Dr. Zeuss's House

Dear Diary, Sorry for the lack of updates

2012-01-26T04:51:00.001-08:00

Is there a word for the exact opposite of "lonely"? Probably not, right?

got the moves like Jagger

2012-01-22T12:14:00.001-08:00

The shirt I wore today will always be my favorite. Such simple faith. "OSU Votes."

run deep run wild

2012-01-18T15:20:00.001-08:00

There's something admirably democratic about flossing. Whether you're a drug lord, a bank teller, or Barack Obama, if you don't floss, you'll get tooth decay. And if you DO floss, you'll have healthy gums and clean teeth.

like a train on a track

2012-01-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

SLEEPY HAPPY BARCELONA LIST

graffiti
gyros
transsexuals
cathedrals
parks
perverts
dogs
the Mediterranean
basements

you know :)

please don't worry lover; it's really bursting at the seams

2011-12-27T23:36:00.001-08:00

I've rooted against the Lakers since I moved to LA. But this year I want them to go all the way.

Kobe Bryant's 33, an age where basketball players aren't hoping to get better, they're praying not to get worse. Every year is another quarter inch off the vertical, a few milliseconds off the first step.

The Lakers got swept in the second round last year. Then they traded away one of their best players to save money. Then their first-round draft pick got injured.

So how did Kobe spend the summer? Aside from getting a divorce. He went to Germany, and got not just one but two speculative knee surgeries. Trying to fight off time. Working as hard as he's ever worked, with virtually no hope of improvement.

There's nothing to suggest the Lakers are going to be any better this year than they were last year. Maybe this time a teammate will step up. Or the other guys will miss a bunch more three-point shots. Or maybe, just maybe, Kobe will jab step, and jab again, and jump higher than he's ever jumped before, and release, and the ball will do the rest.

Can you empathize with that hope? The guy's won five championships already. You could call his need to win another one pathetic, if you like calling other people's goals pathetic. Or stupid, considering the grind of an NBA season. But what it definitely is, is brave.

This is what games give us. Something to exert ourself toward. And a story. Characters with goals and obstacles and conflict and maybe resolution. A way to feel connected.

I was running along the beach yesterday, listening to Death Cab of all things, and I had this crazy sensation of being overcome by love. For Kobe alone in a gym practicing 20-footers, for a valley girl in front of her bathroom mirror putting on foundation, for Ben Gibbard singing whiny crap to a girl who will never love him. For all the people with a stupid dream who are doing their best to get there. You take that, and add friends who push and support each other, and that's what it's all about, love and life and the whole shebang.

This post started out as an essay about why sex is better than porn. And turned into my attempt at a canonical response to anyone I'm close to who thinks of "games" as a dirty word. It can be dirty. But we're all striving for something and we're all on the same team.

2011-12-21T19:21:00.000-08:00

overheard in Silverlake: "So two of us get three... and one of us gets two??" HAH, the eternal dilemma of 3 dudes splitting a pizza.

can I, kick it?

2011-12-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

Drove into Westlake Village for a ritualistic ordeal *cough* Illinois Basic Skills Test. First they scanned our palms. Then they had us all line up for pictures. What a great photo album that must be: Future Teachers of Illinois, a bunch of bleary-eyed twenty-one-year-olds who didn't bother to not wear sweatpants. Then they tested our Basic Skills - pretty much your standard SAT-type stuff. I wrote a harshly moralistic diatribe on why the media shouldn't pry into the private lives of our politicians. Not too bad, taking standardized tests is always strangely relaxing.

The drive back was freaking amazing. Cruising down the canyon listening to 93.5 KDAY, ocean laid out when the mountain curved the right way. Baby if you give it to me, I'll give it to you, I know what you want.

AND, for the second consecutive night, I didn't wake up covered in my own blood. So things are definitely looking up.

make her wanna lick the rapper

2011-12-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

Having your wisdom teeth removed is awesome! Codeine and hummus baby, codeine and hummus.

fall over two

2011-12-09T06:19:00.001-08:00

it'll smell like me until three weeks from now when someone finally gets back and opens the window

and my voice will be hoarse until I finally get some sleep

we pretty much went to the bus stop

and the snow on the ground was a gift

and I liked it when it almost made you slip

I'LL MISS SEEING THE SKYSCRAPERS ON FIRE

2011-12-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycI7C2EX5js&feature=related

I like beautiful songs about worst-case scenarios.

cry me a river so I can float over to you

2011-12-06T16:01:00.000-08:00

There was a homeless guy outside Treasure Island repeating the same sentence in every form he could think of:

"Apartment fire, lost all my possessions."

"Victim of apartment fire, all possessions lost."

"No apartment, fire burnt all my possessions."

"Lost all my possessions in an apartment fire."

"Recovering from apartment fire, lost all possessions."

Maybe he was working on his pitch. But it didn't sound like it. It sounded more like he was trying to find the story of his life. Like he had the copy written and was just searching for the headline.

so much for all your highbrow Marxist ways

2011-11-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

Part 1: Match The Phrase To Its Definition

1. "Friend God"

2. "Is there something I can do for you?"

3. "Spend some quality time together"

4. "Forever"

5. "I like you. It's a problem."

A. The biggest oxymoron ever, although people keep telling me some form of it...

B. Apparently, code for "tentative, unceasing interview". Infinitely less worthwhile than Scrabble.

C. It might have saved everyone some pain if Neel had invented this phrase last year.

D. [the meaning of this is [to me] completely obvious]

E. Anyone who she says this to, she inevitably hooks up with before the end of the night. Even if she's sworn not to, like a Greek tragedy. I wonder if she's aware of it herself.

tat my fucking name on you so I know it's real

2011-11-21T02:25:00.000-08:00

I think girls are evolutionarily superior.

our bathroom light turned orange for some reason. and there was water swirling around in it. then the water started dripping out

2011-11-18T12:34:00.000-08:00

69 love songs

Something smart my mom pointed out

2011-11-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

It's a lot easier to go to the Art Institute with two people, so you can have one person wait in the ticket line and one person wait in the coat rack line.

soul with no footprint/rose with no thorn

2011-11-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

sign on the inside of the apartment said "YOU CAN HELP IMPROVE SECURITY BY DENYING ACCESS TO ANYONE YOU DO NOT KNOW". which is technically true.

***

there's a modest young man from Kansas who's the best torturer in the world. his method is based on psychic transference and empathic resonances. first, he sets up an empathic resonance between him and the subject. second, he puts himself in a large amount of pain, which is transferred to the subject via the empathic link. third, he increases the pain they feel until the subject breaks (he has a freakishly high pain tolerance).

this method has obvious disadvantages, which is why he only does it to Stop Terrorism.

bomb graffiti on the tomb of Nefertiti

2011-11-07T23:13:00.000-08:00

DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BUTT

"omg, I must have human-dialed him like 3 times last night. awkwarrrrrd."

"YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONES YOU LOVE"

Prop 1: [you hurt someone] => [they can be hurt by you]

Prop 2: [they can be hurt by you] => [they love you]

Prop 3: [they love you] => [you love them]

By Props 1, 2, and 3, [you hurt someone] => [you love them]. QED.

I AM 21

Thanks to everyone who came to the party. Felt great to have everyone together.

Got some high hopes.

Oh yes I love her like Egyptian, want a description? Her body's sickening

2011-11-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

P, M, W, P M W PMW

(and tbh, never really needed M)

Headturning, no? :)

I beat a former US chess champion! It's been a pretty awesome weekend.

fight the scary day we both pull our tricks out of our sleeves

2011-11-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

CROSSES SOME KIND OF LINE

I mean I hate mosquitoes as much as the next guy, but this is some dystopian shit right here. There was an Arthur C. Clarke novel where aliens used roughly the same technology against us. Not being able to have kids would be the worst. Our kids not being able to have kids would be just about as bad.

