I had some brilliant plan...

...of what to write here last night, but I fell asleep instead. I don't remember what it was.

So it's my job to make sure that people get served. Sometimes the money's even okay. The summer is what it always is here, and I'm fighting. Today I learned how to run another register, which makes something like a dozen throughout my sordid little job history.

My brother has an ipod and I have itunes and I want to have a car. Bandana Matt is still illegal, and until he gets his documents in order, he's not allowed off the ranch. I speak in idiocy when it's this late and I've been working all day, but at least I'm even trying to post.

Today was Katie's birthday, and she's sixteen. Thanks to NC law, however, you won't have to stay off the roads until September. Pete decided to usher her into the world of nigh-adulthood by signing her card 'eat my ass - Pete.' Ah, maturity.

Once again I got her a pair of books for the occassion, one she can appreciate now, and one (hopefully) later. No Rushdie this year... probably because of the rush in ye olde barnes and noble.

So I give up. Tomorrow maybe I'll do something more clever, as I have the day off.

Welcome to the US of A, Malcovsky.

First thing I bought with my work money: the soft bulletin

MUSIC: jet by day: worldwide

okay. We're back.

I told the blogger authorities that my blog is dead and no one cares, and by the time they responded, it was back.

Hey, look at this. stupidity, it seems, is worldwide.

And I pirated an Alan Partridge and I bought tiny little pads on which to write orders. I have an apron. I get tips.

word for the day is austensibly.

MUSIC: juliana hatfield: cool rock boy

what the hell...

...is going on with my blog?

MUSIC: casiotone for the painfully alone: secretest crush

Someone stole the mops,

then they trained me for waitering, then half the kitchen staff quit. I've got a good feeling.

And speaking of good feelings, here's what my joint horoscope is with myself.

"Robin Hood had his band of Merry Men, and right now, so should you (although more diverse, of course). You're not robbing anyone either -- instead, you're all about having good times, and you and your friend aren't shy about spreading the wealth (of fun), either. Well, you can't party forever ... things have to wind down at some point, don't they? No way! Keep it going. When you start feeling sleepy, don't stop the proceedings. Just switch gears -- throw an old-fashioned slumber party instead."

So it seems I'm really spreading on the joy hanging out with my good friend... and that friend and I shared a name... Me!

Cara's winning. She's probably already a better sailor than you, and odds are if you're a regular reader of my work here, she's probably cuter, too... so at least attempt to prove your superiority in guessing songs on my playlist based on tiny, tiny lyric quotations.

Oh, and I was wrong about that digital camera working now. I am accursed.

MUSIC: the arcade fire: I'm sleeping in a submarine

PS-I know I'll have to justify that cuteness statement to some of my cuter readers. Let me just say that I operate under the assumption that most (probably not by a large margin) of my readers are dudes, and therefore, from my heterosexual perspective, she'd automatically be cuter than you. So that's why odds are she's cuter than you. at least that's all I'm saying about it here and now. this hole is deep enough.

take two

all my loyal fans will recall the old contest. Well, that one was swept, if you'll recall, by the lovely Miss Traci White. The songs from that one, however, were drawn from a single MP3 CD. So now I shall repeat the competition with my actual computer and therefore my actual playlists at my finger tips.

The rules, once again, are:

Step 1: Get your playlist together, put it on random, and play.
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 15 songs that play.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from.
Step 4: Underline the songs when someone guesses correctly. Mine have ***.

1 *** Jess *** Yeah Yeah Yeahs -Pin
"things are feeling thin..."
2 ***Cara*** Galaxie 500 - when will you come home
"...watching TV all alone, watching Kojak on my own..."
3
"and you're trying to show it but you can't have it"
4 ***Jess*** sleater-kinney - god is a number
"answer me with industry"
5 *** Cara *** Ben Folds Five - Kate
"her mix tape's a masterpiece"
6
"I know a puppy who walked from Kentucky. Made to East Virginia by dawn. He had seventeen ideas in his head"
7
"do something pretty while you can, don't be a fool."
8 *** Cara *** Weezer - The Sweater Song
"watch me unravel..."
9 *** Cara *** Doors - People are Strange (Bonus points for guessing it was the Echo and the Bunnymen cover.)
"streets are uneven when you're down"
10
"Her eyes are dark just like mocha java; she turns my insides into molten lava."
11 ***Jess*** eels - last stop: this town
"they don't know how to let you in and I can't let you out."
12
"I'm sleeping today so I can wake in your arms tonight."
13
"maybe ice capades or maybe even charades"
14
"and I'm leery, loaded up" (these lyrics are awful and incomprehensible)
15
"my mirror's reflection is you looking coquet and smirking"

and good luck. To us.

MUSIC: architecture in helsinki: scissors paper rock

crooked rain,

crooked rain.

Say something encouraging.

I would like to thank George Lucas for finally delivering a star wars movie. Despite popular rumor he hasn't directed a star wars film since 1977, and he hasn't been involved in making one for at least 20 years. So thanks a lot, big guy. Wookies rule.

To all my homies on the far east side, can we hear a word or two about how this prodigy thing went off.

To my other homies, I'll have money and a car sometime in the nearish future, promise.

To all my homies: speaking of car, should I opt for Bandana Matt for $12 or Nameless Caprice for $13.50. For that price, the third option would be to buy both and join them in some horrendous breaking-the-laws-of-nature sort of way.

To all the girls I... eh, forget it, that is a new level of lame, even for me. I apologize. Sepuku is clearly my only option for this shame.

MUSIC: the rain AND casiotone for the painfully alone

I thought...

...we were beyond this, but clearly I was wrong.

I ate at a place yesterday that did not serve french fries. It did not serve potatoes fried in the french style, even. It served freedom fries. Seriously. On the menu, right under the big-ass eagle and the american flag.

This restuarant has two locations: myrtle beach and high point.

I don't know what to say beyond that.

And if you actually looked at the pictures I put up from the weekend, I'm really, really sorry. I did discover that my digital camera, shitty though it is, has not fully died. Pictures of a depressing quality will ensue.

All the better to wow you in a month or so when I get my photo lab time in.

MUSIC: tenacious d: karate

Inappropriately named cities, take one.

High Point.

Geographically middle of the road with an elevation of squat, High Point is the former furniture capital of the world. It sports a putt putt and a walmart and is not all together a delightful center of culture and entertainment.

MUSIC: the tv guide channel

Diagnosis: Gout

seriously.

music: the pixies: dig for fire

Okay, I know...

...everyone's seen this by now, but for the love of god and all that is holy...

Further idiocy. It seems that nearby Haywood County has drawn national attention. A local preacher apparently drove people out of his church when they expressed an intention to not vote for Dubya. Now apparently there's national attention about this, and it's hurting tourism in the area so badly that the local government is stepping in. By the way, tourism in Haywood county...?

And the weather man explained why it was hotter in some places today by saying "It was hotter there today because there must have been some... some hotter weather there." JTFC!

music: beulah: calm go the wild seas

Category I - The Hub

You're a 'people person'. Networking runs in your
blood. Consequently, you can move through most
social circles with ease.


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

It's 12:21, time for...

...my breakfast of champions. That's right, three cups of coffee and lots of aspirin. But at least I have the luxery of having english-language TV on to be ignored in the background.

The good news is that my 'give me a job' cleaning up of myself has been successful. I will wait the hell out of some tables and I'll be working with Pete and Shleeve. Note that none of the things in that last sentence are described in either a positive or negative way. Time will tell.

But on the plus side I am pirating in high style all up in this internet. And I have a dryer I can use.

MUSIC: mary prankster: art fag bastard

I got a haircut, now give me a job! 

pop quiz hot shot

you thought you were going to see a movie. When it turns out that it's sold out you find yourself in a bar. You have a beer and a sandwich. someone offers you most of their drink and offers to buy you one. What do you do?

In flight entertainment: Ray, Lemony Snickett, Hotel Rwanda, Six Feet Under, the Simpsons, Massive Attack Album.

Fly US Air.

MUSIC: owls: everyone is my friend

...leaving on a prague train... don't know when i'll be back again... 

Living and dying in a Red Psalm world

History must answer to man. As a statement of philosophical import it is unimpeachable, but as the topic of an essay it is, at first glance, frighteningly vague. It strikes one, at first, as being akin to having as a topic Life, the Universe, and Everything. Naturally the phrase is meant to indicate something terrifically broad and not the Douglas Adams novel of the same name. Despite the overwhelming nature of the assigned task, however, it is best to simply get to it.

The first issue to be considered is the fact that this class is on Eastern European Cinema. There is a limiting influence imposed on the broad bounds of the assignment already. History must answer to man in the context of Eastern European Cinema. What that means, exactly, will take further examination. One could, if desperate or simply procrastinating, type that essay prompt into a search engine on the internet. Say a student finds himself idly looking around amazon.com for potential Christmas gifts when he suddenly remembers this essay topic. Typing in “history must answer to man,” he finds that it is a book by Graham Petrie on Hungarian Cinema. Eureka! Here’s a connection.

