earlier than it once was

it is possible to remain connected in some way despite a feeling of total seclusion.

from a hotel room in rapid city, south dakota. i ordered the newest cell phone on the market, just to say that i have the newest cell phone on the market. i had swordfish tonight, which is more or less a worthwhile venture in any state. w. was on the television, though the time zone change always makes things more bizarre for me. alito was sworn in as well on this day, an event that has caused a predictable amount of support from me. all of these things have little to do with my current location.

it all makes sense.

captain america says...

according to this cnn article the new car smell which i love more than chanel no. 5 is at least in part caused by toxic chemicals. you might assume that this would make me rethink the 5 new-car-smell air fresheners in my powder room but nay. i mean, my favorite fragrance on a woman is gin mixed with scotch and a touch of gasoline.

jack and trixie

it appears that i will be getting a sizable tax refund check from the president. though partly due to non-compensated <fingerquote>business</fingerquote> expenses, it is mostly due to having mortgage payments that are essentially all interest. bring on the cheap whiskey and expensive women. no. expensive whiskey and cheap women. yes, that’s right.

surfin usa

well east coast girls are hip
i really dig those styles they wear

last week the suggestion was made by someone in my firm's portland office, that i should move to the other coast. t. price has coincidentally contemplated such action in his own life. or so it was written.

i wish they all could be california girls

portland isn't california, and i'm partial to hip. maybe i'll move, and remember the song in a different order. maybe the east is home. the kids on the oc and laguna beach, they have stress. it's vital to the script. maybe they're partial to hip as well. brian wilson has never met me, but he probably should. i have a way of seeing things, and maybe we're closer than the song would suggest.

hang ten pappas

chris’s exploits in san diego are making me want to pick up and leave for the wes-coas. i’ve always wanted to learn to surf, but i have a few requirements. first, it must be part of a music-backed montage cutting from clips of me hopping up to a balanced position from flat on the board to clips of me missing waves looking disappointed, to me finally catching one and looking “stoked”. also, my teacher has to be lori petty. or at least a guy who has a haircut like hers circa 1991. all my east coast sins would be forgiven, and i would finally lose the respectability that’s plagued me for as long as i can remember.

avril

as i’m sure most of you have already concluded, i really dig (ha) avril lavigne. it’s not so much the predictable pop compositions or tired lyrics, but a certain something hard to define. I mean, pretty people are undoubtedly better than normal people, but i think maybe the thing i find cute is when musicians who are obviously pop singers think they are something different. self delusion is an attractive quality.

when i read this sun article about her getting into modelling i became excited. this passage especially brought back memories:

In the process of shedding her tomboy image Avril has begun experimenting with cosmetics and clothes.

i remember when i first experimented with cosmetics. i was fifteen and my parents were out for the day. of course, i didn’t know any better so i tried all the products at the same time: eyeliner, rouge, lipstick. now I know not to mix cosmetics, but that day i experienced the dark side of estee lauder. i ended up floating around the house for a while and then puking for an hour in cold sweats. i had to lock myself in my room when my parents came home and say i had gotten the flu. i woke up the next morning with a massive hangover (smudged lipstick, eyeliner smeared, and traces of red and black on my hands and sheets).

just thought that i had to be in compton soon

the boyz in the hood, they're alwayz hard...

i once considered that had my person been cultivated in the hood, or in a hood of any sort, that things may not have turned out any differently. this doesn't necessarily frighten me, nor does it interject any significant level of fate-based vision on my part.

currently, i live in the city. i'm close enough to the beach to matter. and i'm not home enough to care. i consistently wake up to sub-par videos on the television, though i rarely make a change in that regard. i take more time planning the discs in my car's changer than i do in planning a rare day when i'm slotted to do development work in my office. packing for a business trip is an art i'm studying. a well fitting suit can be drastically underrated. red wine every night, and there are very few exceptions to that, no matter what city i'm in. my cell minutes in a given month surprise me. every time.

i think that somewhere in between here and there, these are some of the things that could matter to someone.

life is short

i just listened to wolf parade’s “shine a light” 11 straight times. i watched the video a couple times on on demand last night before the o.c. as well. the singer sounds more than a little like the lead singer in dynamite hack, whose voice i also like. although it is difficult to understand, the song is a “life is short” –themed ode to over-living, the mantra of which i respect but don’t generally follow. it really gets the blood moving, though, and it made me consider that perhaps there is more to life than just blogging and being third shift assistant greeter at walmart.

diary

neither the love of a woman nor a man (er, i’m told) compares to the announcement that the following will share the same warm air as you and some diluted rum in the near future:

minus the bear, mates of state, the magic numbers, thomas dybdahl, cat power, ted leo, the m’s, nada surf, ok go, the go! team, new pornographers, sia, her space holiday

hint: chenault won’t be there

another nice guy

i am saddened to hear of the death of nice guy eddie (aka chris penn). i think this is a time for all of us to reflect upon our lives of crime, reevaluate our priorities, and take some advice from the late actor:

okay, first things fuckin' last!

