>> I'd been intending to put the finishing touches on the entire site today (barring the Portfolio, which is in limbo until I have some kind of artistic output worth sharing to put in it). One of my goals was going to be to put together a page explaining the history of the site, with images and preserved pages of all the previous designs. But while rooting through the site directories, I found that I did a truly shitty job of cataloguing and storing all the files required to properly document the site's past designs. Switching computers didn't help, either; I'm sure most of what I need is squirrelled away in some corner of my old Windows laptop, but since that's in my dad's office in southwest Florida and I'm right here, right now, on a different machine and operating system, that makes things... problematic.

So that plan seems to have been well and truly squashed by my own incompetence, which is somewhat deflating, to say to the least. I've still got a couple of other minor things to do, so I'd better get to them before the initiative drains out of me entirely.

God, isn't that such a shitty personality trait? If things don't go smoothly I instantly want to give up. Leave it to a minor incident to once again dredge up all the stuff I loathe about myself. Must... drown sorrows... in HTML...

>> I just finished reading Noel Coward's Private Lives for Modern British Drama (will also be reading Blithe Spirit for Wednesday). Doing so made me feel cripplingly ignorant; because as they were standing out on the balcony, I simply could not stop thinking "Hey... they did this on Frasier!"

I'd also managed to miss the fact that Private Lives is the play they're performing in Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare, which I've seen staged about a bazillion times; it's one of those staples of high-school drama that you quite simply can't get away from if you had any scholastic theatre experience. Oops. (I'm a bit sick of Durang by now, but really, if you've somehow managed to never encounter his stuff, give him a go sometime; he can be maddeningly funny.)

At least I'm not so ign'ant anymore, right?

>> The Music section is now online, barring a few minor tweaks (I still need to update the Help file to reflect the newly-added sections and include some credits, but everything else is in place). Have some free songs, browse my CD collection and the contents of my iPod, and then go on to far far better sites about music. And now, I'm going to get some much-needed sleep.

>> Justin Timberlake, live on NYC radio, admits to having performed oral sex on Britney Spears -- in exchange for 30 more weekly plays of his new single. And we call Christina Aguilera a prostitute? I'm willing to bet that if one hundred of my readers all agreed to buy his album on the first day of release, he'd let us come on his face. Sign up in the comments.

(via No Rock & Roll Fun)

>> Had another truly fuct dream last night, which involved the following: giant sharks; NYU's paramilitary squad; Jodie Foster, my dog, and I starring in a remake of Panic Room; my mother; a parking lot beneath Penn Station; and other assorted absurdities. But I won't get into it.

Last night I went out to Brooklyn to visit Ashley & Mark. Theoretically, we were going to see Atom And His Package at the Pratt student union -- we bought our tickets and everything -- but instead we played Monopoly in Ashley's dorm with a couple of their friends, and I lost hardcore. There's a lesson to be learned from this, but probably not a terribly useful one.

I'm not upset that Atom has my money; I've been enjoying his music for a long time via the magic of online fileswapping and friends who actually paid for his stuff, so I'm glad he profited a little bit from my $7 ticket. I may still buy his CDs anyway.

We ate at a Middle Eastern place on Myrtle Ave. near the corner of Washington Ave. ('round the corner from the Pratt campus) called Zaytoons (note: the website doesn't really seem to acknowledge this new location yet -- they list it as "coming soon" -- but trust me, it's there, and this is the place). The food and prices were both most satisfactory. Unfortunately we had to wait something like forty minutes for our food, due to some kind of screw-up in the kitchen, but that clearly isn't the norm... I recommend the place anyway. Let me know if you go there and get screwed so I can recant.

Final little news update: The lovely and talented Erin has landed me an interview on Monday afternoon with the management firm who handles Moby and Rufus Wainwright (she works there already). So I might have an internship with very little effort expended on my part. We'll see how things go...

>> Having trouble with my Dreamhost mail account -- my Deleted Messages box seems to have vanished and as a result I can't delete anything. I'm still getting all my mail (and a shocking amount of spam, considering I just created this account a few weeks ago), but I can't delete any of it. Argh. And of course, my ethernet connection's crapped out again, so I'm on 56k and apparently my modem can't handle Dreamhost's giant web-management panel, so I can't even investigate their site and see what's going on (or manage my mail through their webmail servers). Argh 2.

