Completely moved out.
Completely, of course, does not include 1. A small fan.
2. A grill.
3. A pastel drawing of a lizard and an ant.
Otherwise, we're golden. It's very quiet here, so I opened the window and I can hear the drunks walking to and from Sloopy's or Miani's or Chachkey's or whatever it is this week.
Indy is laying down exactly behind me. Scratch that.
EVERYONE - My cat can read. She wants to make me into a falsifier of information. And in the most passive aggressive way. She's rubbing my legs now. What an underhanded sneak.
Also, I've been to the supermarket twice today. In an effort to stop living out of Taco Bells, I figured out three easy meals I could make out of one pot...
one pot...
I have no skillet. No sauce pan. No double-pot vegetable steamer thing.
I have a slow cooker and a french press and a casserole dish.
And a pot.
SO I bought coffee and stuff for mashed potatoes and was creeped out boiling water on an electric range and guess what. I don't have any cleaning supplies. Now I do, and a belly full of carbs and some bubble bath. I'm going to edit and then take a (well-deserved god damnit) bath.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The Devil Waiting Outside Your Door
I'm writing this under the gun. (Not really, I just might have to save and split) I'm getting the keys to my apartment tonight. Here are some things I've been looking forward to once I'm finally moved in.
1. Sleeping on the Floor
-at least once. the floors are carpeted so it won't be entirely uncomfortable. further updates once I try it out.
2. Book Stacks
- i have a lot of books. they're all in boxes now because, duh, but they're typically mostly in boxes anyway. I'm looking forward to implementing the School-Haven't Read- Reread- Put Away stacks now that I have the room for it.
3. Not flushing. and flushing. and flushing.
-you know, i'm a "if it's yellow let it mellow" fellow. on top of that, i'm not really phased by the last kernel of shit that doesn't get flushed down. maybe i'm weird. i just pull hairs out of my food too.
4. Cat Torture
-i've thought up so many improvements on the thumbscrew technique sara pioneered. what if it doesn't work out though? my roommates would have totally noticed if indy wasn't walking around the apartment anymore begging to be fed.
5. Radical Self-Reliance (Shut up, hippy)
-every mess in my apartment will be my own. it can fester or be cleaned, but i'm the only one there is to blame for the latter. i like festering. seriously though, all my distractions are my own, all mine. [imagine 3 hour break for meeting landlord and moving]
6. Visiting my old roommates
-i like them.
So I've got raw knuckles, my shoulders hurt, and I've moved my comic books, my books, and my plates. I put the plates away and filled some ice trays. There's baking soda everywhere. Utilities get turned on tuesday. I'll move another batch tomorrow, when I don't have shit to do.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Comfest.
Comfest is this week. I'll try and be there.
Roadblocks:1. No more bike, must take bus or hoof it.
-will totally eat ribs to celebrate hoofing it.
-limited benefit to health in hoofing it.
-will probably end up shitting in a portajohn, or in some other awesome public place if I hoof it.
-taking the bus.
-sweating/ covering other people in my sweat/ exchange of sweat, w/o sex fluid exchange is a bit of a let down. maybe next year they'll have a bus and an orgy bus, which i will never, ever ride, but maybe they can use the proceeds from the orgy bus to turbocharge the AC on the mundane bus.
2. Comfest is the site where, two years ago, Sara began this tradition of changing posture, avoiding eye contact, or steering herself off in another direction altogether to stay away from geographies that'd necessitate a conversation with me.
It makes my heart race every time it happens.
In that two year lull since I've moved in with Brian and Bean, and now that I'm moving out, I've talked with Sara once. Bean and she were going to a show and there was conversation about her family, her new tattoo, et cetera. I was directly addressed.
"and now my sister's on MySpace," she said, "and you should see these pictures, Elliot. It's scary. I'm not ready for my sister to be a hussy."
