today, i get paid.

it's a monthly occurance which has its pros and cons, not the actual getting paid part, that's all pro and no con at all. the part with the pros and cons is the scheduling of the event. chief among the cons is that it only happens once a month so the rush of endorphins that takes place when the check's deposited is relegated to a mere twelve times a year. at the top of the list of pros is that it keeps me from spending an exhorbitant amount of money with the false sense of security that a payday is coming up. in any case, the paycheck always comes on the last weekday of the month, and like i said before, that'd be today.

money, or income more specifically, is interesting. in what some would call more dignified times, income wasn't something that respectable people talked about, period. information like that was intensely personal and to be guarded. these days that's not so much the case. i mean i won't say how big (or small) my check is right here this second, out on the web and all, but generally if someone wants to know, all they have to do is ask.

there's also a lot to be said for just getting a paycheck on a regular basis. i remember in college, i'd try to limit the time i spent working, ostensibly to focus on school, which for the most part, meant that i didn't have a regular part time job. i did some work moving furniture for this one guy. that was pretty awesome mostly because he paid $15 an hour and in cash. the flip side was that it wasn't regular and when it wasn't busy, i'd have to figure out whether to get groceries or put gas in the car and sneak into the cafeteria on campus that week.

some of you know exactly why the word "ostensibly" is in that sentence about focusing on school.

feeling: black t-shirt and jeans
thinking of: st. mark's
music: "sick boy" social distortion

i have a gamecube.

i don't really play it very much, and the decision to get it was actually a pretty involved one. part of the benefit of having roomates is that usually one of them had a nintendo of some sort, a 64, a gamecube, something like that. whenever i'd get the urge to play, that is to say whenever i had reading or other homework that i wanted to avoid, the option of playing was available to me, i could play for a lil while and be done with it, and i usually was. i wouldn't touch it again for at least a few weeks.

so it's been a year and a half since i've had a roommate and it was about january or february that i felt like sitting down for an afternoon and doing nothing but playing video games. with no roommate, however, the option wasn't readily available so if i wanted to play, i'd have to spend the money to get one myself and i wasn't sure how i felt about that, it'd never cost me money to play before, and i kinda thought it'd be stupid to spend over a hundred bucks on something i'd use, at most, every once in a while. so anyways, i got one and it's actually come in handy on days off and stuff, but true to form, it's not become a habit at all, but i actually kinda feel like it's been worth it.

anything to avoid constructive activity i guess.

feeling: a chill
thinking of: audrey hepburn
music: "badstreet, usa" the fabulous freebirds

i am so down with spicy brown mustard.

i wrote a few weeks ago about applied memories, i'd link to that entry, but i'm a bit pressed for time and too lazy to dig it up anyway. in any case, what i was describing then was the kind of memory that comes to the forefront of your mind as a result of some sort of a catalyst action. it's more vivid than a regular memory, but not quite full-fledged deja vu.

so anyways, when i was little, i was a very picky eater. somewhat shocking considering the standards i have for what i shove into my mouth these days, i mean sometimes the requirement for edible gives way to merely non-toxic. anyhow, from the time i was four til i was about eight or nine, the staple of my diet was cheese sandwiches, grilled if i could get it grilled, but if not, it'd always be with mustard.

at home, we only ever got regular yellow mustard, but whenever i'd go to my grandparents' house, my grandmother kept the pantry stocked with spicy mustard, so whenever i'd eat there, that's what would be in my cheese sandwich. you know how it is when you're a little kid and you go to grandma's house, everything is so different and so much cooler than at home, even if it's not. so, obviously, the logical progression here is that i would look forward to going to my grandparents' house so i could get a cheese sandwich with spicy mustard. it's funny because day before yesterday i went grocery shopping and, pretty much on a whim, got some spicy mustard and really felt like i'd totally forgotten how good it was, and even that i'd liked it so much when i was a lil kid.

luckily, however, i never tried it with my grilled cheese.

feeling: energetic
thinking of: baking cookies
music: "firefly" old 97s

sometimes having a Y chromosome is tough.

not that i'm complaining or anything like that or pining away for the alternative, though i did use to be a cheerleader and i watch the learning channel, trading spaces, while you were out, stuff like that. i mean nothing against girls, i dig girls, but the monthlies and underwire bras are enough to make me want to wholeheartedly steer clear of the whole brier patch, as it were, that being a member of the opposite sex is.

so anyways, i was thinking yesterday about gender differences and different conversations i've had with girls that i know and just how as far as perception goes, guys and girls perceive things so so differently. what i also thought about is just how much i've changed as far as that goes in the past few years. i've gone from perceiving things in a very androcentric, compartmentalizational way to being more comfortable with uncertainty and not having every little thing laid out.

