10/26/0
Question of the day: "So, whatever happened to that huge explosion in Siberia
from 90 years ago?" That Tunguska event. Well, the flames died down after a
while, but cataclysmic radioactive anti-matter space meteor impacts will always
have a home on the internet. Those of you from Generation X-Files probably know all
about this; those of you, ah, less hip can see this somewhat lurid
account for a gripping (if less than scientifically rigorous) introduction.
The no-effort conventional wisdom still seems to be, "Yeah,
big meteor hit
Siberia in 1908." But there are some troublesome details. First of all, there's no
crater, and no meteor fragments that anyone seems to know of. The first expedition out there
just found a point: a point from which the fallen trees radiate outwards, and
(weirder) with a small but necessarily powerful _torque_
coefficient - all of the fallen trees were spun about three degrees clockwise
off the radius. The shockwave was rotating, like a big spiral, or a
tornado. Whatever the thing was, if there was a thing at all, it was a 40
megaton airburst that exploded with considerable backspin and left no
detectable fragments behind. Seems kind of weird.
Second of all, there's the matter of what people saw. Now people are just
monkeys, really, so the eyewitness accounts vary considerably; the best
aggregate you can come up with seems to be: "there was some kind of
gigantic cylinder, brighter than the sun, that hung in the sky falling
gradually for ten minutes. Also there were some fireballs, some kind of five
hundred mile vapor trail, and a suspicious little cloud down near the
horizon. Or something. Then there were four thunderclaps, and what sounded
like ongoing cannon warfare. And the ground shook a lot. We were really
scared and everybody in Siberia thought they were going to die."
So what the hell? The people with the slightly lurid account come out in
support of the "anti-matter projectile" theory, which they run through some
rigorous comparisons with the "asteroid" and "spaceship reactor" theories
before admitting down near the bottom that "the only problem with the
anti-matter theory is that it doesn't exist in our universe." That's no
problem though, it might have had a plasma cushion, like on Star
Trek. Well.
You've got your massive electromagnetic disturbances, your radiation
sickness, your earthquakes, loud cannon / thunder noises, and bright lights,
jets of fire, your trees catching fire 40 miles out but surviving near the
center, and of course some kind of massive EMP on the other side of the
planet - also worldwide reports of strangely glowing skies and aurora
effects for days before and after.
After spending a while sorting through the abductees' Geocities pages
(those pop-up banners must soothe their implant scars) I turn up another angle
- a tectonic
interpretation. Like so much of this Tunguska material, it's
sketchily translated Russian, and I didn't want to buy it at first because it
isn't as fun, but if you read the whole thing it makes a lot of sense.
Their theory is that there was no object from space. Instead, this was some
kind of, not earthquake exactly, but enormously powerful
"tectono-atmospheric event". As it turns out, the Tunguska
epicenter is an ancient area of major volcanic activity. Such areas have
a history of behaving strangely - wandering fireballs, ball lightning, that
kind of thing. Some very weird things happen sometimes. They
give a lot of examples in the report, in fact that's what most of the
report is.
The asteroid hypothesis probably isn't actually as far-fetched as people
promoting other theories try and make it sound — it's difficult to get
hard facts
about something that happened in the middle of Siberia 92 years ago,
particularly when the Russian government didn't even bother sending one guy to
investigate until 13 years after it happened (imagine cosmic forces detonating
Nebraska and Clinton not giving a shit). But I like that tectonic
theory. Maybe "like" is the wrong word,
but it has a certain gut plausibility - a giant spike in the great
system. So many things came to a point at once in those few days - sunspot
activity, rate of change in the angle of the Earth's axis, so on - and the
planet got polarized somehow, impaled on the great sword of the gravity
gnomes. It's that giant EMP on the other side of the planet that gets
me. Huge forces. You wonder how often this thing happens. One report I saw somewhere mentioned in
passing how if this had happened further west it could have basically blown up Europe.
I may do more research and refine this later. Bear in mind I'm getting this stuff from random websites; it might be
completely wrong. My ultimate goal, of course, is to start up a legend about
the "Curse of Tunguska" among Cubs fans1, but it's
going to take time.
