Thursday, January 31, 2002
ouch! it's friday five time again... 1. have you ever had braces? any other teeth trauma? i was the first kid in my class to have braces - in third grade. had them till seventh. i was never good about the retainer thing, and that plus having my wisdom teeth removed my freshman year in college - oh, and the rootcanal my junior year - have pretty much reversed any good the braces might have done. 2. ever broken any bones? nope. 3. ever had stitches? when i was about seven, my dad was scraping algae off the bottom of our pool with a brick, and told me specifically not to swim after him. naturally, i did, and got a brick to the forehead, 5 stitches; when i was thirteen, i got home from debate camp early and decided to let myself in through a bathroom window, but my left palm slipped trying to get it open and went straight through the glass, that was 4 stitches ; and when i was 17, my friends and i got locked in a local park after hours, i was trying to undo the chain that tied the gate shut, when a friend decided to kick it - and it tore my pinkie in half, laterally - about 15 stitches there. 4. what are the stories behind some of your [physical] scars? see answers to # 3, plus another scar on the forehead from a metal baseball bat and one on my left index finger from a razorblade when i was cutting foamboard in seventh grade. 5. how do you plan to spend your weekend? i'm going to the breeders' concert at the shim sham club on saturday night with amy; besides that i'll be studying and avoiding parades and superbowl tourist traffic all weekend. Wednesday, January 30, 2002
this ranks up there as one of the greatest compliments i've ever gotten about this site. i'd like to think that unapologetic is a good place to start learning about blogs... and from his first full post, it seems as if cynischism.com will be a blog to keep an eye on. thanks, ido - and good luck. Tuesday, January 29, 2002
of course, i've been sucked into the googlewhack meme that's going around, and after a (relatively) short time i actually found a couple/three googlewhacks. fun stuff. 1. "tomato verbigeration" - score: 1,540,334 2. (variant) "ketchup verbigeration" - score: 271,334 3. "degreaser pluralism" - score: 263,900
driving through the fog, reality is obscured just enough so that everything looks nearsighted, as if you're not wearing your glasses, even though you are. every streetlight has a spectral halo according to its physical chemistry - most are sodium and look like gothic, wrought-iron dreamsicles; and the angels on the porch out front anne rice's self-consciously foreboding mansion actually seem to hover a few feet above the ground tonight, though they're cloaked more in mist than in mystery. the saint charles street car approaches, rattling, like a coal car from a mine, out of and into the darkness with only the single, thin lantern-beam thrown weakly ahead to feel the way. it's harder to find tapioca pudding than one might expect on thick, moist nights like this one. but it was worth it. Monday, January 28, 2002
it seems like it's been forever since i've written much of anything, and i guess it has been. there's been a lot going on over the past few weeks, though, and it's just been tough to sit down and get anything written out. between studying for the bar and helping simeon out with a few political campaigns (more on that in a later post) i've been busy... plus, i've had a couple of new blog-related projects up my sleeve, which have been rather free-time consuming themselves. one of which is a pretty comprehensive redesign of unapologetic, which may be appearing in the near future, if i can get all my coding nailed down just so. it's kind of a scary idea for me, since i've been complimented on the current design by lots of people who seem to know what they're talking about, and whose opinions i value... but it's been nearly a year (!) and it's time for a change. it's coming along nicely, and i think it'll be a change for the better. if not, you'll let me know, right? these things are always works in progress anyway - and the new design is all css - finally - so it'll be easy to tweak. i hope. tonight's been a rather strange one - it's a foggy night and a full moon, for one thing, and a bright enough one to shine ominously through the fog. amy and charles and i had dinner at on the way home, a black cat crossed in front of the truck. i would've stopped and backed down the street at that point so as not to cross its path ( and have done before ) but then we noticed that he had little white feet, which made him, in the final analysis, not a black cat at all, but just a mostly black cat, and not unlucky enough to be avoided. so it could've been worse. i'm off to the grocery on a midnight quest for some fat-free tapioca pudding cups. if i'm not back in half an hour, send a rescue party. Saturday, January 26, 2002
mardi gras is indeed upon us, folks. the krewe of sparta's parade is rolling down st. charles in front of my apartment complex as i type this - though i can hear the marching bands and see the floats from my window, it just doesn't feel like mardi gras yet. too early? or maybe just all the studying... anyway, if you're interested, i've got the webcam pointed out the window at the street, so if you're lucky you might see some of the floats as they pass by. more later. Friday, January 25, 2002
f-f-f-friday five, baby! 1. what cologne or perfume do you wear? eau du right guard. i have a bottle of hugo boss for special occasions, though. 2. what cologne or perfume do you like best on the opposite sex? no idea. whatever she's wearing. 3. what one smell can you not stomach? vomit. 4. what smell do you like that others might consider weird? laundry room vent air. 5. how do you plan to spend your weekend? studying and studiously ignoring the mardi gras parades going by outside my window. Wednesday, January 23, 2002
congratulations of the wedding sort are in order this week, to angela of trippyswell, who just got married, and to my neighbors arianna and pableaux of nubbin and bayoudog, respectively, who just got engaged (or better? can't quite tell from their somewhat cryptic posts.) congrats, y'all! Tuesday, January 22, 2002
i took some time out to see the royal tennenbaums last night. i had the same reaction to it as i did to rushmore - there's something uncomfortable in the act of watching it, something unfunny and mildly painful - but as soon as it's over, i'm sure i enjoyed it, and as a matter of fact i think it's a classic modern fairytale. a fable told in the vernacular - i love the costumes in both movies, often constant throughout, as though people never changed clothes - which makes each character a caricature, and allows their external changes in costume to reflect the character's internal changes. i don't know any other filmmakers who use that device - at least not as well - and it's nifty. i also think that for a young director, anderson gets career-best performances out of much of the cast, especially gene hackman and angelica huston. good movie, and one that will likely be the topic of many, many theses and dissertations.
