absence makes the heart go yonder

listen dan, it's been a long time since you posted anything on me (like 37 days, even) and i'm starting to wonder if you even carea about me anymore. i have feelings too, you know, and needs, and contrary to what everybody's been telling you, i'm not going to just sit around and wait for you to come back to me, extra-large hat in hand, and act like nothing ever happened. the fact is that you gave up on us, not me. and frankly, i don't want to hear excuses about finals, or holidays, or the strange virus you picked up from tramping around on new year's.

get over yourself and come back to me, because i haven't given up. and if you're man enough to admit you were wrong, i'll be blog enough to take you back. this time. everybody deserves a second chance, even a jerk like you. plus you're just too damn sexy not to have in my life. play your cards right, and maybe you can be a blogger with benefits. just promise not to fuck up anymore and treat me with a little respect, ok? i deserve it.

love (begrudgingly),
your blog

on the move

i love to travel, even if i don't do it nearly often enough (no $$$) and even if i'm just traveling to places i've already been to a hundred times. it's just the act of uprooting myself (temporarily. semi-permanently, maybe. i'm not sure i could ever leave boston for good) and all the little acts that go along with it. right down to requesting time off from work and watering the plants. i can't even describe what it is, but it thrills me to no end. which makes me pretty awesomely lame, i guess.

i really like the weird things about it, too. train station kiosk coffee, getting gold dollar coins from ticket vending machines, that good-stiff-shoulders feeling that only seems to come from a duffel bag full of dirty laundry, uninterrupted ipod time, texting from the train, trying to figure out where strangers are going. this stuff just makes me happy. i always stay up late the night before a trip too. it's not even on purpose (mostly), but i'm sure being tired helps to coat the whole experience in that gauzy transient drifting haze that i find so endearing.

anyway, turkey-day-week is here and with it, lots of opportunity for me to be (more) tired and move around the eastern seaboard. i just got off a series of trains and there are going to be plenty of automobiles in my near future. which is good, because i miss driving! and i have a metric assload of cds to rock out to. so happy thanksgiving to whoever reads this and try to enjoy the traveling, because anybody trying to get anywhere between now and sunday is in for a grand old time.

dear britt daniel,

i know you probably get a lot of letters like this, but i just wanted to say that you pretty much rock. just the other day, i saw bono (in 7/11! eating a roller-dog!!) and i gave him a nod and thought that though he's done a fairly good job of publicizing the plight of the impoverished and hungry and whatnot in africa, there must be somebody who could do those things who wasn't involved in the production of 'how to dismantle an atomic bomb.'

and that's when i thought of you, britt! you're compassionate, friendly, outgoing, you have awesome hair, and i bet you smell pretty good most of the time (unlike bono. also, nitrates, dude! seriously.) and what more do you need to be an international davos-fixture like lord bono?

this is getting a little off topic, but really britt, i just wanted you to know that i was thinking about you and listening to some of your fantastic music, and it made me a little sad that you're not beloved by more people. if you're ever in boston, look me up, ok? talk to you later!

love,
dan

nanowrimo, take five-ish

it's that magical time of year again, when my eyes are too big for my...talent, i guess. november equals national novel writing month, which for me usually equals grandiose ambitions followed by very little in the way of follow-through. the idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

i've been trying since my junior year of college, and the best i ever did was 10,000 (actually 9,874--huzzah for rounding!) and that was two years ago. last year, being back in school, i was quickly distracted by things like papers and other unimportant things (thanksgiving? whatever). but not this time! no sir, i have a secret weapon this year, and it's called: cheating.

that's right. this summer, i started writing a story and got about half of a notebook into it before school started again and robbed me of my mojo/free time/will to live. so, since i still have all that other junk to do this november (trip to see cecilia, turkeyday, homework, real work, trivia night, etc.), i've decided that it's not really unethical to use a story i've already started. since i have to type it anyway, it's practically like writing it (take that, ethics!). anyway, shut up, it's my story and my month!

p.s. write your own novel! go to the website and check it out. the more the merrier!

