on fire.

We also watched Dead Leaves, described by someone on the internet as the most bugfuck anime ever. It can also be described as next level shit. It's coherent kind of, in that it's largely a vehicle for extremely well-animated (but bugfuck insane!) violence propelled by annoying characters who you're supposed to think are badass for their attitude. It's poorly written. But it's good in the way that extremely violent japanese animation should be. It delivers on a certain level. Asking the characters to not be annoying as hell is almost asking too much, especially when you're asking for something to meet the incredibly vague criterion of being next-level shit. Dear lord, was it fun. I enjoyed it the most when none of the characters were talking, and they didn't really talk that much. It's the kind of violence that makes you giggle and go "holy shit" and "fucking awesome" to your friends that you watch it with. People who are into shit like Dragonball Z but not shit like Dead Leaves (like our new roommate, coincidentally) should be shot on principle.

Was the best thing about that last sentence how I used two different meanings of shit to prove my point and expected the reader to just read along and know what I meant by my tone, or when I talked about how my new roommate should be shot?

I or someone else I live with really needs to buy floor soap because right now I'm just mopping with hot water which isn't doing shit and the mop is getting mildewy and spreading mildew around is probably worse than the peedrops that hang out around the front of the toilet.

This is one part note to myself, one part note to roommates, but I think it's a pretty accurate representation of my life and how I live it to those reading elsewhere.

Finished reading the Marquez but already wrote my comments in a letter and it would be cheap to reuse. Let it be known (throughout the land!) that I have read Marquez and am smart and literate and have a dick the size of a damned canoe. And maybe I can't compete with the people who've read Dostoevsky and have dicks the size of yachts, but surely I'm better than all those people who only read Tom Clancy and have dicks the size of vaginas.

Two nights ago, Alex, Loren, and I attempted to write/practice the music to another Art Project song. I felt really strongly about the theories behind it, and I'll maintain the component parts were solid. When combined it all went horribly awry and sounded like utter shit. I kind of don't know where it all went wrong, although I'm placing most of the blame on my shitty guitar line. (Part of the idea was that I'd write a guitar line and perform it... And although I said earlier that the component parts were strong, and people were all "it's kind of Pixies-ish" and understood that it was meant to be angular and dissonant it really was the weakest element...) Deterred? Yeah, kind of, but... I don't know, I stand by a lot of it and hopefully the whole thing will be completed by the end of the week. The fact that I am an idea guy and the Art Project is an idea band I think gives us an edge over other ventures headed up by non-idea people.

Also to be completed by the end of the week: Short story I'm writing now, (current title is For Those Who Lived It) some kind of essay for my Saturday class, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, and maybe maybe Camus' The Plague. Got a hundred pages of Marquez to finish tomorrow and then I'll enter Camus country, but that book is considerably thicker than The Stranger.

February 24th is Mt. Eerie and The Evens (Ian Mackaye's new band) at Eagles Hall for $5.

Oh and the YACHT dude what did The Blow Poor Aim EP much beloved around these parts will be doing her next full-length too, and it'll be called Hit Factory or somesuch wacky thing. And apparently the next Sleater-Kinney record will sound different from their other stuff. It's their Sub Pop debut and produced by Dave Fridmann. The Low Sub Pop debut that Dave Fridmann produced is kind of alright.

Here at headquarters we are excited by the leaks of the new Prefuse 73 and Books albums. If I end up talking to Phil Elvrum at that show I will either encourage him to collaborate with the Books or just tell him my weird logic comedy bit about how I imagine live shows with Bill Gates in his band on weather-controlling device. None of these things will go over well probably but if we don't try to ingratiate ourselves to people based on little more than how nice it would be were we in their good graces, there would be no more human reproduction.

And now you're all "well sure Brian I suppose that that is technically true but that is talking about male-female interaction, and does not really apply to nerd-musician interaction at all really" and then I guess I have to be like "well shit shit I guess it's ego and the constant urge to be validated but do I go to your work and slap the dick out of your mouth?" and then you walk away shocked at the completely unnecessary rage that you provoked, but hey you know what: if any of you were prostitutes I probably would slap the dick out of your mouth and say "HEY! You're better than that, you don't have to suck cock for money" and you'd be all "Wow asshole, way to run my life, I don't come to your work/house and slap the dick out of your mouth" and then I'd be offended, because I mean fuck, I was just trying to show some concern, and I don't see how that makes me a whore.

It is late in the evening, in case you couldn't tell. Oh and if I talk to Ian MacKaye I will talk to him about the bands Horses and Flowers, formed by dudes who used to be in Black Eyes. I will do this because I imagine many people have already asked about the next Fugazi record and if he heard the new Soft Pink Truth record and if so what did he think of the Minor Threat cover, but who asks about Black Eyes? No one, probably, but that could be me thinking my thoughts are special thoughts when they are in fact not special thoughts.

Luckily for these people I probably will not end up talking to them, but will instead sit around making jokes about the other people at the show who I don't know with the small circle of people at the show that I do know.

Oh boy sleep, that's where I'm a viking, and by viking, I of course mean "person who has sex."

Goddamn right this is a character assassination just because I usually am just all "records I downloaded for free and didn't pay for weren't very good" doesn't mean I can't let loose with the vaguely comedic self-loathing when 3 AM rolls around.

More tales of bad roommate interaction, or, how to tell if someone is useless.

They say things like "I don't judge someone by their opinions."

They have bad, poorly-thought-out political opinions, esp. the kind that lead to not voting in favor of advocating anarchy.

They hate The Daily Show, and enjoy the comedy stylings of Denis Leary.

When asked who their favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan is, they become confused and say "I'm not familiar with that group." This is a question, by the way, of which most answers would be acceptable. "Method Man" is really the only wrong answer that someone might actually say. Even joke answers are acceptable, even if they are only made out of not knowing what you're talking about.

They express anger at the idea of inside jokes, even when faced with things that aren't inside jokes so much as they are conversational prompts, i.e. "Who's your favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan?"

They don't get jokes, even of the non-inside variety. Except, I suppose, those that Denis Leary make.

Denis fucking Leary.

Also: fucking Megadeath.

They say "this doesn't look like meat" when looking at falafel.

They talk about TV and how to watch it is American, or something.

Most of what they say doesn't really make any sense but seems like something someone dumb would say. This is the most golden of all rules in terms of judging someone as useless. If you need a concrete example of what I mean by this, think "I don't judge someone by their opinions."

There is a new roommate living with us. He is a total goddamn mook.

"He spilled barbecue sauce in the kitchen, and really, I think that's just a metaphor for the whole situation, him living here."- Loren

"DRAGONBALL Z IS THE WORST SHIT EVER" - Alex, on AIM, later said by Loren in real life.

"Is college life like Animal House?"- The Mook, to Alex.

He wants to make the drum kit bigger. We're not sure whether or not he listens to Hoobastank, but we haven't ruled out that that could definitely happen.

He makes me uncomfortable, a sentiment that other people echoed, but was kind of undefined. The kind of uncomfortable you shouldn't have in your own home. All the esoterica and layers of irony that I take for granted that my roommates will understand I can't talk about for fear of having to explain. Kind of the same thing I felt when I lived with my parents, but worse because now there's other people around that I actually want to talk to.

He is dumb. "Dyslexic means backwards" he says, referring to Mega Man controls, after he said they were dyslexic.

He asked if people were into medieval reenactments in such a way that suggested that he is into them.

He saw that we had a Twin Peaks boxset and talked about it in terms of being an old show on ABC he never got into, rather than even kind of suggesting he knows who David Lynch is.

He writes screenplays, a fact which makes me think of the fictional Donald Kaufman rather than my "I'd like to write and direct my own films but I don't know how to direct" stance. He has a collection of Dragonball Z tapes, in case that wasn't made clear earlier.

This is an unpleasant development and we all want him to leave. Goddamn, there's enough drama as is without passive-aggressiveness thrown in. I desperately want to just be able to turn into that loud obnoxious self I get yelled at for being just so I can make it clear that we don't like him and don't want him around because we don't feel like we can be ourselves around him. Until then maybe people will pee/ejaculate into his shampoo.

There was a time where I had to define the term "mook" for Loren. When I did this, I came to the conclusion that mooks are the bane of my existence. Now Loren knows all too well the precise meaning of the word.

In other better news, Alex got on Netflix. That'll be rad.

Although, watching things that are funny/weird around people who don't get them? That is hell. It's fucking hell and I'm going to have to ignore it's the hell I'm living in right now.

So, this post is going to come off as nerdy, as it's about comics. But, if you view it as a metaphor for life, the implications are staggering.

Went to the comic shop today. I'd been planning that the next time I'd go would be two weeks from now. I'd pick up the last issues of three comics, then walk out, and not return for a year. Disengage from the medium, and the culture that surrounds it. Stop seeking out things that are new that I might like but probably won't. Wash my brain out. The culture surrounding comics is fairly disgusting, and from the outside it just seems nerdy, but from the inside it seems psychologically damaged. So to get away from all that... Ah. It would also save me some money. Which I could use, you know, to pay off student loans, and not be in debt until I die.

But I went today, and added some things to my pull list for the future.

And really, this is an idea that's been in my mind for a while, but it seemed like the near future would be the only clean break for the foreseeable future.

So, why?

Obviously, sometimes it's pleasurable. Sometimes the actual work is fucking amazing, life-changing stuff. Not frequently. It's frequently disappointing, but the same can be said for music or movies or whatever. It's fucking insane to do what I was thinking about doing, because it's a medium like any other, and it would be absurd to go without music or movies for a year.

