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Murakami
Posted 9:19 AM, Jan 31, 2005 |
I’m in the middle of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and loving it. As with every book of his I’ve read, there’s always something surreal going on just a bit below the surface (although in this one, the strangeness isn’t quite so subtle). But still, even with characters doing normal things like reading library books, something just doesn’t quite seem right.
Murakami is, by far, now, my favorite. David Foster Wallace, my old one, is still good, but I realized that, as soon as I got Kafka on the Shore, I stopped reading Wallace’s Oblivion to read Murakami. It also occurred to me that I’ve actually had Oblivion for a few months, since shortly after it came out, and have read about 10 things since then. Wallace is too much work, sometimes, especially when compared to Murakami.
Also, Murakami makes me want to write, which I actually stopped reading and got out of bed to do. I just wrote about 20 lines, but not bad. He’s got this way of making the seeminlgy-uninteresting interesting. He makes it seem so effortless, no fancy tricks, no big words, that I end up thinking I can do it. I sort of can, but I still tip my hat to Murakami.
Go get The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and stop reading this ridiculous excuse for a weblog.
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Blank (Cranberry Curry)
Posted 8:57 PM, Jan 30, 2005 |
I’m drawing a blank, here. I feel like I should write something, so y’all know precisely what I’m doing at every moment of the day. The problem, then, is that I’d have to admit that most of what I did today is entirely boring. You would think, just for a moment, that I’m really a middle-aged housewife cooking for a family of four.
I did cook cranberry curry, which was good. It wasn’t what I had in my head, having had Azia’s cranberry curry in my head. And sure, of course it isn’t going to be that good. I suppose recognizing that they made theirs with pasta, and I used rice, well, that’s a good sign that they weren’t going to be the same.
But it was tasty. It needed a little more kick, a little more pizazz, but that might have overwhelmed the subtle hint of cranberry, the delicate aftertaste of… flour? I guess.
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This Story Takes 3 Weeks To Tell
Posted 2:49 AM, Jan 29, 2005 |
Week 1: Russ and I are out at Grumpy’s, and I turn around, and, what’s up? Angela, Frisbee Angela, is right there. She and Adam and Sara, these people I play frisbee with in the spring, summer, and fall, are playing pool on the other side of the bar. Russ and I wander over later and hang out for an hour or so. Sara is from St. Louis, as is Russ, so they’re all bonding and shit. Adam and I play pool. And so on. So we all shake hands and go our separate ways. However, I did promise a party.
Week 1.5: Russ runs into Sara on campus. Conversations ensue.
Week 2: Russ, Heather, Meaghan and I are out at the Turf Club. Russ points a few tables over and is like, ‘Hey, isn’t that those frisbee people?’ And it is. So we talk, again, to Adam and Sara. Angela is nowhere to be found, goddamn her, where is she? But anyway, the coincidences continue. We joke, laughingly, saying things like, ‘Hey, we’ll see you next week, but who knows where?’ and then laughing like drunks. Because of course, what are the odds that we all run into each other again?
Week 3: We all run into each other again. I shit you not. Do you think I’m shitting you? I am not shitting you. Heather and Russ and I head to the C. C. Club and we stand around for a while. Two waitresses try to push me down, knock me over, kick my legs out from under me. So we decide to leave, and I’m walking, apparently in a daze, out. I vaguely hear someone calling my name, but since it isn’t prefaced by the word ‘Frisbee,’ I don’t answer. Then someone taps me on the shoulder, and it’s Adam, and he points out Angela and Sara.
At this point, I shit my pants.
So here we all are again.
While we’re talking, another waitress tries to knock me down, so we had to go. Things were threatening to get violent.
Again with all the jokes about us meeting next week.
And they (Angela, Sara, and Adam) told me I have to write about them, so I hope they’re all reading this. I challenge you to find us next weekend. We’ll be out and about, around town. That’s the biggest clue I’ll give you: we will be in town.
