adventures of a dilettante

three month itch

2008-01-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I realize again the epic importance of blogging/journaling....so much time is going by so quickly, so much seems hegemonic and un-exceptional, but only because it is being compared against what I have already done, what I am in the midst of doing - everything seems the same, like the same song played again even though you haven't heard it in three months you realized you have not changed, it has not changed. But everything really is the same if there is no way to trace the passage of days and events - for me time of late has been one stony, unrecognizable and drunktastic conglomerate of days and weeks. I work all the time and then when I am not working I am probably drinking or sleeping (that I am also high goes without saying).

Things that have changed in the last three months: I moved (triumph!) and have found my office job that I had just acquired upon last bloggity to become my more substantive bread and butter, I hit the back of a taxi just barely and fucked myself and my life HARD, I passed my first birthday-and-holidays cycle in Austin, I took up with a young fellow for whom I have nothing but mediocrity in my heart, whom I am currently very passively blowing off (not in a good way, obvs).

I am excited about the possibilities surrounding this new year, but have felt over-burdened by the post-cabbie horror, to the point where though I had no phone, it didn't matter a whit because I was too overpowered to even want to do anything but hide away in my house (which is new, beautiful and full of novelty and capacity for changing my life, so not all bad).

I want to be more. I want to live and do more and feel more electricity for my life.

I think I can do it, because today is the first time my heart felt freed of some of the dread Damaclesing over my head seemingly without end.

I don't know if I'll be blogging with any sort of regularity, but keeping some kind of record at this point is critical.

sous de la nouvelle vague

2007-10-15T11:00:00.000-06:00

Wow. In my many blogging years, delinquency of posting has definitely dragged into the 4-6 month mark - but I feel almost like this if the first time of this particular blog-vehicle that I have been so postless. And having just verified that statement, I agree with myself.

Last night was...epic. The Second Sunday Sockhop, truly one of my favorite things in Austin, came to pass. As if seeing my beloved Naenae laugh in the face of tomorrow morning and show up to dance off her sweet hindquarters wasn't enough....there was so much more.

I forced my way into friendship with a couple just because I saw some guy taking blatant hits from his pipe near me...the lady in his company was one of those crazy east coasters - she spoke French with me and confessed her past of being once engaged to a b-list celeb - not that I want for any new best friends, but I would describe her as someone I'm going to do coke with someday and it's going to get really raw really fast.

And then...oh yes...my dreamweaver showed up - I had given up on him, having been informed by a friend that d-weaves has picked up a shift at his work - but there he was, like a bolt of sexy magic. And though there were certainly others around, I did hang with him until the early, early morn - I remain as unsure of myself as ever, totally unable to confess to my crushings.

I know this is all terribly unspecific, but I haven't properly woken up and I don't have time to get into details and I must be snazzy and clean for job numba 2 almost at once.

Let the blogging silence be undone!

tie-red

2007-05-29T16:24:00.000-06:00

I'm silly tired today. Perhaps vaguely connected to the fact that I kept waking up from 5-7 am every few minutes this morning. No amount of coffee can bring me back to normalcy, I fear. Tiiiired.

I'm also tired of people telling you they're going to take you out to lunch, drinks, Monte Carlo etc. when intoxicated but with the veneer of sincerity all the same. Then, you show up to collect (like a good lil opportunist should) and in their blank stare, you become simultaneously over-sober, cheap and/or delusional.

a good whiney rant

2007-05-28T15:08:00.000-06:00

Admittedly...I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

But that's a given.

Somewhere along the line, I surrendered my ability to capitalize. No more! 'I' will be capitalized from here on out, as well as any/all proper nouns. I strayed from my destiny.

As I have been doing for months now. Staring blankly into my computer, I feel amazed I can even put together a complete sentence. Looking at my resume never felt so...chilling. Last time it was time to do this, I suppose I was less existentially shipwrecked than I am at the moment.

I found myself thinking today that my excessive potheadedness is not limited to association with compulsive behavior - I wondered if I was trying to stun myself out of consciously realizing how quickly my life is passing me by and how I am changing without even consenting to these changes! And by changing, I mean growing older. There are many people with whom I have not spoken in what seems to be ages, but when asked to summarize what I have done with myself and my time, I realize...there is very little I can say.

'Oh, you know - drinking and smoking to the point of stupidity and hanging out with my friends all the time,' I would blithely reply if I felt more blithe about the whole thing. I am not strictly dissatisfied with this, my relatively pointless lifestyle. I am admittedly obsessed with my friends. To say nothing of drinking and smoking. But it seems far more pleasurable to be with my people, my self-made family, my tribe than to be by myself attempting to do...anything.

I feel like I could be staring into the face of the last wave of brilliant and unrealized ideas I could ever have...my brain could go drier than the Sahara at any time - when the ideas and characters fade, surely the quips are not far behind.

So, I must act. And I have collaborators, supporters, resources and I'm even coming up on some free time what with the eventuality of my quitting my job finally kicking in and all. I guess I'm just scared as fucking hell. I don't know what I'm doing. But I do not what I'm not doing. Which is enough. Knowing the I will never be able to do enough for myself is what puts me in this waking coma....like achieving true justice, it is impossible. So rather than make the attempt, I apparently just wish to slide into the warm bathwater of nothingness.

I'm whining. And you would never believe that I'm pretty happy righty now, but I actually am.

I just wanted to whisper into the ears of my fears for a moment. That's what you're here for, old bloggybabes - innit?

thoughts: connected and disconnected

2007-05-04T15:59:00.000-06:00

Which came first?
The birds shat on my car because I always try to run them over when driving?
Or I always try to run over the birds while driving because they shat on my car?
Not that I think anything with a brain smaller than a peanut is realistically culpable for its actions.
But I still fucking hate nearly all birds.
And by hate, I mean fear.

South Congress Ave?
It will make you feel like a skank.
If you let it.
And by you, I do mean me.
Today, I put it all together. Two of my 'conquests' work within one block of each other on Congress.
In that same one block radius? The man sitting on top of the mountain that is my 'to fuck' list.
And that wasn't even the icing on today's lustcake...
Coming back from the walk that forced me to solve the mystery of what can only be described as a Bermuda Triangle o'Sleaze ....I see the hottest piece of manflesh I have laid eyes on in the parking garage of my office. I don't know if it was him, or the promise of crawfish...but I started to drool like a dawg.
Or maybe it was when he said he was a sailor.

In more cogent news...I am perhaps over-loving the life alone. So, I don't really have 'furniture' - so the fuck what? I do have bamboozy cushions and a lil table to match. And a bed. And a desk! Who needs anything else? Chairs, couches? What are these things? And where are the bougies who lounge upon them?!

Drinking a few beers toward the last hours of the day? I feel a spring in my step that can only be spurred by beery delusion.

And I have decided this weekend shall be even more glorious than the last.

back for more!

2007-04-06T10:44:00.000-06:00

Last night, some funny shit went down.

I settled into my temporary pad in South Austin, where I have most generously been allowed to stay while my friend goes north for a wedding this weekend.

I get a call from a friend of mine, who is hanging out and drinking with a guy I used to work with - let's just say, I don't like Workboy. He's pissed me off a few different times, and I think he's kind of an idiot and sketchy to say the least. My friend Stacey says, 'You should come over...here, Workboy wants to talk to you...'

Great, I think. WB hops on the horn and demands that I come up North and hang with them, since he's moving soon and we've never gotten to hang out. I made various protests, but finally gave in because...am I a doormat? Fuck!

I proceeded to call my friend back, leave her a monologue of a message telling her that I don't appreciate her telling him I don't like him, since obviously that's what she did and obviously his attempt to get me to come down there is to force me to re-like him.

I call back her girlfriend and WB answers the phone. "I'm not coming," I say. "All I do is drive north, come back south, drive north, come back south, ad infinitum! I feel like chilling out and I actually can, so I'm fucking going to. Sorry."

The evening went on...my friend told me about the little dog hanging with us and how it shat out its own rectum. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.

I got a text message from my friend this morning: 'WB thinks you're hot and wanted to get with you. That's why we were trying to force you to come over.'

The weird thing is, usually when I dislike someone, I secretly or not-so-secretly want to do them. But this guy is just sketch and not really cute. So....NON.

updatables ahoy!

2007-04-05T16:46:00.000-06:00

I have been wanting to update for some time.

Obviously, I am now an emotionally destructive blogger, who HAS to check the fuck out of blogville for a good two or three months, tearing a new arsehole in exciting sub-cities of existence like Silencio, Inexpressiveburg and Secretown.

But I'm back. Who knows for how long?

Leading anecdote? Today, I stood behind one of my myspace favorites at Torchy's. Such a deliciously odd feeling...recognizing someone you don't know and have never met, but you've 'seen' them in the most pseudo-sighted manner imaginable. Did I feel him reciprocally recognizing me, or did I just want to? The weirdest thing about this dude is that he really is a clone of Nate Fisher, who I don't really have a history of thinking is tremendously hot, but for some reason, I find his real-world clone crazy hot.

With little to no regard for structure, let us move on to the current state of affairs. I have tossed the dice on my life and future once again - I am moving into my own place on the other side of Austin. It will change...everything. I hope. Because I do not really know how I became the rambunctious rambler I am today. Perpetually outbound, ne'er-to-be-found (at home), constantly over-wound. I want to be able to know stillness and solitude and all the good things that add balance to one's life - other wise I am just a manic case constantly waiting to crash.

I'm very excited about the change. And I was reluctant at first, as I have been constantly living under the pre-developed roofs of others, so I was not really ever required to have much in the way of 'furniture' or 'kitchen essentials' or 'ANYTHING.' So, while that's great for fitting my entire life into a car, it doesn't really make for...much of an actual life. Outside of a car.

Also, I can't really afford this new place. But I COULD afford to learn some budgeting skills. Anyone wanna teach me how ta hawk d-rugs and/or apply for food stamps? I expect both should come fairly naturally.

Because of the expense of this move, I was not able to 'fuck you, fuck you, you're cool,' style quit my job as soon as I realized the offer they had made me was completely insulting. Especially since the first salary figure on the table was technically less than what I make now. I wish I had quit, slapped faces and high fives as appropriate and walked out and really cast myself to the four winds. But I would probably die. And by die, I mean have to move back in with my parents, which is like dying and going directly to hell without a trial and/or passing go whatsoever.

So I stayed. I stayed when I should have screamed, broken things or ran out the door. But these are the things we do to survive, eh? I feel like life is a constant prostitution, and one has to compete against people willing to do scatplay, DVDA and/or group necrophilia - so you have to really humiliate your fucking self just to make it. Fuck meta-whores! Why can't they think about how their nastiness just makes it harder for the rest of us to be lesser-dirty whores?!

And finally, I am couch-surfing. From the start of this month to the tenth...and I have been really lucky to have a lot of people willing to put me up. But let's just say I'll be glad when it's over. And it could mean I retreat even more deeply into my solitude.

That's all for now - hopefully the scene-change will also render me capable of cohesive blog-writing.

under de-construction

2007-01-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

I keep on sitting here, trying to collect my thoughts and recollections so I can blog about the entirely out-of-character ice storm adventure I had last long weekend...but my emotions are all over the place lately. Thurdsay found me sad and tired and having the worst working day of my young life. That night, a few free Dior shirts and a weed-deal later, I was feeling much better and went to go play psychiatrist with my favorite lesbian couple. Yesterday, I was pretty on top of the world and ended up having a great night downtown.

But today is cold and grey and captive to work. I'm cold, vaguely hungry, slightly over-caffeinated and largely hating everything. I'm tired of feeling like this. But I just feel like everything seems pointless and dissatisfying and nothing I can do will change that.

I sense an evening rife with movie marathons, chinese food and maryjuwanna.

Eventually, I will blogicize my adventure. Once I've figured out why its end has thrown me for such a fucking emotional loop.

I'll give you a hint...it involves the hottest boy I'll probably ever sleep with.

all I want is having you and music, music, MUSIC

2007-01-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

FALLING IN LOVE WITH AUSTIN MORE EVERY SECOND OVER HERE!

First, there was this. No big deal. Just David fucking Lynch, leaving his footsteps all over my destiny. Desperately hoping my dreamweaver shows up in tow, but it is doubtles an impossible dream.

But THIS?!

How much more can my heart take, Austin! What's scariest about this rumor-plagued lineup is that it will probably at least double. Oh. My. Fucking. God. Whatever happens, I have to not work during SXSW.

And my original best friend just sent me an email informing me that she and her mang are coming for the extravaganza! Hurrah!

Okay, so, some recent musical purchases I would like to plug are...

Beach House - S/T - This is the official music of driving home stoned at 3 am. It sounds like if Nico (who I'm finally not creeped out by anymore!) and Ladytron were trapped in a burning building together and afterwards their shit is all fused together. Um, sonically. As it were. It has a really beautiful blend of actual accoustic music and cheesy synth. When the girl isn't riffing on Nico, she almost sounds like Hope Sandoval - also not a bad thing!

Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther - These boys make me proud to be a Texan! Smart, low, classic-sounding (I've heard comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, respectively - I'm staying out of that one) with rich, smooth arrangements. Though the opening song 'Roscoe' threatens to steal the album's spotlight with its classic rock redux and meandering allegory, I think the best songs are 'Van Occupanther' and 'Young Bride' are the album's best tracks. The first, a dreamy dram of heartbreak. The second has all the energy of the single, but the strings here add a lot to the sound and the lyrics recall any number of too-young-for-eyes-that-sad girls.

Beirut - The Gulag Orkest - I almost like this more than Devotchka, though the sound is strikingly similar - Zac Condon, the multi-instrumentlal group's ringleader commands all the charm and grace of Devotcha's Nick Urrata at the tender age of 20. He works with a glimmering mass of gorgeous brass, strings and accordians - but no mothafuckin' guitars! No, sir! I think the best song on here is 'Idle Days (Mount Wroclai)' but I'm a whore for the accordian, even if it is an instrument which damns the player to homelessness.

Stereolab - Whatever the Fuck Their New Compilation is Called- Hard to believe I went through so much of my life without Stereolab! But thanks to the helpful nudgings of Jenn Daly and Benj, I have now embraced it via this disc. Obviously, it's perfect for me - hot chick singing about weird shit, periodically in French, with a Portishead-meets-Smiths-esque sensibility. Me. Likey.

That's going to do it for me (again). I wanted to drop props to this music and also stretch out my critic's muscle as I want to try and get reviews written for the new Oblio Joes and Lights CDs, both of which were sent to me ages ago so I might review them. I suck!

finally!

2007-01-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

It seems every single night I go to bed, I recall quite suddenly the phenomenon I have termed 'déjà rêvé.' I do not begin to recall my dream from the night before until I am slowly drifting toward slumber the following night. Strange indeed! And each half-unconscious eve, it strikes me as if for the first time. And each night I rather swear to blog about it, for I find it quite strange to say the least. I suppose it was telling of me feelings of rut-ishness.

At last, I rather feel that things are on the upswing. Yesterday proved to be a rather exceptional day. In spite of semi-crazy allergies (which I have finally admitted to the existence of - I've been allergy-free my entire non-TX life!) I decided to hit up a few drinks at the Elephant Room after work last night. I used to go there constantly, in my early days of Jenn Daly worship. I miss the dank, cellar-ian ambiance - the 'who gives a fuck if you smoke in here' of it all. The scads of be-written-upon dolla bills all up above the bar, sailors swearing to their return.

Perhaps my nostalgia was warmed up by the deeeelightful Lisa B serving me up a freebie from the get-go. Perhaps.

Saw a friend I haven't seen in a bit play a happy hour intermission - in some ways, she reminds me of Tori Amos, but with a much deeper, raw-er voice. The imagery, the darkness and the originality of her text was really awesome though, in a completely different way from Tori. You can just kind of see the influence - they are only strictly comparable by being women singing and playing the piano.

Anyway, it was a nice start to the evening off there, catching up with the various members of Jenndaly's entourage (for she had her hand in the turnout for this event, assuredly) with whom I have shared many fond memories, dinners and holidays. Yay!

A few cocktails later, it was off to my new herbalist's house - and after a few moments of conversation, it was revealed that he knows my dear friend Beth and worked with her for quite a while at three different coffee shops! Lord those kids get around. It was awesome to stumble across this total 'Austin is the biggest little city since Reno' moment, as they truly define this place. He agreed with me on that, as well. And he even showed me scenes from Lost and the Al Gore doc respectively (whatta gamut to run!)! Yay for liking your herbalist!

Then it was over to Josh and Jared's, where the drinking scene definitely got a little out of hand waaaay before I got there. I wished a young ex-Coloradan a happy 19th (gods, were any of us ever that young?!) and set sail shortly after. I did, however, find out that Sam, the drummer for the band I manage is being ousted! Que escandalo! I must pick up the slack and become a drum prodigy at once, as their successful future lies in my wildly capable hands! And by wildly capable, I mean musically retarded and eerily irresponsible.

Then it was a latelate viewing of Princess Mononoke with Beth (yep, that one!) and Stacey. My love for that movie is wildly reaffirmed, as is my desire to become Ashitaka. What a badass! What a beautiful, strange and parable-ic world! If I could live inside the movies of Miyazaki, I fucking would. I would also have to be living off of pay-otee (deliberately misspelled to damn the google) and liquid acid, I imagine.

It was good for my old soul to have a super-late night - I so long to return to the days when to sleep during daylight was the norm.

Well, that should do me now. If the heavens are with me, I will re-blog some love over recent musical acquisitions later today.

well, that was interesting

2007-01-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

I hate the feeling of being overtaken by an evil little notion or fear that you believed you had finally evaded - one that has plagued and nagged and drained to excess already. The accidental freedom you didn't even know you were enjoying because for some reason you weren't clapping your hands or spinning in circles over this victory, this escape or distraction.

I spent what could be described as a supernatural amount of time, energy and even surplus thought trying to slipslide away from the machinations of my own mind.

Be it this fella or that foible, they have a nasty little way of jumping back to their spots in my mind (perhaps left still-warm in the painfully brief absence).

It's hard to not view life, the universe and everything as a battlefield. At least a lot of the time, I think.

Why is this relevant right now?

Because it's raining. I just took my marvy British flag umbrella out for a walk in it. To drop a wonderful book off to a rather magical girl whom I even more magically known through a variety of connections.

But...

It made me wish that the feelings of wonder could outpace feelings of dread. I don't really know how to do that. But I'm trying.

I think the books I'm reading are sharpening my mind to a fine and hopefully fantastical point - Angela Carter and a beautiful book called 'The Book of Embraces.'

I would like these pesky thought buggers to bugger off.

In more officially catchy-up-y news, Montana was awesome. My birthday was bloody awesome. Christmas was a textbook illustration of awesomeness. Let me re-assert that I am much more in favor of the vacationing life rather than the working life.

New Year's Eve was fun, but it's hard to put a dent in the glorious and record-setting NYEs of the years that became 2003-2005 (New Orleans, Berlin and Amsterdam sequentially). There was a barrage of champagne, dancing and poor decisions and de-wigging. Friends and staying up late and all the good shit that comes with these times in our lives.

Anyway. That'll do for now. More magic pending, mehopes.

wow...seriously?

2006-12-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well, my beloved old roomie called me today. And she told me to leave where I have moved at once so I can go live with her. I think she was kidding.

But the exact same thought crossed my mind yesterday - my boss mentioned this sublet coming up, and I thought 'Man, I wish I hadn't moved and I could live with Stima again.'

So I'm probably going to move. Again. I mean, I haven't really unpacked from the last move. Barely, I suppose - books were unpacked and shelved. There's still a bunch of shit in my car that I haven't moved in yet. Two months, huh? The spirit of my laziness is all knowing.

I just...can't quite cope with my new place. Something about the vibe is off - perhaps it is the balance of power. As in, I am living in someone else's house - not in a cooperatively 'not our house' house. The distinction, while slight, is POTENT.

Six days til it's time to go home...I am positively abuzz with excitement! This is the getaway I have been thirsting for - the good heavens above only know when I will get out of this town again, in spite of all my intentions.

In other news, the beard has finally been shorn. While I do feel a bit facially naked, it is better to look and feel younger on the eve of such a drastic age-change.

'it's come to this' or 'i like movies'

2006-12-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

Okay. I kind of swore I would actually pen a blog this eve, rather than just staring blankly at mypace and hitting refresh. In a boredom coma like the one I find myself in now, old habits die hard. Or rather, thinking outside said old and brain-numbing habits requires entirely too much effort.

So, this is it.

This is it? Seriously?

Yeah.

Well, here's the good news: you can rest easy. I saw and loved the new Bond movie. I never thought I could ever accept a blond Bond, but mothafuckin' boy did I, would I and will I! I was kind of giggle-ishly a-quiver (with Bond virgin Renae by my side) at the absolute silly sexiness of Daniel Craig. Movie, plot, action, character, blah blah blah...but DAMN that mothafucka is hot. It was like the entire movie was in on it and winked at you gawking at him. Not a bad thing whatsoever.

Speaking of the beautiful...I had begun to harbor a fear that Scarlett Johansen (or as I know her, Scar-J) had a fluke good-acting virus that quickly evacuated her system following Lost in Translation. I have found myself hating or only vaguely tolerating her beautiful arse in whatever cameo-sized role that was thrown her way. And that most especially applies to Match Point, which I loathe something crazy. But, Woody made it up to me and managed to throw together a really good, humorous and yes derivative film with Scoop. Basically, Scar-J plays Woody in the film. Y'know, cute, babble-y, lucky in a 'in the right place at the very right time' kind of way and somehow managing to hook up with someone who should not really ever do such a thing. Woody also plays Woody - it was surprisingly refreshing to see him in one of his movies again.

Otherwise, the weekend was rather chill. And by chill, I mean lazy and forgettable.

This is what I'm blogging to distract myself from the 13,000-episode saga known as my soul-crumbling existential crisis?

good morning!

2006-12-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

I had cookies for breakfast today. Because that's what was in the kitchen. And because it was delicious.

I signed my name on about 300 holiday cards yesterday. I'm kind of shocked I didn't mention that yesterday...it nearly re-programmed my entire existence. My signature began to look like a mongoose preparing to uncoil on top of a barrel, ready to strike at the first unwary wino who crossed its path.

I'm sporting my Dior sweater, because it gives me power. Power to vanquish the annoying. But nothing can destroy the Incubus fans threatening to tear my sanity in two like warring puppies tearing at opposite ends of a beloved sheet carelessly left on the clothesline.

As always, FUCK WORK.

Lunch with V-Ron today...yay!

fallfallfall

2006-11-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today was kind of a dream come true. Started off cold and gray...crept towards sunny but still stayed cold and windy. The seemingly permanent green has been slowly leeched away. I woke up earlier than I had planned (always a bit of a shocker) and managed to get away with all my insane feats of procrastination (waiting until the last day to pay my P.O. box, managing to somehow not overdraft my bank account). I've been breaking in my new be-swapped style parka (I swapped a pair of swank white loafers to Jigga for it) and it feels all nice with the fake fur lining the inside. Driving to work, as I crossed the bridge, I was kind of bowled over by light breaking through the gloom over red and yellow trees and the river...it was just kind of amazing. I'm feeling very stoked about the world at large at this very moment.

Like the squillion things going on tonight. Unlike most places I've lived, I would drive myself into a tizzy over missing this or that glorious event. But here, it's just...there's always something awesome going on. And so if I really feel like hitting the town and seeing and being seen and polka dancing on the hearts of the unwary...I can! But I so rarely do, because I'm already so in love with the friends I have, I just want to hang out with them. This could be why I struggle to find a boy worthy of my affections...I am never out in places where cute gay boys go. Perhaps I should revise this policy?

Honestly, though, I'm not too worried about that. Not only is it coming up to be time for me to have sex (it's pretty much an every 3-4 months kind of thing) but...One of my crushes from last spring/summer is back in town and apparently doing one-on-one yoga sessions for 'donations.' Do you accept payments made in...dick? I guess he's kind of a yoga genius though, so if I don't get 'da vibe' I could at least get some sweet yoga for cheapish. Thinking about seeing him again though kind of freaks me out. He's incredibly dynamic and awesome, but I just get filled up with a powerful sense of nervousness. Upon meeting him I was just like...wow. You exist? Really? He's a total international sexed-up libertine and I'm...not quite the seasoned sexual warrior I would like to be and certainly not close to where he's at. Due to my runaway parade of insecurities, I don't really pursue people unless I am wasted and usually then I'm not really making sense, so I only hook up with idiots and/or people I'm not really attracted to. Sure, there have been a handful of exceptions. But not really enough to turn the tide on the other trend.