Granted, the thing with music and movies is that to disengage from them would be to disengage from pretty much all conversation with friends. Music and movies make up the majority of my conversation, and this blog. No one I hang out with on a regular basis reads comics though, so it's not like that'd be an issue there.

But, you know, I do know people who read comics, and I meet them, and... It's a good thing to share. It's a small hobby, and there's a certain degree of something there. The small insular attitude is one of the things that disgusts me, but when you meet someone who's down, that's a great moment. And it happens in Olympia. Plus, there's the discussion and the criticism online, which, again: FREQUENTLY HORRIBLE, but is also home to many a smart and funny person.

The reason I wanted to disengage is because it's, in many ways, too much fucking effort to engage to a full level, a level greater than I'm currently at. There's a lot of masterworks to read, and if you want to do that, it's really fucking expensive. Then there's the steady stream of that which gets hype, and to engage that, is really fucking expensive. And to attempt to be on the forefront of something and find out about something and spread the word... That takes money as well. And it takes time. It takes a fuckload of time.

But to disengage from any kind of anything because what you want to do is engage it more than you easily can is fucking nonsense, completely counter-intuitive. And yeah, to engage it is to let it damage you, to put wrinkles on your brain that you'd rather not have. But you fucking deal, because otherwise, what the fuck are you doing?

I'm writing this with a bravado that I don't really have. Part of me regrets that I could've made a clean break. A lot of the work is boring and the spending money on work that's boring blows. This is just the part of my brain that is thinking logically trying to convince the other part of my brain that is also thinking logically. One part's romantic while the other is cynical, but both are functioning properly. There are no misfires. There's work in the future that will inevitably be worth reading, just as there has been in the past. (Not the recent past, which is really the issue... The last time I was really excited by comics was the summer) To ignore it would be to say "fuck you, happiness!" in favor of, you know, mental health. Like mental health has ever been a friend of mine. It hasn't.

Fuck mental health.

My wisdom teeth are coming in at an angle. I don't remember what the dentist had to say when he looked at my x-rays. I remember it not cohering in my mind, and it seemed like they might have been speaking to soon. The plan was for them to be removed over Christmas break, but I would've had to have made the appointment before then, which I didn't know until I brought it up to my mom, and so, the teeth remain. The angle they're coming in at doesn't impact my other teeth, but it does scrape against my mouth.

The nearest oral surgeon is in Bellevue. I can't get there, probably. Alex went in for his teeth not too long ago, it seemed pretty shitty. They gave him weak drugs then insisted they were strong. I can't swallow a pill because I am nine. Every time I tell this to people, they try to tell me how to swallow a pill. I know how to do it in theory. But: Maybe if I were to go, they would give me liquid painkiller? I know of only one liquid painkiller. It is very strong. Still: I can't get to the dentist, so it's a moot point.

Damns but I need to buy some things. Books, for one. Clothing, for another. A wallet. A can opener. The griddle I bought in September is warped.

Halfway through One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I am bothered by lack of themes of any tangibility, besides reoccuring traits in family, which is really not the most interesting thesis. The style's competent, there's a lot of characters. I don't know how I feel about it. I wish there were things going on thematically that I cared about.

Last night I worked out the story I'm writing currently, all the way through until the end, so the plot can actually do what I want to put forth. The teacher I'm having this contract with will probably not enjoy it... Protagonists are young people and they go around doing young people things.

Philadelphia football team's going to the Super Bowl. I doubt they will win. But I am rooting for them. I won't watch though. Unless. The Super Bowl can just be an excuse to eat buffalo wings and drink. Then other people will be down. The Oscars didn't nominate Eternal Sunshine for anything of note, and the categories it's nominated for it won't win. The only thing I like that will win any Oscars will be The Incredibles. The Oscars are shit. They don't get their own paragraph because I think of them much in the same way I think of the Super Bowl. I know that Oscar parties exist, but I don't know what they're like like I know what Super Bowl parties are like. I figure there's less beer and more wine. I imagine everyone just sits around being old and boring. Year-end best-of lists are better than awards because there's a smaller probability of being full of shit. And year-end best-of lists are always TOTALLY FULL OF SHIT.

Hotmail expanded it's mailbox size not too long ago, so now it is absurdly big. I tend not to delete things as is, and this encourages that policy. I haven't deleted the e-mail exchanges I had with my last professor, in order to remind myself of what a truly evil fucker he was. Of course, the stuff I wrote, the amusing stuff, is gone. And his evil fucker stuff... It's like the banality of evil kind of thing. I'm not saying he's the kind of guy who'd vote for Hitler, because he is liberal. So with his liberalism established, I think that he might be the kind of guy who'd join a cult and allow his daughter to be raped by the cult leader. Either way, his e-mails, which were incredibly unhelpful and pretty much always bullshit, remain undeleted. You know, for laughs. Sooner or later I'm going to come across those again and delete them, because why dwell on that shit? But for now, they remain undeleted. It's an inevitability that they will be gone someday, when I decide to improve my life and become a better person.

Also: The drumkit in my living room is a terrible hellbeast. Drums are not very interesting in general, but rock drumming, in isolation, without any kind of polyrhythms or time changes or any kind of anything... Hoo, it is wearing. And loud. Loud as fuck and dull as grass growing. There are also sometimes songs that are played. Better in theory because it's not drum solos, but the same set of six (?) songs gets practiced every day. They are not very good songs. They are dull like drum solos, but with more going on.

God, but my Saturday class is shit. Fuck. My independent contract remains brilliant in theory but slow-going in practice. I wrote a thing about the John Barth book. I still need to do more fiction, but I am stalled and lacking in new ideas.

This is probably mean-spirited and in poor taste, but you knew that coming in. It's funny to talk to someone who should be healthier than you because they are a vegan and do yoga and whatnot, but they aren't, because they've taken so many downers that poo no longer flumes out their asspipe.

In other news: Don't you hate when you order a book off Half.com and it's mostly fine except that one short story is all done up with annotations and marginalia, written in ink? Probably not, because I'm the only one who is bothered by such things. But man, that was disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing: I read Leo Tolstoy's Death Of Ivan Ilyich for Saturday class. In a word: Shit. Granted, "shit" is a bit harsh for most things, but I was just summarizing up in one word. A more long-winded response would be to call it dull. It's not very good.

A copy of Don DeLillo's Underworld arrived in my mail today. That book is large.

I ordered a copy of Lifter Puller's Soft Rock off Half.com. I guess I really like that band.

Oh: Erin Tustin read and enjoyed some short stories I sent her. Oh sure, she's a "friend of mine" and as such she's "biased." Look, I'm not saying my stories are "good." I'm saying that her words of praise made me feel good on the inside, although to call it praise might be a bit hyperbolic.

Oh oh oh: People I was in AP English with in high school, before I got kicked out! Remember when that teacher-bitch-lady taught us advanced tricky literary terminology she told us would be on the AP test? And everybody had to learn them and it was a real pain-in-the-ass? And then the words totally weren't on the test at all? Yeah, remember that? Well: Said teacher lady was pronouncing at least one of those words WRONG. The word in question is "synecdoche," and it's not pronounced in a way that even kind of brings to mind a feminine hygiene project. It's pronouned "sin-ek-duh-kee." Jesus fuck, did we have some dumbass English teachers at that school. I mean, some of the other teachers were alright, I guess. But the English ones were pretty goddamn terrible. Because I mean: They speak English. In retrospect, the fact that they were such horrible fascists regarding literature and its interpretation doesn't strike me as being nearly as bad as their inability to speak the language, their misuse and mispronunciation of words. Oh, and that they were fascists about that. That pisses me off too. You know, when I think about it, which is blessedly kind of rare. Granted, at college I had a teacher who insisted on multiple occasions that the idea of having sound health refers to one's ability to cross a sound of water.

Generally speaking, I find the idea of homeschooling abhorrent, (and for reasons besides the whole social skill thing) especially for kids in their later years, because there's no way the parents know that much (especially when you take into account all the narrow-mindedness and biases that accompanies most parents who make such a decision, whether it be fundamentalist Christianity or hippie bullshit). There's a reason why high school teachers are so niche-oriented: because no one retains all that information. Still, the idea of taking your kids out of school for a subject you know better than their teachers is tempting.

I just finished reading John Barth's End Of The Road. I'll be writing some piece of criticism on it for class, but as of right now: Holy living fuck, that was great. The characters are all really unlikeable, but they felt real to me. Yeah, I'll write more elsewhere, but let me state now that it's a really good book, I only mention that the characters are unlikeable bastards as a caveat for a recommendation. And it starts off a little bit slow before it gets going. Still. I finished it in less than twenty-four hours. First novel I've done that with since The Catcher In The Rye, maybe. Partly that's the schedule I'm on, I decided to wrap it up, and it's not a very long book, and I'm probably forgetting something... Now that I think about it I think I had to read Their Eyes Were Watching God really quickly for class. Still. When it gets going, it goes, and when it ends, it breaks fucking teeth. I thought Barth got lumped in with the post-modernists, but that's... It's a novel in the classic mold, really. Whatever. I'll write criticism later... Probably tomorrow, actually.

I also finished Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar today. Lot of characters in that one, and once Beto gets into his idiom, when he did Poison River, things take on levels of density and each panel starts telegraphing more than my brain can process when there's that many characters involved. Other people call it a masterpiece. I think I'd like it more if I were smarter and could process all the information being thrown at me. I guess it peaks with the Duck Feet/Human Diastrophism stories. It's a lot to process.

