I've gone three friggin' days without a single blog entry. Argh.
Anyway, there's very little to talk about. Even though I've been listening to it for several weeks now via the miracle of MP3 piracy, the new U2 album continues to delight, amaze, and all those other neat verbs. If you've ever liked a single song this band has done, pick this album up. Trust me.
I redesigned, obviously. Despite the seeming simplicity of it, it took me most of those three days to get right. I am, how you say, really goddamn dumb. Hope it doesn't offend you on some primal level, and if it does, let me know. It's probably worth noting that the color scheme and a faint suggestion of the visual motifs are shamelessly lifted from the design of Brian Wood's astonishingly brilliant graphic novel CHANNEL ZERO, available now through AIT/plaNETlar.
And, in one of those "to be continued" stories I know all you soap-opera-junkies are so fond of, I ended up not going down to Times Square after all; I slept too late. I did catch the performance on TV, though, and instantly wished to cut my wrists for my folly. But life, as they say, goes on.
Oh yes. And I hope you all had a happy Halloween yesterday, you Satan-worshipping scum.
Late as always in linking to it, but Meg has started something interesting: The Mayfly Project. It challenges you to summarize the last year of your life in twenty words or less (taking its cue from the four-word summation of a mayfly's life: Born, Eat, Shag, Die). It's remarkably cathartic, and helps you get your thoughts in order about all the ridiculous shit you have and have not done recently...
I'm living in Hell, apparently. The pack o'fools living on my floor have kicked off some kind of Bacchanalian orgy outside in the hall; I'll have to wade through six feet of drunk/stoned moron in order to go get dinner. Which I am not willing to do, even though I am wearing my steel-toed boots and could, theoretically, liquify them all individually. The worst part? They've formed an absolutely horrible impromptu punk band. A punk band that plays nothing but pop and Broadway covers.
Oh yes. Hell.
In any event, in order to pass the time I've taken to designing useless promo flyers for actual comics and fictitious films. I am, indeed, aware that this is both sick and sad in equal proportion. However, I'm still unjustifiably proud of these pathetic pieces of crap, so look for a gallery sometime in the near future...
Apparently, I'm un-American and non-Democratic. I was supposed to send my absentee ballot in today (I voted Gore. I wanted to vote Nader. Before you kill me, I'll explain. But later). But since this is the Grand Weekend Of Sleep-Schedule Reorganization (which explains why I'm awake, and blogging, at 6 AM; I got up at 5 PM today), I woke up too late and am therefore put in the position of (a.) paying some eyebrow-cocking sum of money (I think it might be $12) to get my ballot overnighted to Florida, or (b.) abandoning the Democratic process and watching another swing state fall into the hands of the most incompetent presidential candidate in the nation's history (Thanks to Mark and his guest-crew for the link). Aaaaaargh.
I realized today that this page has been without a title since the redesign. I feel so... naked. So I've instituted the newly case-sensitive title policy. I'm proud of myself; I'm sure you're ashamed of me.
And speaking of shame, don't hold your breath waiting for that gallery of promo material mentioned last blog. By the harsh light of day (well, OK, early evening), I realized that they are in fact ridiculously amateurish. Kiss that one goodbye.
Finally: I've been listening to a bunch of Afghan Whigs MP3s. What a cool band.
I am so very addicted to the election coverage, it's sick. I know it's ridiculous and biased and non-representative -- CNN had to reverse their attribution of Florida (home sweet home) from Gore to uncallable, for God's sake -- but I need some kind of hit.
If Bush wins Florida, I am going to be... cross. I think I'll demand my $11.75 back. I voted Gore because I knew FL would be a serious swing state, and I couldn't conscience a Nader vote in such a hotly contested territory... I'll be pissed if my compromise was all for naught.
Dammit. I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out Blogger. Perhaps I'm just a complete moron, and I'll readily acknowledge that I'm an amateur at best when it comes to HTML, but I cannot figure out how to use the damn thing at ALL. I can't customize my template to save my life. I'm going to have to go check the code on blogs that use Blogger successfully -- should've done that in the first place, really -- but I've got Virginia Woolf to read and a short paper to write and I was really hoping to get more than a single hour of sleep tonight.
These hassles, coupled with the agonizing wait to find out if The Great Satan is soon to be led by Satan himself, are putting me in a very foul mood.
Last night I had one of those nights, when your brain sees it fit to wait for a time at which you are most stressed and then gently but firmly remind you of everything that you hate about yourself and the world.
I'd been skipping along in a mood of blissful semi-ignorance for a good month or so, just happy to be in NYC, happy to be alive. Then, when all this election bullshit went down and I began to fail miserably at my efforts to figure out various aspects of web design (which is something I'm currently feeling irrationally passionate and interested in despite -- because of? -- my complete and utter inability to do it), I just started to get cranky. And then I got introspective. And then I realized that I've got very few actual skills; that I haven't even begun to accomplish any of the goals I'd outlined for myself (get into shape, obtain useful knowledge, cut down on buying worthless crap); and that I'm really largely ignorant about things I either think I know about or wish that I did.
