two.points.collapsing

indulge me in some ego-stroking.

who doesn’t love it when they get that little comment here or there that just makes you think maybe you’re good at something after all. sure, it’s only a one-page reading-response memo for business communication class. sure it wasn’t really a very well-thought-out piece of writing, or something to be proud of. but who wouldn’t be inwardly beaming when their professor (one of few i consider very intelligent and whom i really respect as a professor and as an intellect) writes a note at the top of their paper that says, “brian — your writing is admirably clear and articulate”.

it wasn’t something he had to do, and it’s the only comment he made. now, i realize what i write here usually wouldn’t give you the same impression, but it’s little things like that comment that give me hope all the same. maybe i’m not useless. maybe there’s a glimmer of talent or even acquired skill somewhere buried under all the distractions and half-hearted attempts. maybe i’m sort of good at something, and people will respect me for that.

i’d certainly like to hope so.

i think presidents are so great. well, i think so on presidents day when they get me a day off. in a couple years when i don’t get presidents day off anymore, you can bet i’m gonna stop thinking so highly of presidents in general. stupid presidents.

i think i’m going to watch godfather pt. 2 again tonight. that movie is so good and i have these extra three and a half hours lying around taking up space, i think i should just get rid of them.

i think life would be a lot cooler if i had a car. maybe i should steal one. or start trying to plan out my financial future so it would make sense to buy one in the not-so-distant future.

i think that the above thought is due largely to two things: (1) living in los angeles where not having a car is as good as having no legs. and (2) watching a whole reel of volkswagen commercials in advertising class last thursday. i mean, they made me want a passat soooooo bad . . .

i think it’s time to hit the couch.

in the span of a month a very nice college boy can go from having never had a drink in his life to carrying the obligatory red-plastic-college-party-cups three nights running. and not filled with water or kool-aid. i don’t know what’s happened to me. i do know that it’s not such a bad thing though. very under control. i can quit at any time.

i keep thinking of the end of the simpsons episode with rodney dangerfield, where everyone suddenly has martinis and are wearing leis (lays? leighs? hawaiian flower thingies?), and marge asks, “where did all this booze come from?” and homer gets leid (laid? layed?…) and gets a drink handed to him from offscreen and just says, “it’s a party, marge.” then that song that goes, “that’s the way you want it, any way you need it…” by journey comes on. what a great bit.

i’ve been saying “it’s a party marge” all weekend. and at the party friday night, they played that journey song and i sang it into a tv remote control which i found could be used as a prop microphone, because i am clever.

but i’m just living the college life and doing it moderately so concern yourself no more. of course, today i’m living the life of a very boring college boy. i don’t think i’ve done a single thing besides go to the grocery store. i bought taquitos and ice cream. time for a taquito sundae? (sunday? sun-deigh? okay, joke’s over) no, that’s disgusting. i bought lots of other things too., but they’re not as fun to say as taquito or as fun to eat as deep dish apple pie ice cream. hot damn that stuff rings my ice cream bell, figuratively speaking.

i think the trick to turning the story of the last few days — which didn’t really contain any great stories — into something interesting, is talking like a damn fool about it all. or maybe i just sound like a damn boring fool instead. who can say really.

but the real take away here is that if you have vanilla twist smirnoff and put it into coke, it tastes like vanilla coke. holy god, new mixed drink of choice. highly recommended.

and there’s not school tomorrow. this weekend is just too good, almost.

take that!

finished less than zero in two days. it was… well, it was really good. in my mind. but at the same time i could see how someone could not like it at all. add seasonings to taste, you know? i’d still recommend it though.

i’m just so glad i finished a book in only two days. i decided recently, and rather arbitrarily, to try to read 35 books this year. i’ve never kept track of the number of books i’ve read over a whole year, but i’m going to do it this year, so i just figured, “okay, i’ve read 4 so far (this was last week i think), and i think i read the last one since this month started. if i say three per month then, as an average, and keep that up, 12 times three is 36. and i like nice round numbers so we’ll go with 35.”

and hence a goal has been set. personally, i think it will be easy. the goal may be to just see how early in the year i can get to 35, because i’ve been reading an awful lot lately. but of course, there are always those busy periods, or those burnt out periods where video games seem like such a better idea…

i’ll keep you updated, naturally. now to find something better to do than sit here at 10 on friday.

