monday january 29 2000    |    3:03 p.m.

two quotes today while they're fresh in my brain, courtesy of professor shutt, who was particularly inspired this afternoon:

"are dreams the screensavers of our brain?"

and:

"crunchy water. with strings. that's celery."

all this while discussing the eighth canto. that man will never cease to surprise me. great class.

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i've been listening to jane's addiction recently. the standards tend to serve an equalizing or a balancing function in my life, and i guess this is why. the logical progression, when i start feeling less vulnerable, is this. my subconscious likes to forge connections between perry farrell and john frusciante, and i can tell you right now that it has nothing to do with glamboy dave navarro, either. in a not-so-parallel universe those two are kindred spirits, the happy hedonist genius and the completely fucked up but recovering one. it makes perfect sense.

and no, this has nothing to do with the events that transpired this weekend. i'm just putting off the telling. because it really wasn't that big a deal, and i kind of just want to move on with the workweek and such. but.

friday i turned in the comps and was very giddy for a few hours. daniel's birthay was on thursday and so nick threw him a little party at their place to celebrate. the rum punch made a surprise reappearance. lots of people came and lots of alcohol was drunk and mild sketchiness ensued. now comes the part where i try to say something without really saying anything, which i tend to do anyway. maybe i just won't say it for a change. at one point things started getting uncomfortable, and that's when i made my not-so-graceful, not-so-sober exit.

woke up just in time for dinner the next day. julie and i decided we had to get the hell out of kenyon somehow, and i knew that the sovines were playing at bernie's that night, so that gave us something to do. i called ben and dusty and tentative plans were made. jules got her car jump-started and we were off, off through the cold dark winding roads and into the city, baby. oh bright lights, the way i felt when we turned onto high street!

we met up with dusty and brad and went to the show, which was great in that cramped beer-and-cigarettes, tattoos and leather jackets and seedy down-home goodness kinda way. three crappy local bands not even worth a mention, and the wonderful sovines, which put the rock back in truckabilly and gave us a chance to shake our butts. so after their set we went to sit down in a booth, and that's where the really unsettling stuff started to happen, which i won't go into, but which involved an old black man named "spirit" who was missing several teeth and who informed us that his birthday was really on april 20th (get it? ok.) and that it was a "national holiday," at least in the city of columbus.

a very strange while later, sans spirit, we drove back to brad and dusty's, half of a small blue duplex which they share with eight other people, making the house headcount ten. we camped out in brad's room in the basement for a while and smoked with them and their roommate steve. i remember a conversation about videogames. and ogling the stacks and shelves and crates and corners filled with records, everywhere, records in place of furniture, in place of food i'm sure. not a bad tradeoff.

eventually julie and i left. got lost and eventually made it back here at around 5:30 in the morning. yesterday (sunday) was a recovery. slept in, went to work, watched an incredibly beautiful and depressing movie for my chinese class, and then decided i just couldn't deal with going to the make-up class and doing the radio show, which daniel happily did himself. (but i'll be on thursdays from 8-10 pm, so if you're in the vicinity, tune in.) so i read and went to bed.

today i'm exhausted. luckily i only had one class, so now i get to nap and read the rest of the hours away. i got a package from erick in the mail. i think the more i'm away from him the more i realize how wonderful he is.

a small note on serendipity and the internet:

i think that a boy i had a significant thing for last semester-ish reads this. pretty amazing considering i don't know him. wow.

also this weekend i got an out-of-the-blue e-mail from this kid i went to high school with. he left after sophomore year or something like that and went back home to israel. i guess he recently finished his military service and then he'd been taveling and must have gotten nostalgic, because he found my e-mail address on the mcds website. argh!! now you know where i went to high school. don't hold it against me and don't stalk me. ok? good.

so yeah. gotta love the internet.

daniel's brother sent him a louisville tshirt in the mail for his birthday, which makes me want for myself a miami tshirt that doesn't suck. ie no pastels, no hard rock cafe logo, no flamingoes, no palm trees, no bush jokes. just "miami" straightup. i don't think it exists. plus i guess the associations with louisville are a lot hipper than those with miami, but if i don't end up moving anywhere after graduation, i'll make sure that changes. put the rock back in miami. i'll turn old folks' homes into rock clubs. revolutionize the whole rock scene. take lo-fi where no four-track's ever been before. or something.

listening to steely dan on the way to columbus--

the girls don't seem to care
tonight
as long as the music's right
no static at all
no static at all
there is
no static at all