Immediately after she left with Brian to meet some guy by the airport, it occured to me I should have said something like "fuck you, if you see me walking down the street you cross it so you don't have to talk to me, and I'm not going maintain this charade in the interest of our mutual friends," but I didn't. It also occurred to me that I could have said "gee, your mom must really hate the internet considering how its absorbed your brother and your sister." But I usually want to follow that up with some comment about hero worship.
Instead, I just said "uh huh" and acted like I wish interested in a video game or something on my laptop.
Admittedly, I became a little helpless at points. I was left in a house with two dogs and I didn't deal with it at all. I projected. Our roommate had a friend that was a kleptomaniac, and I subsequently didn't trust the rest of them. I projected that too. I didn't like her boyfriends, and suspected she'd been doing the same drugs as my dad when she didn't come home for days at a time. If Freudian psychology is detectable under some sort of special lamp, Sara would have been lit up like a pubescent boys bedspread.
I'll also admit that, after two years, I can see how things haven't cooled. In the midst of this moving thing, I've called Sara twice, bringing my attempts to contact her up to two in the course of a year. And then there was the "I need my W-2" call which ended up being delivered covertly when our old roommate didn't know where it was.
Maybe I'm just picking a scab.
That said, look at this: I sent her a text message asking if she knew what our old landlord's contact information. I never got a reply. And then when I left a voicemail asking if she still had a table I'd left behind, and I got a text message back:
Im not a storage facilityto
be used at your
convenience. Please quit
contacting me. It upsets
me. Thanks.
be used at your
convenience. Please quit
contacting me. It upsets
me. Thanks.
So I guess that's the end of that. When someone postures...hemm... when someone tells you that it makes them feel bad to hear you voice instead of just saying "no, i don't have your table, don't call me," you realize you've exhausted to possible emotional experiences from that person.
Maybe going to Comfest is a step/the first step in the long labor of moving on. I'll buy that. I could just bring that big brimmed hat I have and a grocery bag, because that hat can't get wet.
Who's playing tonight?
Maybe going to Comfest is a step/the first step in the long labor of moving on. I'll buy that. I could just bring that big brimmed hat I have and a grocery bag, because that hat can't get wet.
Who's playing tonight?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Lists of Five
Here are Five Lists of 5 things. The lists aren't in a hierarchical order, however an individual list might have one. Some are prescriptive. Some are simply to amuse.
5 things to have on a Desert Island: Copy of James Joyce's Ulysses (Preferably anotated but any will do), Bucket, Pen, Paper, and, of course, Towel.
5 movies to see before you die (not because you're dying): (this is a list that Film4 made into a TV series after the relaunch of Channel4. They picked ten movies from after the millenium, ten from the nineties, ten from the eighties, ten from the seventies, and ten from before. despite appearances to the contrary, I think brevity is important. No, I really do! So, here's one from each decade)
2000: Unbreakable - M. Night Shyamalan (2000) Suspension of Disbelief and Science Fiction go hand-in-hand, right? Shyamalan combines both the viewer's need for clarity (How is that guy going to explain super-strength and invulnerability in a realistic and scientifically feasable way?) and the character's need for closure (What's happening to me? Why now?) into a story that makes science fiction seem mundane.(the lack of capitlization is intenional)
Shyamalan preserves, and even transmits the binaries of the superhero, or rather supervillain genre. Buried in the commentary of subtle science fiction is the supreme irony of comic books. Rather than be defining their villains by their actions, superhereos are defined by the supervillains. In addition to being found by Samuel L. Jackson, the aptly named "Mr. Glass," Bruce Willis is told about comic book heroes, in fact told how to be a comic book hero, by him.
1990: Boyz n the Hood - John Singleton (1991) They know nothing in life but to be legit, and, um, as an artist, I respect that...
Also, it's a movie that captures the desperation induced by econimic desparity through personal and social lenses. If you've only seen Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix then the Furious Styles character is a headtrip, but also beautiful.
