Category: Uncategorized

alright, i could tell you the long stories from my trip so far (penny pitchers of beer + a crave case — that is 30 white castles — divided by three people?), i could talk about being back in illinois some more (delicious hometown eateries i finally get to revisit?), i could talk about the holiday tumult (assorted family mayhem?), the snow (on new years eve!), what i got for christmas (ipod! for real!)…

but the thing i really thought i should write down is that last night i was up late here at my grandparents’ house, by myself. and i was sitting in a rocking chair doing two things. 1) reading sartre’s nausea and contemplating existentialist thought, and 2) watching fox’s fastlane starring bill bellamy and that other bonehead who’s white instead of black and has awful long hair, and which is directed by a guy named ‘mcg’, and which was being aired on mtv for some reason at 12:30 in the morning.

i was reading more than i was watching, i swear. good book. but the idea of those two contrasting inputs in the same room made me laugh so i had to tell someone. hopefully i’ll remember to tell the better stories from my vacation a little later on. today it’s off to a bears game and then from there who knows what so i’ll write more when i can, i guess.

merry christmas and a happy new year.

who’s in illinois?

i’m in illinois.

who’s getting johnny’s beef for lunch and giordano’s superbly excellent deep dish pizza for dinner?

that’d be me.

who’s going to some northwestern bar with his roommates to get wasted, to hopefully be followed by the coveted midwestern privilege of white castle burgers?

you’re damn right i am.

and it’s almost christmas to boot. if i wasn’t so sleepy from my freaking 12 hour travel day yesterday, i’d be on top of the world.

as it is, i’m just in the arctic circle, figuratively speaking. good enough, right?

working with adults is funny, because some of them have kids, and sometimes you hear them talk about those kids. today at lunch a topic of conversation was santa claus, and whether or not a media planner’s 9 and 7 year old kids still believed in santa claus.

apparently they both do, but somewhere along the lines they asked said media planner why santa making all those toys at the north pole wasn’t copyright infringement. they believe a guy can fly around the world in a night, but still manage to worry about how he covers all the licensing fees?

kids are so weird.

(this is a note to myself to remember later to write out what i was thinking earlier about having too many friends and it keeping me from playing video games as much as i’d like to…just kidding. i’ll explain later when i’m not at work.)

[now hearing this: inner tick-tock-tick-tock because it’s 4:50 and not 5:00.]

school is absolutely over. for an entire month, i have no scholastic obligations, and what a feeling that is. it makes going to work tomorrow morning as usual seem more unfair than it would otherwise too though.

i feel odd sometimes lately, about how i’m spending my time. it’s as if i’m never unhappy doing any of the things i’m doing, but when i get a moment to reflect afterward i am always asking myself, “what have i been doing with all my time?” i’m in a constant state of feeling like the day ends without me getting to spend enough of it not doing anything. i guess i’m the opposite of bored, but not in an always positive sense. i haven’t read more than 10 pages in as many days, i think, and that’s probably the worst symptom as well as the one that gets under my skin the most. i mean, when you stake so much of your self-image on being ‘one of those people that reads all the time’ but then you never do, you start to wonder what you might really be — a frightening thing.

today i liked though. it was filled to the brim with, well, no reading (yet — there’s still some time), but good company the entire day. the best and most worth sharing was lunch/dinner. the two are hard to separate though when you spend it (them?) at a hometown buffet with six of your housemates, and between the seven males present manage to dispose of a ghastly amount of food. why did we do it? because it’s a buffet, man. it’s a challenge of manhood. the question was raised on each of our first plate’s worth, “say, how many do you think we can eat? 30? 40?…” and for some reason we decided 40 was a good number, and we had a resolution: no leaving until we reach the mark. that still works out to about 6 plates per person, which is a lot of crappy buffet food, i’ll tell you what.

the first three were pretty easy. mashed potatoes, chicken, tacos, ham…alright, none of it was great, but at least it fit. josh managed around plate three or four to eat an entire plate of only corn, simply because we thought it would be funny. he and a few others ate something like 7, covering for those of us who couldn’t get past 5, to our embarrassment. toward the end we started accusing each other of cheating or not eating their share, as i ticked off each empty plate on the back of a receipt (which i kept as a souveneir — i’m thinking about framing it). eventually we started bargaining.

“wait, so if i eat two ice cream cones, that’s a plate right?”

“since he’s mostly done with his and he doesn’t want it, and i just started this salad and it sucks, if we both stop now, that counts as one plate total, right?”

