Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
score, and score alike
i found camilla, by madeleine l'engle, today. it's been something i've been looking for, for a long, long time.
the first time i read this book was when i was ten. well into voracious, insatiable reader-mode, the kind where even the librarians laugh at you because your arms aren't long enough to hold the stack of books you want to check out, the topmost book wedged precariously under your chin, because your parents will only take you to the library once every two weeks and you always, always finish that stack before the first week ends and accidentally wash your umpteenth library card, the one with your name and card number in the crazy bulbous faux computer font; the kind where you're borrowing books that seem unrelated, but reference an author or subject from the last bunch, which built on the bunch before and the bunch before, and you slowly begin to realize that everything is about everything and how daunting being grown-up will really be; the kind when you start figuring out that the answer to life, besides living it, is vicariously experiencing it through books if you're not allowed to live it.
my elementary school had a fairly decent library, since it was a magnet public school and the powers that be invariably deem it necessary for the gifted and talented (and the rich neighborhood kids) to have a wider selection of books. to this day, i can't reconcile being a prole with actually, you know, being a prole. i had put the horsey books away in short order: all of fourth grade was consumed by the marguerite henry oeuvre, down to her letters from readers book, and walter farley and his ghostwriters. i even consumed the burly will james works, laying the foundation for my distaste/fascination with all things western. but camilla, oh camilla...
the wrinkle in time series is perennially a YA favorite. you can't go wrong with the sympathetic, smart, self-conscious, homely outsider, a misfit sometimes even in her own home. i shudder to think about those who never went much past babysitter twins and the francine pascal monolith, branching only into v.c. andrews before taking the grownup plunge into bodice-rippery, throbbing purple manhood (menhood? manhoods?) and all. camilla is different.
the gold italic lettering on the spine stood out on the shelf. it looked awkward, gangly next to its brethren, orderly and content in their pert roles as part of a set, different yet matchy-matchy like the girls in my class. the lettering was flashy and brilliant once, yet losing its luster to much handling or abuse. the dust jacket had been shed many a reader-and-waterstain ago, the binding coming loose and beginning to angle defiantly against the book's place on the shelf, but hanging in there with the help of the determined endsheets. a musty whiff as the cover opened reinforced the silent testament of the few names on the check-out card, the ancient-to-the-young dates, 1973, 1981, the spring of 1984, on the Date Due sheet facing the card jacket. the end of the Reagan era was nigh, to be sure. have you ever met a formerly six-year-old misfit fan of Mondale? you have now.
i took it home. everything must be read, after all. it must be good, or at least fun-and-science-y, judging from her earlier books. i was wrong, in the most perfect way.
she said i wasn't alone in being alone. that's the short version. the long one? realizing that i was an i, ego, id, fragile and resilient as an egg, an individual separate from my parents, from my family, an unalienable/alienable person; that crying was something that you did end up having to hide a lot, that the purple dye on the cover starts to bleed when you take it into the bath and don't continually dry your hands before handling it to turn the page, the book precariously propped on the porcelain edge with a damp washcloth near; that Vietnam was a tangible war, the damage that it did to real people, physical and psychological, shaping and destroying lives far from the frontlines; that war and money and circumstances make other people's lives different from yours, and you're different but they're also all different not only from you but from each other, secrets or no; that people do do things for themselves despite their feelings for you, that trust can exist in forms other than all or nothing - this was the book that told me everything will be sort of okay and you can get over it in the long run.
camilla helped me grow up, and i'm sorry that i'll never meet her or her creator, and, maybe, just a little bit sorry for myself and who i'm not, in that special, YA-primed self-pitying way.
