this is the journal of dorian gray.

I just realized I started writing junk here in July of 2000. My user # is perilously low… I’d like to think I’ve grown and evolved and matured and all that rot, but looking back over old entries, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

a random sprinkling of consistency:


12 November 2000 @ 12:12 am
remind me to elaborate about the super-quantum-waitress-collider theory.


17 October 2001 @ 12:56 pm
there's a page in my checkbook register that says "cheap trick is the type-O blood of the music world." and its true...


18 October 2001 @ 12:19 am
i was wondering, while i was watching "training day" with meggo, how much of my life is real and how much is based on hopes and wishful thinking? am i really certain that the things i want are things i want or are they just a part of an elaborate illusion i'm making for myself?
i'm too sleepy to really reason this out, but it all seemed so clear while ethan hawke was getting his head bashed in on a rooftop - all my questions seemed real and valid and worth further examination and now they've flown off somewhere.
i'll try again in the morning.


02 September 2002 @ 08:22 pm
i think, that given the ways and means, i'd be the world's best bored drunk housewife.


16 March 2003 @ 03:29 pm
i just sprayed the toes of my shoes with chalkboard spraypaint.
because i could.


22 November 2004 @ 03:28 pm
i make all these little deals with myself - like if i get this one really suck thing accomplished, then i can do this fun thing. or if i get one hard thing done, i can then get myself a nice little treat.

only i don't hold myself to these internal agreements and i feel bad not only for not holding up my end of my own bargain but also for cheating on myself. it's like i mentally sue myself for breach of contract..


25 January 2005 @ 08:47 am
i don't remember if i mentioned this or not, but for the past couple of days, i've been living with the assumed knowledge that one of my neighbors was dead and that her pets were feasting off her carcas, you know, like in clyde bruckman's final repose.


22 June 2006 @ 10:25 am
so, let's say 5 marxists and 7 poststructuralists were having a knock-down drag-out fistfight in a dark alley... who'd win? who'd run? who'd call the cops?

oh by the way, it's raining and there are some weapons like metal trashcan lids and loose bricks available. and maybe a length of chain. definitely a bag of lettuce juice. and antonio gramsci is a werewolf.

i need to know. it's vitally important!


19 April 2007 @ 06:07 pm
[i just chugged a pbr tallboy at work]


25 October 2008 @ 07:30 pm
summer songs 2, side 2, track 3
fuck! i forgot that david garza was playing tonight. here! in town! i love david garza, and even struck up a fleeting and strange little friendship with him when i first moved here, and it kinda kills me that i'll not be there. but on the other hand, i really do not like the venue where he's playing. and also, i'm in my pajamas already.







yeah, 9 years is kind of a long time.

There are scenes
There are blues
There are boots
There are shoes
There are Turks
There are fools
They're in lockers
They're in schools
They're in you.
Then there was you.

you know that book i'm always yapping about, Rodeo in Joliet? well my friend Glenn will be on KIRO 97.3 radio in seattle tonight (8pm PST aka NOW). ironically, the show is called Too Beautiful To Live. he's gonna be talking about his stupid book. which, of course, is not available for purchase right now.

you can listen to it here.
if you're not listening to it now right now right now, you can find it online later, just click the TBTL with Luke Burbank podcast link.

pete got a killer tattoo and i recognized the script and made his day by saying "i love a man in cuneiform." now i must listen to gang of 4our all day without stop.

also - lookit! my first ever record cover. check it. the music is swimmingly swell, too. i wouldn't lend an image to anything less than faboo.

umm, aside from a petty complaint about my keyboard being all sticky, that's all for now.

i've been on a kind of vacation... i took wednesday-friday offa work. wednesday there was a wedding near bremerton, thursday and friday i just kinda stayed home and did nothing, yesterday i went to a friend's house and we picked green walnuts for nocino and then went to a bout, and today i think i'm getting a cold.

there were mass rad plans for the thursday and friday, but i was having the period of doom of epic proportions and just couldn't manage to do much more than watch dresden files on hulu.



i think i will be thankfuller than most when menopause rolls around. i read some books and watched some movies and although it was really nice to not go in to work, it wasn't really feeling very vacationny, it was just.. eh. i still need an adventure.

so - at the bout i was at last night, the score had been run up by over 100 points and although the winning team was putting in less experienced jammers, their blockers were practicing the same old strategies of trapping and splitting the pack (i gotta say, it was weird seeing 3.1 still in effect, it's so out-of-mind for me now) and it was pretty damn awful. there's absolutely no reason for a point spread like that. i'm tempted to post this wikipedia entry about running up the score to places where the coaches will see. because i'm a passive aggressive jerk.


