Danse Russe

最後

2010-07-20T16:54:00.003+09:00

After nearly a year with no new posts, I think it's safe to call this blog "retired" ...or at least resigned to the sad delegation of "feed dump." Though I continue to keep a "taste blog" (seriously, that's what they're called?) at skyscrapersoup.tumblr.com and music writing at www.oregonmusicnews.com

In fact, this is the last blog in which I will be doing anything like a "public journal" as blogging used to be, before the ease and ubiquity of video, audio and other media, before re-blogging, re-tweeting, "liking" and tumblr. This blog is too "old school" to remain relevant, and I'm now far too busy (that's likely a good thing.)

I doubt anyone (other than perhaps a family member, or old friend maybe?) will stumble across this thing anyway, but I've found that when killing a blog, it's best to leave a note.

R.I.P.
Danse Russe
2007-2009

And to commemorate its passing, here's the first post I made on this blog...
so uninteresting... so telling... so... boring.

始め

----------------
Now playing: Nick Drake - Way to Blue
via FoxyTunes Le Sigh. Livejournal is SO, like, 3 years ago...Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm starting a new blog. Wait, why am I starting a new blog? ...'Cos Franklin did it first and everyone knows I just do whatever the Franklin does. Maybe there's a vague hope that it will inspire me to get back to blogging away, but the fact is I just don't have all that mindless, empty time sitting in front of a screen at that horrific little hellhole JHS down south. Life here slips away almost unnoticed it's so smooth. Like a river current, it sweeps me up with hardly a sound and carries me on effortlessly...why fight it? I have rhythms. I'm left to my own devices. I play my guitar and go running and play silly computer games and sleep well. I get drunk sometimes and constantly fail at quitting cigarettes...and who's to care? For some reason, going back to the LJ just feels...anachronistic, or something. It feels finished, or at least, for some other purpose than I need at the moment. I'm almost unable to post on it lately. The most I manage is a link or video every few weeks. The real answer is that I'm just generally lazy, but also it's very connected with a skin that I'm just now finally shedding. Praise Jesus. It's taken a helluva long time, but finally.
Dad says I should make a book out of my JET journaling...it's actually a fairly enticing idea. Never have I found such a bitch-worthy subject as the time in Guadallama. There are days when I think I should set sights on doing something with writing...then it unravels in my hands as I while away hours doing seemingly nothing in front of a screen. I haven't written a story since Portland. I read those stories sometimes though, and think "Hey, yeah. That's not so bad. I like it in fact...if it were a magazine, I wouldn't put it down just yet." Dad strokes my ample ego a bit and tells me my j-blog had "fans" back home, random strangers who were more up with my haps than he was. I like this idea...obviously. But lookie now, I got my life all straightened out n all and I'm plum out of things to complain about it...ain't it always be like that.

WH @ Portland Makes Music

2009-10-14T03:00:00.001+09:00

Coming Up for Air

2009-08-02T02:33:00.004+09:00

image: wlt

Those of you who know me probably already understand why the blog has gathered dust lately. Those who don't know me probably aren't reading this. So, I'll spare you all a redundant account of the trials and tribulations of my life to date, and just say that surviving July was nothing short of a miracle.

PDX Pop Now! Was a roaring success. I ran to-and-fro, I managed stages, I hauled heavy stuff. I finally understood Explode Into Colors. I saw what was certainly one of the best performances I have ever seen in my life from AU. I saw Menomena play a brand new song from backstage. The festival, in its entirety, can be found at the Portland Radio Authority.

Moving out of 705 was decidedly not a roaring success. It is finally finished, at least. I had an image in my brain, of the four brothers sitting on the bare hardwood in the empty house, sharing a sixpack and some reminiscences... but S left a day early, I had more stuff to load then I thought, M, got upset at us, or the situation, or both, and left abruptly in a huff. P was extremely drunk, following us around making racial slurs. B and I ended up spending the whole time bickering about what we could and couldn't throw away or stuff in my car. All this in the middle of a heat wave. It was too fast and frustrating to be sad. Certainly no time for nostalgic hardwood pow-wows.

It was afterward, driving off in the dusk with a car full of junk I didn't want, listening to Andrew Bird sing, "If you've come to burn an effigy, it should be of a man who's lost his way..." It was then that I finally felt the shape and breadth of our loss. It was then I realized why most peoples' sympathies the past few weeks seem so hollow or disingenuous. Simply put, when it comes to houses, most of them have never had anything this nice to lose. When you say "I'm moving" they just nod and say, "what a pain, man, I hate moving." How can they know? They are blameless, but subject to my bitterness anyway.

Last night I locked myself out of my car with the engine on, 5 minutes before my gig start time. I paid $65 to have a guy stick a glorified coathanger in my window and roll the window down. There are last straws, and there are last straws. This one broke the back of whatever poor, misbegotten animal that had thus-far dragged July lurchingly forward. The set was mediocre, understandably. It was old, unrehearsed stuff. I wasn't really upset. I didn't want to scream and pound things with my fist. I didn't feel like breaking down and giving up. It felt like an exorcism, a final demon to be cast out. July is over. OVER. My back may never forgive me, but for all I care a piano could fall from the sky and crush the fucking car and all my gear into a million pieces and I'd walk home whistling dixie.

It is August 1st, and I slept in late. It's the first time I've slept past 8 in I don't remember. I woke in my new room, to the soft breeze of the fan and the new, unfamiliar sounds of new neighborhood dogs and lawnmowers. My head crested the surface of the dark waters and I threw my head back, opened my mouth and gulped a huge, grateful lung-full of air.

Lightbleeds

2009-07-03T18:30:00.001+09:00

Part of the Ongoing Series in my Head-

2009-07-01T07:59:00.003+09:00

Things I will Miss About Living in the West Hills, #228:

The view.

Things I will NOT Miss about Living in the West Hills, #317:

The constant stream of shitty drivers traversing Cornell, Barnes and Skyline in their BMW, Mercedes, Porche, Lexus, & Hummer luxury tanks, like a veritable parade of conspicuous consumption. Negotiating corners while fishing for their Oakleys; absent-mindedly juggling enormous latte, bluetooth headset, PDA and steering wheel; waving you on when they have no reason or right to; putting on their makeup at 10 mph... and otherwise just generally adding that little extra "douchebag" touch to your day.

Moving

2009-06-15T08:31:00.005+09:00

"ED KEEPERS -- DO NOT THROW AWAY!!!!" written in huge, ungainly block letters on the top lid, I peeled off the old tape and pried open the box, having not the slightest clue what might be inside. What I found were 2 half-filled sketchbooks, 3 journals, each with only two filled pages, a stamp collection (when did I ever collect stamps??!) hundreds of 80's & 90's baseball cards, karate trophies, postcards from Japan, a "Canada" pin, a signed harlem globetrotters program, and a locked box with big heavy stuff rattling around inside it. I pried open the box with a screwdriver and found a bunch of junk gems, thunder-eggs, a wizard figurine, a necklace of a serpent coiled around a skull and sword, 10 egyptian pounds, a dollar coin, and two cigarettes that were at least 12 years old. There was also a folder of CDs which contained the following:

Aerosmith, "Big Ones"

Aerosmith, "Pump"

Aerosmith, "Permanent Vacation"

Hootie and the Blowfish, "Fairweather Johnson"

Green Day, "Dookie"

Alanis Morrisette, "Jagged Little Pill"

The Proclaimers, "Sunshine on Leith"

Various Artists, "Mortal Kombat - The Official Motion Picture Soundtrack"

Coolio, "1,2,3,4 Sumpin' New" [promo single]

Korn, "Korn"

Queen, "A Night at the Opera"

There were also about 50 empty jewel cases, commemorative Portland Rockies program, 6 Electronic Gaming Monthly magazines, baseballs signed by old little-league teams, etc.

This is the sum of what I considered absolutely essential at 14. I took one of the cigarettes outside and lit it. After the third pull I felt woozy and lightheaded, and stuffed it out. Inside, staring at the enormous pile of junk, I started to feel slightly sick. Maybe it was the gravity of the task ahead of me - emptying the entire house of a hundred more boxes like this one - becoming horribly real, maybe it was just plain terrifying to see my entire youth reduced to this kind of mundane, meaningless junk... Or maybe it was the lingering nausea of the decade stale Kamel Red. How is it that everything I once found so important was so hopelessly meaningless to me now? How is it that everything I once found so important was so hopelessly meaningless to me now? How is it that everything I once found so important was so hopelessly meaningless to me now? How is it that everything I once found so important was so hopelessly meaningless to me now? How is it that everything I once found so important was so hopelessly meaningless to me now?

In another 12 years, I will unload an identical box, full of all the absolutely essential relics from our Albemarle move. Everything I consider worth saving from the vultures. Then, too, I'll be unable to piece together just what anything meant at the time. I'll have nothing but my own skewed memories, and some familiar furniture. Here, even now, I'm unable to compose the narrative, unable to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to the fall of Thanhouser.

June

2009-06-15T08:23:00.004+09:00

Chatting with Strangers: Episode 1

2009-05-30T16:32:00.002+09:00

Hey S., thanks for the link, buddy. You've made my life. This is my new internet crack.

Via Omegle

Connecting to server...

Looking for someone you can chat with. Hang on.

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: hello

You: hi

You: So far, everyone's in Korea or China... what about you?

Stranger: canada babayyy!

You: niiiice

You: good, no more ESL

Stranger: you?

You: Amer'kuh

You: West Coast

Stranger: nice by the beach!

You: heh. not quite...

You: but not far either

You: so what brings you to chats with strangers?

You: brother's facebook landed me here

Stranger: im a lonely person

Stranger: i dont really have anyone to tlk to

You: you do this often, then?

Stranger: hahahahahahah jk im vererrerery popular
!!!

Stranger: i have like 12 bfs

You: good you had me worried

You: I had already shed a solitary tear for your lonely life...

You: isn't 12 bfs hard to handle though?

You: that must get complicated

Stranger: well i have a good memory

Stranger: are a boy
?

Stranger: cuz you could be lucky number 13

You: it's more fun if you guess...

You: what do you think

You: am I a guy or a girl?

Stranger: hmmmmm

You: I can hear the Jeopardy music playing softly in the background

Stranger: you a boy

You: correct!

You: amazing

You: you must be psychic

You: sorry to let you down though, I don't date Canadians

You: I can't be your lucky 13

Stranger: woow why you quick to judge

Stranger: im such an awesome person

You: its complicated....sorry

You: to be honest, it's a racial thing

You: I'm racist against canadians

You: no offense

You: most americans are racist

You: and I'm no exception

You: but at least I'm honest

Stranger: i thought you different

Stranger: :'(

You: so... let me guess... you're a female student, between ages 19 and 25, right?

Stranger: effff no im 16

You: oooooooooohhh man

You: what are you doing up?

You: no matter what coast you're on, you're in trouble with your rents

Stranger: partying

You: partying... on the internet?

Stranger: yes indeed

You: sounds like a lame party, if you ask me.

Stranger: are you an old person ? how old are you ?

Stranger: cause idont want to be talking to a creep .

Stranger: and dont lie either

You: hah.

Stranger: cause thats gay shit man

You: I'm a 58 year old obese man from Wisconsin. I'm so lonely

You: please pretend you want to sleep with me just a little longer...?

Stranger: seriously

Stranger: i dont want to tlk with a creeeeeep

You: serious? serious as cancer. NOthing but pure, clean honesty in this chat room.

You: Creep? Do I sound like a creep?

You: Well... since we're being honest...

You: I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here...

Stranger: F U im disconnecting bitch.

You: you don't like radiohead?

Stranger: wtf

You: ITs a really popular song

You: about being a creep. DUH.

Stranger: okay..

You: wait... weren't you disconnecting? You called me a bitch...

Stranger: cause you were being wierd.

You: You call me a creep. You call me a liar. You call me a bitch... honestly, my feelings are hurt

Stranger: honestly, you are.

You: I thought a 16 year old would know Radiohead, I'm sorry. I guess times have changed since my day.

Stranger: wow bye

You: TTFN!

Another pity Post le sigh Fulfillment is Time Consuming

2009-05-06T16:04:00.004+09:00

I'm sincerely missing the early days being back where I used to sit around and play nintendo all day or watch Lost or read Tolstoy or go running. These days it's all I can do to split my time between work and music. Work and music. Exactly the two things I wanted when I got here. Now I have them, more or less. And they're going well, and falling behind on my blog or my Zelda game is a pretty small complaint. It will be a very nice break indeed when I head out to see Bill graduate (and watch OBAMA!) Until then, the blog will just have to suffer.

Everything Must Go

2009-04-08T14:09:00.007+09:00

Fantastic spring weather will lift anyone's mood and mine has been no exception. The whole internet is atwitter with people shouting the glories of sunshine, bikerides, sunburns, flowers and greenery. In our little corner of world things appear to be just peachy. In my head and in the next room on endless loop: "Oooooooour house... is a veryveryvery fine house..."

Open house today. An enormous white sign has been erected next to the garage. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. As I drove up with the groceries, a young couple walking dogs stopped to take a flier. It took everything I had not to scream out, "BEWARE YE! BEWARE!!! 'Tis curséd, this place! 'Twill claim ye very souuuul!!!!" Anything to keep the vultures away. Inside everything is labeled. As I put the eggs away, "BUILT IN FULL SIZE REFRIGERATOR." Head downstairs for laundry, "NEW AIR CONDITIONER INSTALLED '06" and "GAS GENERATOR AT THE READY!" "ORIGINAL WINDOW MOLDINGS" frame the front door. This is your life on sale. With sunlight streaming through every window of a house cleaned to the nines, though, it's hard to be bitter. More than anything, I just feel stunned by the idea that my whole childhood is about to be auctioned off. It's surreal rather than upsetting, somehow. Maybe I've just had so much time to prepare, maybe it's the weather. I sat in my chair looking out over the lawn today, thinking how this place is everything that growing up in Portland ever meant to me. It's not just the house, either. The furniture, the garden. the pictures, the rugs, the fishtank. Everything must go. I wonder where exactly... just where will it all go when this big brown box is no longer ours to contain it.

I read the flyer today at lunch with ま. Very flattering. "FOUR huge climbers? There are more than four in that yard!" She exclaims. Then she sighs and looks at it again. "They did a good job." If I were to say she's been "a little on edge" about this whole thing, it would be something like saying, "I guess a few people died in WWII." A friend and I joked that we should throw a net over her and shoot her with a tranq. dart. I wont lie, I considered it. I don't think I've seen her sit down for more than 10 minutes all week. I hear her at 4 am, vacuming. Tonight, glass in hand once again, she gave me a big speech about how tired she was and how much sleep she was going to get. Why does she always yell these things down 2 flights? Is it all that difficult to just come talk to me in the kitchen? "So fine, go sleep. Don't tell me about it." I said. And hey, what do you know, for once she actually did.

And me, hell, I'm beat too. お. and I hauled thousands of pounds in dirt. じぇ. and I mopped and scrubbed every inch of molding and ceiling we could. So what am I doing blogging when there's a big sunny day at the mountain waiting for me in the morning? Why do I yell these things down into the abyss? Is it all that difficult to just accept a mundane evening, early to bed? Well, what do you know, for once, I actually will.

Pitty Post

2009-03-30T04:35:00.004+09:00

The Pitty Post, like the Pity Fuck, is a post posted purely to show sympathy for an otherwise neglected blog. Danse Russe has unfortunately gathered dust lately. Why? 1. My personal life is largely uneventful: I exercise, I agonize over petty things, I sometimes work, I sometimes go to band practice. All the rest has moved to Exploder, because the only exciting things happening, if at all, are in music. That said, the whole thing is beginning to get old. The rains have started. Relentless, cold, grey rain. A late, wet spring has sprung. The blossoms are bursting from the cherry trees but they've jumped the gun. Everything else is just buds and sticks. Springs are often attributed various magical powers. I have occasionally witnessed these powers, but this year's feels somewhat deflated. My calendar tells me its been almost a year since I quit smoking and I think how strange that is before stepping out for a cigarette. The bands I hear are increasingly wierd or increasingly mediocre, depending. I'm starting to have trouble distinguishing the good from the bad. I wish I could produce 12 songs every single day, and sort out the good ones on Sundays. I wish, for the first time in my life, that I could see my own abs. I have gained 10+ pounds, and still can't be sure if it's muscle or flab.

I'm starting to feel it all as just spinning wheels, no progress. What felt like everything falling into its right place now feels like stasis. They say if you put your mind to it, you can do anything, but your mind is not enough. You have to put your soul into it to make it work. I'm still ignoring that little voice of mine that tells me I just don't have what it takes (sometimes unsuccessfully). I'm trying not to be impatient. I'm thinking out loud. The house is on the market, officially. I must clean and move boxes. マ is on and off and on and then off the wagon. Looking from the patio, I notice the hills behind the house have far less trees and far more houses. I must buy an ionizer at home depot and scrub the walls and ceilings. Ceilings is such an odd word. It took me 3 tries to spell it, and it still looks weird. Mom watching golf. Scratch Ionizer, ordered a rental Ozone machine. Write thank you letter. Listen PPN. Brush Teeth. Make coffee. Make bed. Tidy room. Mind: off.

Retracted

2009-02-16T06:19:00.001+09:00

I take it back, valentines is awesome.

Happy Fracking Valentines Day

2009-02-15T04:25:00.003+09:00

Valentines sucks, anybody will tell you. It's a holiday people love to hate. A commercial scam taking advantage of people's affection for each other say the cynics, an obnoxious Grand PDA day to all the lonely hearts, and the happy couples (if there are any) don't need an excuse to do something special anyway. I gotta say though, I was looking forward to V-Day 2009. I don't necessarily have anything against the day itself, persay... I just never had much use for it. Even in a relationship, it was usually the occasion for disaster. 3 years ago it was on a Valentines Day date with ま. that I finally realized that I didn't love her, and hadn't for quite some time. Thus began the longest breakup of my life. V-Days after that have come and gone without much of anything, whether I was involved or not. This year, however, I had a plan. I hadn't been seeing じぇ. for long. Hell, I'm still fresh off the boat here, but things had been going reasonably well. Witty banter - we had it by the bucketfull. Dates - roughly 7-10. We slept together - twice! She charmed the pants off me by inviting me to a Valentines Day strip club party with a bunch of her friends - "Meat Curtains and Skirt Steak," she said. Ha. She has a roommate in a small place, and I live with my mom, so I thought I'd take the liberty of getting us a cozy place to spend the evening, after we'd oogled, quaffed and chowed our way through a fantastic night at the Acrop. I booked a charming room at the White Eagle "Rock & Roll Hotel," bought some fine whiskey and nice chocolates. I was set. It was gonna be a surprise, but after seeing her the other night and being in kind of a "meh" mood, I thought I'd try and get some points back by blowing the whistle on my Valentines Day plans early. I also admit that I was worried about looking like a creep for booking a hotel without asking her. But hey, we'd already slept together right? I figured this was just thinking ahead. For once, here I was looking forward to a Valentines Day. I had a girl, I had a plan, I had a big new 12 pack of rubbers and a hotel room.

The problem with this year's V-Day is that it follows Friday the 13th. I supppose I should have seen it coming, but I'll admit I was blindsided. I'm watching movies with poor ひ. who just broke her wrist up at the mountain, I go check my email and find I've been unceremoniously dumped. BY EMAIL. The reasons are unclear. She's trying to be cute about it, I can see that. Hoping to get it early, avoid something dramatic. Hell, the subject line was "Better Now then [sic] Later." She cited the hotel thing as "Too early," and said she wasn't feeling the "couple thing rearing its ugly head."