forget enron and k-mart. we lost juan esquivel and peggy lee this month - and this world's a less hip and swingin' joint for it... Sunday, January 20, 2002
despite my getting them to him just before the legal delays expired, charles from sixdifferentways has managed to answer my blogger insider interview. his answers are here. Friday, January 18, 2002
that time of week again. friday five: 1. what do you have your browser start page set to? my very own custom startpage, with lots of pulldowns for links. needs updating, a bit. it's here. 2. what are your favorite news sites? cnn.com, iht.com, wired.com, themorningnews.org 3. favorite search engine? google. duh. 4. when did you first get online? i was noodling around on dial-up bbs's in high school, some of which had internet e-mail access, that was maybe 1989 or 1990. i really got online in 1993 when i started college, as far as e-mail, ftp, telnet and gopher access goes. ah, wuarchive, i knew ye well. i was introduced to the web in 1994, and had learned html and had my first homepage online on my college server by late that year. 5. how do you plan to spend your weekend? taking amy to the airport tomorrow morning, studying for the bar and working a bit.
so it's a new year. but the world still seems to be caught in a gory jurassic-park-esque action movie... and not a very believable one, at that. Wednesday, January 16, 2002
to satisfy certain people's morbid curiosity, i've posted a few pictures of the aftermath of last week's laundry fire on the photo page. yes, those were my clothes. oh, and a couple of interesting links lately: firstly, i happened (via link on rebeccablood) upon this online novel a few days ago - the first chapter is available free - and was thoroughly intrigued. it's called loose lips, and it's a spy/love/twentysomething coming-of-age story. or something. it's very well written by one claire berlinski. and the coolest bit is the marketing angle - it has no publisher, as yet, so the full version is available by pdf download, for about six bucks via paypal - or for free if you link to it, and help get the word out. (unfortunately for me, i didn't catch that part till i had already paid. that's ok, though, i'm always up for supporting independent artists, novelists included. good cause.) and nextly - i received an e-mail tonight from the webmaster of a native american art and culture website called aaanativearts, asking permission to republish there a short review i had written on my music page of a native american punk band called "black fire", which i had seen live in october. he's got a great and very informative site going there, and so needless to say, i was pleased to let him use my review. the result is here - along with some very complementary comments about unapologetic. pretty cool. thanks, raven! Tuesday, January 15, 2002
everybody should be watching jeopardy on tv this week to cheer on fellow blogger nanette from (what was) amplified to rock. i hear she wins big. the olympians ball ended up being both interesting and very silly - and a lot of fun. definitely not something that could happen in any other city: a strange mix of solemn formality and high-society pretentions with farce: absurd costumes and goofball antics, and a good dose of medieval-ish pomp and pageantry. done with typical new orleanian tacky gaudiness, and this year, added patriotic elements. ah, mardi gras at its best. pictures will be forthcoming shortly. i saw amelie again on saturday (yes, it's still at canal place two months later), this time with amy, who loved it. i still can't say enough good things about it. we also went to amy's friend (and fellow med student) dan's house for the premiere of his self-produced short film, "a loan of freedom," which was really impressive - well filmed, well directed, and well edited. dan is planning on entering it into the new orleans film festival this year, and i can see it doing well. point being, it got me thinking along the lines of doing a film project of some sort myself - an idea i've always toyed with, but who knows? maybe this will be the year - along with the comic and the children's book i've been meaning to write and illustrate for a year now... argh. well, it's good to have goals, right? Friday, January 11, 2002
friday five! 1. what was your first job? my first volunteer job (at about age 13) was as a junior keeper at the audubon zoo (basically i got to work in the petting zoo and educate people about endangered species.) after a couple of years i got my first paying job at the zoo as a zoocamp counselor. my first real, bona fide job was as an insurance agent for my father's agency - i got my property & casualty insurance license when i was 18, and my life and health license when i was 20. 2. how old were you when you had your first kiss? 15. 3. what was your first car? what happened to it? a bitchin' 1989 red camaro. it eventally died of various electrical maladies, when i was away at college. 4. what was your first concert? i think it was the oakridge boys (el-vi-rah!) at the 1984 world's fair. i have a list. 5. how do you plan to spend your weekend? tonight, i'll be wearing white tie and tails - amy and i are going to the 'krewe of the olympians' ball. it's a mardi gras thing, kind of a like a masquerade/debutante ball. my sister is a 'maid', which is supposed to be a big deal or something, and my grandmother is all excited. i can't decide if it's kind of interesting or just incredibly silly.
