[12.01.03] - Haha. Well, I'm sorry for jerking
you all around like this, but screw all of this.
By "this," I
mean the loupe. I cranked out 11 posts in the past month,
and had desire to crank out about -8 more. That's right - I actually
just wanted to write about 3 posts.
Sandy Koufax, one of the
greatest left-handed pitchers in baseball history, retired at
an "early" age. This word, "early," really
just means he didn't keep pitching into the years when his ERA
would rise to 5.76 and his W-L record would be something like
6-14. A lot of people think Koufax retired early. I think Koufax
retired right on time.
After realizing that the
number of sites I read on a daily basis is about 4, I also realized
my site isn't "white noise," as I previously claimed
- or, at least, it wasn't before The Anticlimactic Ending #1.
But now, maybe it is. And maybe it isn't. But it's nothing I want
to do.
Maybe I just needed some
time to ease off it. the loupe is like a pack of Virginia
Slims for the tall brunette in 1970s magazine ads. It's a little
interesting but mostly a lot addictive for me. I couldn't quit
it cold turkey, but needed to wean myself off it before it gave
me a nasty case of carpal tunnel.
I hate those bastard websites
that I visit, looking for information on the Human Genome Project,
the Gross National Product of Andorra, and the correlation among
the price of tea leaves, Tarot cards, and Ouija boards at the
local game store. I hate them because they are never updated.
These sites don't feel the need to tell me they don't update -
they just don't, and I only realize it when I figure out that
there's no way Ouija boards are only $8.79 in 2003.
"Let's make like a
couplet / like two pairs of lips."
There won't be another
weblog anytime soon. This is not a clever ruse to cover up the
fact that I could launch an anonymous one. I don't want an anonymous
one at all.
The site will remain here
for some period of time, after which I will let the domain lapse,
most likely. You can come and visit until then - I'm leaving all
the content up.
I don't feel any remorse
or questioning in my mind like I did the last time I shut it down,
so that means this time I'm doing the right thing. It'll be good
to have this burden gone, and when I tell you that the first word
I honestly thought of for the first clause of this sentence was
"burden," I think you'll all breathe easy, nod your
head, and tip your glasses to me.
I'm glad you all came to
visit me, and I'm glad some of you came back to visit me.
Stay safe this holiday
season and afterwards.
[11.24.03] - There's a new poem today, 3 short
memories, on the sidebar.
I'm home sick today. I went
in for a couple hours, but then left. I think it's the dastardly
flu coming on - I have a sort throat, but more prescient is the
fact that my arms, legs, back, and neck are all sore, and I haven't
done anything but, well, nothing.
Unless the flu hits me hard
tomorrow, I still plan on going to Duluth for a few days for Thanksgiving.
[11.22.03] - There's a review of the sublimely,
supremely excellent The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys posted.
A bunch of quick links:
At the end of this
article about ABC television, there's mention of a Stephen King
miniseries, Kingdom Hospital. This must be a remake of Lars
von Trier's series, right?
I don't see Ronald Reagan
in any sort of favorable light, but this quote: "The movie's
producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, said they are "pleased that
our final version of the movie will be presented. We are proud to
live in a country where everyone, including artists and writers,
has the right of free speech," from a
CNN article, makes the producers sound like idiots. Free speech
does not equal 'getting your movie on television.' It isn't
the same thing. People bastardize free speech like there's no tomorrow.
So, here comes the holiday
season, whether you like it (I don't) or not. Sure, it means a lot
of days off from work and stuff, but that doesn't even do it. I
sort of wish I could go back in time to a period when the holidays
were actually exciting and I wasn't jaded, disillusioned, or what-have-you.
I don't know what my problem is with holidays, but I sure have one.
[11.18.03] - How does the CD Database online
identify CDs? At first, I thought it was by some unique number encoded
on purchased CDs, but then I took all of The New Pornographers'
Mass Romantic in the form of mp3s collected from various
sources, sequenced them appropriately, and slapped them on a CD-R.
It was still identified correctly. Does it, perhaps, look at the
number of tracks and associated track times and then guess based
on that? I guess I could try by creating mp3s with the exact times
on a given disc, then burning them and seeing what it gets identified
as, if anything. It seems like a lot of trouble, so if you know
the answer already, spare me.
Also, I think I would kill
myself if I had to go to work every day at a job I couldn't stand.
Seriously. I don't know how some people do it. I remember when I
worked (briefly) at American Express doing some sales entry temp
work, and I hated it. Fortunately, I found my current job within
two weeks of starting at AmEx, because much longer and I would have
started sending out little doodles of me hanging by a noose along
with the prospectuses financial planners were ordering.
Today I got three things:
1) The Extended Edition of
The Two Towers on DVD. It came out today. The fact that I
purchased it before noon makes me a certifiable geek.
2) One of my Richter prints,
which I brought in a while back to get framed. It looks stunning
hanging over:
3) My new couch, freshly
delivered, which looks stunning sitting under:
2) One of my Richter prints,
which I brought in a while back to get framed. It looks stunning
hanging over:
3) My new couch, just kidding.
