October 31, 2003
Why Ohio is actually better than Connecticut: Four days ago my local post office received a shipment of post-office candy and Judy, a woman I know only as the nice lady who gets my packages when they come in and sells me stamps, said to herself this morning, Hey, I definately have a customer who really likes these free mints. Why don't I package some up and leave them in his mailbox?
11:25 AM | [permalink] |
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October 30, 2003
So really all I have to say is that today I got a new CD, which has always excited me and forever will, I'm sure. But I think I've finally found a band that genuinely makes me happy. That might be easy to do, because I spent most of my morning being the anti-social guy with his headphones on in the cafeteria, internally-bleeding to some Iron & Wine.
Then I got this song on and immediately escaped to a thousand great movie moments. I'm now a young girl escaping from my orphanage, or a soldier who has been rescued by sirens. I just got high for the first time and I'm spinning through the woods in a way that isn't ok after you're forteen (Dangerous Lives of Alterboys). It's the closest I've come to music that I like, that means something, that isn't self-helpy shit about how it's all going to be ok. Because, frankly, it's not going to be ok.
Broadcast- Colour Me In
Then I got this song on and immediately escaped to a thousand great movie moments. I'm now a young girl escaping from my orphanage, or a soldier who has been rescued by sirens. I just got high for the first time and I'm spinning through the woods in a way that isn't ok after you're forteen (Dangerous Lives of Alterboys). It's the closest I've come to music that I like, that means something, that isn't self-helpy shit about how it's all going to be ok. Because, frankly, it's not going to be ok.
Broadcast- Colour Me In
10:34 PM | [permalink] |
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October 28, 2003
Electrelane- I'm on fire.mp3
(Springsteen Cover)
Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I'm on fire
Tell me now baby is he good to you
Can he do to you the things that I do
I can take you higher
I'm on fire
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
through the middle of my soul
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
and a freight train running through the
middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I'm on fire
(Springsteen Cover)
Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I'm on fire
Tell me now baby is he good to you
Can he do to you the things that I do
I can take you higher
I'm on fire
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
through the middle of my soul
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
and a freight train running through the
middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I'm on fire
5:14 PM | [permalink] |
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October 26, 2003
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October 24, 2003
Further proof that college is only for sellouts:
Dear Brendan,
The English Department has approved your revised proposal for a creative Senior Exercise project.
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, Chair
The Crap-Ass Proposal
"Ok, one month and two-hundred more pages spellchecked, and I finally have a better grasp on the future of my writing. I hope to be honest with the department as to my current dilemma, for which I am, of course, not alone in banging my head against the keys. I do know this, however: my final project will be an example of narrative growth and experience that I have gained here in four years. The story I have in mind will of course be one of thirty that I plan on creating and destroying by the middle of next semester, which means that I shall spend a lot of time bargaining with myself. I do have these four requirements: 1) The project will involve abandoning something I’ve spent a long time with, first person, and getting into the issues of more than one character. 2) The setting of the story, however, will be in the places where I think my characters first confront their baggage, in the liminal and ill-defined world of in-betweens. Following the Joycian tradition of travel, my characters will be part spectator as in the Dublin funeral procession, being people both stuck in one place, preoccupied, moving, stuck and unstuck. Issues of home and personal space are all too comforting for the amount of destabilization I require, all to often I find that the best place to reorganize a character’s personal pockets is in a gas station, the back seat, stuck in traffic. 3) The characters will mirror each other in ways that make them subtly uncomfortable both with themselves and each other, i.e. good friends who nitpick, mother and daughter, lovers. 4) I will resist wherever possible my tacky need to joke, to create humor, in that really insecure way of bad writing that merely pleads for the reader to get to the end. If there is humor involved, it will be of the sad, NPR variety."
I'm sorry, but if this is the kind of shit that garners approval, then we, a college of supposed writers, have no future.
Dear Brendan,
The English Department has approved your revised proposal for a creative Senior Exercise project.
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, Chair
The Crap-Ass Proposal
"Ok, one month and two-hundred more pages spellchecked, and I finally have a better grasp on the future of my writing. I hope to be honest with the department as to my current dilemma, for which I am, of course, not alone in banging my head against the keys. I do know this, however: my final project will be an example of narrative growth and experience that I have gained here in four years. The story I have in mind will of course be one of thirty that I plan on creating and destroying by the middle of next semester, which means that I shall spend a lot of time bargaining with myself. I do have these four requirements: 1) The project will involve abandoning something I’ve spent a long time with, first person, and getting into the issues of more than one character. 2) The setting of the story, however, will be in the places where I think my characters first confront their baggage, in the liminal and ill-defined world of in-betweens. Following the Joycian tradition of travel, my characters will be part spectator as in the Dublin funeral procession, being people both stuck in one place, preoccupied, moving, stuck and unstuck. Issues of home and personal space are all too comforting for the amount of destabilization I require, all to often I find that the best place to reorganize a character’s personal pockets is in a gas station, the back seat, stuck in traffic. 3) The characters will mirror each other in ways that make them subtly uncomfortable both with themselves and each other, i.e. good friends who nitpick, mother and daughter, lovers. 4) I will resist wherever possible my tacky need to joke, to create humor, in that really insecure way of bad writing that merely pleads for the reader to get to the end. If there is humor involved, it will be of the sad, NPR variety."
