Life: Narcotized
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Liam's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, August 9th, 2009 | | 9:15 pm |
| | Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | | 7:32 pm |
Let's Have Some Fun This Beat Is Sick, I Wanna Maybe Get Coffee With You Sometime?
This is my new website where I talk about music and I think you might like it. thepirateslut.wordpress.com Fun Fact: If you google "The Pirate Slut" (with quotes), the first picture of what I think was someone's pirate-themed backyard party. The second picture? A tiny photo of a sad looking man in a gray suit, sitting on a bench. Fun Fact #2: Pistachios can EXPLODE. | | Thursday, June 4th, 2009 | | 10:10 pm |
From The Vaults
Upon a crawl through my old notebooks in search of golden literary nuggets for the novel, I chanced upon a bunch of old poems. Many of them were terrible. A few were all right. This one, circa 2005, in particular I was pleasantly surprised by. And I present it to y'all. IOWA CITY The air is like toast. Houses got their own history, you know? That one’s owner died last week, ‘s why he’s got newspapers studding his lawn. Troughs of cement trap dirt. Someone scratched 100% hemp Work Bites on a day where wet pavement begged for it. You see the nylon inflateable Pooh bear? Strapped down to the house with the new baby? 9lbs, 3oz. Mommie quit smoking, left her empty pack on the lawn. Houses break into Friends Meeting Houses Staple-choked signposts, music in the past week Exploded yard sales. Zach talks of Yakuza field trips. “How can you ‘stop rape’?” I ask the spraypaint on the mailbox. If you want to see some crazy shit, check the bricks Under our toes, raised red letters blur from capitol to purington. Building invite us to enter. Watch us come back here tomorrow, black suit and tie, dark glasses, same shit Talking into the tape recording, freaking people out. “Sleepy neighborhood.” “Good soil composition.” “I’ve been spotted! Kill the girl, kill the girl!” Also, to cap out this entry: My mother, in relating her opinion of the the movie Revolutionary Road to my father, said the following regarding an actress in the movie, who happens to be the daughter of an old family friend: "Yeah, she was good. She showed her boobs. I don't think she's anorexic anymore." | | Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | | 2:10 am |
what a lame week with a wonderful shiny nice ending. this week I had 4 women cancel or reschedule plans with me, a bigarse paper to which I gave manbirth, some sobering CW commentary, and various self-analysis bullshit. Which is to say I was a lame-o and concentrated too much on delusions of badness instead of the good stuff which was: continuing good impressions given and gotten in African American Lit, finishing my paper, listening to good music, eating chocolate-covered bacon, hanging out with A&A to fantastically fun bourbonny effect, meeting nice pretty people on the 10th floor, walking around the Fi Di and listening to U2's latest (which is very fun, album and experience both) and eating well, living under a roof, having friends and technology and a big beautiful world out there. Now if only I could make a date that was kept, that'd be some darn fun icing on the life cake. Sigh. sisterpsychosis.wordpress.com | | Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | | 12:35 am |
"I'm not the one whose responsibility it was not to abandon you. So just get over it, please." -Nate
Today began like many of the other sluggish, wasted days of the past few months. I woke up at noon, drank a few mugs of thick coffee, and listened to a nearly decade-old radio show. Toast, orange, shower. Music, television, internet. Everything was going really well, relative that is to my usual workless rut, and then Garrett was here, back from the sunny west coast. He walked in to our room, and was all "Who wants to come see Central Park in the snow?" He was greeted, predictably, with sort of a curdled enthusiasm; "Oh wow, that sounds good...but...somuchwork" or "Wish I could...but...I've-got-shit-to-do". Then something sort of clicked or popped in my head, whatever active verb best describes a spontaneous jump from my usual locked groove into a unfamiliar parallel one; I said "you know, sure, I'll come along" and I zipped myself into my winter gear, topped off with my down vest that makes my torso look like a glossy black egg. We walked to the front door of the building, and just outside it met two of Garrett's friends, also from California, one an NYU freshman, one a Pratt. After three to four hours I had 1) made a small snowman, albeit one with stick-supported arms 2) Engaged in a snowball fight on what I'm pretty sure was the same rock formation I climbed on roughly a year and a half earlier, my brain beginning to sizzle in the sun/psilocybin 3) Promised to wholeheartedly convert from cooking beef to cooking TVP 4) drank a small bowl of DIY hot chocolate and eaten an absurdly expensive muffin 5) Made a snow angel with the other three members of my party, which was arranged as one fourth of a symmetrical snow-symbol that ended up looking "sort of like the Wu-Tang W" 6) Met a