master of mixology

no, not booze for once (though i'm pretty unstoppable with that too; see: green crush). music actually. to me, crafting mixtapes (or ipod playlists, if you're into that whole thing) is like the fine art of collage. or scrapbooking. or fanfiction. it's all about rearranging other people's hard work into kick-ass arrangements that say something about you, not those sell-outs who actually produced the stuff.

i like to make mixes that fit my attitude towards my own life. one of the downsides of this approach is that they don't always stay relevant since, well, things change. still, if the mix really works, it should come together to form a solid, delicious whole that is more than the sum of its parts (not unlike jell-o), and the timeliness issue shouldn't be a problem. that being said, some songs really (really) don't age well, and it can be hard to figure out if "jenny was a friend of mine" is still going to be rock-tacular when i'm an adult (p.s. i'm not yet).

so, if you're like me (you're probably not) and you love a good cliche (you probably don't), then you think making a mix cd/playlist/tape for your significant whatever is good old fashioned fun (and you probably already left my blog). for reals though: it's mostly personal, it takes a not-insignificant amount of time, and it can--if done properly--give her important relationship information. what info you provide, however, depends on the mix. you can tell her about yourself, your influences and tastes, what you're listening to at the moment, or what songs you want to have sex to the next time she's in town. on the other hand, you can show her that you've been paying attention every time she says she loves a song (to really step it up, find other songs by the same band, or similar bands. but oh man, stay away from covers), or that you remember what songs she played during sex the last time. or you can do themes. they're kind of cheesy, but as in most things, the line between romance and cheese is a very fine one. and it takes practice to stay on the right side of it.

caveat mixtor: you can very easily ruin a song you love by putting in a mix for a girl who dumps your cheesy ass. especially if you really dug her. shit, music is wicked evocative, that's the whole point of it, and when you go and associate it with some painful happenings, kiss it goodbye. for a while anyway. what's the getting-over-a-breakup rule? half the length of the relationship? yeah, that sounds good. don't listen to tainted music until half the length of the relationship has passed since the breakup. got it?

p.s. mixes are fun for other things too, like working out ("rump shaker," etc.) and parties ("rump shaker," etc.) and getting blazed ("the ocean," etc.)! haha, yeah right, loser. they're also awesome for a night alone with a bottle of makers' mark and singing along/dancing on the bed. not that i would know. my only playlists are titled "kicking ass" and "making it with chicks".

slight site changes, insights to excite!

blogger's new layout gizmo is giving me issues, so i'm calling it a night. no more 'what hits' bar, as i got the feeling it only mattered to me and was a pain in the ass to update (there was typing involved, gah). trying to give you guys a new picture to swoon over (it shows off my eyes!) and a new blogroll. the labels are awesome, and i'm having a blast with 'em. in case you couldn't tell.

by the by, did anybody hear about that nutbar down in georgia? yeah, she wants to ban harry potter books because they're too witchy! i know! the nerve of some people. not only are witches smoking hot (sabrina, samantha, tara, willow, blair witch, hermione), but they teach kids to read before they eat them. sometimes. also a few of those witches i mentioned saved the world! what have you done lately, nutbar?

oh, right, you made sure your library didn't have any spanish-language fiction so the immigrants wouldn't come in there and make it smelly and mexican. fantastic job. really, way to fucking go. i almost wish witches were real so they could eat your children and keep them from spreading your lunacy to more innocent people!

first of all, many immigrants (legal or not) are not spanish speakers at all. they're from other parts of the world that probably scare nutbar just as badly. secondly, a fair amount of illegal immigrants (the scarier kind) are fucking illiterate! and i bet they're still smarter than you! sweet fucking christ, lady. i can't decide whether to tear my hair out or curl up in a ball and weep.

p.s. the harry potter series are the most banned books of all time. as banned books week was last week, we can safely assume that nutbar is ignorant about pretty much everything yet was blessed with a deliciously ironic sense of timing.

dogs think i'm awesome

i was riding home after work. it was a beautiful evening in boston, cool and windy; the whole city smelled like the ocean. i like riding at night, as long as i have my lights on so i don't have to fear for my life around the worst drivers in america. on a night like tonight, i just feel bad for the poor suckers in their cars. with good music on the 'pod and the wind in my face, it's the only way to get around.