Reasons for running up the score

Some of the reasons why a team might run up the score:

• To demonstrate domination of one's opponents, and intimidate them and future opponents.
  
• To embarrass an opponent or to make a point.
  
• To demonstrate the skill of individuals who need to impress sponsors, talent scouts, etc.
  
• To increase the team's prestige.
  
• To gain an advantage where play statistics (such as points scored or point differential) are kept and used for professional advancement or as part of a tiebreaking system.
  
• To ensure a win (in which case, if the scoring is genuinely used to improve the team's chance of winning, it is not unsportsmanlike. The subjective part comes from whether or not said scoring is necessary or if the game was already decided).
  
• To improve rankings and thus a better placement in a championship picture, such as with the AP Poll and Coaches' Poll in college football—the computer ratings used in the BCS ranking formula do not measure margin of victory.
  
• Just for the sake of scoring more points.
  
• To respond to a crowd that wants a game to be a blowout or to reach a certain score.

Consequences of running up the score

The most common negative consequences of running up the score are injuries to a game's starting players, lack of experience for the non-starting players on the team, and opposing teams remembering a shellacking and plotting revenge in a future meeting.

Running up the score is considered poor sportsmanship by many fans, players, and coaches, albeit with differences in opinion on how big an insult it is. Allegations of poor sportsmanship are often brought up soon after a team scores multiple times near the end of a one-sided match.

however, the bout for the title was faboo!  completely neck-in-neck and white knuckled the whole time.  i was rooting for both teams, and each really played hard and deserved it.  that's the way it oughta be done. 

also, i really appreciate many things zipcar, but i hate the $50 price tag it adds to an evening, especially when it's one of those drive to the place, park for a few hours, drive home kind of deals.



in other news, i had a really vivid dream last night about insincere friendships and school and stuff. the nifty parts were that i made a 3-piece presentation screen for a chat about 50's teevee morals out of needlepoint and photographs, all hand-done. the shitty part was that my best friend in the dream was using our friendship/flirty budding, young romance as the basis of his multi-media presentation on how to fake a friendship. in the end, he wasn't in class for his presentation, but stood outside and watched my reaction and then said that although it was a study in applied insincerity, he really did have friendly feelings and that's why he couldn't bear to be in the room when his presentation was aired. umm, yeah.  stoopit subconscious.

there was more to it, but not all the subtleties can really fit into an lj entry, and i know nobody really wants to read about my dreams anyway, so there.  i will say, though, that there was intrigue involving 2 missing guided by voices posters and a screenprinter.  and there were performance artists. 

now this is a great customer service complaint letter

this is so wrong you don't even know.

i think i just signed on to coach another league. just for an 8-week stint, and just to get their newbies up to speed, but still... i was all set to day no, but after chatting with one of their coaching committee members and asking a buncha questions and hearing about their program, i'm thinking it'll be a good and fun thing. and i really like the limited time span.

epilogue books is going out of business and i went there after breakfast and bought $60 worth of books that i probably could have gotten at the library. but i'm sad that the business is closing and i'd rather help see the owners off with a nice chunk of change so they can maybe start something new. anyway, i got :

• a 1969 hardcover Field Guide to Western Birds, so i can be a geek and figure out who's eating at the birdfeeder. consensus so far, olive-sided flycatcher, gray jay, some chickadees, and maybe a nuthatch or two. according to the book, black-throated warblers say "zeedle zeedle zeedle zeet che!" and the hermit warbler says "sweety, sweety, sweety, chup chup!" this is gonna entertain me for far too long.
  
