Saturday, October 12, 2002

So That's What It's Like!

I've never done needle drugs. I flat out refuse to even try heroin, and I don't think anybody does morphine or the old ten per cent. cocaine, a la Sherlock Holmes, these days.
Having never been in the hospital, I've only had needle in veins taking out blood when I go to the Red Cross. What I did today was tecnhically selling plasma, not whole blood. They drew out the whole blood, spun it around to remove the thrombocytes (big word for today! = red blood cells) then reinjected the blood cells. At the very end, to help rehydrate me, the pumped in a saline solution. Man, it was cold. It felt so weird going up my veins. I wondered if that's what it like when you first inject yourself.

Feeling all swell, I went to the record store for the first time in six or seven weeks. I couldn't/didn't buy anything, but I did see Bob, the owner. I was disappointed not to see Neil, the Recordshop Boy (but wait, there's more!*). I nosed around, not seeing new Reindeer Section or Irving. Or Snow Patrol or Les Hommes. They did have The Mercury Program, which is tonal RPM/jazz of the same stripe as Les Hommes, and something I'm into right now, as I am with electronica in general.
I also saw If You're Feeling Sinister on vinyl. Wow, oh Wow! I said as much to Bob. Well, I say, said, it was really more of an ill-disguised orgasmic moan.
Bob cocked his head to one side and said that he was surprised I didn't already have it. "I mean, of all people in Chapel Hill not to have it..."
I just sort of stared at it in frustrated desire for a long time.
I did notice the Dr. Who named bands... Dalek (quite popular now, and just did a show hereabouts... I think I mentioned seeing their flyer), from the Daleks, the little pepper shaker-shaped pots o' evil that have plagued the Doctor since the second episode in 1963, and progenitors of a Beatle-level craze in 1960s Britian (Yes, really. It was called Dakemania) and Sutekh. Sutekh is much more obscure, and was the all-powerful god trapped on Mars in The Pyramids of Mars, probably my favourite ever story. They play hardcore electonica.

*As I was driving home after CD Alley, I was singing very loudly to 'Heart of Glass.' My car's air conditioning doesn't work, so my window was down. At a stoplight, I heard somebody sniggering. It was Neil on his way to work. And man, he knew exactly who I was.
No attempt to even try to play it cool then.

BWWBR fell asleep last night looking up a number in the phone book. Literally. The phone in one hand, the book in his lap, he just passed out. It was quite funny. I thought about waking him up, but decided against it.
He did, however, know all the words to "Judy and the Dream of Horses."
Wow. I'm not even going to comment on that.

Friday, October 11, 2002

Sex is like blood...

My friend Nat, met on the street: *sees arm bandage* "Did you give blood today, man?"
me: "Man, why would I give it away when they pay cash money for that shit?"
Nat: *walks away, smiling* "You too much man, too damn much."

In other news, I got the last $20 to pay this mont's rent.
The End of the Affair

Today was on-air training, part two. It went well. I fell in love with a group called Irving. Their disk is on black list, which means it's less than three months old. They're five sing-songerwriters formed into one group, so each track is quite different the others. Which I quite like. The one song I really like was "Did I Ever Tell You I'm in Love with Your Girlfriend?"
I mean, how twee? No wonder I went all weak in the knees.

I went to the pawn shop today. I got rid of this massive, ancient tv ($8, by the by), my rapier and my dagger. I was very, very upset to lose that rapier. It was quite beautifully made. The value was all sentimental -- I bought and used it for my job at the Elizabeth II, where I was very, very happy. I loved the way it was utterly useless and beuatiful and anachronistic. A bit symbolic of me, I think. They wouldn't take my broadsword, so I've still got that.
And yes, I know how sad and pathetic having a sword is, let alone mourning one. But I had legitmate reason for having them, I was jusk a geek.
*Sighs*

Random Rant

I saw something today that got my dander up.
It was some show on MTV about coming out. (I suppose it should be Coming Out, really, as it apparently iis a huge event) And yes, I know I shouldn't watch MTV, especially their pseudo-reality/pseudo-documentaries.
Anyway, Some schmo was babbling about the Mormons. Apparently the Mormons don't take kindly to the 'Mos.
This guy went under reprogramming by his church. At one point, they were showing him slides of gay porn while administering electric shocks.
He's still gay, but has very attractive scars on his chest, stomach and arms. He can't go to church and his family can't ever talk to him again.
I'm sure Jesus would be proud. As he tends to be reticent these days on most issues (death tends to do this in most people), I don't find fault with him.
But, dude! this is a church! A great, honking church with lots of members. Does nobody have a conscience?
Bad Church! Bad church!

