I just returned from the shore with my mother. I went kayaking for the first time, in the back bay—watched a beautiful sunset and drifted through the reeds with not a care in the world. And I went fishing and caught a nineteen inch flounder, who I will eat tonight with a little lemon and butter. I console myself about having to kill the flounder with the thought that I've saved the lives of dozens of other fish by taking this menace from the sea. Those guys have sharp teeth, and they are none too gentle. And we caught a big black rat snake, who seemed generally okay with having been caught, manhandled, and then released back into a nice swamp.
While at the shore, I started my entry to the Johnny Theremin project. I'll post it here later when I get a chance (no time for it now, because mom needs the computer for business in a few minutes).
I also got about a fifth of the way into The Chess Garden at the shore. It's fantastic. Easily one of the best books I've read in a long time.
Sigh. I go back to Chicago on Tuesday, and I'm of mixed feelings about that. One thing I've realized in my week and a half out here in Philly is that I'm a different person in Chicago than I am here. And I don't know if it's the people I know, or the fact that I'm on vacation right now and have no responsibilities to anyone or anything, or what, but it remains that in Chicago, I'm much more closed, much more pedantic. I feel very cut off there, from my past, from who I have been, from the guy I knew in the Wayback Machine, who was open to any thought, any idea, any new people. And I feel very alone there. Even in crowds of people, I feel very alone, like I'm constantly struggling to connect and sometimes I do in some way, but never in the way that I want. Not entirely. Not the free me. Here, I have my past, I have the people who have loved me since before they knew me, just because I was theirs. Here I'm not constantly struggling to make myself heard, or constantly having to give up being heard in abject disgust. Here, if I say something, it isn't contradicted outright, but the idea is explored, questioned, thought about, discussed. Even if it turns out I was completely mistaken.
I'm of mixed feelings about going back—as opposed to just bad feelings—because I also know that I have friends back in Chicago. Some amazingly good friends. And I have a life there, and a job, and fortunes of sorts. I just wish there was someone there who I connected with fully. I wish I had an old friendship there, a person who could remember the real version of me. I remember him, now, but I'm afraid of losing that memory, or worse, that I'll remember him and nobody will believe he's really me.
So I write my fear here. To take away its power. And to remind me that it's a ridiculous fear. Back to relaxing. Enough of my fears.
I'll post Johnny Theremin later tonight or tomorrow.
Monday, August 30, 2004
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Hyperlink Madness
I just went through and corrected all of the hyperlink problems from yesterday's post. So ignore my little apology for the problems with hyperlinks. The hyperlink problems aren't there anymore. I've never had so much reason to include to word hyperlink in a paragraph. Thank you, mom, for the superior technology. Hyperlink.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Comparing the Relative Adorability of Different Cuddly Mammalian Brains
The best thing I heard all day: While walking around in the Mutter Museum, a girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen, looking at jars of brains, declared to her parents, "The dog's brain is actually kind of cute," then gasped and emphatically added, "Aw...but the cat brain is even cuter!" It's true what they say. Some people are cat brain people, some are dog brain people. (This same girl was thoroughly grossed out by the wax models of skin infections and informed her parents that she would "just die" if she ever had one of those. "Well yes," I thought, "depending on the severity of the infection, you just might.")
So far, the vacation's been fanatastic. I had lunch with my father yesterday, followed by a latte at a coffee shop called La Colombe. It's kind of hipster, kind of yuppie, and they have great croissants. So I spent the afternoon in there, reading and writing, and then struck up conversation with a guy named Fred, who teaches art at one of the Quaker schools around here. Then I went to Rittenhouse Square and read until the afternoon mosquitoes (who, surprisingly enough, are far more vicious than the midmorning mosquitoes) gave me reason to leave.
I finished reading The Encyclopedia of the Dead yesterday. All in all, I was disappointed with it. My biggest problem with it stemmed from this: It's a book of short stories in the vein of Borges, and, although the stories were generally well-written, often times they were too long to really keep my interest past the initial few pages. For example, the title story "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" is about a book that records the lives of every person who has ever died, since its conception, in striking detail. Where Borges would have explored this idea for six-to-ten pages (and would have explored it thoroughly and beautifully, so that the reader would not be left feeling that his six-page story had gypped them out of some vital information) Danilo Kis explores it for twenty-something pages, going into the extreme details covered in the entry on one person. Consequently, he lost me.
Worse still is "The Book of Kings and Fools," which is about the life of an antisemitic pamphelet. The story explores the results of the pamphelet's wide circulation, its effect on the ideas of people like Hitler, Stalin, and others, and its origins as a work of satire during the reign of Napoleon. In places, this story is very interesting, but it's thirty pages long and much of that feels like filler. Also, it hops back and forth in its narrative tense, from present to past and back again, without warning and without apparent purpose, which made it very hard to follow.
Borges' great gift was his ability to use an economy of language to explore a complex idea in a relatively short space. Where Danilo Kis does this, his stories are excellent. But too often the stories in The Encyclopedia of the Dead fell into a kind of narrative babble, which made me care less about the ideas he was exploring, less about the characters he was using to explore them, and less about the story as a whole than when the last page would come.
Alright. Now on to a few links.
I found Johnny Theremin on Neil Gaiman's site. It's a project based on his July 26th journal entry, in which someone told Neil that he needed a chapter summary. Immediately. The rest followed. Apparently, a fan put up a site for the Johnny Theremin story. I know I plan to submit something. Just as soon as I'm done with everything else I need to finish writing and revising.
I found out about the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping through an article in the New York Times Magazine. To quote the article from an episode in a California Starbucks:
Enter, from the parking lot, Reverend Billy.
He is 6-foot-3, impossible not to look at in his white suit, clerical collar and dyed-blond pompadour. He is also not a real minister -- he is a New York-based performance artist and activist named Bill Talen -- but it generally takes people a minute or two to figure that out, and this confusion over the exact derivation of his authority is the space in which he thrives. ''Hallelujah!'' he shouts through a white cardboard megaphone as he bursts through the door. ''This is an abusive place, children! It has landed in this neighborhood like a space alien! The union-busting, the genetically-engineered milk, the fake bohemianism! But we don't have to be here, children! This is the Good News!''
