two.points.collapsing

i feel like there are a bunch of things i wanted to talk about from the past couple days that i just didn’t get around to, but i can’t recall any of them, or at least what i wanted to say about them in detail, so i’ll just list a few fun things worth noting.

you know how it rained here finally the other day? my mom told me in a short email note a tidbit she must have read or heard somewhere: it hadn’t rained in downtown los angeles for 198 straight days before that. see? i’m not crazy, it really is a miracle to have precipitation in this city.

yesterday as i was sitting outside on some steps before going into a class, a guy snuck up on me and started talking to me about religion after he invited me to a meeting. having nothing to do, i figured i’d discuss with him for a few minutes just in case he had anything profound to say, or just in case i could make him doubt himself. you know, for kicks. neither of us really gained anything though, because his argument ended up being “there are no contradictions in the bible, so you have to believe the part about how there’s a heaven to go to after you die, because the other stuff in there is true too”. i didn’t even know where to begin trying to argue against his ludicrous point, although i would have tried had i not had to go into my class.

i didn’t do anything fun halloween night. i had my fill last saturday, i guess. i just read about the signifier and signified. it’s a real page turner, that elements of semiology, i tell ya. at least i knew enough to look smart in class today though.

the shiner cd is still kicking my ass.

i just got back from an hour of raquetball and i need a shower.

i’m so glad it’s thursday.

so halloween’s over. it’s november now. how do you feel about that?

it’s also time for a new song of the week. right in the middle of the week is a good time for this sort of thing — right when you need a little jolt to get through a couple more days.

i have to say, i’ve been listening to the new shiner cd a lot this week. and every time i pop it in, i just get all tingly. it’s that good to me. i can’t quite put my finger on why just listening to this one cd makes me so excited about music, but it does. maybe it’s the intricate, heavy beauty of their songs, maybe it’s a little bit because they remind me of my favorite and sadly extinct band, hum, in some ways. i do know that the egg is in the running for best cd i’ve picked up this year though. i just love this band. so since i can’t stop listening to them, i’ll force some of their music on you. this song is called the truth about cows, and it’s the first track off the cd. i picked this one because two of the other great tracks, “play dead” and “the egg”, are available from their website for you to download already, which i suggest you do too. buy the cd while you’re at it. it’s really fantastic, and even has cool cover art.

enough flattery. i think i should really be getting to sleep now.

the timing couldn’t have been more perfect (just got these tonight) . . .

so there i am, on the left, in my outstanding costume (if you don’t recognize that i’m the joker, then i’m sorry but we can’t be best friends any more. it’s just the way it has to be). please focus on the costume itself, not the dopey look on my face that results from my constant bad luck of getting photographed between smile and non-smile, never fully one or the other. on the right would be the second best costume besides me, my pal shannon as the always sexy tinkerbell, pulled off very nicely with cute dress, wings, and hair.

so you can get an even better look, here’s another picture:

so there they are, just in time for the unholy holiday. i know they’re not the best quality photos, but you get the idea. and come on, tell me that just going as the joker in the first place isn’t a damn cool idea.

happy halloween everyone.

don’t mistake my exclamation for any serious religious belief (i don’t subscribe), but holy god almighty, it finally fucking rained in los angeles today!

excuse the language as well, but wow, i swear it’s probably been over 8 months since i’ve had a single drop fall on my head. it just never rains around here, but today as i came out of my southern california classroom building i walked into a light and wonderful drizzle that — unlike traditional equations of rain with sadness — completely made my afternoon. it started really really lightly, at what could only be called a slight drip-dropping, and already a girl walking ahead of me could be overheard pleading into her cell phone, “it’s raining like crazy and i forgot to bring an umbrella!”

to my pleasure, it got more steady and never so heavy as to actually soak me, so i just walked to my next class enjoying every brief second of it. now, i’m sure those of you in places that actually have weather are saying, “what the hell, it’s just rain” or something, but honestly you don’t miss it until you’ve been without it for ages. so it quenched a thirst i’d been having, you might say.

an hour later during a short class break my business-school friend spencer and i went outside for a minute (the rain had already stopped), and i remarked that the school finally looked like i felt — all dark and dreary and dank and grey. he agreed wholeheartedly, because really, that’s what business school will do to you sometimes.

now it probably won’t rain again until february so i’m gonna listen to the new dismemberment plan cd and hold on to those few minutes of precious variety.

none of you won the wonderful prize on my radio show last night because none of you called in. shame on you.

grey days like today make it hard to get up early to go file microfiche in a basement library for three hours. honestly. how much greater would it be to sleep until 11? yeah, exactly.

sorry, but i’m to weary-eyed to manufacture any of yesterday’s events into entertaining vignettes. you’ll have to just imagine your own wild adventures of brian this morning.

oh today, today. a monday unlike any other except that i happily skipped out on finance again to go home and . . . study finance. we have a quiz on wednesday and listening to the teacher is usually the opposite of learning, hence the home course.

and look what i just got in the mail! a new shiner cd, dismemberment plan cd, and juno cd from desoto! oh what a musical evening i’m going to have. i’m quivering with delight here.