1 - among Red Sox fans they talk about the "Curse of the Bambino",
i.e. Babe Ruth. In the first part of the century, the Red Sox were the dominant team in the AL.
After the 1918 season, the Red Sox had 6 championships to the Yankees' 0. Then the owner (Harry
Frazee) sold their star pitcher, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees; today the story goes that it was to
finance Frazee's Broadway production of "No No Nanette", but it was actually because of Ruth's
perceived attitude problem,
among other things, in addition to cash flow. Anyway, since then the Yankees have 26 championships
to the Sox' 0. 81 years later, you get the Curse of the Bambino. So, the Cubs haven't won since
1908 — the year of the Tunguska event. It didn't fund any Broadway musical, but it definitely
had an attitude problem. I don't see how this can be a coincidence.
1/12/1
You hear things over lunch: apparently (so I hear) New England fishermen
make their real money off of bluefin tuna. Like, a single bluefin tuna.
That's what my boss says: when she was small on the coast, in the 70s and
early 80s, the same Japanese man would come to Provincetown every day,
pick up the bluefin right off the dock, hand the fisherman cash, take the fish in a truck.
They were flown out from the Hyannis airport. They would be eaten in Japan
(sushi I guess) inside of 38 hours, and the flight alone is 20. I didn't hear a price,
but they say that 2 or 3 bluefins make an entire season, and if you
get 5 or 6 you're making pretty good money over the top of expenses.
They're fat like hogs. They send planes out now trying to spot them.
You can only imagine the incidence of agoraphobia among bluefin tuna
nowadays.
1/13/1
< long pause >
"You're a mixed fruit boat."
"What?"
<pointing at menu> "Mixed fruit boat. You."
"No-oo..."
"Yes. You're Polish and English, right?"
"Yes..."
"So you're mixed. And you're a fruit because..."
"No, I"
"... you came from a tree. Do you float?"
"I... not very well."
"But do you sink?"
"Well, no. I float a little ways below the surface."
"So you're a submarine. That's a kind of boat. Cogito, ergo
mixed fruit boat, QED."
<silent fit of some kind>
"I'm not a mixed fruit boat."
"No, but you have to admit I made a better case than you were
expecting. You know where you could have had me? On the fruit
part. I skipped over that pretty quickly because I knew I didn't have an
argument. Come to think of it, though, people are a lot like fruit - an
attractive, fleshy exterior to lure observers to the seed within."
"Except for, like, hair."
"Hm."
"And organs and things."
"Yeah, that's true. We're whole organisms, while fruit is just a sort of
snack wrapped around the seed, so the insects or birds will be
tempted and carry it away to a better place."
<pause>
"So, in a sense, we're like the fruit and the birds all rolled into
one."
"You'd better write that down before you forget it."
1/15/1
My new subway reading is Maurice Nadeau's The
History of Surrealism which I was supposed to read for class two years ago
and never did. I still have most of my expensive college education sitting around
my room unfinished. I hope it doesn't start to go bad. I was a little concerned
for the surrealists back in college; what they were doing seemed absolutely correct to me
on a gut level, and yet some of what Breton told me in those manifestoes
was clearly bullshit. The future resolution of the states of dream and reality -
I don't even know how to finish this sentence. I wrote André a letter asking
for more concrete details, maybe a diagram, but he didn't reply. I probably should
have known better than to take it literally and absolutely, but in my own place and time there was
something of a backlash against irony in progress and I was moved by his apparent earnestitude.
Is there a noun for earnest? Sincerity? Is that exactly the same thing? Anyway,
I was a sucker, and today we have moved past sincerity again, past reason and rationality,
and finally beyond irony and even absurdity into something else. But we still have to wash the
dishes here, which I think is what was confusing me before.
