Laser-Beam Focus!

The last two weeks or so have been extraordinarily busy and fun, but it was bound to come to an end, as good things always do. Today was the first day of school, and my return to (student) work. I skipped my morning kines class (I added it this morning), toured the MSC with Tifanee, then went to accounting, out among the wilds of the here-to-fore uncharted (by me) west campus. Pretty mundane, really, but hopefully handball will be enjoyable and maybe comparative politics tomorrow will be interesting. It doesn't feel like a real semester without a literature course, but I was able to pick up Tom Frank's newish tome, What's the Matter With Kansas? for 30% less than cover price.

I also finally sorted through the fall's concerts- it looks like Austin City Limits is out this year, despite the fantastic lineup. We'll make up for that, however, by catching the Pixies in Houston, Modest Mouse (and apparently the jaw-dropping Explosions in the Sky, who I've had the pleasure of seeing twice and who never cease to amaze) at Stubb's after ACL, and by going to the Shins show that a ridiculous storm postponed a few months ago. That last one, however, is something we should avoid going into, though, as a last-minute jaunt to the excellent Waterloo Records allowed us to see the Shins...putting away their equipment after an impromtu in-store. I'm still a little bitter about that, but I'm sure finally seeing them in concert will allow that particular wound to heal.

Conversion at the point of an expletive

From the new issue of Rolling Stone: One day we'll look back on Tom Cruise as a latter-day St. Augustine, and intro philosophy classes will feature the self-coital argument right alongside the teleological and ontological arguments for the existence of God. Link via Stereogum.

He lists some of Scientology's selling points: its drug-abuse, prison-rehabilitation and education programs. "Some people, well, if they don't like Scientology, well, then, fuck you." He rises from the table. "Really." He points an angry finger at the imaginary enemy. "Fuck you." His face reddens. "Period."

There also appears to be a piece promising the truth behind Fox News' "number-one bigmouth," but just flipping through the channels while Bill O'Reilly is on the air is enough evidence for anyone to see that the guy's a total douchebag.

inside the golden days of missing you

With the people of Cleveland, who've suffered for so many years. (D. Berman, 1996)

But it's okay, I know you'll be back on Sunday, I probably should've written this post a few days ago when the feelings were more acute. Better late than never, yes?

Busy day at work today, brief review for Monday's statistics final, followed by lunch at Freebirds with Emily, who came into town today to help Luke move out with those big strong arms of hers. A nice, lazy afternoon before a (presumably) long evening of Hildreth, drinking, reminiscing, and drinking. Maybe I can live in an alcoholic haze until your arrival Sunday night. I promise to knock it off if it begins to resemble a fugue state too closely.

In other news, can someone tell me if "pies" means something besides the tasty post-prandial? I've been listening to Wiley's song of the same name (it's awesome, he's like Dizzee Rascal's rastafarian cousin) after seeing it mentioned on head Mountain Goat John Darnielle's excellent site (I think calling it a blog would be degrading in some way) Last Plane to Jakarta. Who ate all the pies? Wiley did, and he doesn't mind telling you so.

now playing: "Palmcorder Yajna," the Mountain Goats

short people've got... no reason to live!

All night we waited in that sad potty-mouthed wooden booth, waiting for the midget to come out.

- He said he lives out by the Dirty Sock, she said, how far away is that from here?

- Only about fifteen minutes or so, it’s just off the highway. He should be here any minute; it’s not far at all.

Any minute now that door is going to open and we aren’t going to see why but we’ll know in our hearts that he’s finally here.

He never arrived, and we can never know just how he would’ve appeared and I’d be lying if I said I was only a little disappointed. Instead we just sat emptying bottles into bigger bottles, waiting for some kind of chemical reaction within ourselves.

Another friend of ours is a midget, or a dwarf maybe, the differences elude me now but it has to do with ancient European folklore and in any case they don’t seem very important to our present discussion. This isn’t a legal matter, after all. This is about people who are interesting because they are smaller than most other people. Among other reasons, of course, but usually the lack of height charts at number one. There have been a great deal of talented leaders and artists who happened to be midgets- many speculate that they were able to accomplish so much in part due to all the normals gawking at their diminutive frames. That’s what they call people of average height; they call tall athletes freaks, or worse, depending on that midget’s respective temperament.

Our friend the excessively short person had her breasts surgically augmented, although you’d never know it unless she told you. Or unless one of her friends were to let you in on the secret. Basically, they aren’t noticeably bigger than normal, although before the procedure, they probably weren’t very noticeable at all.

So the three of us sat there talking into three different cellular phones to three different people whose company, apparently, we would have preferred at that moment. My girlfriend was calling me from the coast of Florida, telling me she just slept through another dance. I know how you feel, I feel that way all the time, is what I wanted to say, but instead I just said too bad. But we both knew that it wasn’t really a bad thing, and that it certainly wasn’t “too bad.”

We also knew that sometimes people say things just to say things, to fill up air space and space-time and airtime and all that rot until something noteworthy comes along. We are waiting forever, for something greater than the daily mundanities we’ve grown to know and disregard and maybe even despise. We are waiting for something other than bills and news on the stock market’s eternal rise and fall and toothpaste and television and routines and drudgery. We’ve had it with that. Instead we’re waiting for midgets, and when they fail to arrive we blame it on their stubby little legs that are still so cute to us even though they totally stood us up last night. That little jerk.

leaving, conceivably, the south and midwest?

"It seems simple enough, drive all night through the dawn through the morning through the noon park on the beach take off your shoes and fall asleep by the Gulf of Mexico. Wake up with the stars above perfectly spaced in perfect health. But he is going east, the worst direction, into unhealth, soot, and stink, a smothering hole where you can't move without killing somebody. "
- John Updike, Rabbit, Run p.23-24

And to the west, amoral depravity, unlimited riches, and chlorinated swimming pools. At least it's sunnier there.

As you can probably surmise, I've started reading Updike after completing Didion. Again, this wasn't due to some connection I was aware of, although Rabbit and Maria share a love of driving, apparently to escape the lives they feel trapped by. But Rabbit has already fled his hole, for parts still uncertain. Maria's truest escape, after the freeway lost it's power over her, was into a laconic nihilism that allows her acquaintance (friend would be get their relationship all wrong, though near the end they are something like compatriots) BZ to kill himself with pills while holding her hand on a bed in the middle of the desert.

I'm not sure if Updike was an athlete in his younger days, but when Rabbit starts describing how it feels to "be in the zone" (quotes mine; Updike doesn't use sports page cliches like this, but then again, the book was written in 1960, before that sort of locker room parlance grew popular, I'd imagine), he is perfectly on target. And since he's talking basketball, I'm all over it. But Rabbit's fallen on hard times and, like many former jocks, he seems to be more than a little bit stuck in his glory days of 23 points in his first varsity game and how it felt to "smother" Oriole High.


now playing - The Fall, "This Nation's Saving Grace"