RIP

bonjour fish-man

i would be willing to substitute a fair amount of surprising elements for their anticipatory counterparts. what remains significant about known events that serve to build up expectation is that perception changes along the way. while surprise can be powerful, it is nevertheless instantaneous in nature. it's impact can only be measured against future returns.

expectation, on the other hand, provides a multi-dimensional driver for change. happiness that extends from this sort of catalyst can be valued at a higher level of worth. the realist sees the future with this sort of outlook. for better, for worse, and everywhere in between, the energy spent longing for the unexpected is better spent valuing the known road ahead.

cleo

the music videos on the televisions at the gym today were about a song and a half behind the audio through the speakers. this was disconcerting not only because watching jessica simpson sing the fine young cannibals’ “she drives me crazy” is lurid, but also because the uncertainty of the future was gone. I knew five minutes before the puppets came on screen that genesis’ “land of confusion” was next. i wonder if i can have any fun at all without some element of surprise.

break out the champagne. of beers.

i, for one, cannot wait unti this program airs. as one of the faithful buttafuoco (jesus jake help you if you misspell his name) supporters in the early nineties i took a lot of criticism. but i have no doubt this will lead to both of our redemptions.

down here, i believe

back on the east coast
it's not that people are different here
i'm just more willing to notice

saturday night
a girl asks me what i do for a living
what do you call this, i ask
blank stare, half smile, no words
i can't help but think...
maybe you're right

will work for food
is that what she was looking for?
if life has become too complex
if drawing that line is no longer possible
is it ok with you if we stay alive for a while longer?
i can change

to care is not to understand
i care very much about living
my bag is full of pencils

give to caesar

it appears jesus plummer may be crucified, if not by the city of denver, then by the general media. why must this happen every two thousand years, give or take?

from the city

i don't listen to country music
i remember being bored once
1995, a night at the beach
maybe that would have been an opportunity
things are different now

baby you can drive my pickup

while watching the bodyguard and perusing i blame the patriarchy i came across this article about the growing acceptance of smokeless tobacco use among young women. needless to say i am not undisturbed. how many people actually listen to gretchen wilson?

speaking from another

i have friends that are best listened to on paper. on a screen. always after drinking. certainly them, possibly me. and at a distance. one such friend passed these lines to me last night, and it was more elegant than anything that i had to say. it is best that my friends are left longing for more. my interest is defined by it. more or less.


tell me something beautiful,
but maybe not so typical
as a walk on the beach
or cuddling by the fire,
cause i need more
than just air to breathe,
or a sweet idea
of what love is meant to be.

where are we now,
that it seems like so long ago
we both believed
our precious notions.

and through it all
i pinch myself;
but i'm trapped in restless sleep,
looking for the dream
that i want to awake to,
but it flickers away in a
mist of misunderstanding
and causes pity to rain down
and wash the ground
away into some nothing.

and so day after day
i sit lonesome,
wishing for something typical;
just for starters i'll build you a fire, and we can walk along
the beach to your heart's desire, if you promise not to go,
and i'll call you beautiful, because that's who you are.

love spelled backwards is evol

i had the pleasure of hearing omega love last night at a small venue. well worth the hassle from the homeless guy (Al) who somehow was in the process of switching HMOs and needed a little cash advance for a procedure. I was in a good mood, though, since omega took the edge off while smoothing out my evening and my companion’s hair smelled like coconut and lime.

a bland flavor...

dinner with mayor nagin...

picked up at seven-thirty. stretch hummer. twenty-twos. runs on polluted water extracted from the mouths of drowned white katrina victims. we drive fast. chocolate cities conform to actions such as this. the excessive heat does little to dampen the mood. no a/c. funds are best diverted to diversity. museums. galleries. these are important. people need to see where they come from. they learn from it. white males develop guilt from it. nobody goes.

conversation is kept at a minimum. the budget is equally as tight in this regard. remembering when jazz was not important. i'm not comfortable with that. cajun food is overrated. nagin begins to compare the levees to a street curb. i'm wondering if either is worthy of continued mention. he loses me in a sea of saints fans. they're on their way to texas. i'm considering leaving as well. coastline without a beach should never be trusted. and i don't drink milk. people like nagin wouldn't understand that. people like nagin like to rebuild. they alter milk because it wasn't right the first time. they fix things, then forget. nobody pays attention. i prefer to make better selections.

maybe that's being a little vanilla.

damage control

"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said. "New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special."