Thursday, October 10, 2002

It never gets any better

I went in today to check on my new job. They gace me 20 bucks and told me not to come back.
"Ah cahn't puut mah fingre on eet, mais you dohn't seem raht for heer."
I managed to leave quite friendly and gracefully, but I was thinking dark thoughts about Agincourt and Crecy and how much I love the play Henry V.
I hate the French.

In other news, my radio show went relatively poorly as well. The 5 am girl didn't show up, so my show lasted till 7 am.
Actually, that wasn't too bad the last two hours were a lot better. The talk sets were (relatively) smoother and there was actual feel to the sets (one new rock, one jazzy). I feel much more confident now and ready for on-air training, two. It's tomorrow 12 pm to 2 pm. Listen in, since it's a reasonable hour. That's www.wxdu.org/listen.
The highlight of the day was meeting Aruni. Well, for me, anyway. She, decidedly tolerantly, listened to me babble for an hour. Her attempt to quite me with tea failed. She was quie a charming hostess.

I can't wait for Friday so I can drink.

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

It's 1 am. Do you know where your Ocelot is?

It is *such* nap time in the hovel.
My roommate has fallen asleep on the Curiously Comfortable Couch with the Wonder Ocelot, tail warming his nose, at his feet.
I can't decide is it's picturesque or cutesy.
You'll notice niether 'sublime' nor 'beautiful' is a choice.*

Nothing much happened today. I go tomorrow to the sketch job to demand, umm, work, as I've not been back in a week now.

My show is tonight, 3 to 5 am (EST: -5 GMT), listen here. Make requests. (Especially Les Hommes).
Listen up. dudes.

*Obscure Art Historical/Romantic Literature joke.

I'm in the middle of reading both The Wide Window and Nalda Said. Literally, in both books.
No Dr. Who today either.
Word of the Day: haver -- Scottish people don't flirt (apparently). They haver.
Llaura Llew rocks today because: She helps the elderly. You should, too. It makes up for my slack in the department. It's quite a shame that she doesn't at all resemble Boss Hogg (it's two 'g's, yo, Llew) cause' man, that would be a great duo with me as a televangelist.
I have thu paaar!
An' thu Sp'irt!
Amen!

Monday, October 07, 2002

What does it all mean?

No, not more self-indulgent existential moaning.
But a dream. This dream:

I'm at my parents house, which seeme to be inundated with people. I'm talking on the phone (oddly, it's my own cordless purple one) to Laura Llew (also oddly). I go downstairs, thinking it will be quieter. There's a terrible storm out, and I ask Laura, "Has lightening ever run in on your phone before?"
Consequently, there is a great peal and an explosion as lightening presumably runs in on her phone. Even more oddly, I look out the window to see Bonnie Langford, a red-haired British actress (and former Dr Who companion) eating in the neighbor's house. I run over to stop her, and see the table is set for three and that she has started in alone. As I try to drag her out, a large black pig tries to jump up on me to get to the food (I remember brussels sprouts particularly). Its feet (trotters, I think they're called) hurt and scratch my leg.
At this point I wake up.
Anaylze *that* folks. Like most one-off dreams, I'm not sure I want to know what it means, but it may shed light to you, O Gentle Reader, on my own madness.
I'm Popular with the Opposite Sex

i am open-minded!




How indie are you?
test by ridethefader

You're pretty knowledgeable about music in general. You like indie music, sure, but that's only part of it.
You'll listen to any old shit as long as it sounds good to you. You're not snobby about music at all, you
just like what you like. How boring. Curiously, this makes you popular with the opposite sex.


I question the accuracy of this test on several levels.
Did he get tired or did he just get lazy?

Yeah, I know. Philosophical introspection at the hands of the Eagles?
I heard this line from 'Lyin' Eyes' flipping through radio channels today. It impinged itself on my consciousness in an odd way, worming through my thoughts. Echoing.

Whether driven by that same vibe or through fate, I picked up an old copy of Dracula I've got. I'd probably not spared it a thought in several years. It's on the bottom of my book shelf, behind a stack of Indie CDs that always catch my eye when it wonders there, The Smiths or Moldy Peaches or Rock-A-Teens...

Today, though, I picked up the book. I was vaguely surprised to find a few odd keepsakes in it: it had been a gift to me from the director of the last play I was in, Long Day's Journey into Night. There was a program, a card and the dedication Eric K had written.

It was loaded, basically, with a complex design of regret and irony.
The most immediate was from the sender. I've mentioned Eric several times, but never by name. Regardless of what could have been written, anything in his hand is enough to give me pause.

