06.30.04


the neighbors' parrot is back today, sassier than ever and a bit...pudgy? you can tell me that this is a hearty replacement parrot, that the original really was brutalized by midtown pigeon gangs and left for dead, but i won't believe you.


the best thing about the infinite cat project, aside from having an excuse to stare at cats staring at cats staring at cats, would have to be the said cats' names. 'cutter bean'?

06.27.04


our neighbors have (had?) a spunky green parrot. his half-a-cage was fixed to their window like an air conditioner; we both spent a lot of time peoplewatching and dropping things on the sidewalk. i'd whistle at him, he'd braap at me - it was a nice arrangement. i fear he didn't weather the thunderstorm on friday night very well - the cage is on its side, the window sill is covered with poop, and one green feather is stuck in the fire escape. i hope new york is kind to feral parrots.


jason forrest's the unrelenting songs of the 1979 post disco crash is not for the faint of heart, but the first listen was a good one; given my traditional fear of electronica, that's saying something. imagine, say, a biker bar jukebox becoming sentient and galloping off to pick a fight with the sushi bar next door. it's kind of like that.

06.25.04


Q: what do you call a fat goth?
A: vampire the buffet slayer.


courtesy of The Man, i saw madonna's show at madison square garden on wednesday. she's more spectacle than musician, of course, but she's one of the more effective spectacles i've seen. after a few hours of 'heavy hors d'oeuvres' and open bar + the skanky champagne and strawberries they sell on the arena floor, i found myself shouting that is TRUE! during "express yourself." in fact, it was.


the faustian transaction was that said hors d'oeuvres were secretly full of chicken. hell if i know what that tastes like - i haven't eaten it for more than ten years. so a little bit of my soul died when i realized the meatless egg rolls just weren't. sadly, punk rock vomiting hasn't been hip since college.

06.17.04


though i strongly dislike david lodge (nice work, read for a class in england, was basically elizabeth gaskell's north and south as written by david sedaris [also strongly disliked]) and have traumatic memories of henry james, i'm all over the british museum is falling down, DL's novel on HJ's life. anyone read it?

06.14.04


so slowness was my first encounter with milan kundera, as it was $1.50 at one of the stops on our thrift store circuit and, hey, french instead of czech! which is not to say that i read it in french, but i found that exciting. blurbed as his "lightest novel," it may not be the gateway to a big kundera adventure - paul claims to have issues with him, and something he, paul, considers problematic would hand me my ass halfway through the first chapter - but i would have it known that i quite enjoyed the genital descriptions. they are as if - the gentle narrator from gogol's dead souls drained the bile from the evil cocks in naked lunch. does that make sense? look, it's not scary at all:

The penetration did not take place. It did not take place because Vincent's member is as small as a wilted wild strawberry, as a great-grandmother's thimble.


Why is it so small?


I put that question directly to Vincent's member and frankly, astonished, it replies: "And why shouldn't I be small? I saw no need to get big! Believe me, the idea didn't really occur to me! I was not alerted. Vincent and I both watched that odd run of hers around the pool, I was eager to see what would happen next! It was a lot of fun! Now you're going to accuse Vincent of impotence! Excuse me! That would lay a terrific burden of guilt on me, and it would be unfair, because we live in perfect harmony, he and I, and I swear to you, we've never let each other down! I've always been proud of him and he of me!


The member was telling the truth.

if someone demystified nipples thus, i'd be able to tackle the whole western canon and go to nude beaches.

06.12.04


behold emeril's artichoke and spinach dip recipe. i have little or no faith in him as a rule, but this stuff was good - even in my talentless hands. the secrets are lots of cayenne, extra cheese, and saving some to re-heat the next day.


my little cacti-in-jars project is tootling along nicely. i found three species that are spiky enough to scare the cats away, and a weird little succulent that scares all of us away - a living stone, also known as 'that fucked up plant from invasion of the body snatchers.' part of me hopes it will die before it flowers.

06.10.04


thursday is a weekend night for me, too - no thanks to The Gipper, but because The Corporation granted me a free friday in june. i feel no need to contemplate reagan in exchange for sleeping in tomorrow. as a liberal hailing from orange county, the ronnie-est county in the country (really, check the voting records), though - and as a jelly belly enthusiast (have you ever strolled through a presidential portrait gallery made entirely of candy?) - i'll admit that i'm hankering for closure.


good riddance to bad rubbish.

06.08.04


liz smith on becks today:

What is on the cover [of Vanity Fair], this person called "David Beckham"? Horrid, dark pictures of a half-naked man covered with hideous tattoos, grim, foreboding and to what point? Is it the point stated by the British soccer star himself, that he "woke up one day, and I'd been voted the gay style icon of the year or whatever." Well, "whatever" is more like it, since I think most gay men have better taste. Maybe I'm just sick of half-nude people covered in tasteless ink with diamond studs in their ears!

this, mind you, several paragraphs after she praised whitney houston for her levelheadedness. reading the gossips for work: awesome.

06.04.04


donating blood was stupendous:


1) i was the only volunteer in my department, so everyone else looked like selfish pussies,
2) i've finally caught up with my donating cat (sorry about that, man),
3) the passive accomplishment is immediately and immensely gratifying - good job, veins! and
4) eating junk food in an RV while the people on either side of me passed out was kinda like being on road rules. yeow.


i've decided that breedster ("ingestion, defecation and fornication") is not for me. the premise - creating social networks by role-playing a little bug and mating with strangers - is fine, but once one has a few offspring and makes pictures on the grid with poop, there's little more to be done. worse, a rampant STD put a stop to everyone's breeding (thought i could avoid it by only mating with virgins - i'm very upset), so no invitations for new players. the bright spot in all of this was lukas's demonstration that he can be as two-dimensionally sleazy as he is via anecdotes: i gave life to both him and sara, and darn it if they didn't make incestuous bug-love with each other. well played, you appalachian rogues.


in its stead i give you the kingdom of loathing ("an adventurer is you!"), an old-school parody of medieval role-playing fun. i think it's what would happen if you threw 1000 blank white cards in your bag with a fat deck of magic: the gathering cards and they had a malevolent baby. my character is an accordion thief named vim; come play, and we'll start a clan with a plan.

06.03.04


apologies, dear readers: in executing my diabolical plan to cut george tenet out of the CIA, i managed to destroy The Corporation's laptop and doom my home computing. i should have a new one by this weekend, and then i will rock and roll.