I just got my lily-white ass handed to me on a silver platter garnished with mint jelly and watercress. I was playing an innocent game of garden croquet with five of my mother's middle-aged friends, half of them tight as newts, and every man jack of 'em wiped the floor... uh, grass... with me. Suckitude, thy name is Mirablah.
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(3)
11:35:47 PM,Monday 1 September 2003
I dreamed I was in a wacky screwball comedy hinging on real estate fraud and the incomprehension of foreign languages. I remember a shelf stocked with twenty different breakfast cereals. I poured a little bit out of each one until my bowl was overflowing. They were all yummy and sugary with marshmallow bits and fruity things in. The only one I particularly remember had a satellite photograph of the moon and the earth in space on the front of the box. It was composed of these impossibly dense brightly colored geodesic crunch bombs and miniature licorice pastilles. On the top of the box it bragged, in big puffy letters, "33% more bible verses than any other breakfast cereal!"
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04:53:01 PM,Monday 1 September 2003
Two of our clients who go to the center eat pureed food, and so I have to put everything in the cuisinart when I'm making their lunches. It comes out looking just like the stuff they serve in the fancy restaurant in Brazil. And I giggle. (But not after first making the snooty waiter face, to be sure.)
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10:51:57 PM,Saturday 30 August 2003
I haven't been online too much because my nephew's been staying in my room and playing Wizardry 8 practically non-stop, so I haven't had my computer. Also, my mom's friend from Sweden is visiting for a month, so I've been taken up with that whole sociability thing. But Michael moved into the dorms today -- he's gonna be taking something like 26 credits this semester, the nut. And his dorm room doesn't have internet access. Barbaric!
I've been thinking of getting DSL myself, so my ma and I wouldn't be squabbling so much over the phone line. Tell the truth, if Audiogalaxy still existed, I'd probably move heaven and earth to get it... stealing music is an addictive hobby. But none of the file-sharing programs I tried out since then ever much met with my satisfaction. I guess I could settle for streaming music, though, against the grain of my file-hoarding impulses (I've only got 13 gig left on my jukebox, though, so I gotta curb them pretty soon anyway). I just discovered that MusicMatch just started up a cool-looking streaming classical service for $5 a month. I dig that. I was subscribed to their generic classical "station" for a while when I had a fast connection at SJCSF, and I dug it. More customization, like it looks the new version has, would make it very welcome, I gotta say.
More about music... sometimes I feel like I almost could be a musician. I mean, ha, that's a hilarious thing to say considering I haven't practiced any of my instruments in something like seven months now, but still -- if I'm going to be any kind of a human being, I'm gonna have to dredge up some discipline. It's been lacking in everything I've always done, but that can't continue, y'know? I used to think: figure out what's easiest and most enjoyable, see how you can make it turn a profit, and just do that for a living. But my mind's always freaking conspiring against me. I used to read all the time, right? And now I don't, and it's a source of lots of angsty hand-wringing. But my mom hit on the reason: when I was reading all the time, it was because I had other things I was supposed to do, and so I read to spite them, to fill the time with idleness instead of carrying out my duty.
Now I don't have any particular duty, except some vague notion that I'm supposed to be bettering myself, y'know -- so I feel like I've got the impetus on me to read and make myself studly virtuous. So what do I do? I go to work, I lie on the couch for six hours, and I watch completely stupid lame boring movies the whole freaking time. Then I wrench myself up with a lugubrious "blehhhhh" around 4:00 am, and clean the house a bit. All night long I'm dreading getting up, but the second I do get up, I feel happy -- I listen to my music, I scrub the toilets and sing, and life don't seem so bluggery. If it weren't that I've never much listened to death metal and haven't played D&D in donkey's years, I'd almost believe the guy who wrote that copy of The Edge of Evil: The Rise of Satanism in North America which my dad picked up somewhere and put in my bookshelf to be a smartass. I must be possessed by Satan -- not that I'm belching brimstone or slaughtering small animals, but it is a satanic impulse only to do what you don't want to do, and to resist with a steely passion everything you think you should do. Only taking pleasure in avoiding what gives you pleasure. I mean, lordy. Short of an exorcism, though, I couldn't say how to cure it. It's just insufferable and... fooey.