I was going to put [another movie] on here that dealt with communication and soundbytes and, pardon the pun, communicable disease, but I opted to put this on here instead for the binary. (Communication and inability to communicate/listen. sorry i've edited myself into murkiness) These are all "90's issues" and I wouldn't be so bold as to say "Boyz N the Hood deals with them more effectively, eloquently, in a smarter way," but I will say that BNtH is 33% more realistic in it's expectations of effective communication between individuals. (I've measured using an alembic and a calcinatior to be sure.)
1980: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Terry Jones (1983) How could I resist having this on a list of movies to see before you die? It's also extraordinarily funny. As previously asserted, I love satire. I don't think there's a better way to make people look at something than to make fun of it. "Isn't it awfully great to have a penis?" Jack: Why, yes it is! This is frightfully funny. Betty: You're laughing. What's going on here? Et voila! la connaisance. Furthermore, it's the year I was born. Everything from 1983 is golden, including, but not limited to: Jaws 3-D, Porky's II: the Next Day, and Superman III.
1970:
Formative: A Fistful of Dollars - Sergio Leone (1964)
Five comic books you should read (even if you don't):
1. Transmetropolitan - Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson. Spider Jerusalem, the Hunter S. Thompson of the magical future fights the french language, fascist cops, and presidents for the readers that both elevate him and commodify him.
2. We3 - Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly. A Cat, a dog, and a white rabbit, in military robo-suits. They fight robo-doberman and escape with a homeless man while the handlers must face justice. Behold, the Western Manga. The pets talk, but they can't spell good.
3. The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller. There is a world where this is the only comic you should read. This world would have superheroes. There hasn't been a Batman for a while, the guy who dresses up like him has a dream about a giant bat and then there is again. Arkham Asylum villains trickle into Gotham. Robin's a girl this time around.
4. Preacher Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Man goes on a quest to find God. and tell him to shape the heck up. Is pursued by the Man with No Name. from Hell. His cohorts are his ex-girlfriend and a vampire. from Ireland. Laughs are had.
5. Pride of Baghdad - Brian K. Vaughn and Nico Henrichon. Released three years afterwords, Pride of Baghdad dramatizes the lions of the Baghdad zoo as they escape from their pen in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of 2003. Read it for "This isn't right. Freedom can't be given. It must be earned." if nothing else.
Five Questions my Generation will Inevitably Ask:
1. What the fuck was I/were we thinking? (thank you, Jenny Owen, for cementing that association in the minds of the majority of 20-30 year-olds)
2. Why did I buy that?/ Why are they selling that to me?
3. OH! What are they doing?
4. How did I get here? / Why did I do that?
5. What's that mean?
5 things to have on a Desert Island: Copy of James Joyce's Ulysses (Preferably anotated but any will do), Bucket, Pen, Paper, and, of course, Towel.
5 movies to see before you die (not because you're dying): (this is a list that Film4 made into a TV series after the relaunch of Channel4. They picked ten movies from after the millenium, ten from the nineties, ten from the eighties, ten from the seventies, and ten from before. despite appearances to the contrary, I think brevity is important. No, I really do! So, here's one from each decade)
2000: Unbreakable - M. Night Shyamalan (2000) Suspension of Disbelief and Science Fiction go hand-in-hand, right? Shyamalan combines both the viewer's need for clarity (How is that guy going to explain super-strength and invulnerability in a realistic and scientifically feasable way?) and the character's need for closure (What's happening to me? Why now?) into a story that makes science fiction seem mundane.(the lack of capitlization is intenional)
Shyamalan preserves, and even transmits the binaries of the superhero, or rather supervillain genre. Buried in the commentary of subtle science fiction is the supreme irony of comic books. Rather than be defining their villains by their actions, superhereos are defined by the supervillains. In addition to being found by Samuel L. Jackson, the aptly named "Mr. Glass," Bruce Willis is told about comic book heroes, in fact told how to be a comic book hero, by him.