And the next thing on my self-assigned reading list is 100 Years Of Solitude, which has a ton of characters too, but they're identified by name rather than drawings, and there's a chart and the beginning, so maybe I'll be able to work it out. Before that though, is Tolstoy's Death Of Ivan Ilyich, for the class I take on Saturdays. Plus trying to write coherent praise for The End Of The Road. I don't know who I'd recommend it to, really. As I read it, it struck me that Alex might dig it. But that's it. Mainly I'll just say that I really liked it, and go on the record as that being my opinion.

I just finished Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End Of The World. I can't say I enjoyed it too much, although the fact that I read it quickly says something about it's quality. It's more of a genre piece than I usually read, splitting its time between cyberpunk and fantasy. My interest in these genres is kind of nonexistent. This isn't to say that's all there is, and the other stuff that is there is what I found myself more attached to. Although at the same time: Some of those things are themes that are at least kind of addressed in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Well, one theme is shared: Split worlds and fictional realities. It's explored more in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but more vaguely defined in Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I can't really recommend it. Which is weird: I expected to like it more, as the more weird and fantastic elements in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are what I responded to. Although perhaps I was responding to the contrast and dichotomy of that with the reality presented in that novel. I don't know how I'd respond to a piece like Norwegian Wood, which is supposedly completely grounded and goes for being emotionally affecting rather than being a novel of ideas. I might get around to reading that at some point. For now, my flirtation with Murakami is over, although Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains really fucking good.

I've got myself an independent contract. I've got to do a lot of writing, essentially. Thirty pages of fiction, twenty pages of criticism. By the end of the quarter. This will be tricky. I'm also reading some books. I finished Franz Kafka's Amerika. It would be better if it were finished. There's fragments that Kafka wrote which aren't included in my printing. If they're in other editions, I'll be kind of pissed. The Trial wasn't finished either, but The Trial's incomplete fragments cohere and don't leave out major events. Amerika is a little bit funnier towards the end, but a lot less compelling on the whole. It's acceptable if you like Kafka. I can't quite recommend it.

Hey, the new Caribou record leaked. Caribou is what Manitoba is called now that he's been sued by the frontman of an old punk band who has not released any albums under a name that even included the word Manitoba. The worst thing about the record is that it's coming out under the name Caribou. Which would probably be the case even if the album didn't totally kick ass. Wow. Dan Snaith said this album wouldn't have the whole indie vibe of Up In Flames, but it totally does. There's also a hip-hop influence and a krautrock influence, yes, but mainly... It's pretty indie. It all coheres into one sound, though. Or at least a coherent vibe throughout. It is kind of great. It's a little less psych-pop, I suppose, but my roommate Thor still said that Manitoba was one of the most psychedelic things he'd ever heard. I hope for a Caribou/Animal Collective collaboration at some point. Anyway: The album's called The Milk Of Human Kindness. Two of my roommates plan to buy it on vinyl the day as soon as it becomes available. I plan to buy it, and any accompanying singles/EPs once I'm in a place that's not Olympia.

The Bloc Party full-length's alright. They're a band that's like Gang Of Four in 2oo5 but not shitty like those other bands that people compare to Gang Of Four for no apparent reason. When I say this, I am saying that they are better than Franz Ferdinand, which is to say I'm saying nothing at all. The album's alright.

I watched Hard Eight again tonight. That's a fine film. I'd forgotten a lot of it. I like P.T. Anderson a lot. Got in an argument with roommates about whether you can be said to like P.T. Anderson and not like Magnolia. For now, I'm maintaining no, on the basis that I feel that Magnolia is the most P.T. Anderson of all the films he's made. It's long, so it's just more P.T. Anderson. It's ambitious in scope, and it's personal to the film-maker. Granted, if someone said the clever line "I like P.T. Anderson a lot, but I don't like Robert Altman, hence I don't like Magnolia," I might not concede my point but I would laugh at that joke because it is clever.

I'm also listening to M.I.A. which I like okay, although it's not the kind of thing I get into. Music's like pop-hip-hop vaguely in the vein of Missy Elliott or something but she's British and skinny. (In many ways I am probably downplaying my enjoyment of the record when I say shit like that. I like the record but I'm not going apeshit over it, shall we say, because it's not in a genre I respond to in a way that I go apeshit over.) But: I did go over to her website, http://www.miauk.com, and her art is pretty fucking cool. Graffitti type stuff and leftist politics and... It looks cool and some of it's offensive. Bundles of dynamite are a reoccuring image. The video for the single... I haven't seen all of it yet. She dances to a background of animated imagery that ties together explosions and spraypaint, graffitti stencils of tanks, and mushroom clouds forming black power fists. So... interesting.

Also: I bought The Believer issue with the DVD and the art profiles... Some of those L.A. artists are rather cool and make me regret that I never went to any of the art openings in Philadelphia. The DVD is pretty solid as well. Money kind of well-spent, although the Raymond Pettibon interview is kind of a letdown. I like art, and I wish I knew more about it, had my finger on the pulse. The only thing I can say in my defense is that no one else knows anything about modern art either. (the good kind... The kind that looks cool and isn't avant-garde and conceptual. Is it reductive and over-simplifying to say that stuff is crap and boring? Yes, yes it is, but at the same time: Fuck man, I can come up with concepts and ideas. That's not very hard. I've done it: If anyone wants to give me gallery space and pay me I'll show them to you. I can't draw things with any degree of competency. This is the kind of argument I base around phrases like "fuck John Cage." Fuck John Cage.) Evie said she had a friend in art-school whose work comes off like show flyers, and although meant in at least a kind of degrading way: That's not a bad vibe to working off of. This is not to say that painting isn't awesome either, but... Sadly the last few paintings I've seen by people I know, including my brother, were leaving me flat. Still: these paintings weren't made by professionals. I don't know. Familiarity breeds contempt. There's a lot of art out there I'm not familar with. I like things that look cool, and that's my basic description of what I want out of art because I am five years old. (I also like leftist politics and extremist imagery if that makes me seem somewhat more discerning. Which, really, it shouldn't, because art should probably be judged more on aesthetic grounds than ideological ones... This is the kind of argument I base around phrases like "fuck punk rock.")

I am rambling like shit. I have class tomorrow. Do people still read this anymore? Did everyone give up once I realized that my life was boring and I just started talking about books, movies, and music instead?

I am sleepy and I'm mainly talking for the theoretical enjoyment of a nonexistent audience. Goodnight.

Woke up hot and thirsty slightly before 5 AM. I've got class at 9 on a Saturday...

I didn't post what was going on with school, did I?

I didn't get in. I might be kind of fucked. I'm going to try to take a Saturday class for four credits. This isn't enough for financial aid and housing, so I'm going to try to get an independent contract for anywhere from 4-16. I don't know if that'll work because it's late in the game. Maybe I'll be fucked and maybe things will work out okay.

I guess I thought I was going to blog about music criticism and stuff. I hope to write some decent pieces for the contract. There's the beginning of a piece about Lifter Puller/The Hold Steady on my computer now. I was going to type up something now about rockism and how it relates to pop/hip hop. I will simply present the facts now and not try to work them into a coherent whole: In recent months, I've seen two musical performances on Saturday Night Live by two different acts whose major singles are produced by the Neptunes. One of which was grotesque in its not-even-kinda-being-played-live-ness. Drums just don't fucking sound like that. The other was considerably more interesting visually, and deviated from the album version and was being played with real live instruments. These two acts will remain unnamed. But: the second, less artificial performance was of a song that got some critical acclaim from rock critics, while the former artist is viewed as a joke about shitty hip-hop that's overly poppy. The reason the two are unnamed is to separate the invested from the not-so-much. Really, you can work this out in your head if you even kind of want to.

Right now I'm listening to the LCD Soundsystem full-length. Long story short is that it's better than The Rapture's Echoes. When it ends I'm going back to bed.

I didn't get into the class I wanted to get into. I wasn't even wait-listed, which was something of a surprise. Apparently there was something I needed to click on in order to stay wait-listed. As it stands currently, I'm not registered for anything. And the class I want to get into isn't letting in new people. There's been some talk of a group contract for all the rejected, where we'll just ape the syllabus. The syllabus, as previously discussed, is pretty solid. However, tonight? Tonight I've been assigned a short story by Joyce Carol Oates to read, Faithless.

In high school I threw around the word "pretentious" a lot. Not as much as some of my friends, who would call Nathaniel Hawthorne pretentious. But: Joyce Carol Oates is pretty goddamned pretentious. At least she is in this short story. There's sentences like "Voice mixed with dreams, and the wind."

It's bad. It's not good. Joyce Carol Oates. Let this be a warning. Avoid her writing.

You know what is good? That Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain reissue. Hot damn. Also: Lifter Puller's Fiestas And Fiascos.

So that's music one, short stories zero.

Writing is for lllllooooooosssssseeerrrs.

The short story I'm writing now has this tendency towards internal rhyme that I wish I could avoid, but I can't. This one tries for this kind of clever denseness, and writing things that read well because of their meter ends up rhyming a large portion of the time involuntarily. It's kind of good and it's probably able to read it without thinking it's rhyming all the time, but it's there. Still. I like it more than my other stuff because it gets away from traditional short story tropes. I also like it more than my other stuff because I'm writing it right now, so there's a certain amount of freshness to it.

But I should go back to reading this terrible short story.