It makes me proud to be an American. The complete text of the article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22BILLY.html. You may need a password, so let me direct you to www.bugmenot.com.
And finally, my roommate discovered a while ago that automobile names are a lot funnier when you tack the word "anal" on them as a prefix. I happen to agree. But my roommate, not content just knowing that some automobile names can be made funnier this way, but wanting to find out which automobile name is funniest when the word "anal" is added, set up a Web site to find out. It's at www.analautos.com. You can find a list of all automobiles, arranged by maker. I try to delude myself into thinking I'm an adult and an intellectual, then something like this comes along and I have to concede that I am neither.
Sorry about the lack of hyperlinks in the text today. My dad's laptop doesn't support them for some reason, so we have to go manual for now. I'll correct them as soon as I can.
So far, the vacation's been fanatastic. I had lunch with my father yesterday, followed by a latte at a coffee shop called La Colombe. It's kind of hipster, kind of yuppie, and they have great croissants. So I spent the afternoon in there, reading and writing, and then struck up conversation with a guy named Fred, who teaches art at one of the Quaker schools around here. Then I went to Rittenhouse Square and read until the afternoon mosquitoes (who, surprisingly enough, are far more vicious than the midmorning mosquitoes) gave me reason to leave.
I finished reading The Encyclopedia of the Dead yesterday. All in all, I was disappointed with it. My biggest problem with it stemmed from this: It's a book of short stories in the vein of Borges, and, although the stories were generally well-written, often times they were too long to really keep my interest past the initial few pages. For example, the title story "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" is about a book that records the lives of every person who has ever died, since its conception, in striking detail. Where Borges would have explored this idea for six-to-ten pages (and would have explored it thoroughly and beautifully, so that the reader would not be left feeling that his six-page story had gypped them out of some vital information) Danilo Kis explores it for twenty-something pages, going into the extreme details covered in the entry on one person. Consequently, he lost me.
Worse still is "The Book of Kings and Fools," which is about the life of an antisemitic pamphelet. The story explores the results of the pamphelet's wide circulation, its effect on the ideas of people like Hitler, Stalin, and others, and its origins as a work of satire during the reign of Napoleon. In places, this story is very interesting, but it's thirty pages long and much of that feels like filler. Also, it hops back and forth in its narrative tense, from present to past and back again, without warning and without apparent purpose, which made it very hard to follow.
Borges' great gift was his ability to use an economy of language to explore a complex idea in a relatively short space. Where Danilo Kis does this, his stories are excellent. But too often the stories in The Encyclopedia of the Dead fell into a kind of narrative babble, which made me care less about the ideas he was exploring, less about the characters he was using to explore them, and less about the story as a whole than when the last page would come.
Alright. Now on to a few links.
I found Johnny Theremin on Neil Gaiman's site. It's a project based on his July 26th journal entry, in which someone told Neil that he needed a chapter summary. Immediately. The rest followed. Apparently, a fan put up a site for the Johnny Theremin story. I know I plan to submit something. Just as soon as I'm done with everything else I need to finish writing and revising.
I found out about the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping through an article in the New York Times Magazine. To quote the article from an episode in a California Starbucks:
Enter, from the parking lot, Reverend Billy.
He is 6-foot-3, impossible not to look at in his white suit, clerical collar and dyed-blond pompadour. He is also not a real minister -- he is a New York-based performance artist and activist named Bill Talen -- but it generally takes people a minute or two to figure that out, and this confusion over the exact derivation of his authority is the space in which he thrives. ''Hallelujah!'' he shouts through a white cardboard megaphone as he bursts through the door. ''This is an abusive place, children! It has landed in this neighborhood like a space alien! The union-busting, the genetically-engineered milk, the fake bohemianism! But we don't have to be here, children! This is the Good News!''
It makes me proud to be an American. The complete text of the article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22BILLY.html. You may need a password, so let me direct you to www.bugmenot.com.
And finally, my roommate discovered a while ago that automobile names are a lot funnier when you tack the word "anal" on them as a prefix. I happen to agree. But my roommate, not content just knowing that some automobile names can be made funnier this way, but wanting to find out which automobile name is funniest when the word "anal" is added, set up a Web site to find out. It's at www.analautos.com. You can find a list of all automobiles, arranged by maker. I try to delude myself into thinking I'm an adult and an intellectual, then something like this comes along and I have to concede that I am neither.
Sorry about the lack of hyperlinks in the text today. My dad's laptop doesn't support them for some reason, so we have to go manual for now. I'll correct them as soon as I can.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Shoulder Section, Medium Rare
I almost entitled this entry "Et in Philadelphia Ego Sum," because here I am in Philadelphia. Then I decided that would be pretentious and I should forget about the whole thing, altogether. So I put it here. Better to be pretentious in the text than in the title. Right.
Friday afternoon, I left work and went to O'Hare airport around four o'clock for my seven-thirty flight, thinking that if I didn't arrive early, the forces of irony (and there are forces of irony, make no mistake about it) would find a way to delay my flight. But naturally, since I had thought ahead, I had my boarding pass and was through security in roughly twenty minutes, which left me about two-and-a-half hours to kill. So I wandered around O'Hare for a while, exploring the terminal for food options.
I also made my traditional trip to Japanese Heaven, a light display in the throughway between B and C sections of Terminal 1. I can't quite describe it to give it justice without going on for several pages, but it's a darkened tunnel, lit in pastels from compartments behind the walls. Above you, as you travel on a moving walkway, a display of neon blue squiggles and day-glow orange diamonds usher you forward, through the color spectrum. Around you, electronic musicbox music tinkles lightly, underscored by recorded feminine voices, sweetly chanting, "Please look down, the moving walkway will end shortly." At the end of the tunnel, when the lights have moved you through the blues, into reds and oranges, and then back into the blues, you find yourself at the foot of another escalator, this one with white light pouring down through it from the terminal above. Where does it lead? You won't know until you go up it, will you? The feeling of the place is so very pseudo-anime Tokyo and incredibly dream-like. I can't help but imagine it's what happens to Japanese people when they die.