“does soup count?”

and by dessert we were in pain and sundaes or cakes were more like punishment than treats. but we had to do it — we needed dessert plates to get to the goal. we pushed our limits to where it hurt to laugh and every bite was like a hard-fought inch toward the peak of the unscalable mountain. and then with some apple cobbler and pumpkin pie…we made it. 40 plates of bad food for nine dollars each. maybe we couldn’t move, and we questioned why exactly we would do this to ourselves, and people at the other tables couldn’t quite understand why we would high-five each other when we would get up to get more. but the groaning on the way home was a small price to pay to know we’d proven our manhood by spending almost an hour and a half eating in a trashy buffet restaurant

it’s good to be alive, isn’t it?

[now hearing this: this mix cd i made for my car that’s pretty good. rock and roll, man.]

so about books, lately…

well that’s the sad thing actually. it’s more like, “so about this one book”, and not as much lately as “…that took forever to finish because i was sometimes busy, sometimes lazy, and sometimes fed up with reading this long book that wouldn’t end.” but the thing was by the end i really ended up liking it and so i felt like it was worth the weeks of wishing it was just over. this book is called the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas and i’d say you should read it if you have more focus than i do and can finish it more promptly. it’s a good book if maybe a wee bit overrated. i bet it would make a good movie.

that was a joke, see?

now i’m reading one flew over the cuckoo’s nest and again not finishing as quickly as i would like because of finals. that shouldn’t bother me, except that last december i decided i was going to set an arbitrary number of books to try to read this year, and it’s looking like i will fail. now, i had no way of knowing how many books i would really read in a year, having never counted before. i knew that i go through spurts of furious reading followed by periods of video game tendencies (during which i still read, but less avidly i guess, for a little change of pace). but the thing was i started off really strong in the spring, and thought i could get to my number well before the end of the year and maybe set a nice precedent for next year. that didn’t happen though. i’m still around 10 books short. that’s awful!

i don’t blame myself though. of course i don’t. no one ever does. i say it’s the fault of two books of large scale that took much longer to consume than your average workaday book. yes, these culprits are at the root of my tardiness. they are the count like i said before, and this little 1100 page wonder called infinite jest, which was an enormous and bible-esque volume (i didn’t think biblical would be the right word to use in this case) but which was better by several times than the adventure novel. much better.

those two were so long though, they’re really like 2.5 books or something instead of 1, so really i’m only 6 or 7 short of my goal. and if i finish a few more before the new years, which should be cake, i’ll be right on track. and that doesn’t even count the graphic novels, which i think would just be cheating. right? yes, right.

oh and otherwise concering literature: a girl in my advertising class group was here in my place because we met here for a project with our group of 6. she said two things which roughly translate to, “brian, i’d make a great friend and you should totally talk to me more often so we can hang out some time,” and those things were, “oh, i love your books,” and, picking my copy of atlas shrugged off the bookshelf (alphabetically under R), “this is just the best book, isn’t it?” which implies she bothered to read it — another 1000 pager — and enjoyed it, which both say to me “yes, i am a smart and interesting person.”

not to say you aren’t if you haven’t read it. (or didn’t compliment my library). just that if you have…well, that’s a large stride in the exactly right direction.

time to stop geeking out and start sleeping in.

[now hearing this: the dismemberment plan – is terrified]

there’s a lot i could say and maybe i’ll say it all but probably i’ll just trim it down. i’m always trimming things down because there isn’t enough time or i don’t have enough energy. that should end some day, but i doubt it ever will.

piebald was great as they usually are, even if they could have been greater had they played some of the songs we really wanted to hear and sing along to and a few less of the songs i don’t think i’ve ever heard before and had to just sort of nod in time to. still love that band though. got me a nifty t-shirt with a castle on it that says ‘piebald’ right on there. it’s a real hum dinger.

the three bands in between were not really interesting at all so i sat outside with my dear friend for most of them. slow reader opened up the very beginning though and it was so lovely to see those guys again. i miss them in their older incarnation but they are still making good tunes, even if much more somber. dug the set, and i’m pretty sure gabe and rory are the funniest people to hear banter on stage out of any of the bands i like. i don’t know how much that factors in to them being a good band, but it’s fun at least. and i think they’re a good band either way. i bought the cd and it’s pretty great judging by the four listens i’ve given it in the past two days (check the song of the week and see if you agree. it’s called so this is it and it’s catchy, my man).

school is soooooo over. well, mostly. 1 project, 1 test and i’m out like trout for a whole rip roarin’ month, to be spent chillin’ round here some but mostly in the great prairie state goes by the initials IL. oh that’s right, i shall return to my home town of bourbonnais, as well as the hometowns of many former compatriots scattered about that fair state. i have to say i’m downright excited. and christmas is thrown in there somewhere too so that i guess has the chance of being fun too. ha! i’m just havin’ you on…i love christmas. presents and family and egg nog. oh hell yes.

and reading. so much reading. don’t let me forget to tell you about my book issues later.