I'm not a person accustomed to rejection. Sure, that sounds arrogant. It is. Let's just be honest. I'm a young, attractive, well-traveled musician and writer (read-"sensitive"). I've got a reasonable amount of social game. I'm not bragging, just taking stock of what I have going in my favor; we'll come to the rest later. Typically, I have trouble with too much interest from girls, rather than not enough. Greedy little bastard that I am, the hardest lesson in my love life has been learning to refuse others, even when I'm loathe to hurt them doing it. Being on the receiving end of the rejection tip... it's happened to me before, it's never easy, but mostly it's just something I have far less experience at dealing with. It would be easy to just write じぇ. off and be done with it. "She's a guarded, immature, emotional coward who will do anything to avoid seriously caring for someone or being cared for." The sentence has been stewing in my brain since I read the faux-cute "still friends?" closer to her email. It's nice to judge someone who rejects you, comforting. It's not even unfair, necessarily, it's just one-sided. It is, however, for me, inadequate. Even if the above is actually true, it goes without saying that everyone has such a sentence that can easily be composed about them by someone who has dated or is dating them. What has been eating at me is the complete, encyclopedic knowledge of everything I did wrong, and why I did it wrong.

I divulged too much about myself too early.
I was overly eager, I tried to get too close too fast.
I second guessed myself, and confused her by not knowing what I should say.
When in doubt, I shut up, which made me seem quiet or boring.
I was sub-par in the sac (for myself, at any rate, it's hard for me to know her standards).

There is a more specific list. One full of specific incidents, things I said or did, but don't worry, I'm not going to bog us in that kind of triviality here. Even in the above "general" list, it's clear that I screwed things up because I liked her. Really liking someone doesn't happen that often. It makes you nervous when it does. When you're nervous, you make mistakes. It's that simple. The universally cruel irony of love a la Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes, you get what you need."

The women you want will evade you, toy with you, treat you wrong, and then finally, leave you. But even worse than this is knowing that those women you need, the women who have treated you right, who have been there for you and done everything they could for you, you will evade these women. You will toy with them, treat them wrong, and then finally, leave them. If you're a female reading this, just reverse the pronouns/genders, it's the same either way. If anything, Valentines Day makes me wonder, like so many before me, what kind of absolute fucking MORON wrote "the book of love" ... what all powerful creator decided on these rules of attraction? Or from the scientific view, how in the fuck is this evolutionarily productive/advantageous? Why are humans so totally f'd up? And more importantly, on this Valentines 2009, why in the everloving fuck should I (or anyone) go out and celebrate this abomination instead of staying home and watching more Battlestar Galactica?

So say we all.

Thailand Journal - rescued from little black book #4

2009-02-12T07:54:00.003+09:00

This trip is more lonesome. I have several theories as to why, but it's undeniable, whatever the reason might be. It's funny, in Okinawa I wasn't lonely for a single second. It's strange to feel suddenly & abruptly thrust back into loneliness after being so comfortably "at home" (finally) this past year in Japan. I'd almost started to take it for granted. And going HOME - this is what it will be like, I think. Here I am in paradise, surrounded by nothing but chatty groups of white people, honeymooning couples & rowdy bachelors. Down at the water they dump tigerbeer down their throats and drown hours upon hours in idle conversation. I stand on the rooftop in the irridesent moonlight playing my little travel guitar. I look down at all these people sponging up "the good life:" Buffet dinners & lapping waves. I feel somehow on the verge of my first ever mature thought.

The guitar in the moonlight is beautiful, for its own sake. No audience, no expectation, no plans, no song, just sound and ocean and sky and moon. When I get home, I think I will again be displaced, separate, apart. I love to make fun of all the "L.B.H."es in Japanbut then, when here I'm surrournded by "normal" groups of socializing white people and I realize that I too am pretty socially awkward, if slight less so than some. Maybe this is what I appreciate there after all... nearly everyone, Japanese included, are usually even more socially inept than myself. I am aware that I enjoy this sort of entitled sense of social superiority immensely.

Ironically, I'm also aware that in retreating to such comfort, I've only alienated myself further than ever from social ease and the realm of my peers in Portland and elsewhere. Solitude was something I needed; strengthening, empowering and productive. Yet now, finally comfortable & on the verge of my triumphant return, I feel smaller and less confident than ever in some ways. Shocked, here in Thailand to find myself such a victim of "reverse isolationism."

Frost

2009-02-12T07:23:00.002+09:00

In a childish woods I used to play.
& Stopping by one snowy day,
I saw two paths fork, each a different way.

Undecided, long I stayed
And eventually down I lay
Nearly slipping into sleep, my thoughts did stray.
And I, wondering how long I might delay
The choosing of my route that day.

Now miles between and long ago
I find I do not know
If better was the road I chose
often do I wonder, though:

If only I might've stayed,
If only I might've stayed
there, so soft, so white, & I
So unafraid.

Check, check, and.... Check.

2009-01-12T14:12:00.003+09:00

Not a bad start to 09. I think I've gotten *almost* everything on my wishlist. Let's see...

I want to be reading Tolstoy, one of the big, fat, leather ones, sitting by the fire in the Albemarle Library. Right. Now.

I want to be healthy.

I want to stare at the tree, all lit up, in the dark living room, for hours, just like I used to.

I want to walk through the garden in the snow.

I want to sneak downstairs at 5 am.

I want to make everyone coffee.

I want to talk in the kitchen till 3 am.

I want to be warm.

I want to go ride hood till I can't feel my legs.

I want to eat scalloped potatoes and roast.

I want to see tacky sweaters and decorative dishware.

I want candles in every window.

I want a stocking full of guitar picks, deodorant, toothpaste and floss.

I want wreaths, garlands, bows and little fucking bells EVERYWHERE.

I want to sleep in a proper bed.

I want brothers, brothers, brothers, all of em.

I want pictures in front of the mantle, bad ones.

I want Honey Baked Ham and Pecan Pie.

I want family room jam sessions.

I want non-stop competitive sibling video game action.

I want to be home.

So, not bad. Only 1 remains partially unresolved, and even that situation has improved. It wasn't all perfect. The first Christmas dinner was a bust, and two of the brodhisattvas didn't get in till late Christmas night, thank you White Christmas. Dad's party never materialized. Material gifts were fairly slim (I felt a little guitly being one of the only ones who actually "got" something under the tree). But in the end, it was a Christmas like any other, with all the above mentioned stuffs. I ate, I drank, I snowboarded and played videogames (4 way tetris FTW!).

Now, the brothers are gone, back to their own different corners of the country. Downstairs, my mother takes down the last of the Christmas decorations. Unemployed, I wander through the house, looking for things to do. I spend a lot of time on the internet. As expected, I feel disconnected from this place, from America, from the news, from culture, from Portland, from my friends & family. I feel like nothing I say relates to anyone here, or that every sentence I say starts with, "Well, in Japan..." ("And this one time, at band camp...")
It's uncomfortable, but it's also a unique feeling to feel like a stranger in your own town. And every day, I wake up thankful to be warm, to be home, to be surrounded by things I fully understand... to have my Japanese a novelty, not a necessity. I feel the sensation of motion, like when you first feel a plane move back from the jetway; a kind of lurching in the stomach. Japan, in retrospect, is a giant hamster wheel, and all of us there running in place, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. It's good exercise, and there's nothing else to do in particular... yet it's stationary and ultimately, dull. This is not to say I've arrived in the United States of Excitement, so much as I feel I'm carried along again on the automatic walkway after a long detour walking the opposite way. I felt so much excitement about being home, but now that I'm here it's the usual anticlimax. It's so easy to imagine a new life, you flip through a brief picture book in your mind... you see yourself in certain situations the way you'd frame a brief montage of character background in a feature film... it's vague, romantic and free of medlesome details.

I've been seeing a lot of OES people, which is tremendously strange, but nice as well, in its own way. My old Reed crew has come completely to pieces and it's for the better. I deal with people now as individual friends. I get to keep the good and ignore the rest. It really does feel like a blank slate, and here I am, without the slightest idea of my ambition for it. I feel that I really should try to consciously shape my life here, but simultaneously, I feel incapable of just that. I lack either the imagination or the foresight or both with which to do it. But, one thing I am resolved to do is not to worry. So I don't.

Exploder

2008-12-27T23:34:00.004+09:00

I'd like to announce the debut of my music blog: "Exploder," which will be the home of all my future lists, record reviews, music news, and associated blah. I'll be trying to keep up on the latest albums and I'll try and post my "Best 10 Albums of 2008" list as soon as possible. -Ed

All I want for Christmas...

2008-12-19T02:05:00.006+09:00

Fuck my two front teeth. Take 'em. This Christmas,

I want to be reading Tolstoy, one of the big, fat, leather ones, sitting by the fire in the Albemarle Library. Right. Now.

I want to be healthy.

I want to stare at the tree, all lit up, in the dark living room, for hours, just like I used to.

I want to walk through the garden in the snow.

I want to sneak downstairs at 5 am.

I want to make everyone coffee.

I want to talk in the kitchen till 3 am.

I want to be warm.

I want to go ride hood till I can't feel my legs.

I want to eat scalloped potatoes and roast.

I want to see tacky sweaters and decorative dishware.

I want candles in every window.

I want a stocking full of guitar picks, deodorant, toothpaste and floss.

I want wreaths, garlands, bows and little fucking bells EVERYWHERE.

I want to sleep in a proper bed.

I want brothers, brothers, brothers, all of em.

I want pictures in front of the mantle, bad ones.

I want Honey Baked Ham and Pecan Pie.

I want family room jam sessions.

I want non-stop competitive sibling video game action.

I want to be home.

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrty - a short anecdote

2008-12-04T02:24:00.003+09:00

I made a big fuss in these past few months of *properly* sorting out my trash. They're so very concerned with trash here... especially the proper sorting of trash. There is a special bag for plastic, a special bag for burnables, a special sticker and or bag for non-burnables, and all other sorts of tedium to undergo when disposing of things. Not recycling, mind you. That's different. This is just plain trash. I collected my plastic refuse in a separate trash can, and put it in the special bag reserved just for that purpose. I set it out at the proper time on the proper day (only twice a month for plastic!). I did everything right, short of writing my name on it, which is the one thing you're "supposed" to do (yes, really) that nobody actually does. That's why I was surprised to find it still sitting in the red neighborhood garbage cage that afternoon... My bag was the only one left untouched...why? I moved in close for a better look. It had a sticker affixed on one side. 「汚れている」- "Dirty." My garbage is, apparently, TOO DIRTY TO THROW AWAY. Suck on that one for a while, see if your head explodes.

Old Letter To Mike

2008-12-01T00:25:00.001+09:00

Another fossil dug up from the archeological site I've set up on my old hard disk. I like the poem at the end. That's nice, for a change.

Mustachioed Hillbilly Buddha of My Better Angels,

This being a shoddy excuse for the typewriter, and not half so romantic, I apologize but the computer will have to do today, as I'm stuck at school, at my desk in the library like a trilobite at the bottom of the vast prehistoric sea of punditry that is Reed College. If there's something in my tone here, blame that. There's something about reading nothing but extended, dry works by dead critics and writing what is turning out to be an extensively annotated and dryly executed love letter to Blake that makes me write instinctively like some old-world east-coaster. A bald, bland man with an overly long scarf and overcoat, spectacles and a department chair, with a calculated tongue and dusty reference-desk brain. UGh. 6 months to graduation, 5 not counting the month off for winter break. I'm starting, finally, to feel overwhelmed on the last stretch. I have two applications to finish in the span of weeks, chapters due with a "prospectus" whatever that means and the beginnings of a cold. Fuck lit theory. It's just not in the priorty list today. Priority list today is the letters to my better angels. I have a desk full of letters in progres: to Davy, to you, to Ava, to Blake (the masturbatory love letter one I mentioned earlier). I woke up at four AM with the intense need for immediate and extensive nasal dranage and a cough that kept me up with my head hung over the bed for gravity's sake. I didn't know bronchitus was transmissible by phone line. Next time hold a cloth over the reciever for fucks sake! Anyway, on to the meat:

St. Louis Armstrong, meditations, long times of thinking between doings. I have this sort of babble following me around as I think of the dearly departed(not dead, most of em anyway) that encompass the life of these letters. I'm soon to be one of them if the Japan plan goes through. Fake blood all over my pants and a runny nose. Falling asleep to the insane laughter of Swift. "You have a lot of ideas and I think we need to pull out one concrete aspect which we can focus on directly. Until then I will be of no further help to you." Oops.
As I mentioned on the phone, I'm throwing in some writing I did for class....needs works still, and it's a little too transparent for me, but that may make it precisely more interesting to you than to most anyone else. As far as a journal, Mara's working on 3 of them and I think Ava's comes first so that may not go out with this letter or maybe this letter will wait a bit, depending. Oh and also, READ THIS BOOK! It's amazing, really I think you'd digit: Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo...or his short stories, El Llano en Llamas (THe burning Plain). I haven't gotten to Kastanzakas yet, but will eventually. Here's your rimbaud back, I'll be getting my own copy to finish it, wouldn't want this one to degrade any further under my care. ALSO, another guy maybe worth checking out: Greg Bottoms. I saw him read and talked with him a bit, he's a good writer and an allaround nice guy. I like his short stories: Sentimental Heartbroken Rednecks, but I've read from his book too: Angelhead which seems even better but I haven't gotten really into it yet. Now that I think about it, it might not be your "kind" of writing...at least maybe not the shorts, they might be a bit overly introspective/essayistic for your tastes, but you should look at Angelhead, its a memoir about a schizofrenic brother with some really beautiful writing...anyway I'm sure you've got more reading than you can do, but just a couple more for ya.

I missed MMJ with Saul Williams...fucking sold out...Iron & Wine show was awesome though, I could tell you'd really have liked it. Anyway thats about all I have to say.

yours in christ,

Ed

P.S. Check these addressals from Blake's letters, an awesome way to start letters, I think. To William Haley: "Leader of My Angels," to John Flaxman: "Dear Sculptor of Eternity," To Thomas Butts: "Dear Friend of My Angles," & "Friend of Religion and Order" &c. Hence the addressal to this letter. Sinceriously: Butterscotch.

THE ADDICTED

After class
we stand outside the glass doors,
the Addicted, fidgeting
in the cold

and I am imagining a very obtuse poem
involving the moon in the glass of the window
in which, at the end, everyone goes:
Aaaahhhhhhh.

I exhale it in a long, warm
FFFFFFFffffffffffuh and watch its smoke
disperse into night.

The reflection of the moon in the window
spreads God over the nightscape like
a knife might spread so much butter.

11/7/05

On Disgust

2008-11-18T22:58:00.005+09:00

Hauling my sick ass from train to train, pushing my bike out in the dark, freezing cold sleet and wind, hanging on tight, so as not to let my umbrella get snatched up like some giant autumn leaf, I've made my way home. Now I breathe kerosene fumes in a closed concrete box and stuff as much of my body as I can under a giant electric fire-hazard. My nose is clogged, my head swollen, my ear full of muck. These days I operate resolutely under the assumption that what wont kill me is steadily making me stronger. I am stronger every day. Today, I could kill ten cougars bare-handed. I imagine the innumerable situations worse than mine. There are many. They are easily counted. I'm keeping my chin pinned firmly UP. My outlook is either toxic or essential to my spiritual survival in these last 30 days, I cannot tell. In fact, I worry that my chin is so far up that there's a bit of arrogrance and disdain in it, being that with it so far up, I must look down my nose at my life, and the country it's resolutely, if temporarily, stuck in.

My classes begin to revolve around the idea and concept of heat. The adults' first comment is always about the weather. It's cold. We go from there. How do you keep warm? The question fills an hour, with plenty to spare. It would be an absurdity back home. The ridiculous hot patches they plaster all over their bodies, the heat-packets they squeeze and move hand to hand like deformed juggling balls. I think of the old men crawling in and out of their longjohns at the onsen, groaning "よいしょ" with each difficult movement of the legs, the fatigue of the bath. They're amazed, my students, when I speak of basements, of central heating, and insulation. Their jaws drop when I tell them about warmth in every room, all. day. long. They have no excuses, no vocabulary to comprehend their situation. This is the middle class, home owners, housewives, husbands with steady jobs and a pension, who have all been ritualistically conditioned to live like peasants from a bygone century. Peasants, who shell out paycheck after paycheck for heated toilet-seats, heated carpets, even heated FLOORING, and all other manner of inane pseudo-heat, but just can't imagine shelling out for a decently insulated home and climate control. And the reasons they come up with... my God. Most of them are roughly equivalent to saying that "rain is a conspiracy invented by umbrella makers." I look at their faces and see pure dumb longing. Oh the longing. The wanting. Every week, I stare into it like a pit. Every week their eyes say to me, "足りない。足りない。もっとほしい。"

A Partial List of What My Students Want:
They want to magically, suddenly, be able to speak perfect English, without ever speaking a word, without doing any work, without ever taking a risk, without ever making a mistake. They want me to somehow "give" them even a small fraction of my "Wholesome, American Sense of Personal Liberty.(tm)" They're covetous of my ability to toss social formalities out like so much clutter and rubbish. Most of all I see their jealousy when I tell them I'm going home. They wish "home" was somewhere else, they wish their sense of social obligation wouldn't strangle them, keep them from going abroad. They want my courage, my wit, my voice, my youth. They would rip the very skin from my bones and eat the organs beneath if it would give them even a fraction of what it is to be a young, jet-setting American on his way about the world. If they had half a sack they would be hyenas, vultures, rabid scavengers of the worst sort. They want me to tell them how to think, how to live, how to feel, how to escape the cavernous, wet, cold grey prison of their lives. Winter in this part of Japan is mostly a dark, concrete box full of dripping drainage water, and colder than a corpse's ass. The wet cold seeps straight to your bones, joints, sinuses, cracks n crevices. Your life becomes a constant awareness of cold, the stiffness, the brief and inssuficient alleviations of it. I don't want to rub it in, but in the end, when asked, I can't help telling them that I prefer American methods of heating to Japanese. They can't agree or disagree. They have no frame of reference. They just smile at me with that raw envy, and I smile back at my private group of spiritual cripples, nothing to offer but pity, a few bits of basic English grammer for them to promptly and totally forget.

I'm chugging through. I'm the luckiest bastard alive. I'm on my way up and out. Like crawling over a pile of corpses toward the sunlight, I'm solid gold baby! I'm out of here. Disgust is a difficult emotion. It is not one I had wanted to leave Japan with. More and more, however, despite my best efforts, some days, it's all that remains. I continue to work on this, Miller isn't helping.

"Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some extrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, falt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn...Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed escept my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengence. At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man's nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts. On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that.I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself." -Henry Miller

Zoiks.

2008-11-11T02:53:00.002+09:00

Digging through my hard drive during a backup and lookee what I found:

Application for “JET” Program, 2006
Personal Statement
November, 2005
Personal Statement
To Accompany the Application for the 2006 “JET” Program

At the age of ten, I took my first trip to Japan. It was a ten-day exchange program through my elementary school that was intended for older kids. I talked my way into it, as the youngest participant on record, by virtue of an enthusiasm that has only grown with time. 4th grade was my introduction to Japanese language and culture, which may have influenced my sudden desire to travel, but ultimately I cannot truly remember what spark it was that made me want to go. Quite vivid, however, are the many experiences that made me return for three longer visits, host exchange students in my home, and devote years of study to the country and the language. I don’t have space here to go into these details, unfortunately, but they are among my fondest memories, and by the time I was living in Shikoku and attending local high school in the summer of 2000, I was absolutely certain that this is where I wanted to be. It was here that I encountered my first JET. Hers sounded like a dream job to me, and ever since, I have planned on applying to the JET program. Six years later, my goals remain the same. JET seems a perfect combination of my passions and my training. I had always excelled in language arts and literature, while sweating my way laboriously through things like chemistry and calculus. In college, I took classes that came to me as natural interests, and they always involved Japanese and English studies. For me, diligence is easily come by when engaged in an activity that I am passionate about. An English degree encompassed my love of language and my love of literary arts, and by extension, I always saw teaching as my field, as the opportunity to pass on that love of learning and excitement for language and literature.
Not only am I well acquainted with Japanese culture, history and customs, I also have a total of eight years of formal language education, not to mention the invaluable time I spent immersed in Japanese during my visits to the country. I have hosted Japanese friends in the states, participated in leadership and exchange programs, and have always sought to further my own studies while fostering greater cultural understanding. While at Reed, because they do not offer Japanese language courses, I have applied the same ethic to Spanish and Hispanic literature.
In sum, my case for my selection is this: I am a person who has always felt at home abroad, always found endless fascination in foreign cultures, particularly that of Japan, and furthermore, I have the tools and the training of a lifetime of education in this field. As a college graduate, I want to start building a resume that will allow me to begin a lifetime of teaching, while continuing to expand my experience with Japan, fostering strong inter-cultural relationships and partnerships, providing me with skills that I can apply anywhere in the world while adding my own perspective, my skills and experience to the Japanese community. I have been accepted to a CELTA certified teacher-training course as part of my commitment to this goal. For six years this program has been all I wanted to do, my plan for getting started in the post-baccalaureate world. Japan has always felt like a home to me, and as the cost of college and my commitment to Reed has prevented me from continuing my travels to Japan and my Japanese studies, I look forward to this opportunity to resume them with great anticipation.