Speaking of dreams, here are some of the things that were in my dream last night:

• Jack.
• An extraordinarily tanned and friendly Bono.
• A gorgeous beach on top of a mountain.
• An obstacle course that led up to the beach that I ran backwards and forwards a couple of times. It was quite fun, really, though I wasn't doing it for the sake of doing it; I had to go down the mountain.

I don't know what it means. It wasn't quite as good as the medieval action-movie dream starring Kenneth Branagh that I had the other night, but it was enjoyable nonetheless...

In the absolute final stages of my illness, by the way. Feeling better by the minute (more or less). My heart swells, and not with angina.

>> Still sick, but feeling better. Still working on other areas of the site. Finding myself deeply insecure with the way in which I write and questioning everything about myself that's connected to my writing. Very, very torn over what to do about something very, very important. Full of tortellini.

More on some of these things later.

>> Guns 'N' Roses play Madison Square Garden on December 5th, and Shakira plays November 20th. Both of these are tempting for all the wrong reasons.

And yes, I know G'N'R were less than impressive at the VMAs, but I firmly believe that Axl was just having a shitty night. Throughout the whole performance he was fiddling with his ear monitor like he couldn't hear himself singing, and that would explain a lot of his missed notes... I'm willing to give 'em another try if it's not too expensive. I want them to be back so bad. ;-)

As for Shakira... Ashley, Mark, and Jackie will want to go, and I'll shamefully admit a sneaking fondness for her. Again, we'll see how the ticket prices run.

>> Thank you, Bobby Gillespie.

Grrr. I stumbled downstairs to the deli at the corner in the hopes of buying Kleenex and some form of decongestant. I normally avoid medicines of all kinds like the plague -- not only because I don't really like the whole idea too much, but also because I have a hyper-sensitive gag reflex and tend to do very poorly with pills. BEFORE YOU ASK IT HAS NOT YET HARMED ME IN OTHER WALKS OF LIFE THANK YOU VERY MUCH. However, the ATM at the deli had some kind of bizarre processor error and wouldn't give me any money, and then the ATM in my dorm did the same thing. However, my account balance is fine. Somebody's conspiring against me.

The worst part is, I was at the grocery store this afternoon with a runny nose; I should have known that wasn't an isolated symptom and was going to lead to nothing but pain. But I didn't buy any cold supplies, just Coke and junk food. So now I'm gonna have to keep chugging down water and praying that my head just spontaneously decongests of its own volition.

Speaking of spontaneous decongestion... whenever I'm stuffed-up like this, I always entertain a vivid fantasy of taking a drill and popping a hole into my left sinus and just relieving the pressure. Of course, in my fantasies this is a painless procedure. Ha ha ha.

Blaaaaagh. I'd better feel better tomorrow or I'm going to be very, very cranky for seven and a half solid hours of classes...

>> ...check out the great new designs at Goluboy (2.x) (welcome back! And now with a porn sponsor?!?) and Plasticbag. I'm so cowed I wanna redo this site again right now. ;-D

>> Well, here's one of the reasons I haven't been posting, anyway. An explanation, and the relaunch of several site sections in the new design, will be forthcoming over the course of tomorrow. If you hate it, better tell me so now before I delete the old files. I was just feeling ready for an actual design again...

Update, 3:05 PM ET: Have revamped the Chris section (including the Photos) and am setting to work on the Music section. Will let you know when that's done. And I'm assuming nobody's caught any big problems or has questions, or they'd be showing up in the comments... mind you, if you want to make fun of me for redesigning yet again, the comments are apparently the place where that's going down. So.

Update, 3:55 PM ET: In fact, no sooner had I typed that update than my cold, which I'd thought dead and buried yesterday morning, decided to swoop up on me again with a vengeance. I'm feverish and stuffed-up and runny-nosed and feeling generally crap, so I just had a bowl of chicken soup and now I'm going to lie down for a while. Site updates are still quite possible today / tonight, so don't give up on me yet.

>> I can see a fire in midtown (well, the plume of smoke, anyway) through my window right now, but I can't find anything about it on any New York City news site. I thought we lived in the age of instant digital news gratification, people.

I could turn on the TV, but y'know, I just don't care enough. (And if it was REALLY serious I'm sure it would've made CNN.com, and it hasn't, so.)

>> I am well aware of the crushing need for me to write something interesting in this space. Sit tight, folks.