cute Pratt freshman who may or may not be the same woman I have dated since 2005 7) Bought some Baileys with mint in it that was promptly put in coffee ...not in that order. Tomorrow begins classes. In an attempt to not relive last semester, I will work out more, eat less shit, have more (figurative) guts, speak more plainly, get a job, publish a magazine, make a movie, know myself, know others, leave my dorm every day, are you still reading this list if so comment saying the word flanksteak, get more sleep, write more words, eat less beef, listen to the radio every day, have more time, waste less of it, and most importantly I (TRUNCATED DUE TO THE NEED FOR ME TO SET HEALTHY BUT ALSO MORE REALISTIC GOALS, HERE ENDETH THE LESSON) Because life is just too damn short. | | Monday, January 12th, 2009 | | 9:09 pm |
Psychotropics and Self-Awareness pt. 172
1 hot toddy = 1 shot whiskey + 1 quarter lemon (squeezed) + enough honey to cover the bottom of the mug + six whole cloves + hot water. 1 bottle Jameson Irish Whiskey (around 30.00 US) = 750 mL smooooooth whiskey. 1 shot (or "jigger") = around 44.4 mL. 1 5-day week of casual work at Sterling Memorial Library = 37.5 billable hours, 8:30-5:00 each day, with an unpaid lunchbreak from 12-1. Optimal time to wake up on work days, allowing time for ablutions, food, and getting to the bus stop in time for the 7:35 AM bus: 6:50 AM. Previous average time to wake up during non-work weeks: 1 PM (following getting into bed at 3:00 or 4:00 AM.) 4 hot toddies, mixed both to facilitate getting to sleep on time despite a sorely skewed circadian rhythm and to best figure out the ratio of ingredients to provide maximum good flavor: around 177.6 mL of Jameson Irish Whiskey. Round that up with a glass of whiskey with ice, sipped during the surprisingly frustrating process of sorting and sending out writing submissions: around 250 mL all told. Time since purchasing of whiskey and last consumption of it: 9 days. So this morning before I have the chance to wrap my head around a cup of coffee my mother kindly offers to dry-dock my whiskey here at home in the liquor cabinet while I'm at school. "That's a lot of whiskey, you don't have to drink it before you leave," she says, casting a skeptical eye my way. "I noticed that half of it's gone. You've got a lot of alcoholics in your family...your grandfather would drink almost a whole bottle of scotch every night." Skeptical eye, detached tone, the same way she reminds me about open-container laws and where we keep the lettuce. Last night, or rather much earlier this morning, I finished shuffling through my slush pile, ambled downstairs, and slipped out the door. The snow was light and fluffy but it had melted a little bit the night before, so there was a crust of ice that was thick enough to look pretty but not to support much weight. Every footstep crunched like I was a Bradley tank in boots, and every footprint was all jagged ice, craterlike. Does anyone know why on snowy nights the sky is so bright? Maybe it's just where I live. I wandered out past the Christmas trees, and lit up. Because my gloves are fingerless but thumbfull, I kept having to spark the lighter with my pointer because a wind-blown flame would melt the fabric on the thumb. Still, everything worked out correctly. I continued onto the cornfield, and noticed a bright white light in the trees out beyond the northeast corner of the field. So in the usual cannabinoidly peripatetic way, I wandered to what looked like the center of the field, put in my earphones, and listened to a Wilco album that I had not yet heard. The light was set solidly back in the woods, far enough so that it hinted at maybe a deck it was mounted to. Maybe the trees had been cleared away and the stumps ground out of the earth in my absence, giving way to flat dirt and eventual plumbing and stud construction; or maybe it was just an illusion, or it was just a remarkably clear night and a light from my elementary school was visible through the bare branches. I walked until my feet hit icy scrub plants, and then I decided to turn around. As I did, the music in my ears shifted in tempo, and I walked in lazy ellipses, staring at the dust-hued sky, shaded irregularly with the gradients of a fresh bruise. It was really freaking pretty. The cold wasn't so bad, either, and this bud was some good shit. I got a little paranoid, seeing as how all this time I had been walking north-northeast and had done an abrupt aboutface, and who knows? Maybe someone is behind me, I wouldn't know. And that's how that guy got the jump on Mia Zapata, too. But that fear faded pretty quickly. As I got closer to the Christmas trees, I couldn't help but bust out a few dance moves (I don't remember which song it was, maybe Spiders?) but that took up a minute or two. I did the same thing in the driveway when I trudged back onto our property. Thinking to myself both times, "If I saw a mysterious figure dressed in black at 2:30 in the morning, dancing either in my driveway or way the hell out in the cornfield, I don't know WHAT I'd do." That scared me surprisingly lots; I imagined seeing myself out my window, cabbage-patching in the shadows, and the sheer weirdness of that image and how I would react upon seeing it mixed with the simple grooving-to-the-music lack of thinking, and made the whole experience sort of a wash. Then I went inside and made nachos without salsa. | | Sunday, January 11th, 2009 | | 8:49 pm |