On the same subject, today I woke up and beyond the orange glow of my room
the sky outside was a strange grey. I told the other person who was there that
it looked like we had some kind of unusual precipitation, and together we
recalled the ice storm of 95. I dressed, tied on my boots and left the house. A warm snow was falling
thick in the air, great wet white gobs of it even as long as half an inch, so you could see each
individual flake from a block away. As I walked down Simpson I was thinking about the
material in the previous paragraph, and specifically about the fusion of dream and reality and
how distant it seemed from my ridiculously ordinary day-to-day life. I looked up from my feet and
discovered the snow falling thicker than ever, and, as it was on the point of melting as it came
down, appearing to fall straight through the ground and vanish, like snow from another
dimension.
1/16/1
I don't actually know what a lot of words mean. I learned them all by
reading a lot. By necessity I got really good at picking up the basic meaning
of a new word from context. Then when I would run into the same word a few books later,
I would apply the context from the previous book, lay that over the context from the present book
and drop that construct back into the bank. Twenty years later, whenever I see the word
"stately", my brain processes that as a sort of amalgamation of everything stately I've
ever read about in the past, and that's all it means to me.
It works pretty well, but I suck at giving explicit definitions of things.
1/17/1
I want to invent a way to put film grain on my computer monitor -
a sort of constant grainy flickering, with occasional snaps and
pops and Kubrick hairs flashing by. It would make the whole
burdensome ordeal so much easier on the eyes.
1/18/1
Welcome to family story hour. My grandparents have
lived in the same house since my mother was around 8, back in, what, 1947 or thereabouts.
It's in Walteria (south central Torrance), on Adolph Avenue, which was sort of an
unfortunate street name given the times - there's a story about that but I've forgotten
it. Anyway, some time after they moved in, some neighbors came around with a petition
against allowing hispanics to move into the neighborhood. They were getting quite
a few signatures. My grandfather told them to get the hell off his porch. They got the
hell off his porch.
So in the fullness of time a large hispanic family moved in next door to my grandparents and started
stealing everyone's hubcaps. I'm never sure what to say at the end of this story.
1/19/1
Today when I was finally able to get out of bed I dragged myself
down to the living room, but once I was on the couch I didn't even
have the energy to get up again and operate the DVD player, which
I live for. Luckily the H-bomb came back from Store 24 with some
lemon-lime Gatorate and strawberry yogurt (Colombo™, with the
built-in spoon), which I set upon with what might have approached
vigor. Then I composed a poem:
I like your outfit;
It makes you look fly.
I don't like my tummy;
It makes me feel bad.
She thanked me and left. I threw up in the kitchen sink,
went back upstairs and spent the rest of the day fucking around with
video games and sleeping. Now I think I'm hungry, but at this stage
keeping food down actually requires more hand-eye coordination than the
video games. We'll see what happens. (via Kottke)
1/23/1
Nosotros tenemos hablamos espanol aqui ahora. Tenemos hablar. Yo (Leroico)
ayudo muy espanol en la escuela primera, pero no recuerdo muy bien, como tu vez.
Primero, yo necesito recordar como typar los acentos - é - ! Buénó!
Y también el n pequena - necesito searchar el Web para este - Googlar - yo Googlo,
tú Googles, ellos Googlen - ah, es simple. Tengo entrar la caracter especialmente -
¿ - y espero que ningún malo suceden. Que lástima.
En un gran coincedencia, ya deseo escribir en español aquí antes de Christina del Fuego
me dice que ella va a estudiar este lengua para, como se dice... graduada escuela.
Grácias, babelfishto, como no me dices "Ayudas Grandes". Sarcastico.
1/25/1
He estado interesado en capoeira desde que primero oí hablar
él. Como con tan muchas
cosas, la primera indirecta que existió algo como esto era algo
que vi en la televisión.
Demandaron que un amo del capoeira podría derrotar un amo
equivalente de cualesquiera de
las formas del este. Ahora, pienso que son mentirosos. De todos modos cualquier
juego de la cosecha-polvoreda el luchar brasileno del esclavo que baila es un
amigo de mmí. Actualmente
la suma total de mis artes martial que la experiencia es algunas lecciones precipitados de
Tae Kwon Do, pero puedo tener que dar a esto un intento si puedo
encontrar una escuela. Voy a
practicar en el
país poco un primer y a acumular la fuerza
superior del cuerpo así que no hago a un tonto de me o mi cabeza, si sucedido
a Cabeza de Vaca.
