July 30, 2005

damaged appearances

Another drunken rich chick doing a stupid thing story. (Hmm...should I start a category for this?) We were at Minnie's last night when a carload of drunken Belltown girls pulls off one of the most amazing parallel parking jobs I've ever seen...almost, that is.

She had at most two feet to work with, and was actually in the spot, but just kept on going & nailed the car behind her. The girls look around furtively. Unfortunately for them they're right in front of a bank of diner windows--it's like trying to get away with something in front of Hopper's Nighthawks. We're laughing our heads off at them. The chick in the front seat sees us, covers her face in embarassment and makes a phone call...the usual way of escaping uncomfortable situations these days I guess.

Undeterred, the driver does the forward-back-forward Austin Powers thing in the stall, and hits the car *again*. Our laughing escalates & they have the full attention of the whole smoking section now. Up until this point I think they were planning on coming inside. Now even the chick in the back seat who had been trying to communicate something to me covers her face, and they get out of there as fast as they can.

As we left, we checked--there was no damage to the car. Just damaged appearances.

Posted by Alan at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

majestic hunk of concrete

Tonight I got to see a drawbridge on Puget Sound in action. The first time this enormous concrete structure swiveled open, perpendicular to the road, to allow a barge of comparable enormity pass through, I watched in awe from my bike. What a majestic hunk of concrete.

An hour's worth of majestic concrete hunk swivelings later the awe had somewhat...uh...faded. Hunger, hunger took its place.

Posted by Alan at 03:37 AM | Comments (2)

July 25, 2005

max headroom

I just whacked off all my shaggy dog hair & dyed it platinum blonde, because black was already taken by the 10 million other hipsters here on Capitol Hill. So now I look like Max Headroom.

"Hey k-k-kids, it's cool to stut-t-t-ter. P-p-pepsi b-b-blows!"

Posted by Alan at 12:45 AM | Comments (1)

July 22, 2005

moldy-tongued girl

Dream in which I am in love with a girl with a moldy tongue. Still, I love her just the same.

Posted by Alan at 04:46 PM | Comments (3)

July 19, 2005

the mudslide

Dream in a which a raging mudslide sweeps through the valley below us. After it retreats, we begin to debate the change that has come over the landscape. I contend that nothing has changed. My mother, who is a small house to my right, maintains the opposite. She falls silent & I can tell she is very upset with me.

Posted by Alan at 11:18 AM | Comments (4)

climbing up the walls

Dream in which an enormous spindly spider creeps down the wall toward me. Even in the near darkness of the room I can detect its metallic sheen. "It was forged in the extreme cold of pre-fork Time," the voice tells me.

Posted by Alan at 11:12 AM | Comments (2)

July 04, 2005

blowing up things

When I was 15, I was asked by the Inquiring Photographer at the Rolla Daily News what I'd be doing for my 4th of July. "Blowing up things," was my response. Mom & Dad were mortified when my smiling mug appeared in the paper with this caption, next to pictures of other decent upstanding citizens with far more boring answers.

So what will I be doing this 4th of July?

  • Listening to Ives' Variations on America. A huge bitonal sea monster emerges midway and bellyflops into the shrieking audience. "Use your ears like men," Ives roars from behind the organ.
  • Writing some code to do matrix inversion. For the last month I've been torturing myself in my free time with the intersection of 3 spheres problem, which is behind GPS & other cool things. Finally think I've got it...check out maelstrom in a few days.
  • The standard thing. Skyrockets at night...
Posted by Alan at 05:17 PM | Comments (5)