So, I'm late on paying these bills. And I'm behind on this work for class, maybe- Reading a book that's none-too-compelling, writing a close reading about an animation I don't really feel I understand enough for such a thing. I want to hand in a resume to Orca Books sometime in the near future- They're not hiring, and I'm too busy, but I want to make a small gesture towards maybe staying in Olympia and saving myself a hassle. I'm dropping balls in a way that Bruce Lee never did, is what I'm saying.

(did you catch all the levels there? There were some levels there.)

But today I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time, I stood on the west coast and looked out on water and didn't see land. I walked the beach, picked up sandollars, sung "woo-oo-ooh, these are selfish times" to myself, and felt the sand beneath my feet, various textures from fine grains to compacted to wet, had the cold water come up in the form of a tide and numb my feet, played with dogs and punched the ground. There were all of these trees that had been bleached white and were washed up and covered in sand, like images from Days Between Stations, looking like wooly mammoth bones, and being referred to as such by me.

Yesterday I spent some money that I don't have ordering CDs from Amazon- That upcoming Matmos record, and the McCluskyism 3-disc. The Matmos album is great, and I was tired of people downloading it off me when they should just be buying it. Today Pitchfork gave the new Sunset Rubdown a Best New Music recommendation, and then a shitload of people downloaded it off me. I've had it for awhile now, and I agree with Brandon Stosuy's opinion about it- It's really good, one of my favorites, something I've listened to a lot to come out this year, along with that Matmos album- Using the whole iTunes most played feature I find I've listened to those, Islands, and Man Man the most. (After that, it's Lightning Ghost by Bird Show.) All of these would be records worth buying, if you're someone with disposable income.

There was a woman on The Colbert Report on Wednesday, Caitlin Flanagan, promoting a book against feminism. Since she was opposed to feminism and pre sandwich-and-baby-making, I have no moral reservations at all saying she was an unappealing woman, with ridiculous hair. The interview was dryly unconfrontational, but frat boys in the audience whooped it up.

Meanwhile- I read a story on Yahoo news about Bush trying to lower gas prices by urging environmental regulations and stopping putting things in the oil reserve. What awful ideas. He's also cutting tax breaks to oil companies and urging larger tax breaks for hybrid owners, which is decent, but in a word: SINKINGSHIPSINKINGSHIPSINKINGSHIPSINKINGSHIPSINKINGSHIP. John Kerry apparently talked reducing the influx of oil to the surplus in his election campaign. Bush denounced it then as playing politics. SINKINGSHIPSINKINGSHIP.

No one's going to care about this at all, it's just nerdy thought-documentation for my own sake. After I posted that list of the best albums of last year, pretty much immediately, I declared Why- Elephant Eyelash my favorite. I don't know- That might actually be what I say on the list. But what I hadn't heard at that point was the Akron/Family Angels Of Light split, which I've listened to so much since then. Anyway- That should displace Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's spot, even though I like them. It should just be in the second fifth. And, towards the bottom of the list, there's a Numbers record I hadn't heard at the time of my list-making, just as a way to give credit for a good live show. I've heard, it's not too good, displace it entirely. For an even twenty-five.

God, that's some OCD shit. Or, it would be if I hadn't been thinking it for awhile, and am just writing it down now so I can stop thinking it, as it'll be documented.

In other news, I'm pretty into apples.

So I have finally read the final draft that my faculty wrote about me and my work last quarter. It's pretty awful, harsh in that way where it's not necessarily trying to be harsh, but is trying to talk about something not really understood in a way where there's a lot of condescension that's somewhat unavoidable, but even that's tainted with an active dislike. But fuck it, I can't be bothered, I'm moving on, got this class, got a good thing going. So that professor's now an enemy, so be it. I have enemies, that's how I do: I'm kind of unlikable. She's not my nemesis, just one of many in my rogue's gallery.

But now I'm in this animation class and I've got some books to read and I'm working on a thing I'm really excited about. It might be good enough to redeem Evergreen a bit.

So, Penguin's putting out a series of classic books with packaging redesigned by cartoonists. The Jungle, for example, is going to have a cover by Charles Burns, although I don't think it's that great of an illustration. I think some of the packaging is awesome- Some is good enough to make me care about things I didn't previously care about, some are just better designed versions of things I already care about. I do feel like it's mostly uniformly a step up, even when the artists involved aren't people I care about. Some of them, I just don't know how to feel. The only one I'd designate as being clearly bad is Art Spiegelman's cover for The New York Trilogy, but maybe that's actually awesome and I just don't get it because I haven't read the material. The only one on the market currently, I think, is Chris Ware's version of Voltaire's Candide, which I think looks amazing but I can't find a large enough image to link to. It's worth noting that it's not just cartoonists doing the front cover illustration, although I do think that in many cases, that'd be enough of an improvement- but a design of the backcover and inside cover flaps as well. Ware seemingly even got some jokes in. Even beyond such decisions of design, it's just interesting to me the decisions made for the packaging of the content- I don't know who did the cover, but Rashomon is going to have an introduction written by Haruki Murakami.