>> Michael Chabon's been tapped to rewrite the Spider-Man 2 script, and the film's apparently going to be called The Amazing Spider-Man. That's a fucksight better than X-Squared (which is, no shit, the title of the upcoming X-Men sequel, though title aside it promises to rox0r hardc0rzor). I would be rejoicing about this, since Chabon's obviously a good writer and he loves comics... but I read his 1996 treatment for the X-Men movie online. It sucked. It was just boring. He may be much more of a novelist than a screenwriter...

>> ...or the lack thereof.



Today I'm going to watch Oprah. Bono, as you see, has finally succeeded after three years of campaigning to get on to the show and talk up Drop The Debt and DATA to the housewives of America. I'm sure it'll just be a recapitulation of all the soundbites I've heard from him for years, but he may yet surprise us all -- his speeches at the WEF were truly impressive...

Anyway, I'm meeting up with Maria, and we're reinstating her Friday-afternoon tradition of Bagels & Op' -- we go to Bagel Bob's, get bagels, and then watch Oprah. I never took part in anything except the bagels last year (for bagels are good, and Oprahs are bad), but I'm willing to suffer a bit today to see my man get his big break.

My dance card's full tonight after that, too, but I'm not gonna talk about it until plans are firmed up.

More on the Coldplay show later, by the way. 'Twas delightful.

>> Just a heads-up to let you know that I have finally, finally answered all of your questions, and that my new bio is posted in the Chris section of the site. And now I'm gonna actually get some schoolwork done.

Oh yeah, and if any of you Man In Gray chappees are reading this -- I'm gonna do my damnedest to come to the show tonight, but I just realized it's 21+ and I don't have ID. So, here's hoping they don't really care. (Also, if I don't finish all my school shit I'll be bootyfucked, so that needs to get done first, but hopefully that won't stand in the way...)

>> Courtney Love gets to live out my wildest dream -- to take control of MTV2 for 24 hours. Bitch.

>> ...are all you're going to get in this entry, because they're the only coherent thoughts I can form right now.

--First off, The Great Movie Consumption Weekend wasn't so "great" -- I never did get to Godfather Part II or Lawrence Of Arabia. I was just plain tired of sitting and staring at the TV. I do get bored of looking at electronic screens, believe it or not...

--We (Myself, Jackie, Ashley, and Mark) are going out to Jones Beach on Thursday night to see Coldplay and Ash (woo!). However, we don't actually know how to get there. We can take the train to Wantagh, but how do we get from the train station to the Tommy Hilfiger (shudder) Jones Beach Theatre / Pavillion / Whatever? If any of my Long Island dogz could give me some info in the comments, it'd be much appreciated...

--And speaking of concerts, I've got two spare tickets to the Underworld show in NYC @ Hammerstein Ballroom on Friday, October 18th (9:00 PM). If somebody wants them, drop me an e-mail through the contact form -- the show's not sold out, but I'm willing to take a slight loss on the "convenience charge" and sell 'em for below what Ticketmaster would gouge you. I didn't mean to order two sets; it's a long story. Anyway, I'll sell 'em both at once for $73 (face value w/o service / venue charge) or one each for $36.50. Let me know if you're interested; it's bound to be a very good show. (I can't wait to dance like a madman to "Two Months Off"...)

--And ALSO speaking of concerts... come see Man.In.Gray at the Acme Underground Wednesday night! I'm *finally* going to see them, because I think Bryan thinks I hate him. And I don't. So. If you'd like to go to that gig, then once again, drop me a line and we'll meet up or what have you...

More worthwhile blogging to come later.

>> Right, I'm taking a break between Bram Stoker's Dracula (intriguingly deranged... methinks I enjoyed it) and Brazil to just say how unbelievably happy I am for Bart. I know I don't show it, man, but I am. :-)

>> Longtime readers may recall that in November of 2000, I had a Great Movie Consumption Weekend. Well, I've decided to do it again.

It probably won't be as fun this time, since last time I was mixing DVD movies with actual currently-in-theatres movies -- however, there's nothing playing in this town (New York City! The cultural capital of America!) that I really want to drag myself to, so I'm staying parked on my fat butt in front of Jeremy's DVD collection (and a sizeable one it is, too). The line-up so far (subject to change):

• Leon (The Professional) (Watched already)
• Strictly Ballroom (Watched already)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula
• Brazil
• Blue Velvet
• Amelie (Which I've seen but need to see again)
• The Godfather, Part II
• Lawrence Of Arabia

And if I can stomach it, I'll add something else on Sunday before Lawrence Of Arabia.