After I visited Japanese Heaven and had gotten something to eat, I wandered back to my gate and discovered my flight was delayed for another two hours. I blame myself for this. Every time I fly, I have to make it a point, if I can, to have a Cinnabon. This time, I skipped it in favor of my health. And the result was another two hours in O'Hare. By the time I reached Philly, four hours later, I was beat. My dad picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to the shore, where I promptly fell alseep.
When I woke up the next day and walked out on the patio, the sound of the surf greeted me, along with a cool salty, fishy breeze. I had forgotten how awesome and rejuvenating the ocean is. I spent the last three days basically submerged in it, bobbing up and down, letting the waves pound me, or riding them when I could. And it's amazing: if you want to feel small but powerful, insignificant but interconnected, spend some time in the ocean. Because no matter how strong you are, no matter how willful, the ocean is always stronger and more persistant. But at the same time, you are no less strong than anyone else, and when you touch the ocean, you're touching everything else. You're touching distant shores. You're touching the birthplace of life. You're touching the primordial blood. It's beautiful. It's unspeakably beautiful.
I should also add that bobbing up and down in the water and letting the waves pound me was remarkably meditative. I came up with, as I always seem to do when I'm in the water, several ideas for short stories. I've become fascinated with the notion of a "floating court," which is a palace of royalty whose location isn't fixed. There's got to be something I can do with that.
Now I'm back in Philly, dominating my dad's laptop. My shoulder is slightly burnt from the sun (just the right one...the left one is still pale), and my face has some color in it. Of course, it had color before. Horse-glue white is a color.
Off to more vacationing. Ciao.
Friday afternoon, I left work and went to O'Hare airport around four o'clock for my seven-thirty flight, thinking that if I didn't arrive early, the forces of irony (and there are forces of irony, make no mistake about it) would find a way to delay my flight. But naturally, since I had thought ahead, I had my boarding pass and was through security in roughly twenty minutes, which left me about two-and-a-half hours to kill. So I wandered around O'Hare for a while, exploring the terminal for food options.
I also made my traditional trip to Japanese Heaven, a light display in the throughway between B and C sections of Terminal 1. I can't quite describe it to give it justice without going on for several pages, but it's a darkened tunnel, lit in pastels from compartments behind the walls. Above you, as you travel on a moving walkway, a display of neon blue squiggles and day-glow orange diamonds usher you forward, through the color spectrum. Around you, electronic musicbox music tinkles lightly, underscored by recorded feminine voices, sweetly chanting, "Please look down, the moving walkway will end shortly." At the end of the tunnel, when the lights have moved you through the blues, into reds and oranges, and then back into the blues, you find yourself at the foot of another escalator, this one with white light pouring down through it from the terminal above. Where does it lead? You won't know until you go up it, will you? The feeling of the place is so very pseudo-anime Tokyo and incredibly dream-like. I can't help but imagine it's what happens to Japanese people when they die.
After I visited Japanese Heaven and had gotten something to eat, I wandered back to my gate and discovered my flight was delayed for another two hours. I blame myself for this. Every time I fly, I have to make it a point, if I can, to have a Cinnabon. This time, I skipped it in favor of my health. And the result was another two hours in O'Hare. By the time I reached Philly, four hours later, I was beat. My dad picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to the shore, where I promptly fell alseep.
When I woke up the next day and walked out on the patio, the sound of the surf greeted me, along with a cool salty, fishy breeze. I had forgotten how awesome and rejuvenating the ocean is. I spent the last three days basically submerged in it, bobbing up and down, letting the waves pound me, or riding them when I could. And it's amazing: if you want to feel small but powerful, insignificant but interconnected, spend some time in the ocean. Because no matter how strong you are, no matter how willful, the ocean is always stronger and more persistant. But at the same time, you are no less strong than anyone else, and when you touch the ocean, you're touching everything else. You're touching distant shores. You're touching the birthplace of life. You're touching the primordial blood. It's beautiful. It's unspeakably beautiful.
I should also add that bobbing up and down in the water and letting the waves pound me was remarkably meditative. I came up with, as I always seem to do when I'm in the water, several ideas for short stories. I've become fascinated with the notion of a "floating court," which is a palace of royalty whose location isn't fixed. There's got to be something I can do with that.
Now I'm back in Philly, dominating my dad's laptop. My shoulder is slightly burnt from the sun (just the right one...the left one is still pale), and my face has some color in it. Of course, it had color before. Horse-glue white is a color.
Off to more vacationing. Ciao.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
I'll Believe it When They Find a Good Recipe for Borscht
The other day, I linked to a site entitled "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick," which told of various assassinations, including Sirhan Sirhan's, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, and Kennedy's, which were foretold in that epic whaling tome, Moby Dick. For those of you who are interested, the authors of this site are not psychopaths, but are using Moby Dick to disprove the concept of Bible Codes.
Anyway, I spent most of the day today reading that Web site, and found it all very interesting. What was most fascinating to me—although maybe a bit obvious, now that I write it— was the way that the Bible Code believers, when confronted with evidence that Moby Dick contains the same kind of "code" as the Bible/Torah, they simply said that the code in Moby Dick was false. I didn't think they would just shrug their shoulders and say, "What do you know? I guess I was wrong," but I would have at least liked it if they bowed down and started reading Moby Dick as a new testament of God. It would be a fabulous religion. Instead of people saying that they saw demons dogging them until God's mercy saved them, they would say they hunted white whales until they were saved. The initiates would be called Ishmael until they were fully part of the faith. It would be great.
Anyway, for more on Bible Codes, including links to people who believe they are real, and a thorough explanation of why they are not, here is a link to the main site of the Moby Dick page. And for a more interesting view of hidden codes from God than any actual believer has presented, read "The Gimatria of Pi" on The Fortean Bureau.
I'd like to note just briefly that, while generally skeptical, I'm not a complete skeptic. I believe in things like ghosts and whatnot, and there is an alley up the road from where I live that I'm convinced makes people insane, because I've never seen anyone in it who wasn't. But I choose to believe these things because they make my life richer, and they make the world more interesting to live in. And maybe some of this same phenomenon is at the root of this Bible Codes business, but I personally find that using pseudoscience to justify one's faith just makes that faith incredibly shallow. Faith is illogical, unprovable, and in the eyes of anyone who doesn't have it, usually seems ridiculous, if not flat-out wrong. And that's fine. To dillute it with distorted mathematics and faulty science just cheapens both: the faith and the science.