hey, if you happen to be around a computer between 7 and 9 pacific tonight, not only is my radio show going to be on, during which i’ll be playing all these fabulous new titles, but apparently we’re giving away free dvd’s of the new special horror movie collection called “boogeymen” or something like that, in honor of the horrible holiday of halloween (not horrible in that i don’t like it. horrible like scary, ghosts, goblins, etc). so if you listen and call, you could win free stuff this time — not just hear me sound like an idiot.

what a weekend! friday night we went to mel’s diner on sunset (not a bad place, but not return-worthy because the prices weren’t worth the portions) with mike’s two friends from out of town and about five of us besides. our waitress was named snake — it said so right on her nametag. she was young and thin and kind of intimidating and a feisty one too! she scolded one of mike’s friends for not finishing his vegetables, and made fun of dominic for ordering a reuben without saurkraut (which makes it not really a reuben anymore, really, so he deserved it i think). we tipped her well for abusing us. mike even invited her to our halloween party but she declined. then we dropped by my buddy spencer’s posh apartment for his party for his roommate mike’s 21st birthday party. they had an erotic cake shaped like a pair of large beautiful breasts. they were entrancing, and i don’t think anyone wanted to eat it because they were so beautiful. it’s hard to imagine the craftsmanship required to make a cake like that.

last night was our big halloween bash and it went extrememly well. we spent about three hours putting up black plastic tarp from home depot over all the walls and the ceiling, then we painted scary skulls and bats and evil messages over part of the walls with black light paint (yes, we had black lights too). so the place looked very halloween, and it was great. i award us best atmosphere at a party award. my skull and crossbones carved pumpkin was the best too.

a lot of the costumes were really great too. some weren’t so great (one guy without a costume couldn’t even come up with a better excuse than “i’m a . . . a guy.”), but i was impressed overall. we had a few devils, a couple hugh hefners, three pimps (some more convincing than others) but really good ones i thought were a genetic engineer (my roommate who had a fake arm in his sleeve of a labcoat, and reached his real hand out between the buttons to shake hands or grab things producing a very cool third arm effect), one of our bearded friends in a nun’s habit, a statue of liberty with ben franklin (or maybe thomas jefferson) date, one guy with an authentic orange prison jumpsuit he got from a dad of a friend of a friend (i suggested a real child molestor might have worn that outfit at one point, and he looked sort of disturbed), a couple as shaggy and daphne from scooby doo that couldn’t have been more dead on, a superman, a michael jackson, a guy as steve-o from SLC punk, one “neopolitan” — that would be dominic wearing brown pants, a white vest, and a pink shirt and tie, a very subtle but charming “costume” — and my somewhat biased favorite, a sexy and very accurate tinkerbell. of course, mine tops all of them and the picture which i’ll scan in a few days will prove it, i hope. we’ll see how the photos turn out.

the party was great even if the mess was ungodly, and the extra hour was spent rocking the place from 1am to 2am all over again. a damn fine evening, overall. if only a sunday of cleaning, laundry and homework could be just as fun.

i don’t know why i didn’t post this yesterday, but i guess it slipped my mind. anyway, i was on campus yesterday, and saw a bunch of flyers stapled up that had the heading:

NEW PASTOR! NEW LOCATION! SAME JESUS!

come fellowship with us this sunday!

there were a lot of them too, all over every little message board. i thought it was so funny i took one down to keep for my very own. oh, and if you want to visit their website (i haven’t yet, so don’t get angry with me about whatever it might contain) you can go here. i mean come on, it’s the same jesus; why wouldn’t you go?

oh, happy happy friday. happier if i didn’t have to go to work in 20 minutes, but it’s only a few hours and the amazing discman will sweep my troubles away.

that reminds me of a bit on conan last night about new superhero characters. the best was “man man”, a superhero with all the powers of an ordinary man. they showed this girl with a bike, and some goofy looking guy standing next to her. she says, “hey, can you watch my bike for a minute?”, and he takes off his glasses and looks at the camera and says, “yes. yes i can.” then she leaves and he puts his hands in his pockets and just stands there. it was great. love the conan.

so i’m inventing discman. providing an excellent soundtrack to situations where there would normally only be boredom. discman will help me get through work today and on to the pure uncontaminated weekend. party tonight, party tomorrow. outstanding.

and i carved a pumpkin last night for the first time in probably over 6 years. but it was still a great pumpkin. i’ll put up a picture of my triumphant pumpkin creation and my excellent costume from tomorrow’s party hopefully next week, and you will see how this year i am doing halloween right. damn right.

a collapsing first: another blogger that found me and put up a link instead of the other way around. and still my power grows . . .

but say hi to chris at air guitar boulevard because he called me “intelligent” and “cool”. he must be having a sad time of it to be thinking those things, but i remain grateful and dub him collapsing friend #12.

and oh yeah — i finished batman tonight. thanks to my quick work all the villains are returned to arkham asylum where they belong, commisioner gordon is back on top of things, and the city sleeps safely in their beds tonight. i’m a superhero (until saturday night’s costume party . . .wink wink).

now that the video game has been defeated i can have my life back. of course, tony hawk 3 comes out next week and i am very weak-willed . . .