Anyway. Whatever happens happens. Which I've always thought is one of the most obvious statements one can make. Oh if it happens...it happens? Redundancy! It obviously didn't bother me enough to prevent me from using it.

Notice the subtle transition from honest disclosure to linguistic analysis? I didn't.

this is a start, i guess

2006-11-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Less than two weeks between entries? Surely, you jest!

This year's Thanksgiving was far less chemically destructive and far more enjoyable. So nice I did it twice! The beloved friendtor and I teamed up the the T-day itself and threw together a delicious, drunken dinner for ourselves and a couple other friends. We ate outside a little early and the light and temperature were almost perfect. An antiquey-looking candelabra brought the class with drippy white wax that looked just like magic tastes. Magical.

Two days later, the lovely V-Ron invited me and a handful of others to enjoy Thanksgiving's sequel and prepared an absolutely, epically tricked-out feast. I wouldn't even know where to begin complimenting what, but I assure you...I'm pissed that it had to end.

In even more exciting news, my beard is completely out of control. It is becoming a fro for my face. So I think I need to actually manage it. I probably wouldn't even want a beard if it were not my biological imperative (not merely to conduct facial hair, as almost all men and some women do, but to grow a full-ass beard) and a product of high-grade laziness.

Why am I fucking writing this? I couldn't tell you. It is rather unspeakably boring, no?

My birthday is three weeks from Friday. I am terrified. I am not ready to be grandfathered into adulthood. I have strictly barred myself from entrance for a reason! Turning 25 is not going to change that. It's just going to up my raging guilt levels about responsibility-aversion and waste-my-life-itis.

Though it is easy to let this occasion overshadow all else, I must remark on how nice it will be to be back in Montana. It has finally started to get a little gray and gloomy here, much to the glee of those of us who like actual seasons. But how oh how will I survive the Siberian wastes of Montucky in my weakened, southern state? HOW?

It will be an interesting challenge. At least at first, before I am crippled by cold and complaints.

Hopefully next time I come to blogging seminar, I will remember to bring my personality.

why oh why

2006-11-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

Must it be such a trial for me to blog on the reg? I suppose it is symptomatic of the vicious laziness that is locked about me like tigerjaws on babyelephant head. But laziness-be-damned and depression-get-thee-behind-me, for this weekend blew wind into the sails of my being. Or maybe that was the alkeyhaal.

Friday was simply a matter of excess for excess' sake - after a ten hour day at work, I wanted to explore the world through the lens of an empty wine bottle - my tiredness yielded to a surprise guest re-appearance by the spirit of my youth and I ended up staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning.

Needless to say, Saturday got off to a slightly later start than usual. I met up with Jonas (from the Kentucky Shade, my beleaguered, be-managed be-and) and his girlf (I'm going to push for this word's welcome into our lexion) Sara. We took a long, traipse-y walk around the East Austin Studio Tour, starting off at Bolm Studios (one of my fave local studios and a highlight of last year's tour). Bolm was not at its most impressive, but I really liked the work of a dude named Shea Little. I was thinking about cash-advancing myself $150-$200 for one of his pieces featured in the show - and I am obviously not in a non-precarious financial situation. What-so-fucking-ever. But he put together these strange, mixed-media found-object-y maps (or what looked like maps) of strange, future cities of nuclear plants. I didn't know what to make of them, but couldn't really pull myself away. I only felt that way about one other piece I saw that day, at Stacked Studios (out by my old house) where I saw an awesome 2X4 woodblock with modern comic art - a masked man shooting the stomach out of one of a pack of zombies with a pop-art-inspired BLAM hanging over it. But, obviously, I bought neither.

After the tour, Jonas, Sara and I went out for a lovely/expensive dinner of moules frites and wine. Sara and I had been attempting to get together for this FOREVER and it was good to finally do it (even if the moules were really not that bomb whatsoever and if I hadn't been drinking for free all day I would have balked much more substantially at the price I paid). The mussels (or moules), while not exactly prepared to perfection were rather impressively sized - and they had a fairly cheap white Bordeaux that went nicely along.

After dindin, it was prep-time leading up to the show I organized at the Carousel for Little Aurora (my ex-roomie's band), Corto Maltese (disgustingly prodigious group of semi-friends) and....some dude I slept with six months ago. Homeboy really busted out an incredible performance (on Sat) complete with small intermissions for dance pieces. He did a fucking man-voice/uke cover of a Mariah Carey song, ferchrissakes. The LA came together with a vengeance and at this point I was drunkenly sitting right in front of the band in chairs with my beloved friendtaur for the last two songs - lady K-Boz (aforementioned ex-roomie) continues to look deep into the wilds of fashion-future when assembling her costumes and usually pulls of some maddeningly psychodelic old-lady fashion that would have anyone else looking the fool. Corto...what can I say about them but that they are a rather alarmingly good band. And for some reason I need to try and give them some fucking 'hints' such was my wastitude - what the fuck do I really know about making music? nada, obvs.

Much photos, muchmuch staying up late.

Sunday, my second chance at studio-touring glory, quickly buckled under the weight of my need to sleep. And then buckled further with my desire to have a late, boozy brunch with the friendtor - we only got to hit a handful of places on Sunday. Conversely, it was more work of people I knew being presented in a much more intimate space (someone's home/yard and stacks of weird storage unit thingies). Then, once evening was upon us, it was off to the showing of my friend's cool short doc at Pacha.

And more ridiculous heights of stay-up-late-ing.

My room is finally a gorgeous, perfect red. I am still obsessively avoiding the full unpack.

In mere moments or much later tonight I'm going to take another hot streetwalk down memory lane and follow up every blogpost I could find from this day. Surprisingly complete for my parts of my life I chose to remember and acknowledge.

actions...have...consequences?!

2006-11-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

That was a dirty, dirty weekend. Let's start out with the good - Broken Social Scene on Thursday. I was absolutely blown a-freaking-way. It was a gorgeous, generous and wildly energetic performance. They played all their best songs from You Forgot it in People, which probably their best album (though I do love the self-titled track as well). My friend Kurt showed up that night and it was a wonderful night for celebrational boozing - truly icing on the cake to my Austinversary.

I took Jared and Kurt to Waxploitation's Halloween bash on Friday, where I threw on a leisure suit and ridiculous Hawaiian-ish shirt and told everyone I was their real dad. It was a cool affair to be sure, but I wasn't quite feeling it so we ended up taking off fairly early.

Saturday was the Halloween bash and it was a fucking DOOZY. CRAZY amounts of people ended showing up, to the point that the kegs were floated one shortly after the other. WHadda surprise, what a lovely-ass surprise! I went as Donnie Darko, but nobody really got it at first glance, rather tragically. Alas, it was not the worst of the Halloween tragedies. Not by a LONGSHOT. At the end of the night...Let's just say I ran facefirst into something that kept me up all night and all the next day. Oof. One year later, it's still as brutal as ever. I'm ready to go back to being over that shit, since the way I ran my body into the fucking ground ended up making me a little sick. But I didn't regret it - it was a fun night, I managed to not spill all my fucking tragedies onto unwilling ears, etc.

Kurt took off the next day and I've been doing the packing/moving dance ever since.

Then, Halloween. I won tickets to the White Ghost Shivers Ball, which was a ways outside of town at a club called 'The Oaks.' Everything was going swimmingly - the crowd was cool, everyone's costume was pretty fucking amazing (the best one was a bloodstained Bride from QT's Kill Bill) and the WGS set was off the fucking hook. I had received a call telling me to bring a bottle of booze, as the band was getting gypped on the free booze front - they rented the place out, but got no preferential treatment for bringing in a crowd like they did. Tacky, I say! So I brought a bottle of whiskey.

And who knows what happened to it? Not me. It was just innocent flask hits and the occaisonal beer until the end of the night - when myself and a pack of ghoulish drunks proceeded to hit up some Jim Beam and nasty cherry whiskey straight from the bottle. Until I blacked out. I can only theorize, given the immensity of my disability the following day, that I kept on fucking drinking. Apparently, though, I did make out with the foxiest new she-blogger in Austin, it would seem. Anyway, it seems that I got complete incoherent, crashed at my friends' Jason and Mary's house and woke up not believing that I had actually crashed or blacked out. I also took Mary's computer with the absolute certainty it was somehow mine. I was obviously still fucked up, but somehow lived to see another day. I don't think I've ever been hung over like that - at least not in recent history. But I might have to break up with whiskey forever. I'll miss you, baby!

I ended up having to call in to work and probably costing future-me lots of money. Which sucks. But I felt wretched enough to need to sleep the entire day away. Honestly, I kind of freaked myself out by the wildness of my behavior (remembered and un-remembered) and really feel like I need to slow the fuck down. I just started reading the His Dark Material series, so hopefully I can use that as an excuse to lie low and fucking behave myself. In other news, I will use this new 'down time' (wuzzat?) to paint my new room red, to unpack and to set sail on an exciting new diet, composed only of chicken and yams. Yay? I hate the thought of all this pesky sobriety, but I'm sure it won't stick.

PS my new roomies rule, no matter what psycho-departing roommate said to me last night - I have to believe she was the crazy one, and not my new companions! I've got a good feeling about them and my instincts it not be to trifled with. Word.

THE LIST

2006-10-26T14:43:00.000-06:00

I have no idea to start, so we'll go with something overwhelmingly obvious and beloved...

-The whole 'fucking eating things that aren't in tortillas' scene - love it.

-Watching myself be transformed into a heat-loving coldaphobe - I will be whining like a grade-A beach in MT for Xmas.

-The bats - clearly an obvious shoutout, but seeing them with a friend who was visiting recently made me remember how incredible it is to see them hit the sky en masse - when I 'accidentally' saw them before, I kind of fled the scene (I was trying to wait for the hottest day of the year so it'd be extra crazy) - I didn't realize they just keep on coming and coming until it looks like there's a tower of winged smoke in the sky.

-The ease with which I have made friends here. I've lived in some of the world's most notorious snob-haunts (Seattle, Paris, London) and felt ragingly embittered toward the human race afterwards - yet here, I almost feel a twinge of...dare I say...optimism?

-The interminable juxtaposition of big city and small town - I run into people I know on the regular, but still get lost on labrynthine highways or trying to find some new hotspot.

-Live music, obviously! Some of the highlights over the course of this year: Iron and Wine, Man Man, Fiona Apple, Islands, Art Brut, and Kings of Leon.

-East Austin Studio Tour - it became one of the early Austin highlights last November. I drove around with my then-not-yet-my-roommate and basically went into different studios and houses and looked at the work there - the kicker was having the artist hang around all day and engaging in active, thoughtful and non-pretentious discussion. Can't wait to go again this year!

-This might have been the single best night of my Austin life - I wish I could re-live it every week. Weird that I wasn't more gushing or vivid in the blog, but it was a really magical night.

-The mothafucking Alamo Drafthouse. Even though I don't get there nearly enough, knowing that it exists is enough for me. To the uninitiated - this joint is a movie theater where you can order meals and beers and sheet. They show weird cult movies, music docs, new releases, TV on the big screen...ALL kinds of shit. It rocks.

-The way this town can look after it rains - the overabundance of green and gray makes me feel like I'm in Hawaii or Japan once in a great while.

-Whataburger. I guess it's not just Austin but Tex-wide, but still - holy fucking crap.

-The utter coincidencia of this town. Some examples?
1.) Meeting new friends at SXSW - then, after a good month or two of not seeing them or communicating, they appear at a small party attended by about a dozen.
2.) The Friendtor busting out a deck of tarot cards a few days after meeting me - the exact deck I purchased in New Orleans ten years ago.
3.) My friend Renae being told by me to look out for 'IN the City of Shy Hunters' at a book sale - and it being the first book she saw.

-Whole Foods. Seriously, I haven't been that overwhelmed by beauty (human and food) since grocery shopping in France.

-The fact that when it rains here, it can just go on and on and get stormy as fuck - no dribble, dribble like Montana rain - twas more like the drips from a faucet.

-Heroic local bands like Ghostland Observatory, Black Angels, The IV Thieves, Wax Museum Pandemonium, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness and so many more - and all the ones being born right now. Y'all make us proud!

-Saying y'all. It just feels so right!

-Jenn Daly's kitchen. Seriously (y'all).

-This is the city of fucking festivals - everything from hamburgers to hot sauce to music to art to hippies is festivalized - it kind of rocks, though everything being festival-worthy sort of diminishes the magic of such celebrations.

-The freakish coincidence of this: my friend I drove to Austin with originally (Kurt Wikel by name) showing up on this, the very one year mark of my move. Yay for kismet!

letting consistency consistently slip away

2006-10-26T10:19:00.000-06:00

Hard to believe I relapsed into extended non-blogging all over again. And by 'hard to believe,' I of course mean 'obviously.' Things have not surprisingly been whirlwindish. My friend Lydia came to visit for the drag king conference here in Austin, which I happened to catch some of. It kind of blew the lid off the pagaentry of masculine gender identity - seeing something like that reproduced in a kitschy way really seems to bring a lot of the truth to the surface.

Obviously, that doesn't really make sense. But it's still before noon and I am not yet required to be coherent.

I'm moving out of my weird little house. Hard to believe I will have been there for nine months. It was by turns awesome, disgusting, alarming and charming. I will miss it, but I guess it's time to move it along. I finally found a place as of yesterday - I'll be living with a cool lesbian partygirl, her girlfriend and four cats and two dogs. Which is kind of a lot. But the price is right, the location is good and she's going to let me paint my room RED, which rules. It's been a dream of mine sooo long I can't believe it's finally going to happen! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

And today is my one year anniversary in Austin. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Many magical things are happening in response: the reappearance of Kurt Wikel in Austin, Broken Social Scene and the promise that I do not have to go to work until noon tomorrow. Hello, my old certainty that I will vommit tonight!

Later today, my long-awaited 'I Love Austin' list.

recent developments

2006-10-06T11:21:00.000-06:00

Oops. Ten days betwixt this and my last entry. I thought I had finally come around the bend on this irregular blogging thing, but it looks like old habits die hard. That or I haven't really done anything comparably sweet since meeting Alison Bechdel and going to her reading. Is that sad? I dunno, that was a badass affair, it was, it was.

Once more, days are running into weeks and I find it shocking that we are already so far into October - I'm an absolute fawking blank on what to do for my Halloween costume. Ideally, I would like to rock two or three different costumes, since there is a veritable alcoholic cornucopia of goings-on on the pre-Halloween weekend front. I just signed on to work the box office on 'actual' Halloween night for the Trey Anastasio show at Stubb's. And BOY am I excited. There is surely still time to develop a 'I hate hippies' themed costume. At least there will be arseloads of good times to be had leading up to that.

One exciting recent development, however - I was asked to manage a band, 2/3 comprised of my old neighbs on Lynnwood. Which was really freaking flattering and I'm already feeling like I'm not doing a spectacular enough job but I have a fracking full time job already! What am I doing, piling on responsibility?! But coming at me from a flattery-centered angle is usually a guarantee I will do whatever you want. Plus, the promise of free drinks and building up my 'music industry career portfolio' might have helped things along as well.

My one year anniversaire in Austin approacheth. I really can't believe it. This year has been uncomfortably blurry, but I guess that's how I know I've been having fun? Or rather, that's how I know I've been abusing brain and body to the point of non-functionality. The old standby.

Speaking of abusing my body, I noticed that eatting absolute shit finally caught up with me - I was mysteriously maintaining my weight loss level in spite of bad habits for an unnaturally long amount of time, but I did put on a good 5-10 over the last few weeks in the midst of my lull-y, pointless depression. Must now be aware of this and eat like a normal human being and also...maybe...shuddergasp...excercise? I want to go into my 25th year looking and feeling better than ever. No time like the present to start?

Josh and Jared are participating in a diet that involves eating only yams and chicken breasts (unseasoned). Yum! I'm going to watch and wait to see if I want to involve myself in something so serious.

Finally, I can't not mention The Science of Sleep, which I saw last weekend. It could be one of the best performances by Gael Garcia Bernal's beautiful mouth I've ever seen! Seriously though, it was really great. And also seriously, he is FUCKING HOT even if he is short. I like watching movies where it seems slightly impossible to figure out what is going on - whether what is happening is real or a dream or some combination of the two. Petite Charlotte Gainsbourg was wonderful as well. Basically, cute farners speaking Ingles is awesome. The multi-linguality of the film definitely had me extra-sold on it, being eurotrashy as the day is long. If you want to be engages, amused, dazzled and more than vaguely aroused, I definitely recommend this one.

Hopefully next time I will do some mini-reviews on CDs I have recently got, since I've been music-shopping like a madman. And with Gawd as my witness, I will blog some kind of comprehensive 'What I love about living here'/'what I miss' list before the date of my move-versary.

weekend jibbajabbas

2006-09-25T13:15:00.000-06:00

Well. That was an interesting way to spend the weekend. My overdeveloped sense of entitlement lead to some no-frills, up-til-5-am debauching and pokering on Friday night - some unexpected financial windfall is the only way I was able to accept not winning - even though the loss was a humble $5, normally I ball up my fist and have to go punch something inanimate.

Saturday - got woken up inappropriately early (No!) by the friendtor (tentative yay) to get champagne and have fancy breakfast made for me (un-tepid yaying). Drank from approximately 12-6, fell into unfortunate post-day-drinking emotional coma, then proceeded to watch Battlestar Galatica with little to no regard for the outside world. Now, I must broach a rather painful subject - my unabated lust for Galactica-n Jamie Bamber (who is the actor playing Lee 'Apollo' Adama) is no secret. Indeed, it is so unsecretive, I often introduce myself to others as a raging Bamberist first, and follow-up with my...name. Anyway, he be FINE (click it!) to a rather ridiculous degree. Please consider this meager spolier space if you are a Galactica fan who has somehow not seen the end of the second season - one year later he's fat! I've been wounded in the way that only those close to you can do. At first, I thought it was just an unfortunate angle for his chin (how could I not have noticed before?) but then I saw my friend who loaned it to me and her first query was 'What did you think of Fat Lee?'

Horror of horrors.

Onto much more badass things - I actually got to meet Alison Bechdel, ubercool authoress of one of my most potent graphic obsessions, Fun Home. She gave a really fun, warm and engaging reading and Q&A at Austin's illustrious Book People (this is totally my hyperlinkiest entry in my blogging history). It was really exciting to see her in person because I loved the book so much - she did a kind of Power Point presentation so while she was reading, she could cue up the corresponding image for that passage. I had never seen this but suddenly it seems to make so much sense. I guess I've never been to a graphic novel reading before so I didn't even know what to expect.

Apparently, I'm going to write about this a lot, since I thought it was cool - before I lose sight of this, however, I feel compelled to mention that you can totally almost see me on the second of the Austin photos from her blog. Moving forward...

She opened herself up to questions, after having read two chapters and done a really awesome presentation of how she made the book using sketches, composite-imaging, Illustrator, etc. What's interesting to me about this kind of Q&A thing is how people think they have license to ask a memoirist whatever the fuck they want. A startling number of people stop thinking of an author as a human being under these circumstances, and the crowd starting drilling her about some uncomfortable details on her father's suicide. I couldn't stop cringing at that. If I was in the hot seat, I would ask my questioner to draw me a vivid sketch of their genitalia; or to share with the crowd their most honestly mortifying or tragic moment in their life.

I did get in a few questions, but wasn't extremely content with the answers. Due to the extremity of my comic renaissance, I really wanted to find out what inspired her in the comics community, since she is, above all else, a cartoonist (her word, not mine). Because of my line of questioning, when I came up to ask for her signature in my book, she asked if I was a cartoonist.

'I wish,' I replied.

All part of my desire to really try to do something write-y professionally. Write a comic book. Write for magazines. Write a screenplay. Write for TV even (gasp!). Life is such an inescapable cache-22 right now - I have to work my tragic dayjob to survive. Most of my off time is spent drinking or socializing because work is so vaccuous and zombifying - I want to be with the lively, beautiful, strange people I love...getting fucked up, too, obviously. It's so fucking hard to make writing more important than that. Because I am a dilettante? Maybe. Or because I need a patron. Whichevs.

Everything else passed away in a bit of a blur, but I did get to take in a badass French action movie B13 that had some sweet action sequences, interesting allegorical content, and most importantly an outrageously hot French boy with sexy tats.

I also read a really cool article on the making of/reception of
Shortbu in today's Times, which I would encourage anyone interested in the film or the idea of making it to check out.

My evening is drawing to a close - work OVER and I'm gonna go see Art Brut and Spinto Band. Yay!

lukewarm off the presses

2006-09-22T16:01:00.000-06:00

SHIT! I forgot to throw these hot-potatoes out into the ether. There were two rather amusing morsels from my otherwise alternately hellish and boring day at the ACL box office.

1.) Celebrities at the box office? We all knew it was an inevitability, what with Austin becoming the new LA and everything (actually I think it's mor on par with American companies outsourcing to nations they can pay practically nothing, but I'm an asshole like that). But I at least assumed they would be going more toward the guest list. But no, dear readers! One monumental celebrity came up to the box office just like a regular American...and it was Chuck MO'FUCKIN Woolery! That's right. We all had a brush with greatness in that moment. My impression of him: was one of instant recognition, followed by instant revulsion at my recognition, followed by trying to figure out his actual place in the pop culture puzzle. He has the craziest bags I've ever seen under a pair of eyes in my life. Coupled with what may be among the top 20 wackest 'blond on top, dark on the sides' 'dos I have ever had the misfortune to gaze upon.

With that little piece of bitchery out of the way, we can move on to....

2.) Fashion: So, lots of people wanted to either debut their freaky/hot/chic new look at the festival. That, or dust off their most obscurely hip band shirt and take it out to play. But I did see one look that rather surprisingly blew the lid off of my reality - pastel Polo shirt with the collar popped (obviously) and the sleeves cut off (EGADS!). This is so much cooler than I would have thought and I can't really believe I'm re-stating it hear, but it's too late to turn back now.

Other news? Hopefully rounding the corner of my random possibly allergenic sickness (round two) as well as that of my random depression sad party (round 4008) - both of which may have been aggravated by working eleven fucking days in a row. Wow, that's horrendous. And mercifully over in 48 minutes. Hello weekend!

confession (non jimmy mcgreevey style)

2006-09-18T15:40:00.000-06:00

So, I've got this nasty little problem staring me down right now. Far more insidious than other addictions.

It is my 'favorites' section on myspace. I now have a harem of people whom I can spacestalk at my whim, with little to no 'restrictions' as it were. Meaning 'actual interaction.' It's filling a void I've been missing since college - seeing the hot one in your class or around campus randomly was such a sick thrill. I figured they were either straight or generally uninterested in sleeping with me (ahh the chubby, chubby times).

I've got a hot mix of people I had crushes on in high school, my most (mysteriously?) hated Austin local, hot boys I've never met before, some guy I obsessively hated in a creative writing class who was the roommate of one of my 'Austin family,' ex-friends (of course!) and even some kid I had most of my schooling with who is de gay and actually turned out QUITE hot - truly a mix.

I just had to get that frivolity/creepiness off my chest. There! You know! I use it!

Thinking about being in someone's favorites list makes me feel more horny than scared/paranoid. In the case of other people favorite-ing me, say FOR EVIL...well, that's cool too.

delinquing as usual...

2006-09-16T17:57:00.000-06:00

Goddamn, how dare I ever refer to myself as a blogger? Such inconstancy! And what precisely have I been doing to bring my life to new and thrilling heights as well as enriching myself and those around me? Um...well...now that you mention it...

One of the things that seemed of consequence to me about why I do this is so my poor partydrenched brain doesn't forget all the wonderful little things that have happened. And yet I go weeks without mention of these things. Does this lead my faithful public to the assumption that I am not doing anything interesting? Or that I cannot claw my way out of an eerily lit opium den? Interesting things have been happening nonetheless.

Did I tell you, for example, about seeing one of those flip-down LCD screens in someone's truck playing hardfuckingcore porno? Right behind me?

Or have I made mention of any of the plethora of psychics that seem to congregate around North Austin in the 35ish area? There's one in a rather massive house with a balcony on the second floor - sometimes a woman in a red shawl stands out there; watching, waiting....it also looks kind of like a whorehouse, which makes me wonder if the whole thing is a cover. I do know I will go there and have my cards read prior to my 25th birthday. And no, that is not a euphemism.