Right. To bed with me. Hard day at work tomorrow, followed by two weeks of abject goofing-off.
Anyway, I spent most of the day today reading that Web site, and found it all very interesting. What was most fascinating to me—although maybe a bit obvious, now that I write it— was the way that the Bible Code believers, when confronted with evidence that Moby Dick contains the same kind of "code" as the Bible/Torah, they simply said that the code in Moby Dick was false. I didn't think they would just shrug their shoulders and say, "What do you know? I guess I was wrong," but I would have at least liked it if they bowed down and started reading Moby Dick as a new testament of God. It would be a fabulous religion. Instead of people saying that they saw demons dogging them until God's mercy saved them, they would say they hunted white whales until they were saved. The initiates would be called Ishmael until they were fully part of the faith. It would be great.
Anyway, for more on Bible Codes, including links to people who believe they are real, and a thorough explanation of why they are not, here is a link to the main site of the Moby Dick page. And for a more interesting view of hidden codes from God than any actual believer has presented, read "The Gimatria of Pi" on The Fortean Bureau.
I'd like to note just briefly that, while generally skeptical, I'm not a complete skeptic. I believe in things like ghosts and whatnot, and there is an alley up the road from where I live that I'm convinced makes people insane, because I've never seen anyone in it who wasn't. But I choose to believe these things because they make my life richer, and they make the world more interesting to live in. And maybe some of this same phenomenon is at the root of this Bible Codes business, but I personally find that using pseudoscience to justify one's faith just makes that faith incredibly shallow. Faith is illogical, unprovable, and in the eyes of anyone who doesn't have it, usually seems ridiculous, if not flat-out wrong. And that's fine. To dillute it with distorted mathematics and faulty science just cheapens both: the faith and the science.
Right. To bed with me. Hard day at work tomorrow, followed by two weeks of abject goofing-off.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Walking the Buddha
The bylaws committee for Tantalus met last night and got some fantastic work done. We managed to rough out, in only a very few hours, the structure of our bylaws. Which I think is pretty impressive. We'll have a more complete version in a week or two. I was elected to write the preamble for the bylaws, because we thought we should have one, and because I'm the writer-type guy in the committee. Last year I wrote a disclaimer for Dreadful Penny... that included a preamble, but I don't think that'll work this time. The IRS has a notoriously poor sense of humor where things like demonic possession are concerned.
In two days, I'm going on vacation. Friday night, after work, I hop a plane to Philadelphia for a week and a half of hanging out at the beach, writing, and most importantly, seeing my family for the first time in months. This will be the first time in my life that I have a paid vacation.
I mean to spend a great deal of time in my favorite coffee shop, the Last Drop. The Last Drop is a great, out of the way little coffee shop, which is well lit and quiet with a good cup of coffee. And most importantly, the other clientele are often perfectly willing to get into a conversation with me, a complete stranger, on the merits of my being from Philadelphia.
I'm also excited about visiting the Mutter Museum, which is the museum of medical oddities. Really, once you've seen one hydrocephalic fetus, you've seen you've seen them all, but sometimes they have a good exhibit. Even if they don't, it's well worth it to see the skeleton of the world's tallest man stand next to the skeleton of the world's smallest woman. And the woman who turned to soap is always worth a look. Hmmm...there's times I think I should have been a doctor. A mad doctor, naturally.
I bought two books for my trip, Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden, which I found out about on Jeff Vandermeer's blog, and The Encyclopedia of the Dead, by Danilo Kis, which I found out about on The Modern Word. I'm especially excited about The Encyclopedia of the Dead. Short stories in the Borgesian vain: I can't wait. Nothing says relaxation on the beach like complex explorations of metaphysics. Um...or maybe I'll start with the other one.
as an aside...
I've been kind of anxious lately, loosing sleep. Someone who I haven't seen in a while is coming back soon and I'm worried about that, because the last time I saw her, things got bad for a while. I went a little nuts and lost control. I'm afraid of her return and I don't know entirely why. Because I don't know where I stand with her—what is she thinking about me, will we be friends, will we start arguing again, was I missed, etc. It's all so uncertain, which the future always is, but with her, somehow, it's different. She has power, because I care so deeply what she thinks, and because I don't know what that is. She and I stand at a place where we could go anywhere: toward something really special or just towards apathy. She means so much to me that I'm terrified of it moving toward apathy.
I'm just afraid right now, plain and simple. I'm afraid because the future is so vast and I care so much that it has a specific outcome. I'm afraid to move because I don't know which move to make. Which is why I'm walking. Looking for the Buddha in me so that I can move and know it is the right move, because there isn't any right move. It is as my roommate always says, "It is what it is." And that's all it is. The path is long and winding and it doesn't always end in the same place it seemed like it would.
So my first step toward that is writing my fears out here, in the hopes that, maybe she'll see this and understand that, if I seem a little weird the first time I run into her, it comes from here and not from anger or bitterness or anything of that sort. And I'm writing it here in the hopes that, by saying the name of my fear out loud, in public for everyone who reads this to see, I can gain power over it. Fears are cowards; they don't like to be exposed. This one is, especially. I'm anxious over nothing, because it hasn't happened yet.
In two days, I'm going on vacation. Friday night, after work, I hop a plane to Philadelphia for a week and a half of hanging out at the beach, writing, and most importantly, seeing my family for the first time in months. This will be the first time in my life that I have a paid vacation.
I mean to spend a great deal of time in my favorite coffee shop, the Last Drop. The Last Drop is a great, out of the way little coffee shop, which is well lit and quiet with a good cup of coffee. And most importantly, the other clientele are often perfectly willing to get into a conversation with me, a complete stranger, on the merits of my being from Philadelphia.
