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WED 25 SEP 2013 | |
01:13PM my french exit
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WED 24 JUN 2009 | |
02:36PM amazing
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SAT 11 APR 2009 | |
04:17PM heer! are some of my artz.
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i hope you will enjoy them. more are in my flickr, here. i'll be adding to it as i get more fotos.
mood: satisfied
music: tim playing a thug game on thee xbox
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[ 23 bats released | release the bats! ]
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WED 07 JAN 2009 | |
09:36PM for two
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the other side of the world
is an island the shape of a woman
& i know this place
from there there is no escape
you know she held me
not that too tight that she would break me
not too loose for i would slip away
to the other side of the world
you know she held me
like i could leave at any time
& i could breathe into the wire
& tell myself i'm free
then it turned under my feet
& the buildings & the trees
left with the wind
left me standing in the darkness of the street
where i'm a stranger to everyone
& everyone is a stranger to me
if i could touch you darling
i'd tell you all the things i never said
of how you hid those tears away from me
like i couldn't hear
for i loved you through this wilderness
i loved you through the shit
i loved you through the best times
& did every one
from the other side of the world
then it turned under my feet
& the buildings & the trees
left with the wind
left me standing now i'm sharp & set alight
i'm screaming down the wire
to find you
the other side of the world
is an island the shape of a woman
& i know this place
from there there is no escape
download tindersticks "the other side of the world" [7.8MB]
music: i don't have much in my life but take it it's yours
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[ 22 bats released | release the bats! ]
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MON 05 JAN 2009 | |
08:26PM hibernation & hoarding
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"we'll be together in our bear's cave, and our squirrel's dray, and we'll live on honey, and nuts--lots and lots of nuts. and we'll sing songs about ourselves--about warm trees and snug caves, and lying in the sun. and you'll keep those big eyes on my fur, and help me keep my claws in order, because i'm a bit of a sloppy, scruffy sort of a bear. and i'll see that you keep that sleek, bushy tail glistening as it should, because you're a very beautiful squirrel, but you're none too bright either, so we've got to be careful. there are cruel steel traps lying about everywhere, just waiting for rather mad, slightly satanic and very timid little animals. right? poor squirrels!"
"poor bears! oh, poor, poor bears!"
download crystal stilts "graveyard orbit" [7.8MB]
music: we could do anything cos it was always us
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[ 5 bats released | release the bats! ]
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THU 18 DEC 2008 | |
12:01PM hey there internet
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THU 11 DEC 2008 | |
07:02PM i know famous people
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SAT 22 NOV 2008 | |
05:44PM tersely yours, stonerface.
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actual return-by-mail form completion:
item 14669071 SPIRAL NOTEBOOK SERIES 4 PAINTED DOG ONE SIZE. ret. code 30. reason: notebook ordered depicted dog; as rec'd, no dog. wd like dog to be sent--if out of dog, refund.
so far back in grandrapids i have: borne a pall (is that the tech term for carrying a coffin): begun playing BELLA SARA "the unchallenging online girl game about horses and their similars (incl. seahorses, donkeys, pegasi), requiring the semi-embarrassing purchase of trading cards and the painstaking entry of their codes"; driven through four BEAR X-ING zones but seen no bears; told six people my name was johannes; been pulled over for doing 49 in a 25mph zone but did not receive ticket due to decision some years back to simply NOT GET A TICKET EVER AGAIN and that decision's The Secret-like ability to make tickets not be so, or whatever; gotten blotto alone in a holiday inn discotheque on a northern bay of lake michigan while 40mph cursed up a blizzard outside; gotten my nap on silly, sideways, two times, et cetera; and run facefirst into an icicle which was sort of like being backhanded by a walrus, facially.
which instead of "backhanded" would be "facefaced," i guess. "i just got facefaced by a walrus." yo, you got royally tusked, son.
or whatever.
music: it's too late aw yeah aw yeah AW! YEAH!
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[ 20 bats released | release the bats! ]
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MON 15 SEP 2008 | |
12:55PM -
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i wanted to say something about DFW but i had other things i had to say first. i wanted to talk about amanda's wedding since that was the main thing & thank god he didn't actually die on that day but the day before, & i just hadn't heard. i wanted to talk about giving the maid of honor speech, telling how one of the first times amanda & i really bonded, we went to see david foster wallace read, & met him, & asked if we could take a picture, & how he was our idol, in the sense most people reserve for crap lead singers; i didn't tell the family-less-friendly bit about how david looked at the camera nervously, asked you're not going to photoshop dicks on my face or anything, right? how i sat down for dinner after the speeches & then lorealle had something on her phone, a picture of him, & she said who is that & i said oh no oh no, how i panicked & evaded the bride, not wanting his death & her wedding linked in her mind. (how several less sensitive guests strolled right up to the sweetheart table & brayed the news.) how i went behind a dumpster & cried; how lorealle was in the bathroom forever while i went into the men's room & threw up. this isn't about me, but it is about me, i felt like some kind of lever-point of terrible import, it was too full-circle, it was death's great whomping venn diagram, the slide & whale of some planet-sized typewriter's hard return.