TAKE YOU WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOU AND NOBODY GIVES A DAMN

Y/n?

IDEA FOR A .GIF

A guy looks at a girl, she smiles at him, he takes a shot, he looks at her, she smiles, he takes a shot, etc.

If you made a GIF for me, I would just be listening to the above song over and over again. It would be a pretty realistic depiction.

I wish Nietzche had been around to see GIF's.

"live your life like you're going to live a randomly selected 2-5 seconds from it once more and innumerable times more"

they say we can throw far but they don't know how far we'll throw

2011-10-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

got a call from a cabbie telling me to come down quick cause he was outside my door. hadn't asked for a cab. but maybe I should have gotten in anyway and gone wherever whoever called the cab was going. what am I saying, it was a wrong number so he was surely sitting outside some other door.

never wished so much to be in some dull-ass suburban room with my brother playing cards til it gets dark out and then light out.

we can go to my sister's if we say we'll watch the baby (autology edition)

2011-09-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

CONTEXT

I could take my credit card number and scrawl it on every highway underpass and every train station in the world and my bank account would still be completely secure, because who besides me would know how to use it? Someone could photograph the meth lab inside my apartment and post high-res pics on Yahoo! News, so what. Katie Couric could read my social security number to the nation on primetime network television. Yeah, ten random digits, what are you gonna do about it, punk.

CONTEXT FOR THAT

Who needs the internet. Get a plane and write me big shimmery messages in the sky. I'll write back. If you want to tell me something personal, use numbers and an 18-shift caesar cipher. No one else will know what it means.

a manifesto

2011-09-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

What's supposed to be so bad about PDA?

Sex is the coolest and most interesting thing ever! I'm always curious about other people's sex lives. It's totally fair and understandable to prefer to keep that part of yourself private. But why do we discourage the people who don't? Why would you prefer to watch people pretend to have sex (porn)* instead of getting to see people actually have sex? Sometimes I can't sleep from thinking about the billions of girls who I'll never get to see come.

Current working hypothesis is that anti-PDA people are one or more of the following: turned on and ashamed of it, jealous cause they aren't getting any, or just saying the thing of least resistance while under social pressure from people from categories 1 & 2. But maybe someone will write a better explanation in the comments.

*"pretend" because porn-sex usually isn't sex, but that's for a different manifesto

dance to the songs from the cars as they pass

2011-09-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

at Kimbark Laundromat, while I was waiting for my clothes to dry, the man across from me pulled out his phone and called his girlfriend, Crystal. He KNEW about it, and

Us? Hold on, US? We're OVER. There IS no more us.

Don't give me that. You saying some shit about the KIDS, and Crystal, you out getting some guy's NUMBER?

Yeah but look Crystal, this is about RESPECT.

Don't give me that Crystal.

WAS you tryna holla. Was, you try,na holla.

Crystal, come on, you can't just

etc. I could see that:
-Crystal hadn't just gotten some guy's number, she was cheating on him, both with that guy and probably with other guys.
-and the guy knew it but didn't want to admit it to himself, and so was reduced to dropping charges to the ridiculous "got some guy's number" (not even the sliiiightly less defensible "gave out her own number to some guy"), only she didn't point out the ridiculousness because she knew that at some level he knew.

what a fucked up situation. sucks for the kids, sucks for Crystal, who doesn't love the father of her children, sucks for this guy, who
-it seemed clear he was gonna eventually cave and move back in. not for the kids, but because he loves Crystal with everything he's got. until weeks or months or years from now she'll do something they can't ignore.

meanwhile on the TV they were playing an ad for a new ultra-soft catheter, disposable so you can use a clean one everytime you cath! (I guess on TV you say "cath" instead of "piss".) and on the other TV they were showing Hardball with Chris Matthews.

I hope the kids grow up with a father and I hope Crystal ends up sexually satisfied and I specifically hope she receives sexual satisfaction from this guy. But mostly I hope humans keep on living forever and ever.

***

DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A REQUIEM
[song]
[lyrics]

let's start with the bears and the air and mountains, rivers and streams

2011-08-23T09:28:00.001-07:00

INDEFENSIBLE DESIRES

Wind ripping the leaves off trees
Acid rain falling into an open mouth
Truck barreling down 54th St. way too fast

whom it may concern

2011-08-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

to any and all Lollapalooza patrons who I trampled, splashed mud on, knocked over, or otherwise inconvenienced during the interval of 8:23PM to 8:30PM on Sunday, August 7, I would like to offer a sincere apology. I was on a mission, yo.

to President Obama, I would like to say this: when you took office, I had high hopes but low expectations. So far, you have disappointed even the expectations. I worked more 16 hour days than I can remember to get you elected and these days I'm embarassed to wear your t-shirt.

definitively not a cold dead place

2011-08-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

crystal castles tonight...

followed by explosions in the muhfucking sky!

a lot of people I like are coming to Chicago this weekend :)

so hot it feels like the Devil's breath

2011-08-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

OK, this is really amazing. background

and this song hits the spot.

edit: forgot to mention, for me, this is the song of the summer.

try to understand, when I can, I will

2011-07-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

My phone has room for two hundred and thirty text messages. There's about two hundred and twenty text messages on there right now which I'm very reluctant to delete. It's a problem.

friday july 22, ten hundred twenty-one hours

2011-07-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

not sure it's possible for two people to love each other at exactly the same time

want a next man and the next man's bitch want a third man

2011-07-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

HOLY CRAP, did you know Southwest lets you NAME YOUR TRIPS? my upcoming trip to New York is named "Melvin".

mostly metaphorical fat

2011-07-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

There's undeniably something invigorating about straight texting everybody you shouldn't text.

it's not like I haven't been doing anything at work

2011-07-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Rather, I've been going through the websites of the top 2 million schools of social work as ranked by US News and noting their Catchy Tagline, to make sure none of them conflicts with the Catchy Tagline UChicago is about to introduce.

I can't tell you what our new tagline is going to be, because it's SECRET. Also because it is so powerful and convincing that just reading it turns you into a mindless zombie whose hunger can be sated only by a Masters degree from the University of Chicago Social Services Department. But rest assured that the slogan represents an Innovative Change that will make a Difference. Unlike these:

"You Know What You Were Meant To Do" - CUNY Hunter College.
Arguably the creepiest way to ask for a blowjob.

"One of the Nation's Top Schools of Social Work" - Case Western
You know... right up there with the other top schools of social work... I guess...

"Exploring a Career in Affecting Change" [sic] - Columbia
Really, Columbia???

"Strengthening Vulnerable Families Because They Are Vulnerable" -UI Urbana-Champaign
Also creepy.

And all of them are all Change Change Changey Change McChangerson. Can't we have just one school of social work in favor of things staying roughly the same? Fireflies, a nice little breeze, things seem pretty all right to me. Although I do wish I weren't a zombie.

no subject

2011-07-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

I always want you when I'm coming down

but behind closed doors they get oh so rigid

2011-06-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

PHRASES

"Adult Children of Alcoholics"*
Something bothers me about "adult children".

"To Shift From Park, Depress Brake Pedal"**
To Shift From Park, Confuse Brake Pedal
To Shift From Park, Sexually Excite Brake Pedal
To Shift From Park, Enrage Brake Pedal

*This group of people is meeting at a church
**From the uHaul we rented

***

NOT UNTIL

until you learn to eat an apple, as opposed to just chewing it.

if you like it then you should have put an arbitrary statistical measure on it

2011-06-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

Let's say face-to-face intercourse is 10, and complete radio silence is 0.

Texting is about a 2.

Skype about a 4.

A really good, meaty email conversation can be anywhere from 7-10.

Phone is a -1. Would rather just miss and be missed by someone.

Obvs. your rankings gonna vary. My roommate CL for example tells me he'll take phone over texting all the way. His brain must be wired so differently from mine. Probably healthierly.