If my crew runs into their crew again, it’s going to be West Side Story all over again, where my crew is Tony and their crew is Maria.
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Bleeding Fingers for Typos
Posted 10:23 PM, Jan 27, 2005 |
My fingers hurt as if I’ve had my blood sugar tested 1,000 times in the last hour.
I played guitar for an hour, from 5:15 to 6:15, give or take, and then for another 45 minutes from 9:30 to 10:15, give or take. That’s more guitar than I’ve played in a single day ever, I think, and my fingers are reminding me with every keystroke.
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Married to the Job
Posted 8:08 AM, Jan 25, 2005 |
So at what point, say, when getting married, do the participants get all worried and think they’re throwing their life away, or at least wasting a significant amount of time?
Things at work have been moving pretty quickly, and it looks like I’ll get into my new position sometime in the next 7 days, which is sooner than I thought. And so now that I’m walking down the aisle, metaphorically, I’ve got to wonder:
What am I really doing?
People keep asking me, “So, what exactly will you be doing?” to which I reply with a nervous laugh and, “Oh, I don’t really know.”
This is not a good response, since I wrote the job description.
It’s sort of like getting married, in the sense that it could be awesome, or it could suck a lot. I could end up relaxing on the sofa with my new job, spooning and watching television, or I could end up in the kitchen washing dishes that we used to eat spaghetti four days ago.
I guess, like marriage, you just sort of have to dive in and do it, and my job description is like wedding vows, except I made sure not to include the words “‘til death do us part.”
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Numbers
Posted 10:13 PM, Jan 23, 2005 |
My first impression of Numbers was that it sounds like a good idea. My second impression, after the first commercial for the show ended, was that it sounds like a bad idea.
Overall, I liked it. I liked the fact that the “math genius” listened to Massive Attack and a lot of the soundtrack had that same kind of feel. I like to think that kind of music appeals to math people. Maybe that’s just because it appeals to me - right now I’m listening to Clint Mansell’s contributions to the soundtrack for Pi - same kind of feel.
I liked that the writers had at least done some rudimentary research, if not more. They mentioned physicist Richard Feynman and also talked about Galois, who died in a duel. While Peter MacNicol’s character mentioning that he knew Feynman was sort of lame, I liked the idea: mathematicians are real people. They aren’t just this stereotype that you think of from your college math professor (probably). I also liked the “math genius” taking time to look at the faces of the victims - sure, the scene was overdone by shooting it through a rain-streaked window, but the point is the same: he’s sympathizing with the victims - a real human emotion.
And then the stuff I didn’t like. I didn’t like Peter MacNicol’s geekiness, although it was sort of redeemed by his statements in the arcade about humanity and human randomness.
I didn’t like the “math genius” coming into the FBI office and just ignorantly erasing the dry erase board so he could use it. On one hand, the writers are trying to convince us he’s in touch with humanity and not a total space cadet, and then they have him doing things like that.
I didn’t like the annoying “chalk-overs” on the screen. Having equations and x-, y-, and z- axes drawn on a streetcorner building is a little obnoxious. You know, we get that it’s about math, and showing math in the context of the story is fine, but don’t hit us over the head with it.
I don’t know, math-wise, if the math presented is realistic, but I guess it seems plausible. I liked the educational moment in the FBI office where he has a bunch of people spread out “randomly,” and then points out that it’s really too random, essentially, and that everyone has spaced themselves out. That’s a nifty educational moment, and the kind of real-life example that people can understand and say, ‘Hey, yeah.’ So that part got two thumbs up.
Math-wise, still, I thought it was lame that the “math genius” told the “FBI agent” that they must have missed the rapist/killer when they didn’t find him in the 96%-probability ‘hot zone.’ Every mathematician knows that 96% is not a certainty, even though he seemed to treat it like it was. Granted, it turned out there was a human explanation, and so his ‘certainty’ was really pretty accurate. But still, I thought that was a little mathematically illogical.