1/26/1
I really am trying to learn capoeira. And Spanish. I am as serious about both of
these things as I ever am about anything, which is very serious indeed even while
still making wiseass remarks about the thing. Specifically, I've been
trying to stand on my head for the last 24 hours. Earlier today at work I fell on
my head in one of the elevators. Strange things happen to gravity in there.
I kept on getting my legs 2/3 of the way up and then falling back down - thump!
Then the elevator started to go down - fwoosh! - and for a brief, glorious moment
I was up. Then the elevator started to brake and I behaved as a pile driver.
I am very sad that there are no free walls in my house. There is something everywhere,
a bookcase, a television, at the very least a poster. I think this is a bad sign - of what I
couldn't tell you, but there is no where to practice handstands unless you can already balance.
I tried it on my bed and nearly knocked an electrical socket out of the wall with my falling ass.
So I have to do it at work, as I have already described, and I am afraid that it will get me
fired. They don't know that I've been practicing my tae kwon do kicks on the elevator handrails
for months now, hoping that eventually they'll fall off - handrails are
for pussies. Now in addition, all kinds of gymnastics,
and with those giant pants he wears, those naked hairy calves waving about at eye level -
revolting. Why did we hire him? We should have known better. Oh yes, but sometimes
he actually does a good job.
I am going to recommend some music to you. Some downtempo records, sonic wallpaper as
they say. Electronic music to play in the background while you are sitting around self-indulgently
at home feeling like a badass. If you already do that anyway, this is definitely the music for
you.
- Kruder & Dorfmeister, K&D
Sessions and DJ-Kicks
- Tosca, Suzuki
These are all by the same people, Austrians. Very good. This is the essay from the
inside of the DJ-Kicks:
1. Phone call
While K+D were hanging out at the G-stone lounge, Ellen the health
instructor at G-stone leisure 1 handed them over the telephone.
It was a guy from Germany, who called himself the mighty Horst.
Since K+D were relaxing in a jacuzzi with Luna de Morantos of
Heus 69 they could not understand more than the word - compilation.
K+D immediately said no because compilations nowadays tend to be
boring anyway. After days and days of please do it, STUD!O K7
came with an offer that suited them: drugs, money, mo'drugs +
money and then some gals and their sisters. Since K+D are not
made of wood they gave in.
2. Berlin
Flying to Berlin takes about 74 minutes, which can be a very
long time. So STUD!O K7 chartered a private jet full of cool
gals to ease K+D's hard and long flight. Horst knows about the
important things in life. In the evening the K7 crew took K+D
to a cheap Italian joint. There they worked out some ideas.
After two bottles of Chianti K+D convinced STUD!O K7 that there
is a way where Germans and Austrians can work together. So the
crew left for the bathroom - hell knows what they did there -
returned with big smiles and said: "Yes - you're right!"
3. Production
To get away from the - one track after the other - compilation
concept K+D checked in at HAVLIS - SUPER SOUND where their man
Alex (don of the echo chambers) has a secret dub-laboratory.
There K+D did a dubsession on the selected tracks to inject
some dynamics and life into it. They took two bottles of
Highland park whisky and their old dub-echoes from the cellar
and did a smoked-out dubecho-orgy. The new track and a slight
headache was the result.
4. Finale
When the mighty Horst got the tape of the finished session, he
had to listen to it on his old skool cassette answering machine.
The rumour has it, that due to the awesome expenses for K+D he
had to sell his car with his new stereo but nevertheless he was
happy.
|
So as you can see they know what they're doing. I bought the Sessions
from Amazon and then, after I had heard it, (a) ordered everything else that
either of them had done, and (b) bought it for Hodge for Christmas and I am
also considering buying it for everyone on Stewart Day, which is coming up
soon. Stewart Day is the day when Leroy buys birthday and Christmas presents
for all of the people and occasions Stewart has insensitively overlooked, forgotten about
and fucked off in the past year. All of the children dance.
