Rupert Thomson’s new book, Soft!, is here. I’m only a few pages into it, but it’s pretty decent. And only about $20 in hardcover, which was a relief.
I fell asleep a bit before 9, and now I’m groggy and mistyping. I don’t have anything else substantial to say, so I’m going to start working on the book.
Listening to the Ramones, eating a Nachos Belgrande, hoping the next 14 days fly past. I can’t control my fingers, I can’t control my toes.
I’ve given up on about all of the web sites and journals I regularly read during lunch, except for CNN, which I read obsessively. Now that I watch CNN on TV and read it on the web, I can see how much news falls flat without the visuals. It’s all a bunch of shit anyway. They have a ton of crap about the Clinton scandal, and not a word about anything else. It sounds like things are getting wonky in Quebec again, there were these embassy bombings, and let’s not forget the dumb bitch who had her baby at the prom and killed it. While I commend her for ending the kid’s life instead of bringing yet another person with fucked up parents into the world, I cannot support her going to the DJ afterward and requesting a Metallica song. (So, you think her date got lucky? That’s the great thing about bringing a pregnant chick to the prom – you know she’s not waiting until she gets married.)
Marie has been forcing me to remember very obscure stories and facts from my childhood. Not forcing – she mentions some ancient toy or a story about her brother and I’ve instantly found some snippet of long ago to counter with. It’s been a blur of weird stuff from the Six Million Dollar Man toy with the bionic chips in his arm to that horrible meatloaf everyone’s mom makes with the crunchy onions inside and the red sauce on top. (I’m of the opinion that no human being should pay money for meatloaf – it’s a dish typically forced upon you, either by your mom or a dorm menu. I know you can buy it at Boston Market, which reinforces my theory that 97% of humanity is idiotic.) I led an odd childhood since I had a stay-at-home mom that wanted me reading Tolstoy before I went to kidergarten, and I lived in the middle of nowhere with almost no other kids around. Also my family didn’t have a lot of cash, so I didn’t have the latest of everything. I did have some legos and a lot of books, and some other toys like Micronauts and a GI Joe, but I didn’t get into the big fads like KISS toys and bell bottom pants and Peter Frampton records and all of the shit that’s now being re-sold to the Microsoft generation at primo prices. I didn’t even see Star Wars until its second theatrical run. So I guess I grew up fast on one hand, and didn’t grow up much at all on the other hand. It’s weird and I guess it’ll become a book someday.
I haven’t mentioned it for a few paragraphs now, but the Ramones really do kick ass.
I watched about 10 minutes of Friends tonight, and I’ve realized it’s completely unbearable. I guess I used to watch it as a way to kill time between the syndicated Seinfeld and the new Seinfeld. But it’s horrible now, like going back to your old elementary school and realizing you were stupid when you were 9. Now the TV diet is old-school: Conan and Seinfeld reruns, with an occasional piece of something interesting like Weekday Wings if they have cool planes on (I hate when they have episodes about cargo planes or some obscure RAF helicopter. Why do they paint targets on the side of their planes? Their aero industry is about as formidable as their music industry, except for maybe the Tornado. The good Harriers, the ones Ahnold flew in True Lies, are built stateside, you know.)
I should probably try to write. It’s suddenly very hot, but maybe it’s this horrible food eating at my insides. Have a better one.
Gabba gabba hey! Gabba gabba hey!
I’m listening to the new Rotting Christ album, and I’m simply floored that death metal (“extreme metal”, whatever) has taken on such a clean, thick, produced sound while still retaining a good edge. I think this is what bands like Paradise Lost were trying to do a few years back, although they failed. I like this CD a lot, and I’m only on track 4. Too bad the bonus CD is the same one that came in Metal Curse – it’s a great CD, but it would’ve been cool to get another sampler or something. Or a CD with some live tracks or unreleased material. I can’t complain too much, it was a completely free CD at the $16 price point.
In unrelated CD news, I’ve completely given up on Tower Records. All of their CDs are like $18 except for those perpetually on sale that I have no interest in. I guess if I was a top 40 zombie, it would be nice to get the new Smashing Pumpkins CD for “only” $16, but I don’t see that happening soon. Seattle really needs a Best Buy to come in and start up a CD price war.
A busy day today, and I was sleepy for most of it. It turns out that my team at work will be going on a boat cruise as part of our 1.0 release celebration, and it’s the same day Marie will be coming into town. The party is from 12-3, and her flight arrives at 6:30, so there should be no problems. We had another one of these parties, and it was very cool – it’s relaxing to cruise around Lake Washington, watch the shore, and get into long, involved conversations with coworkers that don’t involve Java. I will be a nervous wreck that day – my few hours before I meet Marie, but maybe the distraction will be nice. Better than sitting in front of my computer, anyway.
