Wednesday, November 27, 2002
i saw this graffiti'ed on a bar-bathroom wall tonight: "the true adventure in life begins where your zone of comfort ends." being pretty uncomfortable these days, i found that very comforting. adventure is good, right? (despite dollar pabst, i drank a coke.)
i'm still here. it's strange: life lately has been more suited to blogging than ever, and i just haven't been able to make myself sit down and reduce things into words, much. i feel out of balance. last saturday was one of those nights you wish you could erase. this is something that i feel i have to write about, though i almost don't want to - writing things here sometimes helps me put things in perspective, maybe not in the words you're reading so much as the ones i'm thinking now that don't get written, and the ones that get written and then backspaced-away. that editing process, the thinking things through and putting those thoughts into words carefully chosen - it forces me to look at things through other eyes than my own, in an effort to be tactful. it helps me distill my thoughts, and that's valuable to me. so in that sense it's inevitable that i write things like this, occasionally. the result of it all is that you read only what i want you to, what's calm and considered and safe and sterile and protects the parties involved. it's not even always a conscious process - even when i try to write off-the cuff, it still goes through that filter somewhere between my brain and my keyboard. what i write here is always true - i'm not here to make up stories - but it may not always be real or complete. last saturday was one of those nights you wish you could erase. things have been confusing lately, relationship-wise: ex-girlfriend-wise, specifically, which is i guess always a danger when you remain close friends. i wouldn't really know, as i've never managed to do that before, either due to distance or my instinct for emotional self-preservation or both. but in this case, for lots of reasons, it's important to me that we do stay good friends, and i'm willing to sacrifice a lot to that end. on saturday night, we went to a party - together - and i encountered the limits of that willingness, things happened that i should have expected, but didn't, and i lost it. lost control. completely. nothing overly horrible happened aside from some minor property damage, but i drank myself poisonous, and a lot of people saw a lot more emotion and pain come out of me - at volume, raw, unedited, unredacted and un-thought-out - than they'd have expected out of me before that night. including myself. i hate that kind of exposure; i'm mortified at the thought of even encountering the people at the party that night who i know less well, because now they've got something on me that i don't have on them. something that even most of you don't have on me, that you couldn't get from reading unapologetic start to finish. allen unedited, complete, immediate. allen-i-don't-want-other-people-to-see. and on that night, not unlike a bear in a trap: sad, pathetic, angry, confused, and in a lot of pain. after spending most of sunday inducing myself to vomit, things have gotten back to a relatively normal state of confusion relatively quickly. despite it all, we're still good friends, and i'm glad for that. Thursday, November 21, 2002
you know how there are short forks, and there are longer forks? one of them is for salads or something, right? well, i don't like the long ones. i always avoid using them, so they're always the only forks left in my fork drawer, which results in what seems like my always using them. it's a vicious cycle. Friday, November 15, 2002
so i've started a day job this week - only temporary, for the holidays - doing telephone sales work for aunt sally's pralines, a company i've done design work for in the past (and am doing quite a bit of design work for now, too.) it's silly stuff, but not bad, and i've got plenty of experience doing that sort of thing, so i'm very comfortable with it - and the best part is that the extra income will allow me to keep doing my freelance work and looking for a permanent, career-type thing. and i've got a few good leads on permanent things lately, too, but we'll see what happens there... all in all though, things are busy, and busy is good. one really great thing i did manage to fit into my busy schedule this week was that wednesday night i went to see david rees, the creator of get your war on, which is one of the best satirical cartoons out there and certainly one of the best critical pop-culture responses to the war on terror, etc.. he was a good speaker, funny in a casual way, incredibly down to earth and very matter of fact about the comic and the sudden fame/notoriety he's gained over the last year. and a really genuinely good guy, who's donated every penny he's made from his success - a considerable amount - to the de-mining of afghanistan. not at all the slick, cynical type i was expecting. i was even kind of surprised by his appearance: he's in his late twenties, probably, tall, and looks kind of like a disheveled, sleep-deprived version of ben affleck - totally unassuming and verging on goofy. he spoke at "the ark," an alternative space co-op hole in the wall just outside the french quarter, to a room of maybe twenty people. afterwards he took questions, and my friend simeon and i were nearly the only ones to ask anything, but even alone we got a pretty great interview out of him about his background and motivations, which i think added a good bit to the whole experience for everyone there. practical upshot of all this being that if he's visiting your city on his book tour, go see him. funny as hell and well worth it. Sunday, November 10, 2002
i have been - and still am - busy as all hell this past week and this weekend. but you know, i really enjoy being busy when i'm doing design work. and this past week, i've had some pretty amazing work-breaks and distractions. a few observations from the week: • i've had a record-breaking week for live music. calexico, wilco, rhett miller and rent. • two of the above were free, for various reasons. the other two were worth the money. • the second half of rent always makes me cry. • almost anything by the old 97's makes me grin uncontrollably. • the pixies were more - much more - than the sum of their parts. Friday, November 08, 2002
just came back from seeing wilco at tipitinas. unlike last year, they rocked, and i enjoyed the hell out of it. i don't know why exactly it was so much better than when i saw them last year - it was just as crowded, if not more, but i had a better view... strangely, i think jeff tweedy seemed more down to earth this time, less hubristic - which is odd, since it's been in the past year that wilco's star has really risen, what with yankee hotel foxtrot and all. and the fact that they were playing mostly from that album, rather than from the woodie guthrie albums, certainly helped. Tuesday, November 05, 2002
unapologetic is extremely seductive. Saturday, November 02, 2002
 so this was my halloween costume. anybody know what i was supposed to be? i just told anyone who asked that i was "a martian or something" and that seemed to satisfy most people - but it didn't really matter, everyone seemed to like it anyway. halloween was good in general. i don't know why, but come to think of it halloween is always a little disappointing to me, it never seems to quite live up to my expectations lately. this year especially, something seemed to be missing, which i guess is really no surprise since so many of my friends are no longer in town. all in all it was a good time and it's always fun to get in costume and walk around the french quarter and watch people and be watched and get home at an ungodly hour.after that the rest of the weekend was uneventful and for the most part, solitary; i spent quite a bit of time working on various freelance design projects, which was nice; it's always nice to have work to do. and i attempted a few simple cooking experiments, all relatively successful: split pea soup; bread; and dulce de leche, which is a latin-american caramel of spreadable consistency, made by cooking down milk and sugar. the last because i've been inspired recently to try to learn to cook some of the colombian recipes i remember from my childhood. obleas con arequipe, flan, arroz con coco, arroz con pollo, platanos fritos, tamales bogotanos... the fact that most of these meals include meat or chicken - or more precisely, the fact that those flavors are so integral to my memories of those dishes - is actually one of the few things that has occassionally made me consider eating meat or poultry again. which i suppose is a hint to those out there who would put an end to my vegetarianism (meaning pretty much my whole family, most of my friends, and every girl i've dated in the past seven years.) it's just that for some reason i feel like i should learn these family recipes, be able to make all those things myself - and it would be kind of stupid to cook things i wouldn't eat. maybe one day. Friday, November 01, 2002
we all know that advertising is how many of our favorite commercial websites make money. with that in mind, we tolerate an amazing amount of it on a daily basis, as a necessary evil. but good god, there must be limits. i'm tempted to stop reading the onion, because it's getting to be a more trouble than it's worth to find the content amidst the ads... kind of an ... um... pain in the ads?
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