And I think, when illustrating the fact that one of the crime scenes was wrong by pointing out that it was an anomaly, I’m pretty sure they spelled it ‘anomoly.’ But hey, he’s a math guy - I’m sure he can’t spell for shit.
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The Plastic Constellations
Posted 12:17 PM, Jan 23, 2005 |
… are a very loud band.
And they rock.
After a little dinner at Salsa de la Salsa on Nicollet Mall, the crew rolled over to the Turf Club, which is a pretty cool place. I guess Neil Young and Crazy Horse played there once, so there’s a fair amount of stuff related to them on the walls and whatnot. Biggest show the Turf Club has ever seen, although it was probably back in 1940.
The first band, Little Dirt, was pretty good. Unfortunately, they sounded not-as-good after the second band came out. Too bad the second band never told us who they were.
The third band was the Plastic Constellations, who played maybe 10 songs, half of which were off Mazatlan and the other half of which were new. The new stuff sounded just a good as the old stuff, which is good.
They did a lot of head-bobbing, guitar-wailing, jumping, and generally being enthusiastic. And they sounded awesome. And they were loud.
It’s tough to describe a good show any more than just saying it was good.
Then the last band came out. They were from Japan.
It’s tough to describe a bad, awful show any more than just saying it was bad and awful. But let me try: they had two megaphones on stage. At one point, one of the guitarists held the bass drum on his head. He also stage dove, which was a dicey proposition considering how bad they were, although people seemed to be into it, whether mockingly or for real, I couldn’t tell. And the crew stayed for the whole show.
I knew from the Constellations’ site and from the band as they were playing that they were throwing an after party at Jeff’s. (Jeff is in the band.) And so after the show, we were sitting around, finishing up our beers (Hamm’s!) and whatnot, and the Constellations were standing around. I went over to Jeff and talked to him for a bit about Hopkins, their rule-ass show, their college education, and other awesome things. He introduced me to their drummer, whose name I do not recall. I asked him about the after party, and he told me to ask Jeff. Jeff gave us directions, so the crew talked about it and decided to ‘make an appearance.’ The problem was twofold, we determined after arriving at the apartment building:
1) Jeff and the band were still at the Turf Club. We had hung around the Turf Club for a while, waiting for them to leave, but we still left before them.
2) The building was an apartment building, and so you had to call the apartment and then get buzzed in. I did not know Jeff’s last name, and there was no ‘J. Constellation’ listed.
3) We didn’t think we’d be able to get in even when they got there, because the building looked pretty nice and there wasn’t really on-street parking, so we figured it was underground, which would mean they’d just take the elevator upstairs.
So we left, which sucked. I wanted to stay and hang out and wait, but the rest of the crew was not having that. I was pretty tired, since it was probably like 2:30 or something, but I thought it’d still be cool if we went. But we didn’t.
I got home at, like, 4:05. The whole evening rocked.
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New Job
Posted 10:00 PM, Jan 20, 2005 |
Well, as of yesterday, I’m switching jobs. Same company, just a new job. It was a position I sort of made up, an amalgam of a bunch of positions that were currently vacant, and some other stuff, too. The addition of this new position got approved by (one of) the vice-president(s) yesterday, which was, as my current boss put it, “the biggest hurdle.” It sounds like the rest of the approval and application process is pretty simple and straightforward, although it won’t actually happen for a few weeks due to traveling schedules (not mine) and a bunch of work that I have to finish at my current job before I move along.
I’m really not sure what I’m going to do in this job. I mean, I know what I think I should do, but I think it’s going to take some effort and some self-motivation for the position to actually entail what I think it should - basically, I think I’m going to have to work hard to convince people that the actual job matches the job I envisioned in my head around last Thanksgiving.
I think if the position turns into what I think it should be, I can actually change the way things are done. (I’m sure I’ll read this in six months, having changed nothing, and roll my eyes. But then I’ll read this, my statement of intense realism, and nod sagely, rubbing my chin.)
