sky was a bread roll

Favorite part of Only Skin

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:05:41 GMT

I'm still blown away by her, even after listening to Ys as many times as I have:

mountain goats.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:28:27 GMT

some of my favorite mountain goats lyrics ever (actually, one of my favorite mg songs period - it's so quiet and pretty and ambient). john darnielle said in an interview that it's about his stepfather who abused him and his sister, and that despite the abuse, the stepfather really did love john and his sister. since i've not experienced abuse, i associate this song with some of the less painful but still uncomfortable and dark aspects of any relationship.

love love love

king saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong,
and joseph's brothers sold him down the river for a song,
and sonny liston rubbed some tiger balm into his glove.
some things you do for money and some you do for love love love.

raskolnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why
when he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye.
some things you'll do for money and some you'll do for fun,
but the things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one.

love love is going to lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place.
now we see things as in a mirror dimly.
then we shall see each other face to face.

and way out in seattle young kurt cobain
snuck out to the greenhouse, put a bullet in his brain.
snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above,
some moments last forever, but some flare up with love love love.

best movie i've seen this year

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:43:14 GMT

</lj-embed>

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:15:34 GMT

This book continues to amaze me. I've been reading one or two stories every day at work (ahhh bad employee!). They are all at once anxiety-inducing, creepy, sad, heartfelt, tender and familiar. The narrators of the stories written in the first person have serious, crippling insecurities about sex and relationships... they are desperate for relief from their embarrassing anxieties and troubling fantasies. Their insecurities and personality quirks sometimes threaten to bring down their long term desires: love, happiness, security. The characters harbor grudges and make bad judgments, and as a result they occasionally feel like failures. There is an obsessive teenage boy who makes ritual circles out of socks and other random household paraphernalia in which to masturbate. He likes his girlfriend but can't have sex without pretending to be another person, or a host of other made up personalities. There's one about a grad student and his wife who go on a cross country road trip that starts off uneventfully enough but that spirals into uncontrollable despair after he cheats on her with a motel clerk. There's one about a sincerely caring, young Catholic priest who questions his vocation after he gets to know the woman who cleans up after him.

These are tremendously potent little stories. They are funnier, more palatable and less dour than I've described them, and that's what makes them so effective. Protagonists are normal people with a few flaws that I could relate to and sympathize with.

I like the short story medium a lot, I think... if a short story is done right, it can pack a lot of emotional punch for its length. Short stories can also dig at those feelings that shake you in a single moment and change the way you look at life.

100 years of solitude

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:49:57 GMT

Lyrics that were on my tongue while I walked/jogged home from Mac's Bar tonight (made me remember that some things are consistently good):

Armageddon

"He went out into the courtyard at ten minutes after four, when he heard the distant brass instruments, the beating of the bass drum, and the shouting of the children, and for the first time since his youth he knowingly fell into a trap of nostalgia and relived that prodigious afternoon of the gypsies when his father took him to see ice. Santa Sofia de la Piedad dropped what she was doing and ran to the door.

'It's the circus,' she shouted.