[now hearing this: slow reader – (self titled)]

last night two of my roommates sat on my couch drinking 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor and watching what women want on HBO. i am as yet uncertain if this is hilarious and great or really, really sad.

probably the first one.

today is the last day of regular classes at ol’ ‘SC (check out those back to back apostrophes…pretty sweet, huh?). i am at work because i don’t have class on fridays, so yesterday was my last one, which is even better. and the glory that i call piebald is playing at chain reaction tonight so i’m aaaaaaaall about smiles today — compounded by the fact that a beautiful girl is sleeping in this morning in my bed as i write this from the office. (sigh)… good day. great day.

[now hearing this: piebald, but only in my head.]

see, it’s happening again. not writing. i really hate when this happens but i just feel like i can’t do it right now. i shouldn’t have to feel guilty for doing this, and right now i do because of all the school stuff that demands attention and keeps not getting it because i suddenly have a very short attention span. i blame thanksgiving weekend and finally having a girl like me. that’d throw anyone for a loop.

i’ll be back next week, honest. unless an airplane crashes into me and i’m only a burnt smear on the street.

i really like the mountain goats now.

[now hearing this: tallahassee]

i’m in my parents’ house. i only turn up here about once a year these days so it’s almost strange. not uncomfortable or anything — just a little odd. it’s sort of having my adulthood (or near-adulthood, or something) tossed back in my face.

i feel so weird right now for other reasons too. can someone really passionate about music and literature really be close to someone with an ever-growing enthusiasm for sports and school-spirit? i worry about that. and it’s only the tip of the iceberg, really.

there’s no reason to write about that here though. i plan to spend the next few days eating and reading so there won’t be much worth sharing, i imagine, unless my idle time leads me to some profound reflections that the world would benefit from hearing.

kinda doubt it though.

here’s how they get you i think: they sneak up behind your vehicle, possibly on the street side, just to be extra sneaky. most likely in a crouching duck-walk fashion, although maybe even crawling. as soon as they are in sight of both the parking meter blinking its red light and your ill-fated license plate, they duck down again out of sight, perhaps even diving behind a nearby token sidewalk-tree, or a different car. this way you have no idea it’s coming. then once they’ve punched in your penalty, they casually stroll around to the front of the car as it’s printing up, so that when you see them standing there and say, “hey, this is my car, we were just about to leave,” they only say, “oh, sorry, it’s too late, i already entered it.” and hand you the ticket.

see, their delight in this is double: if they just walked around to the front right away, you’d see them before they entered any info into their little park-o-tron handheld ticket-dispenser 9000 thingy and put a stop to it by leaving hastily instead of sitting on the stoop of a shop on sunset blvd that’s closed for the night right smack in front of your car while your date finishes a cigarette. and if they sneakily did the whole process and sneakily put the citation under your wiper and sneakily snuck away the same sneaky way they came, they’d rob themselves of the joy of personally handing you a freshly printed, and according to them too-late-to-cancel fine. oh, they’re tricky ones they are.

and it’s with a fist shaking in the air that i write this check for 29 dollars, city of west hollywood. may your children be born unfit for tv commercial auditions and your overpriced coffee be spat in by girls too moral to sleep with someone for their big break but not too moral to befoul your latte!

oh and i think this week’s song of the week will be a little cursive ditty called the martyr. this domestica cd is so rocking and good i should have found it ages ago.

oh yeah, rest of weekend wrapup — how about it? well friday i saw rainer maria and rilo kiley and they were both solid. i liked rainer maria better overall but the singer for rilo kiley whose name i can’t think of, well she was pretty much amazing. i don’t know if their sound is overall something i’m totally into (just not my cup — could easily be yours cause i do recognize they are good), but that girl. mm, that’s a fine singin’ voice. and in-n-out afterward was great because this cool girl i never talked to came with us and she was really cool. oh lord that last sentence was godawful. very fun girl though; gives a person hope and all that (no i’m not saying i want to date her or anything, just that i respect people with personality, is all).

saturday we trounced our rival football team which of course makes me feel like a more complete person on some level. oh wait it was more that i ate two cheeseburgers at our barbeque, and it wasn’t that i felt more complete as much as that i felt more full. of meat. mmm, meat. and then the date that included a 30 dollar trip to the bookstore, kind of. stupid parking meter. lovely date though. and today i slept too late.

begin, shortened holiday week!

[now hearing this: the mountain goats – tallahassee. oh my god, this cd is spectacular. wow. really, have you heard this? it’s so good. so good. oh. it’s good alright.]