This was slated to be my massive weekend of going-out-ing - Friday night came and went with little aplomb, as I accidentally overdrank and decided I had to flee Austinist's free local music showcase at some new incarnation of the Velvet Spade (oops, oops). Last night I saw Kings of Leon at Emo's which fucking KILLED and was certainly the best show I've seen in months. Tonight, I was going to chance traffic and check out some freebies and afterparties, but I really don't think I can hack it...since I'm working the ACL Fesitval all day tomorrow in a very 'get up early' kind of way. Yikes. At least I'm going to get to see some shows for free on the pm - yaaaaaaaaaay!

Speaking of work, I'm trying to claw my way toward a rather substantial promotion. We'll see how that goes - more word on this as/if it develops.

Also, I think I'm pretty solidly oves my romantic foray. Seems like he probably is too (fatalism?) so at least no one's getting emotionally eviscerated over this turn of events. Need to actually talk to him about it. Or avoid it and him as long as possible, which ever is the path of least resistance.

can i get a mulligan on my weekend please?

2006-09-04T11:05:00.000-06:00

Fuck. Fuck. Let's proceed in order of immediacy.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

My beautiful eye! Fuckfuckfuck!

So, there I was. Tweezers in hand. Some mysterious fumble caused them to fly out of my hand and directly into my left eye. Cue lots of panicked running, attempts at looking in the mirror with my one good eye at what the fuck was wrong - oh wow, this is the worst thing that's ever happened, to think my new plaything was just commenting on how hot my eyes were (finally, someone notices their tragic beauty!) and now I'll have to halve my appeal with a fashion accessary that is so painfully two years ago! Referring of course to the patch - trust me, if you were in Seattle in '04 you wouldn't want one either.

It was kind of hilarious driving with one eye squeezed shut with tears randomly falling out, deciding to smoke my last cigarette...did I mentioned I semi-sucessfully quit smoking? Coup on top of coup, I tell you. Anyway, it's a miracle no one died. And actually I finally look like a normal person again, the swelling and redness have pretty much gone the way of the saber-toothed tiger (I was getting a little attached to saying 'the way of the dodo,' time to fetishize a new extinction) but I still have a slight flutter happening in my left eye and there is stll one spot that's kind of red, like maybe I busted a vessell. Ewewewew, just thinking about it fucking grosses me out. Seeing people putting in their contacts makes me want to throw up. Such is my touch-of-the-eye-aversion.

Moving backward, this happened after I pissed away my entire weekend, dousing myself with nyquil in response to some mysterious throat problem. The Friendtor recently pointed out to me that this is a horrible thing to do and I should have just taken a bunch of vitamins and chilled out and not smoked/drank. I guess I didn't feel like I could handle quitting unless I was hardcore doped up - it was certainly easier to not smoke when I was unconscious for 14-16 hours a day.

But I didn't really like the idea of me not smoking yet. So after a surprisingly manageable 48 hours (thanks, nyquil!) I smoked five or six cigs yesterday, mostly out of necessity from watching my friend Beth chimney up in front of my very eyes. Basically, it's just like my approach to homework in college - I would start working on it in advance ever so slightly, pat myself heartily on the back and then get fucked up nonstop until 48-72 hours prior to actual deadline. This deadline is my 25th birthday, so I've still got some time together with my lil addiction. Though, it's too bad I'm not more of a badass - think of all the money I could be saving in the meantime!

Wrap it up, wrap it up...oh yeah, and I missed RJD2, that which incited a minor war o'words with one Kurt Wikel (oh yeah, I first and lasted the bitch, now when you google him it will lead straight into the psychological honeycomb that is this blog). Tear in my wineglass...I figured, why stop wasting my weekend now, why not take it all the way home? I don't think I even had any cool quil dreams. Wahwahwahwahwahwahwahwahwah.

That is mofucking all.

Who needs money anyway?

so let's recap

2006-08-28T17:39:00.000-06:00

I cryptically aluded to going on a date on Saturday which I kind of walked into thinking it would be on the brief and not a big deal end. It turned out to be a six-hour affair with a cool, intelligent and very attractive dude with whom things got pretty makey-outy and I found myself uttering the phrase 'Well...do you want to hang out tomorrow?' at the end of a parking lot passion-fest. It was actually kind of cool to not hop directly into bed (I like trying new things) and drive home with my lips buzzing and my heart racing - I ended up staying up til 5 so I could shave and smoke weed and attempt to decompress but not really sleep til the rooster started crowing (FUCK. THE. ROOSTER.).

Next day? My first call is from the famous Jenndaly, inviting me into her world for mimosas before any sort of non-liquid nutrition could grace my lips. Met up with the dude (let's call him...John...it's his name, after all) for some coffee, then hopped back over to my place to...drink it. Lemme tell you, that was some good...wine. I haven't sweat through wine like that since who knows when.

In spite of both of our attempts to be clean shaven...it seems that both parties got rubbed a little raw. In addition to having a rather minor chin wound I'm also sporting a huge hickey today.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little proud of it. It's been eons since I've hooked up with someone and not been completely mortified by them and the quality of the goings-on. So the fact that I had a pretty great time is enough of a reward for any minor phsyiological damage.

Oops. I kinda like a boy. Who might kinda like me. Do I know what the fuck to do or how I'm supposed to be acting?? Nooooo. But I definitely need a little chaos in my days right now.

Ohyeah, and I made a PM apperance at Jenndaly's and had a pretty spectacular dinner that finally made me realize I don't actually hate scallops. Yum.

ruthless in-efficiency

2006-08-26T12:40:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I turned to the friendtor and said, "I just want to lay down my head and cry for the things that have already happened that stopped happening and may never happen again."

Her response? "Good. You should. That means you're not done experiencing it yet."

"I'm never done experiencing anything," I replied.

I am famous for throwing out little off the cuff statements like this, usually half-joking, and they rather instantly disturb me with the ring of truth about them. I suppose it is a faculty of memory to keep the events that dictate our lives in permanent stasis, allowing them to reverberate with decreasing force as time goes by.

Hearing snippets from the Arcade Fire's Funeral reminded me so much of being in Morlaix, walking around all over hell and compulsively listening to that album. Lost in my hash-headed, hamfisted thoughts, walking all over town be-scarfed and windblown, carrying groceries by the heaping armoload. Walking underneath the viaduct, strolling through the harbor, edging past the drunken celtic gypsies while listening to...yup, Arcade Fire, instead of their drunken, incomprehensible what-have-yous.

And Montana. For just about five minutes this morning, I wanted to be in Montana so bad I felt like there was a hand around my throat.

The hardest thing is to keep walking forward and believe that the memories you are making and the ones that will follow can be that good or even better or more profound or more intense.

I live in da ATX now, and I am living in a simultaneous simplicity and exorbitance that is rather incredibly appropriate to me - as balanced as any bloody thing I touch can be. I will be able to say I survived the summer in Texas without mothafucking air conditioning. Soon this could become the experience in my young life I one day relent ever coming to an end.

Tonight, I kind of have a date. We'll see how it goes...

trying diligently to blog, be less boring

2006-08-22T17:18:00.000-06:00

The most depressing thing about trying to write in this slice o'bollocks is watching myself struggle in any attempt to characterize the way my time is being spent. What are the salient thoughts creeping outward? 'Work sucks.' 'Drugs good.' 'Friends fun.' It is a fucking struggle to cast any character into the vacant imagery of my world right now.

That was more of an attempt to explain my lack of blogging than to e-pen any form of suicide note. Sunday was a day deliciously spent with friendtor Jenndaly, grabbing up the red cans at about three that afternoon and not letting go for the next six hours. I ran around with her to deliver a present to a kickball game and to say hello to complete strangers that gave us weedbrownies. HELLO indeed.

Something that does not really need announcing: I am experiencing a rather dizzying friendlove affair with this girl, causing me to say things like, 'If you were a gay man, I would have no reason to leave your house.'

Which is clearly an exaggeration.

Unless, in this already hypothetical universe, freshdirect.com branches out to delivery care packages of cigs/booze/drugs. Then there would be trouble.

The following night, I stepped into her bar for a maybemeeting with friends that went to see Black Orpheus. Rather than seeing people I knew already, I rather stumbled into the acquaintance of an ex-N'awlins-ian who I knew the JD knew and who I was also able to piece together knew my forever famous N'awlins old flame, and pretty well at that. Since I ultimately measure myself and all others by his, um, yardstick of wit and charm, it was kind of dope to convince one of his friends that I was cool and worthy of merit. Which I actually do believe I am, but this is beside the point - last time I saw him, I was a tender 21, still gestating as the social dynamo you cybersee before you today.

I love Austin and New Orleans being connected that way. I get a taste of what I love about that place without having to live there. I will always visit - but I don't think I could really see myself living there. This is not an issue of hurricanes or even just obscene amounts of crime and crazy heat. I guess I want to be able to go there and have the same active appreciation for it. I don't want to have to be frustrated by it or whatevs-ed on it or what have you.

I would really just like it to be the weekend a little bit more, please.

my revolution

2006-08-10T16:30:00.000-06:00

Will not be televised, but mostly due to budgetary constraints. I'm currently working on the script for theatrical presentation in the off-off-Broadway-in-Boca-Reton scene. Fresh-as-fuck.

Can you imagine anything more chilling than if there was some kind of way to tabulate the number of hours one spent checking myspace? I...could...but the chill of the idea of seeing such a physical representation of time-wastiness...it feels as though a clog-dancing convention is being held on my future grave.

Also startling: every piece of spam that you carelessly delete that is born of some freakish text-build program somehow contains a tiny fragment of poetry. Check out this lil snippet I cyber-dumpster-dove. It's title seems to be 'huge breadboard.'

Like flogging a dead horse

Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?

Flies never visit an egg that has no crack

You cant hurry love.

I don't really know what I'm trying to get across here. The far-reaching implications of me being THIS bored at work. It almost makes me want to keep working here, if this place is going to return to such tomb-like-ness. Almost.

Other bits of oddness sure to be conveyed at a later date.

blog through the fog

2006-08-07T09:33:00.000-06:00

That about says it all. Most of my days have been a blur of professional arena bullshit and frustration, punctuated by the stress-aggravated overindulgence in any substance at the ready. Two consecutive days found me at the elephant room after work, downing drinks and praying for a swift end to the week. At the end, there it was: my gleaming tower of excess. Mestima and I threw together a dance party in our teenytiny airconditioningless house and it was HAWT in every way that something can be. People dripped, dropped and poured outside for gulps of fresh air and cigarette smoke. An obtuse melange of records were spun and damn if it wasn't beautiful. One of the more enjoyable nights in recent history.

At the end of it, I was whiskeyed up enough to get into it with a friend of mine and ended up crying semi-hysterically for perhaps the second time in my life; the first time with a witness/crying pillow. Kind of mortifying, but also something I probably desperately needed to do, for all the various tributaries of despair going through my world right now.

Yikes. That makes things sound kind of bad. Maybe they kind of are - maybe a little glorious. I'm fighting to hang on. I'm trying to carve what I need out of what the world is offering me. I'm trying to find a way to reclaim the lifestyle I so prefer - as frustrating as it is to feel so much is wanting...at least it's better than complacency. I feel I can more actively pursue that now - before I was just forced to accept it, without the energy to dream of it ever coming to an end.

I'm trying to get a semi-fantastic new part time job that I actually stand a chance at, if I get my shiite together. Now, I am dreaming of walking out of that which is eating my soul like the obese at a dwindling buffet. And it will be glorious.

Otherwise? Made contact with an old friend currently living in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. I found this book by my old creative writing teacher at UM (we'll see if I dislike it as much as his other novel I read prior). My brother is going back to school in MT for a semester and then wants to move to...wait for it...Portland, Maine to...wait for it...study maritime law (?!). As someone profoundly on the latter side of the financial eight-ball, I have new appreciation for this kind of decision-making. Also, I think Maine would be a badass place to visit. My brother is someone who seems as capable as anyone can be in ability to balance levity and fun in a life like that - I wish him nothing but the best.

Currently reading the end of "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman and goddamnitall if it isn't unbelievable. My friend Dale has suddenly been revealed to me as the old man from the bookstore in The Neverending Story, cleverly disguised as a young man. Between exposing me to that and various New X-Men trade paperbacks, there can be no two ways about it. Now, I must return to my resume and start breathing deep breaths so I might properly walk half-high into work.

sweet gee-zus

2006-06-27T17:03:00.000-06:00

Wow, has it really been a month?

Did I just make the decision to drink a hugeass beer before any sort of substantial meal?

And WHAT THE FUCK is this bullshit?

It's exactly what I've learned to fear in this perceptual transformation from gays as 'the evil other' to 'acceptable demographic.' People are finally learning that homophobia is wack...yay...except the people in question are business people. "Are you just like Jack from 'Will and Grace?' Do women all want to be your best friend? Then come market our fucking bullshit shampoo product.'

Fuck that. SO many times.

And you know what else can fuck right off? Both of my jobs. It's finally come time to quit at the coffee shop. It's coming up close to giving the office job an extra-especial fuckoff as well, but I'll just part-time and keep my eyes double peeled. It's time to whip up an experientially exaggerated resume and go back to prostituting my soul to tablewaiting.

Because I just visited my brother who was passing through outer Dallas (note to self - never return) and found myself hurting time and moneywise with only one complete day off. I worked in the morning, went to Dull-ass, spent a full day there and left the next day early afternoon to go back and work at night.

I want to have pretty things. And paid-off credit cards. And more drinking money and more time to effervesce into the social world.

Because everything now is just so much less than I need it to be. Me included. I'm running around at half-power and fully-boring way too many of the days now.

It's time to get pathelogical.

devious lil weekend

2006-05-22T11:48:00.000-06:00

It's official. I am a fucking ho and a bad person.

I went out with this dude recently, basically decided in advance that I was going to hook up with him, proceeded to throw down loads of drinks on Friday night and sledgehammered through the awkward 'Well...I'm going to go home...I think...what are you going to do?'

'I think I'll be coming home with you,' I said definitively. I have officially arrived at the point where, if I can have sex with someone, I generally will.

This guy is cool, nice, cute, good age, artsy...but I walked in there, heart un-thundering. I didn't feel like I was going to melt from nerves. The air was not crackling with uncertainty. I find this very odd, frankly. And it may have something to do with the general unhotness of our drunkish 3 am sex.

So, I keep on telling people, that I slept with him and that it was unhot. And quite suddenly it strikes me how tacky and sort of mean that is. But I guess in some ways I can't believe I'm not still a sixteen year old waiting for something to happen to me so I can spill out my entire life story. I have things that happen that do not have to be gleefully proferred to the public whenever an opportunity avails itself (or whenever I make it avail itself).

So, maybe I'll see him again. He was cool and clever and he is a talented musician and he has beautiful blue eyes, so I don't see why I shouldn't give him another shot. I think I was just eager to walk away from the whole idea of actually dating and liking someone. It's just a bit more terrifying than I thought. And I don't know if I'm ready to even start thinking about committing all that time and energy...unless I can't not do it (gods how I love a good double negative).

Other news: a whole four days without my beloved chariot Agnes due to general poor planning. But I actually had almos the entire weekend off, so I did a lot of walking and busing all over town. It was a fun little game to see who I could get to come pick me up. My ride karma is evening out ever so slightly.

The new Tom Spanbauer is not devouring my world so entirely as his previous works, but remains incredible nonetheless.

I may be looking into some new jobs that I could potentially not actively resent. Wouldn't that be a fucking reve realisé?!

perhaps now IS the hour

2006-05-18T12:25:00.000-06:00

I'm just rolling with the flux right now, people. My poor steed Agnes has faltered once more, and who knows what the future will bring for her. I was driving into downtown last night, to cruise by the Elephant Room and check out some massive jazz ensemble that does some classic rock covers. Just as I was about to park, a battery alert light went on and the steering wheel just locked up. I'm probably fucking lucky I wasn't in an accident and that I was able to park it. That was about eleven or midnight last night.

Obviously, having a busted car amid downtown is a blank check to get your drink on. It's not like I had to worry about driving home, eh?

I eventually found my AAA card and was able to get it towed home, but I felt I approached the whole thing with rather model calm. I was home by about 2, and it was my turn to contribute to the annoying nocturnal sound scene of my neighborhood. Yay for the weeknight warriors!

I feel I'm having a general perspectival shift in my life right now. And I realize it through things like this. I kind of hate my jobs and my appartment, but at least I have both of those things now. I have the ability to survive now, at least. I'm meeting loads of people and having fun. I may be about to get something going with a cool boy here. Remains to be seen. But I'm not putting myself through the ringer over it, which is a refreshing step up.

I also got the new Tom Spanbauer (AKA GOD!) novel, and felt such an intense rush simply from reading about something as simple as his character's recollections of self through an old bathroom mirror.

Which reminds me, I need to shove my face back into that bad boy.

talking about the weather is a failure of character

2006-05-06T12:12:00.000-06:00

The preceding title describes adequately my feelings on the matter. I accept that I live in Texas now and there will be a point at which I must endure endless dialogs ranging from 'Hot, huh?' to the even more scintillating 'dang skeeter, it's a'swelterin'.' But what I failed to leave room for in such absolution was my absolute fascination with the sudden, violent southern storm.

And it positively poured out of the sky, the kind of rain that forces people back inside and off the roads. I was at the Carousel, site of last month's badish date, to see my ex-neighbors' band Kentucky Shade. In the middle of their set, the power went out. The whole freaky ambiance of that place got further magicked by candelight and a sudden, 'oh, fuck it!' decision on the part of the freakishly Natasha Lyonne-esque bartender to allow smoking inside.

Then, Stanley Roy and the Pigfuckers, who were following and whom I had heard some good buzz around (weird-ass local queerish rock stuff), started in on a freaky banjo/xylophone/craaazy vocals, since the Shade was without acoustic instrumentation. I sat around with a group of cool-ass girls, two of whom has been in NYC during the freakish blackout of a few years ago. I wished, not for the first time, that I could have experienced that.

But, I was eventually compelled home to rise early for work in the morning. As usual, the anxiety of trying to get up that early prevents me from sleeping soundly. When I arrived at work, even though I was feeling like a used condom left on the street, I proceeded to partake in the caffeine wars and slayed at work and functioned with absolute manic efficiency.

Last night's fawking highlight was an east Austin 60sish soul/funk dance party, preceeded by weird tripped out beach-shimmying music. I ran into Stanley Roy (of the aforementioned Pigfuckers) and after maybe flirtatiously praising their acoustic set, I remarked on the feeling of being in Psycho Beach Party.

Ended up at a much lamer party unfortunately adjacent to a Toga Party (fuck da college hood!), which was eventually transformed into a Wet Toga Party by another sudden and astonishing outburst of rain. After supposedly heading home, I drunkdrove circuitously through the crazy rainstorm, because I did NOT fucking drink that hard to not have a burger at 4 am.

The weekend is just getting warmed up, y'all.

prison tats and street rats

2006-05-01T14:03:00.000-06:00

No one at work has noticed the fact the I have 'Butt Tuff' written on my knuckles in permanent marker. Or maybe they have, and don't want to ask about it, because they fucking KNOW they will get an inky punch in the face. Um, perhaps not.

This weekend was a fucking scream, even though I worked my face off, I still found a little smidge of time to throw some drinks in there for good measure. Friday night was quiet and tinged with the abject hatred of having viewed Match Point, which might actually have been worse than Melinda and Melinda, but it's hard to say. It's like comparing gangrene to the knowledge that people are inherently selfish - both arduous and unfortunate in their own little way with little to redeem either one.

Saturday, after working the entire day away, I liberated myself and joined my dear Renae and new coworky friend Jeremy at a karaoke/hookah-smoking party, which was kind of fantastic for this reason: I saw two seperate groups of people I met in Austin at two very different points. And this was a pretty small party, so it seemed wildly coincidental. But all around me, people have pointed to the coincidencia that defines Austin, it being at once a small town and a big city. Love the combo.

Group one: two girls whose acquaintance I met amid the drunkery of New Year's Eve this year. My ex-ish friend Raquel almost single-handedly redeemed her manipulative ass by picking me up late NYE to go get my party on and pick up my visiting dreamweaver from Montana. We also picked up four crazydrunk girls from Club deVille. They were all cool, or so I thought - one of them sat in front, was violently wasted and pestering the living shit out of me. Then she started critiquing my driving. At which point I reached over (she was riding shotty, alas (for her!)) and just threw open the passenger side door, at, oh 50 miles an hour. Heehee. Um, she was wearing her seatbelt. I think.

But, I saw her and her friend. The friend remembered me from my karaoke stylings (to be described in a moment) and my near-victim hadn't the foggiest who I was, but she was stoked to instantly start talking shit about Raquel (yay!).

Group two: My Devotchka friends. I was pretty startled to see those two cats, let's call them Dale and Veronica (their names). Veronica even hopped in on the disasterous sinking ship that was my attempt to sing 'I Wanna Know What Love Is.' Obviously, this is a terrible song, but I didn't realize how much of it was comprised of something besides passionately screaming that YOU wanna know what love is. Oops. The Neil Diamond went better, I'm glad/sorry to say.

Anyway, it was a really fun night, it was wild and fun to see such divergent acquaintances merge under the simple auspices of a smallish house party.

And even though I had to face my not favorite person at 8:30 the next morning at the coffee house, I demanded of myself that I continue getting my party on until after 2. Actually, the whiskey demanded it. And even though I slept like shit and was slightly hung over, I performed admirably under pressure and spent the afternoon and early evening boozing with my new friendcrush Jenn, whose friends branded me with the 'Butt Tuff' knucklicker. She runs with a refreshingly and intimidatingly witty pack - I'm all about it. Definitely deep in friendlust.

I had a great time and finally felt like I was crawling out of this stagnation I've been feeling such an abundance of lately.

I still wanna know what love is, though. And I want YOU to show me.

on this day last year...

2006-04-18T11:49:00.000-06:00

I was making my triumphant return from France, and stepping through the transatlantic portal of possibility that I thought surely had nothing but good things on the other side of it. This date is a hallmark to me because it's been approximately one year since I've had any idea what the fuck I was doing. I realized my goal of moving to Austin (after approximately four months of fucking off followed by two months of living at my parents' and working my ass to the bone), but I swandove into the olympic swimming pool of my capacity for inertia. Three months later, I finally started pulling it together, at least in terms of being able to have a job, pay rent, buy groceries, etc.

It just feels weird. That it's taken me this long to have some kind of functional existence. I've spent almost a solid year flailing, mired in mediocrity and laziness, unfocused to the point of unreason.

I suppose it feels good to not be trapped in that psychological rat's nest any longer, but I feel like it can only inculcate a new kind of struggle. Where I try and find meaning and expression and wonder in my life every day. Now that I'm finally, actually BUSY I have to learn how to make my time important. Because having so many months of nothing but time showed me that nothing was precisely the thing to be doing. All the time.

I don't know what I'm getting at here. But now that the double espresso I just sucked down is suffusing with my life's blood and Dee-lite is playing on the outside porch of the coffee house I am currently blogging from and the heat is a delicious thing and so is this cigarette between my lips (god, so many quitters are filling the streets, it makes my inner-smoker nervous beyond belief).

Today also marks the almost six-month anniversary of my Austinlife. To mark these dual occaisons and welcome the flush of heat with open arms, I'm going to rid myself of this multi-dyed black hair and clip it down all the way to a half inch of real hair roots. Starting fresh.

nemeses

2006-04-15T11:19:00.000-06:00

With Easter rapidly approaching, many are plotting the dastardly demise of those furthest from and most poison to their hearts. Or is that just me?

I went into the Peacock, one of Austin's hippest little sunspots of hotness, on Thursday night to check out an event there. Let me explain something briefly about this establishment: I recently referenced it as a bar I liked and would go to again. I don't really know why I did this; perhaps the last time I went there I was bump'in' in the bafroom (note: if you can snag the seat facing the bathroom line, you can entertain yourself for hours trying to figure out who just did a line and who didn't). The vibe is not really 'friendly' or 'cool,' but rather 'dismal,' 'transparent,' and 'vapid.' Aside from this dazzling array of lovable characteristic, there were two things that especially crawled under my skin:

1.) The presence of this noxious, bitchass bartenderess, who must have remembered that she tweakingly told me I was an asshole when she misunderstood something I said eons ago, because she continued to look at me as if I were the devil and serve any and all people who came up to the bar after I was standing there. Seriously, I know your methadone is wearing off, but please fuck the fuck off.