i've met my match - or at least my (not so) evil twin: charles from sixdifferentways is my blogger insider interview partner this week, and it seems we've got quite a bit in common. maybe that's why he asked so many insightful questions. here goes: 1. why did you start a weblog (or journal, as yours could be called). i've always wanted to keep a journal, but never been able to make myself do it. since 1994, i've always had a personal website of some sort or other, but never any good content. i wanted to get back into the practice of creative writing. i've been excited about the potential for personal publication on the web since my first "hello world." i'm a computer geek and a photoshop junkie. i have stories to tell. did i really have a choice? 2. who's one of your favourite visual artists and why? joseph cornell, for his ability to turn everyday, trivial objects into profound, thought provoking, unique artwork - simply by arrangement, by placing ordinary things in extraordinary contexts. 3. do you ever receive condescending questions from family or friends concerning the fact that you don't want to wear a suit every day and go work in a firm 100 hours a week? yeah, from my family, especially when I'm doing work at the family firm (don't have to wear a suit, at least...) my friends know that lawyering isn't my calling, so they jump on me for doing any legal work at all... 4. i plan on visiting new orleans soon (heh don't worry - i prefer hotels even when visiting my parents.) what are a few non-touristy things i should check out? small neighborhood restaurants all over the city. the uptown bar scene. nightclubs and bars on frenchman street, and in the marigny. basically, don't just stay in the french quarter and garden district. specifically: eat at jacque-imo's. go to the maple leaf bar to hear rebirth. go to vaughns to see kermit ruffins. eat an oyster po-boy at domilise's or r&o's. dance at cafe brazil and have a drink at molly's. get in touch and i'll give you the details. 5. is mardi gras the best time or worst time to visit? or both? the best, I think. though there is much more to the city, for a visitor mardi gras is definitely a wonderful thing to experience - you don't really know new orleans unless you've chased a float down st. charles avenue, screaming at the top of your lungs for a pair of cheap plastic beads. during mardi gras, the city can be a filthy, crowded, chaotic, depraved bachannal, above and beyond its usual decadent charm... 6. i can't believe you have a whole section of mardi gras pictures and no boobies. what's up with that? there is so much more to mardi gras than boobies; i'll leave them (and all of bourbon street on mardi gras) for all y'all tourists. after twenty-six years, mardi gras, to me, is all about having a good time with your friends and family - so that's what my pictures are about. 7. i see that you comment on bluishorange a lot. everybody loves alison. what is your favourite thing about her site? alison is a gifted writer with a style that lets readers identify, empathize, and see life through her eyes. she makes even the most mundane days seem magic by picking out the quirky details. i like her way of telling. 8. you've got a group of big easy bloggers listed. do you all ever get together like we do in dallas? no, we don't, dammit. but I'm actually about to try to put something like that together - i've even bought a domain name to that effect. coming soon, y'all... 9. you mention "the office" a lot, but i can't figure out exactly what you do? depends when in the archives you're reading - though i'll admit i've been intentionally ambiguous on that point lately. at the moment, i'm, um... prostituting myself to the legal profession again, doing odds and ends (and motions and memos) at the family law firm with my father, great-uncle, and second cousin. it's all about paying the bills, right? 10. do you have a s.o.? again, I can't quite figure that one out. i do, as of the beginning of december - her name's amy. she's a tulane med student who's been a good friend of mine for almost a year, and then a few weeks ago something just kinda clicked. she's awesome. 11. you have $10 and a serious caffeine jones on. starbucks is right next door, but you know there's a smaller, no-chain coffee shop a few blocks away. what do you do? (and what do you order, once you decide?) i'm already halfway down the block - i've never bought a cup of starbucks coffee in my life. i'm a dedicated patron of our local coffee shops - pj's, cc's, rue de la course - though they're all local chains now, too. if i'm not at home or working, i'm at pj's on magazine st. drinking a large iced mocha, skim milk. 12. so you're a cancer. are you a moody person? i can be, i think, but not overly so. my mood seems to vary more day to day than hour to hour - i think i'm usually pretty temperate. 