Things.
1 July 2006 | Life | 1 Comment
While walking home from work tonight, there was the most beautiful moon. Nearly a sliver of a crescent, and deep orange. I wished I had my better camera with me. The zoom on my digital would not have been enough to capture the sight accurately.
As I walked up Sheffield, I passed a ‘guy’ - a stereotypical beer commercial guy type - wearing a T-shirt that said “Hung Like a Republican”, with the elephant logo on it. If I hadn’t been so absorbed in the music I was listening to on my iPod, I would have stopped to express my sympathies for his plight.
I dislike this tiny apartment more and more with each passing day. The hot water is typically less than lukewarm, and takes a great deal of time to get hot. I feel I waste an insane amount of water just to get it warm enough to do the dishes. This place is also still way too small for me. It’s a heinous job to clean it, as even when as organized as it possibly can be, it’s still crowded.
I am excited about visiting my brother and his family the week after next. It’s really not good that my niece will be nearly two and I’m meeting her for the first time. Yes, however, that is my own fault for not visiting them more often.
Software update recently updated all 3 of my Macs to 10.4.7, which has eliminated the glitch that caused random freezing and crashing when running the mlan software necessary to use my Presonus Firestation. Great news, as I don’t have to buy a new audio interface. I loved the features and the sound of the Firestation anyway, so it would have been a tough situation to find something new that I like.
My new issue of The Wire arrived in the mail today. Again, I cannot reiterate enough, that I think this is the single greatest music magazine ever. Not pretentious, no caustic insulting reviews, and spanning genres beyond disparate - genres spread far and wide, scattered to the winds. Current 93 is on the cover (or the one man who is the driving, and only constant member, of the group). I recall how much Myke C-Town loved them, and feel I should give their music another chance. Dark can be good, but dark for dark’s sake may as well be goth, which I loathe. This issue also has a good article on Die Tödliche Doris. I have all of their works (you can download them all free from their website) - dark, but for humor’s sake. Very bizzare, avant-garde, and (dare I say it?) absurdist. Again with Ant and the Absurdism, eh?
Here I write
8 June 2006 | Life | No Comments
Today I have somehow found the motivation to write something. Minor updates of sorts, nothing spectacular or exceedingly fascinating here.
I’ve been walking to and from work instead of taking the train. It’s 2.6 miles each way, about a 35-40 minute walk, depending on my energy. I’m glad to be getting some regular exercise, even if it is not much. I must begin running again.
I measured the distance that I’ve been walking with a wonderfully useful website, MapMyRun.com. It allows you to enter a starting address, and click on points in the map to track your walk/run. It’s based on Google Maps, so it has that wonderful satellite view for any areas where there are no streets. I used it to measure the distance of the run I’ve done along the lakeshore - about one mile, it turns out. That’s why the run/jog/walk back was so terribly heinous when I would do that - I was already traveling a mile in one direction. I will go back out and do that again, definitely, and build up to longer distances. I want to run the Chicago Marathon next year. It’s the only marathon in the country that doesn’t require you to qualify to enter.
If you are interested in the different ways I trek to work or my little run along the lakeshore, MapMyRun allows you to create a profile and save it. Mine is here.
I’ve been trying to cook more at home, to save money. Today I’m making some seitan from scratch. I think I’ve discovered the trick to getting it the exact texture I want. It turns out that the more you knead the dough before simmering it in the broth, the firmer the seitan will be. I have always been a fan of the softer seitan, or of the ‘wheat meat’ type seitan (which I have no idea how to make - how do they get that stringy consistency?). So I’ll be doing considerably less gluten kneading in the future.
I’ve not written anything in so long, it’s worrying me. I started writing some bits and pieces of new songs on Tuesday, though, which is good. Very sharp, bitter stuff, as per usual - the Morrissey sort of bitter, where laugh cruelly at the humor in it. At least I do. I enjoying writing that sort of thing greatly. I may make an attempt and bringing my vocal abilities to the open mic next Tuesday.
I drank
21 May 2006 | Life | 1 Comment
I drank more sake than I should have last night. To be honest, I’ve been on a bit of a binge the past few days, consuming massive quantities of things I shouldn’t. Sugary sweets (two bags of Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Cookies, nearly a pound of dark chocolate covered espresso beans, chocolate covered ginger, vegan marshmellow fluff, etc), alcohol (the aforementioned sake, Johnnie Walker Red, the last of my Maker’s Mark, a Pabst Blue Ribbon), nicotine (a hookah last night at Samah). I feel used up, wasted, damaged today. I’ve got to stop doing this. Tomorrow I must eat well and be productive. I must cease wasting my time with nothing. I will clean, I will write, I will record some vocals. I realize my largest problem (and likely the cause of all my distraction and procrastination) is that I am a sensualist, an aesthete, a hedonist. I am too much in love with experience, with sensation and pleasure, with taste and smell and touch and sound.
That realization comes with the harsh doubt of its correctibility. I this something I can fix so that I may be able to focus easier and accomplish things? It is seeming less likely, but there is a great chance I am incorrect in that.
I am
17 May 2006 | Life | No Comments
…sticky. My face, my hands, covered in sweet and sticky juices, and I’m doing my best to lick myself clean.