so here lately i've been fighting with some leftover vestiges of that sort of certainty-dependent outlook, sort of being bothered with the lack of knowledge of the next step of my life. like in high school and college there was graduation to look forward to and having the certainty of knowing when and how it would end was really comforting, which is something i didn't realize then. i've been bothered lately by the fact that i don't have the same certainty now as i did then. not that i don't like what i'm doing or where i'm at, it's just that the sense of the unknown is sort of playing on the small part of me that needs to have things laid out like that.

cheerleading?? i couldn't believe it either.

feeling: secure and conflicted
thinking of: 24, tonite
music: "south of the border" frank sinatra

california is on fire.

not like i'm on fire, that'd be near impossible for pretty much anybody. there are, however, raging forest fires to the east and south of here. what'd really be newsworthy is if there were forest fires to the west, i mean since that's where the ocean is and everything. so yesterday as i was walking towards my car before heading out in the morning, i noticed this layer of ash on everything which sort of made me wonder if there was a volcano that had erupted somewhere around here.

i'd never seen anything like it before, there were no forests in texas or in illinois, at least not any that got set on fire or anything like that, so the whole forest fire thing is a pretty new experience to me, which is funny because i don't even live in the forest. in any case, everything smells like smoke now, and it's extremely smoky, which i guess makes sense, and i guess dusty. some people won't go outside without masks, and it's hazy, even more hazy than it usually is, which is saying something because it's always hazy around here.

i probably wouldn't have even noticed all this if i hadn't just washed my car last week.

feeling: sore neck
thinking of: november and december
music: "carefree" the refreshments

i'm in the market for a jacket.

not that it's really getting cold here or anything like that, but maybe you've seen the jacket i wear most of the time. it's more of a lined brown shirt that's gotta be about thirty years old. i got it from my grandfather, who's a total hardass. i totally dig this jacket, so i'm not really thinking about totally replacing it or anything like that, but being as old as it is, it's definitely worse for wear so i figure i should probably get another jacket to slow down the wear. you know how it is.

so what i'm looking for is just a black jacket, a light one, there's not much use for a heavy one out here and i remember seeing one i really liked, what's problematic about that is that this was about a year and a half ago, more problematic is that it was at a mall in illinois. i think it was a kenneth cole, which is cool, not necessarily because i'm a fan of kenneth cole, i don't think i have a stitch of clothing designed by him, it'd be something different for me is all.

but then you know how it is, it's never just about a jacket, not with me anyway. there's all kinds of other implications, mostly products of a ridiculously integrated education and a somewhat overactive imagination. i find myself pondering and trying to understand a sentiment like the one conveyed in the adage "clothes make the man" a maxim i've never gone along with. maybe it's because i wore a uniform in school or that one time i got yelled at for wearing a wrinkled shirt. but then if i had gone along with it, my identity would seem to change every three days out of seven or so.

i think i'll get some boots too.

feeling: rawk
thinking of: kirsten dunst, "bring it on" greatest movie of all time
music: "beautiful girl" the gadjits

saturday, that's funny.

feeling: a bit worse for wear
thinking of: fall back, 2AM
music: "walk" pantera

if i hear that radio commercial for tommy hilfiger's "freedom" one more time, something or someone will pay dearly.

good gravy, that commercial comes on every ten minutes or so and it's just so stupid. i mean everything from its use of an old aretha franklin (whose music has the very irritating tendency of staying in the head once it's made its way there) song, to the "testimonials" about how tommy hilfiger's "freedom" led some girl to dump her loser boyfriend or some guy to finally own up to having herpes and go on valtrex or something like that.

perhaps my animosity springs from the fact that i'm already committed as far as fragrance goes. with the exception of a few months where i used pleasures for men by estee lauder, i've been a devotee of polo sport since about eleventh grade, probably because they don't have dumb commercials like that.

but i digress.

feeling: surly
thinking of: ambiguity
music: "the sound" further seems forever

i need a biographer.

i'm not entirely sure what prompted that thought, i do remember that i was in the car when i had it though. i tend to do my best thinking in the car, which is somewhat unfortunate, because i don't drive nearly as much as i used to. i remember when i lived in chicago, every once in a while, i'd get up around five and drive to this panaderia (mexican bakery for the uninitiated) in cicero, and it was just as much for the hour or so i'd spend in the car in thought as it was for the stuff i got there.