***

Debating whether I want to post some borderline pornographic shit I wrote yesterday night.

***

APARTMENT!

when it thunderstormed one side was about 20 degrees cooler than the other side

the showers and faucets are under the continuous delusion that it's Opposite Day (haha, Opposite Day. "Oh no, it's definitely not opposite day")

no bed yet but I totally have a bookcase

turns out doing dishes is kinda zen

you can walk around naked in it & set up the furniture in all sorts of illogical ways

basically it's tite

***

and it's right next to Valoise

climbed a mountain turned around

2011-06-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

SOME HIGHLIGHTS

Triumphant post-bookshelf-lugging feeling

Loud music and dancing in lounge

Valoise in the bible-black predawn

A LOWLIGHT

Somehow, L.A. always makes me emo as fuck

MORE HIGHLIGHTS, SANTA BARBARA EDITION

Climbing up above the clouds and eventually the moon, sticking my head out the sunroof, "Cosmic Love" blasting, everyone singing.

-That was on a road called "Gibraltar" - how awesome is that??

Sleeping under the stars.

Then waking up and the clouds below us looked like some kinda white ocean

"no one will be watching us/--"

Pedalling a surrey along the beach belting out 80's music. These two nine-year-olds Razored behind us for like five minutes, alternately mocking our singing and begging us to stop. It was the funniest shit of all time.

The train ride back

Reading books like how I used to read books

***

SPOOKY

The speech Nixon was going to read if the moon landing failed and errbody died

BEEN AFRAID OF CHANGING CAUSE I BUILT MY LIFE AROUND YOU

Smashing Pumpkins in the summer forever and ever.

honor

2011-06-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

dang.

would you look at that, we're throwing off sparks

2011-05-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Both David Foster Wallace and I tend to fetishize people who hang out with ugly people.

***

Princess Mononoke might be my favorite movie ever.

rose you grew is turning ultraviolet

2011-05-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Mansueto in a thunderstorm is where it's at. Rain sheeting almost horizontally off the top, riding the tangent lines until it hits forty-five degrees at the bottom. Lightning & associated murmurs. Can't wait til it snows.*

*Actually, I completely can wait til it snows.

All this hot rain has been making me crazy though. Sensation of running underwater. Wish the streets were flooded. I want to kayak big sloppy laps around campus, 55th-Kimbark-61st-University-55th again. I want to do it till I can't raise my arms.

preckwrinkle

2011-05-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

I GET ALONG MYSTERIOUSLY WELL WITH

-those with scabbed or otherwise problematic knees

-those who are unusually tall

-those who are middle-aged-to-elderly African-American women

-those who are girls & used to play a sport at a high level

AND MYSTERIOUSLY NOT-SO-WELL WITH

-those who are white chicks who wear thick brown belts around them higher than their waist

***

SOMETIMES I THINK

that gay guys must at some level be attracted to girls, otherwise why would they be snuggling on them all the time. yes this sounds naive to the point of the Easter Bunny. but you have to at least admit it solve the problem of how did homosexuality evolve if gay people never mate and have babies. if we say that gay guys are less inclined to have sex with girls (but still will occasionally), but girls are more inclined to have sex with gay guys (which at least some girls are), it all makes sense.

& LESS DEFENSIBLY, THAT

people with Tourette's are using the label as a justification for letting out all the random verbal shit we all want to shout out, and schizophrenics are using the label as a justification for making up their own realities. etc.

how you could connect this to the last paragraph: basically, society has rules to try to normalize us. (using Foucault's words cause we've been reading him.) rules about when it's appropriate to talk and what it's appropriate to say. rules about when it's acceptable to be horny. rules about what reality to see. but some people have found a loophole. yes, it's not OK to yell out "GATORADE REFRIGERAID" at some random time. but it's OK for me, because I have "Tourette's". yes, it's not acceptable to fuck everything that moves, but... yes, it's not acceptable to live in a fantasy world, but... and so on.

^^half-baked theory that offensively compares a morally neutral trait and two mental disorders

(background: I read a book (Motherless Brooklyn) about a detective with Tourette's and parts of it seemed in a strange way almost like wish fulfillment, although real Tourette's is probably not much like this fictional character's fictionalized condition)

***

LIKE IT'S THE LAST LAST NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHuWj6ycquQ

(in a tone of resignation, "maaaaan, DJ's got us falling in love AGAIN??")

we're just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust

2011-05-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

how I order my eggs in the morning: "everything and ham"

do you pray with your eyes closed naturally

2011-05-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

holy fucking shit, Crystal Castles was something. specifically, Death, w/capital D. Alice on her back in the crowd shrieking garbled incantations into the mike. everyone trampling & elbowing each other to touch her. I would have died to have sex with her. to clarify: not "I wanted to have sex with her so much I would be willing to die". more like, that is just her role - the person people die to have sex with. but someone has to fill that role. absolute negative pole. don't know if I'm expressing this well. fuck.

my brother was farther back and couldn't see her eyes and thought it was just noise and tried to go to sleep. Rebeccah was with me in front and thought it was some of the most unhealthy-ass shit she'd ever been a part of. I think I can understand both of those reactions.

then we went to a secret room and it started storming outside and Choices were Made...

crispy crispy Benjamin Franklin came over and babysat all four of my kids

2011-05-04T10:36:00.001-07:00

If I ever get something like my friend's grandpa has, stick me on this roller coaster and let me go out spiral-style.

***

describing her future as "PURPLE and RED and ORANGE"

don't talk politics and don't throw stones

2011-05-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

let's just say this is the first time I've ever expressly Not Attended a facebook event.

damn, I never actually read all the lyrics to that song...

2011-04-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

I will shrink and I will disappear
I will slip into the groove and cut me off
and cut me off

there's an empty space inside my heart
where the weeds take root
and now I'll set you free
I'll set you free

we will shrink and we'll be quiet as mice
and while the cat is away, do what we want
do what we want

slowly we unfurl as lotus flowers
cause all I want is the moon upon a stick
just to see what if
just to see what is
I can't kick your habit
just to feed your fast-ballooning head
listen to your heart

cause all I want is the moon upon a stick

2011-04-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

MONEY CAN'T BUY HAPPINESS
-but it buys Cuervo
-and Lolla tickets
-good enough for me

PIERCE
-puddles of water in odd places
-doors rattling all through the halls, wind trying to suck them through the windows
-the cafeteria swiper machine mysteriously deciding that I am "not valid", then three days later returning to normal
-things buried under couches

DISCOVERIES
-I like oranges.
-Complimenting a girl's appearance and following up with "no homo" is a complicated way of calling her a dude.

JUST TO SEE WHAT IS
-Too much love for the intentional creation of awkwardness

JUST TO FEED YOUR FAST-BALLOONING HEAD
-This could be the best summer ever.

leave the silver city cause all the silver girls

2011-04-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

BASKING

-math class, too sleep-deprived to really understand what my teacher was saying, but feeling warm and happy in the knowledge that it was rigorous and true and well-defined and meant something.

-joshing with the cafeteria ladies.

-my grandfather, chilling like a patriarch at his 90th birthday party with his 15 descendants and their associated S.O.'s milling around Jewishly. he did good.

ice age heat wave can't complain

2011-04-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

on the way to Stagg Field we saw a guy picking daffodils. it's 3 in the morning, which seems like an odd time to pick daffodils. for a gravestone, for a costume, for a windowsill? as long as he doesn't think they'll get him laid. Rebe picked some too... she put them in a beer bottle... I love that image...

***

"It's about a... fiancee... and her... fiancee."

everyone in barcelona better be as attractive as this

2011-03-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

haha. what a G. "I came over here with... no subterfuge..."

