>> I'm drowning in work, friends, and the X-Men. God, I love the X-Men. You'll hear more when I'm able to follow through on my ambitions...

>> Minor 9th is back. Leave this site right now and go there. Right now.

>> Feeling pretty lame right now. The summer is normally pretty light on self-loathing, but this is about the time it kicked in last year, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised... sigh.

All I do is go to work, listen to music, and sleep. Occasionally I'll go out with my friends and do something pleasant but that's more and more occasional and less and less pleasant as I convince myself of my current status' overwhelming uselessness. I can't even say what I feel anymore without relying on song titles; I'm pedantically, obsessively doting on my music collection when I should be punching myself in the face. Displacement at its finest.

God I hate how familiar that sounds.

Off to Tallahassee tomorrow morning to visit Cameron (who promises he'll start blogging again soon) for a day and a night. Pray for the health and safety of my automobile, which tends to have something catastrophic happen to it every time I try to take a lengthy trip...

>> It's gotten pretty bad when I'm posting the results of an online quiz to generate content, especially one that was older than dirt a week ago (well, in meme terms anyway), but I was amused by my result:


Threat rating: High. The Bush administration is
concerned that it may not get a second term.
Therefore, we are going to change the rules so
that each Democrat vote only counts as 0.2
votes because Democrat is a shorter word than
Republican

What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

High, eh? Man, I hope so.

>> I hate cars. All of them. I demand rocket packs and I demand them now.

I'm now waiting for AAA to show up and jump-start my car, because my parents' battery-charging gizmo broke down and they don't have jumper cables (Their logic: "Why would we need anything else?" Well, maybe because your stupid techno-toy doesn't always work?!?) so I can drive it to Sears and get the battery replaced. The car waited to die, of course, until the weekend when I was going to go visit Cameron in Tallahassee, the first sizeable roadtrip I've tried to undertake in it since coming home this summer. GRUMBLE. GRUMBLE GRUMBLE.

In better news, I got a haircut yesterday, which always quadruples my sense of well-being. It's a good thing too, because I was starting to look absolutely ridiculous. People I barely know were commenting on how shit my hair looked. I also bought two hot new shirts. I knew working at Old Navy would turn me into a clotheshorse again. And I still haven't blogged about the CD binge from last Friday...

>> A reporter tries to find Kraftwerk. And fails. Very, very entertaining. Via Prolific.

>> I like vampires. I like werewolves. Will I like vampires and werewolves together? (Note: all logic insists that this film will be very, very dumb. But the formula "I like pirates, I like zombies, will I like pirates and zombies together?" certainly worked out, so my fingers are duly crossed...)

>> New Twilight Singers album coming soon: Blackberry Belle. Mmmmm. And it's got Appolonia Kotero on it! Wha?!? (The Twilight Singers are the new band from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, FYI. Their first album, Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers, is gorgeous.)

>> The Matrix have signed a deal to record their own material. This should be... interesting. (And yes, they will be working on Shakira's new album. Cue the sound of a thousand panties moistening, including my own.)

>> Amongst the many things that cheered me up yesterday: in a recent Zogby poll, Bush's approval rating is down to pre-9/11 levels, and the demographic of "Time For Someone New" has just barely edged out "Re-Elect." Please, God, please, God, please, God. Via Ghost In The Machine.

>> Rhino reissuing Television's Marquee Moon and Adventure. Glad I just bought the lo-fi version of Marquee Moon a couple months ago, then... sigh.

>> Vitalog tells you what your name means:

CONROY : Irish, means 'hound of the plain'; reflects the early Irish love of hunting; because of the affection for the hunting dog the surname sometimes may refer to a house or inn sign, although few Irish names derive from house or inn signs; hound was also used figuratively for a warrior or chieftain.

Craziness. I have learned something new today. (The site's actually not very complete; I got a lot of "no results" for my friends' last names, but maybe you'll fare better.) Via Metafilter.

>> Interview with Banksy, the British grafitti artist who just recently came to my attention with his (excellent) artwork for Blur's Think Tank. I wish I'd been paying attention in London, I probably would've seen loads of his stuff. Via Flyboy.

>> Little robots in your pants -- Popular Science calls Dockers and takes them to task on their claim that "nanotechnology" is fighting stains in their new Go Khakis.

>> Idlewild in the New York Times: Why aren't they big in America? Short answer is, Capitol didn't cough up the several hundred thousand bucks it takes to get them on the radio. Sick, sad, true.