Having found the book, and having read the book, however, are two different things. But there must be some logic behind the assignment if someone could write a whole book under that title about the films of just one Eastern European country. So this hypothetical student must then ask himself “why would Graham Petrie call his book about Hungarian films that?”

Well, perhaps, hypothetical student, there is a great deal about the portrayal and reaction to the history of Hungary found in the works of Hungarian filmmakers.

“Yes, but perhaps it was originally called ‘Hungarian movies plain and simple’ and his editor made up that ‘history’ thing on a whim because he thought it would sell more books.”

We’re going to have to assume that hypothesis is simply wrong or we’ll never get anywhere. Now, if we examine my theory, perhaps we can find a Hungarian filmmaker who deals with and confronts Hungarian history in his films. Of course we can, Miklos Jancso. Here is a filmmaker whose film Red Psalm is about revolution and Socialism and involves all kinds of symbolic acts that cannot actually happen. Yes, my imaginary friend, I think we have a topic.

According to Istvan Nemeskurty, one can look at Jancso’s films in order of their chronological occurrence rather than shooting date and have a fairly consistent portrait of the past one hundred and fifty years of Hungarian history. “In fact,” Nemeskurty points out, “even the heroes of all the films seem one person: a young man about twenty or thirty years of age who appears again and again, almost continuing, perfecting his previous life” (Nemeskurty 20). The Round Up takes place around eighteen forty-eight, Red Psalm, which will be discussed more thoroughly, takes place at the end of the nineteenth century, The Red and the White takes place in World War One, and Silence and Cry takes place in the closing hours of World War Two.

Most of Jancso‘s films are fairly heavily concerned with Hungary and Hungarians as they cope with larger world events, most especially with the relationship between Hungary and Russia. Red Psalm, however, does not deal with this particular relationship. Set in the eighteen nineties, Red Psalm is about a pasant uprising against the Hapsburg empire. The peasants are socialists, reflecting Jancso’s personal opinions, and the story that is portrayed, though certainly not factual, still serves as a comment on history: making history answer to man.

The peasants first rise against the local authorities, singing and refusing to give their grain over to the constables. The soldiers move to take the grain by force, but are shamed into giving up their weapons by the women of the revolutionary group. Seeing that the soldiers have been shamed the the point of neutrality, the men of the group attempt to convince them to join, but only one is willing to listen. He joins in with one of the peasant dances, but soon other soldiers drive him away. He throws down his pistol in disgust and an officer picks it up and shoots one of the peasant women with it. When the cadet moves to her aid, he too is shot and killed.
Immediately thereafter he is brought back to life by the very peasant woman he had been trying to help, and the balance is kept for the time being.

So here we are not very far into the film, and we already have the living dead. Or at least a miracle. Clearly not an actual historical film. But it is an example of Jancso making history answer him. This cadet being killed and resurrected is not factual, nor is the audience intended to think it is. Rather, it shows the keeping of the peace for the time being in a way which cannot be literally believed but can express more clearly that a factual representation.

Perhaps the most stunning example of Jancso making history subordinate to his point is in a scene which opens with all the peasants and the soldiers dancing together. By this time the rising has grown to include hundreds of peasants, and they have been brought into direct conflict with the whole army. So we see a massive dance; all is frivolous and jolly. Then there is a bugle call and all the soldiers walk away from dance and surround the dancing peasants. They aim their guns at the peasants and fire on command until every peasant has fallen down dead.

The statement here is about the power of conflicting loyalty and allegiance, and it is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. It is, however, also symbolic. As powerful a message as this scene is, it is not the final message, and so Jancso’s peasants reappear in the next scene, bound and separated between those that wish to recant and live, and those who would rather die. This is two times that Jancso has had characters resurrected in Red Psalm, the second time being a mass resurrection. Surely this must detract from the meaning of the death. By now the audience must be convinced that no death is meaningful because death is not real in Jancso’s world within this film. But the deaths are not there to torment an audience with the end of a beloved character, they are in this film to make history, in a fashion, answer to man, which has been the goal of all of Jancso’s, and it could be added all of Hungary’s films.

The film Red Psalm ends with the peasants who will not recant being executed. One of the recantors tries to get his fellows who will not to recant, and the guitar player who has only sang and played throughout the film to this point stabs him. the guitar player is himself shot by an officer, and the other peasants are executed thereafter. The film ends with a shot of their blood stained bodies and the image of one of the peasant women rising to shoot down the celebrating soldiers.

The point is hard to judge. There are several points one could see being made in the film, but the primary one seems to be made by the very existence of the film itself. One can make a film to suit one’s own purposes. Jancso does this beautifully but others may do it more poorly. The strength in history is not inchoate. History becomes important when it is made to answer to man and thereby made comprehensible. The danger therein lies in who history is being made to answer to when a given perspective is presented. Clearly in some cases we get beautiful films about the powers of reconciliation and struggle for class freedom. In some cases we could get something far worse.

There, now, that was not so bad, was it?

“What? Oh. Sorry. I was looking at this sweet DVD.”

You mean to tell me that you didn’t get any of the information from that paper I just wrote. You don’t know anything more about history answering to man than you did before?

“Well, you don’t either. You just made it up off the top of your head. Hell, you’re just typing out this conversation because the paper isn’t long enough.”

Yes, proverbial student, the paper does not meet the minimum word requirement in it’s current state, but I think that it is a strong paper nonetheless. You see, proverbial student, it isn’t about the length of the paper, but rather about the thought that goes into it and how clearly the student understands the material involved. If, in the case of this class, my essay reflects, which I hope it does, the appreciation and intellectual challenges this class has brought to me, then it shouldn’t matter if two hundred or so of the words are the most blatent filler imaginable.

“Hey nameless voice, you’re right.”

God, I hope so.

There will be no open letters.

My brilliant plan will have to fruit another, more cognizant time.

Watch out!

For now, I survived. No sleep.

I said "that was awesome" to two of my pilots after the flight. The third, I told "I mean, you've flown in planes... 7000 feet is bumpy as shit!"

Last song I heard in the Czech Republic: wake me up before you go go.

"SPAM SPAM SPAM (nadoelo)"

I don't know what that means, but those of you who have been following the nigh-daily adventures in blogdom that are presented here by the fine folks at santoritimes.blogspot may recall an equally inexplicable post title from some time ago. That title was derived from the auto-filler function of IE in the lab in A2 Vinarska, and this one is as well.

So this is it. This will be my last post from Europe for the foreseeable future. It will not be a good one. Today I bid farewell to the Pod and had an amicable first/last meeting with Andrew's brother. I will say goodbye to Tesco wine tonight. I will pack and take down all my shitty prints from the walls of the room. I will no doubt sleep late. I will eat soft sauce for the last time. Tomorrow Tora pizza will be my final Brno meal.

The bus leaves at 5.

The beauty that I'm sure Prague is in the spring will be lost to me, trapped with luggage in the airport for hours. I will again be spending time in godforsaken Frankfurt, just in the airport, just for three hours. America will welcome me with perfunctory customs checks in Charlotte. I'll be in Asheville in time for dinner.

Visit me.

MUSIC: beulah: If We Can Land A Man On The Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart

which film starring Eddie Murphy...

...and Nick Nolte really sucks and features a villain called the iceman?

That would be Another 48 hours, and it's funny you should ask that, because that's almost exactly how long I'll be in Brno.

The plane tickets arrived today, UPS can eat one, and I will be sitting in the prague airport for nearly twelve hours on Thursday night.

Those of you with ready access to cheddar cheese should remember how lucky you all are. It's totally great.

Gameboy Advance, after lying dormant for months, wastes my time and batteries.

-Friday - get home. hopefully eat something and shower. laundry is good.

-Saturday - get job. have car, possibly bandana matt (comment). laundry

-Sunday - mothers day. call mom, hopefully decembrists. if not, Family Guy.

-Monday - x-rays. not be crippled - doctor. Daily show

-Tuesday - work

Etc...

I've wasted enough of your time for now. Baron Trenck beckons.

MUSIC: pixies: debaser

Oh, la moats...

Tis gibberish, that, but now you know how to pronounce Olomouc, the town we went to yesterday for to walk and drink.

There was, if I'm not mistaken, a birthday celebration involved.

Apparently, our fair city of Brno was to be the site of a giant protest-cum-fist fight with skin heads and anarchists. Perhaps it would be best to spend May Day elsewhere, methought (that can't be right), and my compatriots were in agreement.

We boarded the train near 11 am and rode in companionable noisiness most of the way to said town. Rather than fascists throwing punches and heavy police presence, we found archery contests and a concert and lots of lounging around in the shade and drinking beer. We partook in the latter.

Needless to say this was the first time I was up before noon since March 19, so I slept like a baby.

Also, needless to say, I had the last laugh.

MUSIC: the reindeer section: grand parade

PS: 5 days

PPS: no ticket.

Bored, I emulate Luke Rosa.