("some recognized form of social interaction")

barcelona muthafucka

2011-03-30T08:17:00.001-07:00

sun pouring through the window, not nearly as sleepy as I should be. "last night I cried tears of JOY, what did I do to deserve thissssssss"

if one were to take her seriously

2011-03-15T21:40:00.001-07:00

In about three days finals will be over

and all of them will have basically gone OK

and all of UChicago will have sex and play sports and smoke weed and read books or whatever gets you off

and I'll be flying down a highway to New York

and John Boehner will sit down for a cheerful bipartisan brunch with Barack Obama and they'll agree to finally do something about climate change

and the Clippers will make the playoffs

and soldiers protecting our country in Iraq will dream chastely about their girlfriends instead of jacking off to Maxim

and Barcelona will let me off their fucking wait list

and Japan will stop nuclear radiation with an enormous quilt sewn together from the toothmarked security blankets of five-year-olds the world over, donate YOUR used security blanket by texting 90699 to 1800BinkyPower today

and the sky will be some entirely new color

in about three days

and that's how I choose to remember it

2011-03-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

A DREAM

Statisticians trying to calculate the overall value of a relationship by total volume deposited over the span of the relationship. Yeah, volume of that. Claiming it's a good way to combine duration, frequency, and quality into one simple measure. Arguments over how much to weight different deposit locations. Also, some say that an ongoing relationship should be ranked by its current value, while others say it should be assigned its expected value, which is infinite, cause you never know they could just stay into each other forever.

zero one infinity

2011-03-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

"not only two, but any finite number, is ridiculous and can't exist"

it's all gonna be alright

never never never never had before

2011-02-26T13:36:00.000-08:00

All kinds of dichotomies. Legal vs. moral. Warm vs. cold. Quick-changing weather. Global vs. local maxima :/

It's hard to believe they're the same species.

Our room got cleansed by fire.

***

Transparency = invisibility. If windows were perfectly transparent you wouldn't be able to see them at all. Think how weird we'd look if everything in Pierce turned transparent but the people. Sprawled out on imaginary beds, playing imaginary pianos, fucking each other over imaginary desks.

(and if everything in the world turned transparent except for two hearts then

we'd bump into shit a lot, for one thing)

dog days tryna be over

2011-02-09T15:55:00.001-08:00

I dreamt you had your ears unpierced. they plugged up the openings with tube-shaped bits of cartilage.

(key word "tryna")

plenty of plenties in a balla balla matrix

2011-02-09T15:54:00.001-08:00

COOL

Cairo

Evolution

LINGUISTICATION

"hypocritical" is a nonsense word. hypo like under/not enough, critical like critical, so "not critical enough [of yourself]"? better to just be less critical of others.

COOLER

-touch football in a blizzard

-impromptu dance party in lounge

-decreased transaction costs

-spontaneity in general

-oh and synthetic hormones (which actually comes under the previous -...)

random access mammary

2011-01-29T10:52:00.000-08:00

MORAL TURPITUDES

-Polaroid film (from a strange closet)

-Beer (in a perfectly-executed heist)

-one definition of knowledge: Justified true belief. OK mister philosopher but how to judge a guy with an unjustified true belief. sinking feeling of impending loss. I think all we can do is empathize.

***

then there's the other side of unjustified true belief. when you shoot a basketball and it's through the net before it leaves your hands.

the life of a three-point shooter...

I'ma Dig That Grave

2011-01-15T19:04:00.001-08:00

"Whatever you do, make it look intentional."

-AS

Good advice for people trying to write entire graphic novels in 48 hours. Or anybody, really.

all the blissful misspellings/every bite I gave you left a mark

2010-12-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

you can consider all the rest of the capitalized headings to be sub-capitalized headings of:

BACK FROM JOSHUA TREE

IT MADE SENSE TO ME THAT

-he would share my views about the proper way to play Spit

-she would be the only one who could see shooting stars

-not to imply that there really were shooting stars, or that there weren't

THE TREES THEMSELVES

-cast very long shadows

-look cooler dead than alive

-remind me of first-generation immigrants

ASSUMING 75% OF EVERYTHING FALLS INTO THE OCEAN

-you'd expect to find about 1 crumpled helium balloon on the ground for every four you've released into the sky. we found one today. happy birthday to somebody. happy late birthday, depending on how long it'd been lying there.

-ever let one go and watched it until you couldn't see it anymore? it doesn't exactly seem like it's coming back down.

it's not a party if it happens every night

2010-12-23T02:05:00.000-08:00

GLOBAL WARMING

There's a guy near Staples Center whose job it is to wave a green glowy dildo to signal people to park in his parking lot. When the game's over everyone floods out of the parking lot no matter what he's paid to do with his dildo.

IT FINALLY STOPPED RAINING.

I would strongly prefer to be someplace else. Someplace specific.

people you've been before that you don't want around anymore/they'll push and shove and won't bend to your will/I'll keep them still

2010-12-21T01:37:00.000-08:00

the world is losing the kind of anonymity that made it possible to jump on the back of a train and end up somewhere where no one knows your name or face. nowadays you need to show all sorts of different ids to get a job. the internet has pictures of everyone. we're not far from the time when you can see someone on the street and download their criminal/sexual/employment history to your iPhone. I have a romantic attachment to the possibility of starting a new life in a small town: manual labor, a big Greyhound Shepherd, beer on the porch. but that era is ending. we're entering the era of you fuck up, it goes on your record forever.

like at UChicago where they're replacing keys with id swiper mechanisms so they can know everywhere you've been and exactly when you've been there. from a societal perspective all this stuff is probably good; increase the long-term costs of crime and things we'd be ashamed of, less crime and less shameful activity. from a personal perspective, I hate hate hate this, more than I can explain in words.

Dr. Zeuss's House is against flourescent lights and in favor of secret passages and doors you can open with a lockpick.

this great human continues to live and grow

2010-12-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

I like her style. In particular, this is dead-on, and hot just to read.

struck from a great height by someone who should have known better

2010-12-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

When I was on the Obama campaign I got good at telling people's political affiliations by the exterior of their house.

SIGNS OF REPUBLICANISM (in increasing order of deeeeefinitely a Republican):
-Extremely well-kept lawn
-Sign saying "Beware Of Dog"
-Sign saying some variant of, "Screw Dog, Beware Of Owner".

Thing was, usually the owners who had these signs would be old ex-army dudes who looked like they used to be bad-ass but I imagine I could take them at this stage of their lives. A better sign would have been "Screw Owner, Beware Of Owner's Browning Automatic".

I'd like to see a sign that says "Screw Owner's Browning Automatic; Statistically, Beware Of Traffic Accidents"
or "Screw Traffic Accidents, Beware Of Gradually Rising Sea Level"

***

You could probably make a lot of money digging for expensive but illegal shit in airport trash cans.

fundamental attribution error got you feeling like a champion

2010-11-20T15:21:00.000-08:00

ENDEARING AVIAN ACTIONS

-that dog-eared smile
-singing guitar songs in his room with the door shut, just for himself.
-transparent but brave-hearted attempt to play the bimbo
-holding the door open for someone who wasn't walking through it

***

I like the new Kanye West CD very much. We're in the right city for it.

1x/7scnds

2010-11-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

THEY WALK AMONG US

On Sundays, there's a sign at the omelette station alerting you that "Your omelette is being made by Destiny".

A less well-known fact is that our ice cream is given to us by Hope.

An even less well-known fact is that our apples come courtesy of Despair. OK, I made that one up. They're pretty shitty apples though.

On the plus side, the smoothies they make on Thursday are provided by Orgasmic Ecstasy.

SPEAKING OF ORGASMIC ECSTASY

This item courtesy of my brother: at Amherst they sell ice cream cones out of a box that says "It goes better in a cone!".

