it takes all of my resolve and concentration to avoid responding to inane questions my coworkers ask with: “YOU DUMB, BITCH.”
Categories: Ennui
I don’t know why, but I had some strange compulsion to go on MySpace tonight. I am not really friends with many of the people that I am supposedly MySpace friends with.
I feel like I should put new pictures up… redesign my page to look all cool. But fuck that.
I’m sick of putting on a show to attract people. My interests are there, and they should speak for themselves. Besides, Facebook is the new black anyway. In that vein, I’m also kind of sick of it. I mean I like the whole status updates thing but it that is basically a ripoff of Twitter. And now MySpace has applications too… all this inevitable feature creep and feature bloat just makes me sick of the whole concept.
So then came my urge to see who I really was friends with, and I stumbled upon Joe’s profile again. I often think about him and wonder like what happened to him, and was all in this whole “I should send him an e-mail” mood, so I did.
I can’t even remember the last time we talked…it must have been back when I was dating Adrian.
So I got my algebra test back today, and kept staring at it for about five minutes.
All of my answers were right, the only points I got marked down were for imprecise answers where I forgot to write a plus minus symbol or I forgot to include the “i” that was written on my scratch paper.
Crazy shit.
After I got home, I worked with my mom on her website for a long time. We made a lot of progress, it’s nearing completion. I watched Tin Man for the rest of the night… the sorceress lady looks exactly like Jeffree Starr, which was mildly creepy but I loved all the steampunk stuff, especially the vinyl outfits that the people down the factory were wearing.
At about 9 PM, Sam called me and apparently he was downtown. So I went down there and we ended up only hanging out for like 20 minutes before they all went home, but I got my jacket back. I hit Safeway on the way back and finally did what I’d been meaning to do for a million years, make a vanity Safeway card that prints my name out as “Hiro Protagonist.”
After that, I went home, watched part three of the movie, and started on High-Rise again. I <3 that book. Speaking of it, I should bang out another chapter before I have to go to sleep.
Categories: Ennui
Sunday was my first day back from SF.
Zero and I hopped on the 23 and headed downtown, talking about capital punishment, the death of American car culture, the global food shortage, ethanol, string theory, the creative nature of collaborations, and the higgs boson.
Long, exhausting walk to my building, pick up my scooter at the office, drive down to the new Juice it Up, got a smoothie, read a bit of High-Rise (which is amazing btw), and met Taggart there.
We went down to John C. Fremont Park and languished in the grass for a while. Talked about Kurt Vonnegut, the end of suburbia, various scooter related anecdotes, the economy, etc.
The really funny part happened when this large black woman sat down and asked to use one of our phones… she ended up making like three different calls, but the funny part was when she was about to leave:
“You guys dating?” she asked. We both indicated “no.” She paused for a minute, then came back with “You want to date?”we did the uncomfortable question sidelong mumble thing. After that, she said a few more things and left but it cracked me up that she could pick up on the fact that we’d dated.
I have to say, he looked damn hot today. I’m not opposed to beard as in rather short hair all over the face, I’m opposed to Bill Moseley beard.
It was a balmy summer day today, and that just made the whole lounging around in the shade thing so much more awesome. The thought seeping out of the back of my mind the whole time was that it just seemed like the greatest idea to snuggle with him, but cuddling is so inexorably intimate.
We hugged and parted ways, and zero was just getting off work. He was promised this free barbecue at this barbecue, but it actually wasn’t happening at all, so we went and got overpriced Mexican food.
I still had my San Francisco clothes on because I hadn’t been home since I got back from the city, so I wanted to go home but zero and I got coffee at the new Peet’s at that new MAARS building near 21st.
It was my first time going to a Peet’s, and I never thought there could be anything more gentrified than Starbucks, but I was blown away.
Zero’s friend showed up, so I got back on my scooter and booked it back to the house.
I took a much-needed shower, donned my PJs, and I’m about to write about this awesome, amazing, phantasmagoric weekend.
I just finished uploading all the pictures and editing all my posts. And it’s only one o’clock in the morning!
Days like this I feel like I was born to be a journalist, with my endless stream of articles on my life.
Categories: Ennui
Sam and I drive back to the city, where I was supposed to pick up the Dresden Dolls tickets for Susan, Zero, and I by four.
We were hungry, so we found parking at Japantown, which is right next to the Fillmore, got some noodles and sushi for breakfast, then headed to the box office.
The Fillmore’s website was hacked somehow and their box office hours weren’t online (I got them through the Google cache of the page) and they were wrong, so no tickets. I spent the cash Zero gave me to purchase them, so I guess I’m putting them on my credit card.
Sam took his leave to drive over to meet a friend of his, so I walked down towards Market Street, bumbling into Union Square, which I had never been to before.