All I can say about Leon and Strictly Ballroom is that I enjoyed both heartily, though Leon runs just slightly overlong -- however, I don't really know what could be trimmed, since the American version eliminates scenes that seemed so very integral to the characters... ah well. Oh, and Baz Luhrmann is the most ridiculous man alive but I love him to death anyway, and Paul Mercurio is ASTOUNDINGLY FUCKING HOT. That is all. Off to watch vampires eat people, goodbye.

Update: Well, Paul Mercurio WAS astoundingly fucking hot. Now he's kinda too bulky and old and not anywhere near as appealing. And his haircut's absurd. Oh well.

>> He bought me two dozen roses.

And because I am a poor college student, I have to put them in a Pringles can.

Happy anniversary, Josh. I love you.

>> At Grand Central Terminal, Michael Jordan's Steak House was busy and people boarded trains and in one corridor there remained the wall of missing faces, and three teenage girls walked past, and one said, "I can't even look."

This is New York. This is September 11th.

I can't write something amazing about the 09.11 anniversary. It's just not in me. Because life goes on, you know? I have books to read and papers to write for tomorrow. I have tomorrow to worry about; I simply don't have enough time to devote to an event this big. Because there's not enough time in the world to understand, or grieve, or remember the way I wish we could.

I wish things weren't going the way they are, one year later. But I'm thankful I still have tomorrow to worry about.

This is still the best place on Earth that any human being can live in.

And that's all that I can really say.

>> Blah. Crummy night. Got some reading done, but not all of it, for a complicated and incredibly stupid reason that I'd rather not bitch about right now, but suffice it to say I want to slap my BritLitII professor for being inconsiderate.

My "scheduled" shopping trip (really, really wanted to hit The Wiz's store-closing sale for DVDs, and Shakespeare & Co. for some new books) was called off, since there was nobody to do it with and a disappointed mood of lethargy grew out of my futile search for accompaniment. Then my ethernet went to shit and I had to hook up the phone modem, frustrating me even further...

I let things ruin my day very very easily.

The high point of the night was, hands down, some fairly-OK Ben & Jerry's ("Honey, I'm Home") and twiddling around with All Consuming (The profile! It's updated!). And now I'm exhausted and need to go to sleep early, since I got something like five hours of sleep last night.

Blah. Crummy night. Again.

>> Like Prol, I've signed up for All Consuming, a site designed to track what webloggers are reading. You can view DYFL's profile page here, and expect it to get a lot livelier over the next few days -- I'm in a bookish mood this morning, and I may end up going out shopping for some new not-for-class reads this afternoon, as well as adding some of my favorite books to my listing at the site. Plus, this seems like the easiest way for those who are so inclined to track my academic endeavors...

Cataloguing media data is, I've decided, the one task in this world that makes me happiest. I'm so compulsive about it that you can't even begin to fathom...

>> Two little bits: First, congrats to Nancy & "The Blonde" on getting set up in their new home in Pittsburgh... and:

Welcome to New York, LIA!

Right then, back about your business.

>> Yeah, so I capped off three days of frantic posting with two days of silence, I know. But it's been a busy, busy time. Right now I'm recovering from the first "weekend" I've had in ages -- obviously the whole summer felt like one long weekend, especially considering that I had no set work schedule to fall into a rhythm with, so I'm just having myself a relaxing Sunday morning / afternoon, doing some laundry and cleaning my room and all that fun stuff. Thanks to everyone who's been submitting questions down below -- keep 'em coming, because I'll keep answering them until the moment the new bio goes up (which'll probably be tomorrow night).

It's hard to underestimate how nice it feels to have a real Sunday again. I'm just sitting here grooving to Prince in the sunshine through my windows, wearing scuzzy clothes and feeling fine...

>> Actually, speaking of a new bio...

I'm gonna rip off Simon (and many other bloggers) and invite all of you to help me write my new bio. In all likelihood, nobody cares about whatever stupid crap factoids I would choose to write about myself over there, so I'm gonna have you guys decide.

I want everybody to pose at least one question to me in the comments of this entry. More than one question is welcome. I will answer every single one (unless I feel that they repeat each other, are redundant, etc.), no matter how seemingly obvious, embarassing, simplistic, or off-the-wall, so go nuts (within the realm of decent taste). And I hope to have the new bio up by the end of the weekend, so act fast and act often!

I figure this is a clever way of making you all feel like a part of the site while keeping it squarely about me. I'm devious like that! (Seriously, though, I'm begging you here: please, save me from writing another mediocre biography!)