I'm also excited about visiting the Mutter Museum, which is the museum of medical oddities. Really, once you've seen one hydrocephalic fetus, you've seen you've seen them all, but sometimes they have a good exhibit. Even if they don't, it's well worth it to see the skeleton of the world's tallest man stand next to the skeleton of the world's smallest woman. And the woman who turned to soap is always worth a look. Hmmm...there's times I think I should have been a doctor. A mad doctor, naturally.
I bought two books for my trip, Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden, which I found out about on Jeff Vandermeer's blog, and The Encyclopedia of the Dead, by Danilo Kis, which I found out about on The Modern Word. I'm especially excited about The Encyclopedia of the Dead. Short stories in the Borgesian vain: I can't wait. Nothing says relaxation on the beach like complex explorations of metaphysics. Um...or maybe I'll start with the other one.
as an aside...
I've been kind of anxious lately, loosing sleep. Someone who I haven't seen in a while is coming back soon and I'm worried about that, because the last time I saw her, things got bad for a while. I went a little nuts and lost control. I'm afraid of her return and I don't know entirely why. Because I don't know where I stand with her—what is she thinking about me, will we be friends, will we start arguing again, was I missed, etc. It's all so uncertain, which the future always is, but with her, somehow, it's different. She has power, because I care so deeply what she thinks, and because I don't know what that is. She and I stand at a place where we could go anywhere: toward something really special or just towards apathy. She means so much to me that I'm terrified of it moving toward apathy.
I'm just afraid right now, plain and simple. I'm afraid because the future is so vast and I care so much that it has a specific outcome. I'm afraid to move because I don't know which move to make. Which is why I'm walking. Looking for the Buddha in me so that I can move and know it is the right move, because there isn't any right move. It is as my roommate always says, "It is what it is." And that's all it is. The path is long and winding and it doesn't always end in the same place it seemed like it would.
So my first step toward that is writing my fears out here, in the hopes that, maybe she'll see this and understand that, if I seem a little weird the first time I run into her, it comes from here and not from anger or bitterness or anything of that sort. And I'm writing it here in the hopes that, by saying the name of my fear out loud, in public for everyone who reads this to see, I can gain power over it. Fears are cowards; they don't like to be exposed. This one is, especially. I'm anxious over nothing, because it hasn't happened yet.
Monday, August 16, 2004
For Eliza
My friend, Elizabeth, who I really don't deserve as a friend for many reasons, was kind enough to point out, when I first started this blog, that there are not, in fact, any whales here. This is for her.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/cetacea/cetacean.html
http://www.whales-online.net/eng/FSC.html?sct=1&pag=1-3-1.html
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
And now, there be whales here. Yarrr...
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/cetacea/cetacean.html
http://www.whales-online.net/eng/FSC.html?sct=1&pag=1-3-1.html
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
And now, there be whales here. Yarrr...
Thursday, August 12, 2004
a quick addition
Just a link I found: F The Vote
I think the text on the opening page really says it all:
SEXY LIBERALS OF THE U.S. UNITE in taking back the government from the sexually repressed, right-wing, zealots in control! Everyone knows liberals are hotter than conservatives - we look hotter, we dress hotter, our ideas are hotter, and we are infinitely hotter in the sack. We must use our sexual appeal to our advantage, as one more weapon in our already diverse arsenal. By stripping conservatives out of their clothes, we can also strip them of their power.
Hey, if it helps get Bush out of power, I'm all for it. Be warned, the site makes no guarantees that there isn't nudity or some other racy material on it, and consequently, neither do I.
Just a link I found: F The Vote
I think the text on the opening page really says it all:
SEXY LIBERALS OF THE U.S. UNITE in taking back the government from the sexually repressed, right-wing, zealots in control! Everyone knows liberals are hotter than conservatives - we look hotter, we dress hotter, our ideas are hotter, and we are infinitely hotter in the sack. We must use our sexual appeal to our advantage, as one more weapon in our already diverse arsenal. By stripping conservatives out of their clothes, we can also strip them of their power.
Hey, if it helps get Bush out of power, I'm all for it. Be warned, the site makes no guarantees that there isn't nudity or some other racy material on it, and consequently, neither do I.
Steel Grey and Woodsmoke
God, the fall weather of the past couple of days has been perfect; the air has been cool and sweet-smelling, the streets just a little damp from the sporadic rains, and at night there's a little bite to everything, just enough to make me feel solid again, just enough to grant a little redemption. From what? I'm not sure, but I think everyone could use a little. Weather like this leaves me nostalgic. It's the smells, the charcoal scent of leaves burning that just seems to churn up in weather like this, even though there haven't really been any leaves to burn just yet. But the atmosphere keeps a few particles of the smell in reserve, just for people like me. Just for the good memories it brings.
I walked four and a half miles from my office up to Wrigley Field in this weather. Ignored the clouds that kept threatening to make it rain, even when they briefly made good on that threat. Bring it on, I figured. A little fall rain in the late summer never hurt anyone, least of all me. And when my gimp foot told me that it was time for it to stop pounding the pavement, I took a train up north to Roger's Park and sat down for a cup of coffee in Cafe Ennui (a more affected name, I've never heard). I sat there, reading, and flirting at great distance with a pretty girl in a long coat, and revising a short story, but mostly it was memories. Roger's Park is the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Chicago. I had lived a summer in Evanston, subletting from my friend Dan, and when the summer was over and he needed to move back in, I answered an ad for a roommate needed. The woman I moved in with was an eccentric named Jenny Marx (not Karl's daughter, but she would joke that she was) with two cats, named Rama and Seta, both Siamese.
The months I spent in that apartment were some of the most interesting and productive I think I've ever experienced. Because I was essentially still a traveler in Chicago, so everywhere I went there was a new experience waiting for me, a new alley to explore, and new people to meet. Any stranger I met on a bus, or in a coffee shop, I would talk to them and for a time, I would have a new friend. And as I sat in Ennui, and the coffee warmed my bones the way soup does on chilly rainy nights, I just remembered all of the great experiences I had when I first got here. I remembered spending hours sitting with my friend, John Deng, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, listening to him talk about his childhood as a refugee among other child refugees; I remembered learning some of his language, Dinka, from him. I thought of the way Rama took to me like I was his personal mirror; how whenever he was around me, he expected that I look at him, and if I weren’t, the way he would meow until I did. It wasn't enough for me to idly pet Rama—I had to look at him while I did it. Mostly, I remembered the countless hours of exploring the streets of my new city and the feeling that anything was possible, that life was still undetermined and that anything I could conceive, I could do. It was perfect freedom, and tonight I needed a dose of that.
