This is two-months-from-now-weather,

and I want to spend it on the Vinarska lawn, with champagne and the tragically hip. Sitting Indian Style, cross-legged, wind blowing too-tall grass over discarded butts, balcony shouting, throwing nationalistic stereotypes and cigarette-tricks and bottlecaps... keeping the soccer players at bay with girls desperate to lay claim to the infrequent Czech sunshine.

Andrew, this is Isolation Drills by Guided by Voices.

This is when we decided for the hundredth time that we needed girls.

This is tramspotting.

This is an adventure.

And it will all vanish, I suspect, before my break starts, before I can have even a little of it.

MUSIC: the magnetic fields: the luckiest guy on the lower east side

"each star represents...

...a playmate that I've slept with."

-Abraham Lincoln



These flags are for hatecrimes. It took me a long time to find the sign that told me that.

So February is in its death throes, and another weekend's gone fast and arguably wasted. The more I do what I should, the worse I hurt. This weekend I was on my feet for hours and hours at a time, and I drank more in two nights than I had prior to that all year. So much for clean livin'.

I learned a lot about the butthole surfers, and though I recall not liking much that I learned, I find myself listening to them even now. I also remembered the Sixths today, though, and I can't find it in my heart or my brain to say that I'm enjoying the surfers more than the sixths.

I worry that I don't make any sense a lot of the time.

Spring break is coming, and I will use it to work. I will intend to use it to talk about guerilla asheville with Jack and to make my fourtrack earn it's keep with Malcolm and Laura Marie and Louise and Pete and anyone else willing to make some noise and to clean the room that will be mine and to... probably do a lot of things... but I will not make those promises, because that'll just be one more thing I beat myself up for in two weeks time.

MUSIC: the sixths: in the city in the rain (w/ Lou Barlow)

did you ever feel like...

...you were part of an experiment? I keep wondering when the scientists will come and tell me that I was part of the placebo group.

"Mr. Johnson, we'd like to inform you that you have been taking a placebo all week. As you show no real progress in your recovery from this gouty attack, your results confirm the value of the drug indomethicin. Here are some actual, working pills. And we apologize for mentioning the band 'Placebo.' We understand as you do that they are a vile musical plague who should've been executed for covering the Smiths. We hope you feel better."

Oh, and go do this thing.

MUSIC: pixies: wave of mutilation

The reasons...

...to not go to one's first class are myriad. Perhaps one is sleepy. One could have a hangover or perhaps one has not done ones homework. Rarely does one skip class because every time one takes a step and transfers ones, granted rather substantial, weight to ones left foot they inhale sharply and have the distinct desire to collapse to the floor and then, perhaps, cut off one's left foot.

This is the kind of pain that convinced me in Brno that my foot was broken. And as bad as it was there with trams and miles of cobbled street to walk, there is a substantial difference. There, I had a balcony and grand books and music right at hand. There I could prop up the offending foot, relax, and watch the sun move across the sky, drinking wine because I knew no better, using the inhalations brought by pain to drag on cigarettes and do further harm to my body.

Most importantly, then and there I had Jesse and Andrew. There I had others, Jess Michael and Richard and every one else. As bad as my foot hurts right now, it's not entirely unpleasant. It reminds me of KFC brought from the middle of town, carried back tramwise and cooling because standing made me want to cry. I remember wrapping my foot with toilet paper to keep the packing tape from sticking to my foot, making an ace bandage from whatever was handy, all so I could get my foot into a shoe and hobble into town for fourteen degree beer.

Lots of time on hand, among all this, to read.

I don't think it's adverdant (is that a word?) that Jesse keeps giving me books with characters that take pictures of people who do things I aspire to do, but that's how it is. The Ground Beneath her Feet (which he didn't really give me, but he definitely got me to read it, and provided the copy I used) is about a photographer who takes pictures of the other main characters, incredible Indian rock stars. I have a four track, now, by the way.

Mao II is about a photographer who travels the world to take pictures of writers (among other things, of course). It makes me wish I were a better photographer, it makes me wish I were a better rock star, it makes me wish I were a better writer. It feels like all this is some subtle kind of encouragement from Jesse, and I know he bought me that KFC, too.

And Andrew carried it. And as horrible as the idea of KFC seems now, it's the thought that counts. Happy 2 weeks through the six weeks of winter predicted by the groundhog. It's sixty degrees and NYC stole my blizzard. I need more indomethicin.

MUSIC: sorry about dresden: somewhere there's snow

"Untie me, I've said no vows...

...the train is getting way too loud;
I gotta leave here, my girl,
get on with my lonely life.

Just leave the ring on the rail
for the wheels to nullify.

Until this turn in my head
I let you stay and you paid no rent.
I spent twelve long months on the lam.

That's enough sitting on the fence
for the fear of breaking dams.

I find a fatal flaw
in the logic of love,
and go out of my head.

You love a sinking stone
that'll never elope,
So get used to the lonesome,
girl, you must atone some.
Don't leave me no phone number there

It took me all of a year
to put the poison pill to your ear,
but now I stand on honest ground...
on honest ground.

You want to fight for this love,
but honey you cannot wrestle a dove,
so baby it's clear.

You want to jump and dance,
but you sat on your hands,
And lost your only chance.

Go back to your hometown.
Get your feet on the ground,
and stop floating around.

I find a fatal flaw
in the logic of love,
and go out of my head.

You love a sinking stone
that'll never elope
so get used to the lonesome,
girl, you must atone some.
Don't leave me no phone number there.

-The Shins.

Happy Valentines Day.

We don't negotiate...

...with terrorists. And by we I mean me and by terrorists I mean chain e-mails.

I think I'm cursed with something like 90 years of bad luck by now for not having forwarded any of the many, many chainletters I receive. I should also probably be dead, and will definitely not have my wish come true in my age minutes.

Andrew may recall that when he asked if he should make plans for a roadtrip when I told him I was graduating. Well, no roadtrip is necessary for the event itself, but post event it sure would be nice to share a bottle of red or five.

More to come on that front.

The College Foundation loan people, incidentally, think I graduated in December, and so expect three hundred bucks from me by wednesday. I called them and very politely informed them that I was, in fact, taking 18 hours this semester and have definitely not graduated. I'm not sure they buy it.

MUSIC: radiohead: the bends