>> To make a pattern / tradition of it, here are the things I accomplished today:

• Learned a new word in my first class of the day, BritLitII -- "autogynous" (self-generating). Not terribly optimistic about the direction that class is gonna go in, however -- it seems more philosophically / ideologically oriented, and I'm much more interested in the nuts and bolts and craft of literature. Oh well.
• Got out of the recitation section for that class (immediately following the lecture) early enough to go buy some lunch (Pizza at La Mia) and a book (The Nick Tosches Reader). On normal Thursdays I won't have any time between classes. Eww.
• Saw the v. cool professor for my Literary Interpretation class on the street, and just waved instead of stopping to talk to him. I do things like that constantly, and regret them every time. Must try to send him an e-mail, and must respond to a month-old e-mail from my cool Creative Writing professor last semester, as well as one of the coolest students from that class who also wrote to me. God, I'm such an ass.
• Got a mixed feeling from my American Fiction Since World War II class -- the professor seems fun enough and the reading list is superb, but she's forcing us to do group activities and presentations with partners, which is so fucking weak it's untrue. We're college students, not seventh graders. I was the only person in the room who'd read Snow Crash, which she had us read a passage from and do a group discussion exercise. Great book, lame exercise. Oh well.
• Had a pretty good time in my epochally long (2:45) Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop. Wrote an on-the-spot story (prompt: Begin with "I didn't want to betray him/her/it...") that didn't absolutely suck, and went through the usual first-day-of-writing-workshop nonsense. You can always pick out the best writers in the class; they tend to sit together before they even know each other, oddly enough, and at least one of them is always a self-absorbed asshole whose writing style is phenomenally overblown but which contains kernels of excellence. Not that I'm gonna name names here, since people from the class will probably make their way to this site eventually. And interestingly enough, Josh's friend Lisa (who I'd just met Saturday) is in the class, and her story was quite good. So there's a bonus. The professor seems quite excellent as well. (I could write an entire post about the foibles of college writing workshops. Perhaps I will, later).
• Listened to a lot of Prince on my iPod. Mmm... Prince. (This event is not listed in chronological order; it was ongoing throughout the day.)
• Kind of accidentally blew off Josh, Jeremy, & Co. tonight. See, there'd been a plan for Josh and Jeremy and a couple of their other friends from the last year at Tisch to get together tonight, and I was invited because I'm Jeremy's friend and Josh's significant other. But I wanted them to have time to themselves to re-bond after being apart for the summer, and when I finally got their message about what was going on I was all the way to the subway stop that would take me home, across the Village from where they were, and I was drained from the day I'd had and just wanted to go home. So I told them I wouldn't be coming. And now I regret it, because I'd've loved to see Josh and really would like to get to know his/Jeremy's friends better; I just wasn't in the mood when they called and now that I've relaxed a bit, I've changed my mind. Ah well. Maybe I'll call later, but I don't want to be sad and pathetic... (And while I was on the cell phone to him, Liev Schreiber walked by, also on his cell phone, walking a little dog. Heh.)

Now I've got to fix a horrifically annoying OS X bug that's stopping me from using my printer, and then do some tidying-up around the site (just accessibility issues, like adding links back to the blog in the comments and polishing the archives a little). Then I have all weekend to do some kind of fun crazy stuff to the place... I should be able to get, at the VERY least, a new bio out of the way. We shall see.

Y'know, upon reflection, this day is just full of self-generated (autogynous?) regrets, and that fucking sucks.

>> So tonight, the fire alarm went off. Living in a dorm ROCKS.

I'd just put the finishing touches on a new transitional frontpage when the indescribably cacaphonous alarm started firing (and my R.A. had just dropped by and given me my I.D. sticker, so I now had unhindered access to and from the building), so I just grabbed my iPod and my unlimited Metrocard (best $63 I ever invested) and zipped on up to Tower Records -- for the second time today -- to kill some time browsing the $7.99 sale. I sure as hell wasn't gonna stand outside with 400 of my "closest friends" in the middle of an incredibly stinky street, I can say that much...

At Tower I managed to make a stack of CDs that would've set me back $90-plus. I knew full well that I wasn't going to buy any of them -- how could I possibly afford to right now? -- so I cried a single tear onto each one and laboriously put them back in their proper places. (If you care what they were, view the source on this entry.) Then, I hopped right back on the subway and headed home.

And now I'm going to tell you about two other things that are bound to upset Josh, who's undoubtedly reading. But y'know, we did decide that this was my place to say what I want, and I'm just not in the mood to withhold any even remotely compelling detail right now...