Unmade Bed
Put your player on shuffle and hit the 'Next' button to get your answer to every question. You must indicate the title and artist, no matter how far-fetched it sounds. No cheating. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? - "Bring The Light" by The Smashing Pumpkins (...really?) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? - "Master Of Puppets" by Metallica as covered by Apocalyptica (creepy) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? - "Stop The Clocks (Version 2)" by Oasis (i guess i do like to live in the moment...sort of.) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? - "It's Your Turn" by The Who WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN? - "Fenix Funk 5" by Aphex Twin (uh, not so much) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE? - "#215: Ask An Expert" episode of This American Life (i guess i like a complicated person) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY? - "To Shiela" by The Smashing Pumpkins WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? - "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Otis Redding (well, with any luck...though that is frustratingly ambiguous) WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU? - "Breast In A Moonbeam" by Jandek (the fuck?) WHAT SONG WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING? - "Love Bomb" by N.E.R.D. (how nice) WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL? - "Get Back" by The Beatles as covered by Billy Preston (sort of an ashes-to-ashes thing i guess) WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST? - "Sydney's Work Walk" by Jon Brion and Michael Penn WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET? - "Horn" by Nick Drake (how unsettling) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS? - "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" by Sufjan Stevens (maybe this only applies to my NYU friends) WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN? - "Tears Of Joy" by Tuck and Patti (...?) HOW WILL YOU DIE? - "Knocks Me Off My Feet" by Stevie Wonder (bus accident? electrocution? freak crane disaster? barfight with Mike Tyson?) WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET? - "The Watcher's Mass Pt. 1" by Peccatum - (weird, dark religious past that I've blocked out?) WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH? - "Trani" by Kings Of Leon (sort of a funny song) WHAT MAKES YOU CRY? - "Karma Tsunami" by Fishbone WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST? - "Science vs. Romance" by Rilo Kiley (kind of poetic, huh?) IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE? - "Sedate" by Groove Collective WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW? - "Coma" by Muse WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS? - "Unmade Bed" by Sonic Youth | | Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | | 2:23 am |
| | Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | | 12:03 am |
DEAR READING PUBLIC AFTER 48 HOURS OF LABOR, I AM STARTING TO GIVE UP IN REGARDS TO GIVING BIRTH TO THIS ESSAY SO WHAT IF IT'S A LITTLE SKIMPY, GREAT THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES MAYBE IF I FINISH PUSHING IT OUT TOMORROW, IT'LL COME EASIER YEAH THAT'S ALL I NEED, IS A BREAK BUT WAIT, IF I TAKE A BREAK THEN I'LL JUST BE BACK HERE IN 24 HRS PLUS I WAS GONNA SPEND TOMORROW NIGHT CLEANING ALL THE LINGUSTIC GUNK OFF IT MAYBE CIRCUMCISE SOME EXCESSIVE QUOTATIONS GODDAMNIT, 17TH CENTURY LIT CLASS YOU KNOCKED ME UP YOU PUT THIS THING INSIDE ME YOU BETTER TREAT IT RIGHT WHEN IT'S FINALLY BORN PUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHRGGRGRGRRH RGRGAGAHGAHGRGHRGHRGHA | | Sunday, November 16th, 2008 | | 12:52 am |
"A Shot in the Arm" (Tweedy, Bennett, Stirratt) – 4:19
Today, today, today. Where to begin about today? Let's begin at the beginning. There are dreams which are so close to your solitary waking reality that it causes something like brain friction when you finally wake up. For instance, I had one thing on my mind as I fell asleep, aside from the wandering mosquito that ended up dotting my hand twice as I slept. That thing was: Be At Think Coffee At Noon. I even Sharpied it on the back of my hand; the ink of the letters seeped into the tiny lines in my skin so the words "NOON @ THINK" looked charmingly fuzzy. Be At Think Coffee At Noon. BE AT THINK COFFEE AT NOON. I stamped it deep in my mind and drifted into REM sleep, and as I tossed and turned around 10 the next morning, my stream o' (un)consciousness SP LIT in two and I was having a pleasant dream involving a leisurely morning spent, coffee with serious muscle in it, a shower to blast and boil the dirt and oil, and thinking on the regular that "it's 10:00, remember to go to Think at 12"...""it's 10:30, remember to go to Think at 12"...soft hugging comforter and mmmm, what a nice morning, and I'm