This is one of those scenarios where the people who care already know, and the people who don't care won't know. Will Eisner is dead. When I saw the news, I uttered the word "shit" instinctually.

Shit.

Rest in peace.

Back in Olympia. I have a decent amount to talk about, kind of, in that if I had access to a computer I would've written about a ton of shit. But instead, I'll just talk about movies.

I saw House Of Flying Daggers today, with my dad. And let's just say I have no interest in seeing Hero. It's got some moments... There's a fight scene with bamboo that owns Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's fight scene with bamboo. The ending scene cuts away to a shot of soldiers that imply a BIG FIGHT on the horizon that never comes because the ending scene tells the story the director wanted to tell, and a battle between the House Of Flying D aggers and the government isn't the focus of the story... It's just the setting where all of the plot points come from. Well, not all of the plot points. Most of them. At least one comes from the love story that is, I guess, the story's plot. There's also CGI shots of daggers and arrows going through the air. No wire-fighting, though.

New year's eve I saw The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Which... it's really very good. Weird in that the reviews seem to miss the point of Wes Anderson... For fuck's sake, he's NOT ABOUT the set design. I mean, he likes it. But that's not what his stories are about, ever, and that includes this one. The most important thing about this movie, moreso than how awesome everything looks, (and it does look awesome, and if you try to hold that against the movie, you're a dick) or the artifice of moviemaking, (there's some moments that are intentionally over-the-top but I took them at face value, it's a goddamn movie and the over-the-top moments are good ones, awesome ones, tongue in cheek or no) is the characters. Which should be fucking obvious for people who've watched Wes Anderson movies before. This is another one of those movies that's an ensemble piece where every character has reasons and emotions and is sympathetic. There are also stop-motion crazy-looking crabs and seahorses. The set design is amazing. But the only way that should get in the way of your enjoyment is if it's all your paying attention to, because you're a dumb fuck. Okay, yes, movie critics: It's an easy criticism to throw at Wes, that all he cares about is art direction, especially in this movie, where the visuals are so much more intentionally spectacular. Whatever. I figure people will get over their complaints the more they watch it. The first time they watch it, they see the easy jokes and the set design. Which is a surface reading, and is really the main thing you pick up the first time through most Anderson movies. The second time the characters come through more and the smaller stuff is funnier. This is true for pretty much all of his movies, yes?

The night before I watched The Life Aquatic, I saw The Harryhausen Chronicles, which got me psyched on stop-motion. Stop-motion's so goddamn awesome. I prefer it to CGI in terms of interaction with live-action. Harryhausen points out that one the cool things about stop-motion is that it doesn't look perfect, and this aspect is what lends a dream-like quality as it interacts with real people. Makes sense. The Harryhausen Chronicles is pretty great, a documentary about Ray Harryhausen. His work is so time-consuming, and he has all of these unfinished projects, which might be sad for him, but is amazing as a testament to the man's creative powers.

I saw Anchorman on DVD, which was pretty damn funny. I saw the uncensored version, but there's not a lot there that would've needed to be cut... One scene. I didn't get to see the bonus disc with another feature-length movie on it, but that's probably pretty great. The commentary track's kind of funny: The movie itself is rarely addressed, and the commentary features people not involved with the movie in any way. Like Lou Rawls. Awesome.

My brother also rented the SNL best of Christopher Walken, which is a weird thing to exist. The more recent seasons are kind of over-represented (cowbell sketch is one thing, other stuff is considerably weaker) but they still leave out the thing where Walken is a doctor and Will Ferrell is a patient with a badger in his ass. But there is a brilliant sketch I'd never seen before with Tim Meadows as a census-taker, which I highly recommend.

Other comedies include The Jerk, which I had never seen. Do I need to say that the Jerk is good? I don't think I do.

My brother wanted me to watch Freaked, and holy living christ is that a bad comedy. Wow. Made in 1993. The funniest part of it is Bobcat Goldthwair, doing schtick not entirely dissimilar to his character on Unhappily Ever After. Mean-spirited frat boy garbage. A character wears a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt... My brother's current girlfriend has fond memories of watching it on USA Up All Night. I seriously can't imagine someone finding this funny. You know the episode of South Park with the title Do The Retarded Go To Hell? To find this movie funny you'd have to be both retarded and soulless. That's a twofer of going to hell.

Cannibal! The Musical is pretty funny. A lot less cannibalism than you'd expect. Actually I'm not so sure this one was funny, but I laughed at it once or twice at parts I can't remember. It's enjoyable. Unlike Freaked.

I finally saw Eraserhead, and I laughed more at Eraserhead than I did at Freaked. This is to say it got out like three small exhalations of air that were faintly laughter-like. Eraserhead isn't mind-blowing. It's very "arty." It had moments I liked. Not the best David Lynch, and probably not even important to see in terms of his overall work... Really, I think of the main body of work being everything from Blue Velvet on. Eraserhead is a long student film and Dune and The Elephant Man are done to get paid.

The Saddest Music In The World is kind of dull. It's stylistically interesting and it's got some funny moments, but at one point I looked over to see that my brother's girlfriend had fallen asleep, and that made a lot of sense to me. It's not a bad movie, but I wouldn't recommend seeing it to most people.

I watched Cinema Paradiso and didn't dig it. Although I realized in the middle of it that Evie was in France and that I had forgotten about this completely the time I called her to bitch about New Jersey. A dumb thought, but that conversation would've hit upon an obvious contrast that being in France is considerably preferable to being in one's parent's house in New Jersey.

The reasons for winter break being kind of weak will not be discussed here, for now I am back in Olympia were such things don't matter that much to me. I don't need the therapy. I figure movie reviews might actually be helpful to people.

Although: My brother's house, where I spent my second week, is unheated. Because of this, it is very cold.

Briefly: Being back in New Jersey is much how I expected it, awkward and boring. The room that I stay in is generally occupied by someone who my mom has unofficially adopted, so the room is filled with the belongings of this person who I find objectionable and unpleasant. When in the room I know where to look down, what things to turn a blind spot to. I, like my mom, get to selectively edit reality and it sucks. I really just can't do it. I'm wishing to be back in Olympia where I have books and friends and can say "fuck" as frequently as I do.

I finished Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at the airport (I was there on Friday instead of Monday- a funny story, but long story short, it meant two more days spent with family) and it ended pretty well. I stole my mom's copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude, but haven't started to read it yet, since I'm in the middle of things at Evergreen and class will be starting and all kinds of things will conspire to stop me from finishing it quickly.

Oh, and my streak of only seeing good movies has been ruined. Once I got back, I ran into a dude who wanted to see "The Sea Inside" which I knew nothing about, but kind of expected weak things. It delivered. It's based on a true story, the name is a metaphor, and the director's the dude that did The Others or something equally weak. The kind of dull foreign-language film that gives art theaters a bad reputation. And I still haven't seen Sideways yet.

I also got to read all of Morrison's Doom Patrol in one go. That was kind of nice, although a weird experience when you're familar with most of the material. So, yeah, here's what happens when that's your experience, in list form:
1. The stylistic tic of employing poetry and the odd juxtaposition of two words is really overused at first, but it stops being done completely about halfway through.
2. When you know most of the weird concepts ahead of time, they mean nothing to you. This kind of goes with the first item on the list.
3. Willoughby Kipling is a funnier joke when viewed all in one go.
4. You start to care about the characters more. Weirdly: I wanted happy endings for them, which doesn't quite make sense. In reality, the reason it's sad when people die is because you will never see them again and won't get to have new experiences, etc. This happens invariably with fiction, simply because the story ends.
5. You're really sad when it's all over.

Went to the mall today, to pick up my mom's gift. I didn't buy it, though. I just found the location in the mall where the silk scarves are.

The mall makes me feel horrible. Two songs ran through my head: Sleater-Kinney's "Milkshake And Honey" ("Baby come home, I can't take the apartment alone") and Pavement's Black Walls ("You shouldn't hate your body, it's part of you. You shouldn't hate your family, they're part. You shouldn't hate your neighbors because they're part of you! These black walls. Black walls, black walls, black walls.") I wanted to sing them as I walked alienated through the department store.

I wish I had a camera for the things I'd seen. Emasculated boyfriends, unresponsive to their girlfriends hanging off them. The pathetic uniforms of the people who sell hot dogs. The fat kids and the old women.

I wanted to yell out "Hold me" and fall into the arms of someone who would either be responsive or disturbed.

And I have to go back there tomorrow, to finish the job. I feel like a Vietnam vet who can't function in society.

Also: Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle gets really good in the third book. Loren got into it early on, but then stopped reading, although he's asked for it for Christmas. I found the beginning largely unremarkable. It's improved almost immeasurably: The weirdness at the edges of the first book's domestic chronicle has builded upon itself and has become the book's new focus. I've heard some people had misgivings about how it ended, but we'll see how I react.

Still waiting on my brother's Christmas gift to arrive via mail. It's got two more days that it can arrive before I'm fucked and will just have to give him an IOU.

Last night I realized that TV shows on DVD are such a default awesome gift. Also: I think I'm over cash as a gift. It just seems sad to me, unless you're young and it's being given to you by your family who are directly responsible for your well-being at least to a certain extent. Amongst extended family, it just feels like they don't know you. And granted: My extended family doesn't know me, and I don't really want them to. Still: Should this really be the case? Best gift I've received from an extended family member ever was a copy of On Avery Island on vinyl. And sure, I've since given it to a roommate who actually had a record player. But the thought that was put into that gift was much appreciated. If it really is the thought that counts, (and I truly believe it is) then cash is the worst gift ever.