2.) EVEN WORSE, this hip-drip who works at Waterloo (the official music store of connoiseurs and assholes alike) who I am slightly obsessed with hating (whenever I get him at the register, I strive to out-disdain him) starts spinning his set for this event shortly after I arrived. I slammed my beer and walked out.

So, this just in: I fucking hate the Peacock. Luckily, it's nowhere near my neighborhood, so I have absofuckinglutely no reason to ever pass that way again.

I did end up wandering downtown and checking out The Elephant Room, which felt like the first 'real bar' I've been to in months. Not some new piece of shit trying to masquerade as a bar of character and personality, but a REAL bar that was really dank and underground. I fucking loved it - it felt like I walked into New Orleans when I got there. And my friend JD was working the night away, so I grabbed a table next to the bar and did my best to distract her while ordering an entirely unnecessary array of drinks. Well, maybe not so unnecessary.

In other news...I saw a film called The Dying Gaul, and I must inform you...it's shit. I love Patty Clarkson, lord knows everyone loves Peter Saarsgard, but...that doesn't really help conquer the implausability and general badness of the film's writing. There are all these faux-edgy internet chatting scenes between two of the characters and it's just...laaaaame. Well directed, I guess? I mean, it looked cool, and the sets were awesome. There was just so many details of motivation and conflict and outcome that were just absolutely tossed out the window. Endorsement: denied!

oh, it's on

2006-04-10T12:12:00.000-06:00

My date: "Blogging is self-indulgent."

Me: "Well, if you don't indulge yourself, who will?"

That was a good synopsis of our date, actually. He is trying to straighten out his life and behave like a normal citizen. I am a scattered potheaded hedonist who believes in perpetual whim-indulgence. He was hot and I would like to sleep with him, but we will in fact probably never cross paths again. It was weird - he didn't seem remotely into me but seemed to think about going in for the goodnight kiss anyway - maybe I'm crazy though, because I certainly didn't move in for it, due to the lack of connection. I probably am crazy. But you know who's fucking really crazy?

The bitch I am perma-scheduled with at the coffee shop. DAMN! This crazyass, bad-haircut-having, abrupt, hypocritical maybe-tweaker has taken to fucking with my shit. Oh hell no. She has been in charge of my training there, as well as any and all stress I have around that job. My friend Renae, who is a regular at this place and basically got my my job there, came in to hang out for a while. And this be-bad-hair-cut-ed bitch tells Renae that she doesn't like me and that I'm not working hard enough. She tells her this while leaving me inside with a bunch of customers. Repeatedly. And I guess she previously bitched about me to Renae. And this behind-the-back action follows her initial self-congratulatory rant of 'I'm just who I am and I say what I feel and tell people when I'm pissed off at them and expect the same.'

So, I have to work with her crazy ass tonight. And it's going to be all business. Deep-frozen business.

After working with her on Saturday night, I got olden-days-style wasted, complete with tequila shots, to celebrate a friend of mine's birthday as well as having sucessfully escaped crazybitch another night. Yesterday found me riding around the exterior of Austin with my friend Tre, who is a real estate photographer. The highlights of the afternoon include schooling his ass at pool (so necessary, since he's taken the poker winnings the last two games) and making fun of hideous work/lives of nasty suburban interior designers. The afternoon also gave birth to my dream of having a secret office behind a panel or moving shelf, which will only be complete if it has a tiny spiral staircase that leads up to a secret second floor nook on top. That would be fucking sweet. I could hide my friends in exile, which has always been an important priority of any potential future I might dream of.

And now, I crawl toward a supposedly errand-ladden afternoon.

gulp

2006-04-07T17:27:00.000-06:00

I actually have a date tonight. Just drinks and chat or whatever, but let's just say my anxiety is making an appearance.

I still feel like I'm working constantly, yet really not. At least I'm feeling more relaxed about rolling into work st-o-ned.

Outrageously beautiful springtime continues uninterrupted.

enfin

2006-04-04T11:55:00.000-06:00

So, I survived to see the glistening dawn of payday. It felt like it would never fucking come. But at least now I will be getting paid twice a month at both jobs, which will hoepfully lead to being less singularly swept away by one financial event that leaves me utterly penniless for the remaining, oh, let's say, half month.

Things are going fairly well. My iTunes randomly deleted about 300 of my most recently burned songs for absolutely no reason, leading me to believe that my computer is suffering from the final, insanity-driven death throes of cyber-syphilis (yes, I had to look up the spelling, but my first inkling was naturally correct). This is kind of a bitch, but my computer is coming up on it's second year of life and fairly heavy and reliant use. So it might be time to start saving up for a new one? Gawd, what a horrendous thought. Saving, saving, saving. I feel like I'm working a lot but don't really have a huge wad of cash to show for it, which I guess is the bold new world that pretty much everyone is living in and how this entire pesky capitalist system we live in survives and thrives.

The jobs to which I am chained are both going fairly well. I finally feel like I'm starting to land on my feet and know what's up in baristo-land ('baristo' being my eurotrashy faux-Italian word for a male barista (barista being presupposed as a feminine noun)), due in no small part to the pep-talk delivered by one of my bosses who shall heretofore be known as 'Hot Boss.' He is the lovah of the boss who shall perhaps not insignificantly be known as 'Funny Boss' (the traps of being cute not hot!). Anyway, HB basically just told me to chill on myself and that they both understood that I wasn't going to be good at everything right away.

It's getting warmer, some days inching towards deliciously hot and heavy. On Sunday, I walked ten miles, all the way to Mount Bonnell and back, in the company of the irreplacable and omnipresent Josh and Jared. It was perhaps unnecessarily intense, but GREAT and also sweaty as fuck. I imagine it will only be a few short weeks before I cut my hair down to its honest brown roots so I can stay cooler. And then only a few short weeks after that before I start to dream up ways to escape the heat. But for now everything is glowing springily and feeling rather idealish.

thematic schizophrenia

2006-03-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

So, the bad news is, going to gay bars (at least by myself) still does and perhaps always will drive me to the absolute borders of panic attack. This really has nothing to do with any issues I have surrounding my sexuality. At least not my acceptance of it. Any confidence I have throws itself out the window, leaving me to drink heavily and chainsmoke heartily just so I have some prop to hide behind. Why is it so hard to just go up and talk to someone? I was definitely feeling prowl-y (to put it fucking MILDLY) but I think I was alarmed at my own response in dealing with the unwanted suitors, like the drunken George Takei clone (seriously, it looked exactly like him (and yes, I know it is a dorky thing to note and reference but this is what you're dealing with here, people!)) that tried to throw himself at me FOUR fucking times. He couldn't even remember that he had done so previously after each time he came up again. I wanted to be really fucking rude and cold and just walk away in a huff instead of trying to be polite and while transmitting my complete lack of interest. But I know my comrades practice no such politesse. I just couldn't get drunk enough to stop caring, at least not on my end of the month budget coupled with the responsibility of driving myself home.

Okay, enough of that shit. It's just driving me mad because I refuse to use the internet for dating and/or procuration of sex because it feels too cold and inhuman. But I can't quite hack the gay bar scene unless I'm blowing lines. So I feel like I'm inviting myself to a new version of the same old sexual drought I've lived my entire life in. I don't want to perpetuate that. But do I really want to date? Ummm....no. As usual, I have no idea what I want and lack the savoir-faire to procure the activities my loins demand.

Let's talk about...movies. Last night I watched Nausticaa and the Valley of the Wind, which is one of the very early Miyazaki films, predating the establishment of his brilliant Studio Ghibli production company. A lot of themes of his best work is represented here: human desecration of the natural world and its consequences, shifting alliances, heroes who sacrifice their lives and are resurrected, etc. I would by no means say that it is one of his better films, but it stands up incredibly well 22 years later. It was fairly recently re-adapted and re-released (to video) with better translation and voicework that its earlier incarnation, much like Castle in the Sky was. This film contains a lot of what I like most about his films: almost too much imagination coupled with a comparatively simple moral sensibility. I thought the same message, of humanity's dangers to itself and the earth, were more elequently stated in Princess Mononoke, but this film is absolutely worth watching, if you are a fan of Miyazaki's work.

Tomorrow, I start my training in coffee land. This is damn good news and I am thrilled to have some new things happening.

themes on a cemetary

2006-03-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

Today in Austin, TX: filthy gorgeous, never seen such springtime as this - absolute dream of clear skies and seventy-something degrees, light wind, epic sunshine. Naturally, all this made me want to walk through the cemetary.

I don’t know if I have properly expelled upon my penchant for cemetery jaunts. It probably started in Scotland - walked through the fucking coolest cemetary ever in Stirling, that actually was misted over with fog and age and improbable greens. But it reminded me of the allure and frequent emptiness of such places. I can even still remember the funeral where my mother’s mother is buried, in Woodland, California. I’ve maybe been there three or four times in my entire life, and over fifteen years ago to be certain. Yet I remember it vividly.

In Missoula, when living with my brother in my last semester of college, we lived right next to a cemetary, which was across the street from a softball field. And by the gods, if you don’t know about my love of juxtaposition of extremes, lemme make thee aware: I love it. I used to have people over there for ‘a bowl and a bad movie - come for the comfort, stay for the dreamy unwinding of a walk through the neighborhood cemetary!’ It fucking ruled. The various angsts I endured while living there cannot fully taint the joy of that cemetary.

So, lately in Austin when the weather pulls me from the tent life and briefly out of stoned reverie, I find myself walking through the cemetary not far from my friends’ Josh and Jared’s house. Earlier in the week, I walked there with Josh and ended up talking a lot about feeling that even if I remain depressed about where my life is/isn’t going, I’ll feel tremendously better about that if I start working more (on writing and art) and with more regularity. At least there will be meaning in my days again, instead of my life being punctuated by stimulants (coffee, drugs, literature, Six Feet Under, alcohol, falafel, coffee, drugs, repeat til infinity).

Today, I was walking through the cemetary, alone. And I have made no progress on my artistic endeavors. It’s only been a few days, but it’s just fuel on the fire of wasted fucking time. Yet I am not as pissed with myself as I seem - it actually was a gorgeous day to waste. And I also need to realize that I have perhaps (un)consciously chosen to move to a place that invites indolence to join it for a long, multi-course luncheon. Again.

Things are coming together. I think I want to stay here, for a while at least. I forgot in my hasty dreaming ahead of going west for the summer that I have not yet done the thing(s) that I have moved here to do. What are these things? I haven’t the foggiest. I still need to:

-learn how to ride a bike

-learn how to live a life I can pay for, as an American instead of a fauxfrog

-learn how to be in a relationship

-learn if I want to be in a fucking relationship by at least giving it a shot

-learn Spanish

Among so so so many other things. Basically, I want to be here until I learn how the fuck I’m going to move to New York, or if that’s what I really want, or perhaps - what precisely it is that I fucking want? So many learnings to do. I feel like I’m in the college of my soul.

Two final notes:

1.) I got to speak French with my crush from work, and if anything will get our courtship on the slow simmer, c’est la langue des dilettantes. He is silly cute, with those highbeam blues I so lust.

2.) My friend Mary from college, who lives here now, is setting sail for Costa Rica today. Last night, she tried to pull of the awkward social chemistry experiment of bringing together all her friends from differing local circles/circumstances. Among those present was a complete idiot who LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE BEN STILLER. It was really terrifying, actually. Same eyes, same chin, same features - just tanner and with lighter brown hair. He was a fucking idiot, and deserves mentioning only for this resemblance and his attempt to reason with the perpetrators of some watered down and overpriced margaritas, to mortifyingly little avail. It ended with the patroness, a Bebe-sparkled megalith of a woman, filling a pitcher with ice and pouring out how many drinks there were in each one. It was funny, but godawful to watch.

devotchka? devotchka?

2006-03-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

Last night had only one aim. One of my favorite bands I've stumbled across this year, Devotchka, was set to play a free show last night. They replaced the vacant hole left by cutting the Decemberists out of my life - better music, better vocals, less endless pretense. And you still get accordians and brass and violins. Sososo beautiful.

Alas, the show was a product of internet rumoring, but it was fun to get out in the world again. All my experiences at free SXSW shows have almost seemed to work directly against my boiling rage at the expense of the festival and my inability to cough up wristband fees. Friday and Saturday were both swamped with free beer, and last night threw open the door to drunkenly chatting with strangers, one of my old faves.

It started with me trying to verify the Devotchka gig - I was SURE, having seen a van with Colorado plates, that they would be playing. Little did I know the event last night was a celebration of Denver music. I rudely flung myself into conversations where I heard the word 'Devotchka' uttered, and soon it was just general drunken elbow-rubbing.

Josh and Kristina licked their stamps and attempted to grind them into my wrist, leaving at beast a vaguely discolored bruise-like mark, but it worked enough to get me into La Zona Rosa, where I popped in, was told The Stills would be playing, thought about it for a moment and split. I'm not really crazy for them by any means, and I would have been even more disappointed by seeing them in place of Devotchka.

So, Devotchka was ultimately a no-go. But at least my icy heart melted a little bit in appreciation of SXSW - I feel like I never would have been so comfortable chatting with unknowns in Seattle - it certainly wouldn't have been so easy. It makes me glad I'm living here. I have a wonderful group of friends and I've only started to scratch the surface of what this place has to offer me. I find myself hesitant when thinking of moving now - surely I'll want to be here for a while longer. We'll see if my heart is still fo full of love when things start heating up.

Other news: I had my interview for the coffee shop position. It went very well, now I'm just cooling my heels and waiting to hear back. I usually feel pulled all over the place when interviewed by two people, but it was very pleasant, fun even. I'm eager to see where this goes. And, of course, all a'gush that I have a friend like Renae who thought instantly of me when an opportunity like this prevented itself.

Also - I saw the cover for the new Tom Spanbauer novel Now is the Hour and stumbled across a mini-synopsis. Just seeing it made me feel like I was going to start crying a little - which I realize sounds very unstable, especially considering my general inability to cry (it's true). I don't think it was out of sadness, strictly - though I suspect that waiting until May to read it is going to be a BEACH. It was more like...needing that novel right now. I need to be moved, rocked, and rendered unable to leave my home by a book right now. I can't wait for it to come out.

you already know how this will end

2006-03-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Filling out job applications always makes me cringe, usually because seeing the last year in such a literal context fills me with feelings of inadequacy. But the good news is I'm filling out a job app, right? My friend is working to jobpimp me a spot at a cool little coffee shop here, thereby facillitating my leap into the ultimate post-college professionally-disenchanted cliche. Which is not a fucking bad thing, really.

I need this opportunity to boost my local celebrity status. Not to mention, oh, ensuring my financial survival. Plus, word from my jobpimp is this place is quite the hotspot for young gay men. And if I'm going to embrace the concept of using my degree to sling coffee, I might as well take it all the way to service industry sleaze. In a classy way, of course.

This morning, I'm listening to my 'Smoking Out the Basement Window' mix, which is the soundtrack of my days back in Montana before moving to Texas. I spent many post-restaurant hours staring bug-out-edly into wood paneling listening to that mix. Odd to hear it again now, so much later, as I am returning to the world of working way too hard for tips.

Other news: my beautiful Agnes requires numerous repairs. My fear grows hourly. The time has come for me to attempt to bribe and beg my ex-neighb into doing some repairs for me.

good thing my picture is green

2006-03-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Cause I'm wasted. Yup, you betcha. Happy drunkydays, my little babypoos. Um. What was the point of tis entry again?

Oh yeah. I went to some fsbuylous shows today. Spank Rock in the morning, millions of free drinks inbetween, Islands tonight. I saw the Unicorns when I was 21 with Josh and Jared in Denver (KURT too, obvs) so seeing them with at least Josh was sosrt of magicky - they had a bass clairnet, oboe, two violins.....gawds, if I had become an oboeo virtuoso and emigrated young to Canadia, I could be in Islands right fucking now.

Now, it's official. I'm blasted.

South by...oh my gawd, I tried to focus on my friend's face but my eyes kept spinningt.

lawd almighty

2006-03-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

Witness me posting twice in two days.

I am about to inheirit the first half of my split weekend and things are still looking very boozy on that horizon. Can hardly wait!

Every time I get caught ascending one of the soaring on/off ramps down by my neighborhood, I feel like I'm going to go flying right off it and crash to my death. It is not what would be characterized as a pleasant sensation, but may have everything to do with being bugged-out-high and driving at the same time. Whoops!

Now here's the insight into my world of personal madness: I live and die by the moment I refer to as 'my birthday o'clock' meaning both 12:22 am and 12:22 pm. For some reason, I find excessive magic to exist around these two minutes, especially when you see the clock blink from 12:21 and 12:22 (childishly unrealistic wish optional). I love that I'm always awake for both of them.

Until next time.

at long last!

2006-03-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm going to give this a go. I've been feeling rather wildly uninspired lately, but each time I start writing a new blog entry, I just get lost in my own attempts to explain or characterize this feeling. So I'm not going to. It exists, it's boring the shit out of me, and the best I can do is plow through it, try and inspire my own damn self and move the fuck on.

I've been watching Wong Kar Wai lately, both In the Mood for Love (which I'd never seen before) and Fallen Angels (which I fucking adore). I guess I feel like they've been making me think way too much about the absurd hide and go seek game I'm playing with my own heart. His characters are always hiding their real feelings behind some trick, some impossible prop that seems transparent to the viewer but the character needs so much to cover themselves with.

I feel like I'm playing a similar game with myself. I want to be with someone right now, at least physically. But I feel way too crazy to let someone get much closer than that. But of course I do. So what do I do? Nothing. Not a fucking thing. Part of this neo-hermitude is specifically the avoidance of all things outside world-y.

But it's South by Southwest. Lots of lonely out-of-towners hitting the streets. I have all of St. Patty's day off and nothing but free shows and drinking on my list all day. I'm going to get out into that fucking world and demand the bounty owed me. And by bounty, I do mean booty.

Other news: Broken Social Scene has officially become my musical tortilla. Allow me to explain: living in Austin cultivates the feeling in one that any food not in a tortilla is fucking stupid. Breakfast tacos, home-made improvised quesadillas, burritos....indeed, anything not apparently wrapped in a tortilla is often neither cheap nor adequately satisfying. Broken Social Scene and its many musical off-shootings (Metric, Stars, Raising the Fawn, Jason Collett) are all currently dominating my personal charts. The only hopeful breakthrough lies in hometown heroes I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, who inspite of having a woefully clunky yet awesomely sweet name (surely a recipe for disaster, non?) managed to put out a beautiful, '80s dark Britrock evocative full length. I can't stop listening to the song 'We Chose Faces' over and over and over and over and over. Unless I think of those lovable Canadian tortilla-ists.

Okay. I actually wrote a real blog entry. I'm going to try and drop little posts more regularly that are a little more self-contained and individually focused, instead of throwing together some sprawling bullshit after weeks and weeks of not posting. Here's hoping!

tagged, bagged and lagged

2006-02-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

I actually have a valid excuse for my bloglessness of late, living as I do, in a farflung ghetto of Austin sans internet. Since we last spoke, I had an exciting housewarming dance party at my aforementioned new palazzo with Mysteima (as she shall heretofore be known, for it is her true and demonic name). I bought and pitched a tent, that has a bed stuffed inside and which offers me a zany little shelter from reality. I cut a hole in the bottom so I could put in a powerstrip. Thus rendering it basically useless for anything but indoor use, but...do I look like a wisened woodsman? Nein.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. The Pierre Un gig is about to expire, but I have had the unique pleasure of scorinig things that cost over $200 for about $15. I just got hired to work at a music ticketing company to do customer support for a not indecent amount of money, but very minimal hours. I may be looking at answering phones and book appointments for a local salon. Other possibilities are presenting themselves. So, I may be climbing towards a vague sense of financial legitimacy, which I will still plan on tossing in the pooper come summer so I can follow a flight of fancy all the way back across the country.

Ah, to be young, sagittarian and hopelessly unrealistic.

Speaking of, I also completed my application to graduate school. Yes, we are actually talking singular. Since I missed the deadline for University of Texas, which was the fucking absolute dream, I've been wondering if I don't want to try and wait for that window to open back up. We'll see...University of Memphis, it's in your court, beotch!

Also? I have been having unusual dreams in the tent, including being critiqued on the number of errors in my quick-type keystrokes by my most hated academic archnemesis of all! And other things too, of course.

Now, in response to a recent posting of my eurotrashy contemporaire Zach:

the rules: list seven songs you are into right now. no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to

Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah - Home on Ice - I got this album at the end of October and have listened to it almost every day since - it fucking rules and has such pulse and sensibility and intelligence. Home on Ice is of a slightly slowed down but still rocking wailfest, awesome beat and claps action.

The Clash - London Calling - Lately this song has just been blowing up my world. I hadn't listened to the Clash in a while and started searching for something ton fuel my journey through rush hour Houston...and there it fucking was. Also discovered a strange lyrical shotout from Destroyer's Dan Bejar (one of my faves) to this song, "until this phony Beatle-mania has bitten the dust."

Broken Social Scene - Stars and Sons - Beautiful, long, shifting and shimmery masterpiece from gorgeous popmasters. I've been listening to their album You Forgot it in People a lot, and I think this is the best song on there - unbelievable guitat part, kickass claps.

The Go Team - Huddle Formation - I'm crazy about this entire album, its musical schizophrenia of piling more and more samples into these tight, trippy rock songs - if memory serves, this is the source of the most triumphant harmonica solo of all time. I'm absolutely mad for them, it's like some kind of tripped out Henry Mancini British rock mix. Awesome.

Gorillaz - Dare - I was shocked by the awesomeness of the new Gorillaz album because it took a lot to erase my 'Clint Eastwood' inspired hatred of them, since I had to experience it being overplayed in two continents. This song is dancy, rich, smart and unexpected - the video kicks ass too.

Devendra Banhart - Hey Mama Wolf - Devendra Banhart is another person who I've had an epic mind-changing on. Rejoicing in the Hands was just too creepy and spare, but his new album Cripple Crow is unbelievably good. He pushes out a full eighty minutes of imaginative (dare I say it? I dare!) psych-folk with incredible production, lots of epic instrumentation here. Hey Mama Wolf is a much mellower track, but he threw in some pathos and wolf-howls, so I fell hard.

Black Mountain - Don't Run Our Hearts Around - This is fucking ROCK. Josh had downloaded the first half of Black Mountain's album, and this is absolutely the most memorable and rocking track. Like some kind of reincarnated Led Zepplin with a strang, modern and furious musical sensibility.

huzzah!

2006-01-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

Finally.

For at least three weeks, I will actually be employed. Yeah, it's Pier 1 and it's only $7/hr but at this point I don't really care.

AND I might actually finally be moving soon. Though the seemingly endless hospitality and goodwill of Josh and Jigga will forever leave me grateful, I am looking forward to moving into a different space.

In another shocking movement of hotness, my employment should be ending right around the time Mardi Gras starts, and my friend Mary has already made her intentions to get me to accompany her QUITE clear. Fuuuuuuuuuuck yeah!

tagged

2006-01-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

OK, so I was actually going to wait until I could offer some substantiation on my newest job lead, which is admittedly sub-glamorous (Pier 1) but it's not nearly as sub-sub-glamorous as NEVER HAVING ANY FUCKING MONEY. So, hopefully things will go well with that. Not that discussing jobwoes and moneywoes is particularly interesting or relevant, but it is hard to get out of one's own headspace on one's own blog.

Other news: successfully tamed weird blue/purple/gray hair with cheap black dye, looks fantastic and normalish.

Basically, I'm bored, boring and it's about to get worse - I've been tagged! All the sweet nothings you've longed to know, yet feared to inquire upon.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Contract term paper writer
2. Publication designer
3. English assistant
4. Waiter

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Any of the Thin Man series
2. A Life Less Ordinary
3. Drop Dead Gorgeous
4. Deep Red Hatchet Murders (treasured low-budget Dario Argento crapterpiece)

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Paris
2. Missoula, MT
3. Seattle, WA (and a big fuck you to that place)
4. Morlaix, France

Four TV shows I love:
1. Six Feet Under
2. Daily Show
3. Buffy
4. Adult Swim

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Amsterdam
2. Edinburgh
3. New Orleans
4. Berlin

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. General Tso's chicken
2. Zuchini wild rice frittata
3. A good caesar salad is of great value to me
4. SOmething like a simple cheap pate/baguette sandwich, pulled from a backpack and munched down on the road to travelly adventure (especially if there's a bottle of wine clinking in there too).