Since there's no mention of what goes better in the cone, one can only assume the packaging refers (as most packaging does) to its contents - that is to say, the cones sold in the package go better in a cone, as do cones within cones, etc. With certain assumptions about exactly how much better each cone-product is in a cone, you can arrive at the conclusion that having bought one cone, you're rationally required to buy an infinite number of them.

BUT WAIT. You could angle each cone slightly, kind of bending the cones around until they form a circle. Assuming you can shift the angle by 10 degrees with each cone, you can achieve maximum possible cone happiness with the purchase of a mere 36 cones, which is a lot cheaper than infinitely many cones unless you get the convergent series discount.

Bringing it back to the orgasmic ecstasy, the cone question is intimately related to one I've thought about for a while: how many gay people would you have to have to form a complete circle, with an unbroken chain of penetration? The geometric answer is ceiling(360/n), where n is the average angle to which the dick can bend. Estimating n is the tricky part.

(Extra credit - think about how thrusting would work once you had the circle all set up.)

can't blame em; they ain't never seen versace sofas

2010-10-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

"probabilistic prostitution"

***

"wind speeds of up to 55 miles per hour"

***

there's a hole where a hole used to be

even if they celibate

2010-10-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

3:00 AM, baked as hell, deciding we need to leave the state. the moment where we looked at each other and realized we were actually serious
3:30 AM, bus to Union Station, no baggage but Neel's cellphone charger and a Ziploc bag filled with cashews.
4:30 AM, arriving downtown, all-night Subway. I ask a guy where we should go; his response, "you're lying". weird zen accusations. we reach Union Station
OK done with the time convention

echoing/overlapping voices in the train waiting room, "Track11TrTrTrack12ack11TrTrack9ack11". train station attendant told me they're for blind people, a massively disorienting game of Marco Polo.

"when's the first train that leaves for somewhere outside this state", various Amtrak attendants understandably wondering what felonies a trio of nice boys like us could have committed.

first mention of Kenosha: "*polite cough* not the best of neighborhoods"

we consider blowing $44 on round trip tickets to Milwaukee but ultimately decide to eat our sandwiches and chill out till the Metra leaves for Kenosha.

metra shows up, a sea of people leave the train. one of them, to us: "you're slowing it up!", whatever it is. more zen accusations. we get on the train and climb up to the top.

beautiful green-tinted view of buildings against the sky. tree branches fluttering etc. Aaron and I pass out from tiredness, Neel plays 20 questions with random high school kids across the train. he wins.

we get to Kenosha. first stop Wendy's, where some people tell us to check out the courthouse and the beach. we figure why the fuck not, and go into the courthouse. Neel tells a lady who turns out to be a prosecutor that we're students visiting from U of C. I tell her that everyone in Kenosha seems friendly; we were offered a free cab ride by an extremely friendly man within seconds of getting off the train. we discuss the possibility of visiting inmates. she says we can't, unless one of us goes to jail. Neel: "what's the easiest way I could commit a felony?"

apparently pretty much everything is public. we go into the court room and watch a couple of guys get brought up on sexual assault of a minor charges. they shuffle in, mutely waive their right to preliminary hearings, then shuffle out. a bailiff chews gum, in blatant, blatant violation of the sign outside the courtroom saying not to chew gum. we consider holding him in contempt. it's too depressing watching people answer scripted questions with scripted answers so we move to the bigger courthouse, which we hear is more happening.

it is much more happening. our most interesting discovery is that you can look up the case files for pretty much any case ever, searching the archives by name. we ask the clerk for a randomly selected file. it belongs to a guy named David. charge is "bail-jumping", "attempted bail-jumping", and "assaulting a minor". we read more. the attempted bail jumping is calling his ex-girlfriend, the actual bail-jumping is showing up at her house, and the assualt is something he did while he was at the house, to a child with a last name shared by neither David or his girlfriend Teresa. the files include this incredibly moving, heartfelt letter, about "there is no excuse for what I have done" and "our future together" and "you are my rock, and I hope I am the same to you."

so we get really curious, and look up the guy's entire criminal history. wasn't the first bail-jumping offense, the girl seemed to want no part of him, in one of her testimonies she said they hadn't dated in two years from the time of the note. we find out more about the other man, some asshole* named Kurt; he and Teresa were married, but only got divorced ONE year before the letter, meaning either she was dating David while they were married, or she lied about how long it had been since she'd seen him.

anyway, the story only gets more fascinating and I could go on, but the big takeaway is, it is BIZARRE that some random people could walk in off the street and learn all these things about all these random strangers. I didn't use their last names here, but hell yeah I remember them. I'm gonna be dreaming about these people. I mean, their ADDRESSES were in the files. their PHONE NUMBERS. I could just call up David. there's something odd going on.

not that we were treated like random strangers. the University of Chicago thing worked so well that we kept saying it, and it was more than a little uncomfortable watching people fall over themselves to show us stuff, tell us about their jobs, their histories, their problems, recommend lunch places, etc. privilege. but w/e, no way we would have been privileged to see the stuff we saw without it. if that's what it takes.

awkward/postmodern moment came when we were looking at a calendar trying to figure out what sentencing hearing to go see, and decided on a person named "Denver G__", which name we said out loud, whereupon the woman ahead of us turned around and said "that's me". so we watched Denver G get sentenced. the prosecutor wasn't very good at all; I felt like you could have picked ten random kids out of any MUN committee who could have done an equally good job. the public defender was really good, methodic and articulate. she even corrected the judge a couple times on matter of law, which, one would like and expect a little more professionalism from the judge, considering the stakes for Denver G___: pretty much her whole life, the judge could have given her anything from probation to years in prison. she settled on giving her two years of probation and a long, Judge Judy-like pep talk about Denver and her life choices: "You don't have to live in the shadow of your father!", "You need to find a way to manage your anger healthily, Denver!" the transition from cold discussion of facts to this Tony Robbins motivational schtick, Denver breaking down in tears, PD giving out backrubs, it was surreal.

as was talking to Denver afterwards, listening sympathetically as she laid out her story. she was pretty clearly not guilty of all the shit she was charged with. it was also pretty clear she wasn't turning her life around anytime soon. man, everyone just wants to be listened too though.

anyway, there are far more funny things that happened but I'm tired of typing so I'm just gonna list them in bullet point format for my own personal future enjoyment:

nap on green lawn
goochie-goo turtle
Kaiser Sose's
baby elephants
foreclosure
nap on jail bench
"I like books. Do you like books?"
AStar bellowing about the Red Sox/AStar in a turban

a success of a day.

*the note has got us all on David's side and it's impossible not to root for him and against That Asshole Kurt, who has a much nastier criminal history including tax fraud and something to do with cocaine.

your ship may be coming in

2010-10-07T00:53:00.001-07:00

One of them had razors coming out of his crutches. He said, "We've never liked you, but we've always tolerated you." Then it was dark for quite a while.

***

I'm pretty sure ice cream was invented just so she could look good eating it.

whatever, I got the lighter.

2010-09-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

To be written: a long paper explaining how the decline of censorship allowed for the rise of rap by allowing the use of contentless but iamb-compatible "fucking"s and "motherfuckings" pretty much anywhere in any sentence, making it easier to write bars that scan.

***

Sunny road + Explosions = happiness

considers phoning home, has some quarters in her hand

2010-09-17T03:49:00.000-07:00

traffic as mass meditation, hundreds of thousands of people coming together at the beginning and end of each day for a societally accepted half an hour with no responsibilities or duties other than a soft rhythmic press of pedals. if the 405 didn't exist we'd have to invent it.

getting out of a car = getting out of a bath = waking up = I always want to stay in a car for just a bit longer.

the ben affleck guy in the town holding onto the phone for three seconds too long after his dad puts it away, waiting for his dad to come back, or his mom to start talking through the dead wires, or, you know, something.

compare/contrast:
through traffic merges ahead.
left lane must exit.
WALK SIGN, FIFTY FIFTH STREET. WALK SIGN, FIFTY FIFTH STREET.

those lying countdown walk timers as the root of at least all vaguely unpleasant.