And another music link (since I'm trying not to cram too many entries into one day: Liz Phair defends Liz Phair. Now, you know which side of the camp I'm on, but she's sounding fairly interesting, human, and reasonable to me (with the exception of the Steve Miller reference. Ick.)

>> Precisely because I'm awake so early and don't have anything much better to do, I went ahead and cobbled together some wishful-thinking setlists for the R.E.M. shows I'm going to in October. I tried putting together a Radiohead one, but lost interest; basically, anything they play will probably please me, as long as there's plenty of Hail To The Thief and they don't skimp on Amnesiac, either (Songs I most want to hear live that they're not playing every night: "Climbing Up The Walls," "The Gloaming," "Like Spinning Plates," "I Will").

Anyway: R.E.M.-ho! If this is the sort of thing you don't give half a shit about, well, then, I'm sorry. I'm tired and frazzled and don't have the energy for more cerebral content.

OK. These setlists are venue-specific (tailored to atmosphere) and are composed primarily along the lines of the setlists they've been playing -- I tried to be semi-faithful to the number of songs, the ones most frequently played, their order in the set, etc., while adding some of my own flights of fancy. The songs in bold are the ones I requested by e-mail on REMHQ.com (Isn't that so fun?).

JONES BEACH:

• "Begin The Begin"
• "Get Up"
• "So Fast So Numb"
• "Bad Day"
• "Drive"
• "So. Central Rain"
• "Fall On Me"
• "All The Way To Reno"
• "Animal"
• "Wolves, Lower"
• "Orange Crush"
• "At My Most Beautiful"
• "Welcome To The Occupation"
• "Find My River"
• "Losing My Religion"
• "Imitation Of Life"
• "Walk Unafraid"
• "Man On The Moon"

Encore:

• "Everybody Hurts"
• "The One I Love"
• "Nightswimming"
• "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN:

• "Finest Worksong"
• "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?"
• "Stand"
• "Cuyahoga"
• "Animal"
• "Daysleeper"
• "I've Been High"
• "Maps And Legends"
• "The One I Love"
• "Bad Day"
• "Lotus"
• "The Great Beyond"
• "Let Me In"
• "Losing My Religion"
• "She Just Wants To Be"
• "Walk Unafraid"
• "Man On The Moon"

Encore:

• "Everybody Hurts"
• "Country Feedback"
• "Radio Free Europe"
• "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

>> I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep and I've got a minor ulcer from the stress of the process (and the grocery-store Krispy Kremes I pounded for breakfast probably didn't help), but I do have Radiohead tickets for Friday, October 10th. They're sort of sky-high but I just don't care. Ashley, after some initial server-side fuck-ups and hyperventilation, also landed the set she was going after, so our whole gang should be able to attend. Genius!

I know several of you had also declared your intention (in the comments) to see the band in NYC; did you get lucky?

>> So Josh said he was re-reading my archives (mwah) and that made me re-read my archives and I re-found this which is AMAZING (Brinson's account of The Road Trip From Hell, which, unbelievably, was almost exactly a year ago!). You probably won't laugh but man, did I ever. Again. I luv Brinson (who I haven't seen... since this trip?!? Impossible!)

>> Axl Rose plays tracks from Chinese Democracy for strippers.

>> Well, work sucked tremendous balls yesterday, but karmically it evens out because my paycheck has finally shown up in my bank account. Paul, Ben, if you're reading, then Boogie Woogie, 6PM tomorrow unless otherwise noted. Give me a ring-ring. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that means I'm going to go blow something like $100 on CDs tomorrow night and you can't stop me. Well, you probably could, but you won't. Leave me suggestions in the comments; I think I'm already gonna check out The New Pornographers on the strength of Matthew's gushing praise.

>> The projection reels for Woody Allen's new film, Anything Else, will be manufactured with a new chemical process that's less caustic and uses far less water. Very interesting.

>> Rewatched tonight: Blade Runner (the director's cut of course). So good. So, so good. So good, in fact, that I'm gonna sit down and reread the novel tomorrow (it's been a long, long while).

That Vangelis synth score dates a fair bit, I'm sorry to say. But all the other little anachronisms don't draw attention to themselves and help to create that unified "this is our future" aesthetic that you get off of future movies made in the past. The English language isn't giving me much in the way of syntax and terminology that can express what I mean properly, but I think everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about -- the way Tomorrowland feels like it's from the '50s, etc. etc. Helping to keep Blade Runner timeless are all the pitch-perfect pulp touches: those amazing trenchcoats, the set for Bryan's office with its slat blinds and whiskey in the middle of a giant techno-hangar, the femme fatale sequences. There is very nearly not a single damn thing wrong with the movie -- it loses a tiny bit of narrative focus by the end and yes, the deus ex machina is sort of irritating, but it pulls itself off, I think.