Searching Google for "Jef is"

-Jef is a political movement, but not a party
-Jef is its youth movement
-Jef is an Uncle
-Jef is engaged in an "epic confrontation" with the zethi fleet
-Jef is also a songwriter
-Jef is a P2P application designed by the authors, based on the Project
JXTA P2P
-Jef is all about and why it's good
-Jef is already connected to the serial port 1
-Jef is being sought all over
-Jef is aware that parts of the Constitution remain vague and
contradictory
-Jef is a more generic version of the Filewatcher Framework
-Jef is Babelfish, by the way. By my count, he is roughly 25% of the
troll here.
-Jef is State Certified in General Counseling, Marriage/Family, and
Chemical Dependency
-Jef is probably out of his element here
-Jef is a multitalented person who is most capable
-Jef is a well-known local actor and mime
-Jef is a musician, he builds model planes, loves archery,
ping pong, and racing cars. He's a mathematician, and an
interface designer with a mission
-Jef is also accepting monetary donations to assist financially
-Jef is behind Stig Eklund
-Jef is a gentleman seaking a Russian bride
-Jef is based at the Belgian underground storage laboratory at Mol
-Jef is out standing in his magnetic field
-Jef is on the right with radio
-Jef is like, "No, really..."
-Jef is nabbed by the police
-Jef is in school becoming a certified gunsmith right now!
-Jef is forced to rely on his own instincts to survive
-Jef is the curator of a large collection of Peter Pan memorabilia
-Jef is insane and is the ruler of his own fantasy kingdom
-Jef is the greatest and he is unlike anyone else
-Jef is the ultimate portrait of cool

"I can’t seem to breath..."

...with a rusted metal heart
I can’t seem to see through solid marble eyes"

Okay, so this is what happened. I sent my parents my address to mail me the plane tickets for a flight in six, count 'em six days. I left off the town name, but the postal code made that okay.

As near as I can tell, my parents took the address I sent them, which would work, to some UPS store or something and read them the address. UPS cats, as is their wont, wrote it down wrong.

So now instead of my ticket coming to Brno, it's going to "Vinarska," a town which does not exist. The 5 which goes with Vinarska (sans diacritical marks to ease American minds), the street I live on (Vinarska 5) has moved down with postal code to now make it one digit too long for functionality.

So hopefully my frantic e-mail to UPS will do it's job when they realize they are delivering to a nonexistant address. Really, really hopefully.

MUSIC: modest mouse: trailer trash

I am trying...

I am trying very hard...
not to be angry...
not to be jubilant...
at least I'm in control enough, now, and able
to see to it
that I am not hungry.

MUSIC: yeah yeah yeahs: bang

last transaction

4/5/2005
ATM Cash Withdrawal
L340 TIME 03:28 PM DATE 04-05
CESKA 12 BRNO CZ

So it's still me being broke and Jesse had a little wine, which was too much. Good times.

edit: I forgot... 8 days...

MUSIC: badly drawn boy: this song

The day is mine!

I got money! Woo Hoo!
...
...
...
Oh... Wait... that's just an interest payment of 3 cents. Back of the net.

41 cents now... why, that's nearly 10 crowns. If I could get it, I could own a beer. Jedno pivo. Needless to say, many more than jedno would be required at this point.

9 days.

MUSIC: modest mouse: dog paddle

"How will we know...

...if we talk as we dream if we don't sleep together?"

Looks like I'll be home for dinner on May 6th, people. that is less than two weeks.

MUSIC: sebadoh: oh fire (in my head)

Do you ever hear it?

When all your conscious mind is eaten up by that song that won't leave your brain... Behind it, in the subconscious, is the nebulous miasma of thoughts that are always present, the worries and wants and crushes and plans and the future, but right up in front, all you get is, "sister I need wine for coloring my skin..."

Such was the story last night as I struggled vainly to capture sleep and make it do my bidding. Wandering thoughts about the summer and the Oak Ridge folks I half-know or know not at all and the necessity for remedying the situation were suddenly superceded by "if you want to buy me flowers, just go ahead now..." And, struggling valiently against the two princes I pushed past the spin doctors and tried to decide whether a fifth of Jack would be cheaper in North Carolina or Tennessee and "And if you'd like to talk for hours, just go ahead now!" Such is my delimma.

In other news, no plane ticket as yet. And no ability to finance my frugal lifestyle as yet. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

MUSIC: the tragically hip: are we family

"nevermind the world...

...when you think it's right in front of you
i know they think i'm crazy and believe i need a girl"

Ah, the fire theft. It's arena rock with Jeremy Enigk and it is grand. (Resisting urge for obvious pun) Check it out.

I've been sitting here staring at the blank page and being distracted for some time now, so I'll leave it alone.

Word for the day is family.

MUSIC: pavement: texas never whispers

three, count 'em...

...three updates today, and I've barely said a word. READ THIS.

and have a nice day.

MUSIC: elliott smith: clementine

PS. don't let me forget how much I love Will Oldham (especially Palace Music Lost Blues and other songs)or Beulah.

international small arms traffic blues

My love is like a powder keg
My love is like a powder keg in the corner of an empty warehouse
Somewhere just outside of town
About to burn down

My love is like a Cuban plane
My love is like a Cuban plane flying from Havana
Up the Florida coast to the 'Glades
Soviet made

Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Trucks loaded down with weapons
Crossing over every night
Moon yellow and bright
There is a shortage in the blood supply
But there is no shortage of blood
The way I feel about you baby can't explain it
You got the best of my love

-the mountain goats

quizzes

You're The Grapes of Wrath!

by John Steinbeck

You're mired in a deep depression that encompasses you and everyone
you know. You're trying to get out of the depression, but your idea of help is, in
itself, pretty sad. While some are convinced that this all has a deeper meaning, you're
really just dull and tedious. And utterly obsessed with dust. You really need to focus
on something other than dust. Your best moments center around turtles.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

You are Today Billy! You are a sexually frustrated
dreamer who wishes to get away from the
mundanity of your life. You are adventurous and
fun-loving, you are always ready to pack up and
go. Even though you have friends, you always
seem to find yourself alone romantically, but
you make the best of it.


What music video Billy Corgan are you?!
brought to you by Quizilla

I had to get rid of the image because it was screwing stuff up. You can see it here.

MUSIC: architecture in helsinki: scissors paper rock

I am...

...not photogenic. Thanks Carla.

MUSIC: guided by voices: they're not witches (Cara's fault by way of my own)

"everybody's gotta hold on hope...

...it's the last thing that's holding me"

I don't mind mind redundancy.

MUSIC: the owls: air

holy smokes...

...I'm a senior. sorta. 88 hours or so under my belt... which may explain why this fall I'm taking:

Biology in 21st Century
Intro to Speech Communication
Intro Microeconomic-Social Issues
Intermediate Photography (thank god)
and
maybe
Films that matter

I need a job and a car and crate of vodka and millions of dollars to make it next fall... Well, that's exaggeration, but the classes, clearly won't be keeping me on my toes, generally.

EDIT: I finished writing my album this week. Give me a four track and a steady hand to strum and I can move the world.

MUSIC: burning airlines: wheaton calling

business casual

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions and leave the answers as comments on my blog.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1. Are you drinking two percent milk?

What, at the moment? No. I generally do, though I prefer skim. I am in a milk-free state at the moment, however, and can honestly say I've had no milk since January.

2. Do you think it will be possible to move about in Cullowhee after so much life having passed between last May and this August?

It has to be. There's more life in me now than before, and so Cullowhee will be forced to accomodate it. Rooming with Shleeve and hopefully working in the lab and doing all the things I've been doing and more. 4 track and screaming in the quietest room I can find at the oddest hours and Kung-fu tuesdays and music and actually being social and god-forbid getting a girl and the easiest classes fathomable. And I may even have a car to accomodate escape if cullowhee threatens to crush my soul. And I'm supposed to just answer, but will you be there, or is Chapel Hill happening?

3. If you were held at gun point by a megalomanical literary guild and forced to declare a favorite book or perish, what would you choose?

Whether to name the book or perish? or do you mean which book? Hmm... I'd go with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I could carry that book about with me and read it cover to cover, starting over as soon as I finished, as Pete used to do with the Hitchhiker's guide.

4. What's the deal with corn nuts?

I know! Is it corn or is it a nut?!? What's the deal?!

5. What are the top three moments you recall from your year in the Czech Republic?

Top three memory-wise, or top three top-wise? I mean, am I being asked to name the three moments I will remember the best at this point, or the three top moments? I suppose it's at my discretion, yeah? So, in no particular order... (1) Running across the street at Hlavni Nadrazi, passport stowed in my pocket, jumping the rail and dashing up the stairs, seeing Glen and Brett still there. Their train hadn't arrived, we were going to Vienna. Oh, the elation. (2) the inexplicable joy of being informed that we could not, in fact have any more champagne because we had consumed all the champagne on the premises. The glorious drunk and the snapping pictures and some good, infections Carla laughter and that fleeting feeling that everything was all right. (3) It was after six a.m. but only barely, and the first tram of the day would be there in a moment. The icy walk down had wakened us though we'd not slept and I explained that the Czech Republic was the PDA capital of the world. People were constantly making out, and I needed revenge. Holding and a clumsy kiss. That was a moment.

