Tuesday, March 30, 2004
hey, look! it's a redesign! unapologetic.com is three years old today, so i thought it was about damn time to change things up a little. i'm still working the kinks out of the new look, so i don't think everything is working perfectly yet, and i'll be adding and changing things for a few more days. i've added a few things - there's the new miniblog on the left, just for short notes and links; there's a button for my livejournal, which i'm hoping to start cross-posting to more often; and there's a fully updated archive page. anyway. this is still very much a work in progress, so let me know what you think of the look, what does and doesn't work, and what's missing... * (hint: the titlebar will be changing. and i know that "links" and "photos" aren't working yet.) Monday, March 29, 2004
it's gone! silence! serenity! no more constant "whup, whup, whup, whup" noise when my car goes above 20mph! for any of you who've ridden with me in the past six months or so, you know what i mean - and it's gone forever. the car just goes, and there's no more nervewracking, insidious backbeat. and it's probably a lot safer, too. it's amazing how much a couple of new tires can upgrade your whole quality of life. had an amazingly great impromptu saturday night with darren and melanie - saw xiu xiu play at the banks street warehouse, which was great, and then ended up at the revived cabaret revoltaire dada night, someplace on rampart street, which was a lot of fun, sometimes outlandishly bizarre (the flayed, crucified bunnies in particular) and occasionally beautiful, and there was some great live music. and then we ended up at mimi's for tapas at 4:30 in the morning. then sunday, watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, which is suddenly my favorite movie in recent memory, or maybe even longer. more on that soon. Saturday, March 27, 2004
just a little post to kill some time while I'm hanging out at sam's club, waiting for a couple of new tires to be installed. I've perused all the big box, bulk quantity foodstuffs I care to peruse; won't get any because that kind of abundance is usually wasted upon my bachelor lifestyle: it'll go bad before it's all gone. the discount-priced futurama dvds are a bit more enticing, though. now I'm sitting on a chair in the lawn furniture isle, typing this and feeling like a mannequin in a window display as all the little families walk by, perusing the lawn funiture and, consequently, me. my college (senior year) roommate, henry, showed up in new orleans this weekend for a wedding, and we got to hang out for several hours last night, and again today, and catch up. we literally hadn't spoken to one another since college - almost seven years - just lost touch completely, until a couple of weeks ago when he found me through friendster, and told me he was coming down for this wedding. its strange how you can not talk to some people for seven years and still be immediately comfortable with them. that's how this was. Thursday, March 25, 2004
re-discovered this poem the other day. i like it. the way it is now by charles bukowski I'll tell you I've lived with some gorgeous women and I was so bewitched by those beautiful creatures that my eyebrows twitched. but I'd rather drive to New York backwards than to live with any of them again. the next classic stupidity will be the history of those fellows who inherit my female legacies. In their case as in mine they will find that madness is caused by not being often enough alone. Monday, March 22, 2004
ok, so it was an excellent show, but maybe my euphoria *was* slightly beer-induced. gone as quickly as it came. it's over, and i'm on my way home, stopping at the grocery in the middle of the night, and alone. midnight grocery trips are more fun when you've got somebody to run through the aisles with. *sigh* Sunday, March 21, 2004
don't know if it's the miller high life or what, but right at this moment I'm happier than I've been in quite some time; at the howlin' wolf watching the stars/broken social scene/calexico show - which i've been looking forward to for months - and I feel like I'm part of something, like I have a community, like there are other people in the world like me. the crowd is great, everyone I know who comes to shows in new orleans is here. everyone. and I'd have paid twice the admission to see just one of these bands. and the lighting is great here, for once, so i'm sure i'm getting some good photos. more later... :) Friday, March 19, 2004
well. so i've been pretty down lately, obviously. thanks to everybody that's written, i really appreciate it... it's been a long month of the kind of empty-feelings you can physically feel in your chest, and wondering what the hell i'd done and where things had gone wrong... anyway, whatever. don't have any answers, but i'm coming out of it, slowly; i've had a good week, all things considered, certainly the best in a while... last friday i won a silver "addy" award from the new orleans ad club, for an interactive DVD menu i authored last year, which was pretty cool. got to hang out for a good part of the weekend with rod, who was in town for another staff junket with senator landrieu. we went to the d-day museum to see the "war in the pacific" wing, which neither of us had been to yet. it's really a damn good museum. and this week i've been to concerts three out of four nights - jump little children on monday, plus/minus and the kilowatt hours on tuesday, and the mekons on wednesday. and had a nice st. patrick's day evening hanging out with athanata. so i've been keeping myself occupied. plus it's been a busy week at work - spent the first bit writing and illustrating a new ad for my company, and the second bit on a website that needs to go live in... a few hours. working on another all-nighter. ack! better get back to that... Tuesday, March 16, 2004
ouch. just when you think your emotions are as fucked up as they can reasonably get... things get unreasonable. i mean... I wish somebody would let me in on the joke my social existence has apparently become. fuck. I don't know if I've ever felt quite so alone. Saturday, March 13, 2004
i have most of this saturday morning and afternoon (ie., today) free, and if it's as beautiful a day as the past few have been, i don't want to waste it staring at a computer indoors or alone. so... if anybody reads this and would be up for a bike ride in the park or the quarter, or a walk somewhere, or something else - anything, really, as long as it's fun and outdoors - call me!