Ed Thanhouser

....my god... its just DRIPPING with arrogance, post-private-school nonchalance, snickering elitism... it's so strange to see yourself from this faraway. They say hindsight is 20/20. Well, get me a better prescription, cause I don't recognize the brat who wrote this ceremonious pile of self-aggrandizing poo.

Going to California

2008-11-10T16:55:00.002+09:00

Full show HERE.

How I learned the word "testicle" in Japanese, and other stories

2008-11-09T13:38:00.005+09:00

あなたの睾丸を見せて下さい。ー　"Please show me your testicles."
Hearing an elderly Japanese man ask me this question was one of those rare moments in life... the kind that give you a special sort of appreciation for the delicacy of a given situation. Not only did I show this man my testicles, I even let him squeeze them a bit, despite the sudden stabbing pain it caused. Why? I can see your face, your eyebrows knit with concern... those big puppy eyes are asking so pleadingly, so inquisitively, so OK, I'll tell you. The reason is two-fold: a. He's a doctor, and b. My balls hurt. Constantly. For over 10 days now. He gave me pills and I went on my way. As yet the pain hasn't "stopped" but I'm sure, any minute now...

God knows why I have such shit luck lately. My life reads a bit like the international section of BBC, personalized. It's just that instead of

"Twenty die on Russian submarine

At least 20 people are killed after the failure of a fire extinguishing system on a Russian nuclear submarine," or whatever,

the latest headline from our ongoing news coverage of this shit storm reads a little something like:
"Bulletin - Latest from Ed's Life:
Diagnosis Official, "Epididymitis," doctors said Friday. Causes remain unclear in this, the latest development, in what has certainly been a difficult few months for the whiny American English teacher..." WTF life??!?! Where the fuck does this stuff end? Obviously, someone upstairs hates me, or is at least upset with me for the moment, or maybe the universe just decided I had some "come-uppance" to atone for. I dunno.

Wadayama was miserable, sure, but it was just a shitty place, the problem was not personal but merely external conditions I could whine about and then eventually even change... which I did, by moving.... then Toyooka was awesome, but for exactly one year, almost like a lease, or a warranty. As soon as the terms are up, POOF... stuff starts falling out of the sky. Its hard to whine, mainly just because it's absurd, often comic. I'm taking bets on what goes wrong next, by the way, "Ed's appendix bursts" or "Ed's TV explodes" or "Ed bitten by rabid, wild tanuki." I figure anything's just as likely. Let me know where you've got your money and we'll make a pool... lord knows I need the cash (just another straw on the camel's back!!) I just hope I don't end up disfigured, lame, or short a limb or two by the time its all over. But before we continue our regularly scheduled programming, it's now time for...

[Tom Waits Voice Over]!!!
"Yeaaaah I know, things is tough all over, n they aint get any better... hell, ya know, I mean, it's COLD out there... colder'n the ticket-taker's smile at the Ivar Theater on a Saturday night heh heh... when the thunderstorms start increasing in the southeastern and south-central portions of my apartment, I get upset. With tornado watches issued before noon in the western regions of my mental health, including the northern portion of my ability to deal rationally with my disconcerted precarious emotional situation... That wraps up the emotional weather report for this evening... now back to the eleven o'clock blues."

Thank you, Tom. Tomorrow, coming up at 8, it's more Stupid Human Tricks! ...and also... PRESIDENT ELECT, BARrrrrrrrrrrRRRRAAACK.... ... .... ooooooooooooooooooooOOOOBAMA!!!!!!! (rabid crowd cheering)
...who will give us a speech on how he hopes to change the hopes of those who are hoping for change in a changing America, a hopeful message of hope for those of us hoping for change... in these... troubled times.

Shazzam!

2008-11-05T13:50:00.003+09:00

"If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all"
It's been my philosophy for the blog lately, as I haven't had much good stuff to say lately, other than innocuous record reviews. But here I'll chime in with the rest of the world & say "wOOtz!" for Obama. So yeah. We have a black pres. I'm all for it. He's got a landslide mandate (338-155) a stacked deck in terms of house n senate (maybe two dozen more seats?)... lets hope he can accomplish even 1/100th of what he's been promising. Even that much might be enough for me.

I'm not normally one to get over-excited about politics, but it's pretty infectious, this stuff... but it's also a fairly transparent veil, an overly self-concious burst of joy... like getting to eat your double chocolate (wink) sundae before dinner, when dinner remains the huge heaping plate of *shit sandwiches* that America has in front of it.
Yaaaaaaaaayy! OBAAAAAAMARAMAAAAAAAA!!!! Says everyone, but we're hanging some pretty huge hopes on this guy, and I don't want to be Naggy McNagerton, but being African American alone does not give you a magic wand to solve housing crisis, credit crunch or blah bady blah blah blah. Then again, I'm not sure who I'd rather have behind the weel of this big sinking ship. So, I'm gonna swallow the rest of my usual pessimism, fingerwaggin, n fence straddling, and say:

"MUaahehahhahahehahahhaehehahwhaahwhahhawe
khakehlaahahahhahhahahhahahahhahahahhahahhahhahahahhhhaaaaaaaaaa
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhahhahahhAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAAAAmuahahahahahahahahhahah...
'uMerikuh, FUK YEAH!! Awww shucks, Amer'kuh, yew might jus be wurth goin back tew."
Now lets all go sing Kumbaiyah...

Blitzen Trapper - "Furr"

2008-10-22T09:12:00.005+09:00

It's always a bit unfortunate to open a review of a band's new album by talking about it's prior. Unfortunate, yes, but in Blitzen Trapper's case, inevitable. After being propelled to indie fav-status after "Wild Mountain Nation's" title track and it's sugary slide captured the ears of the wider public outside the indie incubator in Portland, Or., its sucessor is now subject to all the endless comparison-mongering of expectation.

If some of us weren't caught quite so off-guard by Blitzen Trapper's breakthrough, "Wild Mountain Nation" it's because it didn't differ all that much from its predecessor, "Field Rexx." Both are enjoyable, if spastic records of ebullient pop. Both come wearing the kind of alt-country on their sleeves the likes of which hasn't been seen since Wilco's "A.M." But that's not what polarizes BT's listeners. Rather it's their exhaustive stlyistic pace, in which it sometimes seems 100 songs have been crammed into something just under 3 minutes. In my case, BT are a much-loved case of hometown hit-or-miss. Wild Mountain Genre Mashing had about a roughly 70% hit rate for me. In the end, I actually "re-made" the album using a playlist collecting all my favorites and removing the songs I found grating or obnoxious. Even if they do make interesting experiments in genre, sometimes I'm just simply "not in the mood." As such, WMN could be said to be an album of great moments, but not at all cohesive. On their Sub-Pop debut, despite being recorded in snatched moments between relentless touring, Furr finds BT slicker, smoother, and more focused, if less courageously genre-blurring.

Certain core elements from WMN do carry over, nonetheless. Songwriter Eric Early's primary lyrical themes remain heavily pastoral. Just like WMN, Furr's title track shamelessly celebrates "the wild." Though this time around, rather than making some kind of hippie-commune, BT tell the story of a man who becomes a dog ("or a wolf to be exact") who becomes a man again, then lives happily ever after on a farm. Transformation and metamorphoses are an appropriate theme for a band that never can seem to decide what type of music they'd really like to play. There seems to be an almost continual free-associative identity-mashing happening throughout Furr. Early makes multiple claims in a given song, often in the same breath. In the title track, despite already having turned into a wolf, he also croons, "I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on a fire." Oh and by the way, he's also, "a moonwalking cowboy."

Stylistically, Early sticks to his alt-country guns, to great success. In The title track, "Black River Killer," "War on Machines," "Stolen Shoes & a Rifle," BT capture the sound that manages to be more uniquely and enjoyably their own rather than manic pastiche. And this time around, paring down the sheer number of styles stuffed into each track has made BT not just more accessible, but also much more cohesive. Furr adds a solid consistency to BT's songwriting, giving us something that works better as an album than as a couple runaway singles. The trade-off there being that nothing on the album sticks out quite as arrestingly, as infectiously fresh as some of the best tracks from WMN. There's still a really diverse sonic landscape here, from the screaming crawl of "Love U" to the tender balladry of "Not Your Lover," it just feels a lot calmer, more carefully and purposefully constructed. Whether or not this is a positive step will depend on whether your favorite thing about Blitzen Trapper is their slackadaiscal whimsy, or their sugary sense for melody and knee-slapping composition.

62

2008-10-21T10:11:00.003+09:00

There are exactly 62 days remaining until I leave Japan. Based on the last 26, though, I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that it doesnt start raining pianos or something. Recent events have made me afraid to write in this blog, unsure what I'd say. It's not something everyone should read. Now that I sit down to try and suss things out, I'm less-sure than ever what to say. In fact, I have nothing to say. There is no therapy in it, contrary to popular belief.
A rare occasion indeed, an Ed with nothing to say... Instead here's the picture containing the 1000+ words I am unable to find at the moment.

Attack of the Blog Cometh: EPIC WHINING and the coming of winters' discontent

2008-09-14T20:38:00.006+09:00

Ed's housewarming was a success. So successful it was broken up by police... who were honestly very friendly and not very scary at all. M. again (I think for the 5th time?) said she would "definately" come to an event of mine and did not... stranding several others who were relying on her for a ride. M. had insisted on clearing things with the landlord. It's funny, cause my landlord is the one who told me to move it down the street, to an outdoor (?!?!) area he set up in front of his company's building... and that's where we got the complaint... not inside my apartment where we were loud and stuffed to capacity... and where I had taken care to warn all the neighbors in advance... This is yet another reason never to ask if anything is "OK" to do in Japan. It's usually much easier to apologize after, if there's a problem, than to prepare in the absurd manner they usually instruct you if you ask, "Is this OK?"

It's like the time Chris and I went to the baggage check in Kyoto station. We asked if a bag can be left overnight. "No." Was the succinct reply, but out of curiosity, we asked what happened to bags left after closing. We asked, for example, "Is there a fine? Do you throw out the baggage?" The reply was "No. You can have the bag back as usual the next day." So... you can leave your bag overnight as long as you don't ask about leaving it overnight. Right.

Since returning from Thailand, there has been an excessive feeling of discontent growing in me about this country. I've spent long hours discussing the many, the multifaceted, the absurd, the often comical, sometimes tragic problems of living in this country with a wide array of people... Something I haven't done since my days in Wadayama, where it was clear even to myself at the time that the real problem was a crap job in a crap town full of crap people. A year has passed since I moved to Toyooka, my little haven on the Japan sea, where I spent a rather blissful little year achieving goals, enjoying my work as a teacher for the first time, making lots of friends and generally doing whatever I damn well pleased. The relative "goodness" in my life for the past year should be obvious enough in the significantly reduced number of entries in the blog - home of my seething, venting, impotent rage. I can remember exploring, out on a run just after moving into my new Toyooka apartment, and finding a place that seemed very magical. I asked the resident God there for a good year. Looking back, it seems to me that my wish was granted.
神様へ感謝しております。

Now, however, despite a much bigger apartment, a raise in the pay grade, senior status at work, a more competent co-worker, a smoother running, cleaner school to work in, and millions of other bounties bestowed upon me for the coming school year, I find myself suddenly grouchy. Of course, I had originally planned to leave around this time, and I believe my original estimation of how much Japan I could stand was fairly accurate. It doesn't seem to matter how much wonderfulness Japan throws my way now: I have had "enough."

In my first adult class since coming back, me and my adult students somehow ended up on the topic of world religions. I quizzed them about Shinto, which nobody seems able to tell me much about, despite it being Japan's only indigenous religion... that they could not explain the significance of Japan's holiest place, Isse Shrine, to me (in either language) was no real surprise, or at least not compared to the ignorance that followed. When asked, they told me that the Buddha (as in, Siddhartha), lived in China "maybe." They did not know who Confucius was, and told me that Jesus Christ was born "somewhere in Europe." They did not know of a country called Israel, did not know it was a "Jewish state..." They did not know a city named Jerusalem, forget about Bethlehem. In short, they were about as ignorant about world history and religion as an average American elementary school student.

Now, normally I just sort of laugh at this kind of thing and shake my head... I mean, I experienced "Japanese Education" first hand, and know it's lack of concern with "factual and useful" information...even "information" of any kind. Also, someone recently showed me an Australian television program in which the hosts travel to America and manage to convince a wide aray of people on the street that monuments like the Great Wall of China, the Leaning Tower of Pisa - even Mount Rushmore for godsakes - are actually located in Australia... arguing, for instance, that Italy's tower is a copy of the original Australian, which was built by "aboriginals," or that China is "a small town outside Perth." The sincerity of the duped is absolutely insulting... they actually get talked into planning their "dream trip," using an absurd map with the monuments pasted on various parts Australia.

So, yes, obviously ignorance is not limited to Japan, and to be fair, I live far enough out that I'm mostly surrounded by the Japanese equivalent of Trailer-Trash (we usually say, "Paddy-Trash, or more commonly "Yellow-Trash"). So, why am I suddenly so prickly? The weather's good, my friend lends me a gamecube to play to my hearts content (even better, a TV to play it on!), I have shows to play, parties to throw, classes to teach, everything should be fantastic... Why? I have toyed with several theories:

1. Was Thailand just that good? Did I suddenly realize what the real world is like? Well, Thailand was great. So great, that it's just too precious to spoil in a journal entry. A place as beautiful as that has no equivalent in words. Of course, though, there were the peddlers... the rape of the natural... the obnoxious Irish, English, Australian, German, American tourists stomping all over the place like they own it... the knowledge that you're being horribly ripped off on certain occasions.... yeah. It wasn't so good that Japan should look like a trash heap.

2. Dogs And Demons by Alex Kerr. A fascinating book about the problems of modern Japan that I picked up in the airport and read non-stop on my trip... one that exposes some rather hideous sides to Japan's socio-political and economic structure. It made me acutely aware of the Japanese people's own complicit role in the near-total destruction of their country's natural beauty, the downfall of what was once the world's strongest economy, the reason for their shitty, uncomfortable homes and ugly, ugly, UGLY cities. Yes, pretty depressing. It didn't give me best impression to come home to, and put lots of unpleasant things on my mind... but it alone was not enough to ruin the whole country for me... I even stopped reading it to attempt a better outlook, and the more I get out of Kerr's argument, the more I see counter-examples and signs of improvement in my own experience.

3. Sino-Fatigue. This is a term I just made up right now to describe a feeling that otherwise has no name, but is a sort of un-namable "tiredness" of Japanese lifestlye, Japanese things, Japanese food, Japanese formalities, Japanese language, Japanese culture, et. al. It's just so insular, that sometimes you just can't help but hate it. It's healthy. OK, sure, but I've experience that many times before. It comes and goes on a weekly basis. This is no mild grumbling. I actually experienced panic attacks for the first time since college, based on what I can only assume to be the overwhelmingly oppressive feeling Japan gives me at the moment. Fatigue does not account wholly for that.

The truth is, there's a bit of all of these in my discontent, I'm sure, but I think the real truth is behind door number

4. I'm ready. Finally.

Simply put, Japan has been a way to do what I could not do at home. Put the pieces back together, get my identity back, stop destroying myself and actuallyl DO stuff... excercise a little self control... you know, all kinds of things... but now, finally, I'm ready. I'm all growed up and ready to leave the womb. I'm not just ready, I'm itching to get out. I'm clawing at the walls. Good thing I wont be here much longer... but sometimes a handfull of months feels MUCH longer than it should... I don't know. I know that today, I had a beautiful day up at the airport, throwing the frisbee with friends, bathing at my favorite hotspring in Kinosaki and taking in a fine dinner at a beautifully cluttered restaurant with Joe, who I hadn't seen in "a coon's age."

On the ride home, a beautiful, crystal clear full moon rose up through the steamy clouds and I thought of the enormousness of space, and all that dead, lifeless matter drifting aimless through it. I thought how impossibly fortunate even the lowliest human being is... all creation laid at our feet... all of us sleeping, eating, working, ignoring each other, picking fights, fucking. I thought of how totally ignorant of our blessings all 6 n some odd billion of us are... and how necessary such ignorance is. To understand it is to be paralyzed by awe... to fall to the ground in wonder and die of starvation before we could be capable of crawling to our feet and making our way through the world again.

ATTACK OF THE BLOG

2008-08-27T14:23:00.002+09:00

It's coming...

DUN... DUN... DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

Tieduptightuptieduptightuptieduptight

2008-07-20T00:44:00.002+09:00

You ever notice how up tight and tied up become the same word if you string it all together like "ty-dup-ty-dup-ty-dup-ty-dup..."? 'Cause I was listening to a song just now and that's exactly what happened. Things have been a bit tied-up-tight lately. Danny stayed a month in my room. I played two shows. I played hours of frisbee in murderous heat, then in thunderstorm. I went to Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka, Tokyo, Hakone, and, uh, Takeno. All in all, it was a blast, of course, but fairly exhausting. I remember this same time last year feeling pretty much "spent." It's not just the heat. Things seem to pick up around this time and just wont let you go. My throat acted up again. It was pretty bad timing, and the situation didn't help. Danny's not just talkative, being with him, it's practically a non-stop liberalist debate-club session. I'd tell him I needed to rest my voice, and about 2 minutes later he'd put 20 questions to me point blank. I can't much blame him for being inquisitive, but there were practical considerations as well... people who visit Japan for the first time, with no Japanese or prior expectation, they usually need to be babysat more than your average traveller. Japan makes people helpless. Otherwise competent, world-wise travelers are suddenly reduced to begging help buying a subway ticket or ordering food. It's eye-opening just how totally "unfriendly" Japan is to foreigners, despite its heavy tourism campaigns and indiscriminate hospitality.

Anyway, so not only was Danny talking my ear off 24/7, I had teaching and band practice in between. It was non-stop for Ed's poor voice, and at times, I thought I was just going to crack. I nearly lost it a couple times, or rather, actually DID lose my voice entirely at one point... but what I mean is, nearly lost my sanity over it, mainly due to the fact that most people around me were fairly unappreciative of my situation, i.e. pain. This is probably due to the fact that there was really no change in the actually sound of my voice, or the quality of it, which made it hard to believe that I was actually having trouble with it. If someone croaks out a word like a frog trying to whisper, people are suddenly very sympathetic. When you sound normal but just keep rubbing your neck like you've got a nervous tic, not so much. It's easy to forget, I understand. How can I blame them? And of course, it's the boarderline hypochondriac in me that imagines all sorts of horrors... somehow "breaking" or ruining my voice forever due to overuse or some kind of awful infection. People often ask me why I'm sick so often... and sure, I guess I have issues more than your average guy my age. Sometimes I wonder if it's psychosomatic and I'm just shitting myself over nothing again and again, over medicating, and worrying myself to an early grave. Or I'm just unlucky, or I have some kind of abnormally weak physiology, or all the abuse I wrecked on my body during college has come back to get me... or all of the above, or whatever. What's notable is the peculiar advantage we, the hypochondriacs, have over your average, healthy youth. It's that special, razor-like awareness of just how much you stand to lose, and even more so, how inevitable it is that you will indeed lose it all. It's this awareness that makes me suddenly giddy when I'm out running and the song comes on, "I'm amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazed!" and I look up at the blue hush above me, the lush softness of the world, the quaintness of it all - the neat little neighborhoods, rumble of the train, the rustle of rice stalks in the breeze, the hum of the insects... it's the awareness that makes me hold my hand out the car window, grasping and releasing the wind in my fist, rubbing my fingers together in an almost painfully acute sensation of presence. The feel of it - fingers, wind, the warmth of the air, the direction of the sun, the smooth lacquer of the car door... passing, passing, passing. Beautiful.

