Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
K. just called. What a thing to wake up to. Mmmmph.
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09:11:01 AM,Thursday 23 June 2005
Have started seriously considering getting trained in stenography. I like moving my fingers while my eyes and ears are occupied. It's why I listen to audiobooks and play video games, but rarely one without the other. I'm damn quick at qwerty, and I bet I could be even better at this kind of phoneme-based setup, once I wrap my brain around it. I had discounted the idea before because I have zero interest in court reporting per se -- but this is the same training you have to get in order to become a closed captioner or DVD subtitler, and that stuff sounds fun and pays big spondoolik. It'd be the same sort of work as I'm doing now, only realtime and exciting and not restricted to interviews and reality shows. I hope that an advanced degree in the Humanities isn't a total pipe dream, but, firstly, I don't know how I'd live while getting such a thing, even assuming I could find a place whose tuition wouldn't break me, and, secondly, it ain't gonna put rarebit on the table once I'm hooded, especially since teaching ain't my calling nohow. I've got a girl who's either launching a singing career or heading straight down the doctoral road in a couple years. I want us to live together when she graduates, damnit, and both of those options involved a delayed payoff, no matter how studly you are (and she is). Everyone says now is just when the demand for closed-captioners is starting to explode, and I don't want to miss this wave the way I missed the computer boom. So. I'm going to look into it.
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(9)
12:44:11 AM,Thursday 23 June 2005
I didn't get the job at the Milken Archive. Oh well. At least work has picked up considerably at my transcription job, after three dead and depressing weeks. If I can work thirty hours (please Ford) a week there at ~$22.00/hr (though that, of course, depends on the work itself -- how audible the tape is, how many subjects, how many details I have to look up, whether the equipment is working properly), it'll come out about even with working forty hours at $16.00/hr at Mrs. A's. So eh. I'll keep looking. I'm not as disappointed as I thought I'd be. I had a little time to get used to the idea, and I guess I can live without making coffee, supervising truculent freelancers, or calling hotels in Europe to be sure they put out the special feather pillows for the Artistic Director. {shrug} Onwards and upwards, as they say.
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(2)
11:23:37 PM,Wednesday 22 June 2005
You live across the street from a grocery store. Would it kill you to buy something green once in a while?
Sour apple toothpaste doesn't count.
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09:08:59 PM,Wednesday 22 June 2005
I <3 Francis Heaney.
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(2)
08:40:04 PM,Wednesday 22 June 2005
Bastards. Yesterday, in the subway, they had two posters right next to each other: one telling you what train to take to Pride this weekend, and one telling you what train to take to get to the Billy Graham Crusade. It made me grin for hours. Today, only the Billy Graham poster was there. Feh.
But on the train coming home I saw a kid wearing a T-shirt imprinted with the following in friendly cereal-box letters:
Heavenfly Real Frum
Happy Armystore Presents JW Man
FRUIT health GUSHERS
Health Real Design Presents Man
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08:38:18 PM,Wednesday 22 June 2005
I like the comic book's plot better for my own peculiar reasons, but Ghost World is an excellent goddamn movie. Finally saw it. It's good for summer and solitude and the mood the two of 'em conspire to put me into. I miss walking around aimlessly at night. I haven't done that since I left Missoula. Then, I would either walk around the outskirts of the city, or walk into the forest until I reached the river. Here, I'd never stop. And there, if it was three in the morning, I'd never meet anybody. Here I would. It's different, putting aside the practical aspects of the idea. I'm glad I have a month alone, though. I'm glad my girl is surrounded by beauty and doing what she loves, and I'm glad that it's given me a small finite void to breathe in, arrange myself in, like a diving bell. Inertia. Argh. I'll win. I swear. The alternative is horrifying.
Sunday night, Porter and I saw a fabulous combination of Renaissance choral music and smartass cabaret, with dancing all through. Then we walked and drove and debated abstract notions. That's good. I need more of that kind of thing. I'll concentrate my solitude rather than hoarding it. I'll do something concerted. Mediocrity's a bugaboo. Paralysis is the real evil.
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(4)
12:32:42 AM,Wednesday 22 June 2005
Daimons are non-rational.