MUSIC: oingo boingo: flesh n' blood (live)

Mouthful of gyro...

...I told Andrew that the movie kicked my ass all over the theater, and it was true.

This is two times in six months that Jesse and I have seen the last film in an International Film Festival in Europe, and both times it's been an English language film. I guess we're lame.

I am registered for the lamest classes ever. more on that later.

MUSIC: grandaddy: he's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot

"Banned from the end of the world

I've no millenial fear,
the future is here, it comes every year.
(If you want me there, I'll play forever dear
Open up the box a new life rushes out
Nasty little bug, much work to be done
Eat all the numbers up, we're 00 gone!)

Hot hot, go back these eyes are shut!

If you want it, I'll come right over,
then throw me out when the party's over.

Banned from the end of your world
We can bottle time and sell it back
It's a nostalgic crime!
(If you want me there, we'll party without fear
A new world rushes on and we'll just play
along
A night of revelry, spend it here with me
For so many dreams cannot be contained)

Banned from the end of the world
The future is here, look in the mirror
(We're the band from the end of the world.)"

-Sleater-Kinney

The Vinarška ABC's

A is for Abigail - terribly sweet
B is for Booze which is oft what we eat
C is for Carla who visited once
and D is for Drama because there's too much
E is for Eldon, I think you know why
F is for Andrew because Fuck that guy
G is Gambrinus, a beer that's all right
H is for Heikki, thank god he took flight
I am the writer, I caught you a bass
J is for Jesse who frankly kicks ass
K is for Kino, the movies we see
L is for this wee girl named Lizzie
M is Malcovsky, say that three times fast
and N will be Martin, though he should have come last
O is for Olga gone back to Ukraine
and P is for Piia who is not a dane
Q is the Michaels, though I can't say why
and R is for Richard, most British of guys
S is for Shellie whose hair is quite long
and T is for Tim whose hair is dark and gone
U is for Utrecht and Achnes (sp?) as well
and V is for Fran - doesn't work all that well
W is walking after the buses we missed
X is too hard, pretend it doesn't exist
Y is for... Yeshiva... the jewish schools
and Z is...
I wrote this?
I am such a tool.

Wow... that was painful. Sorry about that.

By the way, Film and Musical Festival in town RIGHT NOW! Check it out, especially if you're in town. We should totally see something.

MUSIC: lifeguards: no chain breaking

to get back into the swing of things

let me do another of my trademark needless and brief posts. I just want to say that it's hilarious that MSN thinks that this is worthy of being a news story put before the world.

yessir. that's news. and the link that led me there said, as if this were noteworthy somehow, "Jessica Alba keeps clothes on."

Is Jessica Alba generally in a state of undress? Is her wearing garments so rare as to consititute news? I am under the impression that, so far as most of the world is concerned, Jessica Alba is generally seen in a state of dressedness. Her remaining in said state, however, is apparently news.

Oy.

MUSIC: hum: green to me

"everybody's gotta hold on hope...

...it's the last thing that's holdin' me."

So I spent the night sitting in a lounge up in the brains of Vinarska singing to myself, and I can't believe that no one noticed. I finished the Time Traveler's Wife and it was too much. Audrey Niffenegger can line up behind Ricky Gervais for that fight I'm supposed to be having if my mood doesn't shift enough for me to embrace the lyrical beauty contained both in the Office and Niffenegger's book.

I've been a horrible blogger lately so let me try and summarize the week. Carla left on Monday, and I posted a bit about that, yeah? So tuesday was spent... um... hell, it's a blur. Wednesday night, however, was the plastic people of the universe. There are not words to describe this experience. They performed their passion play for the third and possibly last time ever. It was positively grand. Everyone is required to hit up either myself or Jesse to hear the recording when we return stateside. You will be blown away and then we will tell you how the recording pales before the experience. Eat your heart out.

Thursday I crippled myself and friday I was crippled. Saturday I drank champagne, watched legally blonde, I'm embarassed to say, and I must admit it is far down on the list of destructive things I did to myself or had done to me. Oy.

Last night I came in at least bordering 4 am and took a shower. I was inexpressibly cheered when I saw that the boxers I'd chosen in the dark were my Christmas eve gift from this past year, though I still wanted to punch the mirror and did not.

No worries, ladies and gents, I'm stronger stuff. Traci and Shellie, who may never read this and whose name I may have misspelled, you've both been angels. I hope it's not too off-putting.

"blankness and darkness like underneath a leaf has settled on me here..."

MUSIC: guided by voices: hold on hope

ouch.

i don't want to talk about it.

or if I do, not here.

MUSIC: aimee mann: that's just what you are

PS. Kasia posted in english!

I don't know what it says

about me, but I really like the yeah, yeah, yeahs. Between them and Sleater Kinney I suppose I must be a lesbian women's studies major, right?

Anyway, the weekend went on for miles and every minute of it was life and a lot of it was quite good. Carla from Vermont by way of London was about and I'm impressed. Lefties unite and a running-gag high and we drank a bar out of champagne.

This is an adventure.

MUSIC: pernice brothers: the weakest shade of blue

In pin-striped finery

I walk the streets of Brno, heavy of heart and light of wallet. A check cleared my account today for 25 and some odd dollars, and I haven't written a check since possibly a year ago.

I watched 21 Grams again today. I saw Finding Neverland in a regal old cinema-house (pun regrettably intended) on a huge screen and I sighed and sniffled and allowed myself to be manipulated. I'm waiting in the lab for Bratislava to reach Brno on the bottoms of the shoes of friends and my inability to determine whether this is a great post or a terrible one encourages me stop.

I want this song to never end, but it pulls out parts of my hearts by the note.

MUSIC: archers of loaf: chumming the oceans (live)

Balance must be restored.

We've all had a good laugh at how stupid southerners are this last week. Hell, some of us have had a good laugh at how stupid southerners are for most of our lives. But to show that stupid, redneck idiocy happens the world over, I present this piece of czech news.

Bon apetit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy some food and beer and resist the urge to link more stuff.

Oh, and if you haven't seen the office, don't spend too much time looking around that website I linked yesterday. It may ruin some things for you. And if you're ricky gervais, meet me at the flag pole after school today, you and me are gonna throw down.

MUSIC: sunny day real estate: seven

Sebadoh!

Launchcast is playing "skull," so everyone go and get it asap. That's right, I'm encouraging Internet Piracy.

Yarr, me beauties!

MUSIC: sebadoh: skull

Easter, eh?

I guess we'd better get to the whipping of the young ladies. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Day off from school, which gives me a total of one day of classes this week. I don't know how I'll survive so rigorous a course load. Oh, no, wait, I do. I'll blog obsessively and listen to music and write and drink. Hell, I may even watch something entertaining. Speaking of entertainment, I just finished watching The Office last night and I just want to tell Ricky Gervais to go to hell.

Yes, the office is brilliant. Hilarious, too. But by god it's brutal. If the American version is, as I've heard, a direct remake, it will be too tragic for american audiences to handle.

So big up to Cara for enlightening me about Hopkin Green Frog, and big down to the farelly brothers for fever pitch. You lost me with your Ben Stiller bad day movie, and it appears I will stay lost. Eat one, guys.

Oh, and sorry about making you share paragraph space with the farelly's, Cara.

Here's Cara's own paragraph. I'll even put a link to a good trailer in here, that should make up for the sin of proximity committed above.

So tonight I have the two Christmas specials of the office to look forward to or perhaps the Royal Tennenbaums. Either way the clocks are set forward and it's an hour later than it should be and the Czech Republic is warm and welcoming despite my poverty. Send lawyers, guns and money.

MUSIC: sparklehorse: gold days

and indeed...

...it was a good friday. Kasia was in town and we ate people at Kanibal (fried cheese people) and I even managed to endure a shot of Ukrainian vodka. go me.

so here's something stupid. Between this piece of news and the Tennesseeing afoot it looks like the south is being represented about as well now as ever. Between these occurances and the Serbs singing sweet home alabama the other night at the tops, of their voices, I've been a bit unhappy with being a North Carolidiot. Being born in Georgia doesn't help, either.

So let me just say that Kasia totally rules and I lament the idiocy of tennessee and sports make you crazy.

Now here's some stuff to entertain you.

MUSIC: guided by voices: ester's day

Bowie had it right,

and I mean the singer, not the knife guy. Dying at the Alamo could hardly be right, but with no fear of sounding redundant, it's a godawful small affair.

Is there life on mars?

Forgive me for not being more informative or long-winded. Life beckons. This is an adventure.

Livingstone tonight and being social.

CURRENT STATE OF MIND COURTESY OF: Andrew
HOLY WEEK COURTESY OF: Jewish Calendar
MUSIC: jamiroquai: virtual insanity

"now I...

...want someone badly to burn in here with me."

Somehow today turned awesome and I've had love songs in my head all day. We found the greenway and rode trams and drank kofola.