This past week things have calmed, and again I have time to myself, to think, to listlessly pass the days as before. I missed it so much. I hadn't realized how dependent upon solitude I've become. It makes me worry about re-adjusting to a life full of people again. Also, (of course) the throat unassumingly just sort of "fixed itself." Almost on cue with Danny's exit, it got better, more or less. And as if to prove it, tonight I had the most incredible "session" at my Taicho's home studio. The members from Osaka Zeppelin came up and rocked with us. I sang and they all took turns with instruments... it was just so fantastic, we rocked out in the way that only happens when nobody's really watching. You're not putting on a show for anyone, just rocking for the fuck of it. We had these big stupid grins on our faces... we played almost two dozen songs (I think the final count was 21) and just basically went nuts. I mean, instrumentally, these guys are NUTS, but you shoulda seen their faces finally getting to play with someone who can actually PRONOUNCE the lyrics, let alone sing them. They were giddy. It was funny to see these tough-looking 40-somethings go apeshit for this rock 'n roll like they were still 16 in their bedroom with their parents' old turntable. And ooh, I wailed. I wailed and howled, screamed and growled. I smashed the gong and jumped and fist-pumped and fell down on the floor. "I can't quit you.... BAAAAAAAAABE" and man, they're just RIGHT THERE, I mean, perfectly on it, but not SO perfect that there's no room to breathe. If I happened to jump from I can't Quit You Babe to Whole Lotta Love in one breath, they were right there with me, and we even closed with an extended Dazed and Confused... he even pulled out the bow for the solo. Even when my throat felt like sandpaper and my ears were gonna bleed if they heard ONE more blazing solo.... even long after we should have stopped (the drummer had to drive all the way back to Osaka that same night) we just couldn't. I'd start humming a tune and it was all over. I'm going to miss this kind of thing. I'm not sure anyone in the world can channel Zep the way we can. I'm not sure a night like tonight could happen anywhere else in the world. Yes, I must move on, and soon, but not too soon, I hope.

The Poem Itself

2008-06-18T11:21:00.003+09:00

The poem itself is quite dead, and

has been for some time. It seems

people only wish to continue writing

its epitaph. Though myself, despite all

modern comforts, I sometimes

find small relief in such rememb

rances. Sluggish and stubborn, like weeping

children, we someday must face the

fact of it. Loss is like the dentist.

Someday we will run

out of excuses.

OUT

2008-06-05T14:43:00.004+09:00

Yesterday I read the news. Bo Diddley is dead at 79. Obama finally wins the nomination. Outside the rain rains. Big heavy sheets and it's not cold so I leave the balcony door open and listen to it. the metallic pluck of occasional drops on the railing sounds like a typewriter and makes an excellent backdrop to whatever music I have on (Her Space Holiday - Thanks Mellen). I'm writing an entry as placeholder... because while there's big news in the wider world, there isn't much to speak of in my little secluded nook. The Hip Replacements played their first show ever at Clap last Saturday, and things went swimmingly. The after-party was phenomenal, the dancing n DJing... I woke up with a crick in my neck from bobbing my head so furiously. We've had a couple offers for other gigs already, which I'm sure will be fine. I've also got an offer on the table for an acoustic set at Bubo, which I think sounds fun. Yes, yes... it's all fine n dandy isn't it? I run, I play guitar, I teach. The end. I've never had an entry like that before, right? I'm bored. Christ, I'm just tired of it already. I've accomplished so many of my big goals (even 2 months no smoking now!) that it feels there's nothing left to do. I'm running out of ways to fill the long, mostly empty days. I'm running out of ideas for my lessons too, and the thought of another 365 days of making/doing them fills me with a kind of exhausted dread. This isn't my line of work, goddamnit. This feeling too will pass, I know. It comes, it goes. But today, or this week, rather, I just want to get stateside, hit the ground running... I want vibrance, culture, cussing, drinking, lewdness, and a decent live show to go see rather than having to put em all up myself for better or worse. Today, at least, I want OUT.

Carrot Diving in My Crotch

2008-05-12T22:17:00.004+09:00

After the show was over, the wig off, my tiny pink Bowie-tee exchanged for my usual attire...after the gear was hauled up the narrow staircase, re-packed carefully in the Taj-bound vehicles, after the congratulations were traded, hands shook, the nomi-kai* began. Back downstairs in D3, we piled in and I was beset on all sides, quite without warning, by the eagerly salivating diehards. My Taicho** explained some of these ladies had traveled great distances just to see our little Zeppelin tribute band, some as far as Fukuoka, in the southernmost corners of Japan-proper. He pointed out a scraggly looking woman in the corner wearing a green Zeppelin bandana and told me she runs the biggest Zep fansite in the country. She nodded at me sagely, her heavily-wrinkled visage looking very much like Yoda's. I nodded back, respectfully. Across from us sat a rather heavy-set older lady who wore a yellow Zeppelin tour shirt, who's grotesquely distorted, stretched and faded front attested to its authenticity, as well as the body that once wore it more gracefully. I was informed that she makes custom replicas of Jimmy Page's infamous embroidered stage outfits, with their flowers, dragons and patterns, down to the finest detail. She smiled, revealing a disturbing lack of proper teeth. Here they were: our very own groupies. Like everything else about Larz Gallows, they were very authentic. See, it's not just the wigs and outfits that seek to re-create the Zeppelin experience...in fact, My Taicho's amp is an original, near-mint Marshal stack that is the EXACT model and make of Mr. Page's, straight from the 70's...the original...not a replica or remake, but the genuine article itself. The print on his telecaster he hand-painted exactly to the specification of Jimmy's own custom model. The ZoSo on the cabinet...it's all there. It's amazing to watch too, how thoroughly and totally this man becomes another...how completely he carries the spirit. His gestures, the fluid, graceful, seemingly effortless movements, the easy smile that exudes the kind of enviable, quiet confidence that so few posses... My Taicho has mastered them all. Like a quiet, unsung superhero, my Taicho poses as a harmless, sweatsuit wearing, chain-smoking architect and family man by day - perfectly at home in his quiet, small-town life in rural Japan - then suddenly, one night, when duty calls, you'd swear this man was actually channeling the spirit of 70's hard rock...not to mention it's most famous guitarist. It only makes sense that even the groupies came straight outta the 70's...I should have expected nothing less...Zeppelin is such a forgotten foreign pop-culture relic in Japan that they were few, but a more passionate group of obachans*** could not have been asked for.

...Then one plopped down next to me...or rather, by "next to me," I mean shoved me aside and shared my seat, practically sitting on top of me. She hooked her arm around mine and called me cute. She must have been pushing fifty, and was obviously drunk. Apparently, she too was channeling the spirit of the 70's...because without further ado, and without so much as a preface, she asked to take me home for the night...as if I were a movie she were interested in renting. My Taicho raised his eyebrows at me and said "Edo wa ninki aru mon ne..."****. I blushed uncontrollably and everyone laughed when I exclaimed "hazukashii!"***** I got the distinct sense she wasn't messing around though...and could see in her face a kind of far-off hope...the idea of a long shot that just *might* work if you play your cards right. The fact that she was old enough to be my mother didn't seem to present her much of a problem. It almost broke my heart right then and there, to see this drunk ex-groupie cross her fingers for a hot night with the exotic new foreign member of the band. I say "almost" because she then continued to embarrass herself and me for the next hour and a half or so...and while it makes a great story, I didn't feel nearly so sympathetic after she snatched a recently acquired carrot from my fingers, dipped it in a gratuitous amount of mayonnaise (this is a typical veggie dip in Japan) and attempted to force-feed it to my uncomprehending face. Red with self-consciousness, knowing no viable, socially smooth alternative on the top of my head, I took the proffered bite... and the rest of it promptly fell straight into my lap. Letting loose a screech, the aged groupie dove for the wayward carrot stick - straight to the crotch - with all the zealous attention of a grenade-juggler who has "let one get away." In panic, I attempted to beat her to the carrot, but because of the angle of her dive, and her "total-body" commitment to it (like a goalie going for a big save), my hand only succeeded in smacking the back of her head... thereby propelling her face straight toward the carrot stick... that is, straight into my crotch. Whereas had this happened in an American bar, with American friends, uproar would have ensued - que riotous laughter, and move on - but here, there was dead silence, a disquieting awareness of an awkward social situation in which no one is sure what to say or do. In another second's time, she emerged, triumphantly holding the carrot, and looking flushed with victory, pheromones, and alcohol, scolding me for my clumsiness...

A while later, while we said our goodbyes out front, I saw a bit more soberness in her expression. Here we were, outside the bar, on the chilly, rain-wetted street corner in Nishinakajima, formally thanking each other for a pleasant evening, and all that expectation had drained from her face, as she watched me climb in the cab to go meet my friends at another place across town, I saw nothing but the kind of familiar blankness that you see on so many middle-aged Japanese women's faces. She and the others waved me goodbye, Gorugo told me not to forget to come back to Tajima, and off I went into the still-young Osaka night.

In the cab, I put myself in her body. With great effort, I moved my consciousness into hers, and felt all that quiet yearning and disappointment, the inevitability of age, envy, quietly contained rage, lust. I felt it all, and then returned back to myself in the cab, watching my face in the rearview... my blue, blue eyes... my smooth, young features. I often admire myself vainly, usually in the morning, just after the toilet. Sometimes I run my hands over my body, in pure rapture of the fact, awe and trembling in the face of it's transitory perfection... but in the cab it felt embarrassing, like a gaudy outfit that one wears only to make others aware of your superior wealth. In the end, I was lost in Umeda, my already drunken friends unable to direct me to their location, and then, after finally located, were irritated at the time it took me to get to them, and jealous of the time I'd spent with my band and the groupies, a resentment soon forgotten as we gleefully hopped place to place carelessly and gleefully ignorant of our burdensome beauty.

Glossary of Terms and Expressions:

*A drinking party, usually for buisness or congratulatory purposes, held as a ritual after the successful completion of group labor

**Band leader

***lit. Aunt, colloquially "M'am" or middle aged woman.

****"Edo so hot right now..."

*****lit. "SHY!" exclaimed at times of embarrassment, or when one doesn't know what to say/do.

Appendix A. - Video Documentation

Full coverage HERE

Hidoi

2008-04-26T12:25:00.003+09:00

Hidoi (酷い) - Horrible, horrific, awful, terrible. This is the word my friend F. used to describe America when recommending Michael Moore's "SiCKO"...she loved the movie, and told me America sounds like a terrible place, a ridiculous, backwards country. I agreed that our healthcare situation is ridiculous, and told her that back home it was common knowledge that we should get universal free healthcare, and it's promised every election, but never comes through. She asked me why, how could people allow it to continue like that, and I just wasn't up to the task of explaining lobbyists, paid-off politicians and HMO's in Japanese, so I shrugged and said "I don't know."

She insisted I watch the movie, and lent me a copy. I was skeptical. Michael Moore is a mildly amusing gadfly at best, and a plain old garden-variety conspiracy-monger at worst. I was fascinated by Bowling for Columbine, and thought Roger and Me was pretty well put together in terms of it's argument...but I found myself more or less indifferent to the supposedly "controversial" and "influential" claims of "Farenheit 9/11" and found it more exploitative of election fever than any thing else....preaching to the choir no less, in most cases. People talk about "bias" in MM's films...but who gives a shit about bias?? I mean honestly, what person walks into the theater thinking, "I'm just here to see a purely objective assembly of facts." Not only does such a thing sound like the most boring idea for a movie possible, it goes against pretty much everything that people actually want to see. People don't go see political movies, or watch political TV to MAKE an opinion, they go to agree or disagree with someone else's. I myself rarely feel well-informed enough, or politically savvy enough to present a worthwhile political opinion on anything. I go with the crowd and praise it or flame it like everyone else.

All this considered, I threw on SiCKO last night, and initially, felt shamed, as I knew I probably would. If MM was gonna make a movie about healthcare in the States, I'd guessed that it wouldn't be too flattering for us poor lost souls still trapped in the dark ages while every other industrialized 1st world nation sneered at us idiots without healthcare. Here in Japan I just walk into a hospital and get whatever I need. Biggest charge I ever paid was $50. To hear someone say they pay $120 for each refill of their meds (2 or 3 times a month!) isn't surprising, but it is sickening, of course. So midway through, my thought is that "jeeze, he couldn'a picked an easier target, and I why should I sit through the ceremonial burning effigy of something whose evil we are fully aware of but somehow unable to fix?" ...I mean, we're facing yet another election full of people promising to fix the healthcare thing...Hilary who's already failed once says she can do it right this time...Obama who's talking big but has a strategy no more concrete than "I'll do it, goddamnit."

...and then, out march the 9/11 volunteers...now victims of various ailments thanks to their once-lauded, now forgotten "heroism," all now unable to afford their healthcare. Something inside just broke at that. I can't say what it was, but it was too much, whatever it was. I cursed him. What shit, I thought, "fuck you. FUCK YOU Michael Moore..." I can't believe you're parading these in front of me so blatantly, so fucking sympathy-sucking obviously you might as well wave a flag. I couldn't process this, such despair I felt. Such hopelessness for our poor, misguided country, rotting away on the throne of the world. People talk about how "emotional" 9/11 was...and to be sure, it was, but I remember two emotions only - fear, and shock. Yesterday was the first time since watching 'em fall in 01 that I'd ever felt sadness, loss, hopelessness, empathy. I was just "there," goddammit. I was just there, and that's all, just standing there, wondering what to do, totally unable to understand the thing happening around me.

My poem was fake. The gravity with which I unravelled the story to friends and family was fake. All of it, fake. At the time I felt only panic, shock, fear, anxiety. The victims didn't even really cross my mind, other than the fact that I was actually breathing parts of them in as I walked down the hazy streets. The biggest thing on my mind was the most human: what's going to happen to ME. Will I get bombed? Will I get drafted? Do I have to live in a warzone? That's all I could think about.

How is it that 7 years later, half a world away, I see a movie about healthcare and suddenly grasp all the empathy and hopelessness of a thing? How is it that we do this to each other? What process allows it? What mind constructs it? What hand puts it into place? How is it that I am so far disconnected from it? How is it that I am unable to understand my part in it until too late, unable to affect it, alter it? How can I face the fact of my life, my continued existence in light of my (of our) great failure, of my (of our) great impotence in the face of the machine, the mechanism, the structure that moves and does without even a semblance of control? MM wants badguys, witches to burn, but we all know there is no pilot at the controls, no captain at the helm. There is a system which does and acts beyond an individual, something who's wheels are bigger than any leader, far bigger than us, far beyond our ability to influence or control.

I've always had a sense of my expatriate status as a sort of "escape" ...waiting out the long, dark Bush era in a land far, far, away, preempting a draft, or just some form of non-participation...but last night, I think I came to grips with my inevitable American-ness somehow, and now truly feel the weight of my impending repatriation...not just the shame, but the despair, the directionless, empathetic loss. My days, previously so pleasing in their steady, humming routine now lose focus. I drift meaninglessly from bed to computer and back again. I've been sick for weeks, and just finally deciding to go to the doctor. I oversleep, sometimes 12 hours a day. I let my apartment fall to ruin around me. I'm just "here," still unable to grasp whatever role it is I play in all this.

China Throat & Spoiled Eel

2008-04-14T14:05:00.004+09:00

I have a condition since returning from my Asian Adventure(TM), which I will call China Throat, for lack of a technical term. Suffering from the China Throat has been especially rough this past week. Since the very moment of my return to rising sun I've hardly had a moment to sit down. I arrived and took the boat to Kobe, hoping for a nice long spa n beauty rest before my lessons the next day...but instead I was found out, nabbed by the Tat Police and kicked out on the street faster than you can say "Shitsure!" I hauled my baggage and heavy feet to the other, more open-minded, if slightly "ghetto" capsule down the way, and found it was already past 2 am. It was a good thing I'd checked the station that night, as I found that my nice convenient bus service was suspended till the 15th, so it was up at 7 for trains and transfers. On your normal day, 5 hours aint so bad, but in this case I could feel the China Throat digging it's claws in, getting set for a long haul. I chugged my way to school, taught my lessons and collapsed, gratefully into my bed.

By Thursday China Throat had gone full-blown, and included China Coughs, Mandarin Mucus, Sino-Stuffy Nose and a China Continual Feeling of Exhaustion. Even still, I went to (and failed at) Friday's Gallow's practice, DJ'd G & C's wedding, 4 hours of gaijin band practice on Sunday (At which I "spoke" the lyrics cause China Throat would not allow me to sing them), then Hanami which was rainy and cold and shitty. So finally, Sunday, after it was all over, I went home, played Super Nintendo, watched American Gangster, took all kinds of meds n drank cough-syrupy sick-tea all night before finally popping a couple Niquill and sleeping 11 hours like the dead. Woke up this morning starving, only to find my precious Eel filet was two days over expiry! All the buisitude of the week and I'd forgotten to eat the thing. I always look forward to my Unagi-dons and this was too much. I'd gotten the rice all ready to go the night before and everything...so whatever, I ate it anyway.

Yeah, and the trip was pretty good.

A Ramblin'

2008-03-30T13:18:00.002+09:00

Off I go to China. It's metropolitan Hong Kong tomorrow, then Danny and I head to Beijing. With any luck, I wont die from poison Gyoza, wont get a finger in my Nikku-man bun, wont see any monks being repressed...Anyway, in the near-two-years I've been in Japan, this marks the first time I've embarked to see the wider Asian world outside Japan. Scary!

In Which Our Hero Astounds Audience, Complete's Marathon, Cheats Death

2008-03-13T20:59:00.005+09:00

Recent weeks have felt like nothing short of a culmination, a climax...a fruition of various labors, if you will. Much like the blossoms of rapidly approaching spring, my long, silent winter labors have just recently been put to test, and borne fruits just as sweet as you please. During hibernation, I wrote how my life became a cyclic recurrence of a few simple actions. Run. Guitar. Sleep. Teach. Primarily that is. Unconsciously, I managed to form something typically alien to my life when left to my own devices: routine. And not just any routine, no, more a "regimen" seems the appropriate word. Lord knows, only someone as estranged from things like "self-discipline" and "perseverance" as I am could actually be surprised to find that such things often tend to produce "results."