the first time i read this book was when i was ten. well into voracious, insatiable reader-mode, the kind where even the librarians laugh at you because your arms aren't long enough to hold the stack of books you want to check out, the topmost book wedged precariously under your chin, because your parents will only take you to the library once every two weeks and you always, always finish that stack before the first week ends and accidentally wash your umpteenth library card, the one with your name and card number in the crazy bulbous faux computer font; the kind where you're borrowing books that seem unrelated, but reference an author or subject from the last bunch, which built on the bunch before and the bunch before, and you slowly begin to realize that everything is about everything and how daunting being grown-up will really be; the kind when you start figuring out that the answer to life, besides living it, is vicariously experiencing it through books if you're not allowed to live it.
my elementary school had a fairly decent library, since it was a magnet public school and the powers that be invariably deem it necessary for the gifted and talented (and the rich neighborhood kids) to have a wider selection of books. to this day, i can't reconcile being a prole with actually, you know, being a prole. i had put the horsey books away in short order: all of fourth grade was consumed by the marguerite henry oeuvre, down to her letters from readers book, and walter farley and his ghostwriters. i even consumed the burly will james works, laying the foundation for my distaste/fascination with all things western. but camilla, oh camilla...
the wrinkle in time series is perennially a YA favorite. you can't go wrong with the sympathetic, smart, self-conscious, homely outsider, a misfit sometimes even in her own home. i shudder to think about those who never went much past babysitter twins and the francine pascal monolith, branching only into v.c. andrews before taking the grownup plunge into bodice-rippery, throbbing purple manhood (menhood? manhoods?) and all. camilla is different.
the gold italic lettering on the spine stood out on the shelf. it looked awkward, gangly next to its brethren, orderly and content in their pert roles as part of a set, different yet matchy-matchy like the girls in my class. the lettering was flashy and brilliant once, yet losing its luster to much handling or abuse. the dust jacket had been shed many a reader-and-waterstain ago, the binding coming loose and beginning to angle defiantly against the book's place on the shelf, but hanging in there with the help of the determined endsheets. a musty whiff as the cover opened reinforced the silent testament of the few names on the check-out card, the ancient-to-the-young dates, 1973, 1981, the spring of 1984, on the Date Due sheet facing the card jacket. the end of the Reagan era was nigh, to be sure. have you ever met a formerly six-year-old misfit fan of Mondale? you have now.
i took it home. everything must be read, after all. it must be good, or at least fun-and-science-y, judging from her earlier books. i was wrong, in the most perfect way.
she said i wasn't alone in being alone. that's the short version. the long one? realizing that i was an i, ego, id, fragile and resilient as an egg, an individual separate from my parents, from my family, an unalienable/alienable person; that crying was something that you did end up having to hide a lot, that the purple dye on the cover starts to bleed when you take it into the bath and don't continually dry your hands before handling it to turn the page, the book precariously propped on the porcelain edge with a damp washcloth near; that Vietnam was a tangible war, the damage that it did to real people, physical and psychological, shaping and destroying lives far from the frontlines; that war and money and circumstances make other people's lives different from yours, and you're different but they're also all different not only from you but from each other, secrets or no; that people do do things for themselves despite their feelings for you, that trust can exist in forms other than all or nothing - this was the book that told me everything will be sort of okay and you can get over it in the long run.
camilla helped me grow up, and i'm sorry that i'll never meet her or her creator, and, maybe, just a little bit sorry for myself and who i'm not, in that special, YA-primed self-pitying way.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
i'm not really sure what's happening with these sporadic mood swings. i did talk out some of the more egregious issues sunday and monday with the right audience, and i'm sort of less grumpy; just back to the state of needing a lot of money, again. unless i find something fucking stupendous AND flexible, i think i'll be doomed to working six days a week for a long while.
a long, long while.
i don't suppose anyone knows of an ad or government agency that'll give me *sneeze*K a year, and also be flexible enough to work with a school schedule? i'm willing to ho it out on weekends and the late.
that's all i got. expect next week's issue to completely abolish www.ci.austin.tx.us in favor of www.cityofaustin.org in URL listings. not that i hate you (because i hate myself for letting it happen), but it's all in the name of consistency.
a long, long while.