13. foucault or derrida? jacques lacan, baby. and derrida. someone should write "a weblog semantics". 14. i see you're into music. what were 5 of your favourite cds of 2001. my top ten list should be up on the music page by now. 15. we seem to have a lot in common, including drinking too much diet coke. how much is too much to you? never enough. especially lemon-pledge flavor. 16. i take it you speak english y espanol. do you speak french, as well? being from south louisiana and all? not i. mais, my family 'been city cajuns for a good couple generations now, so all dat french have been long forgot, cher. 17. Have you ever submitted a title to exploding dog? of course! probably five or six. never had one picked, however. 18. since you're a graphics guy - are you also a mac person? no. i've always been a die-hard pc user, since my first ibm pc jr. it's been a long time since macs were really any better than pcs at graphics work. i'm not uncomfortable using a mac, as i had no choice in college working on the school newspaper and website - in fact i learned photoshop on a mac by the name of dave's big deluxe. i don't like how mac is so proprietary and how extensibility is made difficult - if i want a new graphics card or a new cd-burner, i don't want to have to buy a new machine. and besides, i've got a dell 8100 p4 that'll whup any g4... 19. also since you're a designer I know you're a kuro5hin fan. read their predictions for 2002: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/12/30/23534/462 - which seems the most plausible? the most unrealistic? the most unrealistic is that a web-log will uncover some big government secret - it could happen, i guess, but so could a lot of things. several of these are plausible - they're not very ambitious predictions, staying pretty close to the status quo. for example, i really wouldn't be surprised if at least one country has to have the euro re-calibrated... 20. did you and your friends ever throw around latin phrases in law school for fun? our favourites were nunc est bibendum ( now it's time to drink) and futue te et ipsum caballum (fuck you and the horse you rode in on.) actually, not much in law school - but in high school latin classes i remember hearing a lot of "semper ubi sub ubi" (always where under where). 21. Without looking it up, can you name which state overtook texas in 2001for the most death-penalty executions. actually, i think i know. i remember thinking that mcveigh picked the wrong state to attack - it's oklahoma, right? 22. your full name kicks much ass. i'm guessing you were raised catholic? yeah. didn't last long. what gave it away? ;)
just when i thought my karmically-challenged week must be near its end, another elemental force has attacked through another household appliance. namely, the toilet in my bathroom decided to overflow - clean water, thank god - i walked in and found about a half inch of standing water, which had seeped out and under the carpet into my bedroom, so i spent a good couple of hours pulling up my carpet, taking out the foam padding, and sopping, sopping, sopping up toiletwater. what a pain in the ass. two down, now all i need is a couple of minor tragedies involving earth and wind, and i'll be fully cursed by the elements... Thursday, January 10, 2002
if you were wondering, (which you weren't) my blogger code is: B4 d++ t k+ s+ u- f i o+ x e+ l c- (link via jonno) funny, isn't it, how often my longer posts are followed by short bursts of frivolous link-comment mini-posts? eh. well, it's been that kinda week. Wednesday, January 09, 2002
i spent way too many hours of my adolescence (not to mention quarters) in an arcade playing street fighter 2. that's the only reason i find this page as funny as i do. sonic boom! Monday, January 07, 2002
so now the half of my clothes that didn't get burned smell terrible, like, um... burnt clothes. and the laundry room is pretty well indefinitely out of commission, so i've got a ton of wet clothes just hanging out in my bathroom, waiting to mildew. the dryer company called me this morning at work and asked me to itemize what i lost, which sounds promising - they said that either some belt on the dryer broke, or that it was arson. i guess they have to keep all their options open, right? though it's hard to imagine any of the old ladies in my complex tossing a match in among my shirts and towels to teach me a lesson for playing my stereo too loud. and i can't see how anyone from outside could get in through the double locked gates, so, whatever... doubt we'll ever know what happened. i'm just hoping my explodingdog t-shirt wasn't in there. but i'm bracing myself for the worst.