My mom e-mailed me some photos that she wanted to use for her website and I was able to pull them up on my phone and talk to her about the project. I went to the Apple store out of habit, but was bored with all the expensive technology that I didn’t have a particular use for. I’m really sick of my phone. Like… really sick of my phone, so I was thinking of getting an iPhone and then unlocking it so I could use it on T-Mobile. But the thing is… I have a specific set of requirements for my next phone that needs to be satisfied.
So really, there isn’t a phone out there that satisfies all my requirements, but a 3G 30 GB iPhone would satisfy most of them.
But I still must wait until the first Android phones come out. I <3 open source.
On our way to the Haight
Anyway, so I met Susan and Zero in front of the Apple store, and we proceeded to hit up Muni towards the Haight. We got kind of lost… I mean, not really lost but just kind of not being the exact area we wanted to be (I looked at the map and we were like one street off), but while we were standing around looking at the map (and waiting for the stupid thing to load… I hate you 2G!) we stumble upon this amazing juice bar called The Orbit Room. We got a freshly squeezed orange juice and Zero and I had these amazing freshly made Mojitos.
We walked back to Muni and then ended up back near the Warfield. We were all rather hungry, so we asked Alyx (this awesome girl that zero and Susan know) where a good place to eat would be (that was cheap). We end up at this amazing curry place where we dashed down our food and then hurried back to the Warfield. We find our seats, and half the theater is empty. The show is supposed to start in 10 minutes.
An hour passes.
Finally, the show actually starts and Goldfrapp struts out onto stage in her trademark pillowcase/tablecloth dress, and begins the concert with “Paper Bag.” I was speechless as she hit all the high notes… she even had a cold, and she was still able to belt that shit out.
The Frappster.
Srsly, bitch has some pipes.
A song from Seventh Tree, and then she did “Utopia,” which was grand. The live instrumentation gave the songs a richness and depth to the sound that they lacked on the album.
Other than those two songs, the rest of the concert was pretty much shit. I mean, I enjoyed a few songs from Seventh Tree, she did a mean rendition of “Cologne Cerrone Houdini” and “Caravan Girl” was rockin’, but she did all of these slow, pointless songs from Seventh Tree that just dragged the energy of the concert down so much. I mean, if you watch her concert from the Felt Mountain days, the songs are mostly slow, but they are dripping with angst and emotion and build to these incredible crescendos.
On Seventh Tree, the slow songs don’t have any meat to them. The whole album was supposed to be happy and upbeat and the slow songs to seem really out of place.
Pirate + Clown = Goldfrapp?
Also, the sense of flow was just… off. They would stop playing a song, wait for like two minutes, and then start another one… there didn’t seem to be much sense of continuity at all. And for an artist who obviously speaks English (bitch is from the UK), she built up absolutely no repertoire with the audience. Even CSS, who are fucking Brazilian, managed to spit out in broken english that they love San Francisco and it’s hard for them to leave. I mean, even if it’s total bullshit, crowds eat that shit up. Somebody needs to give her like stage presence lessons… she didn’t even “dance” (her little marching-in-place thing she does during “Strict Machine”) at all until like halfway through the concert, and she spent a lot of the time with her back to the audience.
Through it all, we were right beside Goldfrapp’s number one fan, Goth Kenny G, who had this long black curly hair and was literally convulsing in time with the music for the entire duration of the show.
Tablecloth + Pillowcase = Goldfrapp’s dress.
Also, across the aisle, was Goldfrapp’s #2 fan, Go-Go Lederhosen Faggot, who was dressed entirely in white. White lederhosen with matching white go-go boots. I thought I had seen the depths of faggotry before that moment. I was wrong. His unique function was to smoke a joint the entire duration of the concert.
And then after all the slow songs she did a song from the upbeat, dripping-in-synth “Supernature”… which was even more confusing. With every concert I’ve gone to, they build from not necessarily slow songs to fast songs, but the energy seems to increase and then they play like the best, most intense songs towards the end. This concert just felt all over the map, and after waiting for the God damn thing for an hour, zero and I were at this point were we were actually kind of waiting for the concert to be over with so we could go out clubbing.
And club we did.
Alyx took us to this really great private club where we were on the guest list…it was awesome. Zero and I got Absinthe, and ten minutes later I was feeling no pain and rambling on about…well…something, and having a great time.
We had to leave at about two because of the drive home (I think we got back around 5 AM). Alyx was awesome, she looked flawless in a floor-length duster, a garter skirt, and immaculate calf-high boots. She also had this rockin’ Corvette (it’s not my style, but it just screamed “I HAVE MORE MONEY THAN YOU COULD DREAM OF”). I was just kind of like… “are you a unicorn?”
Coming from a small town, it doesn’t compute to me how people can afford to live in the city. She’s a design student, so I guess that translates to student loans.