One, I saw the single most gorgeous guy I have ever seen in my life on the subway ride to Tower. He had a suitcase and a friend with him, and was most likely on his way to Grand Central or Laguardia -- an out-of-towner for sure. But God, he had a beautiful face, phenomenal body... I get the feeling I'm probably not too good at checking guys out discreetly, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. What can I say? He really was actually the most attractive person I've ever seen, and I'm not one of those guys who gushes over every appealing man he sees. I figured that was worth blogging.

And two, a somewhat entertaining story: On my way to meet Josh Monday night, walking down Bleecker Street, I found myself walking behind other-Josh -- the one you may recall from last April, the first guy I ever went out on a "date" with. He looked really, really good. Neither of us said anything to each other, and after following him (inadvertently -- we were just on the same route) for a slightly uncomfortable period, I went out of my way to the next block to split off from his path. Given the situation, it sparked all kinds of "what if" thoughts, which of course were quashed by the fact that in even the most cursory retrospect, he was not at all my type... still, I could've made out with him before I ever met my Josh. I could've given myself that much. But alas, I was way too prudish at the time. That would've been my first kiss, and really, that's just not how you want such things to go down... don't think I didn't consider it way back when, though.

OK, that's it for the embarassingly personal psychosexual stuff. I'm experimenting with making this blog a 100% honest outlet for my emotional life again, and this is the sort of thing that's gotta show up if that's going to happen. So if you're reading, baby, I'm sorry if that bugged you, but you knew the score when you signed on...

Tomorrow I have class scheduled from 11 AM to 6:15 PM. Solid. With no break other than the fifteen minutes between classrooms. I may luck out tomorrow -- I doubt they'll hold a recitation section for BritLitII on the first day of class, so maybe I'll score an hour and fifteen minutes of freedom in which I could potentially eat lunch -- but Thursdays are my death days anyway you slice it. (The other classes, by the way, are BritLitII lecture, American Fiction Since WWII, and Advanced Fiction-Writing Workshop, which runs from 3:30 - 6:15 in a windowless room in the library. That should be a treat.) Wish me luck, and if you'd like to make any specific prayers, pray that I wake up in time to buy a notebook, as well as accomplish the usual hygenic mumbo-jumbo. It doesn't do to skip the shower on the first day of class, does it. Leaves the wrong first impression.

>> Most of the time, I hate the indie-snots at Pitchfork, but I'm glad to have 'em around just so they can deliver me this news: Elvis Costello is releasing a limited-edition live / b-side / remix album (that's album-length, not an EP), and the next wave of Rhino reissues -- Armed Forces (!), Imperial Bedroom (!!), and Mighty Like A Rose (...) -- are going to be released November 5th. Zee calendar, eet ees marked.

>> So, here's the visual presentation I promised last night -- a handful of pictures of my new dorm. I'm pretty much in love with it, I think. The location's inconvenient to just about everything, but the building's nice and our room is spectacular...

I did this last year, too, in the room I shared with John, but I never got around to assembling the full project for viewing.

In any event, click the thumbnail to view the full-size image in a pop-up window. They're large files (800x600), so be warned... Thanks to Andy, my suitemate and buu-ddy, for letting me borrow his digital camera to take these!

First things first: the view, easily the most impressive thing about the place. We're looking north here at midtown. Fascinating New York fun facts: One of those buildings is the Empire State Building! Can you guess which? Seriously, without being flippant about it, I'm absolutely floored by this view, and I probably spend a full hour every day just staring out the window... I've memorized the lighting schedules for all the major buildings, located the homes of all my friends (hi, Josh! Hi, Erin & co.!), and just generally appreciated it every minute since I moved in last week. Mmmm. And as I type this, a balloon just flew by my window. Heh.

And here's my desk. This is where the magic happens, folks! The smilin' face of Andrew WK is part of my screensaver -- I just point OS X to a folder full of album cover .JPGs, and it makes a screensaver out of 'em. Pretty swank, methinks. This picture's already out of date, actually. I now have a printer the size of a bathtub in the right corner of the desk. And don't worry, I recycled those Coke cans. You should be impressed that there were only two at that moment, I go through a lot of Coke...