doing laundry does not always come easily to me. sometimes things will pile up for weeks before i'll get around to a major laundry day, when i summon the will (and collect enough quarters) to haul everything downstairs to my complex's laundry room. sunday was one of those days. after dinner, i got most of my clothes together, and got everything into the washing machines around seven, properly separated and everything. when the first loads were done washing, i put them in the dryers - two normal ones and the one extra-large, gas-heated drum dryer, which fits two loads - and went off to get some coffee and study with amy. when we got back it was late, about midnight, and i went down to get everything out. i felt around in the big dryer, and the clothes were still damp. so i put one more quarter in, and went upstairs again to wait. some yul brynner movie was on turner classic movies (i think it was the file of the golden goose, but i'm not sure. the narrator from rocky horror was one of the bad guys), so we watched about ten minutes of that... "amy, did you light a candle or something?" "um, no, but i thought i smelled something, too..." i don't know what made me open the door, but when i did the courtyard was filling with smoke. i looked downstairs and down the hall, and dark, grey clouds were billowing... from the laundry room... i wonder whose... oh, fuck. no way. running downstairs, i noticed the crew of firemen and the three firetrucks surrounding the building. by the time i got there, the fire was under control and the firemen were blowing the smoke out of the courtyard with an industrial-strength fan. when they were done, the laundry room was a mess, and two loads of my clothes lay on the floor in a wet, acrid pile of smoldering black ashes. i joined the the crowd that had gathered to watch the flames of my bathrobe's demise, took a lot of pitiful condolences, and decided that the only possible reaction was to laugh off the whole experience. what's a few shirts and a bathrobe? just a bunch of sentimental value, really, when you think how much worse it could have been. at least the fire didn't spread. at least nobody got hurt. Friday, January 04, 2002
ooh, fun! my second blogger insider interview, this time by a-woman: which leading man are you most like? john cusack, in high fidelity? or something? why law but not a lawyer? well, first, i have a JD, but i haven't yet passed the bar exam. but that's pretty much symptomatic of the fact that i don't want to practice law now, don't want to get caught up in that lifestyle, at least not yet. there are other careers i find more gratifying, and other directions i feel that i need to go - graphic design, particularly. why'd i go to law school? seemed like the thing to do at the time, put off the real world for a few more years, and made my family (momentarily)happy. and i was interested (and still am) in entertainment and intellectual property law. that's about it. i don't regret it at all, it's a great foundation... which is more exciting...a new person or a new idea? a new person, because they very often come with lots of new ideas. how did you cope with holiday stresses? escapism: studying, working, friends, blogging. when it comes to good gossip, are you the first or last to know? somewhere in the middle. do you have a few close friends or many acquaintances? a core group of close friends, and lots of acquaintances. what is the most important thing in your life? 42 cats or dogs? dogs! if you could live anywhere in the world, where would you choose and why? i've heard this one before... and i quote: i've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, for several reasons. somewhere strong in both of my would-be professions - graphic design and entertainment law - and where i have established friends - current thoughts are new york, dc, nashville, or atlanta. i also love dublin and edinbrough, though.
first friday five of the new year: 1. you've just won a complete collection of movies starring one actor - what actor would you pick? that's easy: audrey hepburn. 2. what was the last movie you saw in a theater? the man who wasn't there. very possibly billy bob thornton's best film to date, and the first real noir film in decades. beautiful b/w cinematography, too - part maltese falcon, part ansel adams. and a tight storyline. recommend. 3. what was the last video or dvd that you bought? i bought the french connection for my father for christmas. last dvd added to my collection was rushmore, which my friend andrew gave me for christmas. next one i plan on getting, is the anniversary party, which comes out on january 15th. don't really remember the last one i bought for myself, though. 4. what movie could you watch over and over again and not get sick of? trainspotting. or pulp fiction. (and have done.) and roman holiday. 5. how do you plan to spend your weekend? dinner with my mom's side of the family tomorrow evening = opportunidad para practicar mi espanol; saturday and sunday will be a nice balance of work and study, if all goes well... and maybe amy and i will finally be able to see lord of the rings... Wednesday, January 02, 2002
i think i know a good bit of useless trivia; i've always had good recall of facts i've ingested, consciously or otherwise. consequently, i'll enter online trivia contests whenever the opportunity arises. yeah, i'm a geek. anyway, today, i got a mention on the front page of coudal.com - one of the most popular sites in the design world - for being one of an "elite group" to get all the questions right on their "christmas party rock and roll popquiz". one of eleven correct, out of "hundreds" of entries. pretty cool, eh? Tuesday, January 01, 2002
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