On with the recommendations:
- Amon Tobin, Permutation
- Dust Brothers, Fight Club soundtrack
- Thievery Corporation, The Mirror Conspiracy
- Autechre, Amber
- Funky Porcini, Love Pussycats & Carwrecks
- Two Lone Swordsmen, Stay Down
- Boards of Canada, Music Has The Right To Children
- Kid Loco, Jesus Life For Children Under 12 Inches
- Aphex Twin, Richard D. James album
That last one isn't relaxing or downtempo at all, except maybe for the middle part, but the
badass is there, although in the case of Aphex it is less about making
you feel like a badass and more about making you feel like Richard is
a badass. Kid Loco borders on Frenchy-French silliness but is still all right.
Tobin and the Fight Club score are the best late-night urban driving music invented
to date, although Amazon's version of Fight Club seems to be missing the nice Tyler Durden
bonus track at the end, which you should by all means hold out for (no reason not to).
1/27/1
Finalmente estado en mi cabeza. Como mis rodillas en mi codos,
puedo formar un trípode y lo sostengo para varios segundos. Si
lo sostengo en general, si puedo persistir, después mis
músculos superiores del cuerpo crecerán y todas las muchachas y muchachos
desearán me dormir. Incluso más.
(Si no habla Ud. español, usa babelfishto. Ése es
para cuál está. Der.)
1/30/1
Washington Street runs through the heart of Downtown Crossing. I'm not sure
if it's actually closed to traffic or if the motorists just know better than
to go, since Washington Street is overrun by the highest density of retarded
consumer pedestrians west of the Ganges. Despite the road being closed, you
have to watch your back because you get a steady stream of paramedics and
ambulances, copcars and paddy wagons, electrical trucks, gas trucks, hook 'n'
ladders and rogue taxicabs. I don't know what it is but there always seem to
be at least three miscellaneous emergencies going on in the unmarked upper
floors above the storefronts. Who knows. I went up in one of them once -
years ago Hodge rolled around on my glasses for a little while and referred me
to her optocologist to make up for it. Little office on the sixth or seventh
floor of some kind of "jewelry exchange building". I'll bet. Lot of
anonymous-looking doors up there. So, there are always two or three
cop-and-fireman conferences going on at various places up and down the street.
Never seems to be too much of a rush. I've identified several species of
indigenous emergency vehicle with no known Los Angeles equivalent; given
recent events sometimes I wonder if the whole scene isn't a front for the
bluefin tuna people.
I was marching through all of this in the awful Boston January drizzle to get
some lunch today. Despite the cold stench of winter it was crawling; cold
speakers blared out from the doorway of the HMV, moistened but
unbowed. Three fire trucks were parked in front of an enscaffolded office
building. Some panhandlers on the sidewalk had a damp clock radio to
offer; it said there were no sexual side effects. I allowed myself a
sigh of relief. Amid all the ruckus I had a
moment of clarity: I realized how comfortably nondescript I was. This place
might freak out some slant-eyed, pidgin-speaking foreigner, but I could
read most of the signs and signals, distinguish between the schizophrenics
and the cellphone users; a native in the native marketplace. It was a
strange perspective I suddenly had; it wasn't very hard to imagine the HMV one
day setting out rubber tubs of squirming cuttlefish, extending one weak
tentacle and warbling plaintively for my dollar; the checkout girl,
slipping in one more lip ring every time I glanced away.
Up on the third floor across from Macy's and Filene's a neon sign says "KUNG
FU VIDEOS". My love of the city comes from this: I know my way around, yet I
always find a next layer waiting.
2/2/1
So here I am. This afternoon I was walking up Simpson on the
way home from the last day of Java training at about 3:30 in the
afternoon when a man in a giant black Buick sedan from the mid-eighties
roared down the street at twice the speed people normally go, leaving in
his wake a few frightened sparrows and a strong smell of exhaust.
Perversely, I liked it. It reminded me of home. This is what has
happened to me: I was raised in Los Angeles, and now I _like_ the smell
of hot exhaust hanging over asphalt.