so anyways, to the point, i think the biographer thing sprung from a train of thought where i was reflecting on how i'm not terribly detail oriented and how it'd help if there was someone i had to sort of cite the details of my life that get lost on me. on top of that i think lately i've become more aware of blind spots in my life. not necessarily what they are, or else they wouldn't be blind spots, but that i *have* blind spots, which has always been something i've had difficulty admitting to myself.

maybe i should become a better writer.

feeling: hungry, which is odd for this time of nite
thinking of: a lot
music: "the warrior" mylon and broken heart

i went to the grocery store yesterday.

that's not normally something worth giving a second thought to, much less writing about. trips there have a tendency to be horrendous, mostly because there never seems to be a time where business is slow, and they never seem to have enough people working the checkout lines. i've pretty much gotten used to that, it helps that, generally, when i go shopping, i'm not really in any sort of a rush. lately, however, i've been trying to avoid it if at all possible, mostly because all the grocery workers around here are on strike.

there's a lot i don't understand about organized labor, i mean i've heard jimmy hoffa is buried in the endzone at giants stadium. luckily, however, there is exemplary social commentary on the subject, the vast majority and highest quality of which comes from the mouth of homer j. simpson. i'm thinking of the one where the teachers in springfield go on strike and lisa mentions it in the living room, hearing about it homer says "lisa, if you hate your job you don't strike, you just go in every day and do it really half-assed."

genius, utter, utter genius.

feeling: ok
thinking of: 91º in october, that's what
music: "worker's song" dropkick murphys

i'm rearranging my bedroom.

i'd been told it looks pretty pedestrian, which makes sense, because, in a lot of ways, it does. my bed was in the middle of the room, with about two and a half feet of floor on either side, lots of pictures framing the window above the bed, some posters, a nightstand, a dresser, and that's pretty much it. so anyway i moved the bed over to one side, and figure i've got some room to put a lil couch on the other side of the room and a coffee table and probly some shelves for a bunch of the crap that's still in my closet.

all that meant that i got to go to the thrift store, which i tore up. it was great. i got a coffee table and some stuff to put on my walls, a landscape that i put over my couch, and a monet poster i put in my hall, both were framed and they look good. all that was like thirty bucks.

in the end, however, i'm not even entirely sure why i'm doing stuff with my room, i don't even spend that much time in there, mostly just between six and seven hours when i'm asleep. but then it's sort of a chicken and egg sort of thing, because maybe if it was designed differently, i'd spend more time in there.

the progression i've made over the last few years:
athlete----> cheerleader----> dabbling in design
has me wary.

feeling: energetic
thinking of: the social construction of reality
music: "spanish flea" herb alpert and the tijuana brass

it's football season.

i haven't really followed it very closely. in fact, i don't think i've watched a single game from start to finish so far this year, which is curious for a few reasons. one is because i've got cable this year and i have more opportunity to watch games than i ever have in the past, granted it's usually the likes of utah st. vs. bowling green or something like that. that, in and of itself is curious, because watching crap teams never seemed to bother me in the past. when i was growing up, other kids were getting up early on saturday morning to watch cartoons, i was getting up early to watch baylor play rice. i'm sure my parents considered seeking counseling on my behalf, baylor and rice have both sucked for a long time and i suspect that the only people that watch games of either of those teams from start to finish watch them compulsorily, strapped in, "a clockwork orange" style.

i understand the game too, which makes my diminished interest a bit more puzzling. mostly people lose interest with something because they don't understand the intricacies behind it. on top of that, i understand it in a way a lot of people don't. i can explain to you what a cover 2 defense is, the difference between a 3-4 defense and a 4-3 defense, what a fold block is, the zone blocking scheme. why teams run running plays (this one's for bone), for example, is more than just one fellow running headlong into a convoy of beefy gentlemen. most running plays are designed to gain four or five yards. there's the center, he's the guy whose virility is, quite literally, in the quarterback's hands, the guys on either side of him are called guards. look, for instance at a trap play, on that particular play if it's being run to the right, the guard to the right of the center doesn't touch the guy right in front of him, but goes to get a linebacker instead, usually the guy over the center, the center gets the guy to the left of him, the guy lined up over the left guard, whose job it is to come down the line and destroy the guy the right guard didn't touch. that opens up the hole for the running back to go through, a hole that's usually open long enough to get four or five yards. it might not stay open quite as long, causing the aforementioned pile up of beefy gentlemen, or it might stay open a bit longer than that and if the back hits the hole fast enough, leads to a big gain.

that was incredibly boring, that's probably why i don't watch anymore. if you made it this far, let me know, i'll arrange for a prize of some sort.

