It occurs to me that I haven't changed a damn thing about the site since last summer. With the coming of finals and actual work, I hope to change this. Starting with new songs:

Electrelane- Long Dark

UPDATE: Entrop- 26

I'm honestly sick of looking at my shit-ass quotes on the left had column. I haven't thought about those books or songs since October. I renounce them. I say fuck fish. I'm taking them all down this afternoon. That's how much fuck fish.

(There will be ten worthless and imaginary points for anyone who gets the above reference.)

Lately I've been trying to become more pretentious. How would it be if I spelled my name the actual way it's supposed to be and insist that everyone use the appropriate accent marks?

"How long did you say it would be for a table? Great, yeah the name is Breandán Ua Súilleabháin. That's S-U-with a fatha..."

Warning: post contains shameless name drops and comparisons between famous talented person and the author, who is quite without talent or future.

a) The details of how it became my job to hang out with Mo Rocca this afternoon are still quite fuzzy. A campus lectureships group brought him here, and neither me nor my roommate (Nick) who is on the committee had anything to do with it. I imagine the thinking was something like this: "Hey, famous talented person Mo Rocca is on basic cable--Nick has basic cable!"

b) Back when I was involved in things on campus, a group I involved myself in brough Chuck D** to speak. I thought this would be a fun way to get the school to bring us a famous person with talent, who could form a lifelong relationship with us on the way to and from the airport. How can I quickly explain how wrong I was? Right: he rented a car to drive himself in an hour before his speech.

c) Mo didn't show up at 3 and I figured he hated college tours because kids like me want to paw all over him until we get invited to write for his long-running comedy program. Nick and I gave him a call at 5 to see if he wanted a campus tour, expecting him to find a rock star reason for needing prep time. He doesn't. We go get him.

d) Waiting in the lobby of the hotel is a 31 year old indie snob. Whimsical hair, nerd-chic glasses. As it turns out he'd had a few gigs in various Ohio places for the past few weeks and rather than flying back to Manhatten, he's been cramming mileage onto his rental car finding obscure presidential sight seeing tours. Mo (short for Maurice, which I didn't figure out: my best guess was "Thomos"has an obsession with all of the presidents between Lincoln and Roosevelt. The ones no one can remember. He shows us pictures on his digital camera of him at Ullysses S. Grant's birthplace, Andrew Johnson's schoolhouse, etc. Each photo is taken from the vantage point of his wrist, with his face taking up much of the picture.

e) In the nearly 200 years of this college, we've churned out few winners. One of them being Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States. Mo insisted he photograph any plaques and see Ruth's dorm room. All along the way he is growing fond of Nick and I (it would be shameful to say that we have the same sense of humor--as shameful as saying that a cute record-store girl has the same taste as you because you both own The Postal Service EP--but I will mention that when I say "So they actually send you guys to England to film? I would have thought they'd just send two doubles...", he gets it.)*. Mo knocks on the random door which was once the home of Ruth, but is now the lounge for a fraternity. This floors him, and he takes pictures of fat frat guys watching TV on the couch for the purpose of showing them on The Jimmy Kimmel Show next tuesday night.

f) Ohioans only: Mo had spent the night before at the Hilton at Easton Town Center, which is a mall in Columbus that was built on a farm to resemble an actual 1930s community. They own a police force, they have a postal system, they do Botox at the beauty salon. Nick and I are also enamoured/disgusted with Easton and this gave us another 20 mins of walking in the sun and making a talented famous person laugh.

g) I'm sick of writing about this, but I'll add that somehow Nick and I got asked to introduce Mo in the auditorium. This was great merely because everyone already knows Mo is funny and knows we're not the openning act. Thus they can't wait to start laughing and think everything we say is fucking hilarious. ("..author of the Wishbone adaptation of H.G. Well's Time Machine, Bark to the Future.") I spend the rest of the week having people tell me to tell Nick that we're funny, and asking me when I'm going to fix my glasses.


*Yes, turns out this isn't about Mo, it's about me. Lame? Yes. But at least I'm honest. Whose horoscope do you read in the newspaper? Yours? Right. Why? Because it pertains to you.

**Today a tour walked past me in the hallway and the tourguide said, "You know, actually, last year--this was the year before I came here--we had Chuck D come to speak and he's a, uh, black innercity rapper."

Today I start trying to have a novel again. I'm in the computer lab printing out about 200 pages of what I fear is absolute shit. A moment ago I walked to the printer to check the progress and there's five people staring agrily at the machine that keeps printing out my shit instead of their pie-charts.

I pretended to be upset with whomever had so thoughtlessly monopololized the queue and the girl next to me got fed up, picked up a stack of my papers, slammed it back into the printer tray and shouted, "Jesus, who's printing out a fucking novel over here!"

Tomorrow I'll explain why The Daily Show's Mo Rocca is at my table. And I shall dedicate this post to Ben.

Actual all-campus email exchange today:

"So when you grow up enough to see beyond the surface, and become satisfied with the person that you are-let me know, and maybe then you’ll have what it takes to become a ninja, but I doubt it."

Things to remember to miss when older:

1) I just hit the pager button to find the cordless phone in my apartment and it rang in the other bedroom. When I opened the door I found one roomate confused and barely awake, the other: meditating in the corner. This was at 11 AM.

2) Tonight I'm going to see Stella Comedy in Columbus. That has nothing to do with growing up. I just wanted rub it in.

Things to remember to miss when older:

1) I just hit the pager button to find the cordless phone in my apartment and it rang in the other bedroom. When I opened the door I found one roomate confused and barely awake, the other: meditating in the corner. This was at 11 AM.

2) Tonight I'm going to see