[11.16.03] - There are new November 2003 photos
today. There's also a review of Master and Commander: The Far
Side of the World. Oh, and new keywords. The bookshelf
has been updated (reduced, thankfully, as I've been on a reading
tear lately), and the wishlist has been modified slightly.
I figured that since Christmas was coming, I better remove everything
I own. Oh, and archives will just be done monthly, now, considering
I'm posting half (or less) as often as I used to.
How was your weekend? I ran
to Duluth for about 25 hours, stayed up really late back here in
Minneapolis, and went to the movie this afternoon. I ironed for
about an hour and watched two more episodes of 24: Season One,
which is good, but the whole "real-time" thing is a cheap
trick and sort of lame after a while. The first few episodes started
with Kiefer Sutherland's voice-over about how the events occur in
real time. Somewhere around episode 4 or 5, this intro narration
disappears. Did they honestly scrap this concept, or did they just
get tired of saying it? And if they scrapped it, didn't they foresee
it being a problem when they started this project? Well,
whatever, it sounds like it's getting a bad rap, but it isn't. It's
quite delecatable.
Regarding Master and Commander,
now that I've already written my review: I found the following quote
from Roger Ebert's review, and it seems fitting. A bit overstated,
but I do appreciate his comparison with the work of David Lean (Lawrence
of Arabia for me, mostly): "Master and Commander is grand
and glorious, and touching in its attention to its characters. Like
the work of David Lean, it achieves the epic without losing sight
of the human, and to see it is to be reminded of the way great action
movies can rouse and exhilarate us, can affirm life instead of simply
dramatizing its destruction."
[11.12.03] - An addendum to yesterday's grammar-explosion:
National American University advertises here in the Twin Cities.
I don't know how "National" they are, so if you don't
know, they're one of these fourth-rate universities offering a college
degree only on nights whose date is also a prime number and it only
takes two weeks, or something. They have a "campus" in
the Mall of America. Need I say more? Yes? One more thing, then:
one of their television advertisements claims, regarding which night
you can attend, "Saturday's Alright" (sic). Alright
is not a word. You can judge NAU however you like based on that
fact.
[11.11.03] - "Esquire reporter Chuck Klosterman
said Britney, while not commenting on whether she saw herself as
a sexual icon, 'acted as if this had never crossed her mind. Either
Britney Spears is the least self-aware person I've ever met, or
she's way, way savvier than any of us realize.'" Can I pick
one? Can I?
"I feel sorry for people
who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good
as they're going to feel all day." - Frank Sinatra
"When I read about the
evils of drinking, I have up reading." - Henny Youngman
"Beauty is the first
test; there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
- G. H. Hardy
So far, I've written six
words to this post.
The quality publication Men's
Journal has published their list of the top 50 "guy movies"
of all time, only ten of which you can access online.
In the process, they've categorized men as dumb, oafish, and mesmerized
by blood, flashing lights, and neon. I would say the biggest congratulations
for the day go to the total idiots at Men's Journal, but
instead the biggest congrats go to CNN for bothering to report the
story as "news." I assure you, this isn't news.
Phillippe took a long, unintentioanl
hiatus from Achewood over the summer and fall. Now
he's in all sorts of trouble. I almost wish he had stayed under
the covers.
As someone who works with
words, writes them, reads them, spells them, and generally just
cares, I present to you a rare story from McSweeney's,
made rare by the fact that I actually read the whole damn thing.
"Words
and Expressions Commonly Misused by Insipid Brothers-In-Law."
Also, since this post is all about quotes, here are some from the
aforementioned:
"[There] is no such
fucking word as 'IRREGARDLESS.' It makes you sound even more stupid
than you actually are. The prefix 'IR-' is a negative. The suffix
'-LESS' is a negative. How many fucking negatives do you need in
one goddamned word? So help me God, I will beat the shit out of
you with a tire iron."
Well, maybe one quote is
enough. You enjoy.
[11.09.03] - I found out this evening that a
collegiate friend's brother was one of six U.S. soldiers killed
in the recent Black Hawk helicopter crash in Iraq. I haven't talked
to my friend in a year or so, but during our college years, we were
good friends, working together over the summer, taking classes together,
and so on. Both of us taught our first year of high school math
in the Kansas City, MO area, and I believe he's still teaching down
there.
Saying I'm more opposed to
the war in Iraq now than I was before is like saying Star Wars:
Episode II was worse than Star Wars: Episode I. I mean,
at a certain point, things just reach their maxima, they can't go
any farther in the direction they're going. Pitch black can never
be more black.
On one hand, I feel I'm only
talking about this because it gives me more of a reason to oppose
the war. My "No War in Iraq" button is the only politically-themed
button I've ever bothered to wear. Now I wish I could construct
a coat built only of those.
I'm not naive; I know that
people are dying over there all the time, and all those people are
somebody's sibling, somebody's child, hell, even somebody's old
collegiate friend's brother who I never met.
I guess I can't even imagine
how I would feel if someone in my extended family was killed over
there; there are cousins of mine that are over there, and have been
for some time.