feeling: loved, keep it coming :)
thinking of: sid
music: "press on" billy sprague

out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

or so i've heard. so i was feeling sort of bad for myself earlier this week, not quite self-pitying, but definitely bordering on it and definitely not the sort of encouraged attitude people associate with me. mostly i was just sort of wallowing around in a mood that was definitely not characteristic of me, an antic disposition, if you will. it was weird, because what i was feeling was pretty substantive, but at the same time, i had this suspicion that the feelings i was having came mostly as a result of me projecting stuff on other people that just wasn't indicative of reality.

i got sort of sick of it after a while, and started to realize that what i was perceiving wasn't really reality at all, and that i didn't really like the feelings i was having either. so anyways, i prayed. what i asked for was simple, that i wouldn't get caught up in insecurity, which was fueling the feelings i was having and that i would perceive reality accurately, based on stuff that i knew to be true, as opposed to stuff that i just suspected based on insecurity. now i don't want to get into a diatribe about the efficacy of prayer or anything like that, that's not really the story and it's definitely the sort of thing that stirs up some passionate convictions, or at least some passionate apathy, and on top of all that it's not really my bag anyway, the whole opinionated diatribe thing.

self-pitying feelings are a weird thing in and of themselves, they're the scourge of many people's existence, but they're the sort of thing that, at the same time, defines those same peoples' existence. what i mean is that i've noticed that people whose lives are characterized by self-pity would have no idea about how to live should those feelings be stripped away from them, that despite all their articulated wishes that they could be rid of those feelings, they'd be sorry to see them go. that's not to merely paint in broad strokes, i know that's not the case for everyone who deals with self-pity and related emotions, but i've seen enough to be aware that situations like that aren't rare. i didn't understand the reluctance to let go of those feelings until sometime earlier today, when i'd realized that i'd gotten exactly what i'd prayed for and then wondered where those feelings went, and then sort of wished, for a moment, that i could feel cruddy like i did earlier this week.

it's funny, because when i asked for what i did, i didn't even really stop to think about whether i really wanted it or not, and what i've come up with was that the desire that i articulated was more or less characteristic of my personality, what's in my heart, if you can go along with that.

i won't say anything about cognitive dissonance, not today anyways, but i do have some pretty amazing friends.

feeling: free
thinking of: conversations from today
music: "you're not alone" MxPx

maybe tomorrow.

feeling: swirly
thinking of: escape
music: "eat steak" the reverend horton heat

ok, i'm over it.

i think i'm over it anyway. i've spent this week getting over the most ridiculous case of jet-lag ever, not really ridiculous because of its severity or anything, it wasn't really severe at all, more of a nuisance than anything else. i think i adjusted too quickly or too well to being on a schedule three hours later than i was used to, pretty much every morning i was there i was up before 8 local time, which was before 5 as far as my body was concerned.

so anyways, i get back and find myself waking up around 5 every morning this week without the ability to roll back over and give the act of awakening the finger. case in point, yesterday, my day off, i was awake and out of bed by half past six, mostly because staying in bed just didn't feel good. it was like that simpsons where homer is trying to eat that 12 pound steak and after getting about halfway through it can't possibly eat any more of it, and laments to himself "awww there's food in front of me, but i don't want to eat any. . .ahhh i've become everything i've ever hated!!!"

vacation pics should be up soon, pending approval.

feeling: more or less normal
thinking of: i dunno, i'm taking suggestions i guess
music: "to have and have not" lars fredriksen and the bastards

every once in a great while, something unbelievable occurs.

to be honest, i'm drawing a blank as to the best way to articulate what exactly it is that i mean. it's not the sort of thing where you remember where you were when something happened, like when that murderer o.j. was being chased by the LAPD in his white bronco, i remember i was with my dad getting bbq at hardeman's in west dallas. now that was some good brisket.

this, however, was something entirely different. have you ever had the feeling when you walked into a place that your very perceptions of reality were being challenged simply by being in that place? it's as though the place you're in is, by nature, an ontological impossibility, sort of like trying to perceive arriving in heaven before being adequately prepared to do so.

so to the point, i went to target today. now you're probably all pissed off thinking "he went through all that crap to say that he went to target?!?! what a schmuck, i went to target this morning and some bratty kid stepped on my foot." in my defense, however, this was not at all an ordinary target. this was target in lakewood, california, a target whose grand opening took place just this past week. they've been advertising its opening for like a year, it seems like pretty much as soon as i got here last september i'd heard about it. everyone's been to target, there's nothing really special about it, even thinking about this one opening, the only thing i really thought was that it'd be nice to have one on the way from home to work and back, i had no idea it'd be what it was, two stories, i'd never seen a two story target before, an escalator for the carts, it was nuts.