Of course I was swamped in homework at the time, and this sort of funk is murder on the old work ethic. So I had THAT added stress, coupled with the bullshit stresses of the aforementioned "election" and Web failures, and I really became quite glum for some two hours. This almost never happens to me; stress rarely overtakes me to a level where I cannot function.
As of this morning (nine hours of sleep last night after roughly four in the two previous days probably helped a lot), these feelings/frustrations are all still present, but they're not inspiring the same level of self- and planetary-loathing. Which is actually probably an even worse thing, because now there's nothing driving me to improvement. God DAMN it.
Well, riotous huzzahs for the longest blog so far. More coming tonight as I attempt to break my inexcusably shameful one-entry-per-two-days pattern.
In related news, I've removed my first week of entries from the page. An archive is coming soon, once I just sit down, shut up, and make one.
My final thought on the matter: Repeat the whole damn election. Screw any complaints of "bias," because at this point, any and all actions we take will be biased. It can't be helped.
And let's ditch the electoral college while we're at it too, eh?
Well, there's obviously been a shameful lack of entries around here for a while; I've been cavorting with various and sundry friends for the last few days so I've stayed blessedly away from the computer. Did you guys know that there's a real, actual planet out there? I'd forgotten totally!
In the meantime, here's a link to the famous unused WATCHMEN film script, by BATMAN's Samm Hamm, courtesy of the beautiful Darren Shrubsole at LinkMachineGo. It's a blog named after the INVISIBLES, so you know you should love it.
What a good weekend. Much consumption of assorted media, foods, cityscapes, etc. Hung out with a friend from high school, which is generally always cool; saw CHICAGO on Broadway (with Jasmine Guy from A DIFFERENT WORLD! She's *extremely talented*!!! Did you have any idea?) and HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (Pretty funny, really, but I don't need to see it again); ate at a cool Mexican place in the Village and at a favored deli in the theatre district; walked all over the city, through places I rarely go and places I just plain haven't been to. Enjoyable experiences all.
I particularly enjoyed watching people perform again, even if it was in the ultimate corporate-theatre-love/hate zone of Broadway. Theatre had completely vanished from my life since I came to college, and the last thing I'd seen was really pretty atrocious (Andrew Lloyd Webber's WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND while on vacation in London this summer). So seeing something enjoyable (God bless Kander & Ebb) really reminded me what I was missing. Planning to start seeing a lot more theatre in the coming months, and to seek out auditions again...
Finally, I'm back. My next blog should hopefully update you on the things in my life that kept me away from the blog (the redesign was one of them, obviously), but in the meantime, here's a selection from last week's travelogue. Hope it's readable.
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What is it about airports that always forces me to be so poetic? There's always been that perception of an aura of romance about these damn places -- the beginning or end of a voyage, tearful reunions and goodbyes, etc. etc. That's a perception I've picked up from books and movies; experience had nothing to do with it. While I've uttered the odd teary "au revoir" in many different airports, and stopped over in them on the way to many fabulous destinations, nothing that's changed my life has ever happened in or because of an airport. Apparently that doesn't matter. This romantic notion is rattling around in my head all the same and I can't stop thinking about it.
What's currently stirring this introspective fever? Boredom, of course: the greatest lyricist of our time. I'm sitting in the JetBlue terminal of JFK in New York. It's Wednesday morning, and I'm on my way home to see my family and friends in Florida (alliteration! Aaaaagh!). I walked right out of the dorm and caught a cab instantly, which was the last thing I expected to have happen, so I ended up with another hour tacked onto my already cushy two-hour airport wait. I put on the U2 album (they're in an airport on the cover, I'm in an airport now, and that's all the excuse I need to listen to U2, really) and settled down to some serious people watching.
Ah, people watching. That great voyeuristic tradition. When my friend Len visited this last weekend, we talked briefly about what living in New York was doing for my writing. Unfortunately, I had to answer "not much" -- I haven't written for pleasure since I got here. I'm always in class, working on something for class, or, if I have downtime, either foraging out into the city for cheap thrills or completely squandering away my time by farting about on the Net. I haven't simply sat down and put words to paper / electrons to Word document in months. But the subject of the "writer's eye" came up in our discussion, and it forced me to realize that I'm always using it -- always mentally accounting in words for the places, sights, experiences, people I see on the streets -- even if it never comes out to anything useful. That smacked some sense back into my lazy brain; so this time, when I ended up with down-time on my hands, I opted to go ahead and get a mental workout.