anyway, i was about halfway over the charles, with all of cambridge spread about in front of me, and a car pulls up alongside me. we're going exactly the same speed, and i find myself face to face with a big brown dog who has his head stuck out the window about 2 feet away. he's got a big dog grin on his big dog face and he looks at me and i look at him. yeah, i think we shared a moment, i'm not ashamed to admit it. he knew what was up.

last weekend, completely randomly, we ended up in the nyc dog fair in madison sq. park. they had a booth for just about every breed and there were maybe 200 people and 400 dogs of all sizes roaming around the park. it was pretty damn awesome. i'm not sure what brought on this whole pet love-in, maybe the long distance relationship thing is making me lonely, but someday pretty soon (when i sell my first novel, duh) i'm gonna get a dog. i grew up with cats, and my sister has cats, and my roommate has cats, but good goddamn, am i ever sick of cats. can you picture what a cat fair would be like? crazy people and snobby cats looking at each other across the park. plus hairballs everywhere. fucking cats.

my semi-annual* report on election results

yes, the nights are getting cooler and the leaves are starting to change colors. pumpkins and squash are everywhere you look. as of today, it's officially my favorite season! and politicians across this great nation are amping up the rhetoric, making outlandish claims of competence and professionalism, and calling each other dirty words (hack! ideologue! liberal!) in an effort to transform themselves into the lesser of two/three/six evils.

sadly, even i get a little cynical about elections these days. especially primaries. i tried to vote on tuesday, to make sure my boy deval got the nomination for governor. the emphasis there was on tried, by the way. i went back to my old address in somerville to vote--technically illegal, as i'm a resident of cambridge now, but whatever--only to find out that the somerville elections people had me listed as an inactive voter at my prior address (which was also in somerville, but in another ward). so i asked the nice staff lady if i could just go over there and vote. she said that because i was inactive, in order to vote, i had to sign an affadavit saying that i was who i said i was and that i lived where they said i lived. wouldn't that be (even more) illegal (than what i'm doing now)? i asked. yes, she answered, way more fucking illegal. and the penalty for perjuring myself in such a way is like jail time and possible sexual trespassing. now, i'm pretty sure i can take fisty mcrapesalot in a fight, as i routinely kick the crap out of shaolin monks possessed by demons with my kung fu on the way to work. nevertheless, i didn't want to bike across town because i had homework to do and i wanted a muffin pretty badly. i'll just make sure to reregister for the general, i told her with a steely glint in my eye. i think she got the message.

anyway, voting is harder than it should be. and that's not even counting having to fight my way through the horde of republicans keeping good democrats like me away from the polls. if i didn't have the ninja skills to blend into the shadows they might have stopped me with their burning effigies and 'liberalism killed jesus' signs.

and speaking of republicans being batshit crazy...

the reactionary, torture-loving house passed a new--and wicked unconstitutional--law saying that people will need to present valid photo ids in order to vote in 08. this is to cut down on voter fraud, so that people can't claim to be other people when they vote. this is a stupid law because nobody even does that shit, and if they did, simply having to show id probably wouldn't stop them, just like it hasn't stopped billions of college kids from buying beer despite being 18. also, it's to stop illegal aliens from enacting their master plan of voting in politicians who will approve their communist amnesty idea and make them legal. this is also stupid, as most illegal aliens are goddamned terrified of being found out and that plan i just made up might as well have been drafted by pixies riding on a unicorn. it's pure fantasy, baby.

no, what this stupid law is all about is making sure that the poor and elderly--who are less likely to own cars and thus driver's licenses, and are mostly democratic voters, coincidentally--have a harder time voting. by the way, it's also unconstitutional. and stupid.