• Grant's Roman Myths, because it's a great companion to Edith Hamilton's Mythology.
  
• Perdito Street Station - i think i'm the only person in the world who has not read this yet. i sure hope it doesn't fall under the Christmas Story curse...
  
• Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, to keep me occupied on the bus ride to and from work. i'll have it read in 3 days.
  
• Hammett's The Maltese Falcon - i've avoided reading this one because of the movie. it's so beautifully acted - Bogart at his prime - but try to make a flowchart of the plot... can't do it. so i'm hoping the book will be better.
  
• Sayonaraville by Curt Colbert. i don't know why i picked this up; i didn't like his first book at all. the cover sure is pretty, though.
  
• some turn-of-the-century opium den and prostitute story, Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer. again, the cover was pretty, and i like opium dens.
  
• Woman in the Dark, yet another DashHam novel.

they had a bunch of cookbooks and ghpst story collections that looked good, but i've hot my casual spending limit for the next couple of weeks. i shall be staying in and reading for the next whole bunch of days. i'm cool with that.

did you know my dad went to china and they made a movie of it? i only knew the first part, and only found that out after he'd come back, the 2nd part i just came across yesterday when looking up random things on the internest. look, a youtube clip:



nobody knows why there was salsa dancing.

went to a bridal shower last night and spent $28 on one vodka tonic. this is why i hate splitting the bill. people, just get cash and pay as you go! other than that, it was lots of fun with none of the usual bridal shower shenanigans. i was a bit worried about the state of tomfoolery, because basically i do not approve, so i was mentally ready to make my excuses the very minute that the freaky cheap tinsel condom tiaras came out, but thankfully there weren't any. just a pearl necklace penis cake and a sexy show at the can-can. aerobotron is a great show, by the way - i highly recommend it.
then we played pinball at shorties. fab evening.

today i'm thinkin' breakfast at hatties - swedish pancakes, ftw! - and an afternoon of playing animal crossing and transcribing stuff about yodeling. alpine, not hillbilly.

that's all i got.

i just bought 2 shirts that are basically mumus for the new miliennia.
shoot me now.

palin just resigned.
happy birthday, 'merrica.

of a sort, anyway...

it's been 24 hours since i last had cheese. but i've been eating strawberries and cherries like there's no tomorrow. so damn fresh and tasty!

work is still fucked up and i'm tired of people asking how i'm doing. i'm doing annoyed and frustrated, and you're not helping. people need to tell their clients and vendors to stop asking for certain so-and-sos; i know it's hard and nobody wants to, but seriously, step up and be grownups about it. i'm sure it will calm down soon, but for now it's still all full of seething hate.

tonight there shall be a transcription-fest of epic proportions at my house. also, i think i'm gonna make sweet&sour non-chicken. except, fuck, i forgot to get rice at the grocery store. (confidential to dyskodyke: grocery-shopped last night - 2 weeks worth of tasty meals for under $130. including 3 hyoooge bags of birdseed to fuel the kitty teevee. still need to grab brown rice, black pepper, and some ice cream sammiches.)

have you seen the derby socks yet? you don't want to be the last one on your track to have them...

it's july and i've not done a damn thing with my summer. that's ok by me. i'm not a biker/hiker/climber-type and i really don't have anything to do outside other than get from one place to another. when i hear people talking about this whole "making the most of the day" thing, it seems like a weird compulsion. like, i must do everything there is to do right now immediately because i do not understand the idea of downtime or savoring the moment or just being calm. i must take in everything or else i will die. that kind of attitude makes me uncomfortable and i tend to see it as a sign of severe personal discomfort with one's self. armchair diagnosis por vida!
as for me - there's always tomorrow; i'm not gonna sweat it.


that rentals song, friends of p, is so damn great!

i am the hereditary mandible of the first universal church of large appliance worship.

spotted in ballard...



duct tape road repair.

i miss hanging out at the pub.

i posted this over on faceybooky, and even though it's a personal rule that i don't do any cross-format posting, i'm gonna screw my principles an' pop it here, too. it's that important.