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Gawker
2. Myspace (definitely developing into a compulsivity)
3. Email (obvious response)
4. Defamer

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. London
2. Bodega Bay, CA (some of the most beautiful Pacific coastline EVER, I think)
3. NYC
4. In the passionate embrace of an indulgent South American millionaire

Four bloggers I am tagging:
I refuse to put myself through the embarassment of tagging people, since no one fucking reads this blog!

yowza

2006-01-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Damn, have I been remiss in my bloggery or whaaaat?!

Finally took the GREs, got a good score, now attempting to feign interest in getting my shit together on grad school applications. Ack!

I have been getting downright creative about financial survival in recent days.

Two dollar poker buy-in. I beat the pants of five other people to make a glorious $10 profit.

Yesterday, significantly less glamorous, brought about a change-scrounging mission to buy Top tobacco to roll cigs.

Hopefully, employment is on the horizon - trying to be proactive and engaging in correspondance with people I am desperately applying to. Hope, hope.

Until then? Getting high before noon and wasting time by the fistful. Reading an incredible novel by Anthony Burgess called Earthly Powers, which is just epic and sweeping through the 20th century and amazingly well-written.

Tomorrow, I will have forty hot dollars in my hand that represent the last little bit of my viable finances. I've been feeling kind of scared and frustrated with the complete absence of purpose in my life and now I just want to get a fucking job so my time will actually become important to me again, since now all I have is fucking time to waste, waste, waste. It's getting a little out of hand, peeps. This tragically impoverished ten-months-of-brokeass-couchsurfing thing is losing its luster.

at last, the opinion you've truly been waiting for

2006-01-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

At last, the moment for me to weigh in on the media cumshot of the moment - Brokeback Mountain. First of all, I have to make me feelings clear on one issue: one aspect of my zany bohemian fashion statement is an obsession with cowboy style button-up shirts. I think the whole idea of cowboy drag, especially when looked at through the lens of films like Midnight Cowboy is fascinating. However, I know that due to the raging popularity of BB, I am going to be labeled a Brokeback Queen or whatfuckingever. It's not so much that it bothers me, but actually it fucking does because people and their fucking assumptions already piss me off semi-continuously. So, I guess I'm saying, 'Fuck you world! I did actually love that fucking movie, but it did not inspire my wardrobe!'

And on that note, YES, I did find it an amazing film. Beloved blogmates Zach and Chris have both made their feelings known on what seems to be the film's most irritating point: its fucking buzz and all the supposed courage of the actors and filmmakers. Guess what, they were doing their jobs! And we just fawn all over them for doing their jobs correctly?

Unforunately, you fucking bet we do. And I don't really think the particular fawnability of this film has to do with the absurdly homosexist notion that two straight men kissing/having a sex scene must be the most horrible thing imaginable for them, wow, how courageous that they did it and did it so well. Obviously, I believe that is bullshit. But it goes hand in hand with our entire society placing such emphatic importance on the lives and loves of these famous idiots. We're fawning all over the TomKat intergalactic lovechild, just by devoting such perpetual lip service by talking, talking talking about how crazy he is.

This train of thought is sailing dangerously towards me ultimate pet peeve yet inescapable fact: that as fun as making fun of how horribly shelter our culture is while watching it happen on TV or at the cheap seats of whatever, IS STILL participating and putting money and ratings towards the very things that should terrify a mind sharp enough to make fun of it. There needs to be a full-on rejection of the emptier parts of our culture that we despise, rather than an affectionate 'how much dumber can this shit get?'

But, I'm not talking about completely rejecting this dominant culture yet, because obviously I am enjoying the endless jibes it offers as much as any dark-humored, HighQ, pop culture junkie. I'm just trying to set stage for the fact that our culture worships celebrity, and that has at least as much to do with what's to blame for all the misplaced attention on BB.

So, the actors are just doing their jobs. But quite honestly, I think they're doing them incredibly well. I haven't seen such compelling, intense, doomed love in a fucking long time. In my opinion, the adaptation is incredible. There are a few extraneous details and a little bit of over-emphasis on the married lives, but it definitely captured the tone and the heart of Proulx's text. I'm the at least the second person to naysay Heath Ledger's acting, but I was amazed by his brooding, nuanced performance - I think it taps a lot into how modern masculinity is such a disguise, that any unexpected or powerful or especially 'unmanly' feelings are so surprising, they inspire primitive responses like violence or demand some other kind of physical release. Jakey G is of course amazing (and obviously a total fucksamich), which is maybe why Ledger is getting more attention, since he usually sucks and this is a pretty drastic upwing.

I was thrilled, upon finally seeing the film, that Ang Lee ended up directing it rather than Gus Van Zant, who probably would have gimmickily ruined the fuck out of it. Ang Lee does have an incredible visual language, which matches well with Proulx's descriptions of Wyoming. The sex scenes were perfect, gay and straight. All of them very honest, across the board.

So here's my ultimate bottom line for this little culture snack: as important as it is not to lend credence to the absurdly tacky and celebrity-obsessed nature of our culture, it is MORE important to recognize and celebrate the good art that is still being created, even if there's a little bit of stupidly skewed press in the way of it.

Also, I partied my ass off on NYE, but I did not get to kiss the dreamweaver, which was truly a tragedy, especiallly since it has never been clearer that he does not, in fact, love the cock. But may be fascinated with cockloving due to some psycho-hetero defeciency that does not end up with my dick between those beautiful lips. Alas, alas! But it was a weird, wild evening all the same. Sorry for the rant, next time I'll just extol the virtues of the new Devendra Bernhart album.

Also, I'm really stoned, so please excuse any and all leaps of logic (I'm sure it's implied at this point anyway).

a year older, absolutely no wiser

2005-12-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

But it's not like that's a bad thing, right?

I had a freaking scream in New Orleans, in spite of the fact that I was feeling a bit too sick for any kind of boozy fun on that sacred day of days. My beloved cohort and inviter-of-me-to-Nawlins was even sicker, so we vowed to raincheck the shit out of some partying. It was pretty incredible to be back in that town, which I really feel like is this other fucking world that sparked so much of my imagination and development and dreams and lust right after I turned 21. In some ways, I really wasn't sure I was going to feel the same way about it. Not because of the hurricane, but because I couldn't help but wonder if I hadn't been crazy about the city per se, but rather just enamoured with my old fuckbuddy who I used to hang out with when I was there.

Luckily, the magic persisted, I didn't even really want to see him (not that he was in town, I think) and it still acts as a rather powerful sexual locus for me, which is also fucking awesome (as it were). Seriously, only in New Orleans do people tell me I'm cute and hit on me and this was perhaps the most intense example of said particular phenomenon.

But first, let's talk about the holiday. So, my friend Mary (my aforementioned beloved cohort) invited me to spend the holiday with her family, which I was excited about because I LOVE her mom (funny damn woman, Ph. D. in British Lit and obsessed with Jack the Ripper) and her mom's girlfriend, whom I had stayed with for one fucking night a day or so after Christmas before I relocated to the pad of ye old fuckbuddy.

Anyway, this trip allowed me to witness the elaborate and entertaining dysfunction of her family. There was yelling, drinking, embarassment, certainty that I was going to watch someone die on Christmas, outrageous claims of the world's largest animal being a 'whale shark,' upsetting Christmas annecdotes...in short, it rocked. I'm always jealous of families that are so expressive, even if their problems seem to be without end - I'm so sick of passive aggressive shit, and I really never see anyone in my extended family, so it's fun to see both elements and not have to deal with the repercussions of either.

Anyway, on Christmas night, Mary, her cousin and I went out to the French Quarter and passed through a few of her favorite dive spots and my old Quarter fave The Abbey. We took turns hitting up the legendary jukeboxes of New Orleans, partook of some delightful free cookies and chatted with some cool girl at the Abbey about her incredible red and green rice krispie treats. Mary was lucky enough to receive the world's worst yet most topical pickup line ever: "I've got a FEMA trailer with your name on it," which was followed up with, "And my zebra sheets survived the flood." Hee-larious, I wrote it down on a cocktail napkin and stuffed it in my pocket so I might enjoy it later in life.

What was really surprising about the whole evening was that it managed to not feel depressing. A few days earlier, the mayor finally suspended the 2-6 am curfew, so I think a lot of people were celebrating that, as well as the end of the irritants and obligations of Christmas. There were a lot of people out, which I thought was awesome. So when Mary and her cousin wanted to head home at the modest hour of 1:30 (amateurs!), I decided to drop them off and head back out the Quarter by myself, which is honestly a very 50/50 proposition: usually I hate hanging out at bars by myself, but Nawlins has this unbelievable conviviality that makes meeting people very easy and fun a great deal of the time. Anyway, this time things didn't go so hot, and I almost headed home but decided to make one last stop.

On this stop, I met a very cute, charming, smart boy who was all up in my business, slathered me with compliments, told me I was an incredible kisser (that one IS true), begged me to let him take me out to dinner the next day...and promptly did not call me. I got really pissed off, but then remembered that game playing is the name of the, er, game. Whatever. I got a little flustered over it, followed by an impossible and seemingly endless quest to get from point A to point B the following day, which lead me to absolutely demand to get seriously drunk.

So, in the midst of mixing beers, shots and Mind Erasers with absolutely no regard for my body, this very hot boy in our drinking posse starts hitting on me. Now, when I meet attractive but evidently stupid gay boys, I don't really make an effort to talk to them that much, because I know that they're stupid and almost guarantee they're not interested in me. As far as I can tell, we didn't really talk that much, but I suppose that as the night continued I lost any sense of what was actually happening (mind erasers...so well named). Anyway, I ran into an old Nawlins acquaintance who used to be the fuckbuddy's roomie, and suddenly this boy in our boozing posse (let's call him Matthew, as it's his name) siddles up to me and tells me that I need to come home with him.

Later on, I realized that he was probably freaked out that I was 'talking' to another male who was not him, and felt like he needed to make his move rather immediately. So, this kid was on the dumb side, but I had to take some naked pictures of him, just because he is so much hotter than any of my other conquests. And even though he was dumb, he was far from the dumbest of the conquests, so not all is lost.

Anyway, very much fun had, and I feel that my adventures in New Orleans jolted me out of my head and sleazed out my soul enough to set me off the the exact right foot for being 24 in the year 2006. It's a little freaky for me to have my birthday so near New Years, just because there's barely time to get used to being another irrelevant digit older before we're talking about a whole new year on deck to piss away.

egads!

2005-12-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

It actually happened. An impossibly beautiful miracle has hijacked my meager hopes of Texan berfday and Xmas and scattered them to the four winds! I am now headed to New fucking ORLEANS for these two momentous occaisons, for their respective out of hand partyiong and family celebration.

Things are looking up.

I don't have a job, of course. Nonono.

But, I do have hope. And I am taking the mothafucking GRE on the fourth of January, and I fully intend to study my pale behind off.

Shortly after I recover from being partied and celebrated off.

on second thought

2005-12-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

So, after doing some drinking last night and attending a job interview for a company that makes synthetic vaginas, I'm feeling a lot more humored by the nature of the universe.

blech!

2005-12-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting for those petty mistresses Inspirtation and Actual Content to fill me up to the brim before posting again, but they seem to be on the run.

I did indeed finally finish my plagiarized masterpiece for my fucked up neighbor, only to be greeted with unexpected critiques. So after having stayed up all night and all day haphazardly assembling the paper, I spent another six hours of chainsmoking and pill-popping (aderol, useless) to pound out something closer to his aim - however, it was shorter than the forementioned length and not all of the citations 'matched up.' However, this dude seems to think these issues may lead to him 'flunking the class' and so I have yet to see my fucking payment.

Luckily, during this academic marathon, I was also battling the beginning of an illness. Which, two full days of staying up later, metamorphosed into a beastly ailment which still plagues me to this day.

Basically, I am not feeling terribly chipper or holiday spirited at the moment. My birthday is in exactly one week, which means that Christmas is just around the damn corner. I have a dizzying lack of enthusiasm surrounding the day of my birth this year. I was thinking about having some kind of drinking and pool-playing extravaganza on Saturday, but my enthusiasm has waned on that, as on nearly everything else. I dream of a future in which I am not a complete loser.

Even when everything is not covered in snow, this season must still fucking fuck itself.

fuck, actually cold, fuck

2005-12-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write about how I am in the midst of the dawning of the age of Sagittarius and everything is going to get done and be okay but FUCK it actually is kind of cold today, shock of shocks. Rumor has it we may ever drop...just below freezing! Gasp. These people are not ready for it, but I'm REALLY not because I thought I was finally safe.

One other thing: um, reluctant as I am to confess, I have become utterly obsessed with myspace. Like, to the point of complete non-reason. On a positive note, it has totally facilitated having a connection to people that I may not see again, but at least I have some slight ability to keep track of where they are and what the fuck they are doing. However, when I just compulsively enter the names of every single person ever to have crossed my path...um, that's actually BAD. Or at least highly unconstructive.

Which brings us to my performance as plagiarist - the paper is due on Friday afternoon, and I have pretty much done nothing except find sixty pages of articles to research. My employer continues to behave super-erratically, ever willing to act as a public service announcement for why doing coke is bad.

I do, however, have a job interview tomorrow. FINALLY. And I've been applying to a shitload of places and just earmarked four more to respond to today. My money situation is getting pathetic, and the fact that I have been so comfortable doing so fucking little here is frankly terrifying.

Tomorrow will mark precisely two weeks standing between me and my 24th birthday. I'm currently trying to brainstorm so I can plan something so fantastically off the hook that all of Austin will be REELING! Brainstorming for this, which is totally unimportant for right now, completely unlike my contract paper thing. Perspective? Yes please. Reality? I think I'll pass.

nobody said it was eeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaasyyyyyy

2005-12-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday morning, at 8 am, I was awoken by Coldplay and a coked-out Venezuelan performing on the porch. This figure shall be known as V, AKA a blow-enabling madman who is paying me to write a paper for him.

INteresting, non?

So, his drunk and crazy ass kidnaps me, takes me up to Mount Bonnell, both of us in PJs and runs around and smokes me out and insists on me drinking in the sights, which were not unincredible - obviously, it was beautiful.

But this kid is crazy, and acting like he's too drunk to drive back. I don't know how to drive stick so I couldn't take his wheels and ditch him. He yells at me when I try to walk away from him, he flips out when I commented 'Nice scene, V,' calls me a fucking bitch girl for me wanting to be taken home, then finally does a bump and brings me back. This time, no running of reds or stops or knocking over construction shit. Phew.

Anyway, he kept on saying I was going back to bed (I wasn't) and how I should go out to coffee with him.

Nono, cocoadog.

I woke up to him seriously and crazily challenging my commitment to doing his fucking paper, blahblah, I had no desire to talk about it much more. I go inside to get dressed, take proper bonghits and prepare my excuse.

So this cat is just waiting on my porch, shirtless. And while he is straight, it seems to him perhaps that perky, epic pecs and biblically flat stomach may convince me to do what he fucking wants. Luckily, Josh pretended to follow through on being an extra in the local caveman epic (actually being filmed, not even kidding) so I had an out.

Anyway, that was yesterday, this is today. Must go to bank, must go grocery shopping, must FUCKING WRITE.

teetering on the edge of another unemployed week!

2005-11-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yes, but I still found it necessary to party my ass of all weekend. And now, in the afterglow of an incredibly fun weekend, I ran to central market to get a bottle of cheap Argentinian red and some pate and a baguette. Incredible feelings of pseudo-continental, pseudo-poverty-ridden style. Here's the weekend breakdown:

-Friday - 9ish pm - Many car-beers later, Jared and I emerged to go see The Shout Out Louds and The Rosebuds at the Parish, both of which were great. But most memorably, before even getting there, some morbidly obese homeless man re-christened us as 'The Twin Towers,' which I think is so fucking funny it's going to be our zany duo nickname forevermore (it's funny cuz we're both so tall, you see). I tried to make magic happen with people from the Rosebuds, all the while thinking 'just invite us to your afterparty, c'mon!' only to learn that they had to go to Houston the next day and everyone just wanted to sleep. Couldn't you have told me that before I adorned my arms with temporary tattoos with your bands' name on them?!

-Saturday - 7:00 p.m. - Went to Alamo Drafthouse (AKA HEAVEN!) with Jared for Diabolic, some crazy ass psychadelic Italian '60s comic book adaptation. Diabolic is a leather-catsuit-wearing-studmuffin-international-thief-mod-robinhood. It was funny and weird and beautiful and silly and gadget infested and just a great time. And we got in free thanks to some girl I actually used to think sucked, but now obviously she is my new best friend. Because of all the crazy funny kitschy shit going on there, I kind of almost want to live there. Examples: live wardrobe with coats and trees and fake snow and a lamp post for the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe premiere, doc about the Velvet Underground, Moulin Rouge singalong, weekly bad b-movies, trippy art films with live music, and SO MUCH MORE. I cannot emphasize how rad this place is and if it didn't I would have maybe paused before realizing I wanted to move here, instead of knowing without reservation that this is exactly where in the world I want to live right now.

-Saturday - MUCH LATER - Went out to scaldingly hotspot 'The Peacock' on the notorious east side - fantastic mix of drunks, druggies, hipsters, gays, partygirls, DJs, rock stars and hangers-on. It was awesome. Then scampered off to Club De Faulte for some wheelings and dealings and then...well, you get the idea.

Today is all about feeling the combined remorse of two pretty excessive days. Where my pate at?!

um, so, yeah

2005-11-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

Not exactly the most family beginning to a terrrribly family holiday, I'll admit that. Obviously, we were unable to make it to the t-day party we had been invited to. I didn't even crash until 2 pm, and this was one of those tragically early dinner deals, which honestly I don't even see why people do that.

One thing I need to establish rightfuckingnow: I am not becoming a cokehead. Since I'm not blogging too much these days, it just looks like it. But twice in a month to me is not a huge deal. Not that I'm protesting too much. If anything, I just wanted to eradicate the memories of my last coked-out sexperience. Also, it was a fun opportunity to pick that brain of our wildman Venezuelan neighbor. And it's one of those experiences Jigga and I will be able to hold over the head of Josh.

Things that were terrible: everything being closed, dodging phonecalls, not having any weed to smoke or really anything to do. So, Jigga and I americanized it up and had dindin at Denny's. Not the holiday freakshow I'd been hoping for, honestly, and then I got humiliated in chess. So, all in all, a shitty holiday, especially compared to last year's amazing spread for my euro-loves in France. I'm rather terrified that shit was A YEAR AGO.

In other news, I am resisting the temptation to apply to go back to France next year. Partly so I can just focus on grad school and getting in, partly because I don't feel like doing the application. But partly? Because running away right after college was okay, but I feel like if I did that again, I would just have another excuse to not get my shit together upon returning. And I need to accept my destiny as an American in America and stop giving myself continental airs.

Speaking of grad school, I heaved a sigh of relief that three out of four of my choices have mid-February deadlines. Unfortunately, my absolute number one choice, UT, demands everything at the beginning of January. Ahhhh! Which is kind of a 'fuckfuckfuck!' but also a 'good' since forcing me to get my shit together sooner than later is key.

I just need to stop having this crisis of purpose. I need to stop running around unwilling to do anything and just get a job get an appartment get my own fucking life and find a little writing nook to get something meaningful done. Until then, I need to just use coffee shops and libraries and dirty-ass corners of the appartment and just DO IT. Fuck, I seriously make myself crazy with my ability to excuse and justify inaction out the bloody wazzoo.

Anyway, weekend is now here, and I need to pick up Shout Out Louds tix for me and Jigga / write an opus and beg for approval from professors who may or may not remember me.

ahhhhh

2005-11-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the last time I blogged, I was describing being fucked up in a similar way to the fuck-up-edness I now feel, even though the book I am readihng (In the City of Shy Hunters, FUCKING READ IT, TOM SPANBAUER RULES) dictates NOT partaking in said subtance, but whatever is fundamentally whatever, and what is and has been done and shall heretofore be.

I dropped our beloved roomie 'Shua off at the airport yesterday afternoon, and ALREADY things are getting historically out of hand, not counting the heretofore undone yet planned for mushroomes.

Instead of continuing my tres a.m. t-day post, I'm going to post the excerpt that I wrote today and ENCOURAGE you to comment on its content and the possibilities it contins;. Keep in mind I was not on said substance at the time, just some weeeeeed, and it should be read as a more elegiac portrait of said times raathern than a romnatixcization thereof.

Read on, courageous ones, and check out a later incarnation in mothafucking here when I win that shit in a hot month, when I expect they wuill be announcing winners (opmigod, will I remember to post it at the end of this passage (omigod, isa it even good enough to post, let alone submitg (yes it is goddamnit, you fucking rule especially when you read your own shit on diette cokeaine))).

There are those, yes, those rather unfortunate steaming-manhole, unmarked construction, hole-in-the-entire-fucking-universe moments. And there will be no warning, and even more pressingly there will be no one to save you, no one to love you, no one to talk to, no gods to pray to, no any one thing you slaved away hours and days and years just to possess, and mothafucking most importantly, no one to listen to you.

You. You as you babble incomprehensibly, strung-out-edly, with all the despair and love and longing in your fractured-ass heart.

In the clammy deep of 4 a.m. I am you (you are also you) in these abandoned seconds, though at this hour I cannot even see the magic in the first second of a new minute. Usually, such small wonders can reaffirm me but at 4 a.m. nothing can really find you anymore and nor can you (me!) find any-goddamn-thing or any-fucking-one.

Okay, seriously fucking read and comment.

Blogging is fun. I need a cigarette, not that I have been uncontrollably chainsmoking for the last four hours.

make art out of it

2005-11-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday was one of the best-spent Sundays I've had in a ridiculously long time. It also confirmed for me that the place I live is fucking awesome. My friend Mystima and I went to the EAST East Austin Studio Tour yesterday afternoon, getting free drinks nd rubbing elbows and talking with artists and checking out some pretty fucking amazing stuff. We probably went to twelve or fifteen different areas around the East Side, which is also notorious for being the poor/bohemian district. Lots of warehouses and barred windows and train tracks...definitely sparks the imagination.

What was awesome about this event was that it wasn't just limited to galleries. We're talking about a two-day all-day event, where you go into someone's private studio, have the experience of walking around in their brain, and it manages to eschew the 'opening art walk' feeling of obligation to buy - though that was obviously on the agenda, this event was created for people to meet and connect with artists and try to reach some understanding of what their work is about.

We ended up at the closing reception last night, and what I lovedlovedloved was being at an art event and finding that people were incredibly social, not bitterly pretentious or guarded or nose-in-the-air-to-the-point-of-cross-eyed-ness. I met and talked with loads of people very easily, both artists I had met in the day or other artlovahs.

Though all the fun I had does not make up for shitty short films that are basically designed to be a stupid yet arthouse video for a Modest Mouse song (complete with lyrics at the bottom of the screen(?!)).

I can't believe I managed to write something coherent this early in the am sans coffee, but I am about to rectify my caffeine situation.

long overdue!

2005-11-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

Would have been blogging sooner, my little babies, but in spite of the apparently unstoppable power of my roomie's G5, I have been totally unable to post at home for some reason. So, there are a few matters of some importance that must be retroactively covered herein:

1.) Blatant irresponsibility: I had two extremely wild nights in a row this Thursday and Friday. My friend Mary from UM who is now randomly living here post Katrina-ishly (she moved from N'awlins) and I have been hanging out loads. So, she hit the town with the boys and I on Thursday nite, since our original plans of going to see Metric (interesting band featuring the Stars/Broken Social Scene girl) were shot down by the other one million people who live here and looked for an actual activity on Thursday night. So we hit the scene downtown, got our sauce on, threw tiny green berries at hipsters from a hillpoint vantage and ended up staying up until 5, with Mary screaming at the boys for how filthy the house was (she couldn't believe that women actually slept with men living in such squallor, I guess).

Friday: much, much less innocent. I met up with Mary again to check out Fabric, an incredibly cool local gay spot. And let me assure you that the amount of cute guys in this town is FUCKING STAGGERING. So, being in a cool spot in a new town, I took the initiative to throw away my reputation like so much garbage and spend the next couple of hours getting blatantly coked up and avoiding the advances of a much older fellow providing said coke. But pretty soon I was so spun there was only the end of the night and my pent-up sexual frustration, so I went back to his place.

Yikes, do you really want to know more? Anyway, I left and came home, totally unable to get to sleep until after 6.

After all that shite, I decided to gift myself with an excessively mellow Saturday, which was DEFINITELY in order.