By way of reward for what I found, I ran into my friend Steve, who I met running a show this summer. Steve is another writer, and he is also one of the greatest people I know right now. I say this, partially because I know Steve will eventually read this post, but also because Steve reminds me a lot of that freedom and the feeling that life, in whatever form it may presently exist, is always still open and still open to play.
So the universe has left me with some happy synchronicity tonight, which makes me smile. I think I'll go out on the back porch and take in some of that smoke-air. Then to bed and to dreams.
I walked four and a half miles from my office up to Wrigley Field in this weather. Ignored the clouds that kept threatening to make it rain, even when they briefly made good on that threat. Bring it on, I figured. A little fall rain in the late summer never hurt anyone, least of all me. And when my gimp foot told me that it was time for it to stop pounding the pavement, I took a train up north to Roger's Park and sat down for a cup of coffee in Cafe Ennui (a more affected name, I've never heard). I sat there, reading, and flirting at great distance with a pretty girl in a long coat, and revising a short story, but mostly it was memories. Roger's Park is the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Chicago. I had lived a summer in Evanston, subletting from my friend Dan, and when the summer was over and he needed to move back in, I answered an ad for a roommate needed. The woman I moved in with was an eccentric named Jenny Marx (not Karl's daughter, but she would joke that she was) with two cats, named Rama and Seta, both Siamese.
The months I spent in that apartment were some of the most interesting and productive I think I've ever experienced. Because I was essentially still a traveler in Chicago, so everywhere I went there was a new experience waiting for me, a new alley to explore, and new people to meet. Any stranger I met on a bus, or in a coffee shop, I would talk to them and for a time, I would have a new friend. And as I sat in Ennui, and the coffee warmed my bones the way soup does on chilly rainy nights, I just remembered all of the great experiences I had when I first got here. I remembered spending hours sitting with my friend, John Deng, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, listening to him talk about his childhood as a refugee among other child refugees; I remembered learning some of his language, Dinka, from him. I thought of the way Rama took to me like I was his personal mirror; how whenever he was around me, he expected that I look at him, and if I weren’t, the way he would meow until I did. It wasn't enough for me to idly pet Rama—I had to look at him while I did it. Mostly, I remembered the countless hours of exploring the streets of my new city and the feeling that anything was possible, that life was still undetermined and that anything I could conceive, I could do. It was perfect freedom, and tonight I needed a dose of that.
By way of reward for what I found, I ran into my friend Steve, who I met running a show this summer. Steve is another writer, and he is also one of the greatest people I know right now. I say this, partially because I know Steve will eventually read this post, but also because Steve reminds me a lot of that freedom and the feeling that life, in whatever form it may presently exist, is always still open and still open to play.
So the universe has left me with some happy synchronicity tonight, which makes me smile. I think I'll go out on the back porch and take in some of that smoke-air. Then to bed and to dreams.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Phrenology of the Whale
I was very excited today. My brother showed me some concept sketches for the front page of my Web site. Initially, since so much of my writing deals somewhat with anatomy and medicine—they are of a theme—I was hoping to use something like a picture out of an old anatomy book. This was quickly toned down, on the grounds that most people who aren't me find anatomical drawings creepy, and my writings on the subject are absurd, rather than scary. So I decided to go with a phrenology chart, and my brother—being brilliant as he is—took that one step further and came up with the idea of a phrenology chart for a sperm whale. He sent me a rough concept sketch today and I loved it. Fantastic, my brother is. I should add that he came up with this idea and executed it, all in a matter of hours.
Sunday I went to a potluck at my friends Mark and Adrienne's apartment. The theme for the party was "soul food," which immediately made me want to make collard greens, which immediately after made me realize I have absolutely no idea how to make collard greens. So I settled for making strawberry shortcake. I had absolutely no idea how to make an actual strawberry shortcake, mind you, but I had a reasonably good idea for how to improvise one. I started out by making a biscuit dough and adding about a cup and a half of sugar, instead of the teaspoon of salt that the recipe called for: my logic, of course, was that biscuits are really just a kind of shortbread and that, with enough sugar added, shortbread would become shortcake. It was flawless logic, except when I added the milk to the flour, rather than getting a nice sticky mass of gluten and butter chunks, I got a wet soupy glop. So I kneaded in a few more handfuls of flour until I had a sticky ball of something that was not exactly biscuit dough, but not cake batter, either.
When I was done with that I went to whip the cream for the filling, and since I don't have a mixer, and I didn't want to spend a half hour whisking at high speed, I decided to do it in the blender. This worked fine for the half-pint of heavy whipping cream that I bought, but it didn't whip enough air into the mix to cover the strawberries. So I bought another pint of lighter whipping cream, and started on that. After a few minutes, I heard a nice thunk from the blades of the blender, followed by another, followed by the appearance of ugly clots floating in the milk. "My God," I thought, "what on earth is that? That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen." So naturally, I tasted it. Butter. I had churned butter in my blender. It was like that parable with the two frogs in the milk, only substituting a blender for the frogs.
In the end, I went out and bought some RediWhip and the cake turned out fantastic. The bread portion, while not as biscuity or flaky as I had hoped, wasn't too dense either. It had something like the consistency of a scone. And the potluck was fantastic fun. A good mix of people, food, and wine.
The e-bay fiasco resolved itself yesterday. Well, it wasn't really resolved, so much as the Universe called a reset. I found the money order in my mailbox, marked Return to Sender. The guy selling the computer decided to relist it on e-bay, and under the advice of my roommate, I decided not to bid again. So I cashed the money order and deposited back into my savings today, and that leaves everything more or less back where it was when I started. Which is a good thing, I suppose. I kept wondering what I would do with two laptops.
Some links
I found A Softer World on Neil Gaiman's site a while ago and spent an hour or so addicted to their archives. Some of the cartoons are just sublime. They make me think that whoever makes this cartoon would be the kind of person to think they are better than me. I'm not entirely sure they'd be wrong.