If you've read the advance copy of Rodeo in Joliet by Glenn Rockowitz, you're lucky. If you haven't, get on it! Seriously. Haven't I talked about it enough by now?

You'll have to grab it now because the publisher wants to tame it down - way down. That's not acceptable. The new publisher insists that the current edition of Rodeo in Joliet is "too graphic and harsh for the book-buying masses."

They are insisting on a re-write to change not only the frankness of the work, but also to water down the "unorthodox nature" of the writing style. Oh please. We're grown-ups; we can handle it.

If you're a fan of the book, please sign this petition.
If you haven't read it yet, but want to, please sign this petition.
If you care about the integrity of authorship, please sign this petition.

square pegs on hulu. my afternoon is saved.

I AM THE BOREDEST OF THE BORED. right now, this minute, i'm boreder than i've ever been in my life. and i've been b.o.r.e.d. i saw both Ghandi and Reds in the theater - that's a pretty amazing feat for an 11-year old. that was nothing compared to this.

i'm trying to write up a thing for pride weekend, and am realizing that i'm really ...blah... about the whole thing. it's not that i don't want to celebrate the lives and loves of my friends and their friends and so on, but when you get down to the brass tacks, i just don't care where peeps stick their dicks, as long as it's mutually consensual and rewarding, and as far as who and what's all up in your hooter, again - i don't care so much, as long as you and all others involved are ok with it. i care that y'all are happy and healthy, but i don't need to know the deets, you know.
declaring my ambivalence kind of defeats the purpose of a whole open, celebratory acknowledgment-fest, you know.

and revealing stuff about me is kinda outta the question, too, because by default it reveals stuff about partners past adn present and that's not for me to divulge, even by association. if i mention that i like thing A, the presumption is made that the beatnik does thing A, which may or may not be true. or if i say i like to do thing B, the supposition that i do it. and that may or may not be true. i really realy really like eating cap'n crunch, but i don't do it very often. i'm not really a fan of doing laundry, but i do it all the time. i went to disneyland once because i wanted to give it a shot, and because it was important to g, but i don't care to be labeled a disneyland-goer. that kind of thing translates, you know?

that said, of there was ever a charcoal t-shirt with a black silkscreen of a walk/don't walk traffic light on it that instead said power/bottom, i'd wear it. because a power bottom "is a bottom that is capable of receiving an enormous amount of power." bonus points if it blinked.



so... just keep on keepin' on, i guess. i got yer back.

"Motivate dilate frustrate lubricate gyrate insinuate eradicate palpitate"
mark morford

i like the new camera obscura record.

i'd like to replace my office chair with a tilt-a-whirl.

" If it doesn’t make you sigh and moan and blink and squirm, it might be time to reconsider"
mark morford

ok everybody, please stop with the paul simon now.

there' was this guy - dave hart - and he was one of those guys who was quiet and wore mohair sweaters filled his room with small lamps with blue and green light bulbs and had a signed copy of his own death certificate. he was a nice guy, and once he asked me to give him handwriting lessons. anyway... i have a whole playlist called dave hart's basement experience and it's pretty good. that's how i spent my morning. it'd be better if i had access to the music trapped in my big, broken computer, but the power supply issues are still happening. and by issues, i mean the old one is out and the new one is still sealed in its box. this is not helping.

in other news, i've decided that no ladies of proper breeding and respectability listen to gallon drunk. and that's perfectly fine with me.

i need these sunglasses SO BAD IT HURTS! why do i always find these things when i have to stretch $43 over the next 9 days.



(these will do in a pinch...)

all i wanted to do was watch monster movies, but that ended up being all i didn't do.

friday night was rainy and the beatnik and i had sushi, then we had chilly dogs from Snacks and were mightily impressed with their rota-bins full of twinkies. the chilly dog is a godsend - it's not chili like chili cheese fries chili, but chilly like cold. a toasted hot dog bun filled with peanut butter and soft-serv ice cream and topped with strawberry jelly. oh hells yes.

saturday was a league meeting, so i went to that and it was long and long and long. and long. after that, we headed up to a going away party for a good friend. the theme was samurai sushi and some people came dressed as sushi. kristi, the cakebaker extraordinaire made candy sushi - swedish fish wrapped in rice krispy treats rolled together and held with a band of green laffy taffy, rolled thin.