certain to be on time! ...while sleeping. This is a uniquely annoying phenomenon, especially if you're compulsively on time like I am. It's the closest that I come to entering a parallel universe. It's like a really short, bad soap opera involving an "it's just been a dream!" conclusion to a storyline. So I roust myself at 11 and sort of have to urge my mind around until it fits with my head, like finding a wall stud to nail shelving into. It's a unpleasant process, especially when it's actually an especially interesting dream like the one about being locked in an opera house with the rest of the audience, in 19th century Moscow, but being the only one allowed to leave, along with someone who looks curiously like a girl I remember from summer camp a few years back cocky and unavailable then but now with you in 19th century Moscow running from a locked opera house down the snow-covered streets, and she's wearing a purple fur stole. And you say to her "Julia?" and she goes "Yeah" and you say "What're you doing here?" and she says "I dunno" and you say "Wait, why are you here? You go to Sarah Lawrence" and she goes "Truth" and you think wait just a dream FUCK SHIT DAMMIT awake now shower clothes go to class eat your meals do your homework fall asleep repeat. And I drank a cup of espresso-spiked drop coffee that must have had time-release Adderall in the cup's lining because I was a dynamo of taped flyers (NYU bookstore has one!), listened music, walked meters, watched West Wing, eaten dinner with Sally/Co. ,accomplished put-a-good-deed-in the-deed-ether with a phone call to our grandfather, watched/listened concert, and read Into The Great Wide Open, a book that you should all crack open before you die (or before reading is replaced by some higher-technology, more shiny way of absorbing text). And now I watch my newborn inbox and wait for it to start growing... Current Music: Rain-Press | | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | | 9:28 pm |
It Feels Like I'm Getting Rabbit Punched And Ibuprofen Doesn't Make A Dent
I learned today that another valuable point of perspective is my advisor in the English department. Too bad he's going on leave next semester. Not too much to say today. I taped a sign above my bed that says "YOU SHOULD BE WORKING HARDER". I got the idea from a Kevin Bacon movie. Of course, in the movie he ends up turning invisible and becoming a rapist and murderer. Hm. I'll have to think on this. Comment! Tell me something interesting! A witty anecdote! An odd animal! Come on, people out there in LiveJournal Land! Be excited! Yeah! Hooray for everything! | | Friday, November 7th, 2008 | | 2:26 pm |
Concert Brew and Coffee Jitters
What I remember is... the seltzer that I bought through the bulletproof window on 123rd st was so cold there was a little colony of ice chips floating in it. I spent my last two singles on it. Once it was gone, I tossed the bottle in a trash can. Around the Apollo, they began cordoning off the street once a skirmish flared up between cop and populace. A man was being handled into a cruiser by a ring of ten officers, ringed themselves by nearly twice as many citizens craning their cameras and camcorders over each other, all trying to become the next George Holliday. Soon after, bright Kraft-orange plastic fences were rolled out, stretched tight, and walked down the street by a solemn line of boys in blue. By then we were gone, though, back to 123rd to shout Temptations songs from a wet, spongy-tarred roof. Actually, that was just me. That none of us did a Brodie off the edge is a fortunate and chance-y state of affairs. the seat I was in was #28, Row M. Ewan Bremner and a blonde sat three rows up. The frontman moseyed onstage wearing a wedding dress and an Incan headpiece, singing a Searchers tune. Two-some hours later he was wringing a series of impossible squalls from a guitar mashed against a tympani drum. The crowd watched, reacting on a continuum of bemusement to hostility. Personally, my lumbar region was aching. The encore was like Sesame Street done by, well, William Corgan. There were six kazoos, an accordion, and we were all promised that we'd be seen in hell by his truly. As we streamed out of the theater and down into the subway, the emergency doors got opened and the less lawful members of the crowd scuttled through. "Does this always happen after shows?" I asked. She nodded yes. The MTA workers watched us impassively, as they might view an ant war, cheating our way into an extra 2 bucks. the blue-and-red comforter was wrapped around me like a thick warm homemade tortilla, and I woke up feeling a viscera-depth refreshment. the question is: if a=amount of poor-quality vodka, b=an empty water bottle, and c=amount of mixer, and a+c+b=sweating screaming laughing singing muscle-through of tonight's show mashed against a brusing up-front barrier, and .7a=c, then what will c actually be (nonquantitively)? I'm thinking...grapefruit juice. Yeah... Current Music: concrete SAWWWWWWW outside my win-dow | | Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | | 2:05 am |
How many of you say "I could care less" habitually, and mean it? Seriously, I'm curious.