It's cold outside. I'm going
to curl up under a warm blanket and sleep for seven hours.
[11.06.03] - Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday.
It hasn't been a harrowing week or anything, but the weekend should
be good, with a couple of chaps coming down from Duluth. There's
some spicy chili that's been made and will be heated in a crockpot
tomorrow so the 3 habanero peppers we put it in can bring it to
a sweaty simmer.
I'm glad to see people are
coming back to visit the site. I didn't tell most of the people
I know that the site is back up and running. I'm not sure why -
the site still isn't anonymous and I still don't feel free to say
everything I would like to say.
Liz Phair has a chorus that
says something like, "You're like my favorite underwear / It
just feels right" I don't even know. Man, I don't even have
favorite underwear. I wish I knew what favorite underwear felt like,
because then I could identify with Liz.
I have the Michael Gondry
DVD from Netflix. It's pretty cool - it's got some wild videos Gondry
directed for Bjork, the White Stripes, Daft Punk, and the Chemical
Brothers, and a lot of other stuff. I don't know, I'd probably buy
it but my guess is I have no interest in the 6 or 7 videos included
which he directed for some band called Oui Oui.
[11.04.03] - If you've been having trouble accessing
the site because a dialog box keeps coming up asking you for your
username and password, next time you see it please type in the following
information:
Username: [Type a valid credit
card number here.]
Password: [Type the associated
expiration information, in the form MM/YY.]
That's right, the loupe
is closing its free doors. I'm now charging people a mere $1.95
per visit (?!?!) to come and peruse. An additional $0.49
will be charged for each pop-up window opened on the site. All billing
will appear as "Plain Brown Wrapper, Inc." to help you
avoid suspicious significant others who are upset that you never
read their blog.
--
This, of course, isn't true.
Haha. Hopefully the username/password problem will be fixed soon.
Because my life is stupid,
mostly, I managed to miss The Decemberists' concert on account of
the fact I can't read a calendar. It was last night, which is not
the same as tonight.
There are fun things to be
had over at Cockeyed. If you
haven't been there in a while, you could go there.
[11.02.03] - I'm still wearing my "No War
in Iraq" button. I've had people come up to me and say, "Hey,
the war is over." Hey,
is it?
Yesterday evening my left
foot felt heavy, as if it had fallen asleep. I walked with a limp
and stumbled around, tripping on a wet towel in the hallway. I was
unable to curl my left-foot toes. It was freaky and weird. It continued
until I went to sleep. This morning it seems fine. Strange.
Thanks for pointing out the
site I was wondering about yesterday was thoughtpeach.
That was nice of you. And astute.
I was going to start using
Movable Type to run this site, but I'm a traditionalist, so I'm
sticking with good old Dreamweaver and cutting and pasting. It isn't
that I don't like MT (I do) or that I don't know how to use it (I
do, finally), but it's that I'm resistant to change.
I'm going to make a Mix CD
project. Eric did this once, but Eric doesn't get a link from me
because he scammed me out of a CD, never sending me one in return.
You can make me a CD and send it to me, and I can make you one,
and send it to you. I think every reader should participate in this.
Then, maybe, you can send CDs to other people, and we'll all get
new CDs, and we can listen to them and think of each other, and
if we don't like them, we can use them as coasters or solar panels
for our time machines. You should tell me if you want to play along.
[11.01.03] - Well. It looks like it's me and
you again, old friend. It was a wonderful, unplanned sojourn from
the site, and that will continue, in a manner of speaking.
I received a lot of useful
little notes and ideas and comments from people due to closing the
site down a few weeks ago. I also learned a lot by watching Layne,
whose site both ended and restarted in the time mine was down. She
came to her senses well before I did.
I was right when I posted
my closure post - the site has to end sometime. I can't do this
forever.
Layne was right, too. She
missed it, and I did too.
And Jenny
was right. She told me that, with her site, it was important to
realize that the site was her bitch, and she wasn't the site's bitch.
I missed being part of the
little community of blogs and miscellany I read on a daily basis.
Sure, I could still read it, but it was like being a bench player
on a world championship team. Yeah, I get to enjoy the excellence,
but I sure am not taking part in it. The difference is that a bench
player sits the bench by someone else's choice. I was sitting the
bench by my choice.
Maybe that's a crappy analogy,
but it's the best I can do.
Sit down, son, daughter.
This is how it will be.
I'll write, my guess is two
or three times a week. I'll write when I feel like it, when I have
something to say. Posts will be longer, probably, but less frequent.
The content of the posts might change a little - that will reveal
itself in time.
The archives have
been updated. The forum doesn't work anymore because I deleted all
the personalized templates, user profiles, and posts without backing
them up. It wasn't used much, anyway, so I've removed all that.
You can leave comments if you like.
Lastly, someone whose website
is at some address with the word peach in the title made
a reference to my site in its absence. If you're out there, send
me an email. I've lost your address.
See, now I'm thinking to
myself, 'What else do I need to write?' But I don't need to write
anything else. It's nice to be back. Hang around.
Cows
dream when sleeping lying down; they do not dream if they sleep
standing up.