Connections drawn: So on the MySpace page for the Mary Timony band, under influences, Paper Rad is cited. In the new Arthur, there's a Ben Jones strip about the nineties, and a quest to Boston for the lead singer. There is talk of Polvo and the lead singer in question ends up being female. It's a good strip. I like Paper Rad, and I've been listening to Helium with some regularity.

I don't know if I talked about how good the new Ghostface album is- I think I did. Anyway, what I heard was an advance copy, fourteen tracks. The actual album is weaker, in that of what I'm downloading now, a lot of the added material is just godawful skits that no album needs. It's too bad, as that promo is really good.

I'll probably just have it on iTunes, that fourteen-track version, maybe with some of the extra stuff if it's worth keeping, and have the original art up as well. (The one with fish in a net on it, rather than just Ghostface and his posse.)

In other news, it's hard to make french fries. I used a lot of oil, and it never got crispy. I looked up what I should've done after I had already done things wrong. (I should've washed the potatoes in cold water, and then blanched them, before the process.)

So further notes on exactly what kind of hippie this professor who's not giving me all the credits I rightfull deserve is: She's the kind that'll force you to watch What The Bleep Do We Know?, drives a VW bus, but still when you're sitting in her office you find a well-worn copy of Atlas Shrugged sitting on the bookshelf at eye-level.

"You can tell a lot about a woman by the way she scrubs a cauldron."

Are there any novels out there that are as insightful as to how human nature and America and all the shit work as some offhand Paul Mooney interview nonsense talk? I kind of doubt it.

This is from an interview at that one site some girl you know is probably trying to get images of their breasts hosted on:

"A few weeks ago Hillary Clinton said “This administration was run like a plantation.” Do you know who flipped when she said that? Laura Bush. When you’re on a plantation, who does the master sleep with? Condoleeza!"

No fucking shit: This kind of thought process kicks Phillip Roth square in the balls.

No, it's cool, I can have the sword of Damocles hanging over my head indefinitely. It's cool.

So yesterday I had my evaluation conference, with a teacher who I already knew liked me. He gave me all the credit he could. But, the class was split up, and I had another teacher for this independent project I was working on. She only gave me two credits of a possible eight.

So I had to set up an appointment with her. I did so, for 3 PM today. When I woke up, I got an e-mail from her telling me she had to reschedule, as her kid relapsed and has a 105 degree fever. I could come in at 10 or 12, but if I came in at 12, the meeting would be limited to only fifteen minutes. I was not awake at 10, so 12 it was. She also asked for an e-mail that would detail what I did and how that was enough work for full credit. I write her an e-mail. When I get there at 12, she's still in her meeting with the person before me- One of those common occurences at Evergreen, the mom who's older than everyone else that all the students feel uncomfortable and wary about. Anyway, the meeting goes on for another ten minutes.

So I say "should we reschedule?" She says yes, because she hadn't read that e-mail I sent her, because it was long. Which it would've had to be, to account for all the time I had spent.

So there'll be a meeting at some point on Friday. With another person there, the program's third teacher, who I never interacted with for any length of time at all. I guess he'd be mediating, assigning credits? I don't quite get it, but she thinks he needs to be there.

I've complained about this teacher in the past, although not on here. I don't like her hippie leanings, the kind that don't manifest themselves in terms of being easy-going or environmentally minded, but just in stupid beliefs. I've got sympathy for her kid's sickness, but part of the problem, I think I recall, stemmed from her going back and forth between antibiotics and new age cures. The latter wouldn't work at all, as being three years old he's probably not cogniscent (sic) of what's happening enough for any kind of psychosomatic placebo effect to take place.

I'm mostly tired of typing about this situation, and only did this post to make that last joke.

Wow, Alex Tripp is on-point.

Okay, so, on this new Matmos album, which I've talked about in the past- (Antony sings on it, and there's an instrument made from a cow vagina/reproductive organs, played with a vacuum cleaner, sounding kind of like a bagpipe- I thought that was an odd combo) there's a song, track 3, called Tract For Valerie Solanas. The concept of the album is a series of portraits for people, with sounds for them- Track 9, Rag for William S. Burroughs, has typewriters for percussion, for example.