What kind of soda is Green River, other than green? I can’t seem to describe the flavor. It’s not a lemon-lime, it’s – green. I bought a 6-pack of it the other night, but I can’t drink much more than that. It’s too intense of a flavor to drink on a daily basis.
I should get some work done now.
It feels like fall today. It’s almost chilly out, and the clouds are making it look less like August and more like October, which I think is cool. I like the fall, the time when it isn’t hot out anymore, but before the weather goes to hell. It’s very lazy and subdued. I don’t want to sound like a goth wannabe, talking about the leaves and running through the forest in sorrow, or whatever. I guess I just have positive memories of the fall semester, of returning to campus after a summer of laziness to meet the new bumper crop of freshman women. I used to love taking new classes, meeting new people, spending my time in new buildings. I guess most of my relationships started in the spring, but many more attempts happened in the fall. I think my best semesters academically were in the fall, and I know many of my best memories were then.
The slippage of time has taken on a new meaning now that I don’t know how to handle. The division of time into semesters and breaks and vacations made things a little slower – I was always working toward finishing that one semester, like a long-distance runner trying to get in that one last mile before exhaustion. Now time free-wheels and I have no reference point. Someone asked me if I was depressed that summer was almost over and I hadn’t realized that it had started. Remember back when summer was that three-month sabbatical where you rode your BMX bike hundreds of miles a week, playing army and going to the mall to play video games and stealing candy from the corner store and building forts out of old packing crate lumber?
I never stole candy from the corner store. I stole change from my stepdad’s spare change box, and used it to buy candy. And I mowed lawns.
About fall – this time around, I’m thinking about 1991, which is the only fall when I had my old VW. I didn’t have it at the beginning of the school year – the rings went out and I had to limp it back to Goshen at like 40mph (a 250 mile trip, do the math) so this old German guy could fix it since nobody in Bloomington knows what the fuck they’re doing with water-cooled VW’s. But I had it later, and it reminds me of working at Lindley hall, spending late nights in the C335 lab (I had to stop working at 9am and drive my car home so it wouldn’t get ticketed), and everything else that happened in late ’91. It was my first semester back on campus, and I went from working in labs with armies of Leading Edge Model D computers (the Yugo of PCs), Panasonic 24-pin printers that jammed every 3 sheets, a PRIME computer, and almost no networking, to a campus filled with ethernet, laserprinters, nice Macs, SparcStations, a whole fleet of DEC miniframes, and lots of other people into computers. I hung out in the “orchard”, a student cluster of Sparc IPC machines. The machines weren’t bad, but I spent my time there because of the cool people. Whenever I got stuck on a new hack, I could ask someone else about it, and we were always playing pranks, joking around, going out to eat or get a drink, or playing games. It was a really tight, communal environment – probably one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Marie will be here in 16 days. It seems like an eternity, but then again, my place is a real hellhole and I’ll be lucky to get it in shape by then.
I forgot to mention that I ran into Anita at the new/old Safeway on John st. on Sunday, buying light bulbs and trash bags. I just wanted to mention that so you non-Seattle readers will think there’s some kind of Seattle journal mafia where we run into each other on a constant basis. Jealous?
Trying to get back in the swing of things with Summer Rain. I wrote last night, knocking little pieces of a few chapters around, but it’s not like it was last spring. I couldn’t stop writing every day, and I had dreams about the characters in the book. I’ll get back up to speed.
I called Ray last night, and he finally found a 5.25″ floppy drive. He’s trying to publish the first four issues of Metal Curse in some kind of weird half-legal-size digest, which would be cool. (I guess I’m supposed to write an intro, so I better work on that.) While copying source files to 3.5″ floppy, he found a bunch of old poetry, stories and letters. Some of the stuff was about the tail-end of his last relationships, all of the fights and double standards and problems and frustration. He also told me that he wasn’t sure if he wrote all of that stuff 10 years ago or yesterday. I hope he can find an escape this this one, because I’ve tried to talk him down many times, and it’s too messy of a situation.
And since I tell Ray everything, I had to tell him all about my current situation. I didn’t want to tell him how optimistic I felt about this whole Marie thing when he was depressed, but when he met his girlfriend, I was on an all-Pink Floyd diet, writing ultra-dark stories about being the last person on the earth. It’s weird how we’re sometimes on the opposite ends of our cycle – you’d think after more than a decade, we’d be in sync.
I need to go before my TRS-80 speed connection dies.