Instead of going to the chestnut tree, Colonel Aureliano Buendia also went to the street door and mingled with the bystanders who were watching the parade. He saw a woman dressed in gold sitting on the head of an elephant. He saw a sad dromedary. He saw a bear dressed like a Dutch girl keeping time to the music with a soup spoon and a pan. He saw the clowns doing cartwheels at the end of the parade and once more he saw the face of his miserable solitude when everything had passed by and there was nothing but the bright expanse of the street and the air full of flying ants with a few onlookers peering into the precipice of uncertainty. Then he went to the chestnut tree, thinking about the circus, and while he urinated he tried to keep on thinking about the circus, but he could no longer find the memory. He pulled his head in between his shoulders like a baby chick and remained motionless with his forehead against the trunk of the chestnut tree. The family did not find him until the following day at eleven o'clock in the morning when Santa Sofia de la Piedad went to throw out the garbage in back and her attention was attracted by the descending vultures. (267 Marquez)

~~~~~~

"Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened Ursula, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end." (249 Marquez)

Writer's Block: Where the Cheese Goes

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:11:20 GMT

What should cheese go on, and what should cheese NOT go on?

View other answers

OK, so being a humongous cheese enthusiast, I have to answer this. Cheese is excellent on pasta, bread, rice or any other sort of starch as long as the other flavors involved don't seriously clash with the cheese. For example, fried rice. NEVER put cheese on fried rice. That's just sick. Cheese is da bomb on veggie chili, in quiches, over most soups, on bagels (cream cheese - especially Brueggers' Bagels cream cheese). Cheese is not good on certain soyburgers, like Morningstar's Asian ginger burger. In fact I don't think cheese is common in Asian food period... something about Asian cultures relying a lot more on plant based foods instead of animal based ones (less meat, cheese, etc). Brie cheese on french bread is delish, it's so rich and mild it almost tastes like (thick) butter.

Cheese shouldn't go on the genitals. Usually. I think that would be pretty gross. Or not, I don't know...?

Cheese should not go on inanimate objects except for eating utensils like forks and knives. No cheese on the walls or under tables. No cheese in your hair comb. No cheese on the ironing board or between the sheets. No cheese on the keyboard.

Nor should cheese go on animals. Especially since cheese comes from animals... that would be really insulting... kind of like smearing someone's breast milk all over them after it has been processed and made into... cheese?

star trek parody

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:22:08 GMT

Star Trek TNG Rap

Lots of penis references

Hilarious

hello bon iver

Sat, 31 May 2008 23:43:55 GMT

the four agreements

Fri, 30 May 2008 22:15:17 GMT

By chance I came across these "four agreements" in an LJ community. They say that if you try to live by these "agreements" your happiness and satisfaction with life will surge. They are pretty intuitive but it's convenient to have them all together like this. Anywho, I'm just gonna post them up...

The Four Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your word - don't talk shit about yourself or other people.
2. Don't take anything personally.
3. Don't make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

#2 doesn't seem very realistic. What if you are seriously in the wrong and someone tries to tell you? But in general it's smart not to take things so personally. This is definitely something I do often.

#3 is a huge one for me. Assumptions prevent people from talking to one another, asking questions, and feeling. I'd rather be honest and ask a dumb question than make a false, bad judgment.

Gah, I've been wanting to update this LJ with something more substantial than the occasional diary entry but it seems that my life has suddenly become a little busier with work. Speaking of work... it's nice. My supervisor's cool, the work is easy as pie, and I'm bringing in some money. My first paycheck is going to my parents though after the overdraft & Amtrak fiasco (owe them $200 + ).

dumpstermouse , I will be emailing you that essay for "Against the Flood" tonight, thanks again for the invitation.

I figured out a good name for my zine: cinders. I love the thought of cinders and ashes - organic material burnt and transformed, that will eventually assimilate itself back into the earth and living things. Also, I associate cinders with a sort of blissful state of calm and detachment. A still state between the unpredictability of life and moods and hormones and all that jazz.

wut??

Fri, 16 May 2008 15:20:23 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLJ5a6aJOb8

goals, where did you go

Sun, 11 May 2008 12:55:53 GMT

I spend far too much time on the internet and I think it's taking a toll on my social interaction in real life. It's not like I'm on the computer for six hours a day or something but however long I am on, is too long. So from now on I'm going to be solely checking email and filling out job apps. Maybe I will update LJ if anything exciting or notable happens in my life.

So, sayonara internet, at least for a while.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:10:02 GMT

OK, so I did a small friends cut as there were a couple people who haven't updated their LJs for a couple months. If you were cut and object to being cut, please comment.

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:27:04 GMT