~new orleans mayor Nagin (from cnn)

ah, yes. The old, ‘mix anything with chocolate and you get chocolate’ multiplicative property of chocolate. But is he suggesting that the minority mint population doesn’t work as hard as the white and black? If so this error is egregious indeed, because as anyone who has dined at the upscale olive garden knows, those after supper mints look chocolate. But, oh, the taste is something altogether different and magical.

break bread in the house of the removed

it's late and the room is cold
i set the cold
chose the late

how can i feel the sun
when the stars don't mean anything

i learn when i want to
not that there's anyone out there to teach
it's just that i can easily filter life
into the tiny pixels that compose

i like that the sun lacks this ability

for chelsea

consumer
his body’s perfection
her soul’s decay


before anyone cries syllabic rape consider:

In the beginning is the form. In Japanese a haiku is traditionally 5-7-5 sound syllables. All languages cannot duplicate this method of counting syllables so foreign language writers must decide to either follow the method by writing 5-7-5 syllables in their own language. However if they prefer to imitate the product, the translated Japanese haiku, their poems must consist of less words. In English we cannot have both method and translated product correct in one poem so each of us must choose one system or the other. Beginners (especially if better acquainted with Western poetry) often do well to follow the 5-7-5 discipline at first. Later, when they become comfortable with saying what they want said in the least words, as it is easier to switch to the shorter styled haiku in a natural movement. This does not mean that 5-7-5 haiku are beginners' work; many, many very good writers insist on remaining with the form scheme.

from jane reichhold

wonder...full...never fooled

i wonder if you wonder. where has he gone? did he not see his participation in my life as essential, scratch that, beneficial to my daily dose of normalization? you were better off without me. now read what i have to say...

over the last two weeks, i have earned more than ten thousand frequent flyer miles. words like bonus and segment and upgrade have found their way into this convoluted mind of mine. in chicago, a man (no woman could pull such a thing) grabbed my overcoat in a hurried attempt to reach a connecting flight. inexplicably, i returned his similarly tailored garment to the lost and found. wishful thinking comes in grey tweed as simply as it does midnight black. it's just that i traded much of my time for the expertise that came in selecting just the right coat, a ralph lauren for christ's sake. the airlines delayed my luggage three days later. tuesday, today, was spent wearing monday's clothes, and without an overcoat. pinstriped pants cannot account for everything that we lack. write that down.

philadelphia. denver. chicago. washington d.c. charlotte. rapid city. new york. new york. pierre. back to philly, y'all. this is my life, in a two week photograph.

mtv isn't satisfying, and it has nothing to do with bad videos. when i look at my ipod nano, black, four gig, impeccably simple, i wonder why it's not smaller. i wonder why i haven't slept in my own bed for two weeks. can magazines replace east coast air? i have more passwords than accounts. ketel one, splash of tonic, twist of lime. that's where i'm headed. it's the new you. it's still the same me. welcome. rewind. pause. frame by frame, please. it's just that's it's been a while.

i've been naked in the ocean before. there are some things that can fail to live up to expectations without ever disappointing. don't ask me to list their names.

clicking

MTVhits was running one-hit wonders last night. you really can't ever get enough of "how bizarre" and "who let the dogs out". even so i decided to break up the continuous stream of top-notch artists with some other cable channels. after a while it became apparent what has happened. the funniest television show on the air is no longer the daily show, but it's spinoff the colbert report. colbert packs in more genius absurdity and comedic timing than stewart while still saying something meaningful about politics through sarcasm. if this conclusion seems obvious and late to you then let me just state that i don't watch very much non-music-video television. if, on the other hand, you disagree with this contention then you are most likely incorrect.

a matter of time

my new favorite blog is two chinese boys. as I’m not one to refrain from making generalizations, i’ll state with some confidence that the far east has now overtaken the western world and is the best at webcam lipsynching (with choreography), a natural progression from their microelectronics dominance. i’m impressed both by the guy in the background and the wardrobe selections. i have, of course, already requested “sussudio” .

proregress

the time it takes me to convince myself that something i previously disliked is now o.k. or even good is continually decreasing. for example, i now actually believe that powdered whey protein (previously unpalatable) tastes good. does this mean that i am slowly losing my distinguishing tastes and characteristics or that i am on the path to enlightenment?

extended youth

at an appointment yesterday i was told for the second time in a 12 hour period that i look younger than i am. estimates ranged from 3 to 5 years. i attribute this mostly to my winning attitude and avoidance of stress. however, it could also be due to the honey almond body scrub, pomegranate salt scrub, champagne facial peel, or anti-wrinkle eye balm. but most important, i think, is a youthful attitude.

a wild bore

while reading prettier than napoleon i came across this, quoting an old post by scalzi that discussed whether (good) writing can be learned or only admired from a distance by the untalented.