the bride said this way more people will want to read his books & all get to share in them, he'll be more famous. the bride has a sunny disposition. the horror was nesting in my hair, & part of it was the complete resetting of relation to the text that his death meant, & the how of his death & then the why, & part of it was the identification with him, being so close to that edge, & part of it was remembering his commencement speech, about how if you can't learn to control what you hear & think you are totally hosed, & how when i read it i thought he meant w/r/t news & media, but how maybe it was a more headcentric thing than that, that it was controlling what we hear from ourselves, from our insides, & i hoped his insides weren't full of poison like mine are but i was afraid that they were, this kind of went along with that. how it feels to be pent-totally hosed. hubris or whatever how i always felt like i understood something about him & how now horrifying it was, that he had maybe had to life with that poison, how you never want someone you love to suffer in a way you have suffered. i wanted to know him like i know my father, my papa, my brothers; i know how he laughed, but i wanted to see his dinnertime tics or know about how he chose shoes, all the little terrible beauties of living & understanding. how hard we try not to think about how he felt that day. how perfect & terrible & beautiful: hosed.
then driving home from the hotel sunday i thought about the rest of the speech, i really made it up on the fly, terribly nervous, but ended up saying something about how in our culture the wedding is seen as a sort of finish line, the happily ever after end, but how it's really another beginning, & then i somewhat hackneyishly but no less sincerely said ...it's the beginning of forever, & driving home with a complete tangle of hair & bone exhaustion i thought about how maybe that was true, too, that what i have constructed from what i allow inside, controlling how i think, & being yes i will use the word blessed with the people around me, that it is a reflex to me that his wasn't a dead end, full stop, much like how his books kind of always weren't, & i hoped that there was a forever, some kind of great footnote that doesn't have an end.
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SUN 20 JUL 2008 | |
05:57PM what a weird weekend
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well, i just rescued a girl from the american apparel mansion.
i'm not joking.
music: "mansion" is so bourgie but that's its name
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[ 35 bats released | release the bats! ]
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FRI 18 JUL 2008 | |
08:15PM important
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FRI 11 APR 2008 | |
12:55PM how white i am
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i like every thing
that white people like. wait, no,
i do not like rugby. it's not
that i dislike rugby certainly
have nothing against a good bout
match episode of ruggers but
oh god i don't even know it. so
not ruggers. also not japan
or asian girls in such
general and fetishistic terms although
i can think of several individual
girls, happening to be asian, whom i hold
in high esteem. and back to japan
everyone is too small and i do not want
to be chased with torches like some gwailo yeti
into a shop marketing live animals for eating
or used girls' panties (the girls i assume
are asian) so no to japan. i am surprised
that antidepressants are not on the list; despite
several consciously-casted commercials
you know anything named WELLBUTRIN
has to be cracker.
i hate sarah silverman and manhattan
for the same reasons. thinking about it though
i should like to live in shorts listening
to npr and eating fusion sandwiches all
day long, i am super white, smoking
shitty, feeble joints and biking around
to look at modern architecture
ironically. then back home by the water
signing mad book deals watching royal
tenenbaums eating organic, my dog
is a hybrid and piracy is just another
form of recycling and more than anything
i really love divorce i mean
i LOVE IT
• • • • • •
also, who has flown with a medium-large (i.e., not carry-on) dog before? i am flying with my dog. we are going to the moon. tell me about this.
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[ 65 bats released | release the bats! ]
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THU 20 MAR 2008 | |
02:02PM halp
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please talk to me about good digital cameras under $1000 (ideally under $500 but if it's like earthmoving i'll charge the hell out of it). i am favoring canon or nikon. is this wrong?
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[ 84 bats released | release the bats! ]
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MON 10 MAR 2008 | |
02:58PM ohmygod
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do you know how much i love you
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WED 27 FEB 2008 | |
09:05PM claw aboot the hoose
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i just hung a photograph and then walked around cheering "YES IT LOOKS SO GOOD" while brandishing a hammer.
my continued spinsterdom is baffling, no?
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[ 35 bats released | release the bats! ]
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TUE 19 FEB 2008 | |
12:50PM weighing in
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I HATE VAMPIRE WEEKEND
you can all go back to your regularly-scheduled LJing now.
mood: hater tots
music: it's not fucking vampire weekend
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[ 111 bats released | release the bats! ]
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SUN 27 JAN 2008 | |
11:45AM PET PEEVE
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TUE 22 JAN 2008 | |
01:52PM WHAT
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TUE 11 DEC 2007 | |
01:06PM gimme the sparkly! i gotta have the sparkly!
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WED 05 DEC 2007 | |
09:47AM i would rather die than give you control
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my brother ed is probably seven. he barrels down the hallway into the living room where my sister and i are watching television on the couch; he launches into the air and lands dramatically, sinking his plastic teenage mutant ninja turtles scimitar into a floor cushion. "TERRIBLE LIE!" he howls. it is my fault: i have given him a case of the nine inch nails by osmosis; i laugh until i cry.
