I think this is one of those months that I'm inexplicably attractive. I mean, even with still-healing-bike-accident-face-scars and patchy beard, I am engulfed in a flood of strange and awesome women.

I mean awesome in both senses, depending on the girl.

Anyway, I'll be in New York in six weeks, which should be good; but only for a short time, which will be bad. I don't like going to a place unless I can stay there for a few weeks - long enough to make friends and incur horribly scarring romantic collisions. I don't really know where I'd like to visit. My past NY visits have usually involved lots of wandering around the city and eating at corner cafes, a bit of wandering around the city drunk, one or two way-historical-jazz-places where I almost fall asleep, an obscure warehouse show, and, on the last night, climbing onto some sort of factory to watch the sun rise.

Sometimes other people are involved in this NY aimlessness, but mainly they are not. One thing that is no longer possible to experience in Atlanta is being alone - if I go somewhere ITP, I will know someone. For example:

I went to a show tonight after work. The place was filled with people I knew, so I spent a while wandering around hugging wimmin and karate chopping men on their backs in a manly way. A friend of mine was drinking at the bar, I went over and said "Hi Melissa!" She said, I'm [other name that starts with 'M'], didn't we meet at the Film Festival? I said no, maybe you're thinking of my roommate? She said, wait do you live at Fishmarket? I said yes. She said I think I was at a party there last month! I said oh, and then my roommate Sergio walked over. Sergio had met her at the Film Festival.

Okay, that example sort of petered off.

I got some really fantastic photography advice a bit earlier.

I also made a date milkshake.  As in, dates were one of the primary ingredients of the shake.

And I've had this urge to fast forward through movies lately.  I think it's because my bike is falling apart - I want to go faster, but I can't, because that causes the chain to go "clithonk" and skip.

Someone left this in our mailbox:



Also, a dilemma:

I feel a strong urge to stop speaking to people who list Murakami or Palahniuk as their favorite authors.

The problem:

If I actually stopped speaking to those people, I would have to defriend* like half the people on my various social networks.


* why isn't this a legitimate verb yet?!?

I just realized that (grammatically) the true meaning of Thanksboring = mowr holes.

To celebrate, mail me an awl or other non-electrical hole-making-device. 

I will then send you whatever object I bore.  I may also send you a picture of me making the hole, depending on:

1) whether or not I'm wearing pants in said picture.

2) how awesome I look in said picture.

Either way, it should keep you amused for at least the next week or two, so you're definitely getting the better end of this deal.

The weather service said it would rain this afternoon, so I went riding downtown just before the clouds starting sweeping in.

I went over to the Hyatt, which is pretty tall and usually has an unlocked roof access... but this time all four of the doors to the roof were locked. So I put my camera back in some plastic bags, got on my bicycle, and headed home.

I got caught in the rain for most of the ride back, and now I'm sick.

The Vodka Cure is not working too well. At first it was doing great - I wasn't sniffling at all or anything. Then it started to fail completely. Then I got annoyed because I was stuck inside on a Friday night. Then I got more annoyed because there are some things I'd like to see tomorrow night and I'm worried the weather will still be bad.

Then I tattooed the word "YES" onto my calf with some white ink. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but if it looks cool I am prepared to cover that entire calve with "YES"es.

I don't know. I am like one drink away from playing Jenga with myself*. And I've spent the evening trying to make my way through Y: The Last Man, a zine about anarchism in Argentina, and Umberto Eco's History Of Beauty. Also I have been watching a lot of TV - Mission Hill is amazing.

Here is a question for your morning hangover:  Which part of rain do you prefer:  before, during, or after?

* not a euphemism.

From Self Portraits With Hood

Do any of you know anything about puppetry? Can I send you a review I'm trying to write, or bounce some ideas off of you via phone?

(Oh, and it turns out I didn't have tickets to the show... the band's press person just told me I did, and then didn't answer my calls or calls from the other people who showed up expecting to be on the list. So now I am home, where I have given up trying to finish write this review in favor of drinking wretched fucking vodka and taking pictures of myself under sharp lights - the bulb I'm using is one of those energy savers, and I really can't see any difference in light quality. Though I do like the light you get off those really old bulbs, the ones that use clear glass.)

Still listening to Matt and Kim + Deathset a lot.  What can I say?  I like piano.

I borrowed a fuzzy hat with wolf ears from a friend, and now I wear it while riding around the city.  It keeps me very warm, and drivers love it.  I have only been called a faggot once in the past week, which is like a 70ish% decrease from a normal week.  I also haven't had anything thrown at me, but that could be an outlier, as I've only had things thrown at me three times in the last 10 months.

The usual Wednesday fun stuff: finished some writing, cooked with FnB, wrote more, fixed bikes, watched scary movies at a friend's house (I was the only person in the room not in a band), and now I'm back home, exhausted and filled with candy.

I am a fuzzy pinata.

Also, I think my apartment has flees.

Also pt 2, cutting my hair right now.