I can't sleep. My mind's aglow with ideas. Part of this is due to my recent indulgence in four episodes of the first season of The West Wing; I justify staying up late to watch them by reminding myself of Tuesday's importance, and then I get so caught up in Sorkinian stychomythia that it's two in the morning and I'm staring up at the ceiling wondering what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. Thankfully, I already know the answer to that particular dilemma. Step 1: Sleep. Step 2: Wake up at 8:45. Step 3: Drink a few mugs of coffee. Step 4 (performed concurrently with step 3): Write for 30 solid minutes. Step 6: (performed concurrently with the preceding two steps) Eat a bowl or two of raisin bran, because the milk's gonna go bad soon. Step 5: Go to class. Step 6: Leave class, walk to library, return book, try to find old boss to say hello, leave library, go to KMart, buy new earphones, go to the 3rd North computer lab, print my assignment for Tuesday's sociology class, leave computer lab, return to room. (That last one may or may not end up including a grabbed sandwich in no particular allotted place.) One tenth of the month will be interred in 21-some hours. I can chalk my relative inactivity up to party/recovery as justifiably allocated to the Halloween festivities, but when it comes down to it, there is only one good reason to be sitting in front of my computer when I should rather be muscling my way towards sleep. Technically, this entry is not that reason. Neither is idealized basic-cable depictions of government as told by a self-absorbed overintellectual control freak erstwhile cocaine addict but, it beats feeling my eyes adjust to the dark while my brain grabs at half-truths and sketched-out ideas and tries to turn them into deep self-exploration. Seriously, persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. I'm going to throw myself at my pillow now and look forward to the sweet too-short dreamless. Current Music: Wind in the Pillows | | Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 | | 1:29 am |
Jane Bainter Never Had A Boyfriend Named Sergio
So imagine it's your last day at the factory job. And your middle and ring fingertips get lopped off. And a few years later, you're the guitarist in a rock band. And your fingers hurt when you play, even with the custom-made prosthetic fingertips you've made out of melted plastic soap bottles. So you downtune your guitar, easing up tension in the strings, to make it easier on your damaged digits. And this music, sludgy and dark, drops a stone in the musical pond and sends out ripples of influence to this day. And imagine you're a young, talented shredder, it's the early 90s and you've put out a few speed metal albums and you've just joined the band of a former frontman gone solo. And your doctor tells you that the motor nerves in your body are dissolving. Your hands go weak. You lower the gauge of your strings, but it's too late. Eventually all you can move is your eyes. Imagine you walk down the street on a lilac-lit, breezy autumn day. You run into your creative writing professor. You talk gibberish. You part ways. I'm past the proverbial hump. My midterms, finished; my presentation, accomplished (albeit stumblingly); my experimental mixture of THC and cardiovascular exercise, mixed (elliptical machine works the best), a significant chunk of footage for the documentary, laid to tape. However, my accomplishments as of this afternoon have been lax. Tomorrow, however, shall be devoted to coffee-stoked writing. I look at The Rules every time I sit at my desk; every time I move my Moleskine book, I remember The Goals. Both lists are pretty straightforward. I give myself these orders because it's not enough to reconcile my id-tendencies with structure, but I must improve them, shape and polish and hone them down, make my routine a series of iron-hard stiletto paths of productivity. Optimally. In practice, I shall keep busy and let the shambling, scruffy bits of me out for a run around the emotional paddock as much as I need to. I can slacken or thin the strings, or I can redefine what it means to hold the instrument. And soon I'll be ripping Maggot Brain in my weaker moments. (Metaphors can extend about as far as an unsupported tape measure, apparently, and with the same outcome.) Current Music: saved daylight | | Monday, October 27th, 2008 | | 8:09 pm |
Jogging and Accutane Work Wonders, You Know