*coughlosercough*

did i mention i finished reading gulliver’s travels? well i did. can’t say it was a real page-turner, that one, but there were some meritous qualities all the same.

now i’ve moved on to less than zero, which i give myself maybe 3 days before i finish. it reads so fast and i like ellis’s writing a lot so it should get polished off in no time. good book so far. i’m all about disenchantment.

i did notice just now though (prompting this blog), that he used the exact same scene in this book as he did later in american psycho. i mean, exactly the same scene. same dialogue and all. after sex, girl says “will you call me before [christmas in LTZ, easter in AP]?” guy says, “sure”. girl says, “if i don’t see you, have a good [holiday from before].” guy says, “i will” guy starts to leave room. girl says, “hey [clay in LTZ, patrick in AP]?” guy stops but doesn’t look at girl on the way out. then says “yeah?” . girl replies, “nothing.”…. end of scene.

now i want to go buy his other books just to see if he does this every time. i wonder if he feels somehow that this scene encapsulates his entire worldview, and so he needs to make sure it gets across through repetition.

and i think i know how he feels if it does.

yes i know what day it is. what of it? it only matters if there’s someone you’re pining after, in which case you’re in the frustrated, angstful bin; or if you have someone you love, in which case you’re in the do something sappy bin. i don’t really fit either. exactly. a little bit of both, actually. i’m not really at liberty to discuss it.

wanna make out?

honestly i feel fine today. my valentine got her valentine in the mail and loved it. as for someone close by to actually celebrate the occasion with… well i’m over it for now. i had a nice lunch with a new friend (one of many jen’s in my world) and just now spent a few minutes screaming at maximum volume along with a well-cranked stereo belting out “grace car part one” (by braid, for non-fans). i love my roommate because he is willing to join me in just that sort of foolishness. we’re not talking a loud sing-a-long here. we’re talking full on screaming. good stuff.

“this one’s for all you lovers out there…” yeah, i saw back to the future this weekend on TNT and it made my day. did you know it’s coming out on DVD in the near future? shit yeah.

happy valentines day.

just so everyone knows, i make no claim to be on the forefront of musical knowledge. my songs of the week are probably old news to the intense followers of new music. i’d see them not as an attempt to contribute to the cutting edge though. they’re what i’ve been listening to a lot lately, which is often a little lagging, i’ll be the first to admit. but i still like to share anyway.

lately: sigur ros. i finally bought this last weekend and it was a wise, wise decision. a few weeks ago when i only had a few songs of theirs on the ol’ laptop, giving them a test-drive if you will, i told my roommate josh while one of their songs was playing that it was so good i didn’t just like the song, i wanted to be the song, it was so astonishingly beautiful and good. anyway, i’m no professional critic but how could you disagree that staralfur is just a wonderful, wonderful song.

so that’s that and back to work for now.

just to put your fears to rest, all that studying (i.e. not very much) paid the bills. that test was SO easy. i finished and just started looking around the room and thinking about how cute a lady my professor is, and how cute the girl sitting in front of me was. yeah, i’m a big dork. but take that, anthro test. in case you were wondering from before, the (condensed) three postulates of natural selection are 1) competition for limited resources; 2) random variability within species; and 3) variability is heritable. you learn something everyday, don’t you.

and the radio show tonight went over fine too, thanks for asking. of course, you probably knew how great it was because you were listening. i liked when i played coalesce and talked about how i might get killed when i see them live april 7th. i don’t think that’d be such a bad way to go though, honestly.

speaking of monkeys — i got a valentine’s card from my mom, who cracks me up sometimes. inside? it says “you’re the champ”, and has a picture of a monkey in boxers’ shorts, a boxer’s robe, with boxing gloves hanging around it’s neck, and with its hands clamped above its head, smiling gleefully. best thing i ever saw. i cut it out and put it up on my wall next to my desk, so that everyone will always know that yes, i am the champ.

thanks mom.

still no valentine. well, no valentine that i can actually see on valentines day. my sensational friend who happens to be in italy said she’d be my valentine even though she was away, and i really like her, so at least there’s something. and i have an anthropology midterm today, that’s something too!

