Thursday, October 31, 2002
happy halloween! i'm sure this is already all over the place, but this week doonesbury seems to be all about blogging. Wednesday, October 30, 2002
pay no attention to that buttons.blogger.com thing that keeps popping up. every site that uses blogger seems to be doing that. annoying, but hopefully ev and co. will get on it soon enough that by the time you read this, you don't know what i'm talking about. so if this makes no sense, nevermind. problem solved. just got back from mythique, my first visit in several weeks - you've just gotta love a place that has guinness, pumpkin-carving contests (mine sucked. i'm usually the jack-o-lantern carving master, but this one sucked), and halloween movies. not the stupid scary gory ones, but all the simpsons halloween specials, "it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown", and of course "the nightmare before christmas," a movie which i haven't gone a halloween without watching at least once since it came out. i love that movie, and it was wonderful to be watching it in a place where over half the crowd knows all the words and singing along is encouraged. much fun. the one thing i can't believe was that with all that pumpkin carving going on - all those knives, and all that alcohol - and nobody so much as lost a finger. amazing. and despite all the other things going on in my life right now, i've been working on a halloween costume, which i think will be pretty cool. i suppose i just enjoy coming up with my own homemade costumes, because they keep getting more and more obscure. last year i thought everyone would know who max was, from where the wild things are, but most people didn't. this year, i'll be surprised if i get even a single knowing glance or nod of recognition. this one's way out there, but whatever. it'll be a fun costume anyway, and at least i'll know who i'm supposed to be. Saturday, October 26, 2002
back in new orleans, can i get an hallelujah? oh, and one air-travel related question: is "off" really a "position"? i tend to think of it as more of a condition, or a state of being. airline personnel apparently think otherwise, but it's been about ten years since i've taken anything with an actual "on/off" switch on an airplane, that i could say was actually in an "off position." get with the nineties, people. computers, cd players, cell phones, you name it - it's just one button, and it's in the same position when it's off as it is when it's on. is it just me, or does everybody in blog-land seem to be in some kind of a deep blue funk? i am. whether it's atlanta or new orleans, i think i have a lot of packing to do. Thursday, October 24, 2002
still in atlanta, applying for jobs and kind of getting to know the city, which i suppose is pretty cool, though it takes some getting used to. i went out tonight by myself, to see a show i couldn't have seen in new orleans: sleater-kinney at the variety playhouse - great show, they played most of their new album, and some older stuff... they rocked, of course - they're excellent musicians, the set was tight, they clearly enjoy what they do, and seemed like totally cool, down to earth people, with none of the indie-rockstar pretention you get from some (even lesser-known) bands. i've heard people say that sleater-kinney may be the best rock band going right now, and tonight, i'm prepared to believe it. the whole experience only served to strengthen my long-standing crush on singer/guitarist carrie brownstein, who is just incredibly ... sexy, for lack of a better term. she does that girl guitarist thing with her hips, and she plays, sings and speaks in a way that just seems so smart and self-assured. *sigh* Monday, October 21, 2002
i can't imagine a stranger weekend than i've had. i went down to tampa for amy's mother's funeral on friday and saturday. the service was heartbreaking and beautiful, and amy is without a doubt one of the strongest people i know, i don't know what else to say. i met her all of her siblings, which was a little like meeting characters from a book, because i'd heard so much about them all, and seen so many photos, it seemed as if i already knew them. i flew down there, and stayed with my friend holly at her brother's house, which was clear across tampa from amy's. it was also holly's niece's birthday weekend - she'd just turned five - and her dad was taking her to disneyworld, so holly and i met them in orlando and i got to go to the magic kindom! it was pretty much the way i left it nine and a half years ago, the summer after i graduated high school; and though i enjoyed seeing everything again (we rode it's a small world and the jungle cruise twice, among other things), it really became clear that all things disney are best enjoyed either as or with a child. fortunately, holly's neice is the cutest, most precocious kid you could imagine, and it was great just to watch her react to the characters and the rides and just the whole experience. one odd thing that you generally don't hear about disneyworld is that upon leaving, despite the ceaseless playing of muzak-ified versions of every major song from every disney movie you've ever seen, the most prominent sonic memory i have of the place is the "psssssst!!--click!!" sound of air being released from the pneumatic pumps that drive the movements of all the animatronic inhabitants, and all the other moving bits, of every ride and attraction in the place. this evening, i flew to atlanta, where i'm staying with my sister for a few days to look for graphic design jobs and such here. we'll see how it goes... speaking of which, i'd better get to sleep, i've got a long day ahead of me tommorrow. Tuesday, October 15, 2002
wow. haven't posted for a week - it must have been a pretty crazy busy one, and it has been. and tough. sadly, amy's mother passed away on sunday night, and i'll be going down to tampa at the end of this week for the services. on top of that, my grandfather was confirmed diagnosed today with chronic lymphocitic leukemia, which, while probably not affecting him in the short term, is most definitely Not A Good Thing. next to these two dark pieces of news, everything else i could write about seems frivolous and unimportant; but that being said, i can't fail to mention that there have been happy things going on lately: my good friends bebe and jeff got married on saturday night and i designed the wedding programs and the ceremony was beautiful and mercifully short and the reception was wonderful and the drinks strong, and i of course wish them the best. and because life must go on in all its frivolousness and unimportance, and i'd be ungrateful not to appreciate it: i also saw two movies in the past week: secretary (see it!) and the transporter (worst action movie i've ever seen. embarassingly bad.) as i mentioned last week, i've been in a reading frenzy lately, and i finished reading milan kundera's the book of laughter and forgetting and moved immediately on to steve martin's shopgirl, finished that and have begun ella minnow pea by mark dunn and a book on historical typography called the anatomy of a typeface. i'll tell you more about those later. new orleans has finally cooled down into something approximating autumn. the weather is beautiful; long walks in the park need to be taken. Wednesday, October 09, 2002
ok. so i'm back wednesday. sue me. and when i said, "lots to say" it wasn't anything particularly important i was talking about, just that i've been doing lots of reading and working and thinking and digesting of thoughts. expect long, rambling posts about milan kundera in the near future. i also found out recently that a friend of mine from college, brandon barr, has a blog, called texturl. textual... text u.r.l. ... i get it! (he's an english lit phd student. i envy him that.) on a bit of a somber note, my ex-girlfriend amy's mother, pam, who's had cancer for some time now, took a turn for the worse this past weekend and had to be put on a respirator. she's apparently in stable condition, but if you say your prayers before you go to bed at night, throw one in there for her. no news on the full-time job front, except that the position i've been waiting to hear from hasn't hired anyone yet, so it's still up in the air. what do you have on top of your monitor? mine's home, among other things, to a hotwheels dodge deora, a particular make of show car i just think is inexplicably cool. well, i was at a friend of a friend's house the other night for a party, and i kept looking at his computer, wondering what was so familiar about it. didn't take me long to figure out that it was the hotwheels dodge deora on top of the monitor - how strange is that? how many people have hotwheels dodge deoras on top of their monitors? Friday, October 04, 2002
lots to say, just not much time to say it. busy weekend, and interesting. be back monday. Thursday, October 03, 2002
it's been a weird night. a night about relationships and dogs and hurricanes and radio songs. a night that i'm not expecting sleep to come. the wind outside is thick and wet, an empowered fog, too heavy to whistle; strong, and with a solid follow-through, like a good golf swing. swirling, ceaseless, epic - winds you once imagined blowing across battlefields of legend - troy and agincourt, shiloh, iwo jima. yet if you step close enough to the night blooming jasmine in the courtyard, you can still smell the honeysuckle sweetness. |