So. What have I seen? The indistinguishable shuffle of commuters is, of course, a gold mine of subjects for anyone willing to be presumptuous and cocky enough to describe people they don't know. Presumptuousness and ego are two of my most outstanding qualities, though, so I got down to work. As I sat in the food court eating my apocalyptically overpriced croissant sandwich, there was a guy from Brooklyn in his late 20s to my right, drinking a Coke and absent-mindedly playing with his straw, and a father-son team to my left in which the son, who looked to be about 40, babbled ad-nauseum to his father about his money market, the people he brokers for, and the way all the other countries in the world are laughing at us over the presidential election, with a peculiar I-only-saw-one-news-report-though-I'm-not-manly-enough-to-admit-it focus on Germany. Once breakfast was finished, I situated myself in a seat opposite a quartet of free-internet-access booths. I will admit to having tried, in vain, to get one of them fired up; apparently only two of them were actually switched on and functioning. As time rolled on, I watched with no small amount of amusement as a shifting trickle of men, women, and children essayed heroically to get the damn things working. The old (sixties, seventies?) bickering couple were probably the most fun to watch; they'd managed to grab a hold of one of the functioning units, but the wife was clearly not at all interested in it, and she in fact ended up plunked down in one of the regular non-hardwired chairs a ways away, shooting dirty Luddite looks at her husband, who was clearly a big fan of Ye Olde New Media (as they finally pulled up camp and headed for their gate, he'd planted his cell phone on the side of his head and was jabbering away to God knows who). Also of note was the father who entertained his rambunctious, hyperactive son and daughter with one of the units, surfing what sounded like Disney websites, before sending them off to run around the terminal at high speeds and smash into various sharp objects while he checked his stocks.
The JetBlue terminal itself is a curious double-backed beast. The first terminal, which connects to the street, is all modern: glass and steel and pale marble and sunshine, sunshine, sunshine. But a short trip over a pedestrian causeway and bam, you're in the original mid-70s terminal tastefully upholstered in red high-traction plastic with nine-foot acoustical-tile ceilings. The JetBlue people, who are all about blue skies and the aforementioned sunshine, sunshine, sunshine, did manage to knock a few skylights in, but they don't do terribly much to change the pre-remodel-Tomorrowland ambience. Why JetBLUE allowed their terminal to be RED is a mystery to me; perhaps after they'd finished spending money on nouveau-sensitive and semi-ironic voice-mail message which advises you to think of being on hold as "quality time," they'd run out of decorating cash.
OK, so: this is the new design. I rather like it. Note the presence of the Archives (sorry they're so poorly formatted; I'll soon be fixing 'em) and an About Me section, which -- yes! -- includes pictures of me. Finally, something new to put above your bed to look at as you fall asleep.
On Wednesday the 22nd, I joined the millions of other Americans blocking the arteries of our nation's airports in order to travel home for Thanksgiving; in this case, back to Florida. I had an excellent time -- maybe too good. I actually started getting depressed about returning to New York and dealing with the cold and eating off the meal plan and all that jazz.
Part of the problem was with seeing all my friends again. It was quite strange, precisely in that it was not strange at all. I mean, it's only been three months. Very little had changed. Everyone was more or less as I'd left them, which creeped me out, mainly because it forced me to wonder if the same had held true for me. I'd thought that I'd changed a lot -- not in an I'm-too-good-for-this-place way, though -- but everyone responded to me in exactly the same way as before. One of my friends, however, who is acclaimed far and wide for her rather random observations on the nature of things, commented that I had a look of "cool, detached experience" about me, which shocked the hell out of me. I attributed it more to her conceptions about life in New York than anything else, but it still weighed on me. In one sense, it's very appealling and romanticized and makes me think I could put on black skintight vinyl and wraparound sunglasses and go kick some ass; but in another sense, it kind of dehumanizes me and turns me into some kind of war veteran. How much did I want to change? It forced me to realize that just because I was slightly more knowledgeable, competent, and experienced, I truly wasn't fundamentally different. Which is sure to realign your perspective, or perhaps simply align it properly.
But yes: everything was the same back home. We watched crappy movies and laughed at them. We told each other of music to listen to. We pondered the future of the Drama League, our primary social unifier (even though, really, I'm no longer a member). But underlying it all was the frightening assumption that even if things are as usual now, they certainly won't be next year. Most of my friends back home are now high school seniors; when they go off to college, the tenuous threads of connection that hold them to each other and me will be severed completely. That comfortable common social ground is going to be lost. I don't know what they think about it, but it scares the hell out of me, because I've got very few close friends and I can't afford to lose any.
Complicating matters are my relationships with my friends from my own class, some of whom I saw and some of whom I didn't. One in particular I spent a particularly nice evening with, that I think did me a lot of good in banishing my fears that we'd started to drift apart. One of them I only had time to grab dinner with, but as she'd already been gone to college for a year we'd grown comfortable with the idea of dealing with separation, so there was no awkwardness (we'd seen each other two months earlier, also). One of them I didn't call, and she now thinks I'm the Antichrist. At this point, I'm almost willing to let that be; I'm getting increasingly tired of the grand operatics that follow on almost every interaction we have. If she's reading, I'm not afraid to say that to her: I'm just getting tired of the drama.
And speaking of drama, this is quickly turning into a soap opera. Suffice it to say that the whirlwind five days I spent at home kept me very far from any mental state in which I could blog.
Upon returning, I was instantly dumped into the furor surrounding scheduling for next semester, which was a bitch and a half to sort out, and I was forced to write the first draft of a major paper on Virginia Woolf for Writing Workshop. It turned out crap. As I write this, I should be working on a second draft -- due in seven hours -- but I can't bring myself to do it at all; I'm going to bed for a few hours first, setting my alarm with enough time to finish it up before class, and hoping to God that I don't just sleep straight through. Wish me luck.
Back with less navel-gazing sometime this afternoon.
