At this moment...
02.27.07:
I've been in a short story mood. Tonight some Salinger. The other night Kafka and Wolf.
To combat my pathetic AI addiction, last night kk and I went to see Godard's Two Or Three Things I Know About Her. It was okay at best. The sound was too abrasive. It's the type of movie that I would have enjoyed 10, maybe 15, years ago when I was into French writers.
Like the Daylights has been posted on our myspace site. Give it a listen and let me know what you think. Garret did an amazing job mixing it, and the extra little touches that jason added at the last minute sound really great, especially the guitar at the intro.
02.23.07:
02.22.07:
Things that are good about today:
My four mile run after work
2003 Wyatt Cabernet Sauvignon
That fact that today is Thursday and tomorrow is Friday
I probably had something else to write/say, but I forgot it.
Listening to:
Copia - Eluvium
02.21.07:
Signed up for the Chicago Marathon.
Should be lots of fun.
02.20.07:
My morning cup of coffee made me super jittery. So much so that I couldn't finish a second cup. Seriously, my heart felt like is was going to jump outside of my body. Not a good sign. I suppose I need to go for a run.
Listening to:
Broken By Whispers - Trembling Blue Stars
02.19.07:
Listening to:
The Explorers Club EP - The Explorers Club (Sounds like The Beach Boys meets The Zombies. Good stuff.)
02.18.07:
Yesterday, while at Whole Foods, I bought what I was thinking to be some dark chocolate with cherries. After the first bite it was obvious that there was a spicer ingredient along for the ride. Turns out there were chilies as well. Really good and very addictive.
Been reading The Sun Also Rises today. It reminds me of the past, which makes me a bit nostalgic. Nostalgia can be good as long as you don't get caught up in it. Marketing campaigns exploit nostalgia. But back to The Sun Also Rises. Or maybe not...
Thank you kk for getting me out of my apartment and cooking a delicious dinner.
Listening to:
Harvest - Neil Young
The Eraser - Thom Yorke
Chairs Missng - Wire
When I Was Cruel - Elvis Costello
The Clash [UK] - The Clash (Beginning with the first chord on Janie Jones it's so evident as to why The Clash are still the only band that matters.)
Super Black Market Clash - The Clash
Give 'Em Enough Rope - The Clash
Song:
Like the Daylights - Zerostars
02.17.07:
Went for a run earlier and I've been pretty out of it since. Just three miles, but it's made me sleepy. Oh well.
I suppose I'm a bit odd.
For dinner I made corn and red pepper chowder and buttermilk scones with raisins and dried cranberries. Everytime I cook a meal like that I wonder how my mom was able to work and then come home to cook dinner for a family of five. I started prepping the vegetables at 4:30 PM and finished cooking everything at 6:30 PM. Everything was delicious, and the chowder really hit the spot. Now I'll have enough soup for a few more nights.
Listening to:
English Settlement - XTC
Drums and Wires - XTC
Skylarking - XTC
154 - Wire
If You're Feeling Sinister (Live) - Belle and Sebastian
The Life Pursuit - Belle and Sebastian
Electr-O-Pura - Yo La Yengo
02.16.07:
The strange ways I spend my nights...
I'm learning how to use my new camera, so I'll be posting a lot of crap photos to the site until I start to take halfway decent ones.
One of these days a coworker is going to see my plastic knife with the word knife written on it and I bet they'll wonder what goes on in my head.
Some random things:
Do the homeless have celebrities? Like is there a king of the hobos? A homeless equivalent to Paris Hilton? Are there paparazzi for the homeless?
I can't stand coffee house folk music, or maybe it's the whole singer-songwriter genre that just bugs me. I just find it vapid. I'd give examples, but I don't want to offend anybody.
So far two votes to continue reading The Magic Mountain and one vote for reading A Brief History of Time and three votes for Bowie. Anybody want to start reading The Magic Mountain with me? I'm not a speedy reader. I wouldn't mind having a mini bookclub if someone was up for it. Drop me a email if you want to read along with me. I'll even make you a Bowie mix CD as an added incentive.
02.15.07:
What exactly is Live B.B.Q.? Are animals slaughtered and the barbecued before your eyes?
02.14.07:
I keep losing my internet and cable connection (yes, I did cancel cable, but for some strange reason I'm still receiving it. Maybe it'll disappear at the end of the billing cycle). A bit frustrating. Hopefully Comcast can get their act together at some point before the night is over.
On a more positive note, today I bought a new camera. I'm super excited to get out and use it in the daylight. Over the last few years I've been using a Canon Powershot. I really think it's a fantastic little camera, and I'd recommend it to anyone. However, I started to outgrow that camera, and decided to go a step up. I ended up getting a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and a Canon 55mm f1.4 lens. Most, if not all of the reviews that I read recommended spending a little extra money to buy the 55mm f1.4 lens instead of buying the telescopic lens that comes with the XTi kit. I have a lot of learning to do, but here are a few quick, poorly lit shots of moped man in my apartment.