Anyway. The tract has more vocals than most, a pretty constant voice, saying things which I don't think are in the SCUM Manifesto but I read that awhile ago. "get a good job, comanaging the shitpile" gets said, as does "Destroy the male sex."

Anyway. What Alex just pointed out to me, that he apparently got like a week ago, is what the sounds that aren't vocals are. The more musical sounds. That's the cow vagina and accompanying organs. Or, a reproductive tract. It's a pun.

And man, holy shit- Matmos can talk all they want about the album, and how they hope people get it when it comes out, since the packaging's so important, (Dan Clowes is involved, drawing something) but this, the slow reveal of the tracklisting with the knowledge of the people, without the aid of liner notes, is something special. Just learning bits of someone's history and then listening to the track for those sounds- The sound of a cigarette burning flesh on "Germs Burn For Darby Crash," for example- It's really fun.

Like on first listen I was thinking "this is a really great album, probably going to end up being the best of the year," and then, the more I listen, the more I learn, the more I catch. There's layers to this.

I imagine that actually buying the album, with liner notes detailing sound sources, will just be such an epiphany.

When I think about the future, I am terrified. The money that has been in a saving's account is almost completely spent. Job prospects in Olympia are grim to non-existent. School involves a lot of shit and I'm VERY worried about not getting full credit. At the end of June, my lease expires, and my ties to Olympia are severed. Also I'll turn twenty-one, and that will mean the end of my dad's child support. The school situation is also sketchy enough that health insurance is up in the air.

I need to stop being on the internet so much. I need to make this film, write this book, do this schoolwork, find a paying job.

Everything is going to crumble, basically, and I need to have something done before that happens. The schoolwork's the least of the problems, the job is to prevent life-crumbling. The movie's to have something to show, same as the book only in some ways bigger: I haven't made a movie, and I need to, in order to prove how smart I am if given a roof over my head and resources and comfort enough to do such things.

The things I want to do are the same things I've always wanted to do and have never done. It's so fucking tragic, so fucking ordinary.

Tomorrow the things I have to do are schoolwork things. That's okay, though, I guess. Hopefully the video game distraction is dead to me now. I think it might be. Today I reread/rewrote the first seven chapters of this book- It was designed to have a small climax, be a working model, within those first seven chapters, that I could then show people, but then I reread a while back, possibly in a weird mood, and found it really overwrought and kind of unacceptable. I think it's better now. It's not perfect, but nothing is. It is what it is. I can move forward. I'd rather make Stop, You're Blowing My Mind than write this book, though, I think. In terms of immediacy. In terms of what I'd rather do first. Hopefully my writing this will serve as a declaration of intent.

Tomorrow I will wake up early, erect by half-past-ten. I will tear up the schoolwork. Maybe give the Classified ads a look. Talk to people about this movie- I only ever have the confidence to do so in late-night nervous fits, during the day time I'm more insecure somehow. A different kind of nervousness, one more conducive to staying home. Only on the verge of the sleep do my balls drop. It's awful.

Further Books sample cataloging- "I can't find the books, they must be in La Jolla" is from a This American Life bit.

However! "I suppose it doesn't really matter which way we go" (from, I think, "Be Good To Them Always) is from the Nicolas Roeg movie Walkabout, which was recently viewed. It's pretty great.

I just walked home from a party, and am listening to the last couple tracks off Elephant Eyelash. There is alcohol in my system, and the general sexual frustration and a sad awareness of the fact that my memory isn't so good with faces/names/places. I didn't offend anyone, I don't think. I don't know if I made any kind of impression at all.

Alpha Incipiens ran through my head as dance music played. I was coaxed out onto the dance floor for M.I.A. by two pretty lesbians who I got along with maybe better than anyone else. They were drunk and I was aware of their lesbianism and so that probably helped everybody with the getting along.

John Samson's back in town! Awesome.

I had a good night, and I hope the vestigial limbs of the evening reach into the memories of all who decided that I was cool.

I got a compliment from my old neighboring roommate Will, who said that I was "hella nerdy" but the shoes I rock are always so gangster and that's cool and old-school. Yeahhhh.

I've got the glory of the world world-view.

Oh man, Michel Gondry. As I wait for The Science Of Sleep and Dave Chappelle's Block Party to be released (they're both finished) I find out that his next film, Master Of Space And Time, is going to have a screenplay written by Daniel Clowes, based on some sci-fi novel I've never read, but by a guy who's apparently fairly well-regarded. And will star Jack Black.

Oh man, Michel Gondry.