You know what would be a great gift from my mom and stepdad? Fucking replacement copies of some of the shit that they ruined and got water-damaged. That would be great.

When it's 5 in the morning and sleep shows no sign of approaching one's body, one's mind turns to deep thoughts. These deep thoughts invariably give way to shallower ones, because that is how one's mind operates.

So it's in this manner that I found myself pondering the idea of making a mix CD for my mom for Christmas, and the borderline impossibility of doing so.

The deep thoughts that led me here, you may ask? Generally: The inability of one human being to communicate or in some way connect with another when there isn't a shared language. My mom doesn't view music like I do. She wants something that is inoffensive. I don't think she engages any music emotionally on any levels other than nostalgia.

She likes latter Flaming Lips. She liked They Might Be Giants. She liked it when I listened to Loaded by the Velvet Underground. She bought a Belle & Sebastian record because she liked the title. She was tempted to buy a Beulah record based on its title and the song titles, but I told her not to because their good record wasn't at the store that day. She generally doesn't like Beck but liked Lost Cause off of Sea Change.

Oh, and I'm paying attention to lyrics too because love songs on a hand-crafted mix for my mom is icky. Too bad that's a fucking huge topic in pop music.

I AM INSANE.

She doesn't seem to like instrumentals.

I want to put on Jesus Walks by Kanye West. Because she likes Jesus, you see.

I AM INSANE.

So yeah, some contenders: Cat Power when not all suicide style, something by Broadcast, Beulah- A Good Man Is Easy To Kill, The Velvet Underground- Who Loves The Sun, something by Jeff Buckley although I don't know what, Palace Music- New Partner, Mirah- Apples In The Trees, something by the Books, something by Manitoba, some kind of Magnetic Fields/6ths, something by Yo La Tengo. Stereolab? The Mountain Goats?

I'm not going to make this mix. Although, probably, I should.

I'm buying her a silk scarf, as per her request.

I don't even think my brother liked the mix CD I made him for his birthday. If I were to give him a CD for Christmas I think it would be The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, although my confidence in such a thing is low.

2004, year in review, part three: My life and what I read.

2004 was no 2003. Which would be an unfair expectation. After that burst of progress, I'm put in limbo. 2004 I mainly just hung out.

2005: My future is uncertain. Will I stay this summer in Olympia? Will I even continue to go to Evergreen? If not, then what the fuck will I do next fall? Probably 2005 will be like 2004, unless my musical ventures take off and consume a shitload of time. Which probably won't happen.

But anyway, 2004. I went back to Philadelphia over the summer, for more of those depressing interactions with my brother and his roommates. I was constantly being reminded of what a loser I was. Even though I got a theoretically cool job, working at a music store. Sure, it wasn't a good one. But, in terms of what it was, it's probably as good a job as I will ever have. And it mostly sucked. I will never be happy. Then there was the lack of all social interaction outside the job. Hoo. A lot like 2003 in that it was a total no friends summer. I did have some interaction with my brother's friends, which as previously mentioned, was frequently vaguely condescending. I have no idea how much any of those people respect me. This is weird and hurts my head.

Then I went back to Evergreen, where I was considerably happier, but still have less friends than I did last year. Some of those old friends left. Some stayed around Olympia, but I felt strangely alienated from them even at the end of last year. The list of new friends is a short one. The list of old friends departed is probably three times as long.

And then there were classes. Looking Backward ended amazingly. But Telling The Truth was an exercise in testicular injury. I had to read Don Delillo's White Noise for both.

I finished Lolita in 2004, I think. I also read Nabokov's The Eye. Also: Borges' Ficciones and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle now. That was mainly it, besides the large amounts of bullshit I had to shovel into my mind for class. Talking about books in a year of review is bizarre except as an autobiographical conceit, simply because I don't read that much new fiction. I think that's true for most people who aren't book critics. I mean, there's a barrage of classics I'll be reading until I die. Getting on top of the new good stuff is hard to do, and I haven't really attempted it. I guess the only new writing I read was in the last McSweeney's, of which 25% of the content was recommendable. Five new authors to watch out for. And that's the new fiction that I would be inclined to like, probably? That had editors whose tastes probably occasionally align with my own? Fuck if I know. I read a great deal of comics, which makes me feel dumb, but you know, they're shorter. It's also a scene that's easier to be on top of. Of what I read: Seaguy sticks out, as does the new Eightball. Those were the highlights. Hopefully I'll have read all of Morrison's Doom Patrol in one go before the year is out. That's it!

2004, year in review, part two: The year in film.

I didn't see a bad movie all year. Actually, I did, but none in the theater, none that were new. And, with the exception of Before Sunset, every movie I saw, I saw in a commercial mainstream movie theater. This is all odd. I saw a lot of mainstream movies which people like to talk shit on, (including me, sometimes) and I enjoyed them.

Which proves my point, although it was one I didn't plan on making: Fuck the indie/mainstream divide. (at least if we're talking cinema) Most indie people are incredibly unambitious. If they do have ambitions, they can't implement them, due to lack of budgets. Not like small films can't be good, just that there is such a thing as indie hackery. Auteur theory! Motherfucking auteur theory! Give smart people money and they won't disappoint you!

Still a few movies I've yet to see: Sideways, The Life Aquatic, A Very Long Engagement, and 2046. 2046 might not even count as a 2004 film.

But yeah, a good year for movies. A good year for comedies.

Movie of the year was Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, duh. I could write tons of weird shit about it that means nothing: Like how I've been on the Gondry tip for years, and prefer him to Spike Jonze. Like how Charlie Kaufman is a champ. Like how Human Nature was slept on and due for a reevaluation: I'm calling it the Being John Malkovich to Eternal Sunshine's Adaptation, more obviously a comedy, but still possessing thematic weight and well-drawn characters. About how the people saying that this is Kaufman's first script with emotion are fucking retarded. Some people said it was sad, with its fatalistic view of relationships. But guess what? Most relationships do end badly, who the fuck doesn't know that? But this says fuck it anyway, take the good with the bad. It's optimistic, but in a way that's also fucking honest. Let the emo kids have Garden State, the people who see the beauty in Neutral Milk Hotel will be watching Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Actually, we might watch both. I like to think we'll all enjoy Eternal Sunshine more.

I think I've gone over every movie I've watched this year in this blog, so you can see the other movies I recommend if you want to. They were all good. The movie I was the least sure of was Spider-Man 2 and I can't even front like I didn't enjoy that, regardless of the cheesy dialogue. Seriously: that was the worst movie I saw in theaters all year, and it wasn't even bad. (Although if you want to get technical, I saw worse movies at the Capital Theater that came out in 2003. This doesn't count for our purposes now.) I saw two zombie movies and both of them were great. One of those zombie movies I can't think of the director, so to a certain extent: Poop on auteur theory too, don't try to be a pretentious jackass. I like what I like. Fuck it. I'm smart. I don't have to explain my zombie fondness.

After I finished Gravity's Rainbow, my brain needed time to decompress. Weirdly, class provided that with its complete lack of mental stimulation. So I read book two of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a day. The current reading list is book three of that and the Palomar hardcover. Hopefully, I will finish both of these before school starts up again.

I'm currently wait-listed for the program I wanted to get into. Here's the syllabus:
White Noise, Don Delillo. This is the third program I've had to assign this book. And it's also the third program I've taken.
The Awakening, Kate Chopin. My old nemesis.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I never finished reading this in high school, although it was pretty decent.
The End Of The Road, John Barth. The only American writer who's work I haven't read, and I'm kind of unfamilar, although in general, I hear good things.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World, Haruki Murakami. Apparently this one has more of a pulpy feel to it, at least in terms of plot points. Also, shorter than Wind-Up Bird.
Confessions Of A Mask, Yukio Mishima. Mishima came up on a message board thread about Murakami. Good words were said, but maybe untrustable.
Masks, Fumiko Enchi. I don't know anything about this at all.
The Anatomy Of Dependence, Takeo Doi. Same with this. Still, my hopes? My hopes are high.

Also: Films will be viewed. Sweet mother of rock.

Just bought a handful of the books mentioned in the last post from Half.com. Also wanted to say that I should check out the films of Wong-Kar Wai. I've been hearing praise since In The Mood For Love came out, from smart people. No one I know personally, though.

In case the implication wasn't clear: I might be wait-listed currently, but I will fight like hell to get into this class. Although, apparently, the professor I had problems with last quarter was previously one of the teachers of this program, with the one who's teaching this quarter. Which disturbs me, but maybe unnecessarily.

Two things: Alex predicts that the next Animal Collective album will be their last. I disagree. I write this down as to remember it two albums from now. Their next album will be fucking amazing though. We've heard the songs in live form... Hoo. Sung Tongs is pretty great, but it's a weird album for me, as someone who doesn't take drugs. Also: the overall aesthetic seems overwhelming if you don't listen closely to each individual song. As an album, it's a cohesive piece of work, but listened to in passing as a whole, it's almost too cohesive, with a tendency to seem like one giant song with a few breaks. I didn't even think of We Tigers as being a great song until I decided to listen to it in keeping with my "I only like the short songs" theory, (There's another short song, Sweet Road, which blends in with the rest even listened to individually) and it was only today that I listened intently to Winters Love, which others have called the album's high point.