***

looking forward to the drive back home, through mountains, deserts, and many unintelligible farms. will miss people though.

What Up, Oprah

2010-08-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

You could imagine a world where people who go to the gym are in worse shape than people who don't. Makes sense - diminishing returns, the ones who are in bad shape are the ones who need the gym most.

Similarly, you could imagine a world where the smelliest people take the most showers, or the dumbest people read the most books, or the nerdiest people go to the most parties.

But in our world, it's the exact opposite. Gyms are 95% full of the healthy and attractive. Libraries are full of the knowledgable. Parties are full of the cool.

Why? Because going to the gym a lot is how you *get* healthy and attractive.

It's extraordinarily rare for anyone to make a serious, sustained effort at anything and fail.

The good news here is that if you're not as (healthy, smart, cool, whatever) as you want to be, it's very likely that you can change.* You just have to find people who *are* as X as you want to be, and blindly imitate their habits.

*The corresponding bad news is that you probably won't.

if ya ain't runnin with it run from it

2010-08-27T00:23:00.000-07:00

Can tell the geography of the pan by how thick the egg is above the surface. Thinnger and more black you see, the higher the pan, contour map styyle. Although, you could say, it's not telling you much about the pan, it could be that the earth goes up at various points and is not smooth in any hyperbolic geometry. But because the pan has a flat bottom, that can't be true. Flat bottoms allow you to generalize.

***

The more I look at that last sentence, the more I love it.

***

My favorite Lil Wayne quotes are the ones that are like, how is that even something to be proud of? "Even deaf bitches say hi to ME." "I smoke till I got chest pains." "I got ten bathrooms I can shit all day." Who are all these people that deaf bitches refuse to say hi to?

***

Extraordinarily disturbing Multigrain Cheerios marketing slogan. "More Grain, Less You!" It's what Lil Wayne would brag a bout if he were a breakfast cereal. I eat rappers, jumping out of my spoon and devouring their skin when they try to insert me into their mouths. Organic O-shaped cannibals, no pesticide. Where does the extra grain go? Maybe innto the bodes of men who nb are not pictured anywhere on the box, apparently no guy has ever bought Multigain Cheerios. Patriarchy thing only the women pressured to lose weight.

***

Really altruistic people should go around getting intentionally romantically rejected by everyone thereby raising everyone's selfesteem. Cell Fess Team. Congress Bean. Shardress Dean. If you could convince yourself not to have your own selfesteem lowered in equal and oppositely way, you could violate the law of conservation of self-esteem and cause everyone to fly in a balloon no zero-sum.

***

Sex in the next room, real or imagined. A;though sex real or imagined is you gotta think usually imagined.

***

apologies to all deep=sea eggplants who served as greplacements because all the pineapples were in use.

***

Chapter2 with added plugins for the noose chair and blanket.

***

I can say "it don't rhyme", and it gon' rhyme! use-mention btchzzzzzzz that word looks like shoulders

no butter no jam

2010-08-26T00:52:00.000-07:00

Pretty sure they make headphone/CD cases so hard to open because it makes you value and like the music more when you finally get the prize.

Still, the headphones I bought at the airport today, that case was excessive. Especially since anything that would be useful in opening it is banned on airplanes. Ended up using my seatbelt as a wedge to pry it apart. Then felt so victorious that I listened to Alejandro on the airplane radio for like forty-five minutes straight.

Prediction: the things with the complicatedest packaging <--> the things we judge the most subjectively.

***

Transcendently weird. Cousin's gf and I watched like all of them. Highly recommend the duck one.

***

Missed that, cribbage in the basement talking about nothing.

didn't know that this game we were playing even had a set of rules

2010-08-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

ALL THIS TECHNOBABBLE

Say you enter a million-person lottery, the winning numbers are announced, but you've lost your ticket. Quixotically, you decide to find out if you won by interviewing every other person in the lottery.

Before you start interviewing people, your estimate of the probability that you won the lottery is one in a million.

Each interview with a non-winner increases your chances: 1/999999, 1/999998, and so on, until you get to the person who did win, at which point your estimate drops to 0.

The key point is this: on average, an interview with a random person has to have no effect on your estimate. You have a very large chance of increasing your estimate by a very small amount, and a very small chance of decreasing your estimate by a very large amount. They exactly cancel out, which you can do some arithmetic to verify if you feel like it.

And intuitively, you can kind of see why they'd have to, yeah? Like think about the chick in When Harry Met Sally, who is always surprised with each new piece of evidence that her married lover isn't leaving his wife. She should be thinking: why don't I ever see things that make me think he *is* gonna leave his wife? The lesson for her is: her estimate is irrationally high, and she needs to get more pessimistic until she's on average increasing her homewrecker odds as much as she's decreasing them.

Another analogy: consider a bunch of archaeologists who, the earliest human fossil they've found is dated 10,000 BC, so they think human life started in 10,000 BC. Then they find another fossil dated 12,000 BC, so they think human life started in 12,000 BC. Every time they find an earlier fossil, they change their estimate to the date of that fossil.*

"Archaeologists!" you might say. "Considering all the fossils you've found so far, you might as well take into account that you're probaby going to find more. Your best estimate of the probability should be, roughly, whatever the graph of the oldest fossil found to date versus time seems to be approaching." (Man, you got all technical all of a sudden.) Each new fossil they find pulls the graph up, and each day they don't find a fossil tugs it just a bit down. It's the beautiful balancing act of digging shit up.

*Real-life archaeologists are hopefully more sophisticated than this.

IS MY WAY OF SAYING THAT

I'm tired of learning this particular type of lesson.
If you did teach me a lesson, it's one I'd prefer not to know.

guess that's why they call it window pain

2010-08-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder if most religions' devils, or if they don't have devils then Asshole Gods or whatever they have instead, I wonder if they tend to be red. it'd make sense.

have you ever tried to imagine a new color? like, not a shade of any existing colors, completely its own thing. what ultraviolet might look like if we could see it.

apparently casinos paint their floors scarlet because it makes you not notice the passage of time.

gypsy tomb with a sword painted a secret terrible color, and all you can do is slip it into yourself. it'll stay buried until every last bit of it is stained red.

***

to pronounce the word "breasts" as "barristas"

torch my soul to show the world that I am pure

2010-08-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

UNAMBIGUOUSLY GOOD

-Elderly asian couple who ran across the highway, he a bit uncertain about the jaywalking aspect, she grabbing his hand and leading him giggling onto the pavement.

-Waking up with totally incomprehensible/Dickensian names on your cell phone contact list, this morning e.g.:

Roy G. Bivalent
Partay Queen
Lee's Evil Accomplice

-Lindsay Davenport just shredding two blondely identical Russians. Technically she had a partner but it felt like she could have taken them one on two - she touched the ball, point was over.

-The intro to "Mayonnaise".*

*This is the one and only time I will ever say a complimentary sentence which includes the word "mayonnaise".

UNAMBIGUOUSLY BAD

-Cops

-Robbers

-Cops and Robbers

-Afternoons that go on for fucking ever, and feel more like a curse than a blessing. Life thought of as a series of interludes from high to high, muted like a bad commercial.

AMBIGUOUSLY FUN OR GROSS DEPENDING ON MY MOOD

-People lying to you when you know the truth

-People complaining about traits which they very blatantly embody**

JUST PLAIN AMBIGUOUS

-"dread army of narcoleptic dogs"

-karaoke weddings, without a bride or groom

**-shave all those who do not shave themselves

fulfill a promise made of tin

2010-07-28T01:52:00.000-07:00

a picture I like. check how stately the umbrella woman is.

imagine if the B levels got flooded like that. islands of books forming and eroding, pages = sediment. the shelves parting and unparting the water like remote-controlled Moses.