I just saw Akron/Family. I'd been listening to their split with Angels Of Light a lot recently, to get psyched. They were awesome, as a band making music and as a band made up of dudes with senses of humor and stuff. I had a lot of fun. You should all buy that split, and then go see them live and be up front dancing with all of these total nerds.

They made Jim Gaffigan references and like weird confrontational humor.

Banter: "I'd like to dedicate this next song..."

He trails off into silence, puts a hand on one side of his face, leans on the microphone with his lip, and then sighs deeply.

AND THEN THEY ROCKED OUT FUCKING HARD.

Noise and synths, melodica and quiet folk songs, and some of it was danceable and some of it not at all, but enough to make the people who were all "I want to sit in a chair, you sit down" and I was all "No dudes, you should be standing, you will all be standing" realize that I fucking win and am not to be questioned ever.

Long bit of music criticism about Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West starting...

NOW

I was resentful of the dance-punk hype, the insinuation that indie kids didn't dance because they hated fun, were too uptight to like anything. There's some music where dancing just isn't the point, isn't what you're supposed to do, even if there's a groove. For me, alone in my bedroom in high school, listening to Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West, I paced. Back and forth.

There's a rhythm, a groove, but it's not coming from a funk place. It's coming, I feel, from a krautrock place if any such influence can be ascribed other than the pacific northwest nineteen-nineties scene, which- There's no reason to have that limited a framework, although it seems that what most critics did. And, yeah, not to deride that, or at least, the aspect Up Records released. It's kind of a paramount example of nineties indie rock, all treble and cool influences. But, like, krautrock's a cool influence.

The krautrock thing- There's a rhythm, yes, and the rhythm is the drive, but over that, beneath that, all over, there's just this guitar, which works with it, while just- It seems to do more. The songs don't seem written based on the chord progressions, or, if they were, they mutated and are now rhythm-driven. The guitar then just throbs, with rhythm, yeah, and melody, but dissonance as well. It just squeals about, throws noises out there, all while doing all the other things it's supposed to do.

The vocals and lyrics, too, seem rhythm-driven- Repetitious to a certain extent, but not in the pejorative sense. Music is repetition and variation, and there's enough variation to it all, especially in how it plays off of everything.

The Nude As The News review said that the album has verses and choruses, but which is which is hard to distinguish- Melodies and structures just get repeated throughout songs, and it's all groove-based, all based on that rhythmic framework. The vocals are just getting spat out, switching up as often as anything else, really, but repetitious enough.

It's pacing music- Different places in the room highlight certain sounds, but there's more to it. There's something introspective in pacing that isn't in dancing. It's more conducive to self-laceration. You can nod your head and sway your hips, you can feel the beat, but there's still a voice there, and it's still saying stuff, it's still coming in. Phrases repeat themselves for reinforcement, but get framed in new contexts. Not unlike how thoughts work when you're ruminating on a subject.

And the beat just goes on.

Whenever I think of this album, I think of something building, structures being erected, made of wood, wire, spiralling upward. All while I think of three men just bashing it the fuck out. Rhythms. Some of that is the imagery of buildings on the art. Some of that's the length- It's one second shy of an even seventy-four minutes. Towers are going to be brought to mind. But there's a certain kind of construction that builds a tower rather than just stacking a lot of small boxes into rows.

Third Planet, off The Moon And Antarctica, is more of an anthem, in some ways. More traditionally anthemic. Not that there's not stuff to sing along to here, or whatever- Certainly "I'm trying to drink away the part of the day I cannot sleep away" gets a lot of mileage. But so many songs on Lonesome Crowded West are just- yeah, krautrock- The Can kind, there's no motorik beat here. (And holy living fuck is Jeremiah Green a good drummer) There's this rhythm, and it shifts, and it builds on itself. So frequently the climax isn't the chorus- those are hard to find, after all- but the finale, where there's no more words, where the guitar is just getting the shit beat out of it, propelling the building ever upward, with the rest of it just whirring along with it, some kind of violent levitation. A similar enough principle applies to the end, which is mostly just drumming, although there's more going on beneath it than just a drumbeat.

No guitar on the finale to Jesus Christ Was An Only Child, just a fiddle melody, but again, the same principle, of melody as finale. That song, oh man, for all the other stuff I mentioned, that totally applies to this song, is also notable for the whole-

I'm not even talking about the themes. The religious stuff, the America stuff. But that's all there, in spades. Lyric-writing wise. Whatever. Listen to it and pick up the repeated phrases and all that stuff is there, it's great, lyrically, but musically, you know, the placing emotional climaxes on just instrumental works rather well. It works just as well when Isaac Brock screams out "I didn't move to the city, the city moved to me, and I! Want! Out! Desperately!" But that's not all the songs, you know?