The posters next to my desk. Uh, I like music. I bought all of these for $7 each ('cept the big Radiohead one, that was $12) at Generation Records on Thompson St. between Bleecker and West 3rd. So if you're here in NYC and are looking for some affordable wallpaper, that's the place to go. Pretty good record store, too. I'd told myself I wasn't going to bring any posters with me this year (last year I'd bought PJ Harvey, Depeche Mode, U2, and Weezer posters from the same store), so I did indeed leave them all at home in Florida, but rather than live a life of Zen-like austerity I just went out and splurged on more paper I didn't need. Call me Mr. Practical.

The piece de resistance of my new poster collection -- a friggin' huge Bowie poster! WOOO! The image of Bowie on this thing is actually about three feet tall (you can't get any scale from this picture). We fear that he comes alive and does terrible things to us in our sleep. I know he whispers to me softly when he thinks I'm not listening... ahem.

The lovely Erin models for you on my swanky, unmade bed. She was kind of entranced by the VMAs at the moment this photograph was taken, so forgive her lack of facial expression. What you can't really see in this photograph: This bed is actually about three feet up off the ground. Most people I know have to take a running start to get up on it. But man, the storage space is superb, and as I sleep, I'm eye-level with the gorgeous view...

This is our kitchen. Yeah, it's already dirty, though we do a better job keeping up with it than most college students do. There's no rotting food in it (yet), and that's something we're damn proud of! And yeah, you'd better believe that box of Count Chocula is mine, bitch! Hands off! (Actually, that one's empty. I just bought more today.)

Me in our bathroom. I figured nobody really wanted to look at our toilet, crusty sink, or hairy shower, so I just took this picture in the mirror to illustrate that (a.) our bathroom exists, (b.) this is what I look like these days -- I have hair! -- and (c.) we have marble in our bathroom! Marble! I just can't get over that (And yeah, this is the snap I sent in to the Mirror Project, in larger form).

And here's our room from the door. We actually moved that couch in from the kitchen/common room in order to accomodate Jordan (left) and Maria (right) as they watched the VMAs. It should tell you something that the room's big enough to move a couch into, right? We have cavorting room, as I put it. You can dance pirouettes in the empty space in the middle of our room. And yes, that's my roommate (and bestest friend in the whole wide world) Jeremy bonding with his DVD-ROM drive over in the corner.

And that's all I've got for you. I should take a picture of the view at night, and a picture of the room when it's nice and clean and couchless, but I don't wanna bug Andy again, so. This'll have to be enough to give you an idea of where I live now. I'm pretty happy here, all told, and I shall enjoy blogging for your/my gratification from my new sanctuary... now, anybody got a good secret-headquarters name for it? We've been calling it The Sky Palace...

>> Accomplishments of the day thus far:

• Actually woke at appointed time (with the help of Jeremy's absurdly loud alarm clock) (Shit, I forgot to buy an alarm clock) for my class. I left my building without looking up the room number it was to be held in, however. Stopped at an NYU computer station to look it up and still made it there early. I rox0r.
• Attended first class -- Modern British Drama. Sounds interesting. Has an unconventional reading list (not what I would've picked from the field, but then, I probably don't know what the professor knows). And speaking of the professor, she reminds me of a younger, chipper Ellen DeGeneres. The only downside so far is that she seems to really feel the material with an intensity that I find a little off-putting, but it could also work to her advantage, I suppose... I just have a thing about displays of attachment/emotion in certain contexts. Relationships, yes. Classrooms, not as much, but I'm irrational. That's not to say I don't want my scholastic environment to be warm, friendly, casual and intimate, because I do... ah fuck, I'm not explaining myself at all, am I.
• Bought a new printer at Best Buy. Lugged it home only to learn that it didn't come with a USB cable. Oops0rz.
• Went back out to buy USB cable, Prince album, and groceries. Accomplished all of these things, with the unexpected side accomplishment(s) of also buying Joy Division's Substance as well as more groceries than I probably needed. Bankruptz0rs.
• Got a new picture on The Mirror Project - Decadent.
• Hooked up printer, after much dolorous wrangling with Mac OS X / Mac Classic (9.2). Every time I restart between the two, I become petrified that I'll end up stuck in 9.2 and have to deal with its ugly ugly interface until the day I die, and will never again gaze upon the beautiful face of Bea Arthur on my desktop as she wrestles a velociraptor (View screenshot).
• Already managed to wreck the understated elegance of this design with slightly reworked top section. Or did I? Judgement impaired by pitiful lunch of Ramen noodles. Stomach rumbling again. Must crack open new box of cereal.

What did you do today, eh? Eh?

>> OK, that last entry was intended as a signing-off for the evening. I was supposed to go to sleep. But I just can't stop blogging.