it reminds me of the mcdonald's that opened down the street from st. mark's when i was around eighth or ninth grade there. kinda like target, everyone's been to mcdonald's and the experience, after about age 8 is really nothing surpassing mundane. i mean once ronald mcdonald stops being scary, he just starts being creepy, but anyways, this mcdonald's was s'posed to be upscale, like the kinda place you take your date before the prom. it had fancy chandeliers and tartan wallpaper, not even joking, that's what this target was like, like the mcdonald's with tartan wallpaper.

it wasn't long before we turned that mcdonald's into a post morning-workout venue for breakfast burrito binges.

feeling: better, though fighting insecurity
thinking of: katie and my dad, they called me tonite, it was great
music: "house of the rising sun" cream

if you need to head to the bathroom, get a drink, or take a smoke break, it's probably best to go ahead and do it now, we're likely to be here a while.

the muse is a flighty young thing, coming and going as she pleases. i won't go as far to say that she's flaky, that might piss her off, and who really needs that? but given that there's tons on my mind and i haven't written in almost a week plus her tendency to come and go, it was sort of incumbent upon me to take note of some of the stuff i was feeling and thinking about, which i had plenty of time to do, what with spending all day on airplanes.

i got back yesterday afternoon around half past one local (pacific) time after having gotten up at about half past five eastern that morning. such a long day, and like i said, way too much time was spent in airports and on planes, about ten hours, in fact. i do ok with it for the most part, it's not a fear or anything like that, but i get restless; really, really restless after long enough and yesterday wasn't any exception. i did have a good book to read and tons on my mind, which helped the time pass.

i don't suppose i really have to say that my trip was awesome, it was. good company has a way of refreshing me in ways that i'm not aware that anything else is able to, and i was definitely in good company. katie and i go back a ways, all the way to freshman year of college, about five years ago, which is as long as i've known all but a couple or three of my friends. we were pals in geology class which was always a thrill-a-second affair, especially that day we walked into class and the professor said that we were gonna spend the day looking at sildes of dirt, after which we summarily looked and each other and said "yah, let's go to lunch."

it was a relaxing weekend, but definitely very emotionally loaded, i won't go into much detail, anyone that needs to know already does. there's such a high in reconnecting with a friend, especially one like katie. i realize that i've either already started to or am about to sound at least a bit sappy, which is frustrating because it seems (to me anyway) to take away from the reality of sincerity, but i feel like friendships like this are rare. there's all the stuff that should be there, the thoughtfulness, the sincerity, the giving, everything, but what separates a friend, a true friend, from a good acquaintance is when that kind of a relationship is sustained either over time or distance or both. thoughtfulness and sincerity and giving seem to me to at least have the ability to appear quickly. love, however, takes longer to grow and when i look at a friendship like this, love's had the time to grow, and i feel like it definitely has grown, and characterizes it.

sometimes it feels like the words are all i have. maybe that's why i write notes, and even then, i'm not sure that they can adequately convey the purity of what i mean and what i feel. i've found that usually someone else is better able to say what i want to say and that they've already said it, this is one of those times, and for once, it's not even c.s. lewis, i promise. :) this one's from frederick buechner, he says:

your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace and joy and freedom for me. to see reality--not as we wish to see it, but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other, and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life, only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

he's right.

feeling: transparent and in need of affirmation
thinking of: emotion, sin, inadequacy, blue, words, communication, friendship, rareness, purity, sweetness, joy, sincerity, love
music: "every new day" five iron frenzy, "blue eyes crying in the rain" willie nelson, "sunday morning coming down" johnny cash, "kite" U2, "world full of hate" dropkick murphys, "don't walk away" MxPx

"I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you. You ask, `Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?' It is I. And I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me.

"You said, `Listen and I will speak! I have some questions for you, and you must answer them.'

"I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance."

Job 42:2-6

O LORD, how long will you forget me? Forever?
How long will you look the other way?

How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
with sorrow in my heart every day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?

Turn and answer me, O LORD my God!
Restore the light to my eyes, or I will die.

Don't let my enemies gloat, saying, "We have defeated him!"
Don't let them rejoice at my downfall.

But I trust in your unfailing love.
I will rejoice because you have rescued me.

I will sing to the LORD
because he has been so good to me.