"give me life, give me pain, give me myself again."

I know I say it a lot, but this is an adventure.

MUSIC/WORLDVIEW: depeche mode: somebody

"it's a godawful small affair..."

"How is a raven like a writing desk?" And Lewis Carroll never offered to answer the question. I'm something of a Carroll freak, so I endeavored and did find the answer.

My family was in Disney World again, as my step-mom finds an excuse to get us all down there at least every two years or so. Once there, we live like kings and eat like locusts and hunt mullets and snap pictures and make short films and have a ball. So we had just finished eating like kings at one of those character breakfasts, and we walk downstairs to leave. There's a guy playing the mad hatter, and Pete wants to get a picture with him, so we take many a shot of the hatter with members of the family, and I say to the guy, "so, how is a raven like a writing desk?"

He doesn't break character for a moment. "You really want to know?" he said.

"Yeah, I do. It's not in any of the books and I want answers."

He smiled and shook his head. "It's really not very good."

"I don't care. Tell me." And he did.

Answers, I later discovered, for this riddle are plentiful.

"Dream kid the size does not matter
Bad luck anyway you call it
Red ants and mercy giants
The angels of the bars"

MUSIC: guided by voices: they are not witches

"crawling people...

...on their knees, don't take this so seriously. You just have to hum it all day long."

Nothing recuperates you like a royal shindig of a weekend in Vienna followed, eventually, by a long shower and a long, long sleep. Ladies and gentlemen, that is your prescription.

Nothing happened today but the arrival of a package, stuffed with deodorant and books and medicine and chapstick and a helpful robot to add numbers to other numbers (thanks mom). Reveling in cleanliness and listening to guided by voices and david bowie is a fine way to spend the day.

MUSIC: david bowie: life on mars (in my head)

The empty glass...

...was set down, lemon sucked, and somewhere in the haze of the smokey expat bar Glenn said, "Austria was a song."

Austria was a song. Thursday was St. Patrick's day, Andrew and I hung around my room, ate beans and rice, and reveled in the balcony being usable on the first nice day since november. We yelled conversation which led to some confusion, and a pawn fell on my chair.

The pawn was from two floors up, Shell(ie/ey/y) and Abigail's room. Returning the pawn got us an invite to an irish bar with a mob, and we took it. Got angry because of the aformentioned frustration and had a beer, then went to see the Life Aquatic.

I don't have to say anything about that movie, because if you're keen on Wes, you already know, and if you're not, you won't agree.

We went from the movie back home and Andrew and I made our way into the next building for what we thought was a St. Patrick's day party, but it wasn't. It turned out it was someone's birthday, but all the same we were given drinks gratis. Hanging out and talking with Jesse followed. We were up till the wee hours and I was supposed to get up to go with Andrew to meet his friends Glenn and Brett at the train station. (Technically, Brett was, at that point, a friend of a friend, but let's not split hairs.) I didn't make it due to alarm clock idiosyncracies. Regardless they came into the place Jesse and I were eating in the early afternoon, and we hung out with them thereafter.

It was 7:40 and we were finishing dinner in the Staro Brno brewery. Andrew, Jesse, and I are informed that there is room and an invitation for us to sleep in the huge apartment hostel Glenn and Brett have acquired through what I believe were clerical errors. We accept, and have just under an hour to get our passports and buy tickets for the train.

We did it. Glenn said, "stop being a martyr," and andrew replied that martyrs don't succeed. "I'm a hero." He is.

He ran from Vistaviste (don't care about spelling it right) to our rooms, got all our passports, toothbrushes, and a stick of deodorant between two trams going by. This after having been drinking for over six hours.

Jesse has money, and Andrew and I do not, so Jesse, I will safely say, is also a hero. If he hadn't been willing to help us (specifically me) out, this weekend couldn't have happened. At least not for me.

So we're running, adrenal, through the streets of brno after urging our tram to move faster than it by rights ought, and we get to the train station. Andrew goes into the office, sweating and breathing heavily. He says we need three tickets for Vienna returning on Sunday and departing right now. The ticket clerk, deadpan, says, "yeah, I know."

So all of a sudden, we're in Vienna. Glenn plays tour guide, we talk a lot. Kasekrainer and Jesse's first tequila and beers that cost too much and snitzel and churches and hapsburgs and tours and austrian television and mohitos and long island ice teas and cold viennese winds. So much film waiting for a lab in the states to get developed.

Saturday was the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and we walked against the tide of a huge austrian protest being escorted by jackboots with bodies. We had leisurely coffees in the train station before we left and we had to run to catch our train back to brno.

"This is an adventure."

MUSIC: neutral milk hotel: two-headed boy

P.S. Do not see the movie Leprechaun IV

"strap on your wings...

...it's painless to fly."

It's a translated line from a song playing in the film we saw tonight. I'm not sure if that site will get you to a point where you can understand anything or not, but it was really nice. English subtitles, when they let us see them, are really nice.

So I learned about the Passion recut that Mel's decided to release, and I thought it appropriate to post a poem I wrote about the original cut of the film. Before I do that, though, let me paint the scene which is necessary to appreciate the literary masterpiece that I've created: we had been drinking quite a bit. To fill our addled hours, I started to assign people topics to write poems about. I let someone else assign me a topic along the same lines (movies, actors, favorite mr. show sketches for example). I was assigned the Passion, and this is what my wine-addled brain produced. The working title is "ah, my balls."

Mel Gibson drove a nail through what?
Jesus' hand, but it felt like my nut.
That coffin just could not stay shut,
like robbin' graves, just like king Tut's.
They sure did whip poor Jesus' butt,
but, Jesus Christ, the unkindest cut
to watch it without eyes a-shut,
I'd rather have played a round of putt-putt
It's like I got nailed...
right in the nuts.

So there's that out of the way. An homage if you will. Today I took something approaching 70 pictures. We set out to show Jesse the view that Andrew and I enjoyed last week, and then we took a brief tour of the sight of our getting lost.

Last night I convinced Andrew that, should he have a band name, it should be A.M. Whims, or perhaps A.M.'s Whim, because it sounded cool. It was also the reason he'd skipped his classes for the last two days, early morning whims. If he needs an album cover, I have him even more covered now than before, especially if he makes an album with Jesse.

We went to the another park out beyond the bounds of reason (or town center, depending on how poetic your soul's feeling at the moment), but before doing that we intercepted a mob of ladies (4). The sun was setting red and I wished I had color film and there was a man with a hawk and dogs having sex.

There was a wooden cow. Pictures of such will be available in three months.

Oh, and yesterday I got my face cut by a gyro (don't ask. Or do.)

MUSIC: grandaddy: comin' up empty again

more on those puppets

If you want to read more about the folks behind the saucy puppet play in english, check this site out.

And be sure to look at the pictures for Savitri under productions and projects. They're awesome.

Better entry later. possibly tomorrow.

MUSIC: b.b. king: six silver strings

WTF

seriously

saucy puppet play

was just a joke. I mean, we were calling it that as a reference to Futurama, but apparently word got back to the guys doing the play and they changed whatever they had planned to make it as saucy as possible so that the three americans in attendance wouldn't be disappointed. Either that or it was this saucy to begin with; I admit the possibility of the plays sauciness existing separate from us.

Domovní Requiem (pictures 1, 2, 3)

It may have been the oddest thing I've ever seen. As near as I can tell (it were czech) it was somewhere between a morality play, a jan svankmejr film, and a punch and judy show. The puppets spent the first half of the play committing terribly sins in as slapstick a manner as possible (see inflatable breasts) including phone and actual sex and various kinds of robbery and abuse. And a guy kills one of his performing rats with a syringe.

The second half of the play is all about everybody getting served. I'm going to go ahead and ruin it for you, so if you plan on ever getting a chance to see it (it apparently tours around Czechland, but if you're out the country, which you most likely are, you probably won't see it) then skip a bit. I'll tell you when it's safe. So the violent couple who have a tv get beaten to death by the TV character with a freaky disturbing tongue. The man with the rats? He tries to grind his rats up into sausage, and the rats revolt and grind him. The woman who makes with the phone sex? She gets eaten by her phone. At least it pulls her head off. Then it puts it back on. Then it pulls it off again. Then it puts it back on. Then it pulls it off again. You get the idea. The guy who she was having the sex with? Well, he gets attacked by the phone, and then hauled down to hell by the demon inside his car's engine. I'm not making this up.

And there's an angel that floats around every once in a while while some eerie music plays that I wish I owned. It shows up when someone's about to die as if it will intervene, then looks at what's happening and buggers off. Death, we think, is what the angel was.

ALL RIGHT, IT'S CLEAR. YOU CAN READ NOW AND NOT HAVE ALL THE SUBTLE PLOT POINTS OF THE CRAZY PUPPET PLAY RUINED FOR YOU.

The temptation is great to say everything about that play again just to screw with people who actually scrolled down so they wouldn't have it ruined. I shall resist.

Had a gyro. these things are awesome. without them life would be rough here in Czechville. And it's warming up, so in a matter of days I may be able to closet my hideous and functional coat once and for all.

