i won't bore you with the details baby

i will be off for the early part of next week, celebrating independence from britain/my parents. here are a few of my ideas for spending that time:

• listen to entire george michael’s greatest hits double album without stopping
  
• starting at noon, have one drink per hour for twelve hours. then anything goes.
  
• bring a change of clothes and live at the gym for a day.(they have music videos and plasma t.v.s) .
  
• hang out at a friend’s pool with PBR, and don’t drink but rather pour out can after can of it after i remember that i have standards. then get some whiskey.
  

rubber plants

i have a rubber plant at work. it’s leaves are sleek and glossy and their color is marriage of green and burgundy. lately the leaves have been falling off at a disturbing rate. i’ll grant that i lack in some areas of care giving, but it never wants for water and it seems happy on our weekly walks. so i wonder if this is a metaphor for life, that the prettiest things fade the fastest, or a warning about my ability as a caregiver. only the future blessed with either premature wrinkles or children that are falling apart will tell.

g-dub's d.c.

i spent the long weekend in d-of-c visiting a friend. i love it there in the summer. while some dislike the palpable humidity, i have become fond of it (and partially immune thanks to living in north carolina for some time). there is so much to do at night, and the city is made up more of residential buildings than commercial, which makes it very quaint and unimposing. i saw david bazan at the black cat on friday night. i'm not a big pedro the lion fan, but he played well using just his voice and a guitar. i really liked the venue (i'd never been to the black cat before). it reminded me of a rich man's club laga (see deceased pittsburgh venues), with an upstairs, and comparable dimensions.

saturday we pre partied at ana's friend brent's condo in the "u" district. it was pretty much a smaller version of paul allen's apartment, which is to say it evoked a jealous reaction from me when i saw it. he pays more in rent than i do in mortgage each month. then we went out to this great bar that looks seedy from the outside but is kind of hipster inside. there were four d.j.s spinning vinyl and it was so good that it seemed like the playlist was coming from my own subconsious. a mixture of white-kid dance/funk and nineties and eighties tracks, the artists included lcd soundsystem, le tigre, franz ferdinand, and soul coughing. just imagine my delight with those sounds in my ears, whiskey in my hands, and no obligations.

lost in text

i’ve started reading camille, perhaps the best love story of all time. the fact that it is about a lady of questionable morals should not surprise you, but that i am relishing dumas fils’ moral judgement might. i think this can be explained by my recent (re)reading of the great gatsby and glamorama. the contrast is beautiful and simple. life has more meaning from the right, and letting yourself be convinced that morality exists and is meaningful is like remembering back to when you believed in magic or santa claus.

the society section

inspired by this prettier than napoleon post, i wonder whether it is selfish or immoral or both to never have children by choice, setting aside what your higher powers command you to do. i’m of the mind that i owe a debt to society for sacrifices that were made on my behalf over the years by my parents, teachers, and many other unnamed persons. even my nihilist contemporaries can understand wanting to settle a debt even if the outcome is meaningless. but i feel like this does not have to be done by procreation, but rather by any means of helping society (most likely those younger than you). barring god’s finger wagging i don’t think that leading a childless life is wrong.

review review

only once or twice a year (if you satisfy the attractive lady luck with an ever growing set of superstition rituals) do you have the perfect weather / dreamy band combination that makes you reconsider your nihilist attitude. that sort of thing happened last night at mr smalls theater, and so early in the season no less. rogue wave and the stills played for a surprisingly small crowd that was reverently quiet with occasional bursts of static electricity. zach rogue and company played their changing-dynamic angel rock well, and the pretty vocals mellowed the space behind the eyes. although they didn’t perform “eyes”, they played mostly newer material including the haunting “publish my love”. after that the canadians (the stills) increased the volume slightly for their set of half old / half new songs. it was a great surprise to hear so many of the older (and in my correct opinion better) tracks from logic… which they didn’t play at south by southwest because of a shortened set. the highlights were “lola”, “changes are no good”, “helicopter”, and the most appreciated song of the night, “yesterday never tomorrow”. even after the show the temperature was in the high sixties and it felt like time hadn’t progressed at all. driving home at eleven with all the windows down in pittsburgh is something you never get used to or tired of.

a song for the suburban adventurer

think about driving down a highway in the middle of summer. the air is hot and dry and the wind whips through the quartet of gaping windows. the doobie brothers’ “listen to the music” blares, but you only hear patches of trebly sounds through the wind. mile after mile of flat farmland come and go. the only event of any significance occurs when you wipe the hair from your brow at each horizon. the future is unknown, your rearview mirror is broken, and you shift positions slightly as “dixieland”’s initial notes sink into your skull.