I'm sorry, but if this is the kind of shit that garners approval, then we, a college of supposed writers, have no future.
1:29 PM | [permalink] |
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October 23, 2003
Last summer the registrar's computer made me change my password and select a new "password reminder question." The suggest you use "What is your middle name?" which I thought was stupid since, come on, who forgets their password? So I changed mine to "What is your middle finger." And the answer was "Fuck you." This was funny for maybe fifteen seconds last summer. But today I got locked out of my account and had to call the registrar.
"...Uhm, I think you misread my question."
"...Oh, you're right, well, all that matters is the answer."
"...the answer?"
"...Uhm, I think you misread my question."
"...Oh, you're right, well, all that matters is the answer."
"...the answer?"
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The only thing that makes my major in creative writing a complete pile of bullshit is our department's complete bullshit requirements. Like the students who hand in a final thesis of literary criticism, we have to hand in a proposal about a story we intend to write that will exemplify our work in the genre. If we've met before, you can probably understand why this infuriates me. For one thing, handing in a short story doesn't mean shit. I have dozens. And, quite frankly, I hate most of them, but none are any worse than the shit that gets read at the senior comps reading every year. Most creative writing majors suck so badly that I wish that, based on their final project, they would not be permitted to graduate and devalue my already worthless diploma. If they made it really hard, I mean really hard, to be a creative writing major, to bury it in theory, I would be all over that shit.
Here's the proposal that got rejected by the English Department, actually, by my advisor no less:
So now, to graduate, I have to write actual bullshit so that they'll accept my proposal.
Here's the proposal that got rejected by the English Department, actually, by my advisor no less:
Following the top-five prologue to Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, the narrator eases back into his sofa chair, the one that Laura won’t take when she moves out, and muses about his love life. Having ended a relationship of eight years, he does not know what to say, really. Hopeful, open-minded, repressive, he thinks about the next person he will sleep with. Has he already met her? Do they know each other? Or will he just know it when he meets her? For the night, he knows that this feeling will pass, that soon he will no longer be satisfied with a hypothetical future, but the possibilities will be enough to send him in to work for the day. He’ll figure it out when he gets home.
As I come to the close of a nearly two-year novel project, I find it hard to spell check the final pages. What will I do with myself when I no longer talk to people and pretend to listen while thinking, We weren’t broke, but we weren’t fixed either, that’s a terrible sentence. Why haven’t I deleted it yet? I should go home right now and cross it out so I don’t forget. Of course it will never be over. I will rehash. I will revise (again, again, again). I will see it someday and hate myself for leaving the punctuation as such. In the end I will abandon it, hopefully in the capable hands of another, and begin anew. As I look to my senior comps in creative writing I wonder about the story I will hand in. Have I seen it’s first draft? If so, how will I know it? If not, where will I be when the foundation hits me? Last week I became convinced that the perfect first line would be, “And pretty much right after that, she left.” And then this week, she dropped out of school. But will the final project give me autobiographical goose bumps? Or will I find myself at work one day, as I did with her, and realize that the one, at least the one for now, will not be the one that wowed me right away, the one that came to me so easily, but the one I overlooked.
So now, to graduate, I have to write actual bullshit so that they'll accept my proposal.
4:25 PM | [permalink] |
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October 22, 2003
For reasons I still can't quite understand I walked out of Salvation Army on saturday and passed up a pair of 12" Bose speakers, thinking that I could just drop by when I had $9.99 in cash. They take credit cards, but it always makes me feel like an asshole while their old-ass machine dials up to pay for my two-dollar pants and three-dollar shirt. When I came back today, they were gone, which has given me the worst blue-balls for sound. I broke my computer speakers earlier this year and now I only have the single one that came on my G4. It's like listening to a fucking clock-radio. Now I know I'm going to end up spending too much money on them elsewhere just to make myself feel better.
5:20 PM | [permalink] |
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October 20, 2003
I'm going to go ahead and recommend that everyone start to make it a habit to read Neumu Magazine so that next week when my first cd review comes out for them (Electrelane On Parade) you're already into it and begin to appreciate me. It's a magazine basically for people who want the obvious choices, who want to hear about Kill Bill vol. 1 and the new Death Cab, that kind of thing. But I respect their reviews and I want more free music.4:40 PM | [permalink] |
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Having just stayed up the entire night using no stimulants and having nothing due today, I would just like to say two things:
1 I long for the days that I see as coming ahead when I am no longer in a phase. Soon I will meet people, Hi, my name is Brendan. I don't have problems. When it's late and dark I sleep. When I don't sleep it's because I'm working on something and not just staring at my screen, flipping between Duran Duran and MC5.