MUSIC: they might be giants: i should be allowed to think (thanks, cara)

I love discovering...

...that a band you loved, though gone, have reformed, at least the important elements have, and are still around under a new name. A few examples, Jealous Sound (formerly pretty much Knapsack) and The Fire Theft (likewise Sunny Day Real Estate).

So I'm not going to get too much into a post now, because I don't want to steal Jesse's thunder, plus I'm going to see a saucy puppet show tonight that I think will provide me with fuel for the posting.

Here's a nice little essay about American Gods.

I changed the picture on the page linked on the side that says my profile picture won't work. It's odder. er.. more odd.

I think I'm going to go drink tea and read lewis carroll, though I might cave in and buy neverwhere because it's great.

MUSIC: elvis costello: the scarlet tide

"maybe it's so windy...

...because spring is coming," Jesse said.

"either that," I replied, "or the devil's coming. Either way, it's gonna warm up."

Lewis Carroll is an odd fellow to read and last night I flooded the Sušarná which I am probably misspelling and I may even be misspelling misspelling, but I don't think so. It's the room where you hang your clothes to dry since dryers are a western luxery indicative of the american devil, apparently. So my clothes had been washing for two and half hours (that's one load, count 'em, one) and I was ready for them to be done. They weren't, so I took them anyway. They had skipped the spin cycle I hung them up anyway.

One load later, I went down and a girl said something incomprehensible involving voda and pokoj. She then said in english, "that room is full of water." Oops.

I played dumb.

Ate Czech Mexican food yesterday. That was an odd experience. Jesse got Goulash with white rice. There was tabasco mixed into the sauce, which clearly makes it Mexican, yeah?

This'll give you an idea of what exploding dog is if you don't know.

MUSIC: ben folds five: jane

in honor...

of the poetry dropped in that last post, here's something else to do if you get bored.

"U R not worthy of my miserable!"

that's the last line of the poem the P-lib generated for me.

enjoy

"my candle burns at both ends

it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
it gives a lovely light."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Though I am reading the prose of Mr. Dodgeson at the moment, it's still chock full of poetry, and I think I'm more glad that I brought this book even than American Gods. The Gaiman is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I think everyone else here is getting more from that one than I am (maybe) whereas I'm getting more out of the Carroll.

If it weren't for that I'd have to rely on websites like the one above to get all my poetry, and it would certainly be the longest period in my life of without holding a book of poetry in my hands.

What an odd topic to write a whole post on. C'est la vie.

By the way, see if you can find some Miroslav Holub. He's a czech, so he's not exactly easy to find in translation, but he's not that difficult. All the same, he's a winner.

And that website I linked up there: that's got some links at the bottom worth a glance if you're bored or desperately in need of poetical advice. No one better to get advice on life from than from a lot of suicidal alcoholics, after all.

Last night was Frida night, and hot damn is that a winner of a flick. I'd say that I'm seeing more great films here by an order of magnitude than I do at home in the same period of time.

Movies I've seen in the last two months (in no particular order)

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (twice)
Team America (twice)
Naqoyqatsi
Frida
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways

and I'm probably forgetting some. Plus I saw Dancer in the Dark, Eternal Sunshine, and Raging Bull in theaters here earlier in my stay. There aren't many places I know of where you can see Team America one night and Frida the next, both in theaters.

Curse or bless the czech republic; it's starting to snow.

MUSIC: rasputina: leech wife (in my head)

Polls are closing

throughout the world, but the conclusion is foregone. Traci White has won the competition with an incredible 15 for 15 sweep.

Plus I saw Frida and I put up a new link and I ate food and finished American Gods last night.

Andrew and I consulted a map and found the place where we got lost. It was called the devil's (unknown czech word) and we decided to refer to it as the devil's haircut ("what's that song about again?"). Today though, I learned that the word we didn't know is actually gorge. Way to translate all the fun out of my life.

reading: sylvie and bruno (lewis carroll)
digesting: beer and potato pancake
MUSIC: grandaddy: jed the humanoid (in my head)

curses upon this contraption

I just typed out a pretty lengthy entry here. I said that Traci is the winner, hands down, in that little 'guess the song' thing. If you want to know what songs the lines are from (and I know you do), just scroll down and check out the edited post.

The only one not guessed is "even if you held the sun it would cover up your eyes" which is misquoted because I couldn't find anything to cross-check my understanding of the lyric against. The real lyric (which would still be my favorite from the song) is "even if you held the sun in the color of your eyes" So guess that one before Traci and you won't be blown out of the water entirely. Traci, go for the sweep.

Andrew and I had the odd sensation of having trains, cars, and trucks all drive over our heads today. Here's a website that I think is funny.

I know this is a disjointed and crazy post, but it was better before it didn't post a moment ago.

curses upon this contraption.

MUSIC: grandaddy: a.m. 180

"it looks like an aurora's trying to fight it's way over those mountains"

I said, my face to the snow as I tilted my camera down to protect the lens...

====

Last night I took arty (read pretentious) pictures of myself and Jesse and Andrew until my current roll of film was gone. I labled it and stuck it on a shelf and loaded 36 new exposures into my canon.

Today I arose and filled myself with coffee. I read a chapter in American Gods and then loaded myself and set out with Andrew for window pizza and adventure under the protective umbrella of our shiny new tram passes.

We went all the way to Yugoslavia (which involves travel in both space and time) and to Tomato street, I think. By the way, nemluvím Česky. Where we ended up, though, was at an elementary school where the snow was still thick and children sledded and strange sculptures had been planted around towering apartment buildings. We walked and took pictures (Andrew now has an album cover if he ever becomes the frontman for a christian rock band ala Faith +1) and got dreadfully lost in the woods where the walkways were packed with ice so that you couldn't tell where the stairs began. I slid down a staircase on my shoes, pulling myself down with the handrail too low, said rail having been designed for eight year olds.

We found a grand view and watched a storm roll over the mountains and fall on us. The snow fell thick against us and then the sun came and drove away the clouds and made the sky come back and it stopped feeling like perpetual dusk in this town for the first time since I got back in January.

Today was a good day and the only thing that would make it complete would be:

1. to hear Twin Falls by Built to Spill
2. to eat
3. to drink

I will go take care of two and three shortly. First, I'll wait and see if one happens.

"Christmas Twin Falls, Idaho is her oldest memory. She was only two; it was the first time she felt blue. Cafeteria Harrison Elementary - beneath a parachute I saw her without shoes. 7UP I touched her thumb and she knew it was me although she couldn't see unless of course she peeked. My mom's good she got me out of Twin Falls, Idaho before I got too old. You know how that goes. That's where she still was the summer she turned 17 in 1983, two weeks after me. Last I heard was she had twins or maybe it was three although I've never seen but that don't bother me."

so that's one down.

MUSIC: built to spill: twin falls

smashing pumpkins: the end is the beginning is the end

"water on the knee?

A Thousand dollar fee!"

Operation was a success, and by that I mean that I managed to reburn an MP3 cd so that it should, in theory, play in Jesse's portable with the speakers and the singing along and the annoying of neighbors.

I will celebrate in my usual style, by typing out the lyrics of a song that I am just not hearing for the first time in a good month or two. Better make it good, eh?

"Gentlemen, it is my duty to inform you of one beauty, though I'd ask of you a favor: not to seek her for a while. Though I own she is a creature of character and feature no words can paint the picture of the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could've seen her there, boys if you had just been there, the swan was in her movement and the morn was in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they'd bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll. On that evening that I mention, I passed with light intention through a part of our dear country known for beauty and for style. In a place of noble thinkers, of scholars and great drinkers, but above them all for splendour shone the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could have seen her there, boys if you had just been there
The swan was in her movement, and the morning in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll. So my lads I needs must leave you, my intention no to grieve you nor indeed would I decieve you, oh I'll see you in awhile. I must find some way to gain her, to court her and to tame her, I fear my heart's in danger from the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could have seen her there, boys if you had just been there. The swan was in her movement, and the morning in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll."

-silly wizard: queen of argyll


I think I'm having far too much fun with the link button, but considering how long it took me to find it, I think it's okay.

Oh, and speaking of operations that have not worked, the link to Corey Feldman's website doesn't seem to be working. I doubt anyone will cry about that, but I'll try and get it working again soon all the same.

MUSIC: the pixies: i can't forget (leonard cohen cover)

Natalie Portman

I'm telling you a story now
of something that's wrong
This has been developing
since nineteen eighty-one


Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

If i'm a proper jewish boy
Will her family love me?
Can't stand to see her on the big stage
And know she's not thinking of me

Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

Maybe she'll be hearing this,
but probably she won't (probably she won't)
Possibly she has desires,
but probably she don't (probably she don't)

Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

-Ozma.

There're two covers I plan on learning, and this is one of them. It fits the idiom of the other songs I've been writing. By the way, to anyone I've spoken to about Ozma before, they are in no way a Weezer side project, but a stand-alone gang of Californians that happen to sound a bit like the Weez and also happen to have toured with them. No Rivers Cuomo involved.