TEST 1: A (good) live performance.
It sounds like not a test at all...something I'm known to do, as they say "On the Reg'lar," however it's the (good) that makes all the difference. Having worked steadily for more than a year on not just my basic guitar techniques, but more recently, on putting together a solid, and mostly original set, it was put to me to give a competent and enjoyable live show for the fine folks at RANA cafe. My friend Mr. Hiroyuki "Jimmy Page" Furokawa from Larz Gallows also assisted me in preparing some of my favorite Led Zeppelin tunes together. For this I had to learn mandolin, a few obscure lyrics (who ever knew Bron-y-Aur Stomp is about his dog??), and some tricky bass rhythms. Called "EDO LIVE," this event managed to produce in me an unimaginable amount of fear, neuroses, and just plain stage-fright jitters.
Not only had it been more than a year since my last live show, but this was to be my longest to date. I get nervous before each and every show, without fail, but for some reason I had more riding on this one. Though I had not declared it as such to my self at the time, I knew it was a test, a preview, a goal I have had while here in exile. I worked hard. I practiced every single goddamn day, without fail. I ran over the set till I was sick to death of it, and then ran over it again. Here is the set list in its entirety:

GENERATORBABY
-Ashtray Cat
-New Untitled
-Corrina
-L.I.E.
-Sun/Ice
-Let's Dance
-S/T
-Wishing Well
-Shut/in

ZEPPELIN
-Goin' to California
-That's the Way
-The Rain Song
-Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
-Tangerine
-Hey Hey What Can I Do
-Stairway (yes, seriously)

...over two solid hours of Ed on stage - in front of a very impressive turnout no less - I was so nervous the day of that I could hardly breath. In the shower I thought I would puke. Then I taught my Saturday classes, and it all melted thankfully away beneath the games, snotty brats, trying to hit my butt, steal my inflatable baseball bat, or asking me how to say "poop" in English. The lessons finished just an hour before I had to get to the venue, and before I knew it, I was playing the best show of my life. I'm sure people always think it's a habitual humility reflex when I wave my hand at compliments and obsess over what must seem trivial mistakes and falterings...but they're not goddamnit. I've been well aware for quite a while how "sub-par" my stage performances tend to be, and it bugs the shit out of me, not because I expect to play a perfect show every time, but because I know the only reason I'm tripping up is because of lack of confidence and lack of discipline. Knowing I can do better kills me up there when my hand starts to shake and I have to stop mid-song or something. Edo Live was a turning point. There wasn't a tremor, not even a semblance of disaster. The place was packed, all eyes on me, but somehow I completely shrugged it off. So, allow me my vanity when I say, "I was fucking great," because hey, I was. That is, for me, for the first time, I was enjoying it instead of cursing it. There is, unfortunately only one existent video of the performance, which is unfortunately sideways, but nonetheless you get the idea:

TEST 2: A (completed) Half Marathon
Everyone who knows me understands that I'm not athletic...even people here who've never heard or seen anything about those miserable years composing absurdist variations of pop-song lyrics in Lonely Left Field understand that I'm not cut out for sports. My boss laughed at me when I said I'd be running the 15th Anuual Kyoto Half Marathon. I don't blame her either. I'm just not cut out much for sports. Never have been. And that's fine with me, really. I was never a natural at any sport, always got picked last for teams, always fucked up when the ball came to me, always finished last... so of course I quickly decided at a young age that sports were useless and stupid things that jock-types did. To ease the pain of knowing that all my younger brothers were better at these useless and stupid things than I was became immediately more bearable when I realized they were irrelevant, juvenile pursuits and I could best them in other ways. One way was to do whatever nobody else was doing. No competition = no humiliation. Thus, my brothers skied, I snowboarded. My brother's did the soccer team, I did baseball, that is, the one with the least running possible. In high school, however, sports are an unavoidable fact. Even if you disdain them, you still HAVE to do them. I was the only senior on the Junior Varsity soccer team, and even still I was a bench-warming team captain (more essential for "leadership and moral support" than for physical ability, as the coach put it). I was let on the Varsity lacrosse team more out of respect for my senior pride and my 4 faithful years as Cate School's worse Defenseman, and from that positively cozy bench, oh I cheered my ass off.
So why, as my mom recently put it to me, "what was it that made you suddenly decide to start running?" Well, I found it harder to answer than I expected, but I suppose deep down its just another kind of vanity, that and an intense desire to prove something to myself. I remember M. used to laugh when I told her I was running. She laughed whenever I suggested I would make changes in my life, eventually, somehow. She laughed when I said I would quit smoking sometime soon, "never gonna happen" she said. And, it's true, I have a horrible track record with change. I promise myself something one day, ignore it 5 minutes later. My "Caprice," we called it, back when I still talked to M. I have yet to quit smoking, though I have failed more attempts in the last year and a half than I could count. One thing I did manage, however, was to keep running. And when C. called me from Kyoto to say we should run a half-marathon, I saw it as a motivator, a kick in the ass to really put things in gear. It was a couple weeks before the marathon that I truly realized that my notion of "kicking things into gear," was significantly less than other peoples...as C. and I ran side by side at the gym 1 week before the event. Sweat flew from him in all directions, but his face remained impassive as he chugged out a steady, humming 12~14km/hr pace for 10 k or so. It was then I realized that not only was I "a little behind," at 9.5 km/hr, but I was actually plain "fucked." From that moment on, I envisioned disasters n humiliations of all kinds, the likes of which I hadn't thought of since the days before I decided sports were stupid and juvenile. C. was never patronizing or pushy, he said only, "all I ask is that you do the best run of your life. That's it." He even cooked me broccoli soup and pasta. What a guy.
See, the Kyoto race has "checkpoints," and since you're running through the middle of downtown Kyoto, they don't want you taking your sweet time, exactly. Pass a checkpoint a few minutes behind a 2 hr pace and they'll flat out stop you and take you back to the start in a van with all the other losers, clap on the back, better luck next time 'n all. 21k in 2 hrs is a bare minimum of 10.5/hr, which isn't all that fast I suppose, not for your typical marathon running type...but for me seemed like a death sentence.
Start gun is off at the huge temple gate in Higashiyama and I ran. Oh, I ran and ran. I kept trying to keep pace with someone in front of me, but they'd either get lost in the crowd or suddenly shoot ahead. I gave myself up to the kind of aimless thoughts that occupy a long run and just decided to wait for it to end, whatever way that might be. C. was long gone ahead of me, and I had no idea how far I'd run. THREE TIMES, race officials unfurled the big "zan-nen" STOP banner ahead of me just at the moment I was reaching the checkpoint, and so determined was I to finish what I'd started, that I picked, rolled, ducked, dodged, gave em the slip any way possible...my headphones drowning their frantic shouting as I kept on in an ever thinning crowd of the "giri-giri" people at the back. At one point I was neck and neck with the radio car bringing up the rear for the last stretch. I even waved to the drivers as the sweat poured in gallons down my aching body.
All along the course were droves of old ladies, pinching their wrinkled faces into enraptured smiles, their cheers reached me even through the pounding of the techno in my earbuds..."GANBARE!!! GANBARE!!! SAIGOMADE!!!" They clap in unison. Their expression is unchanging. I think how they truly, truly have nothing better to do than come see what kind of person is dumb enough to pay money for 2 hours of physical torture. I draw my strength from them when I have none left to give. It nears the 1hr 45 min mark, and I'm truly in the back of the line. All the other stragglers have been picked off by the Pace Police. I promise myself I'll stop at 2 hrs, no matter where I am. I note the weird abundance of invalids watching the race. Old ladies and people in wheelchairs. There is something disturbing in it. A paraplegic, his face fixed in a drooly, saw-toothed grin, cradles a video camera that's trained at the oncoming stream of runners. My drained, crazed mind thinks, "what the fuck kind of thing is this, anyway???" Suddenly, from my right, a man, he must be over 60, goes flying past me...chugging along at an even pace, the flaps of his saggy butt-cheeks flopping out of his near non-existent runner's short-shorts. I think how pathetic it is that a 60+ year old man is burning my ass and try to coerce my limbs to move faster. It's not the energy, I note, it's the hinges, the bolts n springs. My achillies, my knees, my tendons, ligaments, joints, they scream in protest with every stride, "STOP YOU FUCKER!! GAHAHHHHHHHHAAAAAA WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME???!?!!?" I consider giving in to them. I look at my watch, it says 1 hr n 55 min since I've started. 5 minutes! I can't do five more minutes, that's fucking forever! And then it comes, like a beacon in the blackest night: the 20k marker. 1k?! That's it?? I did that final kilometer in pretty much an all out sprint. I crossed the finish line like a true goddamn Kenyan- sweating, arms pumping, huffing, chugging, bulging neck n desperate eyes. 2 hours and 1 minute. 1 goddamn minute. And true to form, they had shut off the race timer at precisely 2 hours so I had to check my own watch. I half expected a crew of Pace Police to stop me 5 yards from the finish line and escort me off the course for being behind. I found C. and collapsed in his arms. He and his girl had finished about 13 minutes before me, and laughed as I lay prostrate on the concrete, unable to move. Pins n needles all over my body, my feet pulsating with each rapid heartbeat.
C.'s shrimpy, energetic girlfriend had kept up the whole way without even breaking a sweat. She had worn her usual heavy makeup throughout the whole race, and it wasn't even smudged in the slightest. She wore a pair of pink terrycloth hotpants, short as could be, with little bows on the side...and a pink baby T that said "Juicy Life" in big curling letters. She smiled and said "Soooo fun da ne! Let's marathon again soon!" I smiled weakly, and hobbled like an old man all the way down the subway stairs, to the car, hobbled to the onsen, hobbled home, and promptly sat immobile in my apartment for a couple days before the aching fire in every joint and muscle finally subsided. It was only then that the pride finally seeped in. I finished. 1 minute be damned. I finished the fucker, yeah!
Yeah. Let's marathon again soon.

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Now playing: Paco de Lucia - La flor de la canela
via FoxyTunes

Corrina, Corrina

2008-02-17T22:47:00.006+09:00

Oh, Corrina,
You mute bitch
of the world. Leave me alone.

The singer wants, and I
want with him, but don't
know what
it is I want, exactly.

From the window,
I watch the landscape change
shape
the deformed tumors beneath
the blankets of soft snow.

In the eerie, iridescent
night - a kind you could
just set sparks to -
everything glows, and still the
singer croons your name
from

empty speakers.

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Now playing: Bob Dylan - Corrina, Corrina
via FoxyTunes

Buckets.

2008-02-16T17:09:00.003+09:00

Buckets. Buckets and buckets of snow. It's like the sky was a giant pillow that someone suddenly exploded, blasted to shreds and it's feathery guts falling all over us. I bought new boots n new bindings for my snowboard yesterday, and spent all day today absolutely SLAYING the hills of Oku-kan and Manba. I went with a burton set. The SL10 Boot n Cartel binding. Good stuff. I'm so used to throwing so much effort into my turns that I actually had to spend most of the day teaching myself not to overturn. It's amazing how much more response I get out of real bindings n light boots that actually fit. It was almost like strength training...wearing the old clunkers with no support since 17. (I could just KILL the asswipe in the snowboard shop who told my dumbass teenage self that you actually want "a little 'play'" in your bindings...I don't know who's dumber, him or me for buying it and sticking with it for all these years) In these things I can whip around so fast it's amazing. I spent all day with my headphones lodged firmly in the old earholes, went as fast as I damn well pleased. Walked through the fields of cars, hunched in rows with their wipers pointed up and out like antennae...staring into the mesmerizing fall of the snow...the hypnotizing, calm falling white almost put me to sleep on the drive back. Now it's off to get my onsen on before I head down south for a little weekend excursion. PEACE.

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Now playing: Tom Waits - Bottom of the World
via FoxyTunes

Notes from Hibernation

2008-02-01T15:59:00.000+09:00

I don't know how I manage to be continually surprised and awed by the fact of snow. I wake up and lo, the world is made new. Sure, walking outside it's a mucky wet mess and I still haven't bought my big boots and my socks are soaked through and I'm shivering and the hot water shoots up like steaming piss from roads the Japanese insist on being "washed" of snow...but sitting up in bed, peeking outside to this strange and silent landscape...all the edges smoothed, the sparse colors brilliant in relief, the sudden softness of it...I sit for long hours just watching it. Of course, I have plenty long hours to do so. I sift through the days in a random order of the same actions: teach, computer, guitar, run, snowboard. Rinse repeat. As so often happens this time of year in Japan, my life strips down to the bare minimum required. There is a humming kind of rhythm through it all, like the deep breaths of a hibernating animal. I maintain stasis without trying, without thinking, until suddenly, I see snow and stop, amazed to be here, to be breathing hot steam into the cold whiteness of the world.

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Now playing: Blue Horns - Old Fashioned Bleeding
via FoxyTunes

Endless Loop

2008-01-09T08:29:00.001+09:00

What a scene it was from the escalator-
There I am slowly carried up, a steady stream of people climb the escalators to my right, moving upward at a faster rate, while beyond them another steady stream of people are carried downward, and beyond them, a faster stream of people walking down, and in between us an equally steady, if more random, flow of people up and down the staircase. Moving like a dot matrix diagram of an electrical grid, like a network of small highways, a waterfall of conservative black coats, black hair, black briefcases, black shoes, white shirts goes drifting pass at the mercy of their respective flow...so choreographed as to seem somehow pre-ordained, directed offstage by some camera crew. Each to our own thousands of destinations, the waterfall grid of people splashes to the platforms, diverges to hundreds of glistening gateways, opening and closing of turnstiles, loaded like cattle into the muscular metal bodies of traincars. Standing impassive, inscrutable, face down in a cell phone or book or newspaper or magazine. Each with an identical expression. Identical purpose, identical lives.

Settled into my seat on the superexpress, there is, lo and behold, a picturesque view of Fuji from the train window. Rare for the foggy winter days, it sits iconic, symmetrical, the archetype of "mountain." So purely is it "mountain" that it shrugs off effortlessly the millions of homages paid to it. Ignores the millions of prints and images devoted to it. It stands untouched by its own cliché, unmarred by it's own exploited status as icon, flagship of a country, idol of an aesthetic. I am unable to remove my eyes from it, as it slowly turns to watch us pass, looking down it's long, smooth, snowy brow at the passing of sleek technological marvels such as the Nozomi Superexpress 700 series, 111. The tubby man in glasses next to me sleeps with his earbuds in. Out of his briefcase pokes "Draft plan of IT meeting in January." I see his name is Itaru Asa---something. I see his buisnessman's second-day stubble poking up from under his smooth skin. I smell the mackerel in the bento of the family siting in front of me. I watch the patriarch in a green and grey-stripped turtleneck shovel rice into his mouth with a determinedly blank expression. I see the woman across the isle in cheap black stockings and leopard-print boots pretend to sleep as she hugs her tacky faux-fur coat to her stomach. And outside the country slips by in a jetstream, punctuated by the flash of regular concrete poles strug together in the steady blur of electrical wires. The great mountain is left behind now. There is only the mildly comforting sensation of watching distance distort the speed of passing objects.

As the train shoots forward, the mind reaches backward, and a reflective haze sets in as my eyes gloss over the gliding patterns of buildings and scenery. Certain select images. Home. My mother, her apron on inside-out, holds a cigarette aloft as she stands next to the stove fan. Brothers, brother's girlfriends, occasional lovers, friends and strays crowd the kitchen, anxious for the coming feast. A pot of brown rice boils over slightly. The order had been to feed 8, but the actual number turns out around 14. There is enough. Bob is rambling softly in the corner about a joke he wants to tell. Spencer is changing the music. Bill is hovering at the counter. Michael kisses his sweetheart. Paul goes for beers. I stand in it, waiting for a plate, engrossed in the warm momentum of this scene, wishing I could hold it static, wishing it would revolve this way endlessly, like a snow-globe picture show. And really, that's just what it is in memory...I can't remember the banter, the jokes, the sarcastic remarks and guffaws from who or which corner of the room. It has become, like many other such nights, a kind of silent movie, detached from context and playing on endless loop.

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Now playing: The Kinks - Johnny Thunder
via FoxyTunes

First post of '08 - belated, understated, uninteresting.

2008-01-07T19:56:00.000+09:00

Back in Tokyo.
I feel I could write a novel about my trip stateside. ...Maybe I will. But for now, it's a struggle just to stay awake (and only 8pm). There's a lot to say, but no energy to put it to screen atm. See, I even substitute interweb acronyms for words who's actual spelling requires only the slightest increase in finger effort. I can't believe Im supposed to teach 6 year olds tomorrow afternoon. I think we'll probably just play a souped up version of "duck-duck-goose" and I'll let them chase each other around in circles while I sit back and try not to get sicker.

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Now playing: The Kinks - Powerman
via FoxyTunes

The Bled - Silent Treatment

2007-12-14T02:25:00.000+09:00

DUDE
why didn't I hear about this earlier?
First impression: sounds better than FITF ... less wanky, more rock.

Tis the Season for List(en)ing

2007-12-10T16:17:00.001+09:00

"Hail Mary, mother of God...got the whole host'a Angels shufflin in my iPod..."

Someone recently asked me about my picks for the best of 2007...and you know, I honestly hadn't given it much thought this year, but once asked, suddenly it smacked me in the face just how much great music there was this year. I'm listening to the NPR version of the inevitable endless list-fetishists rambling on and on, and you know, what's clear is that it was a fairly polarizing year in terms of "good" n "bad" ...I think for the first time I can remember it was just as easy to call up the biggest dissappointments of the year as it was to think of the best. Though there was no shortage of goodness, there was a great number of highly anticipated albums that fell extremely flat. So, I have a rough list of what I feel is the best and worst of this year, and man there was just too much stuff for a plain old 10 list...so my list actually stretches a bit long, but here we go.

1. The National - Boxer
Actually, this was no contest. I kept trying to think of something that could challenge this one for the top spot...but though there was lots of great music, none of it proved able to displace this one's special space in my heart of hearts. This time of year and this kind of entry, Tis' the time when I tend to drop my cynic's guard and expose that gooey-mooshy sentimental center, where this album hits hardest. As such, I'm proud to wear it on my sleeve of sleeves, in all its pseudo-creepy, vibey, sharp-edged rainy-night-driving-alone-in-the-suburbs glory.

2. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Was there any album that peppered my DJ and dance playlists more frequently this year? I doubt it. But ironically, it's not at all very peppy-lighthearted dance material, when you boil it down. I may have thrown it down often at a party to impress my friends, but the truth is, the times this album shines is when I'm driving down dark highways banging the side door with my hand as I shout along to the anthemically depressing break-up psycho-ballads and schizophrenic chemical singalongs. This is the most uplifting depressing album ever, and it's so masterfully, meticulously 'n self-consciously clooged together from the billions of little pulverized pieces, that it manages to evade all the usual pitfalls this kind of music usually drops into.

3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
Duh. I mean, seriously, people out there who keep telling me "I just don't...get...Radiohead," It's time for you to shut. up. I just don't care if you think they're pretentious n over-rated. I just don't care if you think you're being meta-cool by bucking the trend n still waiting for what you still must think is "inevitable backlash" at the coolest band in the world. I don't care which older, underground bands they "ripped off" and how "like, SO, not experimental, really" they are...I don't care how popular they get, how much hype they have, how many brilliant marketing schemes they come up with to distribute their product...I just DONT CARE. Fact is Fact, and the Music is Fact. This music is really good. Anybody with ears should be able to hear it. So enough with your whiny-bitching, K? Thx.

4. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
How is this album not out yet?? I mean, wtf, I'm just here listening to NPR and they're rating some EP, because the album isn't "released" yet, except that everyone's heard it. Well, at any rate, these guys are new, and hot off the bloggosphere, and everybody's holding their breath to see if they'll be worth praising, but I just can't wait. This is such an infectious, fun, danceable, (dareisay) "hip" (albeit derivative) album of bouncy afro-pop-rock. Boo-yah...I mean, I just don't remember the last time I heard good afro-pop-rock...I mean, we've come a long way since Graceland, haven't we? But why don't we have any more "So Lonely"s or "Mirror in the Bathroom"s? Regardless of influence, or so called "depth" in this band, I couldn't stop listening to it, and whenever I listened to it, I couldn't stop dancing. That's good enough for me.

5. Battles - Mirrored
Fuk Yeeeeaaahhhhh! That's what I think when I hear this....it's delirious, fist pumping joy with warp-10 vocal jitters syncing perfectly with interlacing rhythm, guitar, synths all pounding into your skull like it was mapped to graph paper. So precise, so weird, so plain "likeable" somehow. I show this band to people and they make a weird face at first and then say "oh....oh yeah. Oh, sweet! Sweeeeeeeeet" ...I mean, honestly, who else is making music like this? Ummmmmmmmm nobody, that's who, and that's just one more reason Battles is such a beautiful unique snoflake of special unique specialness.

6. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
People keep talking about how "innovative" this album is, but really, its a couple samples with lots of reverb, a couple guitars, and a guy going "OOooooooooOOOOOOOHhahahahhhhhhhhhheheheeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaahhhhhAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH OOOooooooOOOOOOOOO" into a bunch of tape-delay and heavy verb...so OK, it sounds cool. Yes. Innovative? Mmmm, mayyyybe...but more just very soothing and nice, very ambient and pleasing, and true, few people have to guts to make such anti-cerebral music for such a cerebral audience.