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(5)
12:44:23 AM,Tuesday 21 June 2005
Which I do.
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12:28:21 AM,Tuesday 21 June 2005
I was putting together a personalized mix for Gabriel when I got sidetracked (his question about wanting to be a Lost Boy intersected pointedly with the Dar Williams number) and slapped this together. Now that's out of my system, and I can get down to serious mixing. I gotta admit, though, I kinda like it.
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09:49:41 PM,Monday 20 June 2005
The imps K. and I ordered back in April came yesterday, so she missed 'em. Not like I feel sorry for her, but there it is. I got her bottles of Intrigue and Incantation and an imp of Envy. For myself I got a bottle of Miskatonic University, and five imps:
Of the free stuff, I'm most excited about Aizen-Myoo. It's got this sharp, playful note that makes me jump. Haven't tried it on yet, though.
I put on a bit of Miskatonic University yesterday, and -- hoopla! It's not at all the cloying, reeking, sugary thing I feared it would be. It stays very close to the skin, and is really quite subtle, even after a generous reapplication. It's maybe not as complex as I'd like; I don't get much polished wood or old books -- but it's a very nice scent, all the same. More like good rich hazelnut candy than coffee or whisky. I like it rather a lot, to my immense relief.
Right now I'm wearing Saint-Germain. I'm thrilled. Both subtle and complex, at least to my nose. In the vial, it's a lot like Scarecrow, but on my skin, it lacks the itchy grass scent that develops in Scarecrow after the drydown. Just sort of sandy and herbal. I wouldn't say soapy, because I find white soap to be an extremely unpleasant smell, and this has nothing of that. But it's strong in the center and light at the edges, which gives it a nice heft at short distances, the way freshly-washed skin does -- my favorite soap is Pears, and not 'cause of Peter Pears or because I used to own the painting; it's just the only soap whose scent doesn't make my nose wrinkle. They work beautifully together, so that's telling. It's serene, elegant, and unobtrusively masculine. I'll get a second opinion when I meet Porter later, but if he agrees, this one's getting pride of place.
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(10)
03:07:58 PM,Sunday 19 June 2005
MC Frontalot w/ full band
Thursday, June 23rd
10 PM (confirmed)
The Bitter End
147 Bleecker Street
(between Thompson and LaGuardia)
New York City
21 and over
seven dollars
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(3)
12:19:39 PM,Sunday 19 June 2005
Recent things:
The girl went off to Greece today. She'll be ecstatic mucking about with Mycenean pots and swimming in the Aegean, and I've resolved to keep busy over the next month. Lord knows there's plenty to do in this crazy city: Tiny Dynamite and Tallis's Spem in Alium tomorrow, the Pride Parade and a Stoop sale on Sunday, Burlesque, bad literature night, Jollyship the Whizbang, Shopsins, mating horseshoe crabs... Also, what did I do before Nonsense NYC? Oh yeah, bugger-all. That sucked. No more.
Some kids have been setting off fireworks under my window for the last few nights. Tonight it's mostly been Roman candles and about ten thousand little firecrackers.
The Magnetic Fields turn mild melancholy into something stranger and better.
I had a damn good job interview, and all signs point to yes, but that just means I have to fight like a Cockney in eel-paste to keep from getting my hopes up. Damn I want this job. Damn. Ssshh.
My brother Robert has a Livejournal. This is powerful awesome.
I need to hang out with Porter and Martin and James Inzeo and Tim Sparkman and all the other studly Johnnies within traveling distance, plus the rest of the good sorts I've met since moving here. I've been rejoicing in diurnality something fierce, but I've got to take further advantage of it, mainly where other humans are concerned.
I'm getting a new roommate who I haven't met yet but who has the same name as my girlfriend and just got a PhD in Musicology. So hey.
My internet connection has been slow and dodgy for the last few days. And I want my new Dr. Who episode, grr.
When I sit around and do nothing, I'm dissatisfied with myself, and things just slide into slow, comfortable, dismal dreck. When I walk around and look at things and talk to people and read in the sunlight and think about the Seven Laughters of God and other puzzles, I feel full of good things, and I can count my days spent instead of wasted.
I need to play music with people. Goddamnit. I'm dying without it.