There was a card from Chris, too. He was to play my little brother in the film, but he got mono (glandular fever, for the Brits) and dropped out two days before we opened. It's worth noting that I, umm, got it as well during the run of the show. His being was quite the fiasco, even before he quit. He was younger than the rest of us and had never lived on his own before and didn't know what to do with himself when he got sick. I remember he passed out one night when we were all out. He was broke, couldn't afford any medicine. I could.
He stayed in my room that night.

Odd, really. That all my sins should be known to all, but my acts of... kindness... my heart carries alone.

Between these two, that this was the millieu I lived in during that show, isn't surprising. O'Neil's play is all about the murk in between the stanchions. All about clearing it up. Harrowing, in the most literal since.

It makes me think of Faulkner (Eric doted on Faulkner and I'm sure he saw this connexion even then), of As I Lay Dying. When you break everything down, when nothing's left, when the heath is utterly blasted, you can start anew. Simple and unadorned. Naked.
The irony folds up from there, intermixes with it.
It all seemed quite simple then, what I felt and what I did. Not that it really was. The pressures of that moment are removed by the exgencies of today.
And now I stand here, far away, emotionally and experientially if not physically. Wisdom, I think, is a sophistry, a religious ideal that tries to make something simple that never was. Parallax and perspective. An electron's speed and path. Past and future.
They're all an illusion we use to try to understand the world.

And somewhere in all that, add the actual words that Eric wrote, telling me I'd be the one to make it. I'd break through because I had what it took to deal with the darkness of the world.
I haven't. All those years of praise and prophecy have come to this...
Tired or Lazy? Success or apathy?
"Words, words, words..."

The ideas are there, the hope.

I'll end with words from Mary Wallstonecraft, a little-known travel book she wrote called Letters from Norway. But the book is so much more than her account of the North.
For what it's worth, I included the same words to introduce a production of The Glass Menagerie, a long time ago:

What a long time it requires to know ourselves, and yet almost everyone has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own, even to himself. I cannot immediately determine whether I ought to rejoice at having turned over in this solidtude a new page in the history of my own heart, though I may venture to assure you that a further acquitance with mankind only tends to increase my respect for your judgement , and esteem for your character.

Letters from Norway, Letter 9, 1796.

Sunday, October 06, 2002

So I spent money today I really shouldn't have. I got a pizza and saw a movie.
The pizza was so good. It's been months, quite literally, since I had one. Over the course of the evening, I've eaten the whole thing.
I also saw Red Dragon. It's been longer since I've seen a film. I used to watch one a week without fail. It was the first luxury to go. I quite liked it, as well. Not to much to say about the film per se. It was a thriller, and written, if not superbly, then quite adequately for the genre. Anthony Hopkins was great, though, and Ed Norton was, well, Ed Norton, harried and shuffling but driven as he always seems to be. Tobey Maguire should play his son or little brother.

The film made be think of evil. There's an old philosophical chestnut that says that if evil exists in the universe that it proves that god is not simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent and all good.
There should be a word like onmebenevolent. (And yes, it should be with an 'e' since you're putting omnis in an ablative use).
When bad things happen to good people, it means:
a) god doesn't know about it (and is not omniscient)
b) god can't do anything about it (and is not omnipotent)
c) god doesn't care (and is not all good).
So god isn't the christian ideal.
Well, it's something to think about. Since I don't believe in god anyway, it's a moot point, but an excellent mental exercise.

I think it's also worth noting that part of the film is set in Marathon, Fla. Marathon is in the Florida Keys, nearer to Key Largo (cue Sara Vaughn) than Key West. It was the closest town (about 15 mi) from the state park where I spent the Millenium with some friends.
The thinking went, if Y2K did strike, we might as well be somewhere decent as we reverted to primitivism. Unfortunately, the world didn't end, so we came back. Not, I might add, without some honest debate about staying on, painting sea shells for tourists and eating hot dogs for a living.
If I had only known I'd be eating weiners anyway, I'd have stayed there, and you, gentle reader, would be reading this on ponded strips on palm bark written with a burnt stick.
Such are the vagarities of fate.

Red Dragon, which seems to be the focal point of this entry, featured people who were lonely. This, of course, made me lonely. Not that I have any intentions of hurting anybody else, but it is weird to think what other people really think of you. Burden of society, really, to never know what somebody else thinks but to live with its effects. Do people think I'm some loner ready to crack and let lose the wrath of God, interpreted by yours truly?
Me, I'm just a pretenious person. I'm not a loner (I talk way too much for that) but a dude with the odd inadequacy issues. As I've said, I know my faults.
Number one on the list: I've given up hope for a decent date, so I'll settle for a good, solid shag.
Yep. I'll take up a collection so as I can afford a rent boy.
Give here.

I have another interview at the grocery store tomorrow. I'll need two jobs to make back to the surface.