7. Iron & Wine - The Shepard's Dog
Well, I've always loved Iron & Wine, but this albums a standout this year for NOT sounding like Iron & Wine...Lets face it, Sam Beam could have crooned away with his acoustic for 10 more albums and people would still buy them and listen to them on Sunday with a cup of coffee while they pet the dog absentmindedly in the living room...but instead he makes this jarring, engaging mash of pop-country/folk/bluegrass/ethnic music. I mean, that and the songs (especially lyrically) hold up as well as ever...wow.

8. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon...pah. I shouldn't love them so much. They just play 3 chords and bang a piano and sing with a cool, tough-guy accent. It should be trite and cheap, it should be throwaway classic-rock worship...but somehow these guys make the simplest, most stripped tune shine like a brand-new black eye. You feel cool just listening to it...it puffs you up and makes you want a cigarette, a whiskey with a beer back, and somebody to listen to your hard-luck story. Yet, it's also thoughtful, thought out, well arranged, as tastefully restrained as ever, even when it shoots for bombast on tracks like "The Underdog" ...putting the flourishes on only when necessary (like that spanish guitar in "My Japanese Cigarette Case"), and never distracting too much from what is just good songwriting, plain n simple.

9. Feist - The Reminder
Jesus. Am I really one of those Latte-drinking hordes of middle-agers looking for "something mellow I can drive to" ....christ. But that's always been Feist...she's 1 in a million precisely because she somehow makes mid-tempo contemporary lounge rock palatable...DEEP even, fer chrissakes. That and I need some females on the list. Part of me feels that St. Vincent's Marry Me deserves this spot, for being more adventurous and more sonically sophisticated, (and also just plain kick-ass) but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't listened to Feist more.

9.5 Kevin Drew - Spirit If...
Man, I just couldn't resist...I'm a sucker for pretty much anything that comes out of that crazy Canadian social scene (tm), and just couldn't help getting suckered by Drew's croony, sweaty "fuck" covered romanticisims n hokey singalong ballads. He's just so lovable...that and he looks like me.

10. Blonde Redhead - 23
Why did nobody notice this album? I mean, honestly. The one review I read was like "meh, it's over produced." Bullshit! It's very well produced. It's the first "polished" sounding record BR has made, but that shouldn't necessarily be a mark against it. I found it catchy, but creepy, poppy and slick, but deep and well-written. It's listen-able without being pandering. Definitely one of the best, if not THE best album from a great band.

Ok, so the list doesn't actually end here:
there were so many others I couldn't fit that deserve mention:

11. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
12. Múm - Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
13. The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
14. Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
15. Kanye West - Graduation
16. Dungen - Tio Bitar

...also, honorable mention to Saul Williams for making very uncomfortable music that is nonetheless a very relevant and coherent artistic statement...and also for making a decent album from what has got to be one of the worst ideas for an album...ever.

...well, this will have to be a draft for now...I'll put in links to artists and "most dissappointing records of 07" later, this just took too long and I have work to do. -E

In Winter

2007-12-04T21:47:00.000+09:00

In the winter,
When everything is dead
And the whole world
Holds its
Breath;

In the winter,
When the women in the supermarkets of the world
Strap their sleeping children across their backs
And hunch their way toward
The gleaming
Check-
Out,
And everything sucks slowly
Into itself;

In the winter,
When everything is dead
And I am also dead,
I go running through the dead
Fields, the thick ochre
Of the dead
Stalks pushing through the cracked
Tablet of mud, and cold rain
And I am yet
Living;

In the winter,
When the world holds its breath
And I am out of breath
And I go days without talking
To anyone,
And sleep most of the grey
Days into the afternoon
When the heater wakes
Me with its dry
Nausea;

In the winter,
When everything is dead
And I am also dead,
And the world all sucked into itself,
And cold,
And holding its breath,
And waiting
For spring-

I am yet living.

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Now playing: LCD Soundsystem - Tired
via FoxyTunes

J語マイ英語！〜J-Go my Ei-Go!

2007-12-03T12:17:00.000+09:00

What a funny weekend.
It was especially nice because I haven't had a "weekend out" in so long...just holed up in the Taj, doin the üsh. I took the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in Kobe...but more than anything the test proved to be just a springboard excuse to have a fun weekend Somewhere Else. I drove to Namikawa (並河） Kyoto after my Friday lesson, which was a first...took me 2.5 hrs to get there at around the dinner hours. Chris was waiting with a longboard under each arm and we skated like demons to get to a Yakiniku joint before closing. We made it, just barely. The niku was most excellent, n Chris and I ate like kings while this funny obachan made fun of/flirted with us baka gaijin. With a belly full of meat, we skated out again into a chilly late-fall night, pumping the boards along smooth, deserted streets boardering rice paddies n parking lots. It felt great. I haven't skateboarded in a REALLY long time, but the hum of those wheels on the concrete and the needling wind in my face felt natural as it ever did at Cate.

Of course, the night was just getting started, and while we talked about possible beats for our rap collaboration, Hammond n I sipped fine sake and perused a giant book of Chuck Close's work. Then it was out to find a bar with doors still open...which we did, and in fact helped keep them open far longer than they had planned. Both extremely drunk, it turned into one of those "deep talks" about life n shit slurred through whiskey and cigarettes...the kind you feel slightly embarrassed about the next day when you're hungover. And hung over we were. My god. Hammond throws the curtain back and sunshine kicks me straight in the face. He throws off his nice big fluffy comforter and jumps up. I'm shivering my ass off on the floor under some Kotatsu blanket number trying desperately to ignore the reality of this morning when he goes over and throws Dr. Dre on the stereo ("Damn Bitches. Ya pussy's been tampered with...") and starts dancing there in his tightywhitey superhero underwear with this ridiculous fuckin smirk on his face. I crack one bloodshot eye at him and mumble something like "wht th fuk mn..." and he's dancin, dancin, dancin ("Jammin!" Cause I like....JAMMIN...") He looks down at me, still smiling this ridiculous wide eyed grin and says "I feel terrible!" ... ... (more dancing) ... ... "We gotta teach some kids in 9 minutes. Get up!" And yes...I got up, reeking of booze and stale cigarettes, old sweat and the like...and I walked into a stuffy classroom full of little 5 year olds and played games like a champ. Then we went back and napped.

Now, Hammond, it's no secret, is a fashion whore, obsessive shopper; a man of fine taste and hetero-flexible bent, thus typically when we meet up we end up having some kind of "man-date" in which lots of high-end shopping and oogly-eyed fashion mongering turns into excessively long (and not just a little gay) fitting sessions and opinions. Chris and I rode the boards through the windy streets n crowds of Kyoto the next day, dropping in on the Bape store (meh...) Paul Smith, and then of course, another Paul Smith. I bought a fabulously expensive and wonderful scarf...the first time I've ever actually bought some high fashion during one of these little man dates. It's a beautiful scarf, flashes of pink and blue striped with the brown n grey. Hammond and I drooled over $1000+ jackets and shoes, Hammond of course has the guy pull out his catalogue to look for some specific model he ran into in Tokyo. So our fashion-fatigued asses are looking for a place to kyukei and decide on a whim to drop in to some place called the "Independant's Café" and dammmn place is cool. It's in this ancient building in the basement, looking like a Zapatistas' weekend hang out, all underground-artsy with some abstract film playing at one end, beer on tap and rickety old tables. It's a place people in Portland would hang out...and so incredibly rare among places I've been in Japan. Normally you go into some glistening steel and glass palace of new modernity full of fashionable salary men sipping lattes. This was a poets basement if I ever saw one. I'll have to remember it for next time I head to Kyoto.

It was around this time that I realized I had forgot not only the information booklet supposedly needed for the JLPT, but also the test voucher that gets me in...I'm amazed I even remembered to bring a pencil. There was no way of going back to get it at this point, so we headed in to Kobe for the evening, already wiped out. Chris fell half-asleep on the train while I yabbered away about mindless shit the way I do when I'm tired. In Kobe there was a hilarious episode in which I called Mellen about getting info on the test n what to do with my voucherless ass, and we're talking and trying to figure out where she is so we can meet, and she says, "well, I should go I just ran into some people" and I'm getting this weird "double echo" thing going on, and I look up and there she is, on the phone walking straight up to our group (we'd met some other Tajimites wandering around) and she doesn't see me, so I put the phone down but she keeps talking into it, standing three feet away but not realizing it "hello? I can't hear you. Ed? Ed?" and I start laughing and finally she looks up and realizes whats happened. It was like something out of a movie. Ahhh sell phones.
So we check into the sauna n spa capsule down the way n an extremely blazed Jon K joins us for indian food, which was delicious. I head to Mellens hotel to get the rundown on the test, head back n get my spa on...and Daaaaaaamn what a place. So much nicer than the other one. I was enormously paranoid about the tatts but ended up ninja-ing my way through just fine. I rubbed myself with salt n sweated my hangover out at last in the salt sauna, dipped my ass in the freezing bath, hopped in the outdoor on-sen n slept like an f'n baby on the space-foam tempurpedic mattress in the capsule.

If waking up in capsules didn't feel so great, I doubt there'd be any way I would have got up for the test, seeing as it was 7 am and my usual rising hour is more say, around noon...but I did it, and even had time for breakfast. I hauled myself in among a vast river of noisy Chinese and Koreans, anxious to prove to Japan that the rest of Asia aren't as dumb and brutish as the Japanese think, and can in fact speak their ridiculously complicated language. Among them a few familiar westerners seen now n again at conferences, orientations and the like last year. I popped Amnesiac on the headphones n glided along with the morning city flying past in a blur. Hopping on the skate Chris loaned me, I flew along the route to the Gakkuen, following the mass river of test-takers directed by traffic cops. Turns out, my dumb ass was in luck. All I had to do was walk up to a table and get a hand-written replacement voucher instead of my actual one and I was good to go. Then...the test.

I hadn't studied at all. I went to classes as usual. I did ONE night of test 問題 in my apartment before getting so tired of the bullshit particle practice that I just gave up and decided I'd get tested on what I'd actually knew rather than what I had crammed. Turns out...who needs to study? Pah. People had told me 3級 would be a breeze for me, but I always assumed they were just exaggerating my Japanese level. No, they were right. There were a few confusing questions, but overall, reading, vocabulary and grammar sections were just...cake. I mean, the grammar, the biggest and longest section, is 70 minutes. I finished in 25, double checked my answers, and then still had 15 minutes to sit there like a chump. What was amazing though was the listening portion. My god. I went into this thing with the idea that "hey, listening's cake, that's all I do all day." and being really worried that reading was usually far more difficult. BUT, jesus, if only I could convey how ridiculous these listening questions were...it didn't really have anything to do with what Japanese words you could understand by hearing...it was actually a test of cognitive problem solving...like one of those math problems ("a train leaves Kyoto at 6:30 am travelling at 65 kph, while another leaves Tokyo at 7:00 am traveling at 45 kph, which train did Mary ride to see her fiancée?"). A perfect example was one in which 4 people are holding a meeting to discuss the schedule for their next meeting....already a brain twister in itself. Four different voices and they go something like this:
"1: So, lets decide about the next meeting.
2: Well, Monday, Wednesday and Friday are all good for me.
3: I can do Tuesday and Thursday, but not Wednesday"
4: Monday's no good for me, and I have another commitment Friday, but Sunday or Tuesday's fine.
1: Great. So It's decided. We'll have our next meeting on......(fade out)"

Q. What day will they have the meeting?

Seriously...they were all like this. It was like...how many times can we "trick" you in one question. They had all these "red-herring" answers that they threw out left and right, and most of the time, it didn't feel like there even WAS a correct answer. Afterwards it was comfortable knowing that other people felt as fucked by this section as I did. It moved REALLY fast too. At one point the voice says "Let's take a short break" and then there's 3 notes of a synth piano and it goes, "Ok, lets begin again." Otherwise, it was just rapid fire listening. No time to change or review your answer, no time to think about it before it was already on to the next one...Each said only once. The other really striking thing about the test (but not at all surprising) was how amazingly anal the administrators and rules were. A lot of them were expected for a test like this, pretty much standard for standardized tests, but they were all emblazoned in bright red bold type on the booklet, posted on signs everywhere, and VERY strictly enforced. For example, before beginning, every single persons face was checked, by hand, at their assigned seat, against a stack of pictures of those who applied to take the test. We had to listen to a prerecorded speech EVERY section about the many many ways you can be disqualified from the test, which included: having a time keeping device that ticks "too loudly", having an eraser that is not removed from its paper casing, having anything other than pencils and erasers on your desk, leaving the room, even just to pee, having your cell buzz, even in silent mode, not putting your pencil down PRECISELY with the chime, or opening your book before the beginning chime. ETC.

This, to me, these things are most indicative of the attitude prevalent over this whole thing. I don't want this to sound like conspiracy theories or some shit, but it definitely struck me as ridiculous/paranoid/weird the way the test was carried out. Most of my friends with ANY moderate to advanced Japanese ability try 2級...and most of them fail...like me, most of us fall in that huge grey area between 3 and 2...but also people far far better at Japanese than myself as well. The stories of 2級 tests I hear are horrific. 2級 is the test minimum required to be employed by a Japanese company, and to enter Japanese Universities as a normal (not exchange) student. In other words, it's a certificate of entry into Japanese society, in some sense, and as such it has tremendous political value. Now, we all know how the Japanese feel about outsiders entering Japanese society...its a kind of apocalyptic nightmare for them in which the barbarian hordes invade, destroy their culture, rape their women and enslave them in international crime rings...etc. The recent changes to the immigration policy (supposedly "anti-terrorist") attest to this attitude, and the sense that, as they say, "foreigners are the primary cause of crime in Japan."

The difference between 3級 and 2級 is huge...and whereas with the English proficiency test has a mid-level 2.5 level for intermediates, the J-test has no such thing. It breaks down like this: from about 300 Kanji (and honestly, as someone who just took level 3, you didn't even need nearly that many) to over 2,000, and while 3rd level is all basic conversational skills and grammar you need to simply communicate, 2級 contains uncountable numbers of technical compounds and specialized language used nowhere outside of academic and buisness reports. Now, to be fair, if you certify someone to work in a Japanese company, they should be able to read your annual business report, and make one of their own...but given that I know people who I believe speak and read well enough to work in a Japanese company, should they want to, it seems ridiculous that such a person is unable to pass this test.

What really bugs me is that you can tell, fairly obviously, that the people who write these tests don't actually "want" you to pass. As with the listening in my test (which, I hear, is largely the same or worse in 2級), the kanji sections of 2級 are full of tricky little nitpickings. For example, they'll show four similar, or even identical looking characters and say "choose the correct one" for the given meaning. Oftentimes they've "made up" a kanji that looks just like the one you know, but either added or removed one tiny piece, or reversed the direction of a single stroke. The fact is, most Japanese people I know admit freely that they would probably fail this test. And thats just level 2, forget level 1. Not to mention that some (not all, but some) foreigners I know who passed 2 don't actually speak well at all...sure they can read a lot of kanji (and they're generally enourmously proud of this accomplishment), but when trying to explain Texas Hold-em' Poker to a Japanese person, the 2級 passing dude at the table fumbled through a bunch of weird sounding sentences, and I ended up being the one to explain the game in perfectly easy, conversational Japanese.

Now, I didn't take 2級, so this isn't first hand, but compiled from the many people I know who took it this year, and my experience with the easier test. When explaining this idea to Hammond over taco balls, he made a good point about they have to make it difficult in order to give it real meaning, and that Japanese is just a difficult language period (ranked 3rd most difficult in the world, I believe). Plus, the Japanese test to measure English proficiency is a joke, and hardly comparable to the native test, but if you take TOIC or TOEFL, you're in for something that might be equally hard for a non-native speaker as the J-test is for us. At any rate, it was just a feeling I got...more of that overwhelming sense of a giant finger pointing down at me saying in flashing neon: "YOU ARE OUTSIDER. YOU ARE NOT BELONG HERE."

Whereas we English teachers put up with the mangled monstrosity that passes for "English" in this country on a daily basis...("hey man, don't J-Go my Ei-Go!") we're continually reminded we'll never live up to the challenge of Japanese. Shikata ga nai, ne.

----------------
Now playing: The National - Gospel
via FoxyTunes

始め

2007-11-27T21:31:00.000+09:00

At Reed

2004-01-23T23:57:00.000+09:00

for the first time in so long I can't remember. The closest I've come to this place since last march is elliott circle to drop people off, then I go roaring out the drive like the place is going to swallow me before I make my right hand turn. Now, here I am. I'm "casual" nonchalant, just walking around, pretending not to recognize everyone, everyone pretending not to be surprised to see me walking around, "casual." Got my id renewed, $10. "Welcome Back." The lady said, as though I weren't really Welcome in the slightest. My Superior calm and mild casual "tude" is due to the handy sheild of my music from my nifty new ipod. "huh?"
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't have to acknowledge your presence. You don't get to know what I'm rocking to, who is making my head bob at the computer. I am "Snob." Monday classes start. I don't know how to feel. I'm not going to spend the next 2 years hiding from this place. I just have to slide through it, casual as I wanna be, effortlessly throwing off stress and stupid people, no more leaving a swath of social destruction in my wake, those days are past. I am New Man. Different. Right?

Anyway. I can't tell if I'm beating my latest cold or if it's beating me. Its a back and forth kind of war, but I'm so used to being sick at this point that at times I almost forget what "health" feels like, so comparatively, its not so bad. The least sick I felt, surprisingly, was on stage last night. I had less tremors than usual, and sang my guts out in a way that felt really good. Still some self-depricating mumbles between songs, but I'm working on that, there were less than usual. I'm getting used to it. Finally. I've given up on the music thing so many times, but I always get dragged back in. I can't put it down. So even though there was a select 10 people in the immensity of the Viscount ballroom, I'd say it was the best show yet, and I got 20 bucks, and spent it all at the bar, so now I'm back to 0 again, where I oughta be.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: sick
Music:Secret HAHA! Ipod snob (Wilco)

Anecdotal

2004-01-12T23:55:00.000+09:00

This year,
as every year
Santa Claus has given me
some none too subtle hints.
He may or may not
be making judgements on my moral character
but he certainly knows
that I stink, now and then;
forget to shower occasionally.
Hence,
two sticks of high-power
sport deoderant
and an "eau de cologne"
sampler pack.

He seems to know
that my teeth
are not as white as they should be.
my morning ritual of coffee and
cigarette
are brought to bear
in a bleaching kit
and several tubes of "whitening"
toothpaste.
And he has not forgotten
that I'm a stressful
little thing-
A professional sports massage
certificate
is slipped between
the usual chocolates, dental floss
and guitar picks.

Shaving cream
Face wash
Anti-Dandruf Shampoo
and a new, special anti-flake
spray
that you put on at night
(Santa's been struggling for years
with a remedy for my seborreic dermatitis)
And under the pile of breath mints
and gum (do I really have halitosis?)
I half expect
a little note:

"clean up your goddamned act
you dirty summamabitch!" -S.C.

Until I realize
that in truth, perhaps I have neglected
myself in these respects
and am no longer
a bit insulted
by this year's stocking.
As I watch my brothers
pulling similar items
from their treasure bags

I look up
at my mothers tired face
her saggy eyes, that weak smile
with her coffee in the left hand
cigarette in the right
as I have done for years.
I look, and
as always, she is standing watch
over this sacrament
making sure there's no confusion
over who's is who's
and deftly picking the occasional
stray price tag off
of this item
or that.
And I smile at her
knowing that naughty or nice
I will always come out of
christmas smelling better
at least.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: nostalgic
Music:Decemberists (still)

A Shot in the Dark

2004-01-10T23:46:00.000+09:00

I gave up
trying to write
after 3 or 4 strong starts
gone limp and

instead, I masturbated.
which really,
I thought
scratched the same itch
only, one
is always a sure thing
and the other
is just a shot
in the dark

Groups:the peeps
Mood: crazy
Music:Decemberists

In The Bath

2003-12-27T23:44:00.000+09:00

I pull the trigger
on the drain
when I just can't take the heat
any more.
The sweat is streaming down my face
and the bath salts are making me woozy.
As the water slowly empties and I feel
the hard porcelain against my neckbone
and the weight
slowly returning to my limbs, my flesh
seems ready to slip off my bones and swirl
down the drain with the water
leaving me a perfect,
steaming skeleton.