i don't suppose anyone knows of an ad or government agency that'll give me *sneeze*K a year, and also be flexible enough to work with a school schedule? i'm willing to ho it out on weekends and the late.
that's all i got. expect next week's issue to completely abolish www.ci.austin.tx.us in favor of www.cityofaustin.org in URL listings. not that i hate you (because i hate myself for letting it happen), but it's all in the name of consistency.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
new or whatever
liveblogging!
weezer (red):
track 01 - this is kind of emo. i'm not really noticing it, because i'm reading the intertubes, but now i am. wtf? who starts an album off with a fucking ballad. next!
track 02 - "automatic" oh. whoops, i guess i should do this right. uh, the last one was called "we made a lot of money off the other albums, so now we're artistes." no, i read that wrong. it's called "the angel and the one." huh. that was short and a little too guitar-hero noisy. does that make any sense? like it was an easy version of the song that should have been, and was sort of attempting to rock like a Sword song on medium? eek! falling behind!
track 03 - "cold dark world" hmm. yeah, soCal totes is a crazy epicenter of seasonal affective disorder. angel girl, i'm gonna be your man/angel girl, i'll make you understand. maybe i should pay attention to lyrics instead of typing. no? okay, sounds good.
track 04 - "thought i knew" it started off kind of promising, until he started singing 'sorry about my past life.' maybe it'll be okay? *waits* *goes pee*
track 05 - "dreamin'" sorry about that, i ended up all number two on that shit. hey! it sounds weezer-y, with the guitars and whatnot! huh! why am i so bad? why is the sun shining? wait, what did you say you were dreaming of? the night? oh, you were dreaming during these points in the day. i guess this is what happens when i start drinking at work. oh shit, wait for me!
track 06 - "everybody get dangerous" baw-bahbahbaw-bah-bawbaw-bah-bawbaw! there is something totally midNineties wrong with this, but i can't put my finger on it. i know someone else can. i'm going ahead and skipping it. "there must be a guardian angel or some other destiny we have" uh, ???
track 07 - "heart songs" that sounds all Robert-Bly. yaaahh!! this is like some sort of sublime gunk! "i never listened to much jazz." aural pain, huh. SKIP. "these are the songs i keep singin'" my ass. it is so not-hot to namecheck debbie gibson, not even nerd-hot. i think maybe i'm getting drunk, or MAYBE i don't understand why i just heard a Fresh Prince namecheck.
track 08 - "pork and beans" look, we're near the end! the first line is "they say i need some rogaine to put in my hair." i think that allopecia is not a laughing matter. (yes, i've got a weird stress-related bald spot again. why do you ask?) oh hey, the chorus is more old weezy-style. "everyone likes to dance to a happy song/with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along." true, but i'm not looking for this perspective in my pop music. i'll let it slide because you're doing the cute wall of guitar/harmonizing thing again. play to your strengths!
track 09 - "the greatest man that ever lived" why does this start off with a piano intro for blue-eyed bonnie or some sort of traditional song that i can't place? and then it does the red-eyed fly macho style of crunchy guitar alternating with the pretty-boy singing thing? hmm. i'm baffled, yet it's working better than the other ballad-y things. i think i probably started listening to this with the expectation that it'd satisfy the weezer-need, and got a couple songs out of it but am being too judgmental about the other ones. hey, the end's totally "pink triangle"-y. cool. i like that.
track 10 - "troublemaker" yay! more weezer-y-ness! bitchin! good job with the whole not leaving a bad taste in my mouth!
i guess i could give this another listen. 2.5/5 for now, kids. yes, there could have been a lot more hyphens and general copy-editing.