But yeah, she and I went in search of an ATM blasting Elastica, and had a good bit of fun.
I slept over at Zero’s house because he is right on the line of the 23, which I had to take the next day to recover my scooter.
Categories: Ennui
Friday was bright sun, dashing out of work, gas at the Arco, Sam and I, flying towards the sea on I-80.
Bay bridge, park on Folsom street, and we’re in the city. It’s bathed in twilight as we walk down 7th seeking some coffee. *cue Requiem for a Dream hyper-fast sipping jump cut* and we’re at the Powerhouse.
Sam and I bit each other’s necks for a while, and then returned to the car around 1 a.m. to read Reddit on my phone and sober up before driving to Josh’s place in Hayward.
I really liked Josh’s apartment… it was just like his apartment in Crescent City, but it didn’t smell like a former meth lab which was awesome. We met his friend Amber who he had talked about for years but I had never met, and she was awesome. Even Sam loved her, which is a shining endorsement.
She was basically a guy in a woman’s body…which was incredibly cool.
So we ended up hanging out for a few hours, then we all piled into Josh’s way-too-small-for-three-people bed.
*zzzz*
Categories: Ennui
Just when I’m starting to give up hope, the Internet totally cheers me up.
I don’t know what it was about today… I think it was this video of Helen Thomas questioning the Bush administration press secretary (the job title is actually “spokesliar”) about the fact that we obviously tortured a whole bunch of people, and the actual admission of President Bush that he did torture people even though he maintained all of that “we do not torture” rhetoric.
It just… hit me. I live in a police state. We can be arrested at any time and tortured. We don’t respect international human rights agreements. So much for being the free world.
So I’m at work and on my lunch I check Reddit. Guess what?
Redditors set up a fund to buy flowers for Helen Thomas for being the only reporter with the balls to stand up to Bush Administration lies.
Guess how much money they raised in about 24 hours? Almost $3,500. And on my entire drive to work I was fuming about it and wanting so bad to write her a letter saying thanks for being the only person to stand up and say:
“THIS IS A LIE. YOU ARE LYING.”
Hitler was totally right…repeat something enough and people take it as fact. I wonder if the press secretary knows that she’s lying… or if that kind of institutional doublethink isn’t actually doublethink at all it’s just people who are complete and utter idiots.
But thank you, Reddit, and thank you, The Internet, for rewarding voices that speak out.
I really wanted to read about this and I have a sinking feeling of “oh… my voice recognition system doesn’t work” and then I was like “wait… it does!”
I’m really happy with my new headset. It looked kind of flimsy and crappy, but it it takes up so much less space than my older one and will be so much easier to jam in my carry-on when I go to New York this summer. In my youth, I would overpack to beat the band, but these days I would be fine with just jeans, a T-shirt, and my laptop. And that’s really all I’m taking.
So I started a new television series tonight. I had downloaded the first season of the X-Files ages ago when Alex (and a bunch of other people) said it was great, but I had just finished Star Trek deep space nine. I don’t know why… it takes me about four or five months to kind of get over the emotional attachment I have to characters from one multi-season television show and start getting into others.
I really liked the first episode of the X-Files. It should be interesting. And Jesus, it’s got to have more character development than Star Trek Voyager.
Zomg today my copy of High-Rise showed up. It’s the only Ballard novel that I haven’t read (that I have been wanting to read for ages). I read this rumor on IMDB that they were going to make it into a movie, but all the rumors were from the beginning of 2007 so I don’t know it it’s going to happen. But I thought I might as well read the book. I mean, I could die tomorrow and I would never read High-Rise so I really want to read it. It’s crisp, glossy cover is in my hot little hands and I’m going to go devour it.
Categories: Ennui
Susan, Zero, and I went out tonight and had absinthe at the Kasbah, then went down to Cobble Stone (which had all the ambience of an inner-city bus station, but great hookah). It was really fun, we talked about Blade Runner, Neil Gaiman crap, and the impending San Francisco adventures.
Zero suggested that we go to this moroccan place (which, coincidentally, I also went to with Alex on that ill-fated trip to see him).
I hate people with money. There’s just no way to seem as put-together or carefree as they are 24/7.
Oh, the check is $300? Just put it on my card.
I’m just jealous because I want to be footloose and fancy-free.
Must get to sleep. I’ve actually been somewhat successful in this getting to bed before 2 a.m. thing lately.
Categories: Ennui
So I got my new headset today.
In the beginning, it gave me the same error as the last one.
I just switched USB ports, and it seems to be working okay… but the recognition accuracy could be a lot better.
So I took my huge math test today. I really have no idea how I did. Almost all of my answers had imaginary numbers in them, and although she mentioned that this test would focus a lot on imaginary numbers I felt like I was using the quadratic formula incorrectly.