r-selected species are those that produce a very large number of offspring as a means to pass on their genes successfully. like insects. k-selected species are those that invest very heavily in a small number of offspring as a means to pass theirs on. orangutans are k-selected species. see, we’re learning!

there’s something much more important that i need to learn though — i don’t know if anyone else saw this, but as part of my super-bowl commercial-watching for advertising class, afterward i saw a commercial for i believe maybe 10-10-220 (calls up to 20 minutes for only a buck?!) with mother-loving ALF. that’s right, the fuzzy alien guy. best thing i ever saw. my question to you blog-reading internet experts: now that adcritic.com is no more, where do i go to download commercials? i want to watch this alf commercial over and over again. something about his voice, i’m just drawn to it. he’s so self-confident and yet laid-back at the same time. the rodney dangerfield of the rest of the universe. please help me in my quest.

sorry i didn’t post yesterday; i was busy learning about how there are bugs with hooks in their front legs that, after they copulate with lady-bugs (not the ladybugs, just bugs that are fine ladies), basically just stay latched on to these ladies for hours and hours afterward, riding them around, so no other dudes can hop on their chosen hoes after they do and decrease the first guy’s chance of fathering children. this is known as mate-guarding. i tell ya, nature is so weird.

mayhaps i’ll be back later. mayhaps i should get back to studying — the three postulates of darwin’s theory of natural selection are . . .

let me tell you a little saturday night story. not the story i would have liked to have told after last night; not the story of my expectations being realized in every detail, and everything going off without a hitch. definitely not that. but not a bad story all the same. it had its highs and lows and its pleasant surprises, so we can’t be to picky.

where to begin? well how about with the first hour of our prevalentines party bringing in a maximum of maybe two or three guests that weren’t either residents of this apartment or co-hosts of the party. no, how about expanding that more generally to include the whole night which brought in the least amount of people of any party we’ve ever had and might barely even deserve the term “party” as college students are given to understand it. it’s safe to say it was more or less a flop. but what can you do. there were a lot of other parties last night. bigger better parties. so it goes. i’m not bitter, honest.

let’s move on. some people did come, and it wasn’t all bad. for example, one girl came and we ended up going into my bedroom and sitting in front of my bookcase and talking about books and reading and eastern religions and i have to say that was a high point. a pleasant surprise. she said she wanted to raid my library and i gave her my phone number — we’ll see if she ever uses it, but if not she was still very nice. another interesting point was there being 2 out of maybe 12 guests who went by “jen”, especially since i had spent the whole prior evening with another jen. these two local jens were also so good as to stay at our party for a while and make it feel like less of a failure. and they were both good people. plus freshman-jen brought a friend that used to deliver frozen foods in the neighborhood i grew up in back in illinois (mmm, schwan’s ice cream bars…) who even remembered delivering on the street i lived on. that blew my mind.

so at about 3, when the party had pared down to a tidy 8 or 9, junior-jen and two of her friends decided it was time to go to IHOP, and so three of us went with them (one being the all-important non-drinking car-owning friend whom we owe our gratitude). that turned out to be a lot of fun and probably the highlight of the night. slightly-buzzed conversation over pancakes (or in my cases fried appetizers — the admitted mozzarella stick/chicken finger junkie) at 4 in the morning really can’t help but be funny. i remember using the word “hoist” for some reason which prompted the comment “dude…words are dope,” which pretty much summed up our appreciation for the variety of our colorful english language in a succinct four words. a true and profound statement, even the next day. words are pretty dope.

and sure, i didn’t get to bed until 5:30am. sure, i didn’t find anything close to a valentine despite my commitment to do so. sure, it was a party so underattended i even told my friend spencer at one point, “if this wan’t my party, even i’d leave right now.” but it was still a good night. maybe i’ll just have to let this february 14th drop off my radar. or rally in the home stretch here and make something happen…but let’s not kid ourselves. chances are strong that i will spend the late evening on thursday watching a movie that reminds me of what i don’t have (i’m leaning toward reality bites i think), and thinking of someone that i can’t have. at least not right now.

so it goes.