Since my internet connection is spotty at best tonight, I'm going to upload this to the server, and call it a night. Happy Valentine's Day.
Oh, and only two people took the survey from a few days ago. One voted that I should keep reading The Magic Mountain and one voted that I should read A Brief History of Time instead. Both voted that I should just listen to Bowie, and not waste my money on any new CDs. So Bowie it is, but, I'd still like more people to take the survey. It's totally anonymous, so I don't have a clue as to who you are.
01.13.07:
I seem to keep listening to the same songs over and over, like I'm stuck in a loop. This year is like last year, only the songs are different, but not really. The highlight of my day was driving to work while listening to Painful by Yo La tengo. Kind of sad that I consider listening to a CD in my car a highlight, but...
Hopefully the snow will have stopped by the time I wake in the the morning.
Song(s):
Porpoise Song - The Monkees
Aus heiterem Himmel (Dntel Remix) - Barbara Morgenstern
02.12.07:
Do the Top 10 most frequently played songs in my iTunes library say anything about me? Here's the list:
1. Stay - Asobi Seksu
2. Sailing Man - Neil Halstead
3. Blue Moon - Rivulets
4. Cherry Blossom Girl (Hope Sandoval version) - Air
5. And Then So Clear - Brian Eno
6. Hard to Find - The American Analog Set
7. Mercury, Sun and Moon - Jennifer Jackson
8. Is It Any Wonder - The Shortwave Set
9. Honey - Doveman
10. The Power is On - The Go! Team
02.11.07:
My Sunday in song:
True Love Will Find You in the End - Daniel Johnston via Sonic Boom
By This River - Brian Eno via Martin Gore
Come Here - Kath Bloom
Power Supply - Portastatic
Goodbye - The Postmarks
Love It's Getting Better - The Pastels
Sleep - The Dandy Warhols
Blue, Red and Grey - The Who
The Sweetest Eyes (When You Laugh) - Julie Doiron
Femme Fatale - The Velvet Underground via Tracey Thorn
Sunday Memory Lane - White Shoes & The Couples Company
Remember - The Durutti Column
Little Else - How To Cure Dyslexia
Emptily Through Holloway - The Clientele
On the Beach Boys Bus (Reprise) - Bill Wells and Maher Shalal Hash Baz
Be Not So Fearful - Bill Fay
I Feel Like Going Home - Yo La Tengo
Don't Be Afraid to Sing - Stars
To Live is to Fly - Townes Van Zandt
Lost and Found - The Poems
I decided to run early, so when I went out it was still pretty cold, a wind chill of about one degree.
02.10.07:
I finished Steppenwolf, and now I need something else to read. Every year or so I make an attempt to read Thomas Mann's masterpiece The Magic Mountain. However, I fail. Usually I make it a few hundred or so pages in and then have to quit. After a number of attempts I'm tempted to just give up on it for good. It's an amazing piece of literature, but I think it's cursed, or I'm cursed. I can't quite explain why it's cursed (I could but don't want to... A long story), but each and every time I start to read it something occurs, and it freaks me out. So, with that in mind, I want to know, should I start reading The Magic Mountain again?
Speaking of Steppenwolf, here are a number of quotes ...
But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity.
...we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.
I found myself reading this line over and over...
There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness in their very tone.
Earlier I thought of going for a run, but it's too cold. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 24 degrees, which is warm.
Song(s):
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan via Portastatic
Smile (Version Revisited) [Mark Ronson Remix] - Lily Allen (Not as brilliant or as successful as the original version, but a nice remix that strips all the ska elements from the song and replaces them with some fine 60's Motown girl group stylings. I missed Lily's SNL performance, was it any good?)
It's All True - Tracey Thorn (I'd love to hear LCD Soundsystem remix this song. Great single. Why can't the Top 40 radio play more tracks like this one? The string arrangement is super subtle, but adds such depth to the overall sound.)
Take on Me - a-ha (Amazing how timeless this still sounds. And one of the coolest videos ever.)
Lay Your Head Down - Keren Ann (From her forthcoming album to be released in May. Listen via her myspace page. Reminds me of Lou Reed. I like it.)
02.09.07:
I wrote something but decided to delete it.
02.08.07:
Finally, after too many days of letting the cold and dreary weather get to me, I went for a 3.5 mile run. Sure, it was cold, but I managed to stay warm. I would have run for longer but my toes started to get cold. I need to get some wool socks.
02.07.07:
After work I had two options:
1. Go for a run in the freezing cold night and hope to not slip and fall on the ice.
2. Eat dinner and make cinnamon scones.
I picked option two. Around last November I bought some cinnamon chips and since then I've been meaning to use them in something. So, instead of using dried cranberries in the scones, I used the cinnamon chips and added some cinnamon to the rest of the ingredients. They turned out pretty good. What I like about the recipe that I use it that it seems pretty low fat, as in not a lot of butter or eggs. Instead of milk, the recipe calls for buttermilk.