Well, there’s no way to know how I did until Monday, so I’m not going to worry about it. Bastards still don’t have my tire. Other than that, not much to report.
I’m still working on my mother’s website… she wrote me this long rambling thing and I have to massage it into her welcome paragraph.
Totally looking forward to going to the city with Sam this weekend. I mean, we probably won’t run into Damon and Jesse again, but I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time.
I was showing him these really disturbing videos last night… I guess they weren’t really disturbing it was just that they were more performance art than porn. There was this one video of this guy who sets his dresser on fire and jerks off onto the fire. It’s just one of those jaw-dropping moments of “umm…wow…er…hmm”
My grandma left me this note to clean up this mess (there was egg all over the stove) but the thing is, I don’t cook eggs on the stove. Article 4,203 in my dissertation of how crazy she is.
I’m angry about it, but what the hell am I supposed to do.
Lets see… news that doesn’t suck… I bought my train tickets for my vacation yesterday! Also, I got this miniseries that Molly recommended in the mail from Netflix, Tin Man. It’s supposed to be steampunklicious.
Um, guys, I just looked at my archives, and holyfuckingshit. My archives list has 58 months. FIFTY EIGHT MONTHS. That’s nearly five years. 3,158 posts. THREE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT POSTS. I need to throw some kind of party on the five-year anniversary. I don’t know who I’d invite that has been here for the whole roller coaster other than Amanda, but still. Weird.
Huh, I was looking through WordPress and I had two private posts. One was just a sentence, the other was this time that I was really mad at Christen on Jan. 3, 2007. I guess I’ll post it, what the hell.
Categories: Ennui
I had planned to do something with Andrew on Sunday, but my returning from a party at like 4 AM kind of killed that. I called him when I woke up (my phone had been doing some weird thing where it wasn’t ringing or giving me texts), and he was still in Carmichael.
We met at the La Bou at Country Club Plaza. I got some kind of vegetarian sandwich, and we walked around the mall, walked around the bowling alley building, looked inside the old Tower Records. We were going to stalk Brian at work, but he wasn’t there.
He told me that he’s moving out of his apartment with the ex-girlfriend, and is job-hunting. I wish him luck, but the job market is just terrible these days. He told me that he got fired from/quit two jobs because he wouldn’t shave his beard or cut his hair. Which didn’t bode well for my subconscious hope that he would get rid of the beard someday. Meh.
I don’t know what we talked about… I keep having these weird flashbacks to when we were dating and I’d want to say something, but didn’t know what.
When we’re talking I have a certain amount of things to mention… updates on a concert, a few things going on with my friends, but that’s about it. I feel like I don’t have as close of a social network as I used to have.
I don’t know… I guess that’s always a feeling when you’re between friend epochs.
Andrew just texted me, he got his yearly haircut…I bet he looks cute as a button. Or maybe the less hair + beard combination will lead to a Rapist Glasses look.
I really want to go see MIA, but it’s a friggin’ Wednesday and I can’t miss class. Well, I guess I could still go since my class is over before the show. However, it would cost a ton of money that I don’t have.
Well, I should work a bit on my mom’s site…she’s really into getting it done, and apparently she’s going to pay me. W00t for freelance design work.
Categories: Ennui
Zero had invited me to this party on Saturday.
It was on this street that shares a name with a major Carmichael thoroughfare, so we all thought it was close, but no. It was in friggin’ South Sac! So I got all ready and headed down there. I really shouldn’t have gone because I had a lot of homework to do, but it was my payday weekend and I felt like having fun.
Got down there, had a few drinks, met everyone. We talked about literature for an hour or two and then Zero decided to like fall asleep in the other room.
I met Derek, a friend of Zero’s, and we talked about Milan Kundera for a while… apparently The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is lame and I have to read another one of his novels. I don’t know… I mean, he had a great style and all but I felt it was lacking in depth. Anyway, at around midnight Zero fell asleep on the couch and left me kind of awkwardly reading The Onion on my phone.
Two hours later I’d burned through the entire stock of articles on the Onion’s AV Club before falling asleep myself. I would have just left, except for that I got waaay drunker than I had any right to get that night. Well, I bought a bottle of Stoli and I wasn’t going to see it go to waste. I mean, I didn’t drink until I puked or anything, but the more drinks you have the longer it takes to get sober.
I woke up at about 4 AM, and the person that was supposed to give Zero a ride was still totally drunk. I said my goodbyes and headed home. It was one of the the coldest drives I can remember in a long time, and I had my full gear, leather jacket and cashmere-lined gloves.
Still, I’m not quite sure whether I think it was a good idea to go to the party or not…I mean, it was cool meeting Derek, it’s rare meeting people that have read more than me or read things I’m interested in.
But it was a faux pas to fall asleep on the host’s couch. Well, I had a good time, that’s all that matters.
Categories: Ennui
