Things to avoid:
:: Current music
:: Talking
:: Special treats
:: Frowning, or smiling, without a really good reason
:: Being outside in Chicago (apparently a third-degree personage got hit in the face with a piece of pipe then beat up, then robbed by a gang of teenagers somewhere over on cottage grove. the catch: he was riding his bike when someone threw the pipe at him. the next thing is clearly going to be like getting robbed while sitting in a cop car)
ask me sometime about the nerdiest two people in the world and how i have to listen to their confabulations twice a week. i can’t go into it now.
i’ve been doing some scientific observation on the not-new phenomenon of scowling at strangers. i have actually curtailed my scowling, which only seems to provoke scowling in others. it’s the unchecked aggression therapy, i guess. if you want someone to be scowling, for whatever reason, the best way to provoke that behavior is to scowl at everyone. including babies.
i have nothing to add, other than, andy marte: you are not white, which i thought you were. this has no impact on your ability to be a good third baseman for the next trillion years post 2006.
I try read widely and schizophrenically, and I like to think that I have done a good job of reading without explicit prejudice in the author/subject matter/etiology/politics/time period/(insert trait). It turns out, that’s not true. I read novels written by various kinds of white guys, in English usually, sometimes originally French or Russian, that are usually about what it’s like to be various kinds of white guys writing a novel (with different degrees of obfuscation — maybe instead of ‘writing a novel’ i might say ‘not committing suicide’). What has been learned, thus far in the year 2006 “read 104 books for fun and profit” is that there are too many ideas and not enough people actually paying attention to the ideas. politics are still dumb, because people who care too much about politics, for the most part, are some kind of deviant. i had grandiose plans for this post, turning it into a hagen-style exordium. instead we are going to make a personal budget in excel and then go get on the six bus and try to read charles dickens (i have no agenda with dickens, i just wanted to check out his late career slide into either cynicism or anomie or whathaveyou)
just for kicks, the running list of books:
The Postmodern Condition, David Harvey
The Last Shot, Darcy Frey
Consider the Lobster, DFW (really i read this book piecemeal as it appeared in mags)
A Question of Upbringing, Anthony Powell
Buyer’s Market, Anthony Powell
American Studies, Louis Menand
Elizabeth Costello, JM Coetzee
The End of the Road, John Barth
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
that’s nine books thus far this year, with some fudging (counting subbooks of Dance to the Music of Time as Separate books, but i did finish them), which means i am just about on pace, but still, i don’t think i’m going to make it, unless i start reading detective novels to pad out the totals.
incidentally, i was wrong about ernest hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is in fact a good book (badly written, though, do not fight me i am a bear). that said, i could only determine it was a book by researching what hemingway later on, extra-textually, confirmed as an important plot point (that is not explicitly, or really even implicitly, clarified anywhere in the *actual work of literature to which it is extremely relevant*, [is there such a thing as implicit clarification - i dunno]). that’s a weird and dumb thing to do ernest, why don’t you go measure your genitalia somewhere, oh wait, you shot yourself because of chronic back pain and alcoholism still, ernest hemingway, a good writer, i relent. the world can now resume spinning on its axis, we’re all going to be OK.
RIP Carlos Martinez. You hit a home run that went off Jose Canseco’s head at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1992, i believe was the year. maybe 1990. who knows.
First part:
Well, those who have seen me since i got robbed can tell you that I’ve definitely become, ah, defensive, I think is the most politic word I can think of regarding my personal safety at night (you don’t miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, that’s a new tool i have). i’m afraid that my paranoia related to getting robbed and possibilities of getting robbed again has completely leaked into the rest of my life (which is where it originated anyway). and now i am getting into tense race-relations moments in such fine places as the checkout line at jewel-osco, the fast food place downstairs, the bus, the walk to work, etc. basically every time someone asks me for money it’s short odds that i will walk away from them muttering profanities. sort of sucks. my main take on it right now is, don’t rob people. it turns them into assholes. also, don’t rob me, i was already an asshole and now you gave me coal to burn.