1990: Boyz n the Hood - John Singleton (1991) They know nothing in life but to be legit, and, um, as an artist, I respect that...
Also, it's a movie that captures the desperation induced by econimic desparity through personal and social lenses. If you've only seen Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix then the Furious Styles character is a headtrip, but also beautiful.
I was going to put [another movie] on here that dealt with communication and soundbytes and, pardon the pun, communicable disease, but I opted to put this on here instead for the binary. (Communication and inability to communicate/listen. sorry i've edited myself into murkiness) These are all "90's issues" and I wouldn't be so bold as to say "Boyz N the Hood deals with them more effectively, eloquently, in a smarter way," but I will say that BNtH is 33% more realistic in it's expectations of effective communication between individuals. (I've measured using an alembic and a calcinatior to be sure.)
1980: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Terry Jones (1983) How could I resist having this on a list of movies to see before you die? It's also extraordinarily funny. As previously asserted, I love satire. I don't think there's a better way to make people look at something than to make fun of it. "Isn't it awfully great to have a penis?" Jack: Why, yes it is! This is frightfully funny. Betty: You're laughing. What's going on here? Et voila! la connaisance. Furthermore, it's the year I was born. Everything from 1983 is golden, including, but not limited to: Jaws 3-D, Porky's II: the Next Day, and Superman III.
1970:
Formative: A Fistful of Dollars - Sergio Leone (1964)
Five comic books you should read (even if you don't):
1. Transmetropolitan - Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson. Spider Jerusalem, the Hunter S. Thompson of the magical future fights the french language, fascist cops, and presidents for the readers that both elevate him and commodify him.
2. We3 - Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly. A Cat, a dog, and a white rabbit, in military robo-suits. They fight robo-doberman and escape with a homeless man while the handlers must face justice. Behold, the Western Manga. The pets talk, but they can't spell good.
3. The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller. There is a world where this is the only comic you should read. This world would have superheroes. There hasn't been a Batman for a while, the guy who dresses up like him has a dream about a giant bat and then there is again. Arkham Asylum villains trickle into Gotham. Robin's a girl this time around.
4. Preacher Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Man goes on a quest to find God. and tell him to shape the heck up. Is pursued by the Man with No Name. from Hell. His cohorts are his ex-girlfriend and a vampire. from Ireland. Laughs are had.
5. Pride of Baghdad - Brian K. Vaughn and Nico Henrichon. Released three years afterwords, Pride of Baghdad dramatizes the lions of the Baghdad zoo as they escape from their pen in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of 2003. Read it for "This isn't right. Freedom can't be given. It must be earned." if nothing else.
Five Questions my Generation will Inevitably Ask:
1. What the fuck was I/were we thinking? (thank you, Jenny Owen, for cementing that association in the minds of the majority of 20-30 year-olds)
2. Why did I buy that?/ Why are they selling that to me?
3. OH! What are they doing?
4. How did I get here? / Why did I do that?
5. What's that mean?
Monday, February 4, 2008
a bought of generational talkin'
A while back I was putting a great deal of time and energy into a top ten comics of 2007. Nothing came of it because I'm an over-critical prick when the time for retrospection comes and until that time comes, I'm eager to say that everything is "freaking genius." I suppose "eager" is doing the most work there. It's a tough word, I'm proud of it.
One of the comics that was on that misconceived list was Army @ Love. I went on about Urskine evocative (of the 1950's, not of the female form in the flesh) pens and pencils and the Veitch's brilliant satire. "Misconceived list" is a little misleading and I should get rid of it, but the list was misconceived and I felt like it was a waste of time in some respects, however, Army @ Love was, and I can't stress this enough, one of the finest comic of 2007 and if you don't pick up the trade you're doing yourself a disservice.
So that's a really roundabout segue, but I'm wordy-guy, and I believe in Words. Words made me my fortune...