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(7)
12:18:51 AM,Saturday 18 June 2005
Argh. Have to get up and eat breakfast and clean my room and get dressed and mail packages and call work again and all these damn things but I'm listening to all the CDs I've ripped from my roommates over the last couple days:
Haydn -- Nelson Mass
Haydn -- The Seven Last Words (Emerson)
Schutz -- Geistliche Chormusik
Mozart -- Great Mass (Hogwood)
Vivaldi -- L'estro Armonico (Biondi)
Misc. -- Come, Gentle Night (Music of Shakespeare's World)
Bach -- Motets (Herreweghe)
Bach -- Actus Tragicus
Bach -- Art of Fugue (Emerson)
Bach -- St. John' Passion (Parrott)
Bach -- Cantatas (Lieberson)
Bach -- In Honore (The Sixteen)
Bach -- Brandenburg Concertos
Sondheim -- Sweeney Todd
Beethoven -- Missa Solemnis (Solti)
Mozart -- Don Giovanni (Harnoncourt)
Handel -- Arias (Battle)
Mozart -- Die Zauberflote (Klemperer)
Handel -- Alcina (Graham and Fleming)
I mean, dude. Dude-ass. I've got them all on shuffle, which I know is the wrong way to listen to coherent works like operas and masses, but goddamnit, I want 'em all in my ears right now, and this is the closest way to wangle it. But the problem is that I've only got dinky monitor speakers, and they distort at ridiculously low levels, so I've got to listen with my earphones plugged directly into my sound card, which means that I'm tethered to the spot. Which is bad. 'Cause, um, see above. Sigh.
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(2)
01:18:24 PM,Tuesday 14 June 2005
Yes, your girlfriend's Hello Cthulhu tank top rocks.
No, you may not wear it three days in a row. Go do laundry. Now.
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(3)
05:56:06 PM,Monday 13 June 2005
My jukebox is such a little smartass. I remember recently when it played "Like a Bird on a Wire" and the Moulin Rouge "Like a Virgin" back to back just to give me fits on the subway. Then its little theological moment, with "Brother Christian" followed by "St. Augustine's Pears" followed by "How The Fruit of Love Rotted in the Garden of Allah". And just now it served up some airy languid polyphony, and I told it, "Hey, you know I love that stuff, but not while I'm cleaning the bathroom." So of course it switched into "Shower Scene". Punk.
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05:42:59 PM,Friday 10 June 2005
This looks damn cool.
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(2)
04:51:21 PM,Friday 10 June 2005
Thank Slurm for Bloghead Life Tools.
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(8)
03:23:05 PM,Friday 10 June 2005
Iber felder vegn, oyf a vogn hey
Mit zun un vint un regn, forn klezmer tsvey
A khidesh, oy, a khidesh, zog ver zenen zey?
Across fields we go,
Atop a wagon of hay
With sun and wind and rain,
Ride two musicians.
A novelty, oh, a novelty.
Tell me, who are they?
Yidl mitn fidl, Arye mitn bas
Dos lebn iz a lidl, to vozhe zayn in kas.
Hey, Yidl, fidl, shmidl, hey, dos lebn iz a shpas.
Yidl with his fiddle,
Arye with his bass,
This existence is a song,
Why should I be upset?
Yidl, fidl, shmidl - Hey!
This life is pure fun.
A tsig shteyt oyf der lonke
Un meket troy'rik "me!"
Hey, du tsig, du shoyte, tro'rik zayn is fe!
Shoklt er dos berdl: "In take, take fe!"
A goat stands in the meadow
And bleats a sad "meh!"
Hey you goat, you foolish one,
Being sad is "feh"!
He nods his little beard.
"Truly, truly 'feh'!"
A foygl flit "gut morgn, gut morgn, a gut yor"
Der troyer un di zorgn tsu al de shvartse yor!
Dem vint a lakh in ponem, un Yidl, Yidl for!
A bird flies by. "Good morning,
good morning and good year."
The sadness and the worries
Should go to the devil.
Laughing in the wind's face,
Yidl travels on! _
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(3)
12:31:05 PM,Friday 10 June 2005
Odious whups my bloomers.
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07:33:37 PM,Thursday 9 June 2005