Psalm 13

sunday is laura's birthday.

i won't be here sunday so i'll mention it now. me and laura go way back and i'm gonna tell the story of how we met, mostly because we seem to rehash it every other month or so, and it'd be nice to have around for posterity and stuff. so anyways, a few years ago i used to work at a camp, back when i spent summers in texas, i was on the rec staff, which was always the busiest group at this camp, busier than the counselors and probably even the kids. we were the first ones up and the last to bed every night, mostly because we were in charge of all the games and stuff like that. one of the things i got hoodwinked into doing was sitting outside the cafeteria selling t-shirts.

i was bored out of my mind, sitting there, selling t-shirts, and it was then that laura showed up with some friends and kept me company and made the afternoon passable, more than passable actually, enjoyable. so you know how it is when camp's over, you sign everyone's t-shirt and you'll probly never see them again, and that's pretty much the way it was. the next year, i had a job at 7-11, so i didn't get to work at camp again, but it wasn't that far outta town, and i had friends that were on staff still, so i went to visit that same week the next year and saw her and her pals who rescued my afternoon the year before, which was totally unexpected. they wanted me to sign their shirts, but weren't gonna get em til the next day, by which time i'd be gone, ostensibly to work on another intellectually challenging project for the good folks at 7-11, and those were the days when i carried a camera around in my car, so i said how's about we take a picture instead, you can give me your addresses and i'll send it to you. so that's what we did, and when i sent laura the picture, she wrote back, and then i wrote back, and then she wrote back, and then i wrote back, well you probably get it by now.

that was three years ago, and being a pack rat like i am, i have a lil box with letters from her in it. there's like twenty of em in there, that's really cool, because in all that time, i've not really written real-life snail-mail letters to anyone else, and whenever i did write people back and forth before, none of them lasted that long. i've only seen her like a handful of times since then, but i really feel like she's one of the best friends i have.

happy birthday laura.

feeling: fabulous
thinking of: laura, airport fun today
music: "i'm ok, you're ok" MxPx

california has a new king.

let's be honest though, you can find all kinds of banal musings with self-important crap political analysis in a gazillion other places, my banal musings are proudly bereft of self-important crap political analysis. seriously, i got way more important stuff than that going on, the first item of which you probably noticed if you were here yesterday, which is the new design. i'm quite fond of it, and the good folks at maystar, i guess that'd just be may, are to thank. like i said, i like the design, but i'm considering an alteration of the color scheme. so here's what i would much appreciate from friends, acquaintances, enemies, and random passers-by, opine through the comments link as to 1) whether i should change it at all, and 2) what i should change it to.

i talked to lisa last night and that ripped, talked about slurpees, the quality of accomodations in backwater towns in arkansas, and all kinds of other fabulous stuff. it was great. she's the home of the Dorey Story, a new link, added yesterday. it's a blog worth reading if only for its views on the dutch.

today'll be busy, i'm leaving tomorrow, the long awaited north carolina trip to see katie, so, naturally, there's packing and a bunch of errands to run and loose ends to tie up before i head out. i'll probably write one more entry tomorrow morning, before my 7AM flight (no idea what i was thinking) won't be blogging while i'm gone, don't perceive that i'll be around a computer, and even if i was, it'd still be vacation, but i digress. in any case, i won't be back til tuesday afternoon, so think fondly of me.

i think it's safe to go to taco bell again.

feeling: action-packed
thinking of: packing
music: "jaks" u.s. bombs

i had an epiphany yesterday.

looking through previous blog entries, i see that i haven't opened any of them with that sentence, which i find somewhat curious because it seems to happen on a semi-regular basis and it occurs periodically in my regular patterns of speech. i think it was a girl that prompted this one, though right now i can't adequately remember the context or anything like that. so anyway, i was pondering my preferences as far as girls go, because you know how it goes, guys dig certain kinds of girls, blondes, brunettes, redheads, well-endowed ones, ones with green eyes, long legs, full sets of teeth, what have you.

so i started thinking about girls i've dated in the past and noticed that, beyond the two X chromosomes (and the full set of teeth), there was no real common denominator. i think a blonde girl in the supermarket is what spurred the revelation i had, because i began to contemplate the stereotype that latino guys dig blonde chicks to the near exclusion of anyone else and started to wonder if that was, at least subconsciously, true for me as well, and i came to the conclusion that it wasn't necessarily the blonde hair that did it, more than anything else, it was fair skin.

now this is rife with all kinds of social and cultural implications. i tan pretty easily, so my skin is a shade or three darker than most everyone i come into contact with. does my attraction to girls with fair skin represent some kind of unconscious self-loathing buried ridiculously deep within my psyche? is the the right side of my body, lighter because of driver tan on my left side, trying to gain outside support in an attempt to gain dominion over the left (dominant, i'm left handed) side of my body? someone somewhere had to have gotten a grant to do some research on this.

there's some election today, make sure you make it to taco bell.

feeling: obstructed
thinking of: lunch, a week from today, with bone
music: "hunk o' burnin love" elvis presley

renewed a friendship last nite.