Maybe I'm just anxious 'cause I'm (hopefully -- the registration still ain't worked out) gonna be taking a class in a week. Last time I dove into academia, I got ownz0r3d so bristlingly. And I really, really want to learn counterpoint, too -- not as a means to any kind of end. I got no illusions that I'm gonna be a great composer. But it'd be nice to be able to... gluh, I dunno -- write a score to a video game my brother makes, or to the opera one of my mom's friends is writing, Jefferson in Braintree, or even to a furking porn movie, I don't care. Just little piddly stuff. It'd be cool. When I said I maybe wanted to be a musician, I guess I don't mean professionally. I just wanna join a little amateur Early Music troupe, and play all my instruments in various cockamamied ways, and not feel like such a barren prickly pear all the time. Yo.
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(4)
10:46:04 PM,Saturday 30 August 2003
A Shakespeare troupe gamboling Renaissance-style to the synthesized strains of "Sit on My Face". And on the way home, a little boy on a unicycle.
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10:29:24 PM,Thursday 28 August 2003
And the strips fit perfectly in the nifty little empty metal Altoids tin I knew I was saving to some purpose. And there's lamb chops for dinner. And I went to Farmers' Market just now and sat at the edge of it, watching all the people and flowers and vegetables, and the sun getting swallowed up by the mellow gray sky, and listened to the rock song I used to worship in high school, the one that was memory to wistfulness to sweet still happiness... and every bit of it was right.
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(1)
09:02:38 PM,Tuesday 26 August 2003
A triple triumph! I come back and find that I'm in the class (woo!), but before that, I went to the drugstore and discovered -- mirabile dictu -- two bold new products in the field of artificially flavored confectionary.
First off, the kids' toothpaste manufacturers have finally gotten wise and pumped out another flavor besides mint or bubble gum: watermelon. Got some, can't wait to try it. Tom's of Maine has good fluoridated non-mint toothpaste, and there are a handful of non-fluoridated ones that I've been using along with fluoride rinse (my current favorite is Meswak, whatever the hell that is; it tastes awesome. Still haven't been able to find a replacement for that lovely eggplant-and-salt toothpowder that I accidentally smashed on the SJCSF bathroom floor), but none of them have had that special synthesized ester goodness that we all know and love. 'Til now!
And!! For at least two years, I've held an incontrovertible certainty in my heart of hearts that, no matter how long it took or how long it stayed on the market, sometime, somewhere, someone would develop a dissolving corn-starch strip that wasn't mint or cinnamon. And they did! I saw it today -- grape, yeehaw -- and it's tremendous. Oh, I'm so dem heppy.
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07:48:01 PM,Tuesday 26 August 2003
Just to be an impulsive git, I'm trying to see if I can get into this guy's Counterpoint class at the University. Yes, registration was several weeks ago. No, I haven't applied to nor been accepted by the University itself. No, I do not have advanced standing in a music degree program, have not taken the Theory test, and haven't written anything in my life other than three incomplete and extremely silly songs based off Through The Looking-Glass over three years ago. So lemme at it! I mean, I'm sure there ain't no chance, but what the hell. Plus the guy just looks kinda cool. Though I admit I'm tempted to get up in his face, shake him by the lapels, and demand, "Whassamatter, 17th-century-style motets ain't good enough for ya?!"
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(14)
04:43:42 PM,Tuesday 26 August 2003
I correctly identified the butler in And Then There Were None as the actor who played the Caterpillar in the cartoon of Alice in Wonderland. I'm smugly pleased with myself on this account. It would have been much more impressive if I had been able to identify him by name, but still. Ha!
