01.04.02 - 10:04 a.m.

Happy new year!

Merry new year!

Etc!

This morning I awoke from a dream in which people were beating me to death with sticks. I hope this doesn't become a regular part of 2002.

i feel too lazy to update for real and there's not much to say anyway. since i arrived in las vegas i've been eating, sleeping, surfing the net and reading. like james bond but without all the fucking and spying. a host of cousins and cousins' wives and cousins' wives' sisters have been visiting, so the house has been chaotic but convivial. call it a hunch-- my mom cooks better indian food than your mom. i have been gorging on puris, bhaji, chaat, idlis, sambar & a host of other delicacies. i probably spelled all of those wrong.

decisions, decisions, WOE there are decisions to be made. that's probably why my dreams are so violent. i get back to san francisco january 28th. where am i going to live? what am i going to do? i've been cursorily looking on craigslist for a new job but they all look boring. my only real requirement for my next job is that i can talk about it at parties without falling asleep.

possible strategy: target cool places. i've been nosing around the websites of SFMOMA, golden gate park, coit tower etc. to see if there are any jobs available. so far not much luck. i think it would be fun to be a park ranger, though my knowledge of woodcraft consists solely of the following three facts:

1) if you shit in the woods you should bury it
2) grapefruit juice will neutralize fire ant bites
3) you can use the moss growing on the side of a tree to find North (or some other compass direction, maybe it's east)

You know what my ideal job would be? Music critic. I've been trying to write reviews for amazon just to get in the habit. One of my goals for the next year is to get some reviews published somewhere.

cerro san cristobal, santiago

Loads of resolutions for 2002, e.g.

1) run in bay to breakers
2) burning man
3) go to kentucky for kentucky derby
4) ride my bike lots & be more than just a gutter bunny
5) write scads of reviews, try submitting to guardian
6) learn how to make rad techno/idm on laptop
7) screw courage to sticking point & talk to cute girls wherever they are found
8) continue learning spanish
9) read leaves of grass, dostoevsky, tolstoy
10) maybe remembrance of things past? don't think i'm ready yet
11) get piercing? for a long time i resisted because it was so trendy and i didn't want to feel phony. but now it's so common, nobody's even going to look twice
12) find something worth going back to school for (woodcraft? spying?)
13) volunteer for global exchange. for real this time! seriously. never going to get nonprofit experience if you don't focus more. need to learn about fundraising & advocacy.
14) listen to confield & black dog
15) cook delicious and exotic meals, all the time

this leads to next dilemma, where to live. i think i'm going to live with josh and nate in berkeley. this is a dilemma because all things being equal, i'd much rather live in the city. BART stops at midnight and this means i'm much less likely to go out during the week. also i love san francisco, berkeley is ok but i don't feel the same passion for it. BUT, all things are not equal. josh & nate are two of my best friends and i think it will be tremendously fun to cohabitate with them. i think it will be good for my sanity and my health & we'll have some kick ass barbeques. & eat lots of organic munchies. plus, since we'll be living in a house not an apartment, we can throw parties... i want to enact some kind of theatre.

oh yeah

16) make a funny movie with shawn. that videocamera should be used at all times

julie & me, machu pichu. (shutterfly really takes the detail out of these pictures! maybe i'll put up better ones later)

What else. on the subject of (dum dum dum dum) Ending this Journal!! or moving it elsewhere: [i have a lot to say about diaryland vs. livejournal & related topics but i'll save it for a separate entry]

here are the rest of our pictures from sudoamerica.

i hope you (and You, and You (but not YOU)) had a great christmas/new year. if i haven't emailed it's because i'm too engorged with egg nog/dosas to even sit up straight.

rotation:

ennio morricone, original soundtracks
plaid, double figure
v/a, q: best of 2001

ursula le guin - language of the night
mary ladd gavell - the rotifer & other stories
andrei codrescu - ay, cuba!
michel archimbaud in conversation w/ francis bacon
internet porn