I am pink
and new here, steaming in the warm glow
of the empty bathtub
and I sit for a moment
adjusting to gravity again,
being lazy and sore
and tired.
I feel my joints creak
and muscles moan
when I pull myself upright,
proof of my poor shape
and all the weight I've gained these
past few months-
my hanging belly and saggy
flanks.

Staring in the mirror I think
"Its not fair."
Grasping at the crude handfuls of flesh and tugging
at my new size.
But it is entirely fair,
and I would do well to
remember it.

Lord knows, I
am covered in reminders
of one sort or
another.

But somehow, it is only here
in the foggy reflection
of the bathroom mirror
that I can see
the many signatures of sins
signed upon my skin.
Was it my own hand which
held that pen?

Mood: sore
Music:clockticky

Dear Everyone - Spencer Thanhouser

2003-12-15T23:36:00.000+09:00

"Dear everyone,
I want to go away for awhile.
I want to live in a jungle with a Hot Ass Bitch that isn't stupid.
I want to be like Tarzan, except a Classy Tarzan, who goes and has martinis with Hot Ass Bitches after he's done swinging around and what not.
I want to fight tigers. I want to come close to death every day to remind me that i am still living. Breathing. Walking. Wondering. I want to feel something.

Dear everyone,
someone get me out of here. Take me to the United States of Excitement. Take me to China. Take me to South Africa. Take me anywhere where i don't have to be me. "

-Spencer Thanhouser

Groups:the peeps
Mood: awake

Finals at Art School

2003-12-12T23:35:00.000+09:00

Both our eyes fixed in front, as mine have been for hours upon the swollen mass of canvas, my painting teacher tells me, "You don't have the patience to be a painter."
As consolation, she tells me "you'd make an incredible art historian, though, you're a natural for it."
"Thanks." I say, eyes still fixed ahead. What I should be saying is "I just threw eight straight hours into this fucking thing and the best you can do is tell me not to quit my day job?" Not exactly betting heavy on my future career as a painter. She knows I'm not here for a degree. That's never stopped her from telling me numerous times about my various "unpainterly" quailties.
"You get frustrated to easily to be a painter."
"You don't know how to push that paint around, thats your real problem."
"You haven't taken the time on this one to accomplish anything, you've given up too soon again."
"You know, you should really look in to some art history classes."
She's right, of course. All these statements are true and entirely self evident. I don't want to hear what I already know again. I sat, mostly immobile, staring at this thing for a whole night. I Got stoned with flavio, and stared at it some more. Stared at it when the dawn broke around 7:30 this morning, fell asleep staring at it around 8. Just tell me what to fix.
I can't not finish it now, I can't finish it either, just tell me what to do.
Paint it for me if you want, just finish this fucking thing.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: aggravated
Music:ghosthunt improv from jamie's computer

2003-12-07T23:34:00.000+09:00

There is still a couch sitting in the middle of my apartment.
You have to step over several boxes just to get from the living room to the bathroom
the couch juts into the kitchen and partially blocks the front door.
The sink is full of dishes and the table full of clutter.
blankets, jackets, old newspapers trash and dust everywhere.
my apartment reflects my state of mind, usually, and especially so today.
Blocked up, dirty and tired.
After working an incredibly long shift last night, I was supposed to meet Ivar at the Acropolis strip club. I went, but arrived about 1 am and he wasn't there. I was in my unbuttoned tux shirt, bowtie hanging askew, black pants and dress shoes. I sat myself down in front of a tattoed dancer with pierced nipples and black hair, sat back and lit a ciggarette. I expected this kind of thing to make me nervous, alone in a strip club for the first time, 5 or 10 years younger than most other occupants. But I found it surprisingly easy to play the game, to sit back and sip my beer ohso casually, the practiced exhale of smoke, staring at nothing but the dancers black eye pits and she leaned in close to my dollar bill saying "My, aren't you dolled up nice" Wiggling her various moneymakers awkwardly to the hardrock soundtrack, her tattooed body shimmering in the blacklight. Locked her gaze to explain that I wasn't dressed up, I was in my work uniform. "So am I." She said.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: dirty
Music:Tom Waits, "Frank's Wild Years"

2003-12-06T23:32:00.001+09:00

There is a letter,
Perhaps the kind not meant to be read,
Waiting somewhere
For me
Perhaps never to be read
Sitting at the table with a
Cigarette
I am too tired to make food
But when I get in bed
I am too hungry to sleep

The sickness clings to my chest
In the measured wheeze of my breath
As I stuff my face further into the pillow
Drowning the phone-song in fabric
Again and again
But I will not sleep yet.

It is my birthday-
The one that means something.
I am opening the new year
Like a letter
Unreadable,
But in front of me
Nonetheless.

And as our new love,
Or new version therof,
Unfolds its pages slow
Like years in contradiction
I want nothing
More than something poetic
To liken it, something
In the style of Li-Young Lee:
Secret, dark and small-
A beauty of the discreet ache

But I have no such description
To give
I am melodramatic at best
Too quick to admire
Too slow to forgive
It is only somehow appropriate
To say:
Your love for me
Is like a Li-Young Lee
Poem, a letter I will never read
A gift never meant to be recieved-
Secret, dark and
Small enough to say
Everything, everything that is
Worth saying.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: blank
Music:Ghosthunt

At The Silent Table

2003-12-02T23:30:00.001+09:00

A startled phone call from home
and my roommate has lost
another friend
in a car accident

watching her swollen face
and shaking hand
there is nothing to say
in these;
the silent moments
we have been taught so well
each concentrating on our cigarettes
we trim the ash and flick
when there is no need,
staring at the dull burn
the curling smoke
haunting the air above us
like a grief
the silent table
the sudden hole in the night
this is after Dana's suicide
And Morgan lost to heroin

a year of mourning
and the winter is finally come
to claim the cold within us
to match the sky
outside the open window
in our eyes
the long hollow stare
time has taught
and we have learned
and we are still learning
I cannot miss those I did not know
but somehow this is worse
across the continent
my roommate's friends may share their grief
spread it thin like a glaze
and count their memories
careful like coins upon the table
with their many drinks and ashtrays full
but not her, she is here alone

I am picturing already
New Years Eve
when I will kneel at the altar of some future
candles lit and whiskey on my breath, to
let loose, like a sigh,
a prayer for the days that slip through our fingers
the quiet moments
where I learn my lessons best

Groups:the peeps
Mood: sick
Music:microKORG makings

2003-11-19T23:28:00.001+09:00

He calls me late at night
when he's lonely
wife asleep and the tv on
the different sets of sleeping pills run out
writing and eating alone in the dark
of that apartment

He calls me late at night,
lonely on the telephone says
could I come over maybe
smoke and listen to a little firlinghetty?
put the coffee pot right on
He's got a good movie he says
watched it twice tonight already and ready for a third
seen that movie I say
yeah its a good one

He calls me late at night when he's lonely
and he's always lonely
but its 3 am and I'm drunk
on the other side of town
with my other buisness and my other people
and my other life, my certain set of others
but could I maybe come over anyway he says
and I just don't have the heart to tell him
that I have no heart to tell no more,
got no heart to speak of
no more

Groups:the peeps
Mood: lonely
Music:crickets

Outside the Painting Studio

2003-11-18T23:27:00.001+09:00

the boys are building the
new building
mixing concrete in the morning cold
when I step out for
a smoke
wearing their "big dog" t-shirts
and covered in dust and suddenly
I can't bitch about being
up this early in the
morning
watching them shout and
shuffle in their flannel,
their hardhats and hammers
their long drunk nights
and concrete cold days
smoking their Pall Malls
with a lunch pail in
their laps

These boys will never
congratulate me on a good
read. I will never know
how to run a Bobcat 750 front loader
or the proper ratios of
sand to lyme to water.

We fit our respective
stereotypes like tailored
suits, tossing glances across
the street in a silent sports match-
Your Life versus My Life

Like catch with dad
in the backyard age 10
breath hanging in front our faces
the ball smacking mits regular time
throwing harder and harder, our hard unbroken stares and the sting on your palm
knowing he will always throw harder than I can-
What I Am versus What I Want You to Be

The glances of these men across the street
will always be harder than mine
so I rush my cigarette
stuff it into the tray
and shuffle inside
I could never understand them
I know its all relative, when I assume to know what they think
but I suppose that's a terribly "art school"
thing to say

Groups:the peeps
Mood: numb
Music:Josh Martinez/Anticon

More of the Same

2003-11-13T23:26:00.000+09:00

Heard from Nydia after a long break in contact. She sent me pictures. She looks like a ghost and I told her so. Her head is like a pale oversized balloon on a now tiny body. It depresses me even more than I thought it would to see where I knew she was heading. I find myself blunt and just generally bitternasty these days more often, for example she mentioned transfering, and I wrote "After transfering three times, basically, I can tell you right of the bat that you're never picking a better place to go, you're picking a different set of bad shit to deal with. Whether its the cold or the roommates or the shitty food, or the pretensious(sp?) over-academic hippie wanna-be revolutionary self-righteous fuckheads or delusional art-rags with too much paint seeping up to their brains, I've decided college just plain BLOWS. Best years of my life HA HA. If this is as good as it gets, I'm gonna pull my heart out of my chest and stuff it in the asshole of the next middle aged fuckhead who feeds me that bullshit line."

God, what's wrong with me besides everything?
Another half-assed attempt in the toilet as of last night. Why always when I'm drunk? (you know why, pussy) "The best people for you don't want you. The ones you don't want, the ones bad for you, will cling to your heels all the way to hell." Thats just "How Life Goes" Bitter Ed says. But I know I know I know, its my own fucking fault, just like always.
I'm getting so tired of living in re-runs.

* Groups:the peeps
* Mood: bitchy
* Music:White Stripes - Little Bird

I Would Say

2003-11-04T23:08:00.001+09:00

to the navy boy
who comes home a novelty
shiny things pinned to his chest
crisp and complete
a perfect machine
the ooh of the relatives and loved ones
the goo of their speech dripping from his
uniform like a soft rain of applause
"we missed you so..."
"we worried so..."
"Back to us at last..."

you have traded your soul
for your country
and I have traded my pride
for my soul

is it true
all women are healers
and all men are killers
perfect in their need for each other?

Mood: groggy
Music:Silence

The Junkyard Men

2003-11-03T23:03:00.001+09:00

fuse the men together
from junkyard parts and send them out
the smoking heaps
the steam and diesel
grease and grind of gears
pound and clang of pistons pump
howl of rust and fire to
drag themselves across the earth
the moan of metal lurching
towards tommorrow

they must never come to rest
static is the end
dustpiles and back to scrap
scrap to build more
and we are always building more

the cranes are
miles high
tearing holes in the clouds
and we are always building more

In the style of...

2003-11-02T23:01:00.001+09:00

Modern novels read like Esoteric Instruction Books for the Mildly Curious. Start anywhere but the beginning. Terse, quick prose and provocatively off-kilter subject matter. Intense description and detail should move to an overall theme or place. Never reveal too much, mostly the details are what’s important. The anatomy of a gerbil for insurance purposes. The precise number of seconds in an average orgasm. The fluid retention of…whatever. Its not quite a formula, but that’s the first word that comes to mind. Piece a plot together somewhere between these snippets of either autobiographical or carefully researched background detail and not only does it make you look really smart, it’ll give an obsessive/neurotic aspect to your character, preaching to the choir, it adds depth for people who crave the weird. A plain old story just doesn’t interest the new generation of readers. Guy meets girl, whodunits, tragic, epic, slice-o-life, its all so worn out.

So my story is not about any of this. My story is about two cans in my cupboard. One is black beans, and one is corn. I’m not going to tell you what kind, or the processing plant that birthed them, the supermarket that sold them, the dye used in the label. Use your god-damned imagination. Two cans. And aside from some peanut butter and an old tin of cookies, they’re pretty much alone in there all day in the dark. They whisper to one another in the back, gathering dust like years. They talk about my days, when I don’t get my work done, bitching about that ugly red coat I found in the trash and fixed up. I’m getting so snippy, they say. I’m grumpy all the time. I should stop smoking. He needs to eat better, take some eccinacea to build a better immune system. how can he stand being sick all the time like that? Why doesn’t he ever clean this kitchen? That damn cough keeping everyone up all night. Why hasn't he been writing? When is he going to finally get his shit together? They’re right, of course. But that’s only because canned goods don’t talk, it’s just nice to have a place to stuff the tired voices of my conscience.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: cynical
Music:beck

OH the Romance of Dying, Woe the Death of Romance

2003-10-22T23:00:00.000+09:00

Elliott Smith is dead.
No one is surprised to say the least.
If he can't make it, can I?
My two favorite portland junkies gone

lots of death on the brain
lots of tears and too much
pleasure in old, familiar pain
I need to find me some new bad habits.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: morose
Music:I don't think I'm ever gonna figure it out

The Poisoned Well

2003-10-14T22:59:00.000+09:00

Got the slide film developed downtown with matt
there's some incredible pictures on it, getting them turned into prints, one at least deserves to be a poster. Saw "Kill Bill" (excellent) and skipped class. It was all around a decent day until we were harrassed by psycho hippy bike nazi. claiming I'd almost clipped him, he comes up to give me a lecture, but its just not the fucking day for this. Waving his can of mace at my closed window, I couldn't help but snap and scream for him to get the fuck away from my car (bitch) when he starts circling my car with his keys out and this real deadpan stare on his face. So we just drove away instead of getting slides turned into photos. He pursued, viciously, but to no avail. TO you, bike nazi mace weilding schizo- wherever you are, hope you choke on your tofu.
In other news,
The beat revival memorial for morgan was one of the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful things I've ever seen in the flesh, I think its help move me along in a lot of ways, an official farewell of sorts. Now I'm worried Mike's gonna quit running the beat, which I can't decide my feelings on. Maybe we just can't top that last night, maybe its just never gonna be the fucking same without morgan popping his goofy face in now and then, maybe its just run its course, or maybe we're all just gonna drift aimlessly into space without it there to hold us down every week, remind us who we are, what we do and what we love, despite all the bullshit. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, I don't know what to think yet. I'm just so glad that the drama that was threatening to overshadow what really matters to me didn't show its fucking face that night. We all needed that, with the whole room screaming his name at the top of their lungs, crying one minute, laughing the next, swapping stories, greif and understanding like they were table napkins, the casual way a room of relative strangers can be closer than those who've known each other for years.
El Gato is dead.
LONG LIVE EL GATO!!!!
I'm pretty sure he heard us at least.

Groups:the peeps
Mood: contemplative
Music:incredible ashtray cat

For Safekeepings

2003-10-12T01:17:00.000+09:00

This is it:
the narrowed list of people I am still comfortable reading this. Its a small list. I suppose it should be. Anyway, this is a step better than privatizing the thing completely I think. The whole reason I have this thing is so that I can easily keep in touch and read up on friends, and vice versa. Otherwise I'd just write in notepad or in a little black book as usual, there'd be no point really...anyway, No need to talk about that shit anymore, too much said already.

What really matters-
First thought with consciousness the past three mornings gone:
Morgan's still dead.
Wondering how many mornings this will be my first thought
how long until the day when I don't wake up thinking
"I'm not going to see morgan today, again."

how long does it take to sink in?
Morgan's body covering me like a shroud
how long till it dissolves
and sinks beneath my skin?
soaks into my bones and
hardens into a crust around my heart?
how long till its been too long
to remember the things I NEED to remember
till the clutter of useless fact rubs his face to a dorky, grinning blur
in the projectors of my skull?

I spend
too long looking at the caps from my drinks
"elephants are the only mammals that cannot jump" fact no. 144
or "Mosquitoes have 47 teeth" fact no. 673
or "The average woman will consume six pounds of lipstick in her lifetime"
fact no. 228
over this sad slice of pizza or that long lonely cigarette, when I should be
committing to memory
the spike of the hair
the jaw-curve
the wild dark eyes
like pits in the round skull

been
Wondering if I should go to the Portland Memorial to find his ghost
jacking off in a corner
the goofy grin on his face
asking if I've still got his book, and did
I take good care of it?

yeah, still got it.
And ask does he know, dolphins have the largest
penis to body-size ratio of any animal? Its fact no. 304

just to hear him crack,
"here's to re-incaration then!"
as he lifts a dark drink towards me
in the gloom, among the other skeletons

Groups:the peeps
Mood: depressed
Music:ouch

Sick again

2003-09-23T01:05:00.000+09:00

Fevered and wobbly
I think I quit my job...finally
I walked in feeling like I was gonna pass out
and just told her that I couldn't do this anymore, I just need
at least one day to rest.
ITs only been 3 weeks and I'm dying.
Let me out of here.
I was informed that After these months of work,
I only owe a simple $2,619
"Go find another job and let me know" she said
"You should get that money from your friends...."
Yeah. I know I should.

Mood: sick
Music:Turin Brakes - Rain City

yarrrmeedarrr

2003-09-12T01:03:00.001+09:00

serious matey bonding last night until I thought I was going to puke at the roxy. I smelled whiskey on my toothbrush this morning and it made my headache worse. I wish girls didn't drink me under the table so easily...it would make me feel more manly. Now its been too many hours on my feet and nothing to show for it but lots of RED and the outline of some shit I'll get around to painting later...maybe.

ohgod

2003-09-07T01:01:00.000+09:00

"when y'wake up in the mornin with y'head on fire and ya eyes to bloody t'seeee..."
thats what plays on continuous loop through my head on mornings like this. My breakfast looked like vomit, but I ate it anyway and then I felt like vomit. I feel used up and useless...
but on a lighter note, it was incredible to see mike and angela finally get married, something about it, I don't know, it made me all shakey and weird seeing them be joined officially, and I'm a witness. I think its my first real wedding. I always kind of thought they were a lot of pomp and ceremonious over-the-topness, but this was simple, genuine and just generally exciting. congratulations mangela.

Mood:usedup and useless
Music:zombies

Thats it, I quit

2003-09-05T01:00:00.000+09:00

I am done driving. That's it, I quit.
Bad Day, late for everything.
school/work/school/work/school/work/getd

runk/school/work
looks like putting my life in order is simple enough in theory
now I just have to get comfortable with the tedium
why is it always a choice between monotony and insanity?

B-Flex and the Get Fresh Crew

2003-08-24T00:56:00.000+09:00

nevermind...

Night Poem

The breath from her nose
sounds like a windtunnel
in my ear
and uncle blair's
snoring
in the next
room as I stare
at the stars through
the roof
skylight

Been lying so still
in the dark
thinking in
circles like jogging
around the block
around the block and
around the block
again
listening to her
windtunnel nose
pressed against
my ear, snoring from
the next room
and watching the
stars through the little
roof skylight thinking in
circles
like jogging
around the block
around the block and
around the block again
trying to wind my tired mind
down
so I can get
some rest but
I just can't
stop

I haven't written
a poem
in months and
why should I?
The stars will still
be there
tommorrow

Mood: loved
Music:Beatles - Good Night

oh no

2003-08-24T00:49:00.000+09:00

Well it may not be immaculate conception, but its still a miracle that anyone like mike can actually have a child...the anticipation is somewhere between scary and exciting. At least its being carried in the belly of an angel to the hands of that loving, laughing devil. Everybody duck and cover.

Mood:infuckingshock
Music:notwist

would you catch me if I'm fallin? Help me stay awake I'm fallin...