The great Trans-Siberian Railroad began construction in 1891, some 22
years after the North American transcontinental railroad was
completed. The heir to the throne, Nikolay, actually went out to
Vladivostok to lay the
cornerstone (they don't say how he managed to get there). As you can
imagine, the climate and terrain were a pain in the ass to deal with, and
they had to make a deal with China to put 800 miles of the middle section
through Manchuria. Then they got into a war with Japan. Then Japan took
over Manchuria. Then, they built a bypass of that section around to the
north.
There was also a stopgap ferry service at the pernicious Lake Baikal
(boats in summer, sleds in winter) until a lakeshore loop was finished in
1905, just as the Manchuria snafu kicked in and forced them to keep on
laying track in the frozen tundra until 1916, after which they presumably
had a big party.
2/8/1
I haven't left work since arriving Wednesday morning. I'm so tired
I was just walking down the hall and I processed the horizontal pushbar
on the emergency-exit stairway door as a drinking fountain and almost smacked it to
get water. I wouldn't have gotten any water.
2/11/1
Quick Kick vs. Storm Shadow:
2/12/1
Hodge, my little daffodil, my little machine-stuffed confection, accused me of
preferring processed food over the weekend. I realized that it more than likely was true.
What is life but a metamorphosis of chemicals? Why fight the cave food of the
future? I was lucky; if I hadn't already exhibited this preference on any
number of past occasions she might have gotten upset when I looked downcast
after realizing that by "waffles" she meant iron-waffles from scratch rather
than the toaster eggos.
But it's true, and I admit it, and really it reassures me, in that (a) I can
eat for cheap and walk off smiling and (b) it fortifies my belief in the adaptability of human taste
and endurance in the face of constantly changing environmental conditions. The fucking bomb! When
all food comes packaged like a fruit roll-up, eventually, people will get used
to it. Yes! Veal roll-ups for dinner! I hope they're the kind that's actually
made of paper. I love those. I had a similar revelation concerning the city one day while I was
standing out at a bus station on Mass Ave with Chloe and Grace about a year ago. It's the
one right in front of the church, near Davis Square. It was a hot summer day and the sidewalk was
hot and covered with broken glass - this is definitely connected with that car exhaust thing from a
few days ago. First I realized that it reminded me of home more than most parts of Massachusetts
do. Then I realized that I liked it, and that in a way, it was like being in the wilderness.
They cry for the loss of range lands and trees, and so do I, but at the same time, if in the
fullness of time the entire world is plunged under a layer of human habitations and other
constructions, it almost can't help but present a new wilderness of its own. They
make movies about that all the time.
Have you ever really looked at cities from outside the human perspective, as naturally occurring
formations — as you would an anthill, or a crystal lattice, or
coral?
2/14/1
The elevator buttons where I work operate on some kind of electrolytic loop,
such that only skin contact will activate them. Once while waiting there I started
spinning out a convoluted science-fiction story in which an android only learns his
true nature because he can't press the buttons, but by the time the elevator arrived
I had decided it was stupid. Today I was hiking my shirt up, trying to press
the button with my hipbone, when another person came into the elevator bay. I hastily
covered myself. The elevator arrived empty. I stepped on just in front of him, turned
toward the console and saw that the "1" button was already pressed. No hands! I realized
that to him it probably seemed like I just had really fast reflexes - I
got on first, but my arm never even moved.
2/20/1
So on Friday night Mike, Amos and I sat around my house trying to drink a
gallon of Guinness each. Mike and I bought three of those convenient
eight-packs and wrote our names on them. Prior to the shopping
expedition there had been a disturbance in the kitchen having to do with
unit conversion, which we thought we had resolved via some canny mental
math and a close reading of milk cartons and soup cans until it turned out
that a can of Guinness is only 14.9 fluid ounces, not sixteen, so really a
gallon is about eight and a half cans. We ignored this on aesthetic
grounds.
Amos arrived two cans behind and finished while Mike and I were still
paddling around in number five. Amos, you should realize, is maybe
6'7" and large. Mike, more realistic than your narrator, realized he
wasn't going to make it at around that
time and eased off the throttle. I was a little ways into number seven
when the pizza arrived and, losing all composure in the face of the bounty
available, I foolishly wolfed down three slices. A little while later I
passed out upstairs.
