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24.09.01 - 8:54 p.m.
Que pasa diary. Melissa reminded me that I have not written in a while. It's a quagmire-- the longer it's been since I last wrote, the more there is to say, and the less I feel like writing it all down. So I don't write, and then there's even *more* to write about... repeat ad nauseum. But let's be realistic here, I am not touring with U2 or running with the bulls in Pamplona. Time to get on with things. Here is what's been happening, in no order other than how it comes into my head. ROHAN This is a korean bar Shawn & Jenny and I went to. It was verrry trendy. The bar's specialty was drinks made with "soju", a type of korean liquor that I hadn't tried before. Having tried it, I would generously characterize it as "vile". That night they were showing stills from an animated korean fairy tale. It was a fundraiser, but I gave nothing, because I am opposed to all art, except for the black art of kung fu.ELEPHANT Nate and Hannah made a life-sized baby elephant out of cardboard! this is one of those cases where a picture would definitely be worth 1000 words. The way it came about was, N & H were just sitting around one day and decided to make a paper-mache elephant in his front yard. It's really big-- 7 feet tall and probably 10 feet long. All the kids who live in Nate's neighborhood are fascinated, and they've been swarming in droves to decorate and paint it. A. & I went over there one night & hung out... truly an inspirational scene. I love those two.BURN PARTY Sandeep's lease is up, which is a good excuse to throw a house-leaving party. Has it been a year already? Jesus. It seems like just yesterday we were at his crazy housewarming party. So it must be about the one year anniversary of this here journal(pause for wild hollering and champagne corks flying everywhere...) Anyway burn parties are where everybody brings a cd burner (hey, we're yuppies. but if you don't have one, you can buy one from fry's and return it after the party. fry's salesperson: "reason for return?" you: "um... it was the wrong... gigahertz... or something...") and their cd collection, and you pick out cds from other people's collection and burn them. I got some awesome stuff such as blonde redhead, wilco, plaid, duke ellington & john coltrane (which i am currently listening to, smooj choons). You are saying it is intellectual property theft? Yeah... I don't have a good retort to that. I could argue that, since I've bought in excess of 400 cds in my lifetime, I've 'paid my dues' to the evil mafia-like record industry-- but that's a rationalization, not a justification. Plus, most of the cds we burned are on indie labels, so it's not even sticking one to the big 5. ToddS is probably shaking his head in shame. Ah well, I could sit here all day positing explanations but probably the main reason I burn cds is because there's no immediate consequence and it's instantly gratifying, and the 'victims' (various artists) are sort of abstract and it's unclear whether or not they'd even really get that worked up about it. I doubt the ghosts of Ellington and Coltrane care much. CHAMPAGNE BRUNCH @ DOLORES PARK Me, jenny, shawn & sandeep. I learned how to throw a football and I sort of learned how to punt. It was a lovely sunny day and there were lots of dog owners walking their dogs around. Our theory is, the dog owners walking around dolores park secretly want their dogs to go after other people's dogs, cos it's a good way to meet members of the opposite sex. What a sordid scene... what happened to the good old days of meeting people at weddings and funerals? And grocery stores. Grocery stores people!DEPRESSION I was feeling low for a while. It happens every year around fall/winter. One of the interesting things about keeping a journal is that you start to see patterns in your life. (Ha, this year I'm outsmarting nature though. In Chile the seasons are reversed.)RUSSIAN RIVER A. and I drove up to the beach this weekend, 3-4 hours north of berkeley. That girl is a sweetie I tell you. We watched the pacific ocean crash into black rocks. There were shiny seals swimming near the rocks. Lots of birds too. We saw a bird catch a fish out of the river-- and then another bird tried to airjack it. Nature, red in tooth and claw...We both made mixtapes for the roadtrip and it was funny to see how excited we both were for the other person to hear the tape. It's fun to be in a relationship with someone who's into music. I should make that a permanent requirement on the application to go out with me. (Yes, there is a form... I get so many requests that I had to expedite the process.) We're going to see Blonde Redhead soon, and also Sigur Ros. RRRAWK GUINESS & OYSTER FESTIVAL Most recent sat. was a lot of drinking, and cake (irono-rock, ugh) was playing for free. There were many people there-- a., shrey, jason, nate, hannah, jenny, shawn, angi, jay, sandeep, mike, anne-marie, andy, leticia, plus some of shrey's friends whose names i forget. It's hard to get any sort of momentum