Anyway, it's certainly a top priority when I start buying DVDs again. Whenever that is. Somehow DVDs always fall to the bottom of my "things to blow my disposable income on" ladder, even though there are plenty that I want (as a recent trip to Best Buy, wherein I literally filled my arms with the discs I craved before laboriously putting them back in their proper spots, obviously illustrated)...

>> My Bloody Valentine return to studio to finish Glider. You'll have to excuse me, my scalp is bleeding profusely. I just got hit with a chunk of FALLING FUCKING SKY. Man, what is it with these 90s dream-team reunions? Next thing you know, Kurt Cobain will rise from the grave and guest-star on a Foo Fighters album...

>> I give up. No more weblog. I'm just gonna write nice letters to everybody with a fountain pen.

Apparently my "simple" "error-proof" "CSS is great, it works for everyone, we swear" design is COMPLETELY FUCKED in EVERY BROWSER KNOWN TO MAN. And I can't make the comments work properly, either. WHY BOTHER? IT'S GONNA HURT ME.

If I could Hulk out and kill everything right now, I would. Mmmmm. Death.

Is anyone out there seeing a nice coherent design where everything lines up and nothing looks bizarre? Anyone?

UPDATE: Comments problem fixed. RSS 1.0 feed active. CSS still fuct. Webmaster still disgruntled. Blah blah blah poop poop.

UPDATE 2: So I just tried validating my CSS, and I'm thinking I'm gonna try eliminating all the underscores I used in giving things names (I know, I know, so naive). That said, I'm also going to have to redo every page on the site because they're all coded with the underscore-usin' tags. Give me time; if something appears ugly, come back in an hour or so and it should be fixed. I might as well do it now, before the site becomes too complicated...

UPDATE 3: Well, I did that. So if suddenly, the site looks beautiful and perfectly composed, do let me know in the comments. If it still looks exactly the same, let me know about that too. I suspect that change won't have any material effect, but I do try to do what the nice CSS validator tells me to...

>> A little something to brighten your day. I'm off to work.

>> A lot of people have complained to me that there's no Mediablog anymore. Don't worry, I'll still write the sort of stuff I wrote there; it'll just be here on the main blog. Once I take in some media worth writin' home about, you'll see it back in action.

Another techy/redesign question: RSS feed. Answer me honestly, does anybody care about those damn things (except Tom)? And if I do make one available, would you rather it had the complete text of each entry? I obviously like the idea of people coming to an actual destination on the web to see my half-crazed scribblings (hence the unnecessary effort expended on each ugly redesign); I don't like having content divorced from location, especially when the content won't stand up on its own (cough cough). Man, I should just stop talking. Anyway. RSS feed -- you want it? Let me know in the comments.

>> Astonishingly choreoographed Matrix-style ping-pong. From -- where else? -- Japanese TV, via Kottke.

>> N.M.E. Round-Up: Bowie and Kate Moss recreate Pin-Ups for his new album, Reality. Beyonce rubs her ass all over Ulysses S. Grant's corpse. And The Sex Pistols wanna play Baghdad. (I'm sure Baghdad will be impressed.)

>> Another day, another new design at Do You Feel Loved?

I'm exhausted and not in the proper frame of mind for explaining myself, but here are the major things to know about this new design:

1. No more dedicated Mediablog and Linkslog. It all just became too much work, honestly. I'd thought compartmentalizing would lead to increased focus; instead, it resulted in squelching my desire to do anything whatsoever. Simple is better; a hard-won lesson. I bow my head in humble reverence to those who can make the format work.
   
   All the entries from those blogs can still be found in the Archives, worry not. And the Photolog lives on, obviously, in the new Photos directory (new galleries coming soon, I promise).
   
   
2. Flexibility. I can't say I'm 1,000,000% happy with how this design turned out visually (it's inspired, for the record, by the artwork from the U2 album Pop which contains the song "Do You Feel Loved?"). But the genius is, I don't have to be -- I've finally done everything with proper CSS, so if I get bored, I can change much of the site's look (if not layout) with a few simple edits. If I get really bored, maybe I'll reformat every couple of weeks to mimic another album. Prepare to delete me from your bookmarks!
   