2.) Revenge of responsibility: I believe I found a house to move into at the beginning of December, which is extremely exciting. I think I'm just going to break down and apply to work with my friend Jigga, who spends his days toiling before a call center cubicle. Whatever, it's $11/hr and will help me make sure I can actually pay to move into this place. Plus, it'll help me get the tickets for going to NYC in February, and then I can just quit before leaving and try and get another gig on the flip side.

3.) Miscellany: My last comment I tried to post was the day after the gay marriage ban passed here in Texas. Living here is definitely like living in Missoula; the young beautiful liberals try to strike down blatant legal hypocrisy and reel with shock and dismay as the other 90% of the population struggles to hold onto their fucking values. Is it absurdly frustrating and unfair? Um, yeah. But I gave up the ghost long ago on believing that we live in anything close to a perfect world. And besides, the institution of marriage exists to provide tangible proof of the invisible and the unprovable - it is my belief that marriage is something that exists to ritualize something, to create proof and promise - lovemeloveme FOREVER no,no please don't go!

Marriage doesn't fucking mean anything anymore, and if the moral majority fucking think that they're protecting a valuable and valid institution, then their next effort should be to convince alcohol-free beermakers that their product is a morally disgusting fluke that does not have the same rights and priveleges of your 6-7% 'normal beers' and should heretofore be referred to as a 'civil beverage.'

Whatever, that's my rant. In zany creative news, two nights ago I read to Josh, Jigga and Josh's lady K-Boz from One Hundred Years of Solitude, while throwing back some cocktails. It was fun, but it's kind of hard to believe how much longer it takes to read out loud - I love the language of it, so reading it aloud is great for me in processing that information in a different way, but the book is written in such lengthy, otherworldy sentances and with such little dialog it should be interesting to see if people can keep their attention up.

Today, I did some writing and research for another project. The flame lit neath my creative bunsen burner, you ask? Tom Spanbauer, of-fucking-course. I finally bought In the City of Shy Hunters, so I can reread it and attempt to force my writing to imitate all that is good about it. I just found out he has a fourth novel coming out in May, which thrills me beyond words because part of me was fucking freaked that he wouldn't live long enough to pen another work.

But, here's the exciting part: I stumbled across the 'Dangerous Writing' website, and found out that he teaches fucking classes in Portland. Portland, where I'm planning on living next summer. The coincidences are whizzing and whirring all around, but one thing is clear: I must meet and study under this man, because from what I've read of his interviews, he is as passionate and dynamic and unexpected in his teaching as he is in his writing.

Anyway, I'm at the local branch of the library, a mere block and a half from my currently crashing pad, so I'm going to trot home and grab some nourishment.

fucking fuck you blogger, you won't let me post

2005-11-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

holycrap

2005-11-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

Little tendrils of possibility are worming their way in and out of my little life right now, and I'm not even fucking TRYING to be my full dynamic self. I love this place. People are already trying to refer me to potential jobs and apartments and hangouts and d-rugs and whatnot. What a freaking delight.

I'm still reeling from Iron and Wine with Calexico (obviously!) but I just finally saw Dig, which is a film about Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. And holy jesus was I musically titilated by the film and have subsequently been compulsively listening to BJM.

Went to Oilcan Harry's, a gay bar, for retro night last nite. Twas fucking dead, but I got my old Missoula friend Mary to come down. She is now mysteriously and post-Katrina-ishly relocated to Austin, and I suspect we will be spending a goodly amount of time together as I LOVE the bitch.

Though I have not actively begun searching for a job, I am helping my friend Trey, who does real estate photography, tonight and may be doing more of that in the future. I fucking even opened a bank account! My god, it's hard to believe I'm finding the capacity for responsibility in this thick smoky haze.

Will be working on pictures soon, for Zach and any other ole anyywho might care to see. I am on the prowl harder than ever, so watch out Austin blokes!

AUSTIN

2005-10-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

Holy shit! I am living in Texas, people! I must admit that I cannot fucking believe it. This place is truly a wild and beautiful world - it seems like a combination of New Orleans and Portland, which sounds like something that would be impossible in this world as we know it. Yet it is!

Fave things currently: Whole Foods, breakfast tacos, Waterloo Records, the torrid, tropical weather of recent days.

OK, here's the biggie I almost forgot in the first draft: I saw fucking Iron and Wine with Calexico. They played seperately and then together to promote their silly-hot EP In the Reins. It was the first show I've seen in a long time where I was perfectly wasted. Drunk enough to feel giddy and fun but not sloppy and tired. They did incredible covers of 'All Tomorrow's Parties' and 'You Were Always on my Mind' and (MOST NOTABLY) 'Wild Horses,' which was the myhtical note on which they chose to end. FUCKING INCREDIBLE.

Today is Halloween and I sort of am costumeless as I already rocked the escaped convict look on Saturday, at my welcome to Austin party, where I obviously got wasted.

There are approximately 400 million outrageously cute boys. Good reason to keep on eating the spinach and other such wildly dietic items.

The CD that carried me through the journey: Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. Unbelievable genrebending brilliant pop music that goes all fucking over and works a wacky magic on the listener.

This post is dumb (obviously I'm legendarily high) but I just wanted to call out to the night and say I am here and fucking happy for the adventures that await me in this magic land.

good gods!

2005-10-24T09:41:00.000-06:00

OK, before I dive right into freaking the fuck out about moving very very soon, I would like to make sure that everyone knows that this last weekend in Missoula was one of the best of my young lives. My fave Missoula band the Oblio Joes played, prompting me to drink like a complete nineteen year old and stay up til after four in the morning.

I can't believe such feats are still possible for me. I couldn't believe there was a world full of young people waiting to seize the day out there ANYWHERE anymore, such was my focus upon brooding joylessly in the basement.

But now I'm excited about everything, I'm getting the fuck out of here tomorrow and leaving from Missoula on Thursday.

I have fucking everything left to do, so I might go ahead and NOT take the GRE now and just hope that I can continue being a person who has access to an extraneous $115 to burn for some fucking stupid culturally biased testing corporation.

Panic, panic, panic. I just wanted to drop a wee update here and let you all know I've been hitting it too goddamn hard all the time because I've been sick for one week now whereas if I would just calm down more substantively, I could already be skipping along the path of wellness.

#3

2005-10-15T12:22:00.000-06:00

The number three is recurring rather crazily in my life right now.

Three day weekends, with not a whit to do.

Three days of work left at both of my jobs.

Three cups of coffee to start off me day.

I jumped off the diet for a meal last night and enjoyed some kickass REAL FOOD last night, which was incredible. And it leads me to conclude that I'm not really going to be able to maintain the same liqiuidic resolve as I maintain for the solids in my mad new diet. Meaning, I'm going to continue to get my booze on with a vengeance. My dad's crazy friend George is in town, and he told me about some liquor store in Houston where I'd be able to get a case of Rothchild's Bordeaux for about $6 a bottle. Which might be extra necessary because when I imagine myself drinking that shit like it's going out of style (which I suppose it surely has, but it's the best wine I've had recently and I usually only drink shit in the US anyway) instead of pounding away on the Peebers, as Austin (or more specifically, my Austin mates) tends to demand.

Speaking of that old chestnut, we are now entering the two weeks or less phase of the countdown. I will be ready to go as of the 26, which is a mere eleven days from now. I am still vainly insisting upon taking the GRE before I leave, so I suppose I'd best get to studying, hmmmmmmmmm?

Things are going quite all right for the moment. I think I will actually be capable of enjoying a quiet weekend at the house and run off to Missoula one last time next weekend before briefly stopping through there days later to take the GRE and have a little goodbye party.

My last weekend there was legendarily fun, and I saw the crush that almost eclipsed the notorious secretly gay C-Rod of my senior year. This guy is maybe 21 now, with lips that go on for miles and those fantastic Prince William style teeth (big but not buck...does anyone know what I'm talking about or perhaps share this oddest of fetishes?) and blue eyes and trendy blondish hair. I definitely remember staring at him in creative writing and watch him sit around and look bored. Well, he got about 37 times hotter, which absolutely disturbed me, but somehow I was able to hold a half-hour conversation with him, perhaps uniquely because I was not fully conscious and yet not unstoned either. Hot, hot, hot and made me feel just like I was in college again, which sometimes an old boy like me needs to feel.

I made the mistake of strolling across the campus on Monday, when the fall colors were blazing and everyone is running around campus, clad in back to school clothes and blahblahblah...I felt insanely envious. I guess of all the possibilities and (faux) purpose locked up in that place.

Back to the present. Nine or ten days hence, I shall have crazy white-blond hair if I have to fucking TORCH my scalp to do it! And it's going to look hot, alternately spiked out like a Japanese cartoon character or swept back '40s playboy style. I think it will totally fit with my Halloween costume, which is going to be a crazy escaped convict thing, to mesh with my 'Escape from Montana' state o'mind right about now.

Okay, I just thought I would sound off and now that it is my birthday o'clock (read 12:22) I'm going to scamper off and make some magic happen before seeing Elizabethtown, which was interestingly reviewed in the NYT the other day. Not a good review, but rather one that made me curious as to what I would like/hate about this film. Will perhaps revive a little culture-snackery on the morrow.

ranting, with mini-culture snacks

2005-10-02T14:32:00.000-06:00

Here we are, two weeks later. I haven’t really been updating because my life seems very dull and dim for the moment. This time is making me realize how much of my energy and personality is contingent on the company I keep. My friends really give me the energy and the entertainment and the information that makes up a lot of how I perceive my identity.

I can’t believe that four weeks from today, I will be leaving for Austin. I’m trying to keep that whole regime change in perspective for the moment. I feel like my entire life exists in the moments like this. I sacrifice my happiness in the present in the hopes that it will bring me to a happier future. But this inbetween time is by turns endless and warp-speedy. I can’t believe that I’ve been living at home for two months already, nor can I really wrap myself around the fact that I have four weeks of this un-lifestyle still ahead of me. Obviously a narrow stretch of time, but each day seems like another problem and another struggle.

I dunno. I was thrilled to get a visit from my friend Lydia yesterday, and she left a wake of her spark for life in my non-sparkly world, so I’m glad I have that at least. I can’t help but try and look through someone else’s eyes whenever I get the fleeting privelege of being around friends. Do they still see me as the person I was, the dynamo and adventurer and charmer and thinker and creativist....or do they see the empty shell I feel more and more like I resemble?

Part of this shell thing is my own doing, clearly. I am pulling away from a lot of people and spending most of my time alone, in the house, if I’m not working. I think a lot fo that has to do with the fear of having people see me as I see myself right now.

If this sounds deeply depressing, it may have something to do with the beginning of my mini-detox period, in which I will probably be spending the next week without weed. Which is fine, good and beneficial to my last-ditch dieting (I think it’s really important to look cute when moving to a new place). But it makes all this solitude a little more unbearable.

OK, onto lighter topics! Fuck!

I saw Serenity last night, for two reasons: my love of Joss Whedon and the hotness of Nathan Fillion, who plays the cap’n on this zany old west / sci-fi ship. Luckily, they threw in a gratuitous shirtless scene just for people like me. The movie, on the whole, was all right, nothing absurdly special, but still containing a smattering of Joss Whedon smarts here and there. I felt that the show that was its base, Firefly did a better job of straddling the fence that runs between science fiction and westerns, whereas the film was more on the sci-fi side, because we all know genre-bending ain’t what sends the ducats rolling in, it’s big explosions and battle scenes. Seeing this movie at a theater in Kalispell was seriously like being in a test audience, where everyone has a hearty chuckle at the parts that have been so designated and one has the feeling of being in the middle of a laughtrack. The one part I though was really funny was when the ‘tough dude’ says something like, “Let her back on the ship? My muscular buttocks!” Ultimately, while this film is okay, it begs the question of how the fuck Joss talked a studio into producing a movie from a series that was cancelled before the conclusion of its first season.

I bought an AMAZING CD on my last visit to Missoula - Calexico and Iron and Wine’s In the Reins. This is a beautiful combination of the painstaking sincerity of Sam Beam’s vocals with the instrumental complexity and imagination of Calexico. I can’t get enough of it. I was admittedly wary, because I feel like Iron and Wine lost a little direction with some of the more overt production in the EP Woman King, which definitely functions well enough as an album, but pales in comparison to the more scarcely-produced predecessors, The Creek Drank the Cradle (easily one of my fave albums right now) and Our Endless Numbered Days. I was a mite concerned because Endless was definitely more pop-friendly than Creek, then Woman King seemed the next step in that direction, combined with the fucking HIT that is ‘Such Great Heights’ (it was in an M&Ms commercial, mmkay?!). But the newest recording is well-paced, consistent and gorgeous. I’m commenting more specifically on the Iron and Wine aspect because I have a much better understanding of that work than of Calexico’s.

Other things: I’m trying to get ready for the realities of applying to grad school, even if I feel like the most critical part is missing right now: there is no way in hell that my manuscript is even close to being complete. The first step, obviously, is to pick one or two new stories and focus really intensely on them enough to have a confident working draft to turn into people I am begging for letters of recommendation. Which honestly is something I’m quite scared of. I have to assume that people are going to even remember who the fuck I am and why they thought I ever had talent in the first place. Then, assuming that they remember anything about me and my work, I need to show that I have grown as a person and as a writer through what I have written. Then, hope to the baby jesus that that’s enough to inspire an inspirational letter. Next trip to Missoula will include me very hopefully obtaining a GRE book and taking two weeks of study time before laying down a trusty $115 and hoping for the best.

In the tradition of hoping for the best and planning for the worst, I have already designated a backup plan. I am going to start preparing to apply to be an assistant in France again, with the mutual goals of landing in Strasbourg (at the well-worded behest of fellow eurotrashito Zach) with the hope of working at the IUFM, a French teacher training school, instead of a damn high school. It sounds like it would be much more fun, with substantially greater freedom of how I could run my class.

Um, apparently I have a lot on my mind.

making up for lost time, apparently

2005-09-17T01:27:00.000-06:00

Yeah, this really happened: I just completed my second consecutive day of working two jobs with an hour and a half break inbetween. We're talking about twelve hours of work. Eight in the beehive and four or five at the restaurant. My life continues to operate in extremes. Then my mom tried to tell me I should be working twelve hours a day all the time.

I nearly cut the bitch!

And I want to at least realistically have some time to write, read, excercise and I'll be able to afford to land in Austin by the end of October so that's all grand and I need...to stop writing this.

I'm having a really intense queer/stoner moment in that everything that is being said on Celebrity Poker Showdown is like sooooo totally gay. Phil Gordon just refused to answer on TV whether it was perhaps not a wife that he was looking for. And, I mean, he's really cute. He's a poker genius. And really tall. Maybe he's also Canadian? Call me! Maybe I'll go on a nude-picture liquid diet and prepare the complete stalking package?

Ok, and, yes, you caught me. I'm obsessed with watching Celebrity Poker Showdown. Watching it brings me untold joy. And for fuck's sake, I can't believe I've never noticed how cute Phil Gordon is.

looking forward to the end

2005-09-14T18:18:00.000-06:00

So, my update is that I start an elaborate and deviously cruel training period tomorrow at my second job. It's going to be seven weekdays of training from 6 am to 2:30 pm. Yeah, fucking AWESOME! Tomorrow and Friday are going to be hell because I'll be work twelve-ish hour days both of them. But I swore I would not be a workblogger, and this is all speculative anyway. Right. The second place is a scary beehive inside of an old shopping mall. There's like probably a million Dilbert cartoons floating around that fucking place.

Then, I have miraculously managed to not have to work on the restaurant on Saturday night, so I will be running off to Missoula to party my ass off for the Triple Virgo Birthday Madness at Travis and Minnie's.

Let's just say I will heartily look forward to the escape, I expect. And only thoughts of the greater escape shall sustain me. I think I should be able to get to Austin and buy myself little prezzies in the mean time, like an iPod or perhaps Twin Peaks on DVD. Little gifts like that should be able to prolong my shrivelling sanity until the great peacing-the-fuck-out of six or so weeks from now.

So I might take a brief bloggabatical until something wildly fascinating happens, for all of our sakes.

new job, getaway

2005-09-12T13:40:00.000-06:00

Not that the second must be preceded by the first, but in this totally non-coincidental case, it did.

My first night was pretty awesome. I only waited on two tables, and the second one was AWESOME. I got to banter with a cool collection of older peeps INCLUDING a real, live Francaise! It was awesome to get the chance to speak French and showcase my dusty but unparalleled charm. However, all that work for a normal $20 tip? Though I suppose I should be thrilled that the French woman was not tipping, though there is indeed the possibility that she culturally overcompensates. Anyway, it was pretty awesome, especially since she dated a French prof at the U and wanted to hear any dirt I had.

Anyway, I made $50 and it was surprisingly chill. Being a waiter in training living at the parents' house beats unemployed depressed deadbeat living at the parents' house every time.

Then the next day it was off to Missoula, where I had hoped to see one of my euro-loves, Liana (who alas was not able to make it). We did get the chance to regress via telephone, and suddenly I was awash in a Berlinin haze of memories, like the purchase of my fave shoes, the true initiation of my now acclaimed/treasured digital camera, and the old chestnut known as sketchy drug dealer park. Ahh, memories.

Speaking of, I got to hang out with one of my very old friends from freshman year who had since disappeared and has now reconstituted in Missoula. It was pretty boys' night in, featuring a vast array of wine and Apples to Apples, which my parents actually non-coincidentally purchased and I have been regularly stealing ever since. If you don't know what I'm talking about, get thee to thine nearest game merchant and have at!

I said goodbye to my good friend and future roomie Jared, who should now be en route to Austin, where I hope to be seeing him in a mere SEVEN WEEKS. That's exactly how many days lie between me being here and the arrival of Halloween, my chosen arrival date. Holyshit, that's really close.

Which brings me to my second job, which I'm going in about tomorrow. Phone shit, helping people change their basic bank information. Apparently I will have a week of training before I have to take on that shit. Exciting, no? The only reason it fills me with a low, humming thrill is that I'll be that much closer to getting to Austin via this job, which will surely suck. But I've never really had a point in my life where I was working constantly. Because I don't count the college paper experience, because I was too permastoned to ever be particularly constructive and it was never really insisted on until after midnight anyway. This will be an interesting experience, one that will lead to me probably not having a day off until I leave, which is seriously fucking OK because a day of rest here is still basically hell, so I'll be in hell wherever I am.

See, that was almost a positive attitude moment. I have also already earmarked my next motivational treat, which will mothafucking be the first season of Twin Peaks on DVD. Don't I deserve it yet?!

Speaking of things I deserve, I picked up a freaky HOT pair of sunglasses, now featured in my profile pic here, complete with short hair and scary red beard. My friend said it made me look like I should be skiing through mountains of cocaine (europeanishly, of course).

ohmygawd!!

2005-09-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

Dudes. Brace yourself, mmmkay?

I actually kind of have a job. Waiting tables at a pretty fucking nice, local restaurant. This will be helpful in evading high gas prices since my commute will be nonexistant. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need another job to scrape together sufficient moolah to peace the fuck outta here for Austin. But I have already tossed in my application to work at an assuredly-horrifying place that takes calls for various tech support stuff. Hopefully that'll happen soon, because I'm running out of time, mofuggahs! But, I have one job. Which is definitely something.

If I had un-arrogantly responded to my dad's tip earlier (even before I was horribly pissed off at him!) I could have been working there at the beginning of this month n'shit. But I didn't. Because I figured that he had lied (he often does) and begged this poor woman to pleaseplease employ his son, who was embarassing him deeply enough by being home.

Anyway, I finally followed up today (desperation beats pride again!) and the woman wants me to come in and do some training tonight. HOT. Hopefully I will still be able to escape to Missoula this weekend to see my long-lost Berlinbuddy and party with my friends for the pre and post Willie Nelson fest. Also, my darling friend Lydia suggested creating a gawker-esque group blog for Missoula and western Montana, to humble the various cultural offerings and smacketh-down-upon news phenoms. I should probably try and do some work to make that happen.

Mini-Culture Snack: I recently checked out some tracks by Devotchka after looking at the jealousy-inviting lineup at Bumbershoot this year. They are fucking AMAZING. The first comparison I will trepidatiously make is to the inventively instrumented music of The Decemberists, who have recently been falling out of favor with me. Imagine a version of that band with gorgeous vocals, imaginative songs that don't draw attention to how wildly folkloreish and intellectual they are, fused with the musical sensibility of Yann Tierson, who composed the soundtrack to Amelie. There's a clear and admitted tone of Eastern European folk music, fused with an unsual rock sensibility that works much more than one would expect. In short, kickass and I love it.

wow

2005-09-02T10:00:00.000-06:00

God damn, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last wrote.

I'm fairly thrilled to actually feel like I want to write again, though the jabbing from my former recovering francotrash Zach certainly helped.

Things have been short of spectacular, to be perfectly honest. I am now shorn of my eurolocks, perhaps re-romanticized for me as I have done a shitload of updating onto the super-exciting photo blog, which I would heartily recommend to be checked out at your leisure. I'm looking forward to going through and writing little bits of info for the photos.

I am still not employed. I'm living at my parents' house. I find their presence to be semi-unbearable and therefor am finding my general enjoyment of life to be heartily lessened. And once again, I am nearing the netherside of a bag of dope and it looks like I might have to kiss my lovely libation buhbye for a bit.

Which is fine.

I was on the verge of being employed as a car rental guru, but my friend couldn't hire me because he knew I was temporary and his upperboss would probably shit on him. Nonetheless, I still made my mistake of attaching all my hopes to that working out.

I know I'll be working again before long because I have very critically decided to be in Austin, TX by Halloween and let the consequences be goddamned.

I'm still rather deeply reeling from the conclusion of Six Feet Under. It definitely had a huge impact on my life and punctuated eras of my life, bringing about spells of joy, tears, outrage and grief. It will be missed and forever references by myself and many of my proches.

However, I've been watching the shit out of the last season on HBO and I impulsively bought the fourth season on DVD mere days after the series finale. So, there is the glimmering/dwindling hope of televisual methadone. I'm definitely feeling freewheeling crazed Claire of the last two season, most uncomfortably when she's lying on the floor and says, "I'm always so much happier when I'm high."

Yikes. But, a propos, I would like to plug this AWESOME NPR interview with genius Alan Ball, which really enriched my SFU viewing. Or something. Special thanks to superblogger Andy Towle for the link.

Also, I just started the new Harry Potter (FINALLY!) and hopefully I will make it after all. I feel a strange, compulsive obligation to comment on the apparent complete destruction of New Orleans, a place that opened up my mind to so many of life's pleasures, perils and plunder. It fucking sucks is basically all that seems sufficient.

life is a seesaw

2005-08-05T05:49:00.000-06:00

OK, so it seems that I have briefly extended my stay in Missoula until this Monday. For a variety of reasons. Only a slim majority of which are Six Feet Under-related. Believe me, if I could cry html tears, you would see them here, people. That's the kind of emotion we're talking about.

Also, let's-be-fucking-honest, I was in no rush to land back at my parents' house, especially with what my mom has had to report about my father (that he's pissed at my brother and I for not being a part of the uber-sucess-stories of most marketable college grads, who are apparently stealing all these swell jobs from poor ole pops).

Also, it's looking like a solid yet silent 'nyet' from the job I was really hoping for, which was naturally and thoughtlessly viewed as my only hope, therefore automatically condemning any chance I ever had at it. Oh well. Apparently I shall never actually learn the lesson of not putting all my fragile dreameggs in one cruelly barbed basket o'reality.

But, there is a definite highlight among all these pieces of bad news. I just wanted to log them in contrast to the swelling happiness when I think about the fact that I am GOING TO MOTHERFUCKING WHITE STRIPES AND SLEATER-KINNEY TOMORROW, BITHCES!!!

Okay, seriously, use of caps lock is never really called for. But if it were, it would have been a moment like that.

And I will even be back in time to make something for the RIP dinner before Six Feet Under, show of shows.

So, things are looking vaguely upward.

yikes

2005-07-26T12:42:00.000-06:00

Things might be totally fucked.

I am moving back in with my parents for a couple of months. Buhbye Missoula, I am suddenly realizing summer may not be my season. Disaster seems close and frequent during these trouble-soaked months.

I am hoping to make it to Austin by Halloween. I think I have a pretty hot job prospect lined up in the hometown, and hopefully I will be bored/productive enough to save up an arseload. If I stayed here, I would just spend it all away, as I feel confident in admitting now.