I guess I didn’t mention this yesterday, but Ford tried to fuck me out of $83 – tax on a bill that was already taxed. I called them this morning, and I think I got out of it, but they got the last laugh – I was on the phone forever, forced to listen to Celine Deon. It really pisses me off that I thought this whole chapter in my life was over when I shelled out all of that money and handed over the keys. And I’m not a betting man, but I’d put down my pink slip for the VW on then sending me some vague invoice in 6 months for a few hundred bucks, based on their clerical error. Sometimes I just know the Unabomber was right.
I didn’t get any writing done last night, but I started reading this book, I think called The Invisible Circus, and I don’t remember the author’s name, but I think the last name was Egan. [Jennifer Egan] Anyway, it’s an interesting book about this girl who is coming to terms with her father’s death. Also, she had a sister that was a few years older who was perfect and the center of attention, and she went to Europe and either died or committed suicide, and nobody really knows (she fell/jumped from a building). It’s an okay book, but the main character reminds me too much of Abby McBeal, and I really fucking hate that show. I won’t get into that now, but the book is moderately entertaining. I like the prose – you don’t notice it, and yet, you see the details around you. I wish I could write like that.
I’m bored. Go read this page.
I just made some pizza out of the box, and it’s not bad. It’s a pain in the ass to make, with the dough and all that shit, but some AC/DC in the player helped that. (_High Voltage_, required listening for everyone, especially my neighbors.) I am not supposed to eat pizza, but when I make my own, I know it won’t have that much fat or grease, and it doesn’t bother my stomach. Most other pizza really kills me, except feta cheese pizzas, and when we get that at work, it usually has mushrooms and other toppings I don’t like. Under controlled circumstances, I love pizza.
I got into a huge pizza discussion with Marie about pizza tonight. She’s from NYC and every pizza place there is “real” pizza and incredible. She’s never even been to a Pizza Hut. I guess that’s kindof cool, but I’d hate to go from NY to a place like Goshen, IN where Pizza Hut is a delicacy. I’d rather do the other way around like me; even the shittiest fast food seafood at Ivar’s in Seattle is probably better than the top of the line stuff in Indiana. All pizza discussions boil down to this: I miss Garcia’s in Bloomington. I still have a Garcia’s plastic cup on my computer table, holding my pens and pencils and telling me about the Monster Slice. (“Great 1/2 Pound Slices Under 2 Bucks!”) Although Garcia’s had good pizza with a unique taste, I really miss the atmosphere. I loved it on the Fridays when I had only a morning class, when I’d skip over there for a slice and drink, sit around with a friend, play their Tetris machine (which had a high score of like 19 trillion) and just hang out. They were the absolute closest place to campus that served beer (I went to an allegedly dry campus. As dry as a fucking brewery.) and that meant some great drinking experiences there. I know everyone reading this will think I’m insane for fawning over eating a greasy, undercooked, overpriced piece of pizza and tipping back a $2.50 bottle of Bud Lite, but man, those were the fucking days.
I don’t know if I should talk about it in public, but I’ve decided to go back to Summer Rain. I’ve started reading the drafts – I need to get the story in my head before I can start writing. I figure the second book – chapters 16-30, will require about 35,000 words worth of new material and lots of editing. I probably can’t finish that before Marie gets here (9/3) but maybe before her next visit.
Oh yeah, Marie bought tickets to visit for the first week of October. I’m not taking off of work though – she’ll be spending the day hanging out here, reading some of my non-internet writing and working on her own stuff. And I’m going to buy tickets Friday to go there for the first week of November. Does all of this sound crazy? If you think I’m sane, you must be a new reader.
Listening to Santana, greatest hits. It gathers dust most of the time, but I guess I’m in a Santana mood. Stop me before I break out the Cheech and Chong. Actually, Santana is a great Hendrix gateway drug, so maybe I’ll have Band of Gypsies blaring away by this time tomorrow (if not later tonight.)
I’m reading a book about the Zodiac killer. (It’s the Grayspoon? Graystein? book, the most popular one.) I hope this doesn’t lead me down the true crime road again, because I have a ton of books I bought but didn’t read back when I thought me and Larry would write a book about the Unabomber. I have a brand new, unopened copy of Helter Skelter. I read it back in high school, but it would be fun to read it again now that I have a vague knowledge of west coast geography.
Shit, it’s 11:30 and I’m just finishing supper. Time to get some real work done.