sunday was pajama day. did some laundry, took some photos, wrote some letters, cooked some foods, wrote more postcards... gotta say, the mango chuntied coconutty milked tofu and brown rice stuff i whipped up for lunch was hella delish. the movie i watched while making it, however, was close to good, but not close enough. did you know that vampires own a corporation started by then-president garfield and al g bell? it's true.



i have this block where i just can't write down the Big Things in my head... minutiae, yes, all the intricate details of my latest adventures in animal crossing or the subtle plot points in the book i'm reading, yes. but the important stuff, not so much.

however, here's a conversational snippet that sums things up nicely:
me: i feel like i kinda didn't put enough work into it.
beatnik: in layman's terms, that's called "inspiration."
yeah. that.

the best part of From Hell is watching Johnny Depp drop laudanum into his absinthe. mmmmmmm...

100+ people in this office and nobody has tenpole tudor in the shared itunes. bah!

maybe some beastie boys will put me in the mood to be constructive. cuz seriously, right now i don't wanna do anything except nap and drink wine. not necessarily in that order.

i had dreams about robbing banks last night. me, the beatnik, dred megan, and robert deniro all had grocery bags full of fat stacks of cash. and then we set off some fire alarms and hung out with our neighbors in a park.

lookit me! i wrote a spellout!

there is a nesting pair of crows that live right by my office, and this morning their crowlet was down on the sidewalk - just walking around, not visibly hurt, but not flying either. every time a hu-mon would walk by, they'd go into full-on divebomb attack mode.

this is nothing new for them; they do this every spring and most of us who work in the area are pretty much trained to leave that corner alone this time of year. there are those, though, who don't know, and those who forget.
and i was a jerk this morning, because for about 5 minutes i stood on the safe corner and watched with glee as the crows chased them away.

i've been looking at classes i want to take, either through svc or the experimental u or random other other places, and everything i want to learn happens when i'm not available to learn it. it's kinda discouraging. i mean, i could probably teach myself krav maga via teh internest, but it wouldn't be the same.

oh, by the way, Art Brut is the best there ever was.

oh morning... i had all the best intentions of making some breakfast and packing a lunch and doing all those things that i can do to ensure that i'm not stuck gnawing on a luna bar at 10a.m. out of desperation, but... well, i was lazy. and, well, the apple cinnamon luna sunrise really isn't all that bad. i can tell myself that, and sooner or later it'll be true.

oh!

last night, we were discussing the uninterestingness of tampon size names, and we decided that a whole new naming/ranking system had to be implemented. my suggestions:

• lil bullet
  
• the big guns
  
• tss avenger
  
• fleet week

yes.

we're skipping the siff closing night gala to stay home and watch teevee. it's nice. i'm in my pajamas. i kinda want to go to the store for ice cream and a wrist brace, but i was out already today and i don't wanna do it again. when we were out, the beatnik and i stopped at the comic book store and i fell in love with all of the dc archive reissues. i need the flash set, as well as batman, the dark knight, and green lantern. now, please.

and since when was elke sommers a superhero?


yesterday was all gd picnicking in the sun and then nerding at the pinball show. here's a secret, a room full of nerds smells kinda gamey. true story. the post-pinball eavesdropped conversation at the pizzeria was about how asparagus was a hearty topping, like meat, also like male ejaculate.

anyway, today's movies include taken, the tudors (not really a movie, i know), and some dave foley vampire fluff. all hail slack.

the wrestler... was hard to watch. not for any kind of soul-searching redemptive whatever, but because the blood was making me all squeamy. that, and marisa tomei can't get old. she'll always be maggie lawton to me. or caroline the diner waitress.
plus, mickey rourke's incessant grunting and oofing was getting on my nerves.


now it's the part in armageddon where everyone's yelling and the bomb might go off, or it might not, and whoa! i've seen this movie at least 20 times, and it never gets better. and yet, i can't ever turn it off. dear michael bay, please stop.
"it's time to embrace the horror."