I’ve been cutting mangos for most of the morning. I am improvising a mango chipotle stew (I love improvised cooking - though I own more vegan cookbooks than you could shake a carrot stick at - I get a great deal of joy from making a dish up on the spot), and, as I love mangos more than any other fruit, more than nearly any other food, I am taking to opportunity to suck, lick, bite, and chew every last bit of mango flesh left on the pits and the skins as I prep my fleshy fruit. I’m going to have to wash my face thoroughly after cooking, as these sticky sweet drippings are making ‘flavor savor’ quite the aptronym today.
I love food. I doubt you could find me a vegan, though, who does not love food, who does not take a great deal of joy and ecstasy from the act of eating or even making food. The vegans I know all talk more about food than other people, cook more often than other people, and eat even a great deal more than other people (fat and skinny vegans alike).
I must go dice the onions now, and chop the chipotles, cut the corn kernels from the cob, give the cilantro a rinse…
Hatin’ christians.
12 May 2006 | Life | No Comments
Why? We’re opinionated, but harmless. And, not to mention, we actually think.
James Jean
12 May 2006 | Art | No Comments
I came across James Jean’s work yesterday while I was wasting time. Dark, yet not grotesque or obscene, and sad, and beautiful. I particularly like this piece.
First words.
1 May 2006 | Life | No Comments
I woke around nine this morning. As usual, I had some very odd dreams, so I laid around in the bed a bit and thought about them, tried to keep them fresh in my memory. I feel I’ll have to start writing them down when I can - they would be excellent creative fodder for my fiction. Anywho. Got up, showered, dressed, cleaned somewhat (I still have a great deal of organizing/un-messing of this apartment to attend to), did some necessary browsing of certain music websites (disquiet.com is my new love), and then headed off to work. Walked to the train. Took the red line down to North & Clybourn. Stopped at Starbucks before heading in to work.
“Hello. I’ll have an iced venti soy latte.” Sad to say, those were the first words I spoke all day.
When I was a child I remember a superstitious sort of thing my brother encouraged us to do. I don’t recall why, or even if I particularly cared about it. On the first day of some month (April, May, March for all I know - maybe it was even every month?) it was supposed to be good luck to say “rabbit” first thing in the morning when you woke up, before speaking any other word. I had all morning to say rabbit, but instead I asked for an iced soy latte.
For most of the workday, I had the word “focus!” scrawled on my left forearm. I tried to think of an easy way to repeatedly remind myself to not get distracted, to stay focussed on the task at hand, to be more observant of things. I don’t develop habits very easily, so it is somewhat out of the question to just remind myself to stay focussed constantly, or try to train myself to think of the word repeatedly throughout the day. So I wrote it on my arm, figuring I’d just see it and it would help. Which is sort of silly, as I need to focus more when not at work - it’s my personal goals and creativity that need me to devote clear attention to them without letting my mind wander off to other things. At work I tend to keep to the job quite easily, at home I find other things to draw me away from work I should be doing - music, the internet, random articles in newspapers or even outdated magazines I have lying around.
So I’m thinking the first tattoo I’ll get will be of a very utilitarian sort. I’m going to get “focus!” tattooed on the side of my left arm.
Narrative, Interrogative
18 April 2006 | Life | No Comments
This is a first draft of a short experimental piece I am working on. Feedback is appreciated.
3rd bed.
5 April 2006 | Life | No Comments
Yesterday marked the arrival of my package in the mail, my package wrapping tightly within its confines 3rd Bed issues 1 through 10, Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz, The False Sun Recordings by James Wagner, and (strangely) another copy of Motorman by David Ohle. This occasion (the books’ arrival) was celebrated by a thorough experiencing of ecstasy by this young man Anthony. He has read a great deal of Stories in the Worst Way already, and its beauty, though itself of words, is beyond words. A great experience also was voraciously reading through the thin volume that is 3rd Bed #1. Outstanding, though I am glad to see the issues have since nearly tripled in thickness and, somehow beyond my comprehension, the quality raised by a power of infinity. It had quite a significant quality to begin with (Charles Baudelaire being among those included in its pages).
Today marked the arrival of another package - Morrissey’s new album, Ringleader of the Tormentors. I am not worthy of describing its greatness with mere words.
Moleskine.
2 April 2006 | Life | No Comments
I was working the customer service desk today (closing shift), when I noticed a notebook in the trash. Not just any notebook, but a Moleskine to be precise. CJ (who was working customer service desk midshift) had decided to clean out the Lost & Found box and threw it out, as it had been there quite a few months.
“Dude, why are you throwing that out?”
“Cause it’s been in there like forever.”
Anthony flips through it, sees only the first three pages are written on.
“I’ll take it, then, if you’re gonna toss it.”
“Take it, take it home then.”
I put it in my apron and leave it there the rest of the day.
As I was waiting at the North & Clybourn Red Line stop, I give it a look through, see what’s in it. Just some random notes of this and that. “Co-op meeting.” “Clean out juicer and use it.” Random quotes of what looks like are conversations overheard.
Anyone who has ever used a moleskine would know of the little pocket in the back that proves very, very useful. I have a look into that and find a scrap piece of paper with an address and lotto numbers, and $10.
Woohoo. Ant is $10 richer, and has a moleskine. CJ, you really should watch what it is you’re throwing away so hastily.