AAAARRGGH

Fucking DAMMIT.

Diary-x hosted my sister's site. It was one of my favorite things to read; her writing is so damn articulate and bittersweet and awesome. It was freaking inspiring. Intimidating, too, considering the kid's only sixteen. I've never linked to it here, because I'm fairly sure my parents read my blog, and I didn't want to blow her cover or whatnot. But...geez. It was so good.

Her site was really nicely designed, too. It had an Exploding Dog motif, all wavery lines and wistful stick figures. Minimalist, but not bare.


So yeah. I hope she gets another site going soon. I promise not to out that one either, kiddo.

I really shouldn't be posting right now, but how could I resist?

From deep in the belly of the brief, I surface to bring you this factoid: someone actually brought a products liability suit for injuries caused by a sports bra.

I was totally intrigued by this (what, did she put an eye out while running?), so I looked up the case. No, turns out she was sunbathing in 100+ degree weather while wearing a black sports bra, and she got third degree burns on the areas traditionally covered by that kind of garment. To which I say: ouch.

She didn't win, though. Which seems fair...I mean, how do you not notice that happening?

Anyway, back to the brief.

My Brain Chemistry Is Fucked and SO AM I

Caffeine makes me sleepy. True fact.


Well, ok, the evidence also admits of another hypothesis:

Life makes me sleepy, and caffeine does not change this fact.



Either way, it's not helping me write this buttmunching thing. Which is bad, because it means I have to fall back on my inner resources of concentration and stick-to-it-iveness. That's right: I'M FUCKED.

Untergang des Abendlandes

I was half-way through a post that started out bitching about this huge fucking appellate brief assignment that's due on Monday, and devolved into introspective reminiscence about literary history and criticism in general and my thesis in particular, but it got kind of out of hand and pulling it together is frankly the last thing I should be spending my time on right now.

Suffice it to say that in German, at least if you're speaking old-fashioned German with its disdain for imported Latin derivations, the word for the West as in the Western Canon is Abendland. Which, being interpreted, means Evening Land. Awesome.

So someday when I have time and inclination, two things that rarely coincide for me, I'll tell you all about Erich Auerbach and his book Mimesis, which is the best book-about-other-books that I've ever encountered.


*Subject line: Decline of the West. See? So much cooler in German. Oswald Spengler knew what he was about.

You know...for kids!

I watched The Hudsucker Proxy last night. Awesome. That whole movie was an example of what Tim Burton tries and fails to do.

Also, it contained a dance sequence that was nothing short of inspired. After my buddy and I finished watching it, we replayed the dance scene twice. It was that badass.

We so funny

This is an excerpt from a GoogleTalk conversation I had today with the awesome Catherine, girlfriend of my brother Troll. I can't think of a good alias for her.

ridley: so i've got a date with this czech guy saturday...
Catherine: cool, give me details! name, age, how met.
ridley: roman, 26, met on the internet.
Catherine: (gasp)
   and how do you know it's not Chester, 61, has a shotgun??

Hee.

And the answer is, well, in that case Chester speaks some damn good Czech, and language practice is really all I'm looking for. Plus, it's time we all came out of the closet about the internet dating. We all do it, we all pretend we don't, and we all judge others for doing it. So really, it's just like many other areas of life, such as nose-picking and making inappropriate romantic choices while drunk.

I should probably try not leaving glasses of water around at foot level

So I knocked over a glass the other day and spilled a bunch of water on my keyboard...not my actual laptop keyboard, thank the lord. No, this was the separate keyboard that I have so I can plug it in when I'm home and pretend I'm a normal person who sits at a desk with a keyboard and a mouse, instead of someone who slumps on the couch with my laptop actually on my lap. Anyway, it was lying on the floor at my feet while I was doing said couch-slumping, and I knocked over a glass of water onto it. The water glass was also on the floor, because, well, that's where I put things. Don't judge me.

Since it wasn't plugged in, I figured it was no big deal, and I just shook it off and set it aside.

There it sat until a few minute ago, when I needed to use the 10-key number pad. When I plugged it in, there were no immediate sparks or anything, and the keys seemed to work ok. But the action was kind of mushy, and -- here's the deal-breaker -- the whole thing smelled pungently of ancient wet Berkenstocks. And not in a good way. If there even is a good way for something to smell like Berks.

Bottom line, I'm pretty sure I'm out 20 bucks for a new keyboard. I could try spraying the crap out of it with lysol..but I can't imagine that would be good for all the delicate bits in there. The same goes for all the other conventional bacteria-killing methods. The little bastards are tougher than computer parts on every level, I'm pretty sure.


Well anyways. Yeah. There...there wasn't really a point. Sorry.

Memories of Times Gone By

About four years ago, I wandered towards the smoker's patio, the Old School smoker's patio, in front of the commons like the Lord intended. There were a couple of people sitting in a group, gazing catlike at the glass doors to the commons. Pretty soon, someone walked along the front of the coffee shop towards the commons entrance. The watchers' attention sharpened. As the guy put his hand on the pushbar, one of the watchers yelled "HI!" with focused energy. The walker's head jerked back towards the noise, his hand failed to engage the bar, and he crashed shoulder-first into the door. They exchanged muffled cheers while he slunk away, and settled back to wait for the next victim; another watcher was at bat now. Whether by experiment or accident, at some point they'd pinpointed the exact moment when a hail from behind would pretty much inevitably cause someone to fuck up that most basic of skills, the door-opening process. And now they'd made it into a sport.

As I watched them watch the door, two feelings divided my soul: on the one hand, these were blatantly awful people, and they were being awful whilst treating people like bowling pins. Because they thought they were so great. But on the other hand, why hadn't I invented this game, dammit?

Ok, thinking back, I think fuming jealousy really had the upper hand in my soul. Alas.

All the way to Buttfuck, Asia!

Holy fucking shit I know what I absolutely have to do someday: The Mongol Rally.

Check that shit out! It's a race from London to Ulan Bataar, the capital of Mongolia. You can use any kind of car you like -- as long as it's a model that's "generally considered to be crap" and has less than 1000 cc's engine capacity. Like a Trabant or a Fiat. Or a Geo Metro.

Holy shit, yo. How much fun would that be? It only takes, like, 3 or 4 weeks, assuming you actually make it all the way to the finish. Their advice for the Mongolia leg of the trip is just to drive from yurt to yurt, asking directions, because it's apparently been experientially proven that every single map of Mongolia is wrong.

I'd need a co-pilot. Crashboxing would be pretty much perfect. He'd have the mechanical end of it covered, and I could deal with languages and navigation and whatnot. Plus I think we'd both be pretty handy with a tire iron if it came to a fight with the locals. It would be awesome!


So. Another thing to put down on The List, along with doing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and crossing an ocean in a sailboat. I'm excited.