One of the frustrating things about my current job, and I think this is a frustration shared by a lot of people with whom I work with who have similar jobs, is the lack of any sort of control over the situation in which we’re all placed. The processes and procedures are determined by other people, and we just have to follow them, even when they don’t make a lot of sense (and, to be fair, we follow them when they do make a lot of sense, too). But only very seldom do we get to create these procedures.
When you follow a lot of procedures and start to think, “Hey, I think there’s a better way to do this, not just for me, but for everyone,” then maybe it’s time to start thinking about how to get these “better ways” to turn into reality. And so I guess that’s what I hope this job is about, in a sense - improving processes and procedures and increasing efficiency.
Sounds really fucking dramatic, huh? Yeah, I’m a real world-mover. Yawn.
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I Write With a Limp
Posted 5:17 PM, Jan 19, 2005 |
I think one of my arms (my right) is shorter than the other arm (the left). A couple times I’ve noticed that my left sleeve seems a lot longer than my right, and it’s been while wearing different shirts. I thought maybe it was because my right arm does most of the writing and stuff, since I’m right-handed, so maybe all that activity was just making it more wrinkled and crinkled around the elbow and shoulder and stuff. But, even when I pull both sleeves as straight and taut and symmetrical to one another as possible, the left is still longer.
I’m going to have to get specially-designed shirts now with longer right-arm sleeves just to balance it out.
Maybe it’s — nah. I thought for a moment that maybe it was a matter of tucking in the shirt, and since I’m right-handed, that side of the shirt got tucked in tighter, and hence makes the sleeve appear shorter. Except I don’t tuck in my shirts, so there goes that theory.
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Barre and Grille
Posted 7:04 PM, Jan 17, 2005 |
So Jenny told me, “Understand barre chords, and you’ll be a rock star.” As usual, I was all thinking, ‘Yeah, whatever Jenny. Like you even know.’ (I hope she doesn’t read the above part.)
But anyway, so today I finally got around to the chapter on barre chords. Like, I understand what a barre chord was, how you put your finger across a whole fret and press until your finger hurts, and then you use your other fingers in lots of uncomfortable ways so much so that it becomes obvious it would be way easier to just pay someone else to play the damn guitar for you. So yeah, I got that.
But I presume what I didn’t get is how to use barre chords to create new chords from existing ones, and how it gives you this whole variety of ways to make chords.
Now if only my fingers didn’t hurt from sliding them around on little tiny steel wires.
Did you know the guitar was designed by a hand model into S&M?
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Illiterate
Posted 5:46 PM, Jan 17, 2005 |
Lately, even though I’m “reading” an interesting book (see side), I can’t sit down for more than, say, 20 minutes at a time to read. I’m up and checking my email, and writing for this damn site, and playing 30 minutes worth of video games, and watching 21 minutes of Arrested Development, and playing 28 minutes of guitar, and generally exhibiting ADD. My brain can no longer focus on anything for longer than 30 minutes.
This doesn’t go well at work, where I get up and talk to people and drink more soda than is healthy for anyone, although this weekend I’ve gone essentially soda-free (in fact, I’ve been depressant-loading), and that doesn’t seem to cure me inattentiveness.
Even cooking something in the oven for more than 30 minutes doesn’t work. I get bored waiting for chicken to cook completely, and so just take it out and eat the outside part that’s cooked, and then put the rest back in for 30 more minutes. It’s a recipe I call “30-Minute Chicken” for reasons that are more than obvious.
It’s a good thing I’m mobile and fully functional. Can you imagine being, say, a tree with ADD?
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Meeting People is Easy
Posted 8:52 AM, Jan 16, 2005 |
Pre-note: I wonder if anyone knows how much time I spend thinking of titles for these posts.
Actual important information, relatively speaking, starts right here, after this colon: : And so I don’t know if I agree or disagree with this, so yeah.
Later.