I like the children's art exhibit at Dream Anatomy. Not to play favorites, or anything, but I especially liked Jacqueline Kantor's and Jenna Kantor's pictures. Jacqueline's reminds me of Alex Grey, whose paintings inspire a lot of my writing. Jenna's looks like a Basquiat painting; I'm not sure if that says a lot about Jenna's talent, or if it says a lot about Basquiat. Either way, I liked her drawing.
And if anyone is reading this who lives in Evanston or nearby, Tantalus is performing "Sinister Puppetmen of the Fabrication Gallery" at the Evanston Lakefill at 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. on this coming Saturday. If you can be there, please go. It's a fantastic show, and deserves to be seen.
Sunday I went to a potluck at my friends Mark and Adrienne's apartment. The theme for the party was "soul food," which immediately made me want to make collard greens, which immediately after made me realize I have absolutely no idea how to make collard greens. So I settled for making strawberry shortcake. I had absolutely no idea how to make an actual strawberry shortcake, mind you, but I had a reasonably good idea for how to improvise one. I started out by making a biscuit dough and adding about a cup and a half of sugar, instead of the teaspoon of salt that the recipe called for: my logic, of course, was that biscuits are really just a kind of shortbread and that, with enough sugar added, shortbread would become shortcake. It was flawless logic, except when I added the milk to the flour, rather than getting a nice sticky mass of gluten and butter chunks, I got a wet soupy glop. So I kneaded in a few more handfuls of flour until I had a sticky ball of something that was not exactly biscuit dough, but not cake batter, either.
When I was done with that I went to whip the cream for the filling, and since I don't have a mixer, and I didn't want to spend a half hour whisking at high speed, I decided to do it in the blender. This worked fine for the half-pint of heavy whipping cream that I bought, but it didn't whip enough air into the mix to cover the strawberries. So I bought another pint of lighter whipping cream, and started on that. After a few minutes, I heard a nice thunk from the blades of the blender, followed by another, followed by the appearance of ugly clots floating in the milk. "My God," I thought, "what on earth is that? That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen." So naturally, I tasted it. Butter. I had churned butter in my blender. It was like that parable with the two frogs in the milk, only substituting a blender for the frogs.
In the end, I went out and bought some RediWhip and the cake turned out fantastic. The bread portion, while not as biscuity or flaky as I had hoped, wasn't too dense either. It had something like the consistency of a scone. And the potluck was fantastic fun. A good mix of people, food, and wine.
The e-bay fiasco resolved itself yesterday. Well, it wasn't really resolved, so much as the Universe called a reset. I found the money order in my mailbox, marked Return to Sender. The guy selling the computer decided to relist it on e-bay, and under the advice of my roommate, I decided not to bid again. So I cashed the money order and deposited back into my savings today, and that leaves everything more or less back where it was when I started. Which is a good thing, I suppose. I kept wondering what I would do with two laptops.
Some links
I found A Softer World on Neil Gaiman's site a while ago and spent an hour or so addicted to their archives. Some of the cartoons are just sublime. They make me think that whoever makes this cartoon would be the kind of person to think they are better than me. I'm not entirely sure they'd be wrong.
I like the children's art exhibit at Dream Anatomy. Not to play favorites, or anything, but I especially liked Jacqueline Kantor's and Jenna Kantor's pictures. Jacqueline's reminds me of Alex Grey, whose paintings inspire a lot of my writing. Jenna's looks like a Basquiat painting; I'm not sure if that says a lot about Jenna's talent, or if it says a lot about Basquiat. Either way, I liked her drawing.
And if anyone is reading this who lives in Evanston or nearby, Tantalus is performing "Sinister Puppetmen of the Fabrication Gallery" at the Evanston Lakefill at 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. on this coming Saturday. If you can be there, please go. It's a fantastic show, and deserves to be seen.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Chewing a Toothpick and Hating E-bay
Late night, last night. I went to a party at my friend's house on the South Side—the very far south side of Chicago, so far that if I traveled any farther I wouldn't have the right to say I was in Chicago anymore. That south side. The party was fun: bonfire and a lot of wonderful new people who I can't wait to see again. I stayed up until about six in the morning talking with my friend Cat about all the things that have been bubbling around in my head for the past couple of months. It was cathartic, but at the same time it just left me with more questions to percolate.
I finished my rewrites on "Daedalus, In His Mirror, Icarus" on Friday, after a mad marathon push of typing, pacing, thinking. And when I flicked on the television (to distract my jumbled thoughts so that I could focus on the writing) I discovered that there was a Farscape marathon on. So naturally, I was overjoyed. I put "Daedalus" into manuscript format yesterday and will be sending it out to Asimov's today sometime.
Last week, I bought a computer on e-bay—a used laptop, not state-of-the-art, of course, but it was fast enough for my writing purposes and it also featured a DVD drive. Which was very exciting. The person from whom I was buying wanted a money order or a cashier's check mailed to him, so I went out and promptly got the necessary cashier's check for $270 and mailed it out to him the next day in San Francisco. He still hasn't gotten it and is beginning to get antsy. So now I don't know what's happening: am I out $270? Did someone else get the money, or is it just lost in the mail? Can I cancel a cashier's check and have one reissued? Am I completely fucked? The whole thing just has me annoyed in a huge way. What's worse, my poor roommate, whose e-bay account I used to buy the computer, has to be the bearer of bad news and therefore has to deal with me being annoyed. Sorry, Ian. Anyway, here's hoping it all works out and I can go home with a new computer in tow.
And in one final note, happy birthday to my brother Mike. He turned 29, I think, on Friday. Happy birthday, Mike.
I finished my rewrites on "Daedalus, In His Mirror, Icarus" on Friday, after a mad marathon push of typing, pacing, thinking. And when I flicked on the television (to distract my jumbled thoughts so that I could focus on the writing) I discovered that there was a Farscape marathon on. So naturally, I was overjoyed. I put "Daedalus" into manuscript format yesterday and will be sending it out to Asimov's today sometime.