***

like a cow drowning in milk
or a guitar so close to a speaker that it can only hear itself
or a pig in its own shit

when bobby pins held angel wings

2010-07-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

"the truth is, everybody's going to hurt you. you just have to find the ones worth suffering for."

King Of Anything

2010-07-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Studies Show People Say Things People Say Are Equally Likely To Mean The Exact Opposite

Especially In This Song I Heard On The Radio Today About Being Done With Some Guy's Shit

(And Really, All Songs About Being Done With Some Guy's Shit)

But She Was Clearly Just Gonna Get Back Together With The Guy (Or Some Guy Just Like Him)

It Was A Good Song Though

OK, I'ma Stop Typing Like This Now

***

How about a real news article? About fake bus stops, to keep Alzheimer patients from running away. :)/:(

***

One of the coolest nights ever on Friday, Inception + watching my cousin's daughter get born. Babies are SO SMALL. Seriously, they're tiny. And they're so free with their emotions, EVERYTHING they're feeling goes on their face. Planning to have like 20 of them. I want a brood.

***

SUMMER MUSIC

Silversun Pickups (every car ride for the past two weeks)

Delorean

We Are Your Friends

Let The Beat Build/Mr. Carter

Sweeeeeeeet Diiiiiiispuhhhhsition

baby if you want to we could fly away up into the sun

2010-07-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

MEMORABLE DESCRIPTIONS FROM RECENTISH EXPERIENCE

-A house as "uppity".

-A bodily region as "vehemently wet".

-A set of paranoid conclusions as "overfitting".

-A set of cleavage - wait, that doesn't sound quite right. A pair of cleavage? A bunch of cleavage? (eh.) A pride of cleavage? (If you have a good body image I guess.) Ah, here we go: a gaggle of cleavage.

-OK, a gaggle of cleavage as "unnerving". (It really was.)

Feelin Lit, Feelin Right, 2AM, Summer Night

2010-07-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

Two drug-war arguments I don't often see made:

-A lot of people say weed is a "gateway drug". They're absolutely right. Weed is a gateway drug. But only because it's illegal. Causal chain looks like this: weed is illegal -> you need to buy it from dealers -> you need to interact with dealers -> dealers usually push other crap too -> *snort*. Legalizing weed solves this problem as no one's tryna interact with dealers unless they have to. (No offense meant to my dealer readers, y'all know what I'm talking about.)

-If our government stopped banning everything, extremely rich and powerful drug companies would have an incentive to make better weed with fewer side effects/health consequences. Not to mention inventing entirely new drugs. Which I would call a clearly good thing, although I could imagine someone disagreeing on Brave New World grounds. Who's psyched for the safe, standardized version of shrooms?

burned like a summer home

2010-07-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

in Stanford, working full time at a startup called Rockme/lt. extremely tough work, sometimes interesting, sometimes niggling shoot-me-in-the-dick bullshit. 9 hours a day five days a week staring at a computer screen. (why I haven't wanted to write here.) turns out having a real job sucks balls. I miss GCI.

what R/ockmelt's gonna be is a browser that's better integrated with Facebook Twitter etc. one click FB stalk access, popups when someone has a new status, easy and intuitive to share any arbitrary webpage, other stuff I can't talk about. it strikes me as a cutting-edge idea, one whose time has come, yadda yadda. and my coworkers are all brilliant & infinitely knowledgable about everything. so insofar as I know my own head from my ass re: financial potential of startups (ie very little), we seem pretty likely to succeed.

however, it also strikes me as a completely socially useless idea. there's this concept in startupland that you should use your own product as much as possible, so you get firsthand knowledge of what you need to improve. called "eating your own dog food". but I find it completely impossible to get any useful work done with status updates popping up every thirty seconds. maybe our children will be so vastly better at multitasking than us that this won't bother them. maybe I'm underestimating the joy of social networking, maybe Ro/ckmelt has other virtues I'm not seeing. first impression though: seems designed for addictive, unsatisfying distraction and v. little else.*

but, I am making a shit-ton of money. although I mean if that's the only reason I'm here why not go all the way, do investment banking or corporate lawyering or whatever? stuff to think about.

weekends are great. racket sports, pools, books, new people. been two weeks and I already kinda live for them.

smoked a cigarette for the second time in my life last night/this morning, and in contrast to the dizziness-inducing and generally blah first experience this time I loved it.

y'all are gonna have to promise to never let me become an addict and never let me reach a point in my life where I say "I live for the weekends".

OK NOW THAT THAT'S TAKEN CARE OF

-what's the mininum number of different people in the world who'd have to exist to make sure you didn't get suspicious? like, while we see many many people in a given year, from year to year couldn't they be the same dudes? would you really notice if the random chick who briefly biked by you was actually the identical chick who was two spots in line behind you at the supermarket who was also the identical chick checked your boarding pass at LAX? and that's not even counting if they could cut their hair and wear disguises and shit. I think you could fool at least me pretty convincingly with 10,000 character actors.

-it'd be cool if someone spoke fluent Engrish.

-she didn't take any clothes with her. that's a bad sign. so it goes.

-two bikes having a full-on collision, front wheel flush up against front wheel. just a weird image I've been having.

-need to do more smaller updates instead of big ones every two weeks cause I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. hope your summer's going well.

*I like that. V. Little Else, Esq.

go to the grocery store, buy some new friends

2010-06-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

sometimes I wish I was gay/black
it would make it easier to know what to think of myself as.

classic straight white guy desire only feelable by someone who's never faced racism or homophobia. but there it is.

my brother dad and I used to play with this nondescript stuffed frog who we'd always pretend was pining away for a "frogality".

ranking minorities by median swag:

blacks
gays
latinos
asians

why was that list so easy to make? "cultural differences" (blech)?

shouts from both sides

2010-06-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

AND IF IT TAKES SHIT

My math final had seven true/false questions, ALL of which were false. That would never happen on an HW test and never, ever happen on the SATs. I get the sense that everyone here was kinda like me in high school in terms of highly-developed ability to BS our way through pages of material we don't understand, and the professors have learned to adapt.

TO MAKE BLISS WELL THEN I FEEL

Jedi Mind, "Uncommon Valor". Jaw-dropping, probably the best verse ever. Skip to 1:30.

PRETTY BLISSFULLY

Chinese food at 4AM on the point watching the sun light up Chicago. How I want to remember the year.

cheap red wine in a paper cup

2010-06-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

bushels of hair in my face like some kind of face wig. blown by moon-wind from the top of the car. incidental contact, no kicking motion, no forward progress, no incontrovertible visual evidence.

my girl from Bolivia... today I realized that I no longer speak her language. in the most literal sense. she definitely doesn't speak mine.

"he said times they gotta change, but so do we"

big hands, I know you're the one

2010-05-30T18:33:00.001-07:00

Got an intriguing sunburn on my chest, from our morning at the beach on Lake Michigan. To me, it looks like the physical realization of this image I've had in my head all week: two enormous turtles roped to a house, walking inexorably in opposite directions. Been fighting the urge to go around shirtless asking random people what it reminds them of, like a Rorschach Skin Cancer Test.

***

I feel like there's an untapped market for the sunburn as temporary tattoo. Someone should specialize in making full body suits with cross/eagle/whatever-shaped holes.

The funniest sunburn I've ever seen in person was this chick who had a hand-shaped farmer's tan on her breast, from an afternoon with her boyfriend on a nude beach.

***

There's a constant battle of whether or not it's cool to be shirtless in the lounge, fought between people who have something to gain from displaying their upper bodies and people who have something to lose.

I wonder if the burqa was originally conceived by some king's unattractive wife.