Listening to Rotting Christ, which started as a really underground band that Ray and I used as the example of the most extreme end of the sickness spectrum. Now they’re on Century Media and have the most incredible sound of a death metal band ever. A lot of variety, a lot of depth, excellent production, just great stuff. I thought the metal scene was dead and rotting, but I just got Ray’s latest issue of Metal Curse, and it comes with a sampler CD from Century Media, which is totally filled with mind-blowing new metal from Tiamat, Sentenced, Moonspell, Rotting Christ, Lacuna Coil and more. It’s so great – I thought all black/death bands were stuck in this eviler-than-though pissing contest, stagnating away, but this stuff sounds so new, great, and incredible – it’s like when it was 1992 and I was DJing and listening to all of this new and incredible music. It’s time for me to start spending on new discs.
I went to a journal gathering today to meet a few locals and see Scott, who is down from Vancouver. I’d like to list everyone and link them to their pages, but I’m in the middle of eating dinner, and my bookmarks are at work. But trust me – I met some people, and I’m sure Anita’s page has photos and links and all that jazz – she’s much more self-documented than I am, at least on the web.
Speaking of self-documented, I was working on my biography all night last night. I’m up to the fall of 93, and it’s like 57K words long. I was cleaning it a bit so I could email it off to Marie in NYC. Oh yeah, Marie is the person visiting me next month. I have been thinking about that a lot, and I’m really excited, to put it mildly. I should probably be cleaning and organizing and planning and everthing else. I’d mention more, but I need to play my cards close until she’s here, when I’ll know what’s up with the whole situation.
Jack in the Box is great. I wish I could rent a tape with all of their commercials. That would rule. It’s too bad the food killed a bunch of people. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.
Okay, speaking of clean… I have dishes left over from the Truman administration in my sink. More later.
It’s been a while – sorry about that. Lots of things going on here, and the heat’s been back for a bit.
I mentioned my mystery visitor from NYC, and I guess I can give the next piece of the puzzle. It’s a she, and I’m afraid that if I give it all away, I’ll jinx thing and then I’ll drown in the mistake forever, sort of like New Coke or the IBM PC Jr. So all I can tell you until labor day is that 1) It’s a female, 2) I think she’s cool 3) I’ve been spending a lot of my time communicating with her by sending back and forth huge pieces of writing – parts of short stories and large manifestos. So it’s been a worthwhile use of my time.
Oh yeah, the Escort is gone. I got out of it for only $620, even though the brakes were shot and making noise when I drove it on the lot. My insurance bill went down dramatically, and I had a few bucks left, since I saved about a grand for the whole ordeal. I’m back to the VW full time now, and it’s a bit of work driving a stickshift today, especially one with such strange and quirky habits as this little car, but I’m doing fine. And getting better gas mileage.
I had my first flash of Escort nostalgia today – I was driving alongside a City of Seattle Escort, which is just like my old one except for the big logo on the door. I didn’t think about leaving behind the Escort until I saw another one. I guess the little thing had a good run, and all of my memories of Seattle are tied to that one little car. Man – what the fuck’s going to happen when I move to a new place? I’ll really miss this studio.
Nothing else. A bunch of new CDs. Metal Curse #11 is out. Motorhead rules. Catch you later.
Seattle is back. It’s 68, cloudy, and I managed to sleep without drinking alcohol last night. I even had to turn off the ceiling fan and close a window, it got so cold last night. I’m very happy – I feel like a changed man. Maybe I’ll get some writing done tonight.
My New York visitor is going to be here over Labor Day weekend, and I’m excited about that. Time to throw out the beer bottles, stock the bar, and do some serious cleaning…
The other night, I thought of the perfect plot for an action-adventure movie. I don’t know why, it just appeared in my head while drinking a beer and waiting for sleep. I’m thinking I subliminally ripped it off from some Van Damme movie or something, but I’m not sure – maybe it’s an amalgm of a bunch of movies. If I had any time whatsoever, I’d write a treatment, or even a screenplay, and then send it to a bunch of people. But I guess I have better things to do with my time.
I’ve been listening to the new Garbage album for some reason – I usually don’t listen to pop albums, but I got a copy from a friend of mine, and I actually like it in some weird way. I could imagine listening to it while doing 90 in a cnnvertible with the top down – it has a lot of energy to it, and sounds fresh. Maybe I should dump this to an MD and listen to it more.
I’m really not that nervous about the car now, but brief explosions of anxiety hit me when I really sit and think about it. I’ll miss that car, but not the dealership. My loyal zine readers keep asking me if I will still put “No thanks to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah” in the back of every issue of Air in the Paragraph Line, like I did with 1-9, or if I’ll find a new cause to berate. That’s a good question, and I guess you’ll have to buy a copy of #10 to find the answer.
I’m bored. I now have a NY subway map and a bartender’s guide, which should keep be busy for months.