In the morning I was supposed to prepare the house and coordinate movie
suicide weekend, the renting and watching of 12 consecutive full-length
motion pictures. I was still faintly drunk and felt sort of spongy
in the head. Standing up produced a sensation unlike weightlessness.
I got Holly to drive to the Porter Square video store but they didn't
have "The Last Dragon" or "Death Race 2000" so we declared that
video stores suck, went home and ordered everything from Kozmo. I cleaned
my room as best I could, limited as I was to short, declarative gestures
with no force behind them. My closet ended up four feet deep in a kind
of sweater-and-CD goulash which will be unpleasant to deal with. We
watched movies from 1 PM to 6 AM and again from 9 AM to 10 PM. Let me see
if I can remember the complete list.
Happiness
Bring It On
Death Race 2000
Heathers
Waking Ned Devine
Network
The Shining
Tai Chi Master
By this time it was 6:30 AM or so. People had been having trouble staying
awake since Network. Dave, Phil, Corinna, Jean and Amos had gone out to a
party and come back. Phil and Julia had never seen the Shining before, so
we showed it to them. I had lapsed into a state of 3/4 asleep and 1/4
subconsciously creeped out when suddenly Jean next to me started thrashing
around and kicking her feet and my body jolted into a fight or flight
response for at least a second and a half. Luckily I was too confused to
pick one or the other.
For some reason Amos declined to spend a second consecutive night on our
couch.
Chasing Amy
The Fifth Element
The Iron Giant
Underworld: Everything, Everything (plotless dinner break)
The Birds (first half)
Koyaanisqatsi
The Book of Life (first half)
2 hours of the fucking Sopranos
Then
after most everyone left Mike and Holly wanted to watch The Matrix in my
room so we did that too, 2.35:1
widescreen on a 13" screen with audio piped through the stereo
mixer. It's a strangely wonderful setup in a way I can't quite explain.
I fell asleep before it was over.
On Monday night Mike, Holly, Dave and I (and eventually Jen) had a small
dinner party at Mike's place. I tried to explain my idea for a society of
music and machine experimentation, but I think the wine may have
interfered with my self-expression. Dave, Mike and I agreed that it's a
good thing when your friends show up unannounced and knock on your door
insisting that you come help them with this new plan or scheme. Holly
didn't vote but I'm sure she agrees too. I love that idea more than
almost anything but I never actually do it to people because my natural
introversion is still strong there, the overdeveloped respect for what
other people are already choosing to do with their time, the unwillingness
to say "come do this with me." I will beat it down until it dies.
2/24/1
Holly claims that technically, it's legal to go as fast as you want here.
The way the law is written, in Massachusetts and also in New Jersey where
her dad is a lawyer, the speed limit is a "suggested speed", which it's
legal to exceed if you do so "safely" - good weather conditions, not
roaring through crosswalks, and so on. You can get out of speeding
tickets on this - her dad does it all the time, and people think it's some
sneaky lawyer trick but it's just the law. The cops can also pull you
over while you're going under the limit if it's foggy or snowing or
whatever - I knew that, but apparently the conditional flexibility extends
beyond the limit too.
This makes the state cop who ticketed me last year a double-stuff asshole.
Mike and I were driving back from Martignetti's Liquor across the river
with a trunk full of booze intended for some ossipee function last summer.
We were on one of those feeder roads that run along the river and then
combine into Storrow Drive, kinda like Voltron. Nice day, windows down,
cruising along around 45. The state police house is up there, and this
trooper car pulls on the road. Normally I get paranoid and slow down when
I see cops, like everyone does, but I figure that has to piss them off -
Krinsky even has a story about how one time a cop in Connecticut followed
him into a grocery store parking lot, got out of the car and bitched at
him for going too slow. So I figure, hey, I'm going the same speed as
everyone else, it's cool.
A second later he roars up next to us and starts screaming through the
passenger window at Mike, "DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?" We just stare at him.
So he drops back and switches the lights on. I pull over to the side, but
I'm blocking a full lane of traffic and I get sort of confused and start
inching the car forward looking for some place more out of the way. He
pulls the car around into battle position in front of us to prevent our
escape. Gets out of the car. "DO YOU KNOW THE LIMIT HERE IS
35? YOU WERE GOING 50!"