Tagged by my LJ friend "dumpstermouse"

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good... but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to.

(Don't) Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult
The Mending of the Gown by Sunset Rubdown
I Want You by Bob Dylan
Mishto by Gogol Bordello
The Sickbed of Cuchulainn by The Pogues
Heretic Pride by The Mountain Goats
Sing Me Spanish Techno by The New Pornographers

OK, LJ friends... your turn

bluewater_sky
what_if
idioticpoet
jurks
dreaming_true
fdrounds
beatmouserz

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:44:26 GMT

Random quote from the Bible that I like:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:52:23 GMT

Some roads are only seen at night.
Ghost roads, nothing but neon signs.
But some nights the neon gas gets free-
Turns into walking dead like me.

And I've been makin' promises I know I'll never keep.
One of these days I'm gonna leave you in your sleep.
I have to go when the whistle blows-
The whistle knows my name.
Baby, I was born on a train.

I know that you were never young,
And I know you probably won't get old.
But honey, nobody's gonna hurt you anymore.
And nobody's gonna make you wanna die.

But I've been makin' promises I know I'll never keep.
One of these days I'm gonna leave you in your sleep.
I have to go when the whistle blows-
The whistle knows my name.
Baby, I was born on a train.

I'll go one cold and gray morning.
And you won't remember anything.
But some people don't believe in time.
And some of us don't believe in life.

But I've been makin' promises I know I'll never keep.
One of these days I'm gonna leave you in your sleep.
I have to go when the whistle blows-
The whistle knows my name.
Baby, I was born on a train...

Baby, I was born on a train...

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:31:31 GMT

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000433.html

Ha. Ha. Ha. I heart T-Rex.

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:34:26 GMT

Moments can be monuments to you
If your life is interesting and true.
It's just the same for a man or a girl,
The meaning of the world lies outside thw world.

People love people and they understand
if you wanna renovate your background mind
(a federal woman needs a municipal man)
people gotta synchronize to animal time.

You can't change the feeling
but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two...
People always come around.

I'm studying the ceiling on a little afternoon
and when I paint my dining room
people gonna come around.

I love to see a rainbow from a garden hose
lit up like the blood of a centerfold
I love the city and the city rain,
suburban kids with biblical names.

People ask people to watch their scotch.
People send people up to the moon.
When they return, well there isn't much.
People be careful not to crest too soon.

The drums march along at the clip of an I.V. drip
like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip.
I really hope you'll come around.

It's sunny and 75. It feels so good to be alive.
Come on baby don't stay inside.
Everybody's coming out tonight.

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:05:35 GMT

http://www.slate.com/id/2141631/

Good review... I agree with this guy's assessment of misanthropy at the end. It only reflects badly on the misanthrope, etc etc.

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:01:54 GMT

To be awake is the only thing that matters. Seriously, the ONLY thing.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:15:44 GMT

In Environ 270 today the professor brought in a former student of hers that spent two months in the Dominican Republic, working with an NGO and shooting a documentary. Her name is Isabelle Carbonell, and the purpose of the NGO's presence there was to educate a village about HIV/AIDS prevention. Carbonell helped the NGO by designing some educational cartoons and fund-raising, but ultimately ended up interviewing the people in this particular village for her documentary. The village is located at the base of a massive landfill, and the people who live there make their money by sorting through the garbage and selling what they can to middlemen. Next to the landfill is a now-defunct free trade zone where workers used to make thirty cents per hour to sew clothes. Ironically, people found that they could make more money by spending their days searching through waste and selling the items they found than they could working in the FTZ (before the owners moved it to China). Carbonell put together a photo essay and showed it to our class. She had a lot to say about how it feels to witness people living in trash and how it was to interview people living in such disgrace and poverty. She said that she was never completely accepted because of the camera and the interviews and her status as an American. Apparently the vast majority of government revenues in the D.R. go toward economic development and the promotion of free trade. So, in the capital city the wealthy have Mercedes Benzes, McDonalds, Baskin Robbins, Burger Kings and so on, but three miles away there are people living in a landfill. The government refuses to fund education and doesn't even want to think about the people living in abject poverty.

