the world has turned and left me here

the chopping of the snakes

All right this is getting weird. I keep having this recurring dream in which snakes are attacking me & I have to chop them up with a knife. Last night was the third installment. To recap:

Part I    I am running through a house infested with snakes. I have a meat cleaver, and I chop them all to bits.

Part II    I am standing on a couch, besieged by snakes. I successfully chop a few snakes up until a furry creature the size of a large dog jumps for my throat. He looks like Zool from Ghostbusters. I try to hold him off. It is a stalemate, and I wake up.

Part III    My oldest sister and I are on a beach infested with cobras. I carefully avoid them, but one climbs into her lap and starts spitting into her face. She calls to me to get her goggles. I can't find them, and run to the kitchen to get a knife instead. I can't find the knife drawer and wake up.

I'm not even afraid of snakes. (Or am I?) Anyway, my dream analyst is on it. No, seriously, I have a dream analyst. If you want I can give you her card.

three flat tires

I just finished digging my car out of the snow, futilely scraping ice off the windows, and pumping up three flat tires by hand. Looks like I'm not going to make that 1:30 class. Oh well, my triceps are bigger.

nomads

It is 1 am. It is dark & -5 degrees Fahrenheit. In spite of this I can see our neighbor across the street snow-blowing his sidewalk, and his dog jumping around in the yard like a kid that gets to stay up late. Why he just decided that now would be a good time to do this I don't know.

I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Why I decided now would be a good time to do this I don't know. The porch light behind him makes it impossible to see his face which is hidden inside the hood of a furry parka. It makes me think of this bad movie called "Nomads" that I watched at my best friend's house when I was 12. As the opening credits roll you see a black-and-white picture of a hooded eskimo. It has no face, there is just blackness where the face should be, and the camera zooms slowly up into the blackness until you are engulfed in it. I recall being scared to death.

Nameless terrors. The only kind there is, really. A hood but you have no idea what's inside it, could be something hideous, could be nothing at all. As soon as you know though there's no reason to be afraid. Why is that?

a little frog makes up for it

Dream in which my littlest sister is learning to swim. I let her go in water which is just slightly above her head and she tries, unsuccessfully, to stand in place and keep breathing. Her neck is craned with the effort. Her scrunched up face keeps breaking through the surface, then sinking back down. I am scared. I realize I've made a mistake & pull her out but feel guilty for not doing it sooner. So we go catch a little frog to make up for it.

i'll make my own way

Soon I will hit rock bottom. But you know what I am actually happy about this. And no I don't need your help.

I chose this. I chose staying here in Lincoln even though Lincoln sucks, I cast my vote against job security, I chose not to scurry from one bomb shelter to the next in life like a furry little animal: from parent's home where they take care of you--to a college dorm where they take care of you--to a big defense sector company where they take care of you--to the nursing home where they take care of you. Some people never really leave the nest man. But what must that be like in the end, knowing you were always too afraid to meet reality head on?

This is gonna be tough. I don't care. I'll make my own way, I'll make my own way.

category archives

In a probably sad & futile attempt to increase the coolness of this site, I have added category archive pages which currently list all journal entries, random musings, blog announcements, reviews, image collages, and dreams on this weblog.

If you're coming to this page for the first time start with the journal entries archive. Here you will become accustomed to the disappointment of reading through crappy entries just to find out what an interesting title meant.

compound fracture: psych

Whoah, I thought I had a compound fracture for a moment today. I was playing ultimate & had just laid out for a disc. When I got up a round bump about the size of a half dollar was bulging out of the backside of my arm. I freaked out. But after calling Dr. Mommer it was decided that nothing could be broken (soft tissue? play on!) so I got back in the game. Sorry to disappoint you all, I have no disgusting 7th grade health textbook pictures of snapped bones bursting out of pink flesh to post.

i love everyone exactly the same amount

In the liner notes for "Fake Can Be Just As Good" you will find a little scribbled picture of a man standing beside a harpsichord. Above him it says: "I love everyone exactly the same amount." He is dressed in tailcoats and his nostrils are flaring, and he is looking at you and thinking this as he plays.

I just put together a Blonde Redhead compilation disc and it is probably the greatest thing ever. Instead of giving it to Kim I should just put it in a time capsule and bury it, along with the drawing of the harpsichord player with the flared nostrils.

sonic youth jams with my washer

Yesterday my washer was perfectly in synch with a Sonic Youth song. You know how sometimes you're driving, and you look down to find your blinker is in synch with the car in front of you, only slowly you realize that they're not. It was just close enough to fool you and eventually they become 180 degrees out of phase, you're the downbeat now, and they're the backbeat.

Well this is what I expected to happen to my washer and Sonic Youth. Only it didn't. They were in synch for the duration of the song. Now what are the chances of that?

About 1 in 2500 actually. It was a four minute song and let's say the beat was twice a second. So there were about 500 total beats in the song. The phase difference at the beginning would therefore be 500 times greater by the end of the song, and suppose I would have noticed at the end if they were off by even a tenth of a second. This means the initial phase difference was less than 1/5000. Since the song could have started anywhere in the .5 second interval between washer beats, but instead randomly started in the first 1/5000th of a second interval after a washer beat, the chances of this happening are 1/2500. Man maybe I should have posted this to my other blog? Hee hee.

so this is the new year

"So this is the New Year, and I don't feel any different." If you are like me you listened to the opening track of Death Cab For Cutie's latest, "Transatlanticism," at least a half dozen times on New Years Eve in order to get yourself in the mood. Of course if you are like me & cannot ever muster the proper emotion or impress on yourself the importance of a particular event as it is happening--esp. when this is demanded of you in some sort of social situation--you were unsuccessful at that. Oh well don't sweat it. Just don't ever become a flight attendant, a funeral home director, a greeter, or any other position that requires emotional labor. Or emotions in general...

So this is the New Year. I guess I do feel a little different, finally I have met a cool girl--Kim, Jamaimer's sister--and we've been hanging out some. Well, a lot actually. She has unusual taste, cries during Bjork movies, writes her own songs and records them. I suspect she can beat me at Scrabble. (I don't know for sure because we stopped after 3 turns.) We think alike on some of the important things. Only I dunno what's gonna happen, soon she will go back to school in Nevada & then maybe next semester to Berklee in Boston. And I will be who knows where: Seattle? D.C.? California?

So here's a dilemma I've been in before. You know, even though it didn't turn out the way I wanted to last time, I wouldn't have done things any differently. I met a person who changed me for the better & that was worth it. But at the same time it's not very realistic of me & as maybe you know reality has been my obsession for the last year, so maybe this time I should just stop being such a dreamy doofus. Or maybe I should stop being so indecisive. Maybe.

feats of heroism

Among other Christmas activities, the family went to see the Arch. I thought I'd include a few choice pictures of Ed who mostly slept through the ordeal but occasionally was awake enough to perform these amazing feats of heroism.

The Arch starts to lean. Dormant Ed suddenly springs into action, putting all his weight into it. Please note the heroic hair. Zoom in if you have to, it is definitely worth your time. This picture will appear on the front cover of "Edlas Shrugged."

Ah now this is a classic Arch picture. I don't want to detract from the magic or anything, but I would just like to draw your attention to the heroic photoshop job I did here, note esp. the right hand which actually seems to grip the Arch. Thank you.