* whenever i the hell feel like it

snootchie-bootchies

once in a great while--not nearly as often as i'd like--i just want to get blazed out of my mind. i haven't smoked weed in a while now, but i've been watching weeds on dvd for about 3 hours now, and i think it's actually killing me. the jonesing, that is. the show is fucking great. season 2 starts on monday, but i'll be sadly out of premium television range at that point (and possibly out on the street--welfare state, my ass, massachusetts). i don't have a dealer anyway, so even if i had cash, all i could do is stare at it and pray for a miracle. good thing chris died for my sins.

thoughts on social networking

i guess i'm part of the facebook generation, as these things are understood. i'm probably on the cusp of being too old for it actually, and if not for a youthful girlfriend, i likely wouldn't have bothered. that being said, i'm kind of a sucker for this stuff. if i was anywhere close to single, i could have a lot of fun with match.com and its loneliness-defeating ilk. as it stands, i guess i'm more of a voyeur(/exhibitionist?), using various networks (i'm on friendster and myspace too, i'm pretty sure) to check in on far-away friends and find out what those losers from high school are up to.

i'm not one of those addicts you hear about who posts new pictures every day or exhaustively comments on everybody's walls. for seriously, who has the time? i'm getting pretty tired just writing this shit. and i have better things to do, like finding a home and a paycheck.

oh yeah, and myspace, for christ's sake get over yourself. as much as i (may or may not) like you, i probably don't want to hear your band unless somebody i trust can vouch for it. my listening time is too damn valuable to me (i use it to listen to stuff i already like, ok? sue me, i'm human). myspace band pages are like blogs. if i read one i like, and they recommend somebody else's, i'll check it out and decide for myself. but if you just start asking me to be your friend and check out your "awesome band" i'm probably going to report you by saying you solicited me for underage sex. yes, it's vindictive, but at least you'll get to be on dateline! think of the exposure!

rupert murdoch probably doesn't like you anyway.

the great thing about these social networks is that they're not really social at all. i can completely ignore virtually every one of my "friends" if i want to. if i did it in real life, then i would be forced to drink alone (more than i already do) but in the vast uncharted internets, i can pretend to be too busy with meetings and power lunches to care about what your summer plans are, weird girl who i met sophomore year! i just wish there was some way to combine all three of my profiles into one place so i wouldn't have to check multiple sites just to cyberstalk people. what a hassle!

last week in dc

and i'm having a bit of hard time with it. i guess i should've expected it...i've been tempted to look for jobs around here instead of in boston, and to contact school and see how hard it would be to transfer for my final year. it's a weird feeling, i've always considered myself to be a pretty independent person, and the last year of long-distance relationshipping (ldr-ing) was hard but not nearly as hard as i had been afraid it would turn out to be. so why am i worried now?

because i'm also excited to leave. part of that is the things i have hanging over my head. looking for a job and an apartment at the same time is hell no matter how you slice it, but to be in the wrong city while cheap studios get taken and interviews get postponed is downright torturous. and despite my mom's conviction that i'm a member of the wait-and-see tribe (thanks, jd!), i actually prefer to go out and get shit done rather than let it get all sword of damocles on me (ok, that was gratuitous, i'm sorry). unless it's a paper for school. those are best left until the last minute, because that's when all the good ideas come out and play.

right, so i was going to use this post-work week to get out there and do a whole bunch of touristy things (climb the monument, go to the zoo, stand in the middle of the city and ask the cool looking people how to get to the jefferson memorial, take pictures of every building i see, eat signature dc foods (coffee and steak? every day? i feel like a lobbyist!), etc.) but now i'm gonna be guilty if i don't actually look for jobs/apartments. there's probably some way to equitably divide these things among the hours of the girlfriend-deprived portion of my day--there are far better ways to spend the hours when she's around, snap!--but all i really want to do is work on my latest story. since i'm basically trapped here with lots of free time, i should take advantage and really try to work through a chapter or three. with nanowrimo coming up fast, it's best to get into practice for 2000 words a day.