Last night I was drunk and as I laid down, I thought two things:

1: I should drink some more water, and

2: Hangovers have nothing to do with how much one consumes or how much water one drinks or whether one has liquor after beer. No, I decided, hangovers are an exact indication of how good a night you had. If you drink eight bottles of Tesco Wine (this guy knows what I'm talkin' about) all by yourself while crying about your dog dying, according to my theory, you would have no hang over. Conversly, if you have a single beer but make out with (insert celebrity of your choice) and win a gillion dollars, you would have the worst hang over ever. Now keep in mind I was drunk when I came up with this. It was probably all an effort to rationalize not getting up to have some water and thereby making me deserve the hangover I was setting myself up for. Regardless it was all disproved when I got up today hangover free. It was a good night.

It was Andrew's half-birthday, and we had some beers to celebrate. Couldn't tell you why it was so nice, but it was. Stellar is a word I would use to describe it if it hadn't been tainted by Incubus and the radio goblins that played that song so much that it makes me want to flip out and/or swallow a frisbee whenever I hear it. So in lieu of stellar I'll say it was grand.

And then everyone else went to drink at a bar while Jesse and I went back dormside and drank the beers we'd been refrigerating on the porch and talked a lot, loudly in the smoking lounge.

You Oak Ridge cats (and kittens) are right about that kid.

MUSIC: piedmont charisma: get with the spinoff

I have MP3's

so I'll steal an idea I found of Traci's blog and use it to my own twisted purposes.

Here're the rules
Step 1: Get your playlist together, put it on random, and play.
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 15 songs that play.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from.
Step 4: Underline the songs when someone guesses correctly. Mine have ***.

Of course, I only have one MP3 cd with me, so it'll be an alphabetically limited selection.

1. "your head will collapse if there's nothing in it..." (pixies: where is my mind?)
2. "a barrel full of monkey's would be quite a lot of fun." (Kahimi Karie: Vogue Bambini)
3. "there's room at the top, they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill." (John Lennon: Working Class Hero)
4. "even if you held the sun it would cover up your eyes"
5. "when I'm alone with only dreams of you that won't come true what'll I do?" (Sinatra (or whomever): What’ll I Do)
6. "time is the best thing for giving in" (The New Amsterdams: Idaho)
7. "I know you better than you fake it." (Pumpkins: 1979)
8. "What am I coming to? I'm gonna melt down." (Radiohead: Black Star)
9. "plastic tubes and pots and pans, bits and pieces and magic from my hands..." (Oingo Boingo: Weird Science)
10. "I would keep myself; I would find a way." (NIN: hurt)
11. "the boys in quadrant 44 with their vicious metal hounds don't come 'round here no more" (Shudder to Think: Ballad of Maxwell Demon)
12. "so I pretend I'm doing all I can and I hope someday you'll find it in your heart to understand..." (Ataris: The saddest Song
13. "they called you a sinner, but the people want to sing along." (Sleater Kinney: All Hands on the Bad One)
14. "just have to forget you after tomorrow night" (Nick Drake: If You Leave Me)
15. "You can light the candle while I get the lights. The cactus needs more light. We've got to take care of it." (Piebald: Grace Kelly With Wings).

So good luck.

MUSIC: mott the hopple: all the young dudes

did you know

that oingo boingo changed it's name to boingo briefly in the early nineties? That means that the band had a different name in every decade in which it existed.

70's - The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
80's - Oingo Boingo
90's - Boingo

And then they went back to Oingo Boingo before they ended their run on Halloween night of 1995.

Additionally, I have wasted an obscene amount of time today, and I can't get launchcast to play the Archers of Loaf's live version of chumming the ocean from seconds before the accident. I am having a lot of luck having things I don't want to hear played like Men Without Hats and Neil Diamond and Bon Jovi.

Hey, Danzig's still around, though. that's news to me.

Another shout out to Cara for all the shouting out which was in return for my shouting out. We'll both go hoarse and need some water.

Now I'm going to sit here and wait until I can publish this post honestly after I type in that I'm listening to the archers of loaf playing chumming the ocean live. I might type some more in a bit if it takes very long.

MUSIC: archers of loaf: chumming the ocean (live)

this is what it's playing for me while i wait, and I can't complain.

guided by voices: with surgical focus, the magnetic fields: I don't believe you, christie front drive: two wheeled train, trembling blue stars: now that there's nothing, the reindeer section: grand parade, architecture in helsinki: where you've been hiding, the flaming lips: race for the prize, pink floyd: the show must go on, jam: flying high, joan of arc: god bless america, the smiths: how soon is now, joseph arthur: let's embrace, jets to brazil: your x-rays..., the white stripes: the same boy you've always known, the eels: novocaine for the soul, depeche mode: everything counts (live), the all-american rejects: my paper heart, sportsguitar: mistake, the cure: purple haze, the standard: jump rope, fiona apple: pale september, my favorite: the radiation, leonard cohen: anthem, weezer: butterfly, secret stars: some sinatra, stephen malkmus: vanessa from queens, james blunt: billy, american football: the one with the wurlitzer, electralane: oh Sombra! , galaxie 500: jerome, mountain goats: oceanographer's choice, quasi: the skeleton, portishead: roads, Siouxsie and the banshees: fear (of the unknown), the lightning seeds: pure, pinback: june, the magic magicians: action, the clientele: policeman getting lost, iron and wine: such great heights, cursive: sierra, super furry animals: fragile happiness, sunny day real estate: pillars, mates of state: drop anchor, tom waits: singapore, elvis costello: fifteen petals, fugazi: waiting room, marine reasearch: hopefulenss to hopelessness, elefant: sunlight makes me paranoid, the black heart procession: i know your ways, rufio: follow me, beck: he's a mighty good leader

and the thing just told me I had exceeded my usage of free launchcast and I have to start paying them now.

So I never got to hear my song.

But at least I put up an obscenely long list of music I did get to hear. I dare you to find and listen to all those songs. make a mixed cd. make 12. They'll be good.

MUSIC: nothing.

look at all those damn links!

Cara is officially amongst the cats and kittens now, and I am accepting applications/bribes currently if anyone else would like to join the illustrious ranks.

It occurs to me that my links in that other section, stuff and nonsense, might not all be terribly self-explanatory, so I'll do my best to save you the trouble of having to click on all of them and then figure out what in hell is going on (I'm looking at you, sheepish). Here you go:

something awful is somethingawful.com
hangin' out with the dream king is Neil Gaiman's website. He's the dream king.
dave mckean is self-explanatory (but so is something awful, inninit?)
Bach Man is Crooked Fingers (eric bachman. ha ha)
Hack Man is Gene Hackman
Feld Man is Corey. That's right, I was willing to put a Corey Feldman link up to perpetuate my redundant superhero name joke.
McSweeney's is Dave Eggers et al.
"do a backflip it's bob and david!" is Bob Odenkirk and David Cross
next sunday AD is MST3K
get pumpled is Real Ultimate Power, the best ninja website ever
bad candy is full of reviews of some of the worst candy available
the onion
the next 2 are pretty obvious, though why they exist is less so
No, not the links, I mean the websites and, in at least one case, the person involved.
miles not minutes away is Jet By Day. They played a condemned elementary school gym in Asheville.
sheepish. um... just click on a sheep. it's either a blog or a weird photo/design essay.
don hertzfeldt, the man who gave us Rejected. read the comics
slave labor=Jhonen Vasquez
my profile picture just won't work so here's a low-quality picture of me. BEWARE
buy me a present takes you to my amazon wishlist. buy me a present.

and if that seemed like a waste of time, welcome to my life. And while I'm obliquely apologizing for wasting your time with this list, let me also apologize for being so bossy lately with my blogging. I noticed that I told you, one of my seven readers, to buy an album, see a movie, and diagram a sentence in the last few days. Sorry about that, I'll try and keep that in check.

MUSIC: Oh my god, Puddle of Mudd? What in Hell

*furiously skips*

thank god

elliott smith: bled white

Bitte hören Sie sofort auf, so zu tanzen.

The humans call the midgets Pecks.

The midgets call themselves Nelwyn.

Everyone calls the humans Dikinis

TRANSLATION: please stop this kind of dancing at once (thanks Andrew)

MUSIC: snow patrol: grazed knees

"I want to send a shout out

to my main man god..."

He and Bloggerhelp are responsible for my devastatingly awesome links that I have now and you don't (unless you do, in which case, thanks a lot for forcing me to rely on god and blogger instead of just lending a hand. really, thanks.).

Diagram that sentence.

So I decided to read American Gods again and I decided to wear a suit today complete with my new black shirt and tie combination. Today I'm decisive. Just this minute I decided to skip a mommas and the poppas song that my web radio tried to play, and now it's playing the pixies gouge away, so clearly this being decisive thing is working out all right.

I've got three more songs to write before I can start doing nothing and counting the days until I can get ahold of and embarass myself on a plethora of different musical instruments. After the writing is done, it's back to the other writing. I do have the worst screenplay in the world to work on, right? I mean, who knows how long it will be before Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay simultaneously run out of things to do?