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Once Bitten, Twice Bitten
Posted 3:11 PM, Jan 15, 2005 |
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. On the other hand, if you succeed admirably the first time, the only honorable thing to do is to try and do it better the next time.
I don’t know if I’d say it was better - it’s tough to compare vomiting and passing out on the floor. Different, though. And good.
I have a skeleton laced with adamantium, so, while I look like a lightweight, I actually weigh close to 650 lbs. This heavier body weight has tricked me into thinking I can drink more than I really should.
You know all those charts used to compute blood alcohol content, and they have, like, ‘number of drinks,’ along the side, and ‘body weight’ along the top? Yeah, those things don’t work for me and my adamantium skeleton.
I wonder if Wolverine also has this problem.
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Hair of the Dog
Posted 7:57 AM, Jan 14, 2005 |
The hair of the dog that bit me is a little bit of really hot Indian food, a lot of Summit, some Gluek’s Pilsner, and some Blue Moon, and a whole lot of Hookers & Blow. The dog bit me over and over again this morning, laughing and barking and biting incessantly.
‘Twas not a pleasant morning, but last night was so much fun, we’re going to do it all over again! Well, not all over again. But you know.
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Too Late
Posted 11:23 AM, Jan 12, 2005 |
I was going to write about how the snow was coming down outside, and it’s about time, and they were those huge flakes the size of half-dollars, and you could actually stand by the window and watch the snow accumulate on the grass.
But then it stopped snowing, so, I guess, it was nice while it lasted, anyway.
And also, I tried to write a poem in the car today on my way to work. (By ‘write,’ I just mean think about in my head, lest you think I’m a careless driver.) Yeah, it didn’t work, and today’s about the third day in a row that I’ve tried, while driving, to write. I’m mildly concerned that all my creative energies are being siphoned into the guitar, a trade I’m not really willing to make.
Perhaps if I spent less time working…
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Neglect
Posted 11:13 AM, Jan 10, 2005 |
Boy, after I lectured everyone about not being neglectful, here I’ve gone and ignored all two of you for days on end. I know you’ve been eagerly checking for another update, so here it is:
There’s nothing happening, really.
My fingers hurt from playing the guitar, which is a good thing.
Good old Achewood has been pretty funny lately.
The weekend disappeared nearly without a trace, but fortunately we’ve got another 3-day weekend coming up.
Yeah, and stuff. You know, like you’re really interested.
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Jimi Hendrix I Am Not
Posted 11:02 PM, Jan 6, 2005 |
Today I spent an honest 10 minutes reading about how diatonic musical scales are pulled from the chromatic scale, and how chords are constructed from the components of diatonic scales. I learned how to construct chords - minor, suspended, diminished, and so on. But the best thing the article did was simply helped me understand what I was doing.
I could play a C chord forever. Ask me what notes made up a C chord before today and I would’ve had no idea at all. But see, now I know.
So, why the fuck is that important? Because it’s the first step in reading music and being able to play it on the guitar, or at least I hope it’s the first step or I’ve missed something else. I know how to read music on a staff - names of notes, time signatures, all that stuff. I played the trumpet for 6 years, so reading music is nothing new.
Ask me yesterday to play you a C on the guitar and I’d ask you to show me the tablature for it. Nobody had ever explained how notes on the staff transfer to the fretboard.
Seriously, it’s like the Rosetta fucking Stone. Granted, I still can’t play anything remotely complex - I can barely handle remotely simple stuff. But every journey begins with a single step. Blah.
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Controlled Rant
Posted 10:46 PM, Jan 5, 2005 |
Seriously, now, it might seem like I sit around a lot and don’t have a whole lot to do on a daily basis, and that’s right, but a lot of that “free time” is planned free time. That’s time I need.
So why am I saying this? Because I don’t have time to waste on people that are going to fuck around, people that think their time is more valuable than my time. I get ticked at a lot of people about this.