But the religious stuff, I did want to address briefly, in that for mythology purposes, I fucking love that there's two guys in the band with Old Testament biblical names. And that one of them sings the line, about Jesus Christ, that God "shoulda' killed that little fucker before he even had."

And that's not even, again- that's not like the heart of the record, that line. That's a toss-off. There's other religious references- and by religious references, I mean toying with iconography, rather than direct allusions- that get more play. The last two songs, mostly acoustic instrument-driven, more traditional in instrumentation, pre-electronic stuff, (same holds true for Jesus Christ Was An Only Child, earlier- fiddle!) addresses the topic as well, more conclusively, if not so much more straight-forwardly.

It's just so tangled and so verbal, and so personal a discussion of these distinct things. It feels so bashed out, in a way which in some ways I prefer to the more orchestrated and produced stuff that- I enjoy a lot, that I'd call my favorite records, more sonically detailed things, better with sound, but this... For that stupid abstract concept of "rock and roll," this is as good as the traditional method gets. The more orchestrated stuff sometimes includes better songcraft, but- I mean, that's not rock and roll, is it? That's some kind of classical pop standard. This, you know, "rolls" more than that, with the groove emphasis. It also "rocks" harder than most of that stuff.

It's just that, while doing all that, it's actually interesting, despite/because of its oft-used materials. Other stuff is more moving, or is moving in a way that's rare and hard to find. But this is just great, just as this thing, this structure. It's not beautiful like a painting is beautiful, or a person; but like a building, some kind of architecture, and it's a big enough a thing to get lost in. And then find yourself pacing somewhere in the middle floors, in front of big giant glass windows, overlooking something else, although some kind of city with its presence in it, lost in thought as the weather outside reflects your inner thoughts back at you in some way only vaguely understandable, and when lightning strikes the building the power surges through and the lights maybe blink or flash but the threat of the building collapsing is never all that real.

And although that could've been an ending, I'm not intent to let that lie, because there's still more that needs to be discussed- The fact that an album is both its own complete thing like a novel or a film, but a document of a band at a point in time, and that so much coherence is just through the editing process of editing a collection of songs, of all the thoughts pertaining to a certain broad set of subjects down. To use a literary metaphor, it's a diary at the same time it's a novel with a narrative. The surrounding EPs and singles are all great, as was the albums that preceded and followed. The Lonesome Crowded West is just a guidebook to one way to write songs, one writing process for one group at a particular point in time. So aside from that "what a great album," it should be pointed out that Modest Mouse should be addressed very much in terms of "what a great band."

The new Ol' Dirty Bastard album is awful. Not enough ODB, too much Macy Gray. I'm going to say maybe two acceptable tracks so far, and they're the ones with members of the Wu-Tang Clan guesting. Despite a bit of weird uncomfortable misogyny on the Ghostface track- Ghostface threatens that he and ODB will doubleteam you from behind if you don't have his money. Disturbing enough just as a rape threat before you think about the fact that he probably only said that after ODB was dead, so...

Seriously, awful shit.

I am washing my brain out.

Followup to the Erickson talk of a few days ago: I've been reading stuff he read at Salon, including a piece where he offhandedly praises The Invisibles, and this piece, http://dir.salon.com/story/sex/feature/2000/08/18/erickson_sanctimony/index.html?sid=965738, where he says something really insightful as an offhanded attack on Peggy Noonan, the woman who came off so impossibly creepy on The Daily Show towards the end of last year.

This is the line: "To an extent this is a victory of ideology itself, of the argument advanced by people like Peggy Noonan that by definition a nonideological man like Clinton has no true principles and thus whatever social justice he speaks for can be dismissed. To an ideologue like Noonan, who shapes the truth to suit her biases, the man who shapes his biases to suit the truth is a nihilist."

This fits in with the awesome Onion A.V. Club interview with Stephen Colbert from two weeks ago, which can be read at http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44705. Stephen Colbert, it should be noted, destroyed Peggy Noonan with nonchalant awesomeness when he interviewed her.

Betty Friedan died, age 85. That's new.

My professor said some stupid shit the other day. No one called him out on it. Not even I, as he just said it as part of a long digression and I didn't want to further the tangent.

He was complaining about WASL, the standardized test for the state of Washington, and how biased it is. He started out by talking about the discrepancy between the results of success of special-ed and non-special-ed students, and how this is proof of the WASL being biased against kids in special ed.

He went on to list other groups the test is biased against- whites get higher scores than non-whites, with, and I quote him, "Asians being included as white."

I think I was the only person who blinked at statements like this, but blinking isn't really enough, and I'm now mad at myself for not saying "Excuse me, what the fuck?"