let’s keep our fingers crossed…
Category: Uncategorized
hopefully there will be no serious outages while i try to make a few changes… updates soon.
[now hearing this: oh my god i forgot — i posted at work, and yet i can do an actual [now hearing this]. postal service, in case you were wondering. but it’s all thanks to a script i downloaded from this great page of ipod scripts. now i can rip songs to my ipod at home, then upload (what’s the opposite of rip in this case? unrip? join?) songs to my imac here at work, which you can’t do normally without a sneaky script.
and in case you’re wondering, ‘well, if you have an ipod, why don’t you just listen to the songs right off of that?’ then let me tell you i have a very good reason. if you wear headphones in a place like this you can’t hear someone asking for you, not to mention you are seen as anti-social. and how am i supposed to climb the corporate ladder if people think i don’t like them? haha…exactly. so i stick with my cute little modern/hip imac speakers turned to an appropriate volume.
plus, this way the other people on the network can see what great taste in music i have — almost 5gb worth — which can only lead to eventual office romance. right?]
i haven’t been sleeping much this week. things have kept me up later than usual every night, until last night which was cancelled out by having to get up earlier than usual. i wish i could attribute my nocturnal habits to something (or prefereably someone) really exciting, but it’s more nerdy than anything. you’ll see next week. it’s a special, albeit geeky occasion.
then last night was a night out with the crew from work, which luckily for me is actually enjoyable. i work with good people. interesting the things you learn about them when you’re out at a bar instead of in an office, but they’re still good despite their other sides. i think i’m lucky to have found a place here.
but good or not, staying out until 11:30 with people you work with, unless they’re really your best friends too, gets sort of strange. i had to get out of there before it got too late because the idea of spending all day with a group of people associated with work, as fun as they may be, then the whole night with them — to the point where i go home, go straight to bed, then wake up and go back to work with them — was a little to much. the days would just blend together too easily. so i left a bit earlier than the most dedicated of the bunch in the interest of having at least an hour or so to sit on my own couch with my own friends. it made a noticeable and welcome difference.
i’m curious as to the percentage of blogger-published web sites that comment on the new layout the first time they post using it. i would guess it has to be around 95% which i’m not ashamed to be contributing to — just because everyone else does it doesn’t automatically make it bad. it does look more like a webmail page now though. and i never liked webmail.
oh, gorgeous weekend — i think the only really shitty part of my week these days is adjusting from waking up at noon on your heavenly sunday mornings to waking up almost 5 hours earlier the day following. it’s not that i hate going to work so much as it’s simply a very harsh contrast in waking habits. but we survive somehow. with free donuts, maybe. or free lunches with margaritas. or birthday cake (no, not mine, but still chocolatey).
yes, it’s been a rough day.
the weekend was fabulous though. i think i have developed a real taste for los angeles lately. the past few weeks have sort of sold me on it. last weekend we drove less than two hours and climbed cool desert boulder formations. this weekend i managed to pack into a single day the two very opposing activities of driving less than an hour to a mountain biking track that took us through meadows of wildflowers and over rocks and hills and was gorgeous in a natural kind of way; to walking down a street in hollywood looking for a bar that wasn’t too pretentious and just happening to walk past quentin tarantino coming out of the egyptian theatre, looking not-so-gorgeous in a put on some weight recently kind of way. then we found a bar with 3 dollar beers which is great for this town. fantastic.
if sunday had been sunny enough for a beach trip i would have been in heaven. instead i bought a desk chair for my new apartment, which will probably be heaven in it’s own way once i live there and sit curled up in its leathery embrace reading a book in my slick new apartment. soon enough.
big things coming soon! stay tuned.
[now hearing this: time to go home!]
before i get fully into planning my weekend activities — happy hour? movies? ping pong? — some friday morning netflix rental reviews:
in the company of men – 4 stars (out of 5)
highly recommended by my film nut friend spencer, i finally got around to seeing this and laughed loudly and often. the two main characters are drawn up so well you can’t help but laugh at almost everything they do. as long as you’re not a weakling who is offended by exagerrated male stereotypical misogyny, i’d say see this. obviously funnier to guys, i’d guess, and the closing scene let me down, but still, good.
igby goes down – 4 stars
i’m a fan of bleak cynical humor, and this movie had it start to finish (starting more on the humor side and ending more on the bleak), which i liked. it also had jeff goldblum, who i think is a funny enough supporting actor to overcome ryan phillipe’s deficiency as one, which i liked. plus it had clare danes, who i will have an eternal crush on thanks to formative junior high years watching my so-called life, which i couldn’t help but like. i wanted to give this 5 stars, but i was just too depressed afterward to be excited about this movie. but in a good way, you know?