Also: ODB's autopsy results found him with a bag of cocaine in his body. He flew that day. The bag had a hole in it. Official cause is a heart attack, which I'm sure the burst bag of cocaine contributed to. Holy living fuck.

Wednesday I read my Ol' Dirty Bastard essay to class. I got positive feedback, but of a weird variety. People told me I could make money writing music reviews. Which is funny for two reasons: One being that I don't consider it a review, and another because of the fact that I wrote it five years after its release. Also, good music criticism should attempt to describe the music, which my piece, trying to avoid being called a review as it did, consciously avoided. I didn't even mention the beat to I Want Pussy. My professor didn't like it, of course, but he's a fucking douchebag, who insists on calling it a review and refused to call it an evaluation of gangsta rap culture in my eval, even after he said he'd change the terminology of "a review of a hip-hop record" if I gave him something to change it to. What a fucking fuckface of a fucker.

But after class was done, woo! The sun began shining it Olympia! Although not literally. It's been cold and wet outside. But inside, life's been swell. Thursday night was amazing. A song by The Art Project (Loren, Alex, and I) was recorded. A few practice takes. I fucked up the first chorus on each of the four takes. Still. Submitted it for rerecording for the Evergreen compilation, and the practices are currently being edited together by Alex with some guitar feedback drone (courtesy of Loren) to be thrown on top. What we have now sounds good though. Everyone got drunk. John Samson talked some hilarious crazy-talk, asking absurd questions. Like what would be the best combination of two movies. (I said Magnolia and Kill Bill vol. 1, and submitted Koyanaqatski [sic] and Touch of Evil on Alex's behalf. These are combinations that mean nothing, due to the absurdity of the exercise) Later he asked, out of the blue, what would be the best possible pinata. Hilarious night. Hopefully in future there'll be a nice mp3 of the song we recorded available for download.

Short story writing is currently half-stalled. I could probably push through without any problem. Which I might very well do, as the idea of finishing a story quickly is very appealing.

Haha, I'm a goddamn jackass. I woke up Alex to tell him that Animal Collective cover a Low song on this live set (Which, at an hour, is twice as long as the rest of their live sets) and then there's some talk and then fucking In Metal is played... The second half of the set is fucking Low. It's from some battle of the bands. Shit. Still. The songs early on are still pretty fucking great, and once I finish writing this I'll find out the exact moment when the switch is made from Animal Collective to Low.

And I'm finishing writing this now.

Had my eval today. I thought it wasn't going to happen until Thursday, but that's because I don't know what day it is ever. It was strangely anti-climactic. He caught a typo in my self-eval (effect for affect- that's a tricky one) that I didn't change. I guess there's a part of me that figures that no one will ever read the damn thing... There was also a John Cage joke in there. You know, for laughs.

I did get his piece of editing of my final piece though. It's one of the douchiest things ever. My professor is a bad man. The student I have the most distaste for is the one who is the most on his jock. His terrible old-man jock.

I would've loved to talk about how much he hates me. But this is the Northwest, where people are passive-aggressive. Still. After tomorrow, I will never have to deal with him again. Yay.

Got a new idea for writing a short story. Actually an old idea in terms of concept, but a new execution. I'll share it with you, because I'm not sure how feasible it is. This is the whole "magical realism meets indie rock" thing which is both my stated goal and the most retarded high-concept pitch to ever exist. Anyway, the idea has grown to the sort of thing that could be novel-length. But: What if I just wrote a short story out of it, by using the highly-condensed language of song-writing? The voice I wanted to aim for was that of The Hold Steady, which this new idea seems considerably more able to support. But if the ultra-condensed short-story thing doesn't work out, then what I have is one of those things which would have to be expanded to be a novel, which I'm not good at doing at all. It's pretty big in scope, at this point, you see.

I've got to be up in less than four hours. I've got to go to class. I want to get out early, in order to register for class as soon as I can. But according to my professor the asshole, missing the day in question (where I'd be hearing other people read their work... It would be a douchey thing to miss) would be the kind of thing to result in a loss of credit. Alex said he's be down to wake up at noon in order to sign me up, but Alex got pretty drunk tonight. Who knows what'll happen? I'm hoping for "Everything works out okay and I get into the good class."

My computer is virus-ridden. It craps out in a variety of different ways, and seems on the verge of crapping out permanently. The sound is skipping. Sometimes there are other sounds that betray the electric motorized roots. It acts like the wires are exposed and it is running on steam. Sometimes the screen will freeze. It will begin moving later.

I think some of this might be the fault of Firefox. I did have viruses before, but after downloading and installing Firefox, shit started freezing up.

I've sent some writings to myself, but there's a lot of music on this machine. I don't think it's going to die on me, as that is the kind of thing that tends to happen without warning.

Roommate John Samson has a subscription to Rolling Stone. This isn't a smart idea. Also not a smart idea is for said magazine to make a list of the 500 songs ever. I'm not going to talk about how bad their choices were. I will instead simply give my list of the 10 best songs ever.

1. Sweet Jane- The Velvet Underground
2. The King Of Carrot Flowers Part 1- Neutral Milk Hotel
3. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea- Neutral Milk Hotel
4. Two-Headed Boy part 1- Neutral Milk Hotel
5. Two-Headed Boy part 2- Neutral Milk Hotel
6. Holland 1945- Neutral Milk Hotel
7. Ghost- Neutral Milk Hotel
8. Communist Daughter- Neutral Milk Hotel
9. Debaser- The Pixies
10. The King Of Carrot Flowers parts 2 and 3- Neutral Milk Hotel

Yes, this post is a joke. This post is also my real beliefs.

I watched Saturday Night Live for the first time in over a year tonight. I should've seen the Modest Mouse episode, but I didn't. Was I at a party or something? I don't know. I probably just forgot what day it was, as that happens a lot. It's the kind of thing I want to be good... A lot of people involved I just think of as being funny people (Rachel Dratch's face makes me laugh, pretty much all the time. She is awesome and I want her to be my friend.) or just... Fred Armisen is on that Les Savy Fav DVD, and he's apparently also on the Wilco I Am Trying To Break Your Heart DVD. Also, in that issue of Vice I recently sang the praises of, he talked about hating the sun. So it would be nice if he was a bad-ass too. I think he was in one sketch, and he was in it as the straight man. He didn't break character by laughing though, so he had that going for him.

But what I saw... I was into it more than other people. There was a lot of the laughing at their own jokes, which is never good, but there also seemed to be a large amount of anti-jokes, especially during Weekend Update, just shit that destroyed the momentum completely so I found it funny. Ben Affleck is really fucking terrible though. Wow. He was not very good at all. They tried to get him to do characters and use him like a cast member, which is in many ways, the best tack to take. But he's not very good at line-readings. Not at all. Also, the John Kerry impersonation was sad and pathetic and missed the target completely. There's also a few people (besides the host) who are painfully unfunny and yet get a lot of face time.

I've laughed at that show in recent years, you know? The Tracy Morgan Woodrow bits were really funny. And they only did it twice, which is for the best. (Is Kel the new black guy? If so, that's a bad choice for a black guy.) (Is Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer a frequently reoccuring bit? The last two episodes I've seen have had such sketches... And even though she's funny, and it's anti-jokes kind of comedy, and I laugh at these sketches, reoccurring characters are terrible and should just not happen. You'd think that people would know. Like, no one wants to be the next It's Pat! Or at least I don't want to be the next It's Pat! Granted, there's no danger of that happening what with me not being on television, but still... It's Pat! is a fucking punchline.)

TV is terrible. I hope the people I like make the transition to movies and the ones I don't like become swallowed by their drug habits. (Although, shit, the ones I like... They were involved with Mean Girls. What the fuck? Not even that that's a particularly bad movie, as I've heard good things, so much as it's a movie that I would never see. It's not so much a comedy so much as it is just teensploitation, so it seems marketed to an uncaring demographic. So that's why the what the fuck.)

(So many parentheses.)

2004, Year In Review, Part 1: Music.

I could be saving this for a few more weeks, since 2004 isn't done yet. But, in terms of music, it is. Nothing's going to be released in the next month that I would be interested in, as the holiday season approaches. If it were, it would've leaked already, as I've heard stuff due for release next year already. That said: Wasn't a Built To Spill album supposed to come out this year?

Album of the year was, I guess, Liars' They Were Wrong So We Drowned. Which, come to think of it, I had heard by this time last year. I remember listening to it on someone else's stereo in the mods, on a disc burnt for me by Alex. My heroin-addict roommate at the time commented that it sounded like Sonic Youth. I think I had already presumptively called it the best album of 2004. It turned out I was right, because 2004 mainly sucked. And a lot of people hated that Liars record, thinking it unlistenable noise. They were wrong. I also saw Liars live, on March 26th, a day that is both my brother's birthday and Angus Andrews'. The show kicked ass, and kind of helped me put them over the edge.

I saw a lot of live music this year, all of which I could probably give the album of the year too in a half-assed fashion. I saw Deerhoof, and apparently Spin called Milk Man a perfect album. They're wrong. They also gave Liars their lowest rating. They are a bad magazine.

I also Mirah live... Thrice, actually, twice with the Black Cat Orchestra. C'Mon Miracle I've already burned myself out on, actually. I'd done it before it came out, due to the leak. At first I didn't like it so I kept on listening until I got it. I only get half of it, probably, the other half is dull borderline adult-contemporary. But the stuff with weird instruments? Those parts rule.

I also saw The Blow live. Her Poor Aim: Love Songs EP is pretty great, which is weird considering what it is.