I'm in a mix CD making mood. Send me a theme and I'll make you a mix (of course, almost no one ever takes me up on these offers, but I figure it's always worth a try).
Song(s):
Tomorrow - The Durutti Column
(This song kills me, and The Espers cover version is equally as stunning.)
This Time Tomorrow - James Yorkston & The Athletes
Tomorrow's Just Another Day - Madness
Barreling Towards Nowhere Like There's No Tomorrow - Rivulets
Yesterday Never Tomorrows - The Stills
No Friend of Tomorrow - The Chrysler
Tomorrow - The Concretes
02.06.07:
A few days back I wrote about trying to recapture the movies that play in my head as I sleep at night. Last night I had two very distinct and memorable dreams. In the first dream I'm wandering around some gothic city. All the buildings are painted black or a very dark brown. There are thousands of other people wandering around as well. At one point I'm walking underground and I come across a locomotive. That's all I remember of that dream. Probably very little meaning in that one.
In another dream tornado sirens are going off and a storm is approaching. I'm tracking the storm on my computer and watching the radar to see where it's heading. The storm appears to be everywhere around me but not quite where I am located. There are other people running around all frightened, but I'm calm.
All night I've been reading Hess. A long time ago I devoured everything Hess wrote. Tonight I decided to reread Steppenwolf. At one point Harry Haller is napping in a dance hall and he has a dream that involves a conversation with Goethe. I've only had one dream where I'm talking with an author, and that was when Charles Bukowski decided to appear in my dream. Here's what Goethe says to Haller:
You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high value on time. I, too, once put a high value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Listening to:
Feels - Animal Collective
Song(s):
Battle & No Distance Left to Run - Blur
02.05.07:
I was going to comment on something that I read by Klosterman about Johnny Carson, but I won't.
Today I forgot to include an attachment in an email that I sent to a number of coworkers. While sending a second email with the attachment a coworker responded to the first email saying, "You forgot the attachment." I replied, "No shit." In some strange way that seems to sum up a lot of things of late.
I thought of going for a run, but it's too cold.
In the cafeteria I saw a woman getting a cheese sandwich. She wanted four slices of provolone, honey mustard, one piece of lettuce, and two slice of tomato. It made me think of a story someone told me about cheese sandwiches.
And then I started thinking about Camus and Sartre. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was a similar experience.
I finally broke out the space heater. It's kind of cold tonight.
Disconnected thoughts.
This morning I taped a note to my TV that said, "Channel 11 @ 9 PM = Germ warfare documentary." I've never done that before, but I didn't want to forget that it was on.
Listening to:
Set Free - American Analog Set
02.04.07:
Song(s):
Vapour Trail - Ride via Paula Kelly
Galaxies - Laura Viers
Chicago (To String Remix By Jongalloway) - Sufjan Stevens
My First Time, Vol. 3 - Spoon
02.03.07:
Song(s):
Saturday - The Clientele
02.02.07:
Maybe I just need to recapture my dreams, as in the dreams that play in my sleep (last night I dreamt that I got a new cell phone). The other morning I was in some half-awake state and I kept saying over and over, "I need to build an idea window." At the time it made perfect sense, and I recall being able to describe my concept of an idea window. Days later I have no idea what an idea window is supposed to represent or mean. I'm pretty certain that it isn't a metaphor for something. It was more like a physical object, not some half-baked philosophical nonsense. Oh well, maybe I remember what it means some day.
My apartment windows are frosted over.
I figured out how to synch the bluetooth between my phone and my Powerbook. Now I can download all the photos that I take.
02.01.07:
After nearly two weeks I got my Powerbook back. Let me say, it's blazingly fast. Plus the hard drive is no longer making lots of clicking sounds. Quite the opposite, it's super quiet, as in it makes almost no noise at all. And now I have an additional 40 gigs of hard drive space since I had them swap out the old noise making broken 80 gig with a 120 gig. Now that I have my better computer back I can update Timbercliffe B&B's website (it's nice to get a chance to use some of my own photos on their site, although I did take the photo of Caffrey).
Today I cancelled cable TV. I've decided that I don't need all those channels and the extra expense. No more Food TV, or Travel Channel. It's time to find the old me, the one who never watched a lot of TV, the one read more often. I think I was happier then.
Maybe it's the full moon?
Listening to:
Drawn to the Deep End - Gene
(Gene has always been accused of letting their Smiths affectation get the best of them. Regardless, Drawn to the Deep End is classic Brit pop filled with maudlin lyrics and gigantic choruses.)
Song(s):
Just To See You Smile (Orchestral mix) - Spaceman 3
The Galaxist - Deerhoof
These Days - Jackson Browne
Contradiction -
Apparat
The Bear (Acoustic Version) - My Morning Jacket