2) my new year’s resolution: acquire a $1000 suit by following a 5′11″ 200 lb man into the bathroom at the new Graduate School of Business building and shitbeating him (or her). anyone else want a suit — just send me your general build and i’ll get started.
3) Munich: why bother making a movie look good, and storyboard the shit out of it, and pay lots of people vast sums of money, if you are going to have it end in a) cognitive dissonance b) weird extra-scum finger-pointing c) trite compromise. just the same, you can get a B-minus, as far as movie grades go, just by hiring a polish cinematographer and making your film 165 minutes long. that appears to be all it takes.
4) we are on week two of the “me not getting the turkey leg from ribs and bibs” news vigil. since they only serve it on the weekend, i am safe for another four days. god bless my people.
5) i no longer give a shit about anything. i’m going to sit around and read wikipedia entries then go back to college and use up my NCAA eligibility. i feel like i could probably be the third-string QB for somebody, right, just as part of some kind of scholarship-laundering racket somewhere. then i’m going to read more and become a english teacher for rich kids somewhere in the northeast and eventually they’ll find me dead with a weird smile on my face.
6) The Sun Also Rises: D-minus, and that’s generous? Why, exactly, was ernest hemingway famous for being a good writer? somebody help me out here.
7) The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: good writing, undercooked story, almost-memorable book? i was encouraged, because apparently all you need to get started on the road towards semi-celebrity status and bags full of money is an appreciation for Gatsby and a typewriter and some free time. And genitals to obsess over. So, where do i start my shopping list.
Seriously, ernest hemingway, what the bleep.
somebody walked into their office today with the express intent of saying “hi” in a very prominent, abrasive way to the guy who watches the lobby, because he always gets them by acting like he’s not going to say “hi” and then waiting until the arrival has committed to their usual course of action (slight nod, or just slight eye contact) and then he springs something insidious on you like “HAVE A NICE WEEKEND” or “GOOD MORNING” and you can tell by the way he says it that maybe it is not 100% sincere. anyway, he got them bad today. the person in question went in great guns, planning on a really deadly sincere greeting on the guy, like maybe a “so how was your weekend?.” it’s hard when you don’t take the elevator, because your choices are limited to not really greeting them at all, doing a clearly insincere fake drive-by greeting, or stopping cold and having a really awkward short conversation. it’s a total kobayashi maru situation. anyway, my point is, this guy went totally planning to TV the receptionist guy by beating his fake insincere greetings with even faker insincere greetings. but the lobby guy scummed the person in question terrifically.
It’s probably too hard to explain what really happened. but the lobby guy gave the person arriving at work such a dirty look that it shamed him into not saying “HOW ARE YOU HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND” and then, even worse, the lobby guy didn’t complete the indignity with his own fake greeting but subsequently just continued to radiate out the terrible dirty look. maybe the person in question is reading too much into this.
things to avoid, year 2006:
:: crayfish (too late, i had that gumbo yesterday)
:: PBR. it messes with your internal organs
:: other people
primary goals
:: see the metrodome
:: rent a car successfully
:: steal a car successfully
i basically wanted to get on board with having a post in the year 2006. as you might notice, i have said nothing.
decorations in my cubicle (retired decorations)
:: picture of the last frames of Pierrot le Fou (dude’s head exploding)
:: photocopy of bobby thomson crossing home plate in the Pafko at the Wall/shot heard round the world game.
:: illegibly small doc films calendar
:: a mary worth comic strip that just says “and that concludes the memorial service for fay begler” and shows everybody standing around a casket.
:: a picture of a guy shooting a sperm whale with a rocket-powered harpoon (it’s a woodcut)
schematic diagrams of a sperm whale and the way to skin it successfully
:: a drawing of charles darwin with a chimp’s body
:: a bottle of lotion
:: some dried snot, probably
:: picture of jake plummer
:: the SHITTIEST STAPLER IN AMERICA
:: pens!