it was nice. the whole thing started when i got home and saw the following message on my AIM:
CUBS WIN!!! WE ARE THE BEST!!! LOOK OUT MARLINS!!!

it was from sarah, now i hate the cubs, but love sarah, so i was feeling pretty conflicted. i'm not sure that i fear the cubs winning the world series, hmm, after thinking about it for a second, i'm pretty sure i do, that would be the only thing that would even have a chance of overshadowing the bears' win in the 85 super bowl. that in and of itself is nuts, i mean it happened like twenty years ago, but when you cross into the city limits, you'd think that it'd happened the week before. i'm convinced there's gotta be more than a few churches that have a portrait of ditka in the place the cross normally occupies.

but i digress, and it was really good to talk to sarah last night, she's one of those friends that i feel like i grew up with, because in a lot of ways, i did. i knew her when i was in college and i'm pretty sure i did more growing up in four years of college than i did in the 18 years previous to that. she's in college now and doing well, which makes me happy, and i think the conversation we had did us both tons of good.

i wasn't kidding about ditka.

feeling: pressed for time
thinking of: layovers in dallas, thursday and next tuesday, anybody wanna have lunch?
music: "busted afternoon" old 97s

i cleaned up yesterday.

not much, but it was a big job. the garbage disposal has ceased functioning, and i'm not terribly vigilant about what goes down the sink now that it can't be destroyed with the flick of a switch. so anyways, whenever i was washing the dishes, i noticed that the sink was draining really slowly, so curiously, i put my hand down the drain to see what was up. what i found was pretty unamusing, i felt a pretty gross layer of sludge underneath there.

i guess at that point that i felt an opportunity to prove my domestic prowess to myself, an endeavor in which i was greatly aided by liquid plumr. clearing the whole thing out took about a half an hour, flushing the thing with hot water, dumping liquid plumr and disinfectant down there. finishing the project brought a sense of accomplishment that felt slightly foreign, i didn't want to do anything else all day. i'm not sure what about it was so different than finishing any other task, maybe it was because i did end up affirming my domesticity, and busting up a gender stereotype, something i quite enjoy doing. i'm not sure.

on an unrelated note, don't buy all the suffering crap, the only thing worse than a cubs fan is a yankee fan, and even then, it's a toss up.

feeling: neglected
thinking of: the surprise
music: "zero" smashing pumpkins

i'm pondering freeway nomenclature, specifically interstate highways.

i was driving around, doing so in southern california gives you lots of time to ponder stuff like this, and got to thinking about freeway nomenclature. well, not nomenclature, as such, generally stretches of highway are named for people significant in local history, and numbered based on which way they travel. pretty much everybody knows that odd-numbered highways run north-south, and that even numbered ones run east-west. so i guess what i'm exploring is more the way roads are referred to in the vernacular of the regions they serve.

i've lived in dallas, chicago, and now los angeles and each place refers to its freeways differently. each place, to be sure conforms to the guidelines mentioned in the paragraph previous, but significant variations remain nonetheless. in dallas, everyone generally uses the numbers. giving directions you'll tell someone "head south down 35, and then west on 20. . ." the highways have names, but they're not really uniform. for example, a stretch of 30 is named "r.l thornton freeway" but thornton isn't confined to 30, as a stretch of 35 is also named for thornton. as if that wasn't confusing enough, once 30 leaves the city limits of dallas, it becomes "the old turnpike," i guess that's appropriate since it used to be a turnpike.

in chicago, the locals never use the numbers when referring to the highways, in fact, i'm not even sure they know them. newcomers and tourists face a pretty steep learning curve when they first show up. chicagoans are, next to texans i'm convinced, the most welcoming people on the planet, but asking for directions from a local, despite their gregariousness, is no help when you figure out that you have to decode everything they said, turn the names into numbers. this was pointed out to me, oddly enough, by my new testament professor in college. chicago differs from dallas in a beneficial fashion, however, in that names for the roads are at least uniform. the 294 is the tri-state, no matter where you are on it. same goes for the 290, which is the eisenhower, or the ike, and every other interstate highway in and around chicago. so once you learn the names, it really is easier that way, which makes forgetting the numbers they correspond to if not excusable, at least understandable.

los angeles is sort of a composite of the other two. the numbers and names are used at least somewhat interchangably, and the names are more consistent than dallas', but less so than chicago's. it seems, in some cases, as though a highway's name is contingent upon the direction a person is heading on it. for example, the 405 heading north is the santa monica freeway, turn around and go the other way, and suddenly it becomes the san diego freeway. on top of that, traffic in the area has been known to inspire ridiculously inane blog entries.