This is why you call people back when you say you will. Because, odds are, that person is actually expecting your call. In certain cases, they have actually changed their plans in order to be home to take your call. In certain cases, they are actually anticipating your call, eagerly, even, sometimes. For you not to call, and then not to even say, ‘Sorry I didn’t call like I said I would,’ well, in the words of Max Fischer, Rushmore student:
That’s just rude.
There’s a good reason that one thing I pride myself on is that when I make plans or say I’m going to do something, 99% of the time I do it, as planned, as expected. It’s a matter of being responsible, courteous, and mature. (And that’s ‘mature’ with a hard t sound, not a ch in the middle. Think about that for a minute.)
I’ve managed to keep this rant mostly controlled - I only dropped the f-bomb once - but:
See, even here, I was going to just let fly, really rip into a particular person, but I’m not even going to do that. I had typed a whole sentence here, all typed out and full of vitrol. Then, I changed it to have a strikethrough line through it (like this). But even that, nah, I don’t think it’s necessary.
I think that people that are irresonsible, rude, and immature (hard t sound) know that they’re behaving badly, and, as much as it sounds like I’m a Catholic nun, that’s something they’re going to have to live with their whole lives.
Sure, those kind of people are genuine bastards and probably will never think of it again. The only people that have to “live” with those kinds of things are the kinds of people that wouldn’t do them in the first place.
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Things I Don’t Need
Posted 6:21 PM, Jan 3, 2005 |
Yeah, I don’t need any of this garbage, really. Regardless - hell, irregardless - of how anything ever turns out, I don’t really need any of it.
This isn’t the old Paul Simon song I Am a Rock, either, so don’t start thinking that. I’m not suggesting I curl up into the fetal position for the next… how long is my life expectancy, anyway?
I’m saying I don’t need all the headache, the nervousness, the fustlethrum of dealing with other people.
The really unfortunate problem is that most of these symptoms are self-imposed. Sure, people are screwy, and they’re irresponsible, often, and aggravating (sometimes even intentionally so), but they don’t make me feel this way like, say, eating raw chicken makes you feel nauseous and vomit.
And so but then, the problem is that it’s me, and I’m a tough problem for me to shake. If it was, say, you, then I could relatively easily just decide not to speak to you, and voila, problem solved! And sure, I can resolve not to talk to myself on my drive to work, but it’ll have about as much staying power as my resolve not to sing in the shower, which is to say none at all.
I made a sign at work that said, “hey. Hey. Relax.” in big bold letters. I took it down today and put it in the desk because it clearly doesn’t do any good. And besides, who makes stupid signs for themselves anyway?
Side note: The word “resolution,” it occurred to me, is really “re-solution,” as in to solve something again. You’ve probably noticed this long, long ago, and are wondering where I’ve been.
Anyway, I’m not going to write about some resolution here, so then I can read it next January and realize how miserably I’ve failed. Instead, I’m just going to keep going along, insufferably, for another year.
Next year, when I look back and read this, I know that I’ll have done exactly what I said I would do, and maybe, if this year goes better than last, I’ll at least know I’m on the right track.
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I’m Not Saying, Necessarily, At All
Posted 8:44 PM, Jan 2, 2005 |
“Well, first of all, you completely forget about the world around you. Your friends and family just become invisible. All you can do is think about him day and night. When you see him, it’s as if he’s filled your eyes with light; and when you don’t see him, the thought of him eats away at your heart. You wonder where he is and what he’s doing every minute of the day. You invent his whole life, you live it for him: your eyes see for him, your ears hear for him…
“In this first stage you don’t know what the other is thinking or feeling. It’s the most poignant part. Then you open your hearts to each other and you have a brief moment of incredible happiness…
“After the sunshine comes the storm. Suddenly you’re thrown into darkness, you have to feel your way and crawl along carefully as you get older. You’ll see, when you love and are loved by someone, you’ll know the pain of living on a white-hot grill. You won’t be sure of anything anymore.”
- Shan Sa
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