Now, these roads are the closest thing Boston has to highways, short of
the actual expressways (93, etc.). There are no crosswalks, only
occasional intersections. I was going with the flow of traffic. George
and TJ go 70 out there. So it seemed like this guy was either in the middle of a
psychotic break or had just gotten reamed back at the station for not
meeting his ticket quota.
"I didn't realize the limit was that low," I tell him. "I'LL WRITE THAT
ON THE TICKET FOR YOU!" he says, and goose-steps back to his prowler. It
takes him fifteen minutes to come back with the ticket - he must have run
me through every warrant check in the computer. Not his lucky day -
I have a criminal record the size of his mind. "Thank you," I tell him,
polite as anything. He drives off. "I'll bet he has ugly kids," I say to
Mike as I pull out.
So much for my 6-year perfect driving record. What a chimp. I should
have contested it, but he seemed like the kind of guy who relishes
appearing in court against the people, and the whole experience was just
enervating. Knowing then what I know now, I might have hired Holly as my
lawyer and gone for it. That's another good story - the day Holly bought
her Mustang, she parked it at home and one of her roommates immediately
had it towed while she was out getting the parking sticker. Sadly for the
roommate and the towing company, it was on private property. "It was in
my space," the roommate complained. "They're house spaces," Holly pointed
out. "I didn't recognize the car," the roommate said. "I hope you
recognize the bill," Holly told her. The roommate left her a check for
$50 (maybe a third of the bill) with very, very tiny writing on the back
saying "By cashing this check I forego all further legal action against my
beloved roommate." Not those exact words. We all laughed. Holly took it
to court and eventually got it all back from the towing company, plus
damages and (since the towing company had attempted to plead ignorance of
the law) an injunction that they had to put up a sign in their office
reminding everyone that it was illegal to tow off of private property
without the property owner's permission, or whatever the law is, I don't
know. The owner was pissed but he didn't want a judgment against him so
he had to fold. She's considering showing up one day to make sure they
have the sign.
2/28/1
Today I have some notes on the future for you. They aren't very funny or moving.
First of all, this notes section is probably winding down. I can't get that
excited about the format; deep down I'm all about static content and careful
construction, not daily updates, and every time I think about how some people
probably think this is a "blog" the pouch of dignity my liver keeps in emergency
reserve gives a squirt and I have to choke back a tuxedo. It's not the idea of
weblogs, really, it's just that fucking word. Plus these longer entries should
really be going to my oft-neglected mailing list which got all of one message
last year.
So, I have decided to dedicate all of my spare time in the month of March to
renovating all of this-here. These-here bridges have been staring back at you
with their quiet trestle eyes since early '99 with only minimal permutation; I
still like them but they could probably stand to be de-emphasized; perhaps
rotated, like drawbridges. So a new front page. (Maybe back to radiators. I
always liked those.) I also want simultaneously better and less obvious
organization, significant aesthetic improvements, new content, a giant shift in
the structure of medianstrip.net in order to de-prioritize the sluggish and
ill-conceived magazine section in favor of a more network-of-people approach and
some projects with actual focus, and maybe a java game if I have time.
I'll bet you've never seen anyone use network-of-people as an adjective before.
This is part of a larger scheme: I've assigned myself a specific learning goal
for each month between now and next January, at which point I will disappear and
stay gone for quite some time. February was a review month, in which I learned
how to clean out my inbox and maintain regular correspondence with people. So
far so good. March is the website work. April I learn how to use my turntables
well enough not to get laughed at; May is for acquiring and learning to use music
production software well enough to create at least one song, even if it's bad.
June I write half of a script and July I purchase and learn to use a digital
video camera. Then in August I'll throw a really thorough end-of-summer party,
probably incorporating elements from all of these projects. September through
December remain unassigned. So I lied up there. Then Hodge and I travel around
the world and write a book.
3/1/1
In an ironic turn of events considering yesterday's little outburst, you should
probably look at medianstrip
today.
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