oop - gotta go, affleck drew the short straw.

you know, i'm not really a fan of personalized things, but i love this necklace.

kitty horfed again. i'm nervous...
hopefully it's regular horf this time, not "i'm sick" horf. sometimes it's hard to differentiate 'em. we're gonna keep a close eye on her this weekend, and hope for the best.

also, i went to everett last night, of my own free will. and drank bud light. in a sports bar.





jet city had their tryouts yesterday and a few more gals i'd coached got picked up. i think my total is 103 now, which is pretty damn sweet. a lot of ladies asked me to come back, and i think i want to... i just hate that the schedule doesn't jive very well with mine and i resent the time imposition, and i know that until i can get over that, i'm not ready to sign back on. soon, though. soon.

that said, i keep updating my drillbook and i keep reading and thinking and planning and plotting.

oh, i made pho for the first time last night. only, i didn't have hoisin sauce, so i used pickapeppa. which worked... sorta. and i thought i had skinny rice noodles, but i was wrong, and wide ones are tasty but unwieldy.

now i have three jars of tasty tasty broth left over and one of them is going in my belly tonight. yum!

i just gave the best pep talk evAr.
now i'm off to make a gifty basket.
whee!

she's eating - little bits at a time, but still. many little bits. and she's taking her pills with no fuss. and she really likes salmon. a lot. more than anything else ever ever ever ever.
she and iggy even worked together and busted into the medicine cabinet in the middle of the night to steal the freeze-dried salmon.

my friend sienna made a movie. punch! it premiered tonight, and i got to see it with the whole cast and crew.

fearnet.com says:

the tri-city herald says:

"We grew up at an amazing time in Washington state history where the ears of the nation were tuned into the Seattle Sound (grunge bands like Nirvana), and in an area saturated by classic cars and bikers."

Filming on location in his hometown seemed like a good fit for a movie that is, in essence, a battle for control of humanity, Cynik said.

"I wrote this script as a remembrance of my high school days," he said. "There were a lot of muscle cars, dirt bikes, gangs and cliques. Besides, I've always seen a battle between good and evil and control of humanity as happening in a small town, not a big city."

He adds that there is an "aggressive humor" threaded through the film.

"Toilet humor," he said. "Definitely a guy thing."

i say:

i wanna go see punch!  but i'm broke and don't like going to gory movies alone.

after a couple hours of hiding under the bed, neko came out and ate a bit of baby food.  i'm kind of horrified that babies eat that stuff - it was seriously gross.   when i was warming it up, it started gettign really stinky and i made some kinda snide comment about it to the beatnik and he was all, "babies are stupid, they don't know from good food."  true that.   but anyway, iggy was all GIMME THE BEBEH FOooooOO00000OOOooooOO00oo00ODS so i gave him a teaspoon of it on his kibble and he was all over it going nom nom nom noms.  then i went upstaris where we have neko sequestered and gave her some, too.  she was a little more hesitant about it, but took a few licks.  then she hopped up on the bed and hyperventilated for a bit, whick froke me out, but then she calmed down and slept a bit.  then i zonked out.  sometime over the night, she got out of her enclosure and wandered downstairs and poked around a bit.  then she came back upstairs and pulled off her coban bandages.  g said he caught her licking the babyfood spoon, which i'd left by her bowl because i was too tired to walk all.the.way.down.the.stairs to put it in the sink.

this morning, she had some weruva (halal and orthodox kosher, yo!) chicken food - i think it was the grandmas chicken soup flavor.  i saw peas, whole peas.  and potatoes.  and chicken.  she was into the gravy part of it and licked that right up. later, i added a bit of water to re-gravytize what was left in the bowl and tossed in some kibble for crunch and she ate bits of that, too.  she's still only eating about a tablespoon's worth of food at a time, but she's not horfing and she was scratching around in her catbox so i think things are comin' out the other end (didn't check this morning, was running late for the bus), and her mood has certainly improved.

i think whatever good the vet was going medically was kinda being undone psychologically; hopefully being home will be a good thing for her.

she's teeny tiny now -  looks kinda like skinny christina ricci - big head on a popsicle stick body.