on top of all that, there's a very real sense that we've already started saying goodbye. shared glances heavy with significance, more hand-holding, lots of um...intimacy. none of which is bad, mind you. but it's hard to start saying goodbye with a week to go. i almost prefer to ignore it until the day i'm leaving, and then be sad for a day or two (or week, or until the phone sex starts) than to feel it dragging out through every minute we have together. she tries very hard not to be sad when we're apart though, more than i do, so i feel like she deserves a little indulgence. i'm perfectly ok with her sadness schedule. when i get sad and we're apart, i'll almost welcome it. i like a little melancholy now and then to spice things up--have a glass of bourbon, put on some mournful, beautiful music, light a few candles and stare at the cieling. i try to revel in the maudlin fun of it all. she's a stiff upper lip kind though. lacking in the "artistic temperament" (that's ok with me, i've got some to spare, after all). she bottles it up when we're apart, so it's almost good for her to be a little sad all week. a small price to pay for me anyway. my job is to cheer her up, and i think i'm damn good at it.

this is a little more personal than i usually get, so let me know if it's too much. not that i would stop. i do what i want, alright? quit trying to change me, jeez.

good move, give the crazies a megaphone

fuck! i’m never watching cnn ever again.
you hear me, time warner? never! i’m an msnbc viewer from here on out, no matter how cute anderson cooper is or how many times he has angelina jolie on his show, or how many times soledad o’brien says she thinks I’m hot. fucking forget it! you can’t put shit like this on the air!

that's just how soledad shows her love --->

there goes my screenplay idea

the someday café really is closing this time.  and sooner rather than later.  that’s kinda sad, despite what i said before.  i don’t even like mr. crêpe, and it sounds like they were steamrolled by developmentophiles and a cocksucker landlord.

not that there’s anything surprising about that.  if there’s a single landlord in boston who isn’t a cocksucker*, i’d be glad to shake his/her hand.

when i first wrote about it, i figured it would be like in empire records, and through a very watchable combination of pluck and short skirts they’d turn it all around, possibly by baking brownies or inviting scul over to shake down the fatcats or waging guerilla war on artbeat.  so much for life imitating art.  at least i can still go to diesel to play pool/get sneered at for my hopeless corporatism.

now i’m just depressed.

*quick disclaimer about cocksucking.  i’m all for it--i don’t care who you are or whose cock you’re sucking, i think it’s fan-fucking-tastic.  really, knock yourself out.  i just think it’s a completely, awesomely useful word.  james lipton, if you’re reading this, one question down, nine to go!

forefathers be proud

happy birthday america!

the 4th of july is an odd duck of a holiday.  not so much in the reasons for its existence, but more in the way it’s celebrated.  is bbq-ing american?  sure it is, unless you count all of the other cultures—africans, arabs, asians—who beat us to it.  there’s also the pesky fact that holding raw meat over open fire may very well be the oldest form of cooking there is.  it’s so easy, a caveman could do it.  sure, they didn’t have frozen burger patties and individually wrapped cheese slices back then (it took america to individually wrap its cheese, by gum!), so i guess we can lay our claim to the experience if not the method.  but is grilling really any more american than frying things?  kfc and paula deen probably don’t think so.  we can probably call the fish-fry an authentic american experience, and it’s even appropriately summery, but i don’t think it’ll ever catch on as a 4th staple.

also, when the temperature rises, there’s a certain segment of the population (myself included) that will always reach for one specific beer—la corona!  That’s just an inviolable fact of summer.  and despite the overall (and also inviolable) blandness of the corona, i have yet to find an american lager that a) combines as well with limes and b) refreshes quite so perfectly.  sure if push came to shove, i would sell my cervezas down the river for a pint of harpoon summer, but sadly, that miracle beer hasn’t made to my little corner of the swamp that is dc.  anyway, the point is that our nation’s birthday is doomed by its own summer date to be celebrated with mexican beer. (don’t worry, america, my coronas were in celebration of their election, not your birthday!)

lastly, fireworks.  we all know blowing things up is as american as apple pie.  but the chinese invented fireworks!  and yes, i suppose if there’s one thing america does better than any other country, it’s appropriate culture and assimilate people.  all things considered though, there’s not one thing about this holiday that’s actually american (not counting mike’s supersnack)!  we even had tortilla chips (mexico again) and pretzels (dutch or german, i don’t know).

i guess what I’m trying to say is, good job america!  this holiday has actually shown me that we can thank the various immigrants we’ve had over the centuries, because i’m pretty sure that without them we’d be eating deep-fried cheetos and setting off real bombs every year.