MUSIC: mull historical society: watching xanadu

"and we still haven't walked in the glow...

...of each others majestic presence..."

Where that came from I'll never know, but today I did three incredible things.

1. I ate a McNewYork, which is debatably good (not good) but is incredible, literally. It is not credible that I ate at McDonald's today despite the fact that I did, which makes it credible. Cursed Catch 22s.

2. I resisted the sooty orphans who were begging me for money or food while eating the aforementioned McNewYork. Okay, they weren't sooty and they also weren't orphans, I don't think. Hell, they didn't even count as urchins, they were just annoying and kept saying "Mr., Mr.," and pointing at their mouths as if they were starving. "Mr., Money," and Jesse caved in. He gave them fries. I win in the "heartless American who won't give money to people who clearly don't need it category," although I did say something that made me seem way more heartless than my closed wallet did: "If they want to beg, why can't they be like all the other beggars in town; cut off a leg and learn to play guitar..."

I am a bastard.

3. I saw Million Dollar Baby. Hot damn. As you may recall from about ten posts down, I saw the Aviator recently, and I commented on the fact that it is near-perfect and should have gotten a plethora of Oscars. At least one for Directing and Best Picture. I believe I issued a challenge to Mr. Eastwood to prove me wrong, and he did so. I've only seen three movies in theaters ever in my life that I was tempted to call perfect after I'd seen them: Raging Bull, The Aviator, and Million Dollar Baby. Right after you buy that Frank Black album ('cause I know you're getting right on that) go see Million Dollar Baby.

So here's mad props to Cara for giving me a shout out, as it were, and for choosing a fine photographic machine of which I am jealous. There's some lyrics on the way.

And for Jesse, here's a link to Neil Gaiman's blog. Read it and weep, suckers.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

MUSIC: vocal shrapnel: cc (in my head)

go out right now and buy

Frank Black Francis by Frank Black. listen to his stripped down gorgeous version of Velouria and then tell me you shouldn't have taken my advice. I'll call you a liar, and I'll be right, because it is simply grand.

It's all I've heard from the album so far, but if it's any indication, then the whole thing is a marvel. I'm tempted to revise my Top 5 post from yesterday already with that song.

So I took a look at my old live journal today, and my god, was I ever live-journally. All emotions and song quotes and a complete lack of irony. So all that's changed is my ironic distance from life in general, but my god... let me quote a bit if I may.

"saturday night was so hard to leave behind. drinking coffee and wasting film (none of which came out) and hanging around with old friends. Now i'm supposed to write and read and be responsible. I have no friends here. It will not be hard to quit this... It will be easy. Easy and dangerous.It's an overwhelming scare, what i propose to do. Maggie told me to just hop trains and stow away and travel cross the country (nay, the world!). Can I do it. Hock all my CDs and Books and put my computer in storage and go hitchhike and keep notebooks of fiction and poetry and start illegal barrel fires and drop by on friends that don't want to see me because i'm dirty.sleep under bridges and grow to love the south just because it's warmer in February... It's romantic in theory, but it would be miserable. Miserable and cheap. Give me a room and a spot of food every now and again. I'll be those thousand monkeys and I'll only use one type writer. Hell, I have my own. the great american novel? maybe not, but something great and something american and something away from this scholastic nightmare. "

So that's me in Fall 2000. The more things change the more they stay the same. Right now I miss the south because it's warmer in March. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say that the only reason friends don't want to see you is because you're dirty?

c'est la vie.

MUSIC: snow patrol: run

How many times

do I have to update in a day? Well, three if I have to brag about figuring out how to create permanent links. I will celebrate with window pizza.

Oh, and while I'm here, why don't I take up an obscene amount of room by copying my list of book recommendations here? I was avoiding classics to keep it down to a reasonable level. It still isn't very reasonable.

MUSIC: cap 'n jazz: easy driver

C. Nadia Seremetakis - The Senses Still
Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde - Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader
Paul Stoller - Sensuous Scholarship
- In Sorcery's Shadow
- The Taste of Ethnographic things
Edward T. Hall - The Hidden Dimension
- Beyond Culture
John Gardner - Grendel
Nick Bantock - Griffin and Sabine Trilogy
- The Museum at Purgatory
Madison Smart Bell - All Souls Rising
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
- Neverwhere
- Punch
- Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
- The Ground Beneath her Feet
Jim Crace - Being Dead
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
- The Blind Assassin
- Murder in the Dark
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
- Wonderboys
Dave McKean - Cages
Don Delillo - Underworld
- White Noise
Charles DeLint - Someplace to be Flying
- Trader
- Memory and Dream
- Jack of Kinrowan
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius
Chaim Potok - My Name is Asher Lev
Terry Pratchett - Anything (not a title, just anything by Terry Pratchett)
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
- Mother Night
- Galapagos
Bruce Campbell - If Chins Could Kill
Bernard McLaverty - Lamb
- Cal
Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Zadie Smith - White Teeth
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel
Alison Weir - The War of the Roses
- Princes in the Tower
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
Miroslav Holub - Intensive Care
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Selected Poems
Ray Bradbury - The Nine Billion Names of God
M. Scott Peck - The Road Less Traveled
Pablo Neruda - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

"I forgot...

...more than you'll ever know" -Elvis Costello (featuring Tom Waits, live)

but seriously, I forgot to link some things I've been meaning to.

Here's an episode of Frontline which you can pretty much watch all of from this site. It's an odd little piece about a teacher's way of teaching a room full of white Iowans about discrimination.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Okay, and this is something awful. I mean, it's from somethingawful.com. Jesse and I were talking about Man on the Moon, and I thought it'd be nice to link a nifty goon-piece about, among other things, "why Jim Carrey is a god amongst men."

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2427

so give that a read, and, while you're there, go to the movie reviews. read the review for Nukie. don't read it in a public lab if you're prone to laughing out loud. seriously.

MUSIC: elliott smith: i didn't understand

"and we've all got wounds to clean,

here's a rag, here's some gasoline."

I've been living and breathing music for a week now, falling asleep to lyrics I make up and dreaming reprecussions for songs I've written lately. The above lyric is Hum, green to me, off of Downward is Heavenward.

In honor of High Fidelity, top 5 moments in music ever, in no particular order.

1. "here underneath these sad, sad stars." Crooked Fingers, under sad stars on Crooked
Fingers.
2. "just like the inuit with the promise song to come down and see." Hum, the inuit promise on
Downward is Heavenward.
3. "tell me the stars are made of tin and that they're bangin' on the roof. please..." Jump Little
Children, close your eyes, Magazine.
4. "helplessly waiting, the diver is down and they're chumming the ocean..." Archers of Loaf,
chumming the ocean (live), Seconds Before the Accident.
5. "you finally understand the movement of a hand waving goodbye." Bright Eyes, movement
of a hand, Fevers and Mirrors.

There. that was harder to do than I anticipated. Especially when the yahoo radio is playing everybody hurts.

I saw the aviator last night, and by god, million dollar baby better be melifluous and spectacular. I mean, really, really good, because the aviator is something approaching flawless, and you don't think so, then I will fight you, and that is no lie.

So for the sake of being entertaining, let me share my dream from last night with the world at large. As I have possibly mentioned, Andrew often has friends visiting him here in Brno. So last night I had a dream that he was visited by Blind Pew, from Muppet Treasure Island. If you haven't seen the movie, that's an old blind muppet who gives Billy Bones (Billy Connelly) the black spot and repeatedly calls Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop) a little girl. Plus he's a muppet. So in the dream I was hanging out in a bar with Jess, Jesse, Andrew, a muppet who only spoke in quotes from his movie, and the meteorologist from the aviator. Blind Pew kept calling Andrew a little girl.

So that's my update for today. So far. enjoy.

MUSIC: silver jews: random rules

some day soon

I'll learn how to permanently link people to this blog, but until then I'll have to keep pasting the list again and again. Here's the list the second time, with no additions so far:

Jesse: http://www.angelfire.com/rant/plaidavenger/index2.html
Jess: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lilyiris/
Andrew: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wackyslav/
Kasia: http://ziuuu.blog.onet.pl/
Traci: http://www.livejournal.com/users/relativism/

So mirrormask is apparently an official sundance 2005 selection and Martin Scorsese gets no oscar. c'est la vie. If I were muslim, I could understand that whole fatwah thing after having read The Satanic Verses. But as I'm not muslim, all I can say is that it's a hell of a book. Hell of a book. (Wow is that pun ever unintentional)

Tesco brand instant coffee is a crime against the world.

There's nothing worse than waking up in the morning to discover that your knee has purpled overnight, except perhaps not being able to remember why you would have a tremendous bruise there for ten or fifteen minutes. Of course, it all came back to me after a few minutes. Last night leaving the yellow bar, my feet were betrayed by ice and I took a dive. Numbed by beer, I didn't notice until the next morning.

And by morning I mean afternoon.

MUSIC: cap 'n jazz: precious