Everything is going wrrrrrong!

My arms are all wwwwavy!

I've been meaning to bike more (currently averaging like 10 miles a day, down from 20ish/day a few months ago).  So I told some cyclocross people that I'd practice with them tomorrow.  I don't know what's going to happen.  Cyclocross is weird - sometimes you ride your bike, and other times you've gotta like carry it over walls or down muddy slopes.  And that's considered a normal course.

I am not hardcore.

The closest I get to hardcore is when I forget that peaches have pits.

"The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is "more communist than China right now" but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday."

link.

The article doesn't do much to add meat to that statement, but it's still a pretty interesting thought exercise.

Maybe I'm stuck in the 20th, but the idea of corporation is really fascinating to me. I think it's something a lot of people are in to (see, for example the Penny Arcade guys' Dungeons and Dragons sessions, where their adventuring party uses the name "Acquisitions Inc").  Sometimes I get the idea that economics-types are just as amazed by the idea as us poor people.

I dunno, the more I hang out in the real world, the more I realize that pretty much no one has a plan or knows what the hell they're doing, much less multi-national corporations.

PS: check out these tags - is that the perfect combination or what?!?

3am.  You will see that smile in your nightmares.

Also, The Count of Monte Cristo isn't so great.  I'm 79 pages in, and Mr. Cristo still hasn't stabbed anyone.

Are Dumas' others any better?

Spent the last few hours lying on my floor, petting the cat, marinating my tonsils in red wine, and listening to music.

-

I went to the optometrist a few hours ago and learned that I was having an allergic reaction to my contact lenses. I'd been having the reaction for the last few days, and, from what I could tell, symptoms = inflamed eyeballs, constantly dilated pupils, lots of pain. The diagnosis was a good thing, even at $120, as it let me know that I wasn't going blind.

Instead, I'll be taking eye medicine for the next few days ($28) and not wearing contacts.

Which meant I needed to buy a pair of glasses to replace the ones I'd lost in an airport a few months ago.

The cheapest frames I could find (that day) were about $50, and the heaviest/cheapest lenses were $70. Really enamored with the way my face has been transformed by these things - most of me is covered by thin metal frames and huge fucking expanses of lens. My nose is there, sticking out like the shnozz on a Groucho Marx mask. And then the rest of my face is sort of sketched in around the glasses as an afterthought. But really, the thing you'll be staring at is my eyeballs, magnified 1000-fold by these aquarium glass lenses.

I love it.

-

(Pictures soon. And, if I told you I'd be in Charleston this weekend, it turns out I was lying. Plans have falled through.)

I just fixed my bike!

(fucked around with derailer, adjusted both brakes and seat, cleaned everything, installed waterbottle holder, removed back rack)

It's been a long time since I last learned a manual skill. I've been helping out at the bike co-op these last few weeks, annoying everyone to death with my questions, and it's finally starting to pay off. I'm starting to learn all the part names, and I can almost tell the size of an allen wrench by sight. My next step is learning how to fix spokes, gears, and chains.

Eventually, I'd like to acquire a few more non-writing skills - (ideally) how to cook, grow a spice garden, weld, and bind books.

Watching There Will Be Blood now. Crazy. It's based around Upton Sinclair's Oil - I don't see the influence, except in very broad strokes. The only Sinclair novel I've finished was The Jungle, which is a pretty gritty naturalist depiction of Chicago's meatpacking industry. The release of the novel led to a lot of laws which still affect foodservices today.

Strangely, I'm watching this Sinclair influenced movie the same week that our modern meat industry's been scandalized. I'm a bit too drunk to be searching for the link, but animal rights activists videotaped horrific practices in a few California meatpacking/processing warehouses.

I don't think it's very surprising. Any sort of automated activity performed by humans eventually leads to widespread abuse in order to make the humans' task easier.

We see it in America's treatment of "terror-suspects"

Our prison/court systems

And, tonight, in my job:

I've spent the last few evenings raising money for Oglethorpe at the school's call-center. We're rated based on the percentage of alumni/parents we call, the amount of money we convince them to donate, and our success rate in speaking with alumni/parents. If we call a person and they ask us not to call them again, we are supposed to put them on the "do not call" list. However, doing so negatively affects our call success rates. Therefore, I, and all the other veteran callers, usually just mark the person as "not home," which means they'll get another call later that night, or the next day. A person who asks not to be called by Oglethorpe might receive as many as twenty calls that week, while a person who donates any amount to Oglethorpe only receives one call.

-

Speaking of systems: I was driving around with Elizabeth over the weekend, and she mentioned her friend referring to me as "the guy who looks like an anarchist." I lol'ed.

-



Other Abu Ghraib images.