I went to Crystal's wedding on Saturday...it was pretty great, lots of people to talk to. I made amazing vegetarian enchiladas, with black beans, hominy and sweet potatoes and pepperjack cheese - they were hot. I got not-surprisingly fucked up and ended up setting off for the long stumble home at 10:30, in crazy uncomfortable/outmoded white loafers.

It's weird to think about going home. Who the fuck am I going to hang out with? Another intense period of growing inward. Life is struggle, blah blah blah.

Here's what's helping me right now: I just saw Fantastic Four today, and it's like this epic visual love poem to how FUCKING OUTRAGEOUSLY HOT this dude who plays the Human Torch is (let's just calll him Chris Evans). Example, anyone?

Okay. Things are generally weird and depressing, but at least there are things like frozen pizza, Chris Evans and pot! Yay!

stoned, opinions

2005-07-21T07:11:00.000-06:00

I recently read this article shortly after I started Leavitt's Equal Affections, which is a really incredible novel (will probably spend the rest of the afternoon avoiding the heat and finishing it). I really appreciate Leavitt's thought on the de-ghettoification of gay literature, but it's hard to fully appreciate it since a lot of his impetus seems to come from the resentment of being categorized in this manner. He spends a lot of time saying, 'this book isn't shelved with gay men's fiction but mine are!' which is definitely fair. But honestly, it might have to do with the fact that if you examine a lot of gay fiction in recent years, the stuff that seems to sell well are these bollocks-y, beachy-book lit. Stuff that tries to take a risk and really break out of the formulaic paradigm probably sells really poorly. But novels about really lame, homoerotic wish-fulfilment stories are selling like hotcakes. Why? In transforming into a more demographically-oriented world, and people are given the choice between a story that gives them a ridiculous, cheap fantasy version of the lives they want or challenging, mind-expanding novels, people blatantly rush for the former.

End that rant. Sorry, everyone, I'm high and frustrated.

Check this shit out though. This is why I love Gawker to pieces.

I recently read Confederacy of Dunces, which for some reason I thought was really stupid (possibly because I started reading it four years ago, somehow remembered all the jokes and found them unfunny now). Maybe it was just my mood.

HOWEVER, I did have the good fortune to follow it up with John Cheever's Falconer, which is a fucking amazing novel. He has such a precise, direct and beautifully effective style. It's a story of a man in prison for killing his brother and being a heroin addict. Really interesting insight into the nature of the prisoner's mind, jail sexuality and contemporary ideas of morality, etc. I recommend it highly.

I don't think I can continue along these overly productive lines any longer, so instead of bitching about the jobquest, I'm just going to peace the fuck out.

oh, for fuck's sake

2005-07-19T08:24:00.000-06:00

I know it's only been a couple of days but the fucking porn store has not called! I lack a sufficiently transcendant vocabulary to curse, as utterly as I would like, the fucking soul-destroying shite that is looking for a job in Missoula.

However, I did run into the young punkish dude who was working at pornmart when I handed in my app. When we recognized one another, he said, 'Dude, I think you're too qualified to work here.'

No fucking shit! Of course I am. I'm wildly overqualified, just like nearly everyone in this town who holds a fucking job is! There are people with Master's and Ph.D's hocking coffee and videos and pizza and cigarettes to the world at large.

I ended up mumbling that I wanted a job that didn't insist that I totally prostitute myself to get it, i.e. nothing corporate or uniformish where I find myself saying things like, 'I really think the variety of position's I've held predispose me to learning new things quickly and being a good worker.' Saying shit like that makes me not want to be friends with myself.

Creepily and perhaps redundantly, I realized that the Wilma guy also manages the porn palace, and he very publically checks me out whenever I was at the Wilma. Which is why I don't really go to the Wilma anymore. So do I have to fucking go back there and wear something cute and convince him to hire me?! What the fuck is wrong with me that I'm not getting a callback from the porn store?! I mean, I read fucking Fleshbot, I know what's up!

Speaking of the Wilma and porn, my darling friend Crystal is getting married on Saturday. I need to figure out a gift, figure out a dish to make (it's a potluck wedding) need to figure out an outfit, since I was basically planning on rocking the amazing pinstripe pants (RIP, my fave pants).

My beloved Fake Wife has also returned to Missoula and to my life, which I am certainly enjoying but is not precisely imbuing me with any more will to live. Hopefully seeing her instantly get a job will fuel me into more efficient desparation. Or, I'll just go buy a sack..

fuck!

2005-07-15T02:16:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I'm still unemployed! Yeah!

Fuck.

I was roused by a ringing telephone before 9 this morning and let me assure the readers out there that I DO NOT GET UP BEFORE 11, which is being generous. The guy from the flowershop was telling me he wanted to hire me, but needed me to make some kind of assurance that I would be around til Christmas at the very least, to have the apparently long training period be worthwhile.

Times like these wish I was as amoral as I often claim to be. Maybe part of the problem is that one of my best friends referred me and used to work there for two years. I don't want to sully his name; obviously I don't really give a damn about my own.

So, I think the time has come for me to realize my destiny as a vendor of pornography. This will surely yield much better reading material for anyone that reads this paltry blog. 'adventures of a porn merchant' may become the new title of this wee log.

Anyway, wah. I'm wildly pissed off that I'm actually awake right now, and still not employed. But sleep would not return to me so here we are, with me trying to make the best of being awake at this godforsaken hour.

blogging again

2005-07-11T05:30:00.000-06:00

OK, it's been over a week, so I should write something. Hum.

I still don't have a job now, but I have been all but given one that starts training next week. Still need something supplemental, obviously. Looking into more of that stuff today. I'm trying to arm myself with useful job-finding necessities, like a pair of pants without a huge gaping hole in the crotch.

Doing nothing is pretty much really fucking depressing, but that's why the lord created drinking, which I discovered this weekend.

I actually went to the first really fun Missoula party I've been to in some time. DJs, people dancing, seeing friends that are supposed to be sober and have been going to AA falling into a sickeningly drunken heap.

I feel like relapses are natural, though. So I wasn't judging her. But I was trying to make her get me a beer. Also, I am curious as to whether a certain dude was hitting on me or just really coked up. Not that I care, since I have already chosen my next victim. And the date is drawing frighteningly close to the anniversary of the last time I had sex. So I need to get to it, for the love of god.

I wish I had more to broadcast. My beloved fake wife is coming back soon, and I can hardly wait to see her. I actually wrote a to-do list last night, so I had better get on the doing of it. Unfortunately/not-that-yall-care, I am not including a culture snack in this edition because I am far too lazy.

fuckity fuck!

2005-07-01T05:42:00.000-06:00

OK, so, things were definitely looking good. I had ill-advisedly decided to run away to Salt Lake City with my friend Lydia (one of my new fave people) to see Johnathon Richmond (of The Modern Lovers) on Wednesday. It was an excellent setup, barring my complete lack of knowledge of J-Rich (slightly alievated by a listenting session with my ole chum Julia, cultural genius).

Parenthetical? Yes. It's about to get pathetical, though.

Let's just say that the show was great and we ended up hitting the streets of SLC some time later. At a yet to be determined moment, someone got into the car and stole both of our cellphones and both of our bags. We were both sure that we both locked our doors, but it still fucking happened. I'm kind of trying to go less crazy about it and just learn the fucking lesson that life is trying to teach me right now. I'm FUCKING TRYING HERE.

Elegy for my beloved things:
-My notebook from Europe, with all my friends' address information, random writing and pictures, notes to myself, etc.
-The greatest pants EVER, these black pinstripe pants from H&M - interview wear and night life wear in one!
-My beloved eyepatch! Eyepatches are totally the new mustaches.
-Earthly Powers, by Anthony Burgess, which wasn't even MY book and I was totally excited to read because of the meaty recommendation Tabs and Nettie gave it
-My passport (whoops!)
-All my toiletries, including the only cologne I've ever really liked, Gaultier's Le Male complete with suggestive male-bust bottle!
-My fave light jacket, this sweat denim thing with my last button from Amsterdam and my only fucking button from my only fucking French friend!!!

I'm pretty much over all of that stuff. But Verizon just cockslapped me with the knowledge that my piece of shit phone would cost $120 to replace, since I hadn't paid for fucking insurance because I'm already paying out the nose for fucking cell service. Let's say it together: FUCK YOU VERIZON, YOU FUCKING MINDFUCKING FUCKS!

Feeling better about that. Things are moving on well enough. I was denied another job and I'm being toyed with by the place I actually want to work more (local flower shop, it would be so fucking Six Feet Under). Last night, in the climax of life's unnecessary horriblishness, I broke 'my' bong (it belongs to my friend but was being bongsitted by my friend/roomie Kurt). It looked like a piece of minimalist art, and now all my potheadish dreams are ruined like bongwater-stained carpet!

To top things off, while masturbating I think I re-fucked up my old gimp knee. Obviously, people having as little sex as me have to get more athletic in their masturbation, just to keep things interesting, but some unpredicted spasming found my knee doing that evil, rapid, popping in and out of place thing. I'm trying to walk on it and I might actually NOT have to go to the hospital, which would probably be the last thing to drive me over the edge.

Did I mention the rent's due?

Things are fucked but I'm trying to roll with it and learn my little lessons. Maybe my knee is trying to compensate for my new creativity rush, by forcing me into a brief period of time in which I cannot escape my 'studio.' Actually, my previous brush with convalescence found my writing a shitload and working every day for two weeks for a couple of hours each day. Let's just say that is pretty much unparalleled productivity for me. Whoops. Whatevs, my room looks fucking amazing right now, so why on earth would I want to escape it?!

Happy America's Birthday. I have neither the time nor the desire to pen a thoughful critique on the fucked-up state of our nation. Instead, I will endorse the drinking of beer and the watching of explodey things.

surviving t-fest

2005-06-27T10:05:00.000-06:00

Yo! I fucking made it out alive, the good lord knows how. Friday's edition of Total Fest was slightly obscured by the 'heavy metal parking lot' scene, sparked off by my friends and I. Basically, I only saw three or four bands and was too wasted to make any kidn of sense of what was going on. Saw: Volumen, Oblio Joes, Japanther, some other bands whose names escape me. Totally out of fucking hand.

Saturday was more focused, slightly more sober, but missing that mysterious sensation of spinning out of control. My photos, however, ended up being way fucking better and we hit the afterparty so things were a little more high-end-ish. I finally got to see former Missoulians No-Fi Soul Rebellion, after seeing them never. My friend Lucas used to be the stunt member of the band, so I felt an urge to dislike them from the get-go, but Mark was too fucking hot and could not be hated upon, in spite of our yelling out Lucas' name inbetween pretty much every song. I also saw The Lights (again) and was randomly disappointed (again). Play something from your fucking hot album forchrissakes!!!

I smoked weed with some random insane man who used to distribute the latter-day classic known only as Wild Animus. I met some kids from Idaho who become my Total Fest bros (Totalfestiny!), which was sweet. Brad, if you're reading this, I totally fucking lost your email the second after you gave it to me.

I'm skipping today's edition of culture snack, but people not watching the new fucking season of Six Feet Under should get ON it, because that shit is heartstoppingly brilliant. I've got a date with some cheap sushi, so I must adios.

let's pretend we don't exist...

2005-06-24T08:05:00.000-06:00

Let's pretend we're in Antarctica. But I'm getting ahead of myself via jumping directly into the almost invasively catchy lyrics of this edition's Culture Snack, Of Montreal. Are they of Montreal? I haven't really made the effort to solve that mystery.

Things were going great for a while there, kids. I had made a temporary peace with my unemployment, certain that my dream job (pay) at the local shit-sandwich, The Missoulian, would come into my life. Around the solstice, I was staying up til four or five every night. I was making exciting new friends, having adventures and even fixing my gaze on a new lad who, as destiny will surely have it, somehow cannot like me.

But the Missoulian just sent me a rejection, not even giving enough of a crap about my blatant and numerous qualifications to grant me a goddamn interview!!! I mean, this isn't fucking Silicon Valley, how many people can there seriously be in this town with more publication design experience than myself?!

Whatevs. Trying to get past it via furious bonghits.

Luckily, I have an excuse to get wasted tonight: it's name is TOTAL FEST. I'm thinking...case of sparks on ice, beckoning one and all closer and closer towards the teetering brink of liverdeath and sparksburn! Between tonight and tomorrow there will be about 40 fucking crazy bands invading Missoula. YE GODS! I'm pretty fucking excited, and if I lived with a more values-disoriented house, we would surely be working to host some crazyass musicians. But we're not letting that happen, obviously.

Anyway, it will be fucking awesome to see my friend Jigga again and have another verbally Kurt-kiboshable voice in the house (suck it!). Trouble is inevitable.

OK, on with the snacks.

Culture Snack, 6.24.05
Of Montreal, Sunlandic Twins
Okay, what's great about this album, besides fucking everything, is the perfect juxtaposition of ridiculously brilliant lyric writing (a la, 'Let's pretend we don't exist...let's pretend we're in Antarctica, boredome strangles life from the printed page, don't let me be your pretty abject failure, etc.) and an unbelievable psychadelic pop beat that's like a delicious milkshake of Canadian indie-pop influences (like New Pornographers and The Unicorns). Basically, it kicks fucking ass. The album art is gorgeous, and I mananged to pick up a copy of the album with a bonus EP for a mere $10, so it may be priced to sell near you! My friend Travis and I have bridged our semi-idelogical clash in musical taste to gush over this album together. Fucking check it out, but telling 'em I sent you will land you headlong into nowhere. Peace.

lazy bloggers speak out!

2005-06-16T06:09:00.000-06:00

I am of course using the 'solidarity plural,' a device used to minimize any kind of responsibility and/or explanation for the excessive not-post-ery up in this piece.

Suffice to say, not having any jobs, moneys or general bringers-of-purpose-to-life is a BITCH. And I'm having this weird pathelogical aversion to climbing out of this hole-of-the-soul. Not that I COULD actually climb into a job. I see what people mean when they say pessimism is dangerous.

Perhaps that is why I got so drunk last night. Apparently, Wednesday night is the new official night to get drunk for no reason in my world. I went over to my b-loved Travis and Minnie's home for the beefy face-fucking I'd been secretly longing for. Obviously, I had to toast the savage beauty of these gouda-bacon-horseradish burgers with a bottle of wine. Obviously. And I ran into my old pal Lesbian Dreamgirl (she is a lesbian and my dreamgirl, though I'm sure the name works to describe how anyone would feel about this girl), who was having drinks at the Depot with some of her local friends. But showing up an hour-plus late and already drunk proved to be a slightly disasterous formula. So I drank a cocktail, talked with a fellow who kind of freaks me out, then checked out semi-dramatically, rocking my new 'leaving without saying anything because I am embarassed and don't want to deal with potentially false sentimentality.'

It works.

Speak of new things, I want to start concluding every entry with something called 'Culture Snack' which is just going to be my wee forum to tell yall about something I think is really awesome in the hope of passing it on to ye. It's my way of saying, 'Hey, skip all that self-obsessed bullshit - here's something that you may actually give a shit about.'

This edition of Culture Snack celebrates...
Tom Spanbauer. Which is cheating, but I just invented this feature. I read his In the City of Shy Hunters, a few months ago and I just finished The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon about two or three weeks ago. Here's why Tom is such an amazing writer:
1.) He is able to characterize people beautifully, accurately, hilariously and with a richness that so many writers - especially modern gay writers - cannot even touch. Whether they are prostitutes, performance artists, cowboys or waiters, he creates a legion of heartbreaking, unforgettable heroes. They make mistakes but they are all the more human for it.
2.) He reinvents the traditional love story - his characters develop strong friendships, which becomes a sort of cross between familial and sexual love - fascinating way to capture the human experience while defying cliche.
3.) He is equally comfortable with rural Idaho and the heart of New York City as settings.
4.) He is the first writer to make me want to get a commemorative tat
5.) Brilliant word-games of lines that make you want to murmur them to yourself while reading - a la, "Looking for who I was was who I was."
6.) The strange little morsels of knowledge and ideas implanted throughout his novels.

Anyway, that concludes our initial foray into the thrilling world of culture snack. Stay tuned. Or don't. Fuck you! I don't need your approval!

report on austin

2005-06-06T05:30:00.000-06:00

Summarized as follows:
-Saying anything like: 'Crystals are so stupid!' 'What time is it?' and the despair rattled 'Burrito...FUCK!'
-I am now a /model - I just need something to put in front of the /. Three of my friends and I were in this weird, professional photo shoot thing where we had to get hosed down, etc. Hot shots coming soon...
-getting hot
-getting high
-getting wet
-getting drunk
-The inception of the word 'slampig'
-iced coffee at the same place with the same dreamy baristo every morning...
-The outrage that is Sparks Lite must be suppressed at all cost - sup not on its utter nastiness, I warn you one and all
-perpetual bugs
-at least two people in every bed at the manse of Glassy Heel (my friends' 'band')
-playing pingpong on a fucked up, waterlogged table that sloped ridiculously, leading the 'Thai prison rules' version of ping pong, where you just play off anything and keep on playing and hope that your partner forgets about that gram of tar in your rectum. I mean...
-The Kings of Leon's new album being played constantly and eblematically
-taking on of new pseudonyms - Bellagio and Dario Argento (seemingly indistinguishable from one another)
-watching of the evil that is Bum Fights
-playing with the fake cat (Mr. Boceifus) by creepily posing him in hiding places all over the house, including numerous fake-kitty suicide attempts
-The 'behind the scenes' film I made about our weird photo shoot - hilarious only to me and people who were there, dumb shit to the rest of the world
-anime porn

Basically, yes, I am still planning on moving there. The new goal is to be back in Austin in time for Austin City Limits Festival thingy. The amount of activity and personality and creativity and fun in this town fucking blew me away, so go to it I must. In the mean time, I look forward to experiencing Missoula and trying to get an actual job. I am finally moved into my room and into an actual semblance of being grounded for a few fleeting moments. I think staying busy(ish) and stimulated will be the keys to milking all the richness from this summer. Milk it I will, baby.

me of the many journeys

2005-05-18T06:20:00.000-06:00

In the last week, I have:

-Seen my little bro graduate college
-Gone into the wilds of the North Fork of the Salmon River in IDAHO
-Partied like hell with people of various ages and sizes
-Had to get off my lazy arse and pack things for the next couple of weeks, because I will mercifully no longer be living at my parents' house (YES!)
-Etc.

Tomorrow, myself and the beloved Amsterdam/Paris posse and taking of for Austin. We're stopping in Denver tomorrow night to see sexpot supahstah Brendo-licious.

I'm so proud of myself for actually posting...AGAIN. I will hopefully try to elucidate some actual adventures sometime soon, but first I gots to get fucking READY, which means weed-buying and oil-changing and run-around-ing.

Until then, accept this near-unacceptable excuse for an entry.

at last!

2005-05-10T11:51:00.000-06:00

ok, blogger is somehow fucked up, but i will try to store this entry in the shambly bomb shelter of my mind.

i don't know why it's been so goddamn long since the last time i wrote. perhaps i am feeling mildly traumatized and slightly depressed, most of which has to do with the fact that I am living at my parents for a while longer. mostly, i smoke weed and endlessly watch tv. i am incapable of any kind of productivity or creativity right now. wheee!

it hasn't been all bad, by any means. i know that financially additional travels were out of the question, and i actually wanted to come home. i've been catching up with my beautiful, brilliant friends and laughing and partying a lot. i just feel really unfocused and insubstantial right now. i think when i actually live in missoula again, things are going to be infinitely better.

in about one week, i will be setting off for austin. i'm really excited, but it still doesn't feel like it's going to happen. the plan is to spend about nine of ten days there and evaluating whether or not i want to live there. i guess the question right now is...am i going to have the fawking money to do that? I'm trying not to gaze too pragmatically into the future, for such thoughts put bitter ends to our dreams. or something.

i've been listening to an arseload of new music. i have something like eighty new albums on my computer since my return, most of which i burned over the first weekend. Some of my faves:

Aha Shake Heatrbreak, Kings of Leon

The Arcade Fire Demo EP

Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple

Picaresque, The Decemberists (obviously!)

Notorious Lightning, Destoryer and Frog Eyes

Etc. I'm still filtering through all of it. Shout out to Kurt, future roommate and semi-permanent pain in the ass for hooking me up with like half of those albums.

So, yeah. My baby bro is graduating this weekend, then we're having a family trip to the ole ranch in Idaho (not ours, but we've been going there for ages) on Monday. Then I'm coming back to Missoula Wednesday afternoon, leaving for Austin on Thursday morning. Hopefully, we will make it to Denver late that night. If the gods are good, we should be in Austin on Saturday night.

I'm going to try and get a job as a baker this summer, and hopefully kickstart myself by working weird hours all summer and waking up those crazy parts of my brain again. It should yield manageable results, since I won't have to juggle it with school or pending emotional breakdown.

I don't know what else to say. My next entry will be a free-association synopsis of my american adventures.

existence

2005-04-30T05:33:00.000-06:00

I exist!

The qs and as are at odds in my keyboardy memory banks...and this space bar is fucking fucked up!

I'm in Missoula currently. I have been mainly sitting on my stoned arse and watching movies, etc.

It is quite boring, but fun when I get to Mo-town and see my beloved friiiiiiends.

I need to stop eating all the time, perhaps.

Also, I have a short story and I'mgoing to fucking run with itm biiitches!

That's all.

peace out, beotch!

2005-04-17T07:11:00.000-06:00

I am leaving France. TOMORROW! Fuck. Packing is still a significant pain in the ass, but I think I have done most of it. May have to throw away more shit than I already have (TRULY a statement) but I think I should survive. The mere idea of dragging my luggage around Paris and getting soaked in my own sweat is still chilling, but I think this time the dragging and sweating should be slightly more minimal. One hopes! This time, I am armed with the knowledge that there is a bus from Gare du Montparnasse to Charles de Gaulle, which will hopefully ease matters.

But I still can't help but thinking I will be barred from exiting this fucking country because I didn't EVER GET my carte de sejour. And I lost my titre de sejour, for a second time. This is basically the thing that goes in my passport and says I have the right to be spending this much bloody time in France.

So, I've said my goodbyes to almost everyone, which was only hugely traumatic and sad, made worse by the fact that I am slightly emotionally retarded and have no fucking clue how to say goodbye to people.

But my big crazy plan for saying goodbye to the Brest peeps worked like a charm. My friend Medhi let me use his house, which was the site of two all-night fetes in a row in the mad days of January. I debuted the 'dj-eurotrash presents: international party mix 2005' which I have been putting together for a while, and it was HOT, let me assure ye!

I, of course, got madly drunk and have zero recollection of the last two hours of my consciousness (between three and five) but apparently I was having a really swell time until I crashed in Medhi's bed and refused to leave and had to be carried to the clickclack (foldout bed). I was slightly embarassed to hear this particular detail, but whatever remains whatever.

Anyway, I am currently taking a little chill out from the unbridled insanity that is packing. How lovely to think I will be moving twice in the next six months! AWESOME! Not even counting the transitional month chez mes parents going through all the shit I have left there.

All I really have left to do today is wait for my darling Imani to arrive, so we can bid each other a thoroughly emo farewell. History has the odds against me crying, since I have only cried once in my adult life, but only the good lord knows.

My beloved Germans have actually agreed to take me to the train station tomorrow...AT FIVE IN THE FUCKING MORNING?! I'm not really thrilled about having to go there at such an ungodly hour, but it warms me heart that they're willing to take me. The travel day will only be mildly hellish, one hopes, but I will actually arrive on the night of the same day, as opposed to the three days of travel madness that found me stumbling like a sleep-deprived madman with rust French into Paris. Sweating, as previously mentioned.

Need to call my bro and make sure he's able to deliver me my delicious holistic herbs. I need that shit!

last entry in france

2005-04-15T04:09:00.000-06:00

This shall be my last missive from the beloved salle de profs at my lycee. And probably the last one I will have time to write in this country, if my prediction is accurate.

Yesterday, we had the fete for the assistants, which was a nice little affair. Lots of patisseries, but only orange juice, no social lubricant known as alcohol. It is the school, after all! Lord knows I've never been drunk or high on these premises, of course!

Anyway, it was a nice gathering, we got cute presents and took some of the profs out drinking with us. We all had to make a speech, which was only slightly traumatic.

With the anxiety of the recent speech-deliverers, Matt and I hit the town and the sauce with a vengance. It was perhaps the last sortie I will embark on in Morlaix, and thus weird and pre-nostalgic. It doesn't help that I'm in the middle of reading 100 Years of Solitude for the third time this year, and lord knows it makes a man nostalgic, if only because he uses the word about 10,000 times.