Television is plentiful, especially to those with the knowhow and recklessness to download it illegally. And in my unconscious, good television is usually divided into two categories: shows that are well-made, like HBO programming, Veronica Mars, British shows, etc...and then there are shows that are junk but to which I am hooked, for either A) Reasons like "it used to be good, but then it got middling" (like, say, Heroes, Lost, or even Prison Break to an extent), or B) It's trashy and who gives a shit, like Gossip Girl, or Dawson's Creek, or Alias. You can all basically skip to this paragraph right here, because it's more readable and interesting than the last one. My point is that I started watching a lot more television around sophomore year. I got REALLY entrenched this summer, and with my glut of free time this semester, it's continued, albeit to a lesser extent. As a result, I've read fewer books, and written less. It's not that I've lost my appetite for print, I've just gotten really entranced with television. Railing against television's effect on the youth or society in general, its "narcotizing effects" and other supposed evils, tends to miss out on the little golden pocket of television that's both artistically relevant AND able to hook in the average viewer through whatever compelling or pleasing aspects it has. And for the life of me, I've been trying to sift through the morass of junk to find these shows. Then, I watch them, delete them from my computer, and go on to live my life. But the problem with television is that it's like cheese. Say, for instance, that I decided to really investigate what "good cheese" was. I would probably try as much cheese as I could, figuring out which ones both tasted good and could really become my favorites. Anything from Kraft singles to weapons-grade Parmesan to home-made honeyed chevre to whatever. And I'd probably enjoy most of the cheese because hey, let's face it, cheese is good. Sometimes you just can't stomach more than a smear of some cheeses but at least you tried them. And eventually, I become a connoisseur of cheese, can speak about it to other cheese buffs, or even just pull out random facts or thoughts about the cheeses during casual conversation. It's a specialized but well-wrought cultural capital and it's ALL MINE. But the problem is that I wake up one day with severe vitamin deficiencies, morbid obesity, acid reflux, intestinal flora of every make and model (some of which don't like each other), and the knowledge that I'd wasted my time letting myself get immersed in one little sliver, one degree of the world. However, the transition from cheese to fruit, and then vegetables, and then full meals (meat/fish with corresponding vino) is relatively easy to make. And thankfully, watching one's healthy allotment of TV while reading books, savoring podcasts, catching movies, scribbling stories, and most importantly enjoying the sublime company of you fine people, is a suitable analogue to such a transition. "This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal-wood and tobacco, or whatever other species of animal exhilaration." Six out of eight ain't bad! Current Music: Rollerskate skinny and the terrible twos | | Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | | 8:27 pm |
There Is Only One Metallica Song With A Piano In It
Tonight, while shooting the breeze with my roommate and suitemate, I realized my truly profound lack of plans for Friday night, i.e. Halloween. Who wants to do something with me? This question comes with the following clauses: 1) Any plans I form between now and then can include as many people as is feasible, so if I end up finding an attractive enough party, then come along! 2) Worse comes to worst, I will end up watching The Crow and falling asleep. So thankfully, I will have good plans regardless of what happens (assuming my computer does not die of a consumptive disease before Friday). 3) I will strongly attempt to have an acceptable costume this year, as opposed to last. 4) I definitely do not want this to come across as a desperate plea for your Halloween-plans inclusion. I kicked that habit in tenth grade. Thank you. It's an unfortunate thing to not be conscious enough of one's repeated themes or habits, both because it's ignorant but also because it then becomes difficult to change or break them when such a thing becomes necessary. However, one can't become too proud of and complacent with their changes or breaks in routine/habit, because they then too become ossified sets of actions that replace their predecessors. I understand that to live a completely random, infinitely varied existence is impractical (for instance, I would be unable to attend regular classes or keep to any sort of healthy diet or exercise routine and eventually, die bloated and unable to perform scansion), but it's worrisome to acknowledge that my attempts to be self-aware, productive, and in a state of healthy growth can be unconsciously undermined to varying extents. For instance: My many options in my free time include visiting the dozens of places of historical, commercial, or aesthetic interest around this fair city. My free time is mostly concentrated on the days of Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In practice, my free (i.e. non-homework) time is spent, on the aggregate, watching archived television and/or drinking coffee. I began the school year believing that by choosing to not work part-time, I would have greater opportunity to nurture my nascent literary magazine concept. I instead have sensed that in fact, my free time is not extensive enough, my inspiration not strong enough, my idea not feasible enough, and my window of opportunity is gradually shrinking. This is, thankfully, all lies. Observe the following series of steps: 1) Stop watching so much television when your time would be objectively better spent writing/reading/scheming. 