the deer hunter – 3 stars
great movie; if it were 2 hours instead of 3. i laughed at the buddy scenes that set up the characters, and the fucked up scenes in vietnam were unforgettable, but there seemed like so much exposition that didn’t deliver in the end i wasn’t sure it was worth all the time i spent watching this movie. and who ends a war film with people singing ‘god bless america’? i mean come on. worth it for the deniro/walken scenes though.
and a nice book review to show i don’t just sit on the couch with a remote in my hand…
glamorama – 4 stars
i’m an ellis fan, otherwise this might have been a 3. he just tells such visceral stories though, i get sucked in. i am afraid for his characters and what manner of descent they will go through before hitting bottom. and he does have an uncanny ability to turn your stomach with written words i find more grotesque than most visual scenes of horror i’ve ever seen in film, which you at least have to respect. starts out with laughs and ends up with bloodbaths — what’s not to like?
[now hearing this: nothing, really. i need to remember one day to bring my firewire to work so i can upload from my ipod somehow.]
this afternoon i was caught reading mcsweeney’s by a coworker (those superhero diary and how to break writer’s block pieces were cracking me up), and he called me a ‘closet intellectual’. now, this is by someone i respect, someone who strikes me as a smart guy. i wasn’t sure though if i should take that as a compliment in that i’m sharp but don’t wave it around, or an insult in that no one would ever guess that i’m any sort of thinker. either way at least he didn’t say, “what, you’re into reading?”
so in two days i’ve become a british closet intellectual. perhaps tomorrow in the copy room that girl with the irresistable black rimmed glasses will turn to me and say something along the lines of, “you know, you strike me as someone who’d be fantastic to spend the night with.”
i think that would put a pretty nice cap on the week. and since i have no weekend plans as of yet…
[now hearing this: gangstarr]
today i was at a photo shoot for a magazine ad and the german photographer named werner — pronounced ‘verner’, of course — said i looked very british.
when i woke up this morning, nothing after ‘was’ in that last sentence would ever have entered my mind as possibilities for the day ahead. add another passage onto the pile of ‘brian is amazed at seeing himself become a real person’ posts.
(oddly, others agreed with him on this, something i had never even considered — is looking british a compliment? at least if it’s coming from a 40- or 50-something german photographer with a ponytail? i will assume yes.)
i hate seeing typos in things i wrote a few days ago because i know it’s too late to fix them and prevent giving the impression that i am a poor writer, or at least a careless editor, when in fact everyone should know by now that i am not at all unskilled — i am keeping it real. word.
just like i hate thinking that people don’t get my sarcastic arrogance and end up thinking i am conceited, or my sarcastic insecurity and end up thinking i am self-pitying, when in fact i try to mix the two so no one thinks either because really i’m neither. i mean, i simply hate myself as much as the next guy.
[now hearing this: that totally shitty sting desert rose song playing over the loudspeakers for some office thing which i am about to go steal some food from. well, i guess take, not steal, since it’s for any employees. but i didn’t listen to the silly guest speaker beforehand so i sure got them, huh!]
what a weekend! well really i guess it was just saturday that was so fantastic — friday was a disappointing happy hour followed by sitting at home for the night, and sunday was consumed primarily with buying and constructing moderately priced furniture for the new apartment. and although i am proud to be the owner of a handsome new dining room set and balcony furniture, i will forego the tale of “gino and brian mount a rod on their kitchen wall from which to hang pots and pans in an attractive largest-to-smallest fashion” in favor of the hopefully more pleasing “robots go to joshua tree: an illustrated essay”.
someone suggested around wednesday of last week that we go camping at joshua tree this weekend, and being adventurous to some degree, three of us seized that idea and convinced a fourth to come along after some goading. a quick two-hour drive out of LA on saturday afternoon and we were rising out of the 100-degree desert wasteland into the 80-degree desert mountains. quite a step up in scenery. we set up a basic camp and spent the next few hours of daylight scrambling all over the huge boulder formations of the park, sometimes leaping across death-defying chasms, as seen in picture one of me completing one of said feats (in arms-up action pose). it was a lot of boyish fun.