The people who want to be shirtless have the moral high ground because it's frakking hot.

no ordinary drain on her defenses

2010-05-26T02:27:00.000-07:00

CONVERSATIONS

-with KS/AS: are sperm alive? They don't reproduce. Except, they kind of do. You can think of the entire human race as just a sperm's way of making more sperm.

It's mindblowing to look at the world that way. Humans as cigarette butts' way of making more cigarette butts, teddy bears' way of making more teddy bears, used plastic shopping bags' way of making more used plastic shopping bags.

-with CL: I want to be a topologist so I can find a way to take off my underwear without taking off my jeans. A Velcro strap is one possibility, although it might lead to some hairy situations (as in, situations that make you suddenly less hairy). It would certainly make undressing more dramatic. RRRRATCH!

***

If I was a better person, I'd be a teacher when I grew up. It's an important job and I'm extremely good at it. But I'm not a better person.

***

thunderstorms please.

haven't got a stitch to wear

2010-05-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

Suits have to be expensive or poor people would wear them.

I Got Ten Bathrooms I Can Shit All Day

2010-05-24T00:24:00.001-07:00

Hit by waves of distrust yesterday. Nothing that can't be cured by pounding out the eight miles to Navy Pier. Apparently there was a run to Fight Honkyitis or Save The Dodo or whatever happening on Lakeshore at the same time, which meant there were a bunch of people at around the six mile mark cheering me to their finish line. I think they were a bit perturbed when I just kept on running. Felt like a huge badass when I reached the pier - thanks to Emily Haines for tunes and to the couple running just behind me for triggering irrational competitive instinct (to the point where I didn't notice my thighs were bleeding from chafing... that was a tough one to explain...)

***

"The server loops endlessly, waiting for connection requests."
-My comp sci textbook

I'm watching tv, guess that's a solution

2010-05-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

It is physically impossible to see someone's face and grind with them at the same time.

***

I didn't live up to my standards. I'm so glad to have a friend who calls me on it.

could really use a wish right now

2010-05-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

When you're landing in a plane, there's this magical height where streets look like string and cars look like ants but you're just slightly too high to see people. You know they're there, right there in your field of vision, but at the same time they might as well be invisible. It feels like a word you can't quite remember or a bra you can't quite undo.

We never evolved to be that high and the feeling gets unnerving after about fifteen seconds, which fortunately is exactly how long it lasts.

The University Of Chicago

2010-05-11T01:17:00.001-07:00

I'm lying on my bed doing math, eating Triscuits, and listening to the rain
and very much enjoying it.

I can scream as loud as your last one, but I can't claim innocence

2010-05-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

EVERY PHRASE I COULD THINK OF WITH THE WORD "WIVES"

-housewives
-midwives
-Stepford Wives
-trophy wives

The concept of "trophy x" applies to almost everything. Trophy friend. Trophy bicep. Trophy sexual preference. Things not for their own sake.

Thinking of what it would mean to be a housebicep or a midfriend or a Stepford Sexual Preference.

***

HALFITIS
MAYBE TO BE HONEST MORE LIKE TWOTHIRDS OR FOURFIFTHSITIS

Because she seems to be trying her hardest, in some undefinable way that most people aren't. Whatever I think of her cause.

all secrets sleep in winter clothes

2010-05-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

Things found in the leather jacket Jshap and I acquired from Bart Mart yesterday night, while drunk and bleeding heavily from my right index finger due to overzealous strumming of "Wonderwall" on a guitar borrowed from what could have been any of eight Asian frat brothers passed out on a couch in a room with four foot ceilings:

One refrigerator magnet/nametag: "Greg, Premier Eye Care Technician"
Assorted gum wrappers, used tissues, etc. [Yum.]
Two [2] Blackhawks ticket stubs, each dated April 7.
Two ticket stubs for a flight from Chicago to Toledo, April 18.
Two ticket stubs for a Toledo [unreadables] soccer game, April 21.
One [1] boarding pass for a flight from Toledo to Madrid, April 29. [Draw your own conclusions re decrease from 2 to 1.]
One ticket stub for some Madrid soccer team, April 30.
A hand-drawn map with sections labelled "saloon", "couch", and "Manny's". Vigorously circled Xs on the intersection of Buckley Avenue and Winchester Boulevard. [According to Google Maps there is no such intersection.]
One unfolded Marlboro cigarette box, with these items scribbled on the back:

Out Drinkin'
dogeatschocolate, man doesn't care, girlfriend pissed
alcohol <-> crazy situations
problems w/police
"There are some people who consider their grill their own personal time machine" [though the phrase is in quotes, it gets zero hits on google.]
the art of falling
jizz sandwich
No more helping wheelchair people in the middle of a lousy [unreadable] two trucks pass [unreadable] intersections.

***

"can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"

Flannery O'Connor :)

2010-05-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

"The kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced that extra surge of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a packed trunk out of a burning house, but in her, the power went at once to the brain. Even before he released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him from a great distance, with amusement but with pity. She had never been kissed before and she was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience and all a matter of the mind’s control. Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka."

""Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

"She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

too-doo

2010-05-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

Stop priding myself on my ability to skate by academically, as it is a. not particularly something to be proud of & b. rapidly becoming an inability.
Get into routines for practicing guitar, pop and lock, other good habits.
and out of routines for bad habits.
Treat everyone with equal respect.
Buy myself a fan.

I feel confident that I can and will do all these things, in a way I haven't felt for weeks. "Drive" by Incubus:

whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open arms and open eyes

a heart that's full up like a landfill

2010-04-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

We've been playing Assassins in our dorm and I've discovered that I love shooting people. With water guns. But, it made me wonder if crime is higher than it would be if guns weren't so much fun to fire.

See also, I wonder if people try less hard to prevent oil spills than they would if they didn't look really effing cool.

See also, I wonder if there are more volcanic eruptions than there would be if they weren't so incredibly, stunningly beautiful. I mean, obviously there aren't. Volcanoes gonna explode if they wanna explode. I really just wanted an excuse to link to the pictures.

you can have it all, my empire of dirt

2010-04-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

my dad got hired & I will be able to attend the University of Chicago again next year! it is not something I've wanted to talk to anyone in person about, because there's no particular way I want people to respond. however, I do have an odd desire for random anonymous people to share the good news. perhaps I should print out leaflets w/details of job offer and pass them out on State and Randolph.

I love the idea of Xeroxing the mundane facts of daily existence and pressing them urgently into the hands of passersby.

ATTENTION!!: There's some pretty cool graffiti somewhere around 52nd street. Couldn't really see it that well because the windows were fogged up; I think it was dragons or pipes or something.

TO ALL CONCERNED. Today I ate pancakes for breakfast although I usually have a bagel with eggs. It tasted OK but I think I prefer bagel and eggs.

every single one's got a story to tell

2010-04-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

sometimes at night you set an alarm so that in the morning it will create strong feelings of alarm in you, causing you to wake up from the sudden emotional stimulation.

in my dream you could also set other types of emotion to wake yourself, e.g. you could set a dread, which when it went off would make you feel sudden dread at a specified time. or you could set an ebullient or a horny, causing you at exactly 9:17AM to feel suddenly and unsleepthroughably ebullient/horny.

you're nothing special, you're a skeleton key

2010-04-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty unusual in how I experience sexual jealousy - I don't. any and all girls I've hooked up with, I unreservedly hope are getting sweet loving right this instant. (with one exception who isn't even really an exception because I never actually hooked up with her...)

in fact, in previous "exclusive" relationships I would secretly not have minded if girlfriend got it on with some other dude even during the relationship. although, I would have, because it would be disrespect for what she in assuming me to be the median dude thinks are my wishes. but I wouldn't mind the actual act itself, if that makes sense.

however, it is disheartening to see girl from past with guy very physically similar to you. implication: you were used only as type.

in future I ask that all ex-girlfriends hook up as frequently as possible, but only with short, red-haired Zoroastrians. Your Cooperation Is Appreciated.