2) Congratulations! You have achieved Productive Level +1! Now, approach your friendly if somewhat eccentric creative writing teacher, and pitch her your general idea. 3) After doing so, be sure to acknowledge your limits, while at the same time not allowing yourself any more self-doubt than is necessary. 4) Spread the word about your idea to whomever might be interested. 5) Gather a list of email contacts of those interested, and as soon as possible, begin production. This is all part of my impending (i.e. by the end of this entry) resolution. While a lot of what I've written in this entry has to do with relatively huger concepts than simply my mental status at this current moment, exciting future plot arcs and developments etc., there is indeed a Livejournal-specific question I wish to make, which is: HEY ALL YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE IN LIVEJOURNAL LAND, what is your favorite part of the Livejournal reading experience? What do you look forward to when you survey your friends page? What about Livejournal usually gets you toasty in the cockles area? And, for perspective, what do you particularly not dig about it? Talk, discuss, confront, whatever. I will have formed my literary magazine to as much of an extent as I possibly can by Dec. 1st, 2008. | | 2:04 am |
Word Of The Day (courtesy of this week's Pushing Daisies)
Propinquity: In social science, the physical or psychological proximity between people which enables them to form interpersonal relationships. (It can be generally defined as just "kinship" or "closeness", but I like this more-specific definition more.) | | Saturday, October 25th, 2008 | | 2:10 am |
"Excited Delirium"
When I was very young, my father or maybe my mother made a joke about the cause of my father's partial deafness, implying that I'd screamed in his bad ear as a baby and blown out the inner equipment. This wasn't true, but I ended up somehow absorbing it as gospel, and until the middle of high school I had the continuous knowledge that I'd made my dad half deaf. It wasn't even a relief to hear that I'd been wrong, there was just a general exhaustion. Like "Okay, that's done. What's next?" When I was seventeen, my girlfriend at the time had bright red hair that she had dyed herself. She was fourteen, and lived about a ten-minute car ride from me. It was my first year of driving, and I drove a seventeen or eighteen-year-old Volkswagon Golf. It was standard transmission and had a loud engine that you could hear down the block. I drove to see her a few times per week, sometimes lying to my parents about staying after school, sometimes not. They were suspicious of her; the age gap, her proto-burnout exterior, and the folded directions from a brand-new box of Durex that my father had found in my room only served to compound this. My parents had left me alone at home for a few hours, and I planned on picking up my girlfriend and spending time alone with her. She needed to use the shower, and hadn't had time at her house, so I let her use ours. So when I got back from eventually driving her home, I realized two things; there was a patina of red hair dye in our shower/bath, and a large smeared dye stain on my light blue pillowcase. The bathtub I scrubbed like mad; the pillowcase, I removed and wadded up in the corner of my closet, replacing it with a green one. Eventually, I ended up burying the pillowcase in the backyard, under some sagging pine trees on a slow, unproductive Saturday morning. When I was 20, a girl in my creative writing workshop asked me during a Thursday night happy hour, "Why do you always write female main characters?" I answered as best I could, but I still wasn't sure myself. There's a weird quality to this medium of expression. I have my "Friends" page on a bookmarked link, and it's the first thing I check after my Yahoo! email. Sometimes people who don't post too often will write something, that's a high point of each particular time I click the link. Some people's entries I find myself reading over and over again, until I become self-conscious apropos of nothing, and some people's entries are either too cryptic or depressing for me to stomach at certain times of the day. In the morning is a good time; I'm riding the coffee and still not at full capacity, so I crave any stimuli to get the day started. Late at night, entries tend to either be filler, or sometimes, when I'm lucky, they're the kind of entries that people write ONLY at night; lonely or revelatory or sad or drunk, but either way, the feeling behind them is something undeniable. I've tended not to write