check this out. i have no idea how effective it may eventually be, if at all, but this is a situation i feel very strongly about and you have to hope that every voter's opinion counts for something. we have NOTHING in this country if not free speech; it is a FUNDAMENTAL difference between our government and those of more oppressive regimes... http://www.stopfcc.com/ Tuesday, March 09, 2004
gillian welch. at tipitinas. very not intense, just relaxed, good music. --ab3 Monday, March 08, 2004
i was folding laundry last night, and i completely lost it. i've had this ever-present little knot of anxiety growing in my chest for a while now... i haven't felt quite so bad about life in general for a long time. career, social life, friends, family, money, muse, ability, responsibility, age, everything - the bottom just seemed to drop out and none of it made any sense for an hour or so there. or worse, it made BAD sense. i don't know if it was a moment of confusion or a moment of clarity, or both - a little glimpse of my life without all the filters and denials that block out the unbearable truth of it all and let me live every day hoping for the best. it's all about uncertainty and self-doubt. and uncertainty. the worst of it is, it's still there, and i'm not feeling right about things yet. fuck. Friday, March 05, 2004
the birds have begun chirping, though it is still definitely night. the clouds are orange and the sky is purple. the clouds are a dull, iridescent orange that is the reflection of a million sodium lamps, streetlights and the lights of industry, of the port and the refineries and everything else that stays awake in this city. and the sky is purple, not the sky but the gaps in the transparent orange blanket of the clouds, showing through, underpainting: rich deep blackish purple to thin orange lavender, differences in depth and distance. all scrolling steadily lakeward, moving at a velocity that eludes me, constant but vague, something for which I have no frame of reference except other clouds on other nights. the clouds are orange and the sky is purple; this is definitely new orleans.
it's 5:15am, i have yet to sleep, and i like myself tonight. tonight i've managed a feat I sometimes think is beyond me or behind me, but is apparently not: i've just read a book in one sitting, a real book, a novel (though a short one, at 120-odd pages - in fact I'd have called it a novella but for the fact that the jacket of the book itself refuses to do so). the mourning doves have just come awake here, out in the courtyard of my condo complex, where i'm lying on a beachchair near the pool, watching the endless conveyor-belt of clouds and writing about them. the doves are a call and response chorus now. they have voices that are at once deep and sad and feminine and smooth, like cellos. thus the name, I guess. and now they've subsided and given way to other birds of the more chirpy variety. the book (novel!) was "the body artist" by don delillo, and it was wonderful. I bought it on wednesday from the discount section at barnes and noble, on a whim because I've wanted to read delillio for a while (a bit embarassingly, it's been ever since I heard a mention in a song on rhett miller's album 'the instigator' - "... I read it in dellilo / like it was written there for me...") i don't know that I can adequately summarize or review it, though - I've only put it down minutes ago, and my thoughts are still liquid... though I will say it's a deep character study, and it reminded me of the feelings associated with 'deja vu', or when someone speaks to you and you immediately say, "what?" even though you actually heard them, but there's that delay between the hearing and when it registers in your mind... or when you walking into a room very deliberately to do something and yet you suddenly have no idea why you're there: times when you can sense a temporal disconnect, a doubt in the way you percieve the world. my life these days is a series of half-finished and half-started books. they are everywhere - in my car, at my desk at work, both bedstands, coffeetable, kitchen table, randomly scattered. they knaw and needle and poke at me to be read, and I want to get to them all and so I generally get to none, out of exasperation at the sheer enormity of the endeavor. this situation applies throughout my life, I know. so much half-finished and half-started, and rewarding if I'll only get to it. but I got to one tonight, and I am pleased. and now, to bed with me. --ab3 |