A few things about Carbonell's presentation made me really sad. And all of the things that upset me were filtered through the knowledge that she was a spectator, an outsider, someone from a radically different culture. First, obviously, I guess, was the sight of people walking barefoot through this toxic landfill; people living in shanties on the edge of the landfill; children working in the landfill. Carbonell said that most people there could not read at all, and some could not count to ten. A 24 year old man she talked to, who had eight kids, said that he expected to die within ten years (when she asked where he thought he would be in a decade). She said that even in the cities she visited, people did not seem to take pride in their culture or nationality. It's almost like the Dominican Republic was razed and stripped bare so that the people are left with no cultural heritage. Even the old banana and sugar plantations whose owners used to enslave the majority of people on the island are gone, replaced by American corporations. I can't even fucking imagine how it must feel to be raised in a place whose identity has been completely pulled away and discarded, or how it feels to know that you can work either collecting trash in a landfill or serving white tourists Chicken McNuggets for your entire life, how it feels to know that you can't read or write and probably never will be able to, and how it feels knowing that no one expects anything better of you.

And then there was her presentation itself, which seems really secondary to me right now; but there was something very sad and alienating about it. Carbonell said she felt like an outsider during her time there. To me she felt like an outsider in the classroom, even though she was a great photographer and speaker. That's probably just me projecting onto her though, which isn't fair.

If you want to see her photo essay:

www.pbase.com/isaca

Linoleum (fuck yes)

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:17:15 GMT

Possessions never meant anything to me
I'm not crazy ('cause I've got none)
Well that's not true, I've got a bed, and a guitar
And a dog named Bob who pisses on my floor
That's right, I've got a floor
So what, so what, so what?
I've got pockets full of Kleenex and lint and holes
Where everything important to me
Just seems to fall right down my leg
And onto the floor
My closest friend, linoleum
Linoleum
Supports my head, gives me something to believe
That's me on the beachside combing the sand
Metal meter in my hand
Sporting a pocket full of change
That's me on the street with a violin under my chin
Playing with a grin, singing gibberish
That's me on the back of the bus
That's me in the cell
That's me inside your head
That's me inside your head
That's me inside your head

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:14:01 GMT

I had a good weekend, at home. My parents came to pick me up on Saturday morning and I got to spend the night at home, then went back to school Sunday night. My dad is still limping. He had surgery on his meniscus last week, but he's going back to work today. I hope it heals because he worries about it hurting for the rest of his life.

This weekend a few things became very apparent to me. My parents have always been supportive of me, have always listened to my complaints and always tried to help; even when it seemed like I was complaining just for the hell of it, like I didn't even want to be happy. I don't know if I'm completely "out of my bubble" yet, but now at least I'm more aware of how I acted in the past. It's like my unhappiness has always colored the way I've seen the world and other people, and relationships. I couldn't even be happy for myself.

There must be a way out of this self pity. It's so lame and silly.

I'm not a bad person... I just make myself feel bad out of habit.

"open up your eyes and see the beauty over there,
open up your ears and be surprised by what you hear."
--kimya dawson

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:00:43 GMT

This enamors me even more to Joanna Newsom:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/music/folk-music-with-strings-attached/2005/10/13/1128796617712.html

(the article itself is a couple of years old, but that doesn't really matter)

Note to self: look up these artists: Ruth Crawford Seeger, Vashti Bunyan, Texas Gladden, The Lomax Brothers, Donovan, Karen Dalton.

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:18:58 GMT

A good article on Anais Nin: http://www5.totoro.org/jen/erotica.shtml#f2

Lately I've been flipping through my copy of "Henry and June" and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of Nin's writing. When I first bought the book and began to read it I thought it was kind of dull, but I'm finding more and more gems in it...

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:44:32 GMT

We're worried that we will get lost in the crowd. We're worried that we are utterly insignificant; we're worried that we are negligible specks of dust in the universe, on this planet with billions of people.

I am worried that I'm not doing enough to help, that I'm not generous enough, insufficiently demonstrative and loving and giving. Perhaps it's a guilt complex... Maybe it's a result of my only-child status that makes me feel more important/worthy/culpable than the rest of the (dirty, mulitiple sibling-ed) population.

It seems like the only thing we can do is to help others, somehow. Maybe in the process we can begin to understand ourselves, or at least reconcile ourselves to the mystery of existence. It is easy to see why so many people rely on religion and a God of one kind or another to make it through the day. Pondering the meaning of life (sans God) can be terrifying and oppressive. No one wants to believe that he/she is worthless, alone and miserably inadequate. At this point (my views shift often) I've come to the conclusion that yes, we are fucked; but not irrevocably. As much as we are fucked, we are also equally holy and vibrant and full of unspent positive potential.

I fixate on these questions. They keep me up at night. I cry a lot. It's probably not normal, and I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with them.