after climbing our third, final, and tallest very large boulder pile, we decided to sit back and relax for a while to enjoy the sunset over the mountaintops from our perch, all while making fun of the people down below who came all the way out into a national park and ended up sitting in the ruins of an old building — oh, the delicious irony. it was beautiful and serene and quite enjoyable, as you can see in picture two of josh (L), myself and mike (R) gazing out over our domain.
in the not-quite-darkness between the sun sinking into the mountains and the onset of actual night, we clambered down and went back to camp to start a fire and crack some cold ones (the first of many). as barbeque enthusiasts on regular days, that night we were especially salivating over tasty burgers grilled on a campfire after a day spent climbing and jumping all over the place. it would have been almost too savory to handle, were we not well-practiced in this area of enjoyment, seen in picture 3 of josh (L), justin, myself and mike gobbling up our gourmet.
as the night went on stars came out in full force and we looked for constellations in the sky. that is, until we were taken by one of the coolest scenes i have ever seen, a full moon rising over the eastern mountains. we could actually see its motion as it came up over the ridge, and it was so bright it lit up the whole basin we were in and cast shadows on the rocks around us. it was spectacular. photo four is an attempt to capture it, but not being photo experts the result isn’t nearly as breathtaking.
then we got down to the real business: sitting around a fire and drinking beers. 12 beers apiece, actually. how did that happen? when we bought it we figured we’d be tired and enjoy a few before getting to bed, and still have a whole case or more left for when we went home the next night. we sure showed ourselves. we ended up staying awake until almost 3am watching the fire and drinking and telling stories. we climbed on some more rocks in the moonlight which was so bright it was no problem (i put on sunglasses — because i am so cool — and could still see, it was so bright). this sadly led to peeing off of ledges and mike twisting his ankle on the way back down. we also noticed the people at the site next to ours were sleeping in the back of their SUV and laughed at them. overall we were probably much too loud for a state park at night, but we did create a mighty pile of entirely empty cans and bottles, shown in picture 5. not bad at all.
the sun woke us from our tents at 7am. justin sat up and moaned, “the sun is roasting my nuts off, jesus christ.” we were hot and felt terrible and mike was limping around like an old war vet, so we decided to get going. a few granola bars and a lot of water worked their wonders, and next thing you know we’re at home. a fucking glorious 18 hours.
[now hearing this: i’ve nixed the song of the week in favor of a new plan that is a little bit less pressure; the payday song! an occasion to celebrate by rocking out, for sure, and this way it’s only the 1st and 15th instead of every seven days. the new payday song will be one we had in our heads and decided to listen to while rocking the van back and forth at our campsite at 2am instead of communing with nature. that is to say, the streets’ sweet little track, has it come to this. hope you enjoy it as much as we did.]
i didn’t write for days, what’s wrong with me? i feel like every time i do write it ends up starting out with talking about not writing. i mentally promise myself not to do that anymore because it is bland and i would tire of it if i were reading what i end up writing, but look how well i stick to these minor convictions. i tend to save my energy for the major ones.
on the topic of being bland though, i’ve been suspecting lately that i am becoming more so over time. although i fear this possibility and hope it is only a case of not living up to the sparkling standards of what a captivating person i wish i could constantly be, i am at least occasionally worried that it could be at least partially true. perhaps it is a product of spending so much time at work with people i can’t flex my full cleverness with in an appreciative environment. perhaps i am turning inward in emotional preparation for the upcoming diaspora of my robot house circle, knowing that my comfortable living environment is soon to be disrupted and sadly missed, and as a result feel less inclined to exercise any wit. whatever the case, i have promised myself not to let this continue, and to be as diverting as i can. it should be just like situps; the more i work at it, the better i will be. and my abdomen has really come a long way.
and on the nearly-exhausted topic of not writing enough, well, excuses are beneath me. life has felt very full lately, almost never a dull minute. given several more hours in each day, i could easily pack them to their limit and still feel guilty going to sleep at night and wasting precious time unconscious. i’m trying to read books, listen to music, watch movies, enjoy friends, catch tv shows, go out, live it up and have a good time with every minute of free time and i just think i’m doing good job of it right now. i’m very alive at the moment. i almost won at ping pong last night. i think we’re going camping on saturday. we have tickets to no less than six concerts so far in the month of july. i was sitting on top of a mountain only 5 days ago. tomorrow is pay day. i’m in a good mood.
end with requisite and unneccessary ‘boy this seems long’ comment (even though commenting on that may be equally egregious itself).
more later.
[in my head: fischerspooner remnants from the car ride this morning.]