Last week, I bought a computer on e-bay—a used laptop, not state-of-the-art, of course, but it was fast enough for my writing purposes and it also featured a DVD drive. Which was very exciting. The person from whom I was buying wanted a money order or a cashier's check mailed to him, so I went out and promptly got the necessary cashier's check for $270 and mailed it out to him the next day in San Francisco. He still hasn't gotten it and is beginning to get antsy. So now I don't know what's happening: am I out $270? Did someone else get the money, or is it just lost in the mail? Can I cancel a cashier's check and have one reissued? Am I completely fucked? The whole thing just has me annoyed in a huge way. What's worse, my poor roommate, whose e-bay account I used to buy the computer, has to be the bearer of bad news and therefore has to deal with me being annoyed. Sorry, Ian. Anyway, here's hoping it all works out and I can go home with a new computer in tow.
And in one final note, happy birthday to my brother Mike. He turned 29, I think, on Friday. Happy birthday, Mike.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Procrastination: the Gift of the Internet
I took three days off of work so that I could finish the second draft of a story, start the second draft of another, and maybe pick up the thread of my novel, which the general distractions of life and a bruised heart made me drop a few months back.
Instead, I spent most of yesterday and today procrastinating and being all around generally lazy. Of course, the day is young still, so it isn't all lost. And I have tomorrow and the weekend, but I still feel like a complete ass, having wasted yesterday and still sitting inside today, staring at my monitor. Somewhere out there, a muse is shaking her head woefully and rolling her eyes at the thought of me. Or else she's packing her things and going on a road trip to find someone more worthy of inspiration.
We all knew Brittany was up to something...
Among things I've found while wasting time today was Stairway to Heaven Backwards, which features exactly what it promises, and more: a backwards version of "Stairway to Heaven," as well as several other pop songs, exposing their hidden lyrics. The hidden lyrics to "Stairway" are actually kind of sweet and soulful. I mean, they're about Satan, yeah, but they're still really lovely--they show a side of the Dark Lord that you don't often see in Satanic lyrics. Brittany Spears' secret lyrics are somehow not at all a surprise, but they're interesting nonetheless.
Instead, I spent most of yesterday and today procrastinating and being all around generally lazy. Of course, the day is young still, so it isn't all lost. And I have tomorrow and the weekend, but I still feel like a complete ass, having wasted yesterday and still sitting inside today, staring at my monitor. Somewhere out there, a muse is shaking her head woefully and rolling her eyes at the thought of me. Or else she's packing her things and going on a road trip to find someone more worthy of inspiration.
We all knew Brittany was up to something...
Among things I've found while wasting time today was Stairway to Heaven Backwards, which features exactly what it promises, and more: a backwards version of "Stairway to Heaven," as well as several other pop songs, exposing their hidden lyrics. The hidden lyrics to "Stairway" are actually kind of sweet and soulful. I mean, they're about Satan, yeah, but they're still really lovely--they show a side of the Dark Lord that you don't often see in Satanic lyrics. Brittany Spears' secret lyrics are somehow not at all a surprise, but they're interesting nonetheless.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
An Introduction to Myself
You know, I've had this blog for probably a year or so and haven't added anything to it, simply because I keep thinking that I should start out by introducing myself to everyone, and then I freeze. If there's one thing I'm lousy at, it's talking about myself. But, you have to do it eventually.
So. About me: By day, I'm an editor. I work for the University of Illinois at Chicago's Office of Publications. By night, and by life, I'm a writer of surrealist short stories and poetry, as well as the occasional odd play. My work is largely unpublished; in fact, with the exception of but a single poem, "Face Mongers," published on the Mudlark online journal of poetry, my work is entirely unpublished. Which means I keep a day job for now.
Recently a few friends of mine and I started a theatre company in Chicago, called the Tantalus Theatre Group. We're an experimental theatre company, specializing in new works and new interpretations of old works. Our mission is to use exploration and play to create a theatrical experience that is moving, profound, and magical, both for the audience and for ourselves. Although we've already produced several shows over the years, our first show as an official company has just opened. It's entitled "The Sinister Puppet Men of the Fabrication Gallery," and it will be seen in parks all around Chicago for the remainder of August. Check out our Web site, http://www.tantalustheatre.org/, for information about where to see it.
And that's me, nutshell style.
-Matt
So. About me: By day, I'm an editor. I work for the University of Illinois at Chicago's Office of Publications. By night, and by life, I'm a writer of surrealist short stories and poetry, as well as the occasional odd play. My work is largely unpublished; in fact, with the exception of but a single poem, "Face Mongers," published on the Mudlark online journal of poetry, my work is entirely unpublished. Which means I keep a day job for now.
Recently a few friends of mine and I started a theatre company in Chicago, called the Tantalus Theatre Group. We're an experimental theatre company, specializing in new works and new interpretations of old works. Our mission is to use exploration and play to create a theatrical experience that is moving, profound, and magical, both for the audience and for ourselves. Although we've already produced several shows over the years, our first show as an official company has just opened. It's entitled "The Sinister Puppet Men of the Fabrication Gallery," and it will be seen in parks all around Chicago for the remainder of August. Check out our Web site, http://www.tantalustheatre.org/, for information about where to see it.
And that's me, nutshell style.
-Matt
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
A Haiku to Frustrations
I found this sitting in my inbox when I checked my e-mail just now. It's lovely:
I have attempted to "Login" to the order site and am not able to.
I attempted to create a password but it will not accept it.
I used 8 characters with several numbers and 1 capital but it didn't accept it.
I asked for my password to be sent to me, but an hour later it wasn't sent.
What do I have to do?
Never before have I seen a statement about the frustrations of online ordering systems, so elegant that it borders on transforming into a Zen koan. But here it is. "What do I have to do?" Indeed.
I have attempted to "Login" to the order site and am not able to.
I attempted to create a password but it will not accept it.
I used 8 characters with several numbers and 1 capital but it didn't accept it.
I asked for my password to be sent to me, but an hour later it wasn't sent.
What do I have to do?
Never before have I seen a statement about the frustrations of online ordering systems, so elegant that it borders on transforming into a Zen koan. But here it is. "What do I have to do?" Indeed.
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