I'm actually borderline-ecstatic about how I managed to turn things around for myself today. Ripping the frontpage down to build it anew had exactly the effect I'd hoped it would -- the calculated non-appeal of the barebones layout led me to make some changes, which inspired more changes, which produced ideas and the spark of creativity and commitment that could very well lead to a full-on flame. I think I might have a fire in my belly for blogging again. It certainly feels good to me; your impressions may vary. You've been warned.

Anyway, KungTunes is working now. Most of my problems came from my browser stubbornly refusing to pull the newest version of the page, so I'm over it... it's not as delightfully versatile as Blogamp (I really wish it had the history-list option that made Blogamp so neat), but it's still pretty spiff. Enjoy it; it's just one in a series of functional and entertaining things I hope to add to the site in the next few days. Coming tomorrow: a visual tour of my new home back in the corporeal world of New York City (and yeah, those pictures up top are from it -- that's how I looked as of four hours ago)...

This entry wouldn't be complete without two things: a self-referential weblog community reference and a link jacked from a superior blogger. So, without further ado:

--Minimal!Chris? I like it! I should have a t-shirt made.

--I was all excited about possibly buying Jaguar (OSX.2), but they've retired the Happy Mac icon? How... evil! i'm actually a little depressed by that. For shame. (via Lukelog)

And now I really am going to have to go to bed, with visions of notebooks, David Rabe, and twelve-page term papers dancing in my head...

(P.S. Remember that question I asked you that nobody answered? Well, I found the answer myself -- it's a great freakin' Kids In The Hall sketch. You're all worthless to me. I love only Google. ;-D)

>> So tomorrow I start school again. How am I expected to feel about that?

On a grand level: It's nice to know there's gonna be some kind of forward motion in my life again, but really, that sort of thing is always uncomfortable. I'm now more than halfway done with college. That's pretty freakin' terrifying, y'know? Especially when I have profound doubts about what I'm doing with my schooling and my life in general... (just like everyone else, I know, I know.)

On a minor, yet even more irksome, level: I only have one class tomorrow and it's from 9:30AM - 10:45AM (Major British Dramatists Of The 20th Century, for the record; the replacement class I was forced to enroll in last week). Then I have nothing left to do. So I've got to haul my ass out of bed at 8:30 tomorrow morning, go to one class, and then schlep all the way back here. At least I'll be awake, and I can put together my little visual presentation for you all... and I'll be by Tower, so I can buy that Prince album, and maybe see if The Wiz has any cheap Mac-compatible printers (they're closing, so everything's 10% off. Spiff!)

Catch you tomorrow, in the aftermath of my first junior-year scholastic experience...

>> A helpful hint to the makers of KungTunes:

It might help to TELL PEOPLE HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FUCKING SET IT UP.

Suffice it to say, if anyone knows how to work this supposedly simple little app, let me know, because I'm about ready to fucking kill something.

Update: Never you mind. As usual, I figured it out thirty minutes after irrationally complaining about it with disproportionate violence. I had to take a break and calm myself with the soothing sounds of Coldplay to do it, however...

Update Again: Still isn't working perfectly. My copy of iTunes apparently keeps "ignoring" the app. How do I make that stop?

>> Let me see you stripped down to the bo-oooone...

I'm in another one of those minimalist modes. I'm tired of fretting about my design (or redesign as the case may be), so I've gone as simple as I could while still remaining vaguely interesting to myself. I'm hoping the clean slate will organize my mind enough to let me think constructively about a new and ever more garish look for DYFL, but I'm gonna let that come organically (i.e. probably within a few months' time. ;-D). I did the same thing to my dorm room this afternoon, not coincidentally, and hopefully I'll have some pictures of my new digs for your delight later this evening....

And by the by, DYFL is now brought to you by Movable Type. So if things don't work, that's because I'm lazy and didn't set them up right. Give it some time. I also have absolutely no interest in importing my Blogger entries into Movable Type anytime soon, so if you'd like to have a look at them, visit the Blogger archive index page as opposed to the MT one. And if you missed the last few Blogger entries, some of which were posted as recently as this morning, then go poke about the September archives. In fact, I urge you to do that, because some of the entries in the last few days actually didn't suck. For a change.

All set? Good. Now let me go try and make the fucking MT stylesheet work. I'm sure you'll be noticing all kinds of little tweaks in the appearance of even this Puritan layout over the next few days. Change is good! LET'S PUSH THINGS FORWARD!