*if i get around to it, up next will be ghost - in stormy nights (which was on at work, and promising), alexander's dark band, rae davis, and those peabodys. i don't know that i'll write about the roller.*
weezer (red):
track 01 - this is kind of emo. i'm not really noticing it, because i'm reading the intertubes, but now i am. wtf? who starts an album off with a fucking ballad. next!
track 02 - "automatic" oh. whoops, i guess i should do this right. uh, the last one was called "we made a lot of money off the other albums, so now we're artistes." no, i read that wrong. it's called "the angel and the one." huh. that was short and a little too guitar-hero noisy. does that make any sense? like it was an easy version of the song that should have been, and was sort of attempting to rock like a Sword song on medium? eek! falling behind!
track 03 - "cold dark world" hmm. yeah, soCal totes is a crazy epicenter of seasonal affective disorder. angel girl, i'm gonna be your man/angel girl, i'll make you understand. maybe i should pay attention to lyrics instead of typing. no? okay, sounds good.
track 04 - "thought i knew" it started off kind of promising, until he started singing 'sorry about my past life.' maybe it'll be okay? *waits* *goes pee*
track 05 - "dreamin'" sorry about that, i ended up all number two on that shit. hey! it sounds weezer-y, with the guitars and whatnot! huh! why am i so bad? why is the sun shining? wait, what did you say you were dreaming of? the night? oh, you were dreaming during these points in the day. i guess this is what happens when i start drinking at work. oh shit, wait for me!
track 06 - "everybody get dangerous" baw-bahbahbaw-bah-bawbaw-bah-bawbaw! there is something totally midNineties wrong with this, but i can't put my finger on it. i know someone else can. i'm going ahead and skipping it. "there must be a guardian angel or some other destiny we have" uh, ???
track 07 - "heart songs" that sounds all Robert-Bly. yaaahh!! this is like some sort of sublime gunk! "i never listened to much jazz." aural pain, huh. SKIP. "these are the songs i keep singin'" my ass. it is so not-hot to namecheck debbie gibson, not even nerd-hot. i think maybe i'm getting drunk, or MAYBE i don't understand why i just heard a Fresh Prince namecheck.
track 08 - "pork and beans" look, we're near the end! the first line is "they say i need some rogaine to put in my hair." i think that allopecia is not a laughing matter. (yes, i've got a weird stress-related bald spot again. why do you ask?) oh hey, the chorus is more old weezy-style. "everyone likes to dance to a happy song/with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along." true, but i'm not looking for this perspective in my pop music. i'll let it slide because you're doing the cute wall of guitar/harmonizing thing again. play to your strengths!
track 09 - "the greatest man that ever lived" why does this start off with a piano intro for blue-eyed bonnie or some sort of traditional song that i can't place? and then it does the red-eyed fly macho style of crunchy guitar alternating with the pretty-boy singing thing? hmm. i'm baffled, yet it's working better than the other ballad-y things. i think i probably started listening to this with the expectation that it'd satisfy the weezer-need, and got a couple songs out of it but am being too judgmental about the other ones. hey, the end's totally "pink triangle"-y. cool. i like that.
track 10 - "troublemaker" yay! more weezer-y-ness! bitchin! good job with the whole not leaving a bad taste in my mouth!
i guess i could give this another listen. 2.5/5 for now, kids. yes, there could have been a lot more hyphens and general copy-editing.
*if i get around to it, up next will be ghost - in stormy nights (which was on at work, and promising), alexander's dark band, rae davis, and those peabodys. i don't know that i'll write about the roller.*
Sunday, June 8, 2008
parade, parade
the parade was cute. i liked the looks on the neighbors' faces: "oh, those white kids are doin' it again. what the hell, we'll stand in the yard and watch for a bit." the people who showed up were that weird confluence of circles of friends, and for the most part everyone seems to finally know each other. bicycles and light trucks all decked out, and everyone seems to get skinnier lately instead of fatter. maybe it's a good sign? dislodging from the velvet rut? my favorite bit - toward the end, one guy on a bike going home politely waited for everyone to pass, though he had two buckets of heb fried chicken in a bag hanging from his handlebars and was probably hungry. i also liked the mermaids' fancy satiny swimsuits and veiled umbrellas. yay for people-that-aren't-me dressing up!
yaah! a retarded dove just gently crashed into the side of my house. stupid.
the guerrilla disco party was nothing thrilling to speak of, although as we walked up the popo were talking to jacob. they didn't give him a ticket, but just told him to turn it down. dancing in the parking lot of the bike pedlar didn't seem that fun, so we walked back to michelle brown's house.
ended up leaving and going to bed early [midnight!], but watched some mr. wizard video about adhesives beforehand. the linked video has the same FLDS-looking girl with stripper nails as the episode i saw. then, apparently, i am the only person who had never seen the charles and ray eames powers of 10 short, so we watched that. pretty nifty.