anything on mine to any great extent lately, because I know the people who read it and I know that there's nothing they don't know that I can really write down to make the time they spend reading it worth more than, say, surfing YouTube. And it's a curious position to be in, as I am now, wanting to write something but not knowing what, or particularly why. Maybe it's 2:30 and I'm still awake, with some TV to knock me out but not anything compelling. And I've also got to be sure not to do the things I know make the Livejournal reading experience painful (to me at least). It's nothing different than how I try to put myself across, ideally; dwell on depressing issues only to the extent that it expresses something vital and perhaps works to resolve said issues, say enough but not too much, accurately portray my mental state overall as opposed to moments of particular emotional high/low, and above all, remain interesting. For instance: Mamihlapinatapai: A Tierro Del Fuegan word expressing "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start". Chinese Democracy is here. The reason for the lengths of lines outside female bathrooms remains a mystery, and perhaps I don't want to know it. But really, I think I'm writing this not for any sort of big reason, but just that I'm lonely. And before you put those tiny bows to the world's smallest violas, know that I don't mean that as a way of living. I have enough love for everyone who deserves it, and there are many, and no problem expressing it. I do not spend time alone when I do not want to. I do not intentionally avoid the people who make the day sweeter. I don't stew in a marinade of discontent and unfulfillment. ("Unfulfillment", by the way, is apparently not a word according to the red squiggle of pixels that pops up underneath it like a grammatical keloid.) And I'm not lonely by nature. But, at times, I find myself staring into this white screen and wishing that it wasn't my computer staring back at me, waiting for prompting. Nothing too adventurous. When you're lonely, you want to send out as many tendrils as you can. And yet part of you is fascinated with the whole state of affairs; can I hold out, you think? Can I beat the wave? Will I resort to cannibalism like that rugby team? Will it crack open a part of me, some self-knowledge or memory previously unrevealed, like peeling the yellow skin back to find a wealth of pomegranate seeds underneath? Well it never lasts so long as to give it any significance. I feel tired in my fingers, lean back to watch an episode of something, and then BAM come the myoclonic jerks and the sandbag eyelids and I'm off to reset myself for the coming day. So it's an entirely repetitive, yet totally unpredictable, state of experiences. Barack Obama: Grammy winner, watcher of The Wire. John McCain: SNL host, cameoed in Wedding Crashers, can't raise his arms. My roommate clicks his tongue in his sleep, sometimes in a lingual flurry so fast that it sounds violent. With all that in mind, and the lack of any of you on the various electronic networks, and a clear conscious realization that any lonely messages sent out by any means will become embarrassing or overly cute in hindsight, this is my entry, written mostly to satisfy productive impulse and avoid creative occlusion. The best thing about loneliness is that it reminds you exactly how heart-splitting special others can be, even (and sometimes especially) if they don't know it and I don't have the mettle to admit it. Yes, indeed, when the day ends on an emotional high note regardless of its reason for being, it makes the morning after easier, the sleep more deep and velvety, and a soft-focus filter on every memory I'll have about tonight and its surrounding environs. It is "a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our own." And I know this because of a two-days-gone midterm. And it has the added value of being true. Best, Liam Current Music: internal combustion engine | | Friday, October 17th, 2008 | | 2:10 pm |
Salute Of The Day/Word of the Day
Salute to "Chuck", the most consistently likable show that I have the current pleasure to watch. Word Of the Day: "Monad": Any basic metaphysical entity, esp. having an autonomous life. (There are variations in what this word means in a philosophical sense; Leibniz, Pythagoreans, Bruno, they all have their own say. I heard about this word when it was used as the surname of the titular character in "John From Cincinnati".) For instance: "To live as a monad, one must not be a slave to his gonads." | | Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | | 11:45 pm |
Okay, okay, hold on...
Jay Mcinerney's novel "Story Of My Life", from the 1980s, which I enjoy immensely, is not only based on the life of a real girl whose horse was actually killed for insurance money, but is the SAME PERSON who had an affair with John Edwards during his recent campaign? Damn. Sequel! SEQUEL!!!! |
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