Present Imperfect

The Doctor is In | July 29, 2003

Yesterday, I contributed $10 to Howard Dean's campaign for the presidency. Yes, I was cheap, but Friday's payday and I'm scraping the bottom of the checkbook, here. The important thing is that Dean doubled the contributions made at Dick Cheney's latest special-interest fundraising event, and that made me feel goooood. So, yeah, I'm on the Dean Team. Mock me at will.

And every single Democrat who is currently warning candidates not to present the party as too "far left" can kiss my ass and go join the fucking Republican party.

MON LW FLNG OWLZ | July 28, 2003

Whelp, it's Monday. Bummer. And I have little ulcers on my tongue and a tea-scalded mouth that are making it painful to eat stuff, such as food. However, my friend Megan just sent me a link to her Hipster Bingo page which I should probably take to Spaceland with me...if I ever, ever go. That's right: For anyone likely to give a poop, I live in Silver Lake and have never been to indie-rock shrine Spaceland, which is about 100 yards from my front door. I'm just irritated by the fact that you have to use a decoder ring to figure out who is listed on their marquee, since they use a 10-letter, 4-digit plastic alphabet to spell everything. Out of coolness. Which is wrong. It is.

Reading A Fairly Honourable Defeat now, and thinking a lot about the Abbess's comment in The Bell, that all of our failures are ultimately failures in love. We love too much or too little. We love the wrong people or the right people for the wrong reasons. We love the wrong way. Does this mean that love exists always, as a kind of feature of the universe, for us to channel or redirect? Are we never completely bereft of love? Do we simply forget it exists until we are confronted with it again in the form of a person or place? Or is it born with us, created by the individual and put forth into the world? Does it miss its mark? What happens then? Does it persist? Is a failure of love the ultimate hamartia?

That fellow feeling, a sense of contentment with oneself and the world, must occur because love persists. It saturates the landscape; whether or not the landscape engulfs it entirely or allows it to settle like the first snowfall, that must determine whether we can achieve contentment...though one doesn't really achieve contentment. It seems to wash over you suddenly, without warning. At least, it does me. It's a sort of simplistic realization, and it doesn't last. But it must have stuck with St. Julian, with her "all shall be well"s.

Okay, now I just sound like a nutjob. But it was worth considering.

Leave a Testimonial. Please. | July 25, 2003

Last night I dreamt...not that somebody loved me, but that nobody did. Sort of. I dreamt that I signed up for Friendster and I had no friends in my "network." So, naturally, today I logged on and signed up. It's important to face your fears. And at least Dana will be my friend. Maybe I can make up imaginary friends. Imaginary cyber friends. That's double sad.

Where Are You, Fat Optimus Prime? | July 22, 2003

Well, this past weekend was the San Diego Comic-Con, and once again, I missed out on seeing Hobbits. Isn't that just always the way? Guess I'll just have to run into them at the Arclight like everyone else.

Anyway, I was killing time with a real-live, PAPER edition of the New York Times in the Marriott bar on Sunday, and I read an article on the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and how it is a thriving, albeit accidental, wildlife refuge. According to the article, "the only safe haven on the Korean peninsula for hundreds of rare native animal and plant species [like that Mandarin Duck pictured above] is the one place where there are no people."

They're apparently working on getting the DMZ official wildlife reserve status.

In book-related news, I really have to get a copy of Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (The other interesting article in the NYT was about Britain's masterful fuck-uppage of Iraq back in the day. Also, T.E. Lawrence was really short. Really.) and Okakura's The Book of Tea. Guess I'll take a little trip over to my Amazon wish list today. Nothing like some fake shopping.

Also, I just read Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim which was hilarious. Check, as they say, this shit out:

'There was the most marvellous mix-up in the piece they did just before the interval. The young fellow playing the viola had the misfortune to turn over two pages at once, and the resulting confusion...my word...'

Quickly deciding on his own word, Dixon said it to himself and then tried to flail his features into some sort of response to humour. Mentally, however, he was making a different face and promising himself he'd make it actually when next alone. He'd draw his lower lip in under his top teeth and by degrees retract his chin as far as possible, all this while dilating his eyes and nostrils. By these means he would, he was confident, cause a deep dangerous flush to suffuse his face.

Welch was talking yet again about his concert. How had he become Professor of History, even at a place like this? By published work? No. By extra good teaching? No in italics. Then how? As usual, Dixon shelved this question, telling himself that what mattered was that this man had decisive power over his future...

Happy Flowers and Sunshine! | July 14, 2003

Oh crap. I let an entire week go by without blogging. Now there will be a big hole in my archives where last week should have been. It's like I killed the week for posterity.

The good news is, I didn't do much of anything except work late. I did laundry on Friday night. It's just that sad. And now it's hot and miserable here and I want to move to San Francisco where it's not hot and miserable. But I have a bad money thing. I like earning it. It's a real problem to try and face the prospect of not having a reliable source of income. I'm saving up for a vacation that will never happen. I'm lamenting the fact that I cannot stay within my credit card budget every month (though I don't carry a balance, thank you very much). I'm horrified by the prospect of actually moving, wherein you have to pack up all your shit (as I have done four fucking times since I have lived in Los Angeles...for six fucking years) and either pay someone to move you or go crazy, hate your friends and hurt yourself trying to do it yourself.

Plus, the cats would vomit.

I'm reading fuck all. I'm writing fuck all. I fucking suck. I'm swearing a whole fucking lot.

This weekend is the San Diego Comic-Con, which, as always, will not live up to my expectations--not just for the convention itself, but for the much-hyped "party scene" which I have never personally witnessed. But hey! I'm taking the train down there, so that'll be fun, right?

Right?!

The Buses Are, Like, Electric and Shit | July 02, 2003

Ah, the long weekend approaches. I'm off work at noon tomorrow and on the smelly 5 North to San Francisco soon after. What will we do when we arrive in my favorite American city?

We will see our friend Dana and stay in her apartment with her cats, Charlie and Bill.

We will visit Citizen Cake and have some type of fattening dessert.

We will go shopping (but not buy anything because I've reached by clothes-buying budget cap for the month already) at Dema, where the clothes are mod and expensive but not at all slutty.

We will buy CDs at Amoeba in the Haight, which is not as big as the Hollywood Amoeba, but sometimes has stuff we are denied at home.

We will also eat at a bunch more places, like l'Ottavo and Ti-Couz. Eating is our primary tourist activity. Yes, San Francisco, for us, is really just eating, shopping, walking, unsuccessfully trying to avoid taking MUNI and sitting around Dana's apartment listening to David Sedaris CDs.

Goddamn, we know how to party.