[for some reason, i don't like embedding video. i think it's because i rarely watch them if they are embedded.]
the two-tone teal and silver chevy just left hooker house. i wonder how much an hour costs. maybe one day i'll do field work for economic sociology and find out.
yaah! a retarded dove just gently crashed into the side of my house. stupid.
the guerrilla disco party was nothing thrilling to speak of, although as we walked up the popo were talking to jacob. they didn't give him a ticket, but just told him to turn it down. dancing in the parking lot of the bike pedlar didn't seem that fun, so we walked back to michelle brown's house.
ended up leaving and going to bed early [midnight!], but watched some mr. wizard video about adhesives beforehand. the linked video has the same FLDS-looking girl with stripper nails as the episode i saw. then, apparently, i am the only person who had never seen the charles and ray eames powers of 10 short, so we watched that. pretty nifty.
[for some reason, i don't like embedding video. i think it's because i rarely watch them if they are embedded.]
the two-tone teal and silver chevy just left hooker house. i wonder how much an hour costs. maybe one day i'll do field work for economic sociology and find out.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
finally paying attention
from austin chronicle's TDP convention blogging, just now:
"I'm Representative Jim Dunnam from Waco, and for the purposes of this convention, Tom Craddick is not recognized."
hee hee!
"I'm Representative Jim Dunnam from Waco, and for the purposes of this convention, Tom Craddick is not recognized."
hee hee!
Thursday, June 5, 2008
super-adventure time!
we took our own concordia excursion last night. the dorm at the corner is creepy: all the lights are left on and the doors open at night. we didn't go very far in there. jon found a gangly feral kitty with its head caught in the field netting (what a terrible hazard!), so after a few gouges to our arms, he pinned it down with some backstop padding and cut it free with nailclippers i had forgotten i'd stashed in my pocket. kitty was very ungrateful, but he was pretty panicky and thrashed around violently before we could grab him. then we wandered around the rest of the place and tried random doors and whatnot. i climbed almost to the top of the giant dirt mound, but pussed out ten feet away and gingerly made my way back down. that place makes weird horrible noises at night, and i kept expecting a hobo attack or something.
more unphotoshopped dark pictures to follow!
more unphotoshopped dark pictures to follow!
Monday, June 2, 2008
an update from the land of ick
or, performance art ... to the X-TREEM!
(our tastes tend toward one-upmanship in tasteless, but i find myself hard-pressed to believe even can-smashing robot would follow this concept through... to UN-fruition. oh god.)
(our tastes tend toward one-upmanship in tasteless, but i find myself hard-pressed to believe even can-smashing robot would follow this concept through... to UN-fruition. oh god.)
linky-link-link, just a news article
hmm
brilliant midday beach sun + cameraphone = some guy's ass posting, wrongly. fixing in a minute.
my back fat is mildly sunburnt. i'll pretend i mistakenly thought the UV rays would fry it off.
we had fun and the dog and i are tired, although i'm not sure how her lying around right now is any different from before she went.
if i find others' photos, i'll link ya to them. i didn't even take pictures of a couple of polaroids that i should have.
my back fat is mildly sunburnt. i'll pretend i mistakenly thought the UV rays would fry it off.
we had fun and the dog and i are tired, although i'm not sure how her lying around right now is any different from before she went.
if i find others' photos, i'll link ya to them. i didn't even take pictures of a couple of polaroids that i should have.
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