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(1)
09:20:32 PM,Monday 25 August 2003
My nephew got signed up for correspondence Bible school by his great-grandmother! I'm so jealous I could spit!
A sample:
"When answering the questions below, you may refer back to our DISCOVER Guide to find the correct answer. Finding the answer in the guide will fix it in your mind. The number of each question in your Answer Sheet indicates the number of the section in DISCOVER Guide 1 where the answer can be found.
1. Read again section 1 (pages 2-4) of DISCOVER Guide 1, then place an X before each of the two correct statements:
__ The design of the human body points to a skillful Designer.
__ The design of the human body is evidence of a Creator.
__ The human body is a result of millions of years of evolution."
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(9)
04:15:02 PM,Monday 25 August 2003
They're offering Argentine Tango lessons at the Vo-Tech this fall. I really wanna take 'em, but you have to have a partner to sign up. My last partner was too tall, and he smelled of herring. I don't even know if he's still in town. I don't really know anyone in this town because I'm all nocturnal and antisocial... humph. I could ask the guy I work with, but I don't think he's really the tango type. And he's too tall. And he'd probably get the wrong idea, not that I'd blame him. I just want to tango. I bought a CD of tangoes at a pawn shop today for $3, and some of them are godawful, but enough of them are so damn fine. And I can only remember four moves from when I took the class back in high school. I want to learn the suave foot-flipping head swiping version. I just need some dancing male figure to drag along with me. Hm hm. Would my nephew? Ooooh, there's a brilliant thought... hee-hee!
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(6)
11:51:27 PM,Sunday 24 August 2003
"Mio molto amato castrato dal Prato!"
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07:58:08 PM,Sunday 24 August 2003
I'm turning into the Golgafrinchan captain. Whenever I say to myself, "What should I do now?" I always seem to answer, "Take a bath!"
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06:36:00 AM,Sunday 24 August 2003
I know it's bad form to blog dreams, or even to tell people your dreams, because t hey're never as interesting to anyone else as they are to you, but maybe nightmares are different. Though this one wasn't really very terrifying, except a little bit to me.
I was back at college, though it couldn't have been St. John's, because it was 2003 (a point was made of this later on), and I was doing a research paper. Like I always do, I had procrastinated all night, and the thing was due in an hour or so. But everyone else in my class seemed to have done the same. I had been assigned to do a paper on "Beauty in Ugliness", and even though I had immediately wanted to write on E.T.A. Hoffmann and Toulouse-Lautrec, I had had to write on some Norwegian speed skater and a character called "Cassie" from La Jeuve (??) instead. But the strange thing was, for the first time in my life, I was actually enjoying writing the paper. It was all coming out of me slickly and simply, and I knew I'd have plenty of time to finish.
Then I got transported into 1989. I don't know how. It was the middle of the night, and I was 8, even though I had my 22-year-old mind and memories, and someone was with me. There was a long to-do involving a phone card, and someone else was with me. We were being chased by enemies from 2003, from the future. It wasn't scary yet; just exciting. We were outwitting them.
Then that other person disappeared, and I was with my parents. We had to go to a Parent-Teacher conference. I had mostly explained to them that I was from the future and trying to get back and if they helped me, they'd get their 8 year old daughter back no problem. I think they mostly believed me, too. Some horrible nice pretty lady was trying to film us with a camcorder, but she was being too sweet -- that's always the tipoff when it comes to evil people, isn't it? From Dahl to Rowling: Nice ~ Evil. (That's "is proportionate to". Did I get it right?) We stole it from her and busted it and exposed the film, but she cackled as if we were just playing into her plan, so we stuffed the bits into our pockets and went to the Parent-Teacher Conference at my old school.