   Also on the subject of flexibility: I tried very hard to reformat all my archives into one generic layout, so that I wouldn't have to tinker with them every time I changed the rest of the site. Movable Type played that game quite nicely, but I'm afraid Blogger stubbornly refused to touch my old (and sizable) Do You Feel Loved? / Not Enough Of Me archives, so all the entries from February 2001 - September 2002 are still in that garish comic-book design I had last summer. That's pissing me off a lot, but I seem to have hit a brick wall in terms of doing anything about it... anyway, don't be distressed when permalinks take you to a strangely plain layout.
   
   And speaking of permalinks...
   
   
3. Dead ends. I've reorganized the subdirectories. So most of what you're used to seeing on the site is no longer where it used to be, if it's there at all -- I've also trimmed a lot of aspects of the site that I felt were redundant. In the coming weeks I'll be addressing what to do with all the loose ends -- either they'll be culled together and displayed as curios, or I'll just delete 'em and free up some server space. Depends on how sentimental I'm feeling, I guess; so if there's a component of the site that you're not seeing anymore, and that you'd like to make a case for the preservation / resurrection of, then let me know in the comments or by e-mail...

And that's all I can think of right now, though I'm sure I'll be revising myself copiously in the next few days. Poke around a bit, tell me what you think -- and be honest. At this point I'm not really "proud" of this design so much as relieved to have it more or less finished. There's more work to do, and if everyone hates looking at this, then I'll happily bow to public opinion -- just don't be shocked if, as a result, you get something with lots and lots of white space. Which I happen to like but everyone else complains about, so NEENER NEENER NEENER. YOU GET WHAT YOU ASK FOR, BITCHES: THE GIANT, PIXELLATED FACES OF U2!!! EAT IT! EAT EVERY CRUMB HA HA HA HA HA HA

I really need to go to bed.

>> Good News: Yesterday, I got paid more than I expected to for my work at Old Navy and that church I moved shit at.

Bad News: I just blew half of that wad on tickets to see R.E.M. at Jones Beach, and I plan to blow more on a ticket to their Madison Square Garden show. And then I need to buy Radiohead tickets on the 18th. Not to mention renew my web hosting.

I was really looking forward to going on a CD binge sometime soon, too -- Paul had pledged to match my spending if we go on one marathon spree, which would've been quite fun -- but that may be indefinitely postponed. Sigh.

UPDATE: DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT! I can't afford to learn about this right now! I just can't!

>> So how much did I adore Pirates Of The Carribean: Curse Of The Black Pearl? So. Fucking. Much.

A game for you: Go see this movie. (Really, do, because it's totally fun. A bit too long, but fun nonetheless.) Then, while watching it, imagine that every time they say the word "pirate," what they're really saying is "homo." MOST ASTONISHING GAY SUBTEXT EVER. Johnny Depp's frankly amazing performance does a lot to push that particular envelope, but Orlando Bloom's quest for self-discovery helps too. (You can rationalize his final triumphant kiss the way Paul did: "Don't worry, Chris, he just wants kids.")

I haven't gotten a payoff on my anticipation for a movie like that in a very, very long time; especially since I had wanted so badly for it to be good but known, deep down, that it almost certainly wouldn't be. I was banking on zombie pirates, but gay zombie pirates? Nobody could've taught me to expect THAT! Ah, what a fine night at the pictures. Plus, the dude from The Office is in it.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's some amazing heat lightning outside and I need to find a spot to view it from.

>> (1) I heartily enjoyed my day at work. Honestly. I just liked it. Completely.

(2) I actually turned down a chance to see X-Men 2 again. For only $1.75.

I don't think that I'm still the man I once was.

Oh yeah, still working on that redesign, though I'll probably get bored of it tomorrow.

>> (1) Spent my day off from work moving extremely heavy furniture. For a Presbyterian church.

(2) Bought not one, but two XTC albums and loved the hell out of both of them (Nonsuch and Skylarking, for the -- ah ha, ah ha ha ha ha ha -- record).

(3) Be quietly, mildly disappointed by 28 Days Later and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

(4) Scrapped not one, but two basically-completed designs for this site, finally arriving on something satisfactory in the end. Which will no doubt be scrapped next week.

(5) Got dragged to Steak 'N' Shake. Twice. And bought a Hulk action figure after one of the outings. (We live in suburbia. Steak 'N' Shake and Wal-Mart are the only two things open 24 hours, and they're right next to each other. It's like they're begging us, BEGGING us I tell you.)

(6) Not post anything to the blog except another one of these gimpy filler entries.

Subset: Things I've Done In The Last Week That I Completely Expected To Do:

(1) Saw, and loathed, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. This movie was written by Donald Kaufman, I swear to fucking God.