...getting trapped in an academic feedback loop of writing is pretty damn useless. All you do is hang out with other would-be writers, writing writerly little stories to impress them. You're not actually learning much about anything or anyone else. My own guess is that this has led to the really fabulously boring world of modern literary fiction, where all the writing is terribly clever but doesn't actually say anything of consequence to anyone who's not already a writer or wishing they were. In other words, modern literary fiction is just like sitting in a room full of people who are delighted to smell their own farts. Good for them, but I'd like to go outside, if it's all the same.

i recognize myself as one of the people in the room. and i feel pretty good about it. experience over imagination? i disagree with scalzi on this. after all, there is skill in being terribly clever but saying nothing of consequence. but there is even more skill in saying something altogether new using characters who are clever but say nothing of consequence. and sometimes saying nothing of consequence to non-writers is a heavy statement itself.

brad pitt saved the city, man

steelers win. this is something that i can live with. it's something that matters to me. up until this week, i had never put any financial interest in their games. i wasn't sure that it was worth the possibility of losing both joy and money simultaneously. i like the fact that i can look back at ideas such as this and recognize the bullshit. the times i lied to myself. now, recognize the clarity. the pursuit of the highest level of satisfaction remains the only pursuit worth sacrificing fear for.

define satisfaction. lately i've been capable of doing so for a given moment. sometimes, chaos ensues. other times, i'm simply content to sit on leather chairs, drink vodka martinis, enjoy the quiet of the surroundings that i created. that this can be done from within the city should not surprise you. the idiocy of this portal of a world has little to do with my ability to control any particular portlet. you couldn't stop me if you wanted to.

i win. again. surprise.

lemurs man

we have developed, shall we say, alternatives to understanding. in a collective sense, of course. superficiality. check. ignorance. check. skewed worldviews. never kept in check. nevertheless, check. i find each of these necessary in attempting to deal with the relentless task of coping with you. it isn't that i don't know any better. it is merely that i know so much more than you. and for this, i never intended to be forgiven. unless you're in to that sort of thing.

today i won hundreds of dollars because of a football game that i did not play in. today mtv ran a documentary about the difficulties of paying 600 a month in rent. it's not that i wished that those people watched more football, because the solution must be more complex than that. complexity breeds the results that the most capable among us find useful. the fact that i aligned myself with a sports team from the country's capitol has little to do with that.

it is now that time of the night where i head to a bar with no diluted rum, no specks, and the high probability of being admired. the details fold themselves around such things.

like a pro. noun.

you cook our meals, you haul our trash, you connect our calls, you drive our ambulances. you guard us while we sleep. we should not fuck with you. when i mentioned you before it was in the collective sense. while i am not victor ward wants to understand you, i am much more skeptical. oh, you are interesting. and powerful. and sinister as well as pure. but i don't have enough faith to think i'll ever understand you. i find it difficult (but not impossible) to understand even one entity, and i consider myself ahead of the game. maybe my attitude is unhealthy and i could take a page from i am not victor ward. or maybe i just need some diluted rum.

hello, you

so the trinity has been set. david, tim, you. though many would suggest otherwise, i am mostly conscious of who the first two members are, that is, i have learned enough to recognize both myself and many of my friends on the first attempt. as for the third party...hello, you. i would say that it is relatively important that we grow to understand each other, but we will stick to exchanging truths for the time being. hello, you, stranger. we're in this together. learn to be in this alone.

disappear here...

n.y. s.o.s.

it appears that nothing has changed since last year. and, more to that point, life has already started repeating itself. i turned on a music television channel this morning during my exercise routine and i saw two videos that dominated MTVHits in february 2005: j.lo's get right and the killers' mr. brightside. both are good videos, though, and they helped me get back my groove, which i'd lost for a while.

the new strokes album is getting good reviews. it is--correctly--being heralded as a departure from is this it? (and also room on fire) territory. that is, it is good we didn't get another clone of the first two records. but is it really better? after hearing "juicebox", their first single, i thought not. but it has indeed grown on me with repeated listenings. i am also very fond of "razorblade". but the other couple songs i've heard seem bland and almost alt-y. more pelvis and less grey matter.