I guess now that I'm a little more awake it doesn't seem so strange, and it didn't bother me in the dream, of course, but when I just woke up full of nightmare sweat, it seemed horribly unfair that my school wasn't like it was suspposed to be. It was arranged all wrong, in circles instead of corridors. I know dreams distort geography, but... my elementary school was torn down (and another one built up in its place, also consuming the old playground) the summer after I left. I can't ever see it, except in home movies and memories. Dreams are more vivid than memories; why can't they also be more accurate? Anyhow.
I'm completely awake now, and this is far too long. It's also lost its scary cast so now I know how tedious it would be if I posted it. But I'll post it anyway. In very brief: my violin teacher, conflated with the lady next door who had so many cats, turned out not to be evil, which I figured out because when she hugged me and scratched my back, it hurt a little bit and evil people would have been more gentle. We walked round and round in circles being chased. The bad guys poisoned the water which affected my dad and half the people there but not my mother because she didn't drink it and not me because... well, I don't know. That's always the way in dreams -- nothing bad ever happens to me; only to the ones around me. I hate it. I woke up with a premonition of terror and rushed upstairs to make sure everyone was ok. But it was 2:30 in the morning and they were in bed. So I sat down a little anxious and wrote this instead. The end.
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(4)
05:31:26 AM,Sunday 24 August 2003
Rain. Finally. Thank God.
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09:50:55 AM,Saturday 23 August 2003
O.o.C.Q.o.t.D.: "Was that Underpants and The Poet Guy who just went walking past?"
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10:04:14 PM,Friday 22 August 2003
Chambered Bawdylust
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(2)
07:52:57 PM,Friday 22 August 2003
I'm glad that Neil and Moss are all home and safe and that Julia, at least, has gotten to Seattle (and presumably farther, at this point) with her darling mother, but, boy, is this place quiet. Lull. Could be worse, sure, damn, but. Contrasting emotions, y'know?
I've decided that my intermediate-between-now-and-real-life dream job, short of Antarctica or England, will be working for Naxos. I'm just crazy in love with Naxos. $6 music. Bucketloads of it. And the vast majority doesn't suck -- some of it is bloody transcendent! All the good stuff, plus rare repertoire that you've never even heard of (I just picked up a CD of Glass Harmonica music, and it's... god help me, it rules. Who coulda thunk?), witty and interesting liner notes, hell, even purty pictures on the front. I wish they'd put poor John Dickie the Strangling Tenor out to pasture, but other than him, I can't think of a single thing wrong with that company that even bears mentioning in the face of their overwhelming awesomeness.
So I wanna fetch 'em coffee or something. I could be a secretary or a janitor or I don't care what -- there's gotta be something there I'm qualified for, and I bet no matter how lowly you are you get discounts. Their main offices are based in Hong Kong, I think, and they've got, naturally, a very large European sector, but Naxos of America is based in Tennessee. It's very rare that an enormously successful company is actually worth an honest man's adulation. Isn't it? I wanna be a lackey to something like that.
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(2)
11:40:14 PM,Wednesday 20 August 2003
Every year, a little while before school starts, I have a dream where I'm in a play but haven't learned the part and haven't gone to any of the rehearsals. This has gone bang-on clockwork every year since I can remember. The play varies, but it's always the same feeling. I pull it off with varying measures of success, but usually it isn't so bad. The strange thing is that, even though I'm not going to school this year for the first time since I was four years old (And so have no reason to buy school supplies, my very favorite yearly ritual. Sigh.), I had the dream again last night. This time it was Romeo and Juliet, and I was some character called Cyrus or Quentin or something, who sort of turned out just to be Mercutio after it all got going. I kept rushing backstage to crib off my edition of Shakespeare, but it didn't have the cuts the play was using, and I could only remember a page or so of dialogue at a time before I'd have to make up an excuse to rush offstage again. But all the boys' parts were played by chicks, so at least I had something to look at. It came off reasonably well, all considered. And my breeches looked pretty studly.
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(2)
12:33:27 PM,Tuesday 19 August 2003