2 Dear post-sell out grunge, Thank you so much.
There's been some other things happening, but I don't have concrete stories or photos or anything. There was October Break, which was later dubbed October Bender. There's a growing infatuation in commercial society with the young, fashionable, Rapture-listening, irony-infatuated denizens with whom I consort, which I have dubbed Revenge of the Nerds. There was another party, last night, a notable attempt to capture the magic of fall break, which I have dubbed Woodstock '99.
1 I long for the days that I see as coming ahead when I am no longer in a phase. Soon I will meet people, Hi, my name is Brendan. I don't have problems. When it's late and dark I sleep. When I don't sleep it's because I'm working on something and not just staring at my screen, flipping between Duran Duran and MC5.
2 Dear post-sell out grunge, Thank you so much.
There's been some other things happening, but I don't have concrete stories or photos or anything. There was October Break, which was later dubbed October Bender. There's a growing infatuation in commercial society with the young, fashionable, Rapture-listening, irony-infatuated denizens with whom I consort, which I have dubbed Revenge of the Nerds. There was another party, last night, a notable attempt to capture the magic of fall break, which I have dubbed Woodstock '99.
5:04 AM | [permalink] |
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October 16, 2003
My new job is impersonating a waiter in the finest restaurant in the county. This is obscenely easy for two reasons:
1) We're in Ohio. Last night I had a fucking Amish table. Literally.
2) I am a student at the fancy college up the road, whose professors and administration account for a third of their business.
The other night we had an employee meeting where I came up once as an example of how to do something the wrong way. Soon after that we went to go over the wine list. So I got my revenge. Now. I know nothing about wine whatsoever. Still don't know which goes with fish, that kind of thing. But, as you may recall, I did spend a lot of time last year pretending to be someone who knows French.
Boss lady: Ok, so this one [Freixenet] is pronounced, uh...oh, the wine rep told me but I forgot. Fricksene. Freenee...
Me: It's (horrible monty-python's frenchman accent) Freixenet, the R is swallowed, the X is silent, but there are two vowel accents in the middle.
Moment later, I watched as the entire staff spoke like French 1 students ("Frahawnay...freenay...")
Then.
Boss Lady: Then we have the Wolf Blass Shurass [Wolf Blaz Shiraz]...
Me: (using the same accent as when I say "Irock" and not "Irack" and "Pockiston" instead of "Packistan" when I mean to give the impression that I've done my homework for class)Actually, guys, this is an excellent one to point out if you are serving a table from Kenyon, especially if they are professors. The Wulf Bloz Shiroz is really the it thing right now.
Entire staff, many of whom have children and mortgages, look at me, circle it on their sheet and begin a terrible, mid-ohio attempt to be as professionally pretentious as I.
1) We're in Ohio. Last night I had a fucking Amish table. Literally.
2) I am a student at the fancy college up the road, whose professors and administration account for a third of their business.
The other night we had an employee meeting where I came up once as an example of how to do something the wrong way. Soon after that we went to go over the wine list. So I got my revenge. Now. I know nothing about wine whatsoever. Still don't know which goes with fish, that kind of thing. But, as you may recall, I did spend a lot of time last year pretending to be someone who knows French.
Boss lady: Ok, so this one [Freixenet] is pronounced, uh...oh, the wine rep told me but I forgot. Fricksene. Freenee...
Me: It's (horrible monty-python's frenchman accent) Freixenet, the R is swallowed, the X is silent, but there are two vowel accents in the middle.
Moment later, I watched as the entire staff spoke like French 1 students ("Frahawnay...freenay...")
Then.
Boss Lady: Then we have the Wolf Blass Shurass [Wolf Blaz Shiraz]...
Me: (using the same accent as when I say "Irock" and not "Irack" and "Pockiston" instead of "Packistan" when I mean to give the impression that I've done my homework for class)Actually, guys, this is an excellent one to point out if you are serving a table from Kenyon, especially if they are professors. The Wulf Bloz Shiroz is really the it thing right now.
Entire staff, many of whom have children and mortgages, look at me, circle it on their sheet and begin a terrible, mid-ohio attempt to be as professionally pretentious as I.
5:52 PM | [permalink] |
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October 03, 2003
Sometimes I forget that I'm in Ohio, and then I go to the post office and find animatronics.
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October 01, 2003
They're back again. The nightmares. I had them so often last summer, that when I cut back to four days a week, only then did I begin to sleep. As I begin to fall asleep, I always sort of just drift into some place else. Usually it's nowhere special. But now, I find myself in front of the table from hell. Twelve women, separate checks. This can't be happening, I say. This can't--this isn't. Then I wake up.
Four or five times in the night. Thank god I'm in bed sweating rather than at work. Last summer I would wake up Amanda screaming, "I'll be right with you." And images of sunburnt men holding up empty glasses of ice, pointing for refills, haunted me as I fell back asleep.
Four or five times in the night. Thank god I'm in bed sweating rather than at work. Last summer I would wake up Amanda screaming, "I'll be right with you." And images of sunburnt men holding up empty glasses of ice, pointing for refills, haunted me as I fell back asleep.
11:27 AM | [permalink] |
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Secret to Happiness