• • •
i don't know how to write about music but last night i was reminded of the existence of pretty hate machine by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) octavekitten and unearthed the disc (seriously, what are we supposed to do now with our books of a thousand cds, unsellable, denuded of case? they are fantastic time capsules: music i liked, 1994-2004. right?). the commute was rendered hilarious as the honda filled with menacing casio and paper-thin bass, and then trent reznor's adenoidal midwestern whine stomped along the lyrics like a bad karaoke revolution contestant. and then i died.
"sanctified," in particular, features an aggressively dorky slap bass line, the likes of which have not been heard since early depeche mode, as well as atmospheric bongos and the mandatory synth "ZAP!" sound (hard to describe, but i know you know it). yes. i know. i think a great part of the allure of NIN in the early 90s was its similarity to certain video game soundtracks; i was mainly (duh) into spooky or wizardy games, and sending a 16-bit elf warrior creeping around a pixel-haunted castle was rendered more engaging by the gothy themes that repeated, on average, every forty seconds. but so whatever, tangent, sorry, what i was attempting to get at was that there was something more indelibly lonely and nerdy about the goth/industrial/D&D crap of the 90s than previous, and pretty hate machine is in some ways a paean to that. (my sister will not let go the incident in which i découpaged, using a thousand tiny bits of torn paper, the image of trent reznor onto my trash can. this from the girl who has every backstreet doll in a box under her bed. but i digress again.)
the lyrics have not aged well. songwriters have it easier than poets in that they often get away with "telling, not showing" and doing a lot of me, me, me talk and not having to adhere to any sort of meter; this lends some universality to the song wherein the listener can feel autobiographical and participatory. when i was 14, he was singing the gospel of disillusionment, isolation, nonconformity, maaaan, and i was listening avidly. at 29 i almost crashed my car laughing at the spastic brattiness of his complaints ("now i'm slipping on the tears you've made me cry!") and the ill-articulated feelingness of his feelings, which he was feeling very feelingly ("i was feeling some feelings you wouldn't believe / sometimes i don't believe them myself" OH WOW TRENT THOSE ARE SOME IMPORTANT FEELINGS DOOD). strings of clichés compound into merry garlands of super-delicious disaffectation and whining: "i'll cross my heart, i'll hope to die/but the needle's already in my eye/and all the world's weight is on my back/and i don't even know why" [emphasis mine]. WHY, MOM?! i am reminded of the time my rave dj roommate, adam, an emaciated yet large-panted detroit native, slumped over our kitchen table in despair: "i wish i were a gourd," he muffled out from under his arms, "cos if i were a gourd, i wouldn't have a final tomorrow." DUDE: TRENT KNOWS!
any goth can tell you that the album was recorded at night while reznor worked as a janitor during the day in ohio or something, and as such it's impressive from an engineering standpoint, but his craft might have been well-served via some creative writing classes at the local community college. the choruses out-emo any eyelinered poof afoot today: that's what i get, maybe i'm all messed up, you can't take that away from me--reacting to the world as though it's an extremely large and unfair parent who denies him a promised toy, along with a healthy dose of pre-emo fear and loathing for the sake of fear and loathing. the goths who preceded him were invested in the romance of decay or in a kind of proto-punk what's-the-world-coming-to contemplation; contrariwise, reznor was bratted off that everything sucked for him, all the time. the difference seems to be that 1989, it was the exception to feel that way, not the rule; NIN offered a cretinous sanctuary for the slim percentage of the population beginning to experience a foot-stompy ennui about how shit was unfair (apparently they didn't get the memo from jareth the goblin king). of course the steamroller of industrial fuck noise barreled forward and meatheads signed on and then NIN exploded in popularity the way that, say, skinny puppy never would (their lyrics were too hard), but that was later. i'd guess it's because everyone likes to think about how pissed off and maligned and mistreated he is, in simple terms, and then wear 18-hole doc martens about it.
what surprised me the most was how sturdy "something i can never have" has remained. i had pretty hate machine on cassette, a format that allowed for two album beginnings and endings (start and end of sides A or B), and though it was the last track on side A (meaning that on a cd or ipod it comes smack in the middle of the album), it always read like the closing track to me (reznor figured it out on subsequent releases and put the real leaky-wrist numbers last). the crunchy battleship-clang noises on that track sound great, as does the contemplative piano riff; it comes off more like the moonlight sonata than a cheap melodic gimmick. but the desperation and compounding intensity of feeling (see also bauhaus "crowds," another of the great teenage breakup songs)--is that something we never lose? is that frustration, rather than an adolescent indulgence that we eventually outgrow, actually one of the first tastes of adult despair? i was still moved by the song; i am in no position to judge; i am mentally 14 forever.
• • •
claudia: Terrible lie!
brother: aahahahahaha
claudia: i'm dying
brother: wait, you are?
claudia: no i mean i'm laughing really hard, i don't have cancer or anything
brother: oh
claudia: although when i do get cancer i'll be sure to inform you by texting you NIN lyrics
music: i can't digest certain types of drugs but i won't give up
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[ 110 bats released | release the bats! ]
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( 