i'm dizzy, i'll stop.

feeling: a bit of a headache
thinking of: box filler
music: "make sure i'm out screwing up" wesley willis

waiting for the muse.

perhaps i'll start without her. waiting, everybody waits. we complain about waiting, say how much we hate it, stuff like that. it seems as though we're getting to the point where every new invention or technological innovation that comes next is devoted to diminishing or even abolishing time spent waiting. i suppose that's why people started inventing stuff to begin with. advances in technology, by their very nature, socialize us to hate waiting. part of that, i think comes because we're overprogrammed, we're a culture that values activity to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. that's to say that if we're not in the middle of doing something we don't perceive ourselves to be doing anything of value.

i don't mind waiting so much, having an active imagination helps. maybe i should qualify that, i don't mind waiting in the micro sense of the word. i get frustrated with lines sometimes and traffic is a nuisance, but other than that, it doesn't bug me a whole lot. some of the best advice i ever got was from when i worked maintenance. it came from a crochety old carpenter named billy who constantly told me "now don't be in no g*ddamn rush, boy." i'm pretty sure that he didn't intend for it to be the kind of advice that i'd carry through life, mostly i think he just didn't want us to finish a project so quickly that we'd have to start another one, so it's funny that i've held on to that.

waiting in the macro sense is more difficult in that i'm not sure what it is i'm waiting for, and that's where billy's advice gets the most mileage. if i was in a rush, i'd be rushing towards nowhere, that's where i'd be. it's a significant temptation, despite the laid-back state of my personality, i crave the security of certainty, even if it's false, even if it's an illusion. c.s. lewis talks about people headed in towards nothing or headed towards an illusion and how people so differently perceive progress in a situation like that, how people can get to believing that progress can only come through moving forward, even when rushing closer to something that might not even be there, or to a wholly unknown destination. in that context, the most progressive person is the one who turns around to backtrack first, which is counterintuitive to how we perceive progress. we think, pretty much unequivocally, that some motion is better than no motion, meantime, we become afraid of solitude and terrified of silence, unable to relate to ourselves, and as a result, each other.

tell the muse to let herself in, there's whiskey on the counter.

feeling: fresh
thinking of: val kilmer's doc holliday in "tombstone"
music: "me and paul" willie nelson

autumn is coming.

i guess it's here technically, but the last day or so it's started to show up in a way more tangible than on the calendar. it seems as though i first noticed that last night. yesterday was a long day, wednesdays always are, and i got home around ten last night, after a stop at baker's square, which was about as necessary an amenity as there ever has been. but anyways, normally when i get home, i open up the blinds, and if it's closed the living room window. so anyways, after a while, the breeze became just a bit to nippy for my liking and i shut the window.

i'm not sure how i feel about that because, having lived in chicago, at no point should weather in long beach faze me, there's no reason for that. but then i got to thinking, even when i lived there and walked around when it was twenty degrees outside, i was pretty adamant about it being somewhat toasty inside, so i don't guess it's as big a deal as i initially felt it might be. i also can't get away from the reality that if i stay here long enough, my blood will thin out and i'll wear a winter coat whenever it dips below 60.

i don't even think i have a winter coat right now.

feeling: mostly adequate
thinking of: soup
music: "the party in your head" the reverend horton heat

some days i wonder what i'll be like when i'm grown up.

for some reason, i get the feeling that i'll always wonder that, regardless of how much older or even more mature i get. when i was real little and people would ask me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i'd tell them i wanted to be a firetruck, maybe i just thought it was a cool word because it started with an f and ended with a u-c-k. in any case, i wouldn't be deterred, when people said "don't you mean a fireman? i'd say, "nope, i wanna be a firetruck."

later i learned that i couldn't be a firetruck, and that the task of becoming one would require some sort of perverse pinocchio process where i would turn from a real boy to an inanimate object. i didn't want that, so i changed my mind, i changed it more than a few times, most people do.

when you're a kid growing up is funny, because you think that once you do, you'll somehow have everything you need figured out figured out, that somehow life will be infinitely easier than it is at the present. i remember being ten or eleven and wishing that the next morning i'd wake up and be twenty-one, like in that awful tom hanks movie, i'd say the one where he plays a retard, but that wouldn't narrow it down any. it's probably the perception of autonomy that's the huge draw there.

what's so paradoxical, at least as far as i can tell, is that with wisdom comes the sense that, even though we gain more knowledge, learn more, the more we learn, the more we become aware of the magnitude of what we don't know.

i think it was jaws, the hanks retard movie, that is.

feeling: temporal
thinking of: october
music: "into the great wide open" tom petty and the heartbreakers