2003-06-29T00:41:00.000+09:00

got driven to jemily's drunk and spent the night counting crows through the door. don't know why, but hearing it put me back in New York in the triple, when b and I only ever kept three cds in the player: august and everything after, mutations, and yo la tengo. the late dark nights, sitting by the dirty windows across from the dirty rooftops, listening and watching the lightning split the city sky, feeling that electric buzz, the humm in your heart that makes it beat faster and pump adrenaline. It was the night b and I first really fell. I got to play christ and adam at the same time. Then there was everything. Everything just kept hitting my poor drunk brain over and over again, the goodbyes, the empty now, the hurt, the hum, the then, the then that was better, or the who that I hurt. The everything. The kid who was at my house last weekend and had blown his brains all over a car by tuesday. I didn't know him so well, which makes empathy simple. Its clear cut, he is the tragic hero of all I can make him. So I laid there with my arm crooked across my eyes and choked on everything, emily curling around me confused. Asked if I wanted to talk about it and all I said was "don't know how." Cause I didn't.

Mood: sleepy
Music:guess.

Cookie Cutter Coffins

2003-06-26T00:42:00.000+09:00

I don't even really remember how it went. Not that I was too drunk, its just that blank period of adreniline necessity that makes accurate memory impossible after a show. It wasn't that I was too nervous...it wasn't that I did too badly, it just wasn't what I wanted it to be. It just wasn't ready. I wonder if it will every be ready. But voodoo doughnuts were tasty, and the after-party bands were hotttt. I fell down the stairs and ripped part of my fingernail off on my pinky. Today: best goodwill score ever, belly full of sushi, and an awkward feeling, not bad, not good.

Mood: weird
Music:Escape Engine: Ghosts on Instruments

Dance motherfucker dance.

2003-06-26T00:39:00.000+09:00

Its a blackcoffee morning hot as hell in this apartment. Trying to decide what to do with my day. Lots that needs doing...but how much of it I'll actually do is always up for debate. I never seem to finish anything, I go between states of feeling like I never get anything done and trying to catch up, and apathetic states of saying fuckit to everything I'm supposed to be doing and just enjoying my summer. vicious circles. Demon drums. hideous strength. and Blackcoffee morning. This is your life. Dance motherfucker dance! And I still can't write.

Mood: groggy
Music:the many wonders of jemily's computer selection

beachside disaster fantastics

2003-06-18T00:36:00.000+09:00

Mad excursions into the unknowns of the oregon coast yeilded gasless wanderings through dark wood roads this town that town next town and no gas stations anywhere. When we finally give up and camp, we have no wood for fire, no beer for fun, and its already midnight. But we make a night of it, under bright bright moonlight, guitars and cards till we get yelled at. Its up in the morning for beautiful lucid beachwalks, cut short by fees and regulations. muster car to gas, eat big breafast and home again homeagain jiggidy jig. hectic yet restfull all at once. Too short. Work fault. Me hate work. Work. Hate. YAr.
drinky drinky.

Mood: drunk
Music:beautiful blønde redhead

When ed doesn't have a girl...

2003-06-14T00:35:00.000+09:00

Its a sickly self-indulgent type of emotional-masturbation, somewhere between and around and up and down self-pity and self-loathing, the dashes between each over-played phrase strokes gently towards some tragic emo-gasm of drunken spastic blackouts and self-centered entropy. Tiny violins. Extra-sharp cheddar with my merlot. I'm too drunk usually to be sad though, mostly I worry åbout who wants me and who doesn't, do I have enough cigarettes, will I ever get all this shit done. Nydia used to say "you don't need a girlfriend, you need a mother." I used to tell Brandy she was my anchor in an ocean of demons...now without my anchors I drift. Cut myself loose so I can wait for someone to rescue me. Of course when somebody comes along I'll fold my arms and say "no, I'm fine" its great. Got å girl, sick of fighting, got no girl can't get a ride. Got no money, can't get drunk, got money drinkin too much. The casual flirts, the kisses that go nowhere, waking hazy on friends couches or pissing on my fences. This is going nowhere. My life might be going somewhere I don't know where but when its there will I be aware enough to care?

Talkin bout my sweet sensation

2003-06-10T00:34:00.000+09:00

I got to be a rockstar for 3 holy minutes last night. Karaoke from Hell and I wailed away to the Who. Someone asked Mike, "Is he like, 12 or something?" all mike said was "well he's that side of 21 if thats what you mean." Its true, I felt like a youngin, but that made "my generation" all the more appropriate among the burnedout rockarollers doin their drunken thang on the stage. Actually, the "Hell" part of the karaoke wasn't as present as it may sound, most people were pretty good, but as my ego has now shoved me out of the chair and taken over this entry, I WAS BETTER. YeAh. More than anything it was a fucking blast. my knees were weak as I scrambled off the stage, smiling like I just blew a load in everyones face. The band idea mike and I had been tossing around suddenly became a much more pressing reality, especially since we found a couple drummers among the crowd to fill out our powerblues attitude trio. My music jones is back with a vengence as I walked into the record store for the first time in a long time today, and so, instead of going to work, I spent all the money I made last weekend on Hail to the Theif (special edition) Blur's Think Tank, and Grandaddy's new one "Sumday." I feel like a junky.
The upside is at least for the moment, I'm high on something other than chemicals.

Mood: high
Music:my own self-agrandized performance replay

passed out puppy

2003-06-09T00:33:00.000+09:00

waking up with writing all over me, a head full of loose concrete and looking at a room I don't initially recognize. Typical. I remember enough to know the night wasn't all good. A blubbering whiny mess on mikes lap as he drove my car to wherever it was we were going. "you fucked up a little, but ok, it happens." collapsed on the stairs, collapsed on the floor of emily's apartment, collapsed on the couch that turned into a bed by the time I woke up. A lot of collapsing and passouts, apply the metaphor any which way you feel like. Appropriate, very appropriate.

Happiness is a warm gun

2003-06-06T00:27:00.001+09:00

When I hold you...
When I feel my finger on your trigger...
Its really getting me down have to always write my journal on other people's computer. I feel like I never really get to an honest entry, cause I'm always having someone over my shoulder, or on my way somewhere. And mainly I'm just jealous of mikes latest entry. Why the hell can't I write anymore? Its been a long time since anything worth a goddamn came from my keyboard. All I get these days is fragments. Mostly pieces of possible songs that never happen. I'm everything to everyone/ but it aint me. My overdramatic anthem these days is Yer Blues. "Yess I"m LONELY.....WAwna DIEhai, said I"m LOOOOonnely/ Wawna DAaaaHaiiii" Walked out over the Ross Island bridge tonight. It was a perfect bridge sitting night. The soft warm breeze after a hothot day. Watching the city like a pretty picture of lights and sounds, like it doesn't really contain anything. Its those cheesy moments of romanticism I realized I'm missing these days. I don't run off on the flights of fancy that let me be alone with my mind. Its all my fault. Never giving myself my movie moments, the ones that need a soundtrack, soft summer night scenes, looking over water from roaring bridges full of rumbling trucks and drivers honking cause they think I'm about to jump off. Why else would someone sit ponderously ominous on a bridge at 3 in the morning? Why would anyone stand on a bridge, looking over the side unless they were planning to make a dramatic swandive into the freezing filth of the willamete. Of course, realizing why people were honking at me made this thought cross my mind for the first time since I'd walked out to the center of the suspended concrete. I stood on a low rail and leaned way out to the dark sparkle of endless water. Wouldn't even do the job I thought. I'd get a few broken bones and a concussion, as well as pneumonia from freezing dirty water. Fun.
Why don't people look from bridges just to look?
Everyone should stop and see a city from a bridge.
Its much prettier, if cheesier
Make your movie moment
Especially when the only people watching are the ones waiting for you to jump.

Mood: lonely
Music:White album...duh.

unwashed and somewhatslightly dazed....

2003-06-03T00:25:00.000+09:00

I have no cigarettes
I'm cranky as all hell
I'm sore all over
itchy and headached
I'm about to go to work
where I play chipper to people who don't want to give the rich bastards of Reed College
one more dime
but I have to ask anyway
remember:
be friendly
thank them for past donations and their time
do not apologize for calling
don't simply follow the script
start with a casual, interested conversation about their experience
people love to talk about themselves
be pleasant
smile, you can hear a smile through the phone
and never
apologize for calling
no matter how sorry you are

Mood: cranky
Music:IRCs are musicless

Thompson's holy ghost

2003-06-02T00:24:00.000+09:00

Do you KNOW how good life can be in GOLF SHOES?!
I sliiiiiiiiide so slow across the
side-walk.
talk and talk and talk
like little talkboxes all of them
chitterchatter ha ha fuckoffs
mike called all of them demons but he was blessing every single one
AND god damnit, don't ever, ever, capitalize AND
and aw FUCK
somebody left the machine on tonight.
ticking and clanking
thumping and krunching behind our skulls
aw FUCK
somebody left that fuckin machine on tonight...
down deep
in the basements of our bodies
red lit
fire pit
we are beautiful demons
suspended by strings
from the ceiling

somebody take me home

Mood: enthralled
Music:nothing/everything

ok

2003-05-29T00:22:00.000+09:00

I'm tired and blah.
work sucked
life is boring today
that is all.

Mood: blah
Music:chitter chatter of the guests in mangela's apartmen

Had to be a BIG shot Dinncha?

2003-05-27T00:21:00.000+09:00

All I could think this morning when I woke up on mikes couch was: "When you wake up in the mornin with your head on fire and your eyes to bloody to see...." It wasn't quite that bad, but I was hungover for sure. I dont remember driviing home, that's scary. I'm getting really tired of drinking in general. It just doesn't cut it and I get bored. Not to mention the accompanying shit: I'm once again out of money (spent all on drinks) out of cigarettes (smoked like a chimeney) and starving for a greasy hangover meal that I can't afford. damnnit.It was a fun night regardless though....from what I remember of it. My first real hardcore show. I got all dressed up in mikes asstight jeans and a tiny white shirt with my kickin new New Balances that I found at goodwill yesterday... I looked either gay or hardcore, either which was cool with me, so we went and rocked to the bled, for free. Then we hung out with them for a while in the bar, getting fucked up. I sold them weed via family connections and helped move their equipment. Got a t-shirt out of it. Nice guys. Good thing cause I was expecting mike to get us in a fight. We made a badassgangsta rap cd to pumpup before hand, but honestly, I don't think I'd be much use in a brawl, even if I did have my gat.
"These words are weapons"

Mood: hungry
Music:halo benders

Big in Japan

2003-05-25T00:18:00.000+09:00

gettin ready for Sub-t. Beat-Revival, actually waiting on mike to get ready.
Everytime I get in my car I start writing little songs.
What was that song we sang?
I remember every word
but just can't recall the name

You seem like such a nice girl
and I hate you for that
See I just don't take kindly to kindness
yeah, I know, don't ask

throw me around I'm a potato sack
Toss me a good line
I'll show you a good time
Throw me around and I'll come back

okee

Mood: calm
Music:Mista Tom Waits

Good luck movin up cause I'''mmmmmmovin out

2003-05-22T00:16:00.000+09:00

Its almost done. My monstrous purple room.
Putting up decorations its starting to feel a lot more comfortable. New fresh, like my life feels for this summer. I'm trying to ignore the things I've been, in the words of Buddy Wakefield, trading all I was for who I'd like to be. I'm trying. I want my life back, I want to take it and remake it into the things I've always been able to do but never seem to. The spring is holding its breath for my summer, I'm trying not to buy the hype. Fresh starts have a way of dissapointing me down the road. But if I'd seen me in this house starting this real life in portland a year ago, I'd say thats exactly where i want to be, things are looking up...I feel like Reed thus far has been a separate life, not portland, not me, not my life, but a bubble of isolate hell contained miraculously on a pretty green campus and thriving on drugs and brochure pictureshoot lives. This makes it easier to dissasociate. That was not me. I was not there. I didn't do that. Or that, or that or that or that or that or that or that or that. But this is a familiar mantra. It has a way of not working. I want this to work. I'm sitting in Mikes place cause mine doesn't have internet, mulling over things and waiting for him to finish trimming some ridiculous new style of facial hair. Then its off to get my queen size mattress and then my room will finally be complete in all its glorius pinky-purple completeness.

Mood: hopeful
Music:Pedro the Lion

Static in my Head

2003-05-20T00:15:00.000+09:00

Well, as anyone who reads my journal lately can tell, I don't make much sense lately, and I don't plan on starting now. Too much to go into, I'll have to be lucid later. As for now, its 3 am and its been a long ass few days, tommorrow will be long too. I'm exhausted, I put about 300 miles on my car today and about twice that on my brain. All I say for now is this: Vicky and I broke up. My request. Bad? Good? At least we agreed that everything sucked and something had to change, in some ways it went better than I could've hoped, which is to say I didn't fuck it up too much, and vicky's heart wasn't minced or frappe'd, more like just crumpled a little. She was actually very understanding, considering, and we agreed on most of what needed to happen, the main difference being she remains optimistic about our future as trying to work things out later, while I am neutral, uncertain about what will happen, but I think it will definately take more than 2 weeks of being convieniently a country apart to make us work again, so until then, or in the event of then, I plan to be celebate...but of course, if you know me you're probably laughing at that last comment. Shut it.

Mood: exhausted
Music:White Noise vol. 1

Long talks about friends

2003-05-17T00:14:00.000+09:00

And east coast and west coast and you and them and there and here.
Healthy for you hurts for them.
I can't hide, I know were I stand finally, in a sense. I'm standing on thin air, or thin ice, take your pick. School's out and we are out of names to call each other. Ok this is not supposed to be a poem, why am I writing it like one? We trapped poor adam in with us and gave him a snapshot of the shit we do to us. I felt so bad, it needed a good talking and paige was a definately a voice of reason and comfort. Its nice after some distance to be reminded of why you're drawn to friends and who they are, even when all you have to talk about is other friends, and its all sewing circles, no one is saving much face, but its not so important anymore. This is all so internal, but don't blame me I'm on drugs.

Mood: drained
Music:Massive Attack, Teardrop

You-Me-Us-We

2003-05-16T00:12:00.001+09:00

wiping
drip-dried
mascara crust
tracing tear-trails
down her hot cheeks
rain on the winsheild
slides down
everything drips-drenched
it is pouring
the parking lot
is a puddle
the cd starts over again
with a hum
this car
is a coffin and

we are down the well
filled up and caught
in you-know-what
this is more than
we know
I cannot care-take
but take-care
to care
I take
in the right places
place a little yes
on your tattered tongue

cause a little
empathy goes a long way
and a spoonfull of
sympathy makes the poison
go down fine
we go down
fine

I am built a bridge
I am stretced across
the gap of us
I am down the well
please don't put me
down the well
I cannot climb
wet wall moss
and cold stone drip
I am down
the
well

you. me. us. we.
are well enough
and kind to say
the things the faces say
to keep faces up and
end up face down
in a bed of rain and nails
end up face down
trading sanity for friends
you/me/us/we

Fuck you/me

2003-05-14T00:11:00.000+09:00

So I tried my hand at slam. Mouth rather.
"Crashed n' burned on the first...it wasn't pretty."
As for the second, I don't know if there will be a second, but the Top Gun quote isn't entirely accurate. I mean, basically I fucked up the wrong piece in the second round and got beat out by some guy who got by telling the audience how he "loved all of them" in that incredible, universal "one-ness" of special unique-specialness and god and shit.
Anyway, I'm not as bitter as I may sound.
I was, after all, up against such poets as Der, the infamous, and Josh somethingorother. I felt dwarfed, but got a good response. Everyone was asking where mike was.
I blame the handle. If my name was something cooool like "Michael Molotov" I'd win with a name like that yeah I would. "Wicked McMegasweet" maybe. Nobody likes a joke slam name. I'm not a joke poet.
I feel a bit like a joke.
I shoulda done the serious one I intended to do.
shoulda shoulda
whatever
I still have to study. My impractical life.
Waste of time/tape/paint/words/breath/life.

Mood: pissed off
Music:Echo and the Bunnymen

The girl at the next computer is obviously stoned...

2003-05-11T00:08:00.000+09:00

As she leans over the screen with those red-red eyes moving franticly over a screen she obviously finds a little confusing. I wish I could still enjoy the weedage, but 3am panic attacks and munchy-weight gain have lost the appeal of the gaange for me long ago. In the meantime, its funny to watch her try and get stuff done amidst the fog of daze and the hazy smile on her chapped lips freaks me out. She looks up and gives me wan smiles, I shudder.
Anyway, its another library night.
My back hurts. My prof sent me a mean email. I'm pissy and not in the mood. SO< I think we're going back to vickys where I have some downers waiting to chase with Pink's shitty girly excuse-fer-booze. Then, I tell myself, then, I'll come work...sure I will. At least if I pass out in the library, I can wake up to my work and maybe get something done then. I just have to do it, even when I know i can't. I hate this place. Fatstonedhippies and hipsterfucks hardatwork. I hate this place.
We don't want the loonies takin' over. doo doo do do

Mood: cranky
Music:Radiohead - Hail to the Theif

Loose Grip on a Tight Ship

2003-05-09T11:52:00.000+09:00

Greetings, from hell!
I'm getting used to the suffering. One more week is what I keep telling myself, but it just doesn't seem real. Maybe its the drugs, or the sick (I'm convinced I have a symbiotic combination of all the germs surrounding me in the bodies of my friends: Bronchitus, walking pneumonia, and possible mono) but nothing seems all that real these days. So now its all-night-in-the-library time, where the headachebright flourescent lights are ergonomically designed to keep you awake longer than you thought humanly possible. I need speed but all I got's XTZ tea and tylenol for the pounding pressure in my brain. Save us jesus. My eyes keep going all fuzzy and nothing on this piece of shit computer works. Next week does not exist.

Mood: crazy
Music:the clack of keyboards in the library computer pit

My Hair Stands Up Straight When I Run My Hands Through It

2003-05-08T02:40:00.000+09:00

Thats from all the grease.
I need a shower
Sitll no paper
Still no sleep
out of drugs
five more pages to go
one more all nighter
a little more distraction
like livejournal.

Mood:arrrr
Music:Vicky's chainsaw snore

How Did I Get Here?

2003-05-04T18:21:00.002+09:00

[Ed's First Blog Post EVER imported from Livejournal]

it came to me as I coughed
up the stairs
I came to me
in the stale-smoke boozebottle
smell of my room:
nothing is coming to me.

There's a paper to be written.
it's 6:something in the morning and the
drugs have only spun me in the wrong directions
I can't get moving, just like usual. I can't get myself to get un-stuck.
So this is the first entry. This is the online life I never should have started--
probably. Anyway.

The words of the day
RUNNING FROM THE FURNITURE:
Inmylife the furniture eats me
It will eat me
Alive
I cannot write
The room wants my mind
For itself
This room will have my soul
The souls
The many souls I have and will be and were
And are I a To Be or a Was?
Were I a You or an It?
Will I be an A or a The?
The the of your is is
Without us
There is nothing
Within us
We are not the carriers of light we
Imagine
Our
-selves to
be
We cannot c o n t a I n
This us
This us
Is not in us
It is not just
that
We have some blood
Under this skin
Some gooey
Mess of function
I am not a The
I am the Not
I am a 'not a The'
I cannot be digested
I refuse-

I am made of ref-use
I am built for use
I thrive on the uses
Of my use
And there will be no use for words
Words
They
Are empty
Like ours:
The helpless
Crust of
Skin
Over the crossbeams
And bolsters
Of bone
Structure
To keep it all
Safely inside
To keep us
From collapsing
Into piles
Of useless
Mush on
The bedroom floor

We have a use
A use for the useless
Our bodies are not hollow
Though it comforts us to think
So

We are simply alive
And our lives devour
Us
Piecemeal, the furniture
Of the
Plush houses
Or the bleak boards of the crack-houses
Holes to the rain
And newspaper windows
It devours us
These bodies
Are tangled
In grace
Like a web
These bodies
Are tangled

In grace

god its pretentious and everything sucks Im not in the mood for life right now put me to bed put me inside put me away.
FRUSTRATION
Hell of a fucking start