I was talking to Flavia, the New College girl I met in New Orleans, a few days back. We were doing the usual catching up thing, working off a terribly small list of Things To Talk About (New College, being a freshman, New Orleans, New York, and her friend Maeve, our only mutual acquaintance). Apparently Flavia and Maeve had gone to a barbecue hosted by one of the team leaders whose name I forget; Maeve and the team leader had hooked up that night, somewhat unexpectedly. Even more unexpectedly, Maeve and the team leader fell in love* that night, and they've been corresponding ever since. I should point out that Maeve's currently in her first year of school in New York, the team leader's fairly mobile, in his mid-late-twenties.

I realize that I've spent the last paragraph gossiping about people you don't know. Which is almost always boring. There is a point:

What sort of cruel chance is it which makes two people so geographically distant fall in love? Is it just some sort of Before Sunset mystique which shaves the dice** in their favor? Why do two people fall in love now, instead of when they meet again 3 years later? How can two people love each other in New Jersey, but grow to hate each other in Kansas City?



*Let's assume this exists, for now.
**Back when I played pen and paper RPG's, I heard a rumor that you could "weight" a die by putting it in the microwave, a process which would melt the die's inner core but leave it's surface unmarked. It didn't work then, but I've got high hopes for the future.

A: Dead people.

Today: Climbed a tree. Walked 5 miles. Got tipsy 3 times, progressing to drunk on last try. Found the keys to someone's Lexus. Couldn't find cat. Climbed over 1 fence, and crawled under another. Started Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. Ate bowl of green jell-o.

The French people were great. More later.

Always say yes.

Highlander Black Mocha Stout + Ginger Snap Cookies = !!!!!

Two more papers left. Mebbe 1500 words. Old friend called about bachelor party plans and left message reading:

hey ben "the ben" what's going on this is Will thanks for giving me a call or actually facebooking me so thanks for taking the initiative so yeah we need to figure this thing out so gimme a call back when you get a chance... so chris and i were thinking wednesday at 6 and i don't know if you got in touch with Aaron... I was just curious if you had any suggestions i don't think chris wanted to do the whole steakhouse thing... i don't know we could go out maybe MJQ or el bar i don't know if you patronize those sorts of establishments or maybe casteberry hill... yeah just lemme know alright bye.

Drrrnk. Gonna go lie on the blue table on my porch and listen to my neighbor's hot tub go vvvrdddddmmmm.

(I'm watching Top Gun with Swedish subtitles. Have you seen that Quentin Tarentino rant where he compares Top Gun to gay erotica? I've got half of that floating through my head, and I'm half trying to compare it to the Samson stories. Don't bother reading the actual Samson chapters of Judges, but do read Samson as Border Narrative - I forget who wrote it. It's a short paper, but really phenomenal.)

Interview tomorrow.  I spent the evening ironing clothes and cutting my hair.  Pretty sure both tasks were horribly botched.

"Kiss my ass Lone Ranger!"

I had that song on repeat while I showered this morning. The floor of my apartment is solid concrete (apart from carpeting and insulation and stuff). Any hint of bass is trebled by my shower pipes.

Other things: Derrida starts to make a lot more sense after you've been drinking heavily.

A sample passage, followed by relevant footnote:

Now it happens, I would say in effect, that this graphic difference (a instead of e), this marked difference between two apparently vocal notations, between two vowels, remains purely graphic: it is read, or it is written, but it cannot be heard. It cannot be apprehended in speech, and we will see why it also bypasses the order of apprehension in general. It is offered by a mute mark, by a tacit monument, I would even say by a pyramid, thinking not only of the form of the letter when it is printed as a capital, but also of the text in Hegel's Encyclopedia in which the body of the sign is compared to the Egyptian Pyramid. The a of differance, thus, is not heard; it remains silent, secret and discreet as a tomb: oikesis. And thereby let us anticipate the delineation of a site, the familial residence and tomb of the proper in which is produced, by differance, the economy of death. This stone - provided that one knows how to decipher its inscription - is not far from announcing the death of the tyrant.

The footnote:

The last three sentences refer elliptically and playfully to the following ideas. Derrida first plays on the "silence" of the a in differance as being like a silent tomb, like a pyramid, like the pyramid to which Hegel compares the body of the sign. "Tomb" in Greek is oikesis, which is akin to the Greek oikos - house - from which the word "economy" derives. Thus Derrida speaks of the "economy of death" as the "familial residence and tomb of the proper" . Further, and more elliptically still, Derrida speaks of the tomb, which always bears an inscription in stone, announcing the death of the tyrant. This seems to refer to Hegel's treatment of the Antigone story in the Phenomenoloy...

There's another page of similar dancing around the subject: basically, he's revisiting Saussure's approach to semiotics. Derrida starts by comparing English "difference" with French "differance". (at least, that's as far as I've read). I'm not sure why he needs to cover two pages with Greek, French, and Latin puns before actually approaching his topic.

Finish bike tomorrow, Walid Raad this Wednesday, Midterm Thursday morning, library power-hour(s) Thursday evening, and Florida (?!) over the weekend.

The connecty thing is still a problem, but I have shelved it, to be reexamined far in the future.