More recently, Veitch talked about generation X in Army @ Love, he called the generation after generation Y and my brother's generation generation PWNed. A couple of characters are having this conversation, a guy in his mid thirties representing the gen Xer and a nineteen-to-twenty-two-year-old representing Gen PWN. Of course a bunch of ancient men have told Gen PWN that Gen X screwed everything up, and it's up to them to fix it, thus the moniker. The Gen Xer then rebels against this idea, loses control of his vehicle, and has to be bailed out of trouble by the Gen PWNs.
Of course what really got my eye was gen y. I never said I wasn't self absorbed. One of those recurring thoughts I have (I'm far too literal to have recurring dreams) is "I'm sorry sir/madame, but ,what the fuck?" This is usually uttered to a head of state or authority figure. It's in the spirit of self-examination, of course. More to the point, those points I get to in my writing where I come to dubious conclusions or at some point at night the only word that can be uttered is "What?" What I'm getting at, specifically, is what the Gen Y questions are going to be. I think "hey guys, what was up with all celebrities? That got kinda cult-ish, didn't it?" would be a good one.
One of the comics that was on that misconceived list was Army @ Love. I went on about Urskine evocative (of the 1950's, not of the female form in the flesh) pens and pencils and the Veitch's brilliant satire. "Misconceived list" is a little misleading and I should get rid of it, but the list was misconceived and I felt like it was a waste of time in some respects, however, Army @ Love was, and I can't stress this enough, one of the finest comic of 2007 and if you don't pick up the trade you're doing yourself a disservice.
So that's a really roundabout segue, but I'm wordy-guy, and I believe in Words. Words made me my fortune...
More recently, Veitch talked about generation X in Army @ Love, he called the generation after generation Y and my brother's generation generation PWNed. A couple of characters are having this conversation, a guy in his mid thirties representing the gen Xer and a nineteen-to-twenty-two-year-old representing Gen PWN. Of course a bunch of ancient men have told Gen PWN that Gen X screwed everything up, and it's up to them to fix it, thus the moniker. The Gen Xer then rebels against this idea, loses control of his vehicle, and has to be bailed out of trouble by the Gen PWNs.
Of course what really got my eye was gen y. I never said I wasn't self absorbed. One of those recurring thoughts I have (I'm far too literal to have recurring dreams) is "I'm sorry sir/madame, but ,what the fuck?" This is usually uttered to a head of state or authority figure. It's in the spirit of self-examination, of course. More to the point, those points I get to in my writing where I come to dubious conclusions or at some point at night the only word that can be uttered is "What?" What I'm getting at, specifically, is what the Gen Y questions are going to be. I think "hey guys, what was up with all celebrities? That got kinda cult-ish, didn't it?" would be a good one.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
LOOK, I understand that it's in the interest of the NFL network to advertise during football games, specifically on sunday, but 360 days out of the year, I don't have HDtv. The commercials advertising the thursday game are preetty funny, don't get my wrong. The ESPN-patented "This is what's working, here's something ridiculous to entertain masked as an honest suggestion" will always be funny. It's funny enough to not upset me that I'm missing a football game, or will have to brave the fucking bar to see it if i'm really that intrigued.´
SO here's a bold suggestion: CBS, FOX & NBC all have HD channels. There's a chance if you're watching the big four in HD you have the NFL network. Could they pull off just advertising the thursday night football game on those channels? Maybe just do an "order the NFL network and the (regionally appropriate college football) network" advert on broadcast tv. Then you'll get two solid days of advertising out of it.
SO here's a bold suggestion: CBS, FOX & NBC all have HD channels. There's a chance if you're watching the big four in HD you have the NFL network. Could they pull off just advertising the thursday night football game on those channels? Maybe just do an "order the NFL network and the (regionally appropriate college football) network" advert on broadcast tv. Then you'll get two solid days of advertising out of it.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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