For a while I was calling Girl Talk's Unstoppable my favorite album of the year. This was me, being insane. It's not that important. It's completely disposable plunderphonics fun. It's a collage record. Calling it my favorite album of the year is the twenty-first century equivalent of calling some garage band's album my favorite record of the year, like giving a shout-out to the Electric Prunes or something. It's just weird, even though it was incredibly enjoyable, and good for a few laughs. Not really amazing or anything.

This year I got really into the Mountain Goats, thanks mainly to the greatness of All Hail West Texas, which came out in 2002. That record's amazing. We Shall All Be Healed isn't nearly as good, as it's frequently restrained and maybe a bit too slickly produced. But I've been downloading a shitload of Mountain Goats, with iTunes currently listing me as having 237 songs. None of those are live shows.

I also listened to The Hold Steady, who John Darnielle recommends. Lyrically they're awesome... I posted a verse from an unreleased song a while back, and the ones on the album are pretty good too. The vocalist mainly just speaks and the backing music sounds like a bar band. So that's The Hold Steady. I guess they're good.

John Darnielle also likes Destroyer, who I listened to this year. Streethawk: A Seduction was quite the discovery, as was City Of Daughters. But the album that came out this year, Your Blues, isn't very good. It's consciously designed with a difficult, irritating, anti-rock aesthetic, and I didn't dig it. What-the-fuck-ever.

The Arcade Fire and The Fiery Furnaces: Overrated. Pish-posh!

!!! are rad, but the album they put out this year was kind of disappointing, although I guess it's good.

McLusky are great, and the album they put out this year doesn't seem to be getting the respect that it's due. But when I think about it, McLusky Do Dallas just has much more good songs than the new record. When I listened to them at work, I liked both almost equally, but the songs on that older record just stand out and distinguish themselves more.

Wolf Parade put out a really good EP this year, and I think their full-length should be rad. They're not to be confused with Wolf Eyes... Because Wolf Eyes are fucking terrible.

The Pixies put out two new songs this year. Hot damn. Amazing. I guess Loren didn't like Bam Thwok but then, Loren never heard the Pixies until this year so maybe he just doesn't know. Bam Thwok! Wakka wakka wakka! Oh, fuck yes.

This was the year I got to raid the KAOS record library. I guess the best things would be Silver Jews and Brainiac. Brainiac are amazing. Shit. I guess I hadn't heard Hissing Prigs In Static Couture until this year? That album owns. As do their other albums, which I didn't hear until this year. God, that kind of makes the year better.

I also got a job at a record store and it kind of sucked, which is too bad. That's the kind of fact that suggests I will never be happy.

Animal Collective's Sung Tongs sometimes seems like it should be the record of the year: I definitely liked it, and other people love it. It's one of those hippie-kid/indie rock/electronic crossover hits, kind of like Manitoba last year, but I just didn't dig it as much as other people. Most of the songs seemed kind of aimless. It's part of the overall aesthetic, and that whole freak-folk thing was big this year... And they were the only ones who did it well. Fuck Devendra, Joanna, and all the rest. Bah I say. The Animal Collective songs I liked were the ones least in that aesthetic, that were more focused and on-point. When that was the case, they owned it. I'm calling Who Could Win A Rabbit the single of the year. Leaf House might get that honor if it were released as a single, as that one's pretty damn great too.

The Go! Team also had some great singles, and an album I was disappointed by. They're kind of a singles band, but they were also mining the best aesthetic of the year. The songs are just frequently not there. There's never really songcraft in the traditional sense. The comparison to TV theme songs is apt. I liked it a lot in isolation.

Anyway, Who Could Win A Rabbit is the single of the year, but it didn't get any airplay, which isn't surprising at all. In terms of stuff that did get airplay: Modest Mouse. Their album sucked. And I bought it the day it came out. I remember in 2001, getting people into them and feeling bad as the word of their awesomeness got out to lame-asses. Now, all the lame-asses know about Modest Mouse. And I don't feel bad about it. I just feel shocked and strangely alienated from this band that was once one of my favorites. I hope their next record is incredibly weird and alienating. Not to ward off the new fans. But because I like record that are weird and alienating. Interpol got airplay this go-round too. The video for Slow Hands is hilarious: It seems like it's mainly about the one dude's hair. And Antics is mainly a piece of crap, even though it's not really that different.

Yeah, I hate to be the asshole who's all singing the praises of hip-hop radio. Because that asshole is frequently completely full of shit. But I'm calling the two best singles of the year that received radio airplay 99 Problems by Jay-Z and Jesus Walks by Kanye West. The Kanye joint is a distant second. 99 Problems is... I've only heard it twice, seriously. But in theory, it's just so damn great. The video has Vincent Gallo in it for some reason. And Rick Rubin is also in it, but that makes way more sense. I was talking to Alex about this earlier, and he said that there were the highlights of the radio this summer at his job, along with the three Outkast songs on Alaska radio. (two of them were played out by the end of 2003, the other one most people hated but I think is OK) He qualified that they were only highlights in terms of him just being glad they weren't playing the other shitty songs again. These songs got played a lot. But a funny connection between both these songs is they both make references to not being played on the radio. That's awesome. This is not to say that the radio isn't terrible, but to say that isn't to downplay the greatness of these songs either.

I guess I got more into hip-hop this year? I don't know. Still don't own any records. Mainly I just like the fact that some of it is good and there's a lot of the good stuff that I haven't heard a million times, as all my favorite records are the kind of thing I'll listen to three years from now. (Speaking of which: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain got reissued. That's probably the best thing to come out all year, but I haven't heard the bonus material yet.) So I can listen to Wu-Tang Clan and Public Enemy and finally get into all these classic records that will probably never mean anything to me, and can serve as background noise that still has lyrics to pay attention to if I see fit. And Ol' Dirty Bastard's Nigga Please is a fucking masterpiece, and one I only discovered this year. And then he died. Shit. Saddest death of the year, if it's not too crass to rate such things.

Last year I did one giant post that tied my life into the culture I experienced. This year my life was considerably less interesting. And very little dominated the culture I experienced, so there'll probably be more posts like this, that skim the plain as there were very little highlights. In future: Comics/books, my life, and movies. Movies will come last as a lot of stuff I want to see I won't be able to see for awhile, possibly until the middle of 2005. (Right now it's just Sideways, A Very Long Engagement, and The Life Aquatic, but that could change. What's sad is that those first two movies look kind of ass.) The other two ideas for posts might be condensed into one.

I kind of hate saying this, but the new issue of Vice owns. The theme is Hate. It's not solid gold. But it's pretty damn golden. Compelling and interesting and most of it makes you feel bad and fearful. There's an interview with one little girl who kicks ass and then an interview with two older little girls who make you weep for the future of humanity.

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n10/htdocs/index.php

Happy Thanksgiving America.

Every time I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, my heart hurts. Surely, I am unhealthy. It does seem odd that it happens as I eat the sandwich and not afterwards, but this is not to say that there is not a correlation. My heart hurts because I am unhealthy. I am unhealthy because of my diet. I used to think that the lack of effect on my outward appearance meant that I just had the most amazing metabolism, but now I am thinking that maybe my body is just broken.

It's late. I'm not asleep. Waking up late fucks with my sleep schedule rather harshly, and now I'm thinking that maybe I should just push it. I've got some things to do tomorrow, and there's a part of me that likes the idea of doing these things before sleep. The other part thinks this is impractical and I will just end up passing out before I can do anything and tomorrow will be even less productive than today. I keep on thinking I'm tired as I write, but when I lie down, sleep doesn't come. And I'm considerably more lucid in my writings now than I am when I'm tired.

I woke up late today. After 4:30, to be somewhat less general. It's pretty terrible. I've previously said that the key to enjoying life is to wake up late, but I have to reconsider. I woke up as the sun was going down. Nothing will get done today. I feel like shit.

I've got these two short stories I'm kind of working on. One is paused as the characters don't have names. Another is just kind of stalled the way things usually go, and I reread what I have and I don't like the way it reads. I also have the beginnings of a novel which is kind of on the backburner. Then there's shit for class, evaluations and more rewrites of the Ol' Dirty Bastard paper and editing other people's work. I can't focus on any of these things. My other roommates are being productive.

Currently, my reading for class is a book of philosophy by Michael Foucalt. I don't care, not even a little bit. Class next quarter had better work out.

Tomorrow I'll bake pies. And hopefully, my amplifier will arrive, along with the new McSweeney's. Mainly I just want to make music and read things I find interesting, and maybe inspiration will strike.

It's a bad place I'm in.

The Gorilla Foundation Manifesto,
by Brian Nicholson:

Art is a form of communication. It serves a different purpose than conversation, as it attempts to put forth larger, more abstract ideas. Philosophy attempts to do such a thing using the same tools as conversation, and it usually fails due to its insularity. In this and in many other ways, art is better than philosophy.

And yet, this manifesto isn't a work of art, although it is a communication. It is a conversation, a philosophical text, albeit one made by one imagining himself to be an artist. In time, the art will speak for itself. Until then, this will have to do in order to articulate a statement of goals.

Olympia, Washington, is a music town, lorded over by two twin tyrants. One of the problems created by such things is the very existence of such tyranny. The other regards the way they rule, and how they've earned it. Their policies don't speak to the interests of the people, or at least the people I associate with.

And so, Gorilla Foundation exists in the service of both democracy and good art.