This computer is slow and I'm feeling a bit slow moi-mem, so I shall end this entry now. Today, it's off to Brest for the going away fete that will leave us all reeling. I'm super excited that my one French freind, Medhi is letting us throw the fete at his place! Yay!

Okay, that's all for now. Check you in the crazy ole USA, bloggybabes.

from the impossible natural spectacles to the east...

2005-04-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

I have come to ye!

Holy shit. To continue in the grand tradition of non-consecutive order, I shall start with the spectacle that was Saturday and Sunday of this weekend! Ye gods. We went to Mount Saint-Michel on Saturday morning - the sun was bright but it was still early enough to catch a lot of shadow, which made my photos awesome.

Then, I fucked up my ankle, which was AWESOME! Saturday night and Sunday morning, it was swollen like the bells of hells! But I can't talk about that right now. Let's continue on to Saint Malo as if nothing had been said.

Oh Jesus. The surveyant of my dreams is in the salle de profs. I think it goes without saying that I'm also and perhaps not coincidentally high as balls. Why is he so fucking dreamy?! Damn. Cue the afternoon of furious masturbation.

Saint Malo! So, so, so beautiful! I couldn't believe I wasn't in the south of France. The center was small enough for moi, the Germans and Matt to make several circles we had first considered accidental then suddenly realized were due to the fact that we had seen all the downtown many times over.

But, lovely. The beach was amazing, the water was a blue/emerald that was fucking unreal, the wind was cold as fuck but the shocking excess of sun made a world of diff. I love having the wind rip through my crazy long hair, it makes me feel young and unstable! I would have been running around like a kid, but for the 'let's not talk about it' ankle.

That night, we partied with American and English assistants from the coin and Rennes - the people there were rad, I made irresponsible promises to do mushrooms with a rad girl this summer, the music was weird and cornily retrospective (great anthem classics of the '70s and '80s...errr) and the sangria was weak but later tainted by vodka and champagne. It was cool.

Then, the Germans and I decided to go home and watch porn at our hotel around 2 - Matt decided to go skinny dipping in the ice-cold Atlantic in the wee small hours of the morning. Um, cool, hope you live to tell the tale, yo! We left cwith the encouragement that he could call me when he wanted to get back into the ho-tel. I failed to evaluate my own bollocksedness, apparently. Because he called me and we had a one-minute conversation. During which I was completely unconscious. So, he called me four more times and I failed to both respond and let him in.

I woke up at six and realized at least half these details. I worried for half an hour, then went back to sleep. I had this wild, weird dream that when we found Matt the next day, he had long Tarzan hair and had turned into a complete rogue of a man! Every time my friend Elaine started talking, he jumped on her and starting making out with her like an animal! Then, in an interlude, I was in a room with these two hot dudes. One of them, who escapes my recollection but whom I definitely know, comes up to me and says, 'He wants to play with us.' Then, we start snogging rather sleazily and I was certain it was actually happening because it was so fucking vivid. I don't know what the other guy was doing. When I mentioned it to Matt, he sort of sneered and said, 'Yeah, I totally already fucked those guys.'

Weird!

He was able to get back into the hotel at 10 and went to great lengths to convince me that he had slept on the bitterly cold streets of Saint Malo. Which I knew wasn't true, but what could I say?! It was my fault.

Then we did happy fun things like eat delish breakfast and go to Dinard (amazing!) and Dinan (slightly less amazing, not as cool).

I think my ankle is going to be ok and would heartily like to avoid returning to the hospital. But I will do what I must.

I leave in seven days and I am freaking the fuck out! I packed almost a complete suitcase.

AH! AH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.

and go to mewing.net. not as good as reading a good book, but way better than a bad one.

back from the drunken land of rennes

2005-04-05T02:04:00.000-06:00

Two things need to be said right from the get-go:

1.) The departure countdown is now at thirteen days. This is terrifying the shit out of me and normally this would be the point at which I would re-change my ticket but I know it's the right decision but that shit is so freaky to stand behind, I mean, am I actually making a mature adult decision? Take a fucking picture of this moment.

2.) I have at long last added the coveted links section! You may now congratulate me on the re-mastery of basic HTML.

That said, on to the weekend synopsis! Rennes, as always, was excellent. I love Rennes because it combines the flavor of Bretagne (that is to say, rampant drunkenness) with the charm of the classic-looking medium-sized French city. There are huge places all over, lots of cool old buildings, streets full of attractive, stylish (?! who know there were still stylish people in France?!) young people. It's definitely a student/party town and I love it, in spite of the mysterious absence of H&M.

While the acquaintance-in-law-twice-removed who put me up was alternately cold and welcoming, that ended up working out really well. This family had their babysitter take me out to the bars on Friday night. This girl is a 20 year-old dental student/surfer, so even though we had discussed how bad all the public-jointing smoking in Rennes is with my hostess, we obviously ended up participating in this great tradition ourselves. She was cool - it was a good challenge for me to undertake, to hold a conversation with a motormouthed French girl.

Then a pack of my peeps came down on Saturday. Let us say from the get-go the soiree was a terribly uncivilized affair! My friend Alex and I hit the infamous rue de la soif, making the tour of three euro pint bars and chatting about our obsession with E! while making fun of French people.

Then, we met up with my friends Elaine and Anna at the Irish pub, then invited ourselves to some ridiculous Brit Erasmus afterparty which was being held across the street from the girls' hotel. I spent most of the undetermined amount of time passed there hitting on an adorable French lad who actually wanted to speak in English (?!) but at the end of the night, I was too five-in-the-morning-ishly drunk to try for the pelvic follow-up. I think he wasn't queer anyway, but now we'll never know.

The next day, the streets were even more suspiciously empty than a normal French Sunday. Later, I realized the Pope was dead, so I guess everyone had to stay home and cry? I dunno. Don't expect any thoughtful commentary from me on this end - I am a heathen, but I'm definitely not going to make fun of the poor dead bastard. Or anything.

Anyway, I was painfully hung over, so decided to sit down at an abandonned bus stop to roll a joint. Which is really the only way I can explain the fact that I was in first class on the way home. As mix-ups go, it was so fucking SNCF.

In closing, I would like to thank Riso Grillo, the official boxed-risotto of this blog.

it wasn't really 'fun'

2005-03-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

Today, I had the unique pleasure of getting ear-douched.

Yesterday afternoon, I woke up with a fucked-up blockage in my left ear. It was like my ear had been replaced with a seashell. It was, most vehemently, NOT COOL. But I figured it might have something to do with sleeping for fifteen hours, so I let it go.

Today: same story. This is not the first time this has happened, and apparently it is a new and exciting genetic curse, for my father and brother both have regularly run into problems with overly waxed ears.

So, I got to see this big nasty hunks of wax floating around in my eardouche thingywhobob. It was NOT COOL and believe me I'm doing you a favor by not drawing any visual comparisons.

Anyway, all is well now. I'm leaving France in nineteen days, which is FUCKED UP. I would not have just 'gone to the hospital' back in the States - I would have waited until the blood seeped from my eyes and my genitals sang out for mercy! But never if my ear felt weird. Goodbye, sweet actually effective health care system.

Also, side note: I realized that I forgot to racconte something. One of the guys I was flirting with this weekend told me that the gays here think of Scott as being a porn star name. I don't know how I feel about this.

Regardless, I am going to Rennes this weekend, and it will kick ass.

life is a weekend

2005-03-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

OK, this is going to be a rather vignette-ish entry. Because I am feeling the sweet buzz of brevity rightaboutnow.

Nantes was cool, many times over. Basically, we walked around in big circles a lot, often in search of a mythic Monoprix that escaped us in a very Brigadoon-esque fashion.

The Le Tigre show as hot, hot. My thoughts on Gravy Train are as follows: cool, weird, synthy, hilarious, stagey (slightly), do we really need to see that dude's little cock. Members of the band made a really kickass zine which my friend purchased and I eagerly devoured. Le Tigre: kick ass, perhaps scarily or irritatingly reliant on technology, bad-joke-tell-y (in a good way), dope. You can tell I'm not really a Le Tigre-head because I didn't know that the girl with the short hair was actually a girl. Whoops! Fun nonetheless.

I also managed to flirt heavily with two boys. Were either of these endeavors successful? No, but is that really the point?

Should that be the point?

Fuck!

I also went to a gay bar then a random gay club on Easter night. This was a sweet-ish experience, but there was a lame male stripper that we saw at both places. Thoughts on this: apparently male stripperdom in France is synonymous with prostituion, do we really need to see that dude's little cock, gay people are robots because everyone is watching this with their mouths hanging open.

I mean, obviously I like dick. But if you're going to be a male stripped you need to pack a little bit more heat than the average dude. But as with all matters gay, it's OK as long as you have a six-pack!

Right now I am slightly crabby but high, so it's ok. I'm going to go to Rennes this weekend for another grand adventure.

Also, I am obsessing about whether or not to cut my hair. But instead of making a decision, I'm going to go smoke a cig.

les crushes / survey attaque

2005-03-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have a confession. Sometimes, I get that 'not-so-pure' feeling when I'm around a handful of my students. Colleagues too, but that's like...acceptable almost. Expected, certainly - this whole experience is making me feel like I'm in high school, so getting crushes on profs is something that obviously happens. And I am currently living my life French-teenager style, getting forever stoned in my room, listening to music, masturbating furiously.

However, les crushes: one of them just walked in to the salle de profs - my heart stopped a little bit. She is totally the froggy teenage sex-kitten of my dreams: almost six feet tall, long red hair, big green eyes, French indie/hippie style, totally mortified by how hot she is. She's like a perfect combination of all my hot redheaded lady friends. When I gave her a bisou, I couldn't believe I didn't get a boner.

No, I'm not actually 'bisexual' but sometimes I get crushes on girls, à la lesbian dream girl from college. I once got wasted as only a 20 year-old can and told her girlfriend I was in love with her (lesbian dream girl, not her girlfriend).

Other crushes: I teach a BTS class once in a great while, and have fostered a crush for one of the clueless 20 year-olds therein. I saw him yesterday, when I was randomly teaching a small group from that class. When I found out he was in my group, it was a little difficult to maintain my calm, especially since he's rocking these totally hot sideburns. I kept on thinking that he was looking at me with those big dreamy eyes because he loved me, but my roomie and I decided he is actually just a total tosser and probably has no idea what I'm saying, so that is his 'concentration face,' easily confused with the 'can't you see I'm in love with you' face.

Then there are two boys in my lycee pro class, both about twenty, dreamy as F-uuuuuuuck. The one time I sortied with the crazy girls from this class (before they were my students) the ringleader invited two guys she was hot for to the bar, one of whom being the BTS boy and the other being one of the lycee pro boys. Can't argue with mofuckin' good taste!

But the big daddy of crushes falls to the mysterious beautiful surveyant that works at my school. At first, I was sure he was a surveyant. Then I thought he was a student. Now I'm about 70% sure that's he's actually a surveyant. Nonetheless, he is the cutest boy in all of Finistere, and I DO believe my studies have been extensive enough to draw this conclusion. Curly brown hair, blue eyes, non-wack French pseudo hippie style. Every time I look into his eyes I feel like I'm going to fall down.

This weekend, it's going to be Brest (tonite), Quimper (tomorrow), Nantes (Sat, for Le Tigre!) and possibly La Rochelle (Sunday/Monday/never).

Okay, wasn't that fun and enlightening?! On with the survey I poached from Sara, since it has been approximately one million years since I last did a survey up in this piece.

Ten movies you'd watch over and over:
1. Donnie Darko
2. Breathless
3. Before Sunrise/Sunset
4. The Thin Man series (ALL OF IT!)
5. Gone With the Wind
6. Spirited Away / any Miyazaki film
7. Heathers
8. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
9. Adventures of Felix
10. Young Frankenstein

Nine people you enjoy the company of:
1. E-Liz
2. Nico
3. Saundies
4. Jigga
5. Little Bro Jimmy B
6. Elaine
7. Magui
8. Imani
9. The LDCC (not one, but many (cheating))

Eight things you are wearing:
1. The very last cool shirt that H&M made tan and white with crazy seventies designs
2. Red 'Freedom Bowl' teeshirt over the top
3. Gap-rhymes-with-crap jeans
4. Dope-ass Target watch
5. Black socks
6. The shoes I betrayed Ireland for
7. HOT striped underwear from H&M
8. Cool denim jacket

Seven things on your mind:
1. Should I have a fourth coffee?
2. Going on my crazy adventure this long weekend
3. Need to buy blank CDs
4. Hopefully I got fucking PAID today or I'm fucking fucked
5. My friend Saundies actually emailed me!
6. The crushes
7. The apples I bought on Tuesday are mushy SHIT

Six objects you touch every day:
1. my computer
2. my toothbrush
3. money
4. my lighter
5. my bed!
6. myself (hahaha! i can objectify myself)

Five things you do every day:
1. Read
2. Count the days until I leave with a combination of fear and longing
3. Smoke cigs
4. Um, eat?
5. Obsess about things I need to do or should be doing to the point of sleep deprivation.

Four bands/groups/musical acts you love:
1. David Bowie!!!
2. The Decemberists
3. Helio Sequence
4. Nina Simone

Three of your favorite songs at this moment:
1. Queen Bitch - David Bowie
2. Ashes of American Flags - Wilco
3. I'm Just a Soul Who's Intentions are Good - Nina Simone (from the Dior commercial)

Two people who have influenced your life the most:
1. Weirdly, I would say Marla - one of my first and only genuinely good friends in high school - she taught me how to be open, to be true to myself, how to raise my voice and say something clever or shocking just for the fun of it, how to smoke cigs, how to smoke weed. She taught me how to be, how not to be and that just because you've known someone for five years doesn't mean they're not fucking crazy.
2. It's hard to pick one other person - if I had to pick one other person, I would say my friend Travis. Who taught me that it's okay to talk like a crazy person, it is exceedingly necessary to always be reading and always be writing, that it's okay to get stupidly drunk as long as you laugh at yourself, that being convicted and truly believing things is the only way to be alive.

One person who you love more than anyone in the world:
1. This is fucked up, but I'm going to say myself - I don't have that big scary life-changing love of my life yet and frankly I don't even know if I want that right now. I am becoming the person I have always wanted to be, I am able to surround myself with amazing people who even more amazingly care as much about me as I do them, which is really a fucking miracle. But what I've learned in France is that ultimately, in spite of all these people, I am really the only one that I have. And I can stand on my own two feet, look myself in the mirror straight in the crazy-color-change-eyes and say 'I love you' and 'I hate you' in the same breath - that's love.

un p'tit morceau

2005-03-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, it was hard for me to recall this through the hash haze, but I found it hilarious. Here is a little bit-by-bit rehashery (har!) of my conversation with my roomie Matt, in the style of this beloved blog.

Matt: God, that baby we were playing with at the pub was so cute!

Me: Um, pardon?

Matt: This woman came in with her baby and we played with it for a while. I was so wasted I was crawling around on the floor with it.

Me: Of. A. Bar. Good? What was her story, anyway? This responsible mother.

Matt: She was leaving her husband, some French guy in the navy.

Me: Because he was having an affair with me, right?

Matt: Close. He got together with another guy on his ship. She was very matter of fact about it.

Me: Well, that explains what she was doing in the pub.

Matt: She said (cue perfect Irish accent) 'You should have told me you were fucking bisexual before you married me, you cunt!'

I laughed. Forever. I know other people's pain, tragedy, etc...so not funny. Except, it is. Also, it always makes me laugh the way cunt gets tossed around in the UK (and the Republic of Ireland, god bless it's EU-loving soul!).

so good!

2005-03-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

I don't even know how I'm in such a good mood today. Maybe, I'm making the most of one of my last fave days of the week for the teaching - I have three groups today, and they're all great. I also managed to make it to the salles de profs in time to check my email, a true rarity since my first class is at 8 am!

Possibly the reason my spirits are so high is because I spent yesterday afternoon/night reading the first 300 pages of In the City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer and it is SO fucking good I'm thinking about getting a commemorative tattoo. INdeed, not too long ago I was bitching my sweet head off about the inesecapable suckiness of modern gay lit and then I see this book at the Fac library in Brest. I decide to follow up, because I remember being interested in reading his novel, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon.

It's really exciting to read an author who is not only a good gay writer, a good writer from the west coast...but someone who writes with such joy, such craziness, such spark and passion and richness. I'm about halfway through the book and I seriously love it.

Also, I am finally trying to looking into getting my carte de sejour before I leave. Y'know, just in case it becomes impossible for me to leave this country once I am stopped at the douane and forced to spend the rest of my days in a interrogation closet buried away somewhere in the heart of Charles de Gaulle II. Obviously, it could happen. Even if I have been told repeatedly by other offenders that no one actually cares, no one will even notice.

But my number is up, clearly! I can feel it in me bones. I have smuggled. I enjoy pathelogically lying to people on planes. I drink and mix painkillers on planes, as it is generally the only way I am able to fall asleep. This time, they will stop me in my devil-tracks and I will surely know why the caged bird sings, it's lyrics, etc.

OK, obviously the caged bird is a metaphor and not to be interchanged with a jailbird, but whatever, I'm the one writing this blog and I will inappropriately co-opt whatever I like whenever I want and damn the consequences! Unless they involve me getting stuck in this country.

good times, ever rolling

2005-03-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

Life has been really fucking good for the last week.

Example: one of my friends from Brest passed through Morlaix on Wednesday with a carload of American friends, en route to Rennes. I invited myself along, had a nice little soiree in Rennes and passed the day of St. Patty's there. However, I have proved myself a sub-par Irish American in the following categories:

1.) I didn't wear green, because I went to Rennes at the last minute and just wore the clothes I was wearing for two days.
2.) I didn't go out for the mad fete of St. Patty's that eve because I had to haul ass back to Morlaix so I could wake up ungodly early to start my long Friday morning of teaching.
3.) I bought a pair of shoes with the British flag on them...on St. Patty's day! For shame!

Thursday during the day in Rennes was awesome. I ended up meeting a college mate of my friend Matt who is ALSO from Northern California. She was incredibly cool, and we just spent the day shopping around, drinking cafés, looking at people, comparing notes on weird franco-experiences. I smoked joints madly and publicly, she was unable to partake (some crazy promise she made to her dad...some people are so unlucky to be so principled!).

Then it was off to Brest again Friday afternoon. I spent a good share of the afternoon soaking up the sun and chatting with my Irish lovah Elaine, mother of my future children (Pubshag and Penumbra) and generally chilling out quite pleasantly. I was still tired from walking around all day, but Imani, Elaine and I ended up at some crazy French hippy party waaaaaaaay outside town. I managed to catch a second wind and stay up til what I considered a very respectable hour (3 am), but we anglophones were the first to crash. The fete was illuminating because we met real French people with actual herb instead of fawking hashish, which was cool/inspiring. Also, there was a whole crazy pack of cute French boys so we were rather enjoying ourselves, myself and the recently-cut-loose ladies.

We didn't get back into Brest until Saturday afternoon, but we still managed a respectable sortie that evening. I caught up with my Welsh roomie, Matt, who had been kidnapped by the filles anglaises (though only ONE of them is actually English, they are commonly known as the filles anglaises). As they seem want to do, they spent the entire day drinking and watching rugby. Truly, to see kids with the wherewithall to drink like bastards for TWELVE HOURS is fucking inspiring. I myself coveted their drunkenness, tried to fall in with their example with six pints in two hours, got a little too wasted and had to sleep at hottie Espagnole Magui's boyfriend's house. Whoops!

Sunday was quite chill, had a visit to the plage, but it was the murkiest of the three days of gorgeous. But still a beautiful day for Bretagne in general.

SO EXCITED about the next two weekends: this weekend it is Quimper, then Nantes for the hotness of the Le Tigre/Gravy Train show on Saturday, then possibly to La Rochelle on Sunday, since we have a long weekend due to Easter (we get 'Good Monday' off). Then the first weekend in April I'm going to Rennes again, staying with some cool, random American woman I know through more than a few degrees of seperation. But most of my peeps are going to be in Rennes as well, so it'll still be very sortie-ish.

And I am done for today and tomorrow is my fave work day of the week (even though I have to be in class at 8! such is my love of teaching!).

Oh shit! Bloggybabes, I forgot I didn't yet drop this bomb on ye! There is a tiny sliver of a chance that I will come back to France next year. I'm applying to be an English assistant prof dealio in Rennes for the next school year. Significant raise, significantly cooler city, and I would get to do a lot of the travelling that I didn't get around to this time. We'll see how it all goes - I'm trying not to be overly optimistic. But the good thing is, even if it doesn't work out, I'm going back to the US and that's what I want, too!

Okay, this concludes today's crazy ole entry.

memorandum to body/update/ode to hotness

2005-03-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Body:

I know that drugs have become new and exciting in their potential for abuse.

However, this does NOT mean that you are obliged to wake up at three in the morning for no fawking reason at all. Especially not when there is already the need to be up at 7 am.

Thank you for your consideration.

Other resurgent pet peeves: the inability of the human populace in general to throw away the cardboard rolls of toilet paper when they are finished (why?! why?! it's so simple!!!) AND the existentialist death-march of French high schoolers. Seriously, people - one painstaking, loafing footfall in front of another. Tragic to watch, annoying to get caught behind.

Well, the depression is gone, gone, gone - apparently all I needed to do was acknowledge it and force it into retirement. Plus, what, I'm leaving this country in 34 days and it's really just a waste of time.

Went to Quimper this weekend with the goils, AKA Imani and Magui (my sexy Espagnole whom I had a sex dream about (weirdly)). It was lovely, lovely - we managed to land some hashish from the pseudo-ex-boyfriend of our fourth mousquetaire (Elaine, the rad Irish girl) and then it was off to Quimper to party with the local assistants there.

Tragically, we forced ourselves to be the drunkest people there, got totally defoncé on top of it and were pretty antisocial. Well, actually, Magui and Imani were, I managed to crawl back into the public eye.

PERHAPS in part because there were a whopping THREE people from the actual west coast! The shock nearly killed me. Because whenever I meet Americans they never seem to come from my coast. However, there was even one girl from Davis, CA which is a fucking stone's throw from where I grew up (we were even born in the same hospital). But get this: she has my fawking BIRTHDAY. That's some crazy shit, non? Not the same year, but same day and same hospital.

I actually just forgot that until right now. Because I was wasted.

Luckily, this girl from Alaska I wanted to force to be my new best friend was there. I remembered her from the stage as being a totally cool smartypants and saw her in Brest one night, many moons ago. Where I was also wasted (in the tradition brestoise). So I have not really successfully convinced her to become my new best friend. Nor have I convinced her that I am not a frothing-at-the-mouth alcoholic. But we did managed to talk about New Orleans and I found out that she is a genuine MFA-in-creative-writing-holding smartypants.

But I will probably never go to Quimper again and tragically these people shall disappear from my life story. I imagine. Whatever, they probably have no respect for us because we passed out before 1 AM, the scheduled hour to get thineselves to the afterhours boite. It was embarassing. More embarassing when we woke up...in someone else's completely abandonned house.

We did what most people would do: steal snacks, smoke a joint, take showers and decide not to clean up any of the filthy post-party scene. It really seemed the only logical choice.

Then, we cruised to the cinema to see La Vie Aquatique, which I had been hot to see for some time. It was playing in Brest, but dubbed in French, so I refused to go. Luck was with us and I found out that it was playing in Quimper, a ville one third the size of Brest, in version originale. Yay! So after a long promenade and some serious 'now-let-us-face-fuck-ourselves-with-kebabs,'we went to the film.

My impressions: Andersen manages to deliver a strange, beautiful world full of unique characters, crazy style and beautiful music, like always. His imagination is out in full force, as ever. However, the narrative lacked the momentum of his other films. The story was slower, more awkard, lacking in the same zip that made Rushmore and Tenanbaums so fawking hot. It was great to see him go into a more surrealistic, bending-of-reality kind of place, but a little disappointing when we notice the cost. Good film in general, but I was hoping that Andersen would not misstep so early on in the game.

Yesterday, I listened to Wilco's Yankee Foxtrot Hotel for the first time. Which is kind of pathetic because I have been a fan for a while, but I was obviously not even remotely aware of just how fucking amazing they are. I think I managed to hear all of their albums before finally getting ahold of and listening to what is widely described as their masterpiece.

Okay, that's all. Plans for this weekend remain hazy, but hopefully I'm going somewhere. EVERY WEEKEND IS CRITICAL now.