going with that many people though. The mere act of moving across a park can take hours. At one point we were all sitting in a big circle, and I tried to start a game of telephone. You know, that game where you whisper something to the person next to you and the message gets passed around the circle until it gets back to you, and then you laugh at the distortions? Some of our party were stoned. Here's a tip: do not play this game with stoned people. The message I started with was "every good boy deserves fudge", and the message that finally came back to me was: "We are playing Telephone." ANNA'SWe went to Anna's because Shawn's friend works there. The service was really slow, Leticia started getting upset. She is a cute Brazilian girl with a definite accent, and a guilty pleasure is to watch her get angry because it's kind of amusing. She said angrily to Andy, "this service is so slow, when the food gets here can i say 'finally?' or 'finally dammit?'" and poor Andy (who, in addition to being her boyfriend, is generally a laid-back guy) kept saying "um, i don't know..." and then when our food finally arrived Leticia *yells* "FINALLY, DAMMIT!". It nearly gave the waiter a heart attack. He jumped back and muttered "jesus!" I had to avert my head because I was laughing so much.CASEY'S PARTY I smoked. I've been trying to drink less coffee & alcohol & not smoke. I was doing pretty well on all three counts until last Saturday. I'm not that worried about smoking or coffee, since I don't feel that much of an urge for either. But it's hard not to have a drink in the evening. Maybe if I started smoking up more, the urge to drink would go away. YES! I knew there was a reason to go buy some chr0n.UNEMPLOYMENT Speaking of which-- this friday is the last day of my job. I have a month before I leave for Santiago. So far my goals are: - volunteer at meals on wheels & global exchange
- bike a lot
- smoke up & play video games constantly.
Be, all that you can be... in the arrrrrmy I'm reading constantly, as usual. I have books strewn all over the place. I finished "Snow Blind" (definitive novel on cocaine smuggling, zachary swan sticks in your head) & "Have Gun, Will Travel" (the story of death row records-- suge knight is a SCARY muthafucka. it's funny because at the time the book was written, suge was in jail for 9 years for parole violation. the author keeps trying to interview people and they say "hell no" and when he asks why they look at him incredulously-- "Fool, don't you know Suge's gonna get OUT someday?") Now I'm reading "London Fields" by Martin Amis. It's weird, Jenny and I both read this book non-sequentially. We just flip to random sections and read. Amis is such an amazing writer that using this method, you'll always find some gem. The first time I flipped through, this is what I read: Guy sat on the second sofa in the second drawing-room with a rare second drink and though: How will I ever know anything in the middle of all this warmth and space, all this supershelter? I want to feel like the trampolinist when he falls back to earth and to gravity. To touch the earth with heaviness-- just to touch it. God expose us, take away our padding and our room. That's buttery!! Or is it just that I identify with the sentiment?THE END This is one of those long entries that nobody (including me) will ever read all the way through. That's alright, it had to be done. Any other thoughts. In the car Jenny & I were inventing variants of "slug-bug". We quickly degenerated into "punch-honda" and "spit-denny's". I achieved victory with "poop-tree". You see a tree, you poop on somebody. Nobody really wins in that game.If A. and I had played "slug-flag" or "slug-cow" on the way to Russian River, we would have gotten a lot of punches in. Why so many cows? Not just live cows, we also saw blue cow statues and cows with cowboy hats. Flowers by the side of the road and a colorful pinwheel spinning in the wind-- "it probably marks where someone died". Movies: Brazil-- man that movie blows. a 1984-esque dystopia, but it drags on and on and everything's dark and not funny despite trying to be funny. the only good thing about this movie is that it gives you an excuse to say "dystopia" Dark City-- a much better dark movie, with some gripping imagery like for instance the eerie city streets with people in diners asleep in their food, drivers asleep at the wheel, the whole world asleep. and the chattering teeth of the aliens... CREEPY. angi can emulate that chattering. c64 emulator-- i'm on a nostalgic ultra-geeky kick, i'm downloading all these old sids. the theme from 'druid ii' is my favorite. i have said my piece on c64 tunes elsewhere.
druid ii
fairlight And Elio & A. and I went to see Aislers Set, and Angi left for Chicago, and there's tons of other stuff going on. The WTC attacks threw me off balance and I lost track of all these little details. But I can't pretend like my life hasn't continued in the wake of that. Since we are not dead, we turn to our affairs.
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