Gorilla Foundation breaks down both the hierarchy of the scene, and the distinction between performer and audience. Not fully, as to do so might lead to anarchy and chaos, which is good for a laugh but not necessarily good for art. No, but a balance is struck: Gorilla Foundation exists not in a chaotic state, but it does create something of a shambolic one.

Gorilla Foundation is a band, but it is a band with a fluid membership, open to any who are interested and present at any given time. It has charter members, but that kind of doesn't matter. In interest of democracy, you being there first doesn't mean shit. Take that, scenesters. It doesn't matter how early how arrived. Saying this may downplay the importance of several rather important people, present at initial conversations. Sorry.

The nucleus of Gorilla Foundation are the songs of Gorilla Foundation, whose lyrics are penned by me, but whose melodies are crafted by Evan Hashi. This is partly because Evan Hashi is far superior to I in areas of songcraft, and partly because collaboration is a key part of Gorilla Foundation. It's all about putting your trust in another person's hands. This might undermine the songs I write, and it might confuse the audience's persepective of those songs. It will assuredly create a kind of tension which I find inherently fascinating in collaborative works.

The nature of Gorilla Foundation creates more tension, and undermines the songs. For the performance of the songs, the main members are also Evan and myself. Evan provides the song with their spine, the vocals, the melody, the lead guitar line, the basics of structure. I conduct the improvisational rock and roll orchestra that swirls around that structure.

And this is where the other members come in. They come bearing their own instruments, and they are then conducted. There will be a lot of percussion, a rhythmic cacophony. There may be horns, there may be strings. There may be bounding acoustic guitars, providing counterlines. There may be harmony vocals. There may be basslines, going off the guitar and imploring those not playing instruments to dance.

There is no stage, there is no center. At a Gorilla Foundation performance, there are a good number of things to pay attention to, of utmost importance is the sound.

The sound: Indie rock. Because it speaks to me, goddammit. Because I call Pavement my favorite band, but I know I can't write melodies that good. Pavement were loose and spontaneous, there is a happy energy to their records that I seek to reproduce with Gorilla Foundation, because I can't reproduce it with my other theoretical musical venture, The Art Project.

The Art Project, along with the other musical ventures of Evan and the others involved (Notable in particular is Loren Thor, present in the initial discussions, member of The Tasteful Nudes, and advocate of Olympia scene overhaul) seek to legitimize Gorilla Foundation. The other ventures are to make Gorilla Foundation seem inviting to people outside our smallish circle. We want to paint a picture of a new scene, to replace the one that currently exists. (Well, Loren and I do, Evan seems much more content) That is what the other bands do. Gorilla Foundation is a way to prevent the flaws of revolution, lest we become tyrants ourselves. We our inviting others along, for we insist that ours is a democracy. And its a democracy open to current scene participants as well: We are not opposed to them as people, because some have made some very good records indeed, and some of them are probably perfectly decent as people. We are just opposed to what we view as their rule.

Ours is an open invitation. Come to shows, bring instruments. Join us, for ours is an exciting movement to be a part of; and with your aid, the music might very well end up being exciting as well. Excitement is a very large part of what we are trying to communicate with our art. There are other things as well, but they are comparatively boring. It is exciting to be excited. In a similar vein, it is also rocking to rock. Come rock.

Our protagonist pauses the generic early-nineties indie rock (Archers Of Loaf, again) and then removes the headphones from his head. He asks to anyone who is around to hear, "Eggo makes Cookies And Cream waffles, has the whole world gone mad?" And he hears no response. So he leaves his room and wanders around his dormitory, to discover it was empty. There was no one around to hear his empty words. Don't you hate this fucker?

He was called a hipster earlier in the morning, the kind of accusation that gets his blood up, for no good reason. Oh he can argue the charges. And he would have a good point. These are not the kind of things levied at him in Philadelphia, not even a little bit. But here, at Evergreen, in Olympia, where such creatures may actually exist, there is some confusion. In Philadelphia he is just a lovable loser and no one gives a shit what he listens to, they're just surprised he doesn't like The Misfits.

But let's not defend him too quickly. Because, you know, the third person thing? Oh my god.

Clever kids are killing me. For one, they ain't that clever.

The latest in the ongoing process: The magic eightball/impending death anecdote posted here will be the core of a short story, one that attempts the "balancing magical realism with the indie-rock-kid world in which I live" ambition also posted here. Don't steal that idea bastards!

So, it's 6:19 AM and I haven't fallen asleep. And I have class at 11.

I did have a brief go at sleep, around 1 or so. It didn't take. I woke up again, laid in bed, thought about class, then did some writing. I don't want to do anymore writing about class tonight. And I don't really want to go through the trouble of writing about what I wrote about.

So why am I writing here?

Because I can't seem to fall asleep.

So, how about a quick defense of Pitchfork? It's fallen off lately, or maybe I'm just seeing the seams. I'll defend Mark Richardson's music writing, and I'll say that William Bowers' self-indulgent meta-pieces work better than most of the others. There are other people with varying taste and varying writing ability. I think that Ryan Schreiber generally has decent opinions, although his actual review-writing leaves a lot to be desired. But those first two are fucking fascinating music writers, and they both come at it from different approaches.

And suddenly I'm tired again.

There's a magic eightball floating around the dorm. One day, John Samson, the owner, asked it some questions regarding 2012. John Samson got told (twice) that he will die on December 21st, 2012. It turns out that I won't, though. I'll die before that. A violent death, at someone else's intentional hand.

In the wake of ODB's death, we asked if the RZA will live past 2012. Yes, he will, says the magic eightball.

But earlier, when I played Magic Eightball Music Critic, the eightball said that Bright Eyes is good and The Arcade Fire's Funeral is the album of the year. What does a magic eightball know?

Ol' Dirty Bastard is dead.

RIP

Shit just put on Return To The 36 Chambers, in the intro he just said he's happy to be alive.

Alex is next door, blasting Nigga Please, right now he's on I Can't Wait.

Dirt McGirt album drops in March. I hope it's huge.

I still have to rewrite this paper. And now it will be shot through with a melancholy I never expected it to have.

I had a dream just last night that I was working at a pizza place and Ol' Dirty Bastard came in and everything was cool until he took something about white bread badly and put me in a headlock or something. I don't quite remember what happened.

This is a sad day.

You know, I don't think David Rees is funny at all. But right now there's a little letter of encouragement at his page and... it's pretty encouraging.

And I quote:

CHIN UP.
We're smarter than those motherfuckers.
We can learn more quickly than those motherfuckers.
We can be more ruthless than those motherfuckers.
We can be some six-million-dollar motherfuckers ourselves.

Chin up.
We're more American than those motherfuckers.
We're more responsible than those motherfuckers.
We're more compassionate than those motherfuckers.
Hell, our atheists are more Christian than their Bible-thumpin' motherfuckers.

There's an election in two years.
There's nothing we can't do.

Chin up.
Because it's on, motherfuckers. It is on.

Indeed. But that Get Your War On comic remains as unfunny as ever.

The latest in a string of overly-ambitious ideas, and how it got to be the size it is:

I was thinking about some kind of zine thing that would be a format for my short stories. Because of the zine format, this would also allow for commentary about other things: Music reviews and political rantings and such.

But then I thought "fuck zines" as it's too narrow. People will get sick of my voice rather quickly.

So then it grew into a literary magazine, a collection of short stories, with all the other content, the reviews and stuff, being there to serve two purposes. To show the mindstate of the people creating the art (As I wrote this I was listening to RZA and the Silver Apples, or something) and to be the voice of the magazine. Kind of like the McSweeney's online content implemented more into the print-version text. That voice would be what people could respond to, and would be the common ground for the disparate forms of fiction that made up the real content. It would also be a better music magazine than others around- most are horrible.

Then I was thinking about how most comics suck ass, made for boring old people. A few brits look back at the early nineties fondly... There were things like Deadline that were cool, bringing together music reviews and comics largely made by people who were really fucking cool... Jamie Hewlett, most notably, but I also think that Phillip Bond and Brendan McCarthy were a part of the same group of kick-ass art school kids. So then that got worked into the equation as well, with the comics being treated like short stories. Not particularly arty or literary comics, although a bit of that too, for depth. (Mainly because who's young and kick-ass? I have no idea.)

I'm thinking print it all up on cheap newsprint. A magazine, straight-up, with ads and stuff. Disposable. Well-designed graphically but not in terms of format and not to hamper with the ads. Actually I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of ads... Ads are anathema to looking good but key to keeping the cost down and again, I like the idea of disposability which ads help. Although ads also fuck with the credibility of the reviews and shit that would be the voice, which is something can't really be fucked with. I don't know. Awesome drawings and photography on the front cover, but hopefully that wouldn't be the extent of the design.

I don't know. I don't really have the money, the resources, or the connections to talented people to actually do any of this.

Still. Alex once typed "experimental music needs to be shaken the fuck up. Like now," and I was with him and it's a statement that applies to more than just experimental music. Most things need to be shaken up because I am getting bored. Who is on some next-level shit? As far as I'm concerned, no one.

The latest in the realm of things I've suddenly begun to hear about frequently is Italo Calvino, an author whose works I haven't read, but should probably get on.

It should also be pointed out that it could be argued that The Incredibles has right-wing themes. So did Team America, and Team America was more explicit. Both of these movies were good regardless, so people who bitch about things like that... Just suck it up and enjoy it. I can't imagine someone not liking the movie because of its themes. I can see people not liking it on that level, but being sold on the rest of it. You don't necessarily have to see the themes, but the argument that they're there is a pretty strong argument.