why i fear for the future

what i need is to have a long conversation with someone. like, an hour long. then maybe my headache will go away. it seems to be made worse by the phrases dave matthews and working with children. it is made temporarily better by working out and alcohol. but the cure still eludes me.

washington, george

this clip is the funniest thing since colbert’s press secretary speech. it combines absurdity, intelligence, british children, and profanity in the ideal 40/40/5/15 comedic proportion. this formula has been proven by rigorous testing,

wait, i meant paper. no, no, rock.

finally. progress in the american legal system.

and to think...all of those wasted years of mine, spent pushing for the legalization of caning. a little RPS truly does go a long way.

i should mention, however, that i once viewed a televised rock-paper-scissors event. perhaps it was a championship of some sort. probably the world. yes, it was the world championship. i'm sure of it. ok, a quick search yielded a series of results that are reported like so. regardless, there did (and probably still does) exist a man whose winning percentage was so statistically impossible, so dominant from a mathematical-to-psychological perspective, that he won the tournament nearly every year. with the new and inevitable shift to this sort of conflict resolution, what kind of power will a man like this have in the new america? the ability to harness perceived chance. i'll go out on a limb and say that i'll need a friend like that. and that i can give up my practice of canoodling with otherwise worthless columbia law students. if only those pretentious bitches knew...

teen age hope

omg. arianne caoili, the nineteen year old australian chess phenom, is not only hot (pic in article) but is also inspiring fisticuffs like a world champion. aside from using the possessive case instead of the plural case on occasion she may just be the perfect girl:

Caoili, 19, has listed her likes on her website as: "Funny stories, The Cream, arguing, getting up to no good, shopping, quotes, tea, Pink Floyd album covers, dancing (all forms), chocolate, blitz, theatre, Karpov's games, Oreo's, black and dry humour, singing, good music, gravity (without it we're doomed), sunsets, sunrises, fine food (and fine boys), stars, moons, water, Edward Norton and Johnny Depp, grace, green lights, cooking, pina colada's, vodka, red wine, Kahlua, dwarfs and the odd Cuban cigar.

now i don't know what "the cream" is, but i love water and dwarves!

mao once played dodgeball

perhaps you've heard of the chinese baby, jie-jie, born with three arms. from the most recent update on this story comes one of the more bizarre sentences in recent memory, in the category of non-fiction:

"Jie-jie cried when either of his left arms was touched, but smiled and responded normally to other stimuli, the reports said."

clearly the chinese are on to something here. or at least they were, until removing the child's clear dodgeball advantage, demoting him back to the same level as everyone else. oh communism...that's so you.

comforted by the recognizable

sitting in my living room...it's been a while since i've been around.

i have american psycho on the lcd. it feels right, and i realize that i may have missed this sensation in past weeks. i find myself wondering, in my apartment, what would the soundtrack be composed of? immediately confronted by the notion that it doesn't matter, that people don't understand, and wouldn't, i drop the thought. where were you on the night that paul allen disappeared? people pass up observing things that require perception.

for the love of...

regarding the duke lacrosse situation:

A university investigation also found a history of disciplinary problems involving team members, including underage drinking and public urination.

was anyone else expecting the words "assault" or maybe "rape" instead of "drinking" and "urination" there? listen, if those other things make a team or individual "troubled" then i guess i need to begin worrying about myself immediately, as my "troubled" past treads dangerously close to the lax-ies'. it's a wonder that i've managed to graduate, find non-government employment, keep off food stamps, stay out of jail, and use many fewer cliches and double speak than the duke executives. i must be the anomaly.

fence theory

it seems to me that, aside from physical differences (the vain must qualify this immediately), there are two types of people. one type values loyalty and the other type values honesty. as complex as humans are they can certainly value both at the same time, but never equally. this distinction allows one to make certain generalizations about a person that come in handy whether trying to befriend them, swindle them, or just drink with them. and you know my ugly fondness for generalizations.

testosterone-free action

the new batwoman is a lesbian.

i didn't know there was an old batwoman.

ultimately, that seems fair.

thursday

at the gym going through my cardio routine i look with disgust over at the three hundred pound man on the recumbent bike humming/mumbling along to the new rob thomas video. i can’t tell whether he thinks no one can hear him or that he just doesn’t care. as the song progresses my ire follows a similar linear curve until i can no longer stand it and make the motion of putting on fake headphones. i then proceed to close my eyes and hum along to s.w.v.’s “i’m so into you” --to the bewilderment of the middle aged lady on the stairmaster to my right-- until the next video shuts him up. it is robert palmer’s “i didn’t mean to turn you on”, whose video is a shoddy reproduction of his “addicted to love” classic. the song itself, however, is sheer genius. this is what my life is like.