two.points.collapsing

hope that if you wanted to download the second coolest video ever made, you did it already, because i’ll be taking it off later today. and i think i’ll be putting up the coolest video ever in it’s place for a while, because if you haven’t seen that than you haven’t really seen anything, as far as i’m concerned.

last night there was a great big double birthday party here for mike and dustin (oct. 1st… send presents while you still can), and a tidy crowd of cohorts showed up to celebrate their aging process in the natural way: intoxication. it was a pretty fun time though, despite the complaints of some that it was a, to use their delicate phrasing, “sausage fest”. the friends we don’t see often enough came over and hung out and i got to talk to them, which is good, and some people i’d never really talked to before came too, which was extra fun . if everyone had done what i’d done they would have had nothing to complain about either, because 80% of the girls that showed up did so from my invitation. i’m a good party friend.

naturally, the pretty girl i had been talking to turns out to have a boyfriend. not to sound like a bad guy, that doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. i’d like to think of myself as above the level where in any given social situation my only use for females is as potential conquests or even girlfriends. i have no problem with making acquaintences even if there’s no space for romanic development. i know few enough people at this school, any development is good, really. it’s just too bad. she was awfully cute.

tonight, we qbert. oh man…. oh man.

last night i went to california pizza kitchen, and i got pizza with POTATOES on it. not whole ones, little slices that had been marinated in some delicious stuff apparently, because the pizza (which also had chicken) was fantastic. mmm, that was a fine meal. get the rosemary chicken potato pizza someday if you can. yum. after that we were just here at the apartment though, so nothing that noteworthy happened.

today i had to take city busses to the optometrist to get some new contact lenses, and i had to wait 45 minutes between busses for the transfer i had to make to get there. damn this poor-public-transportation-having city of los angeles, which is also conveniently so spread out it takes hours to get anywhere by the busses they do have. the whole outing took over four hours. yeah, good times, huh?

sometimes i really really would like to have a car, and today was one of those times.

you know now that i think about it, my job is pretty important. before me are vast expanses of information. records of our government’s inner workings in the smallest detail, and seemingly insignificant events are all chronicled and kept in a long row of filing cabinets, where every tiny envelope holds a miniturized version of a piece of history. but all the information in the world means nothing if you can’t find what you need when you need it; you have a jumbled, useless mass of facts that stretches on in an endless maze of microfiche that only taunts you with the fact that the topological map of tyron, nebraska that you so desperately need is in there somewhere, you just don’t know where. so here i am, creating order out of disorder — one of man’s oldest and noblest goals. in making the sea of information safe for the layman to navigate, piece by piece, i am bringing my fellow students closer to the keys they need to unlock the door to knowledge, thereby gaining enlightenment and making the world a better, happier, place.

i have to say, it feels good.

hahaha.

okay that was all bullshit, i just thought it would be funny to romanticize my stupid boring job. work sucked. weekend, commence!

no more entry ways? oh no! well, it’s not an emergency or anything. but i just want scott to know that i’ll miss him. and i expect to be notified if it comes back or is reborn in a new form (with a new URL). just in case, i won’t be taking the link down anytime soon.

it’s friday. outstanding. it’s not so exciting that i still have to go to work at 2 before i’m free, but it’s good to know i’m close. and this weekend should be fun too. party tomorrow night for two of my roommates birthdays (both on monday, what are the odds?), after a fun-filled trip to the eye doctor. and dj q-bert and kid koala on sunday night. huge. i’m looking forward to it all. if only the three hours of work between me and the weekend could be disposed of somehow other than actually living through them.

oh, and last night i saw almost famous finally. i’d heard a lot of great things about it, and some people seem to love it. those people must be all about classic rock lifestyle or something, because although i liked the movie, i wouldn’t give it a rave review to anyone who asked. i’m pretty sure it was fine to watch, but not so great that i’d ever feel the need to watch it again. and for a movie to be really good i have to want to watch it more than just once. or at least come out the first time not able to stop thinking about how i liked it so much. but it wasn’t a bad two hours on a thursday night at least.

my favorite part was the desk clerk at one of the hotels telling the kid, “your mom really freaked me out. seriously.”

with a completely straight and serious face. hahaha. that’s great.

well apparently the terrible show on last night instead of the family guy was love cruise, not temptation island. but how could i have known.

i got out early from visual culture today (group project plus time to work during class equals everyone makes sure they know what they have to do and we all leave. oh, and i’m in a group with the heartbreakingly beautiful girl from the other day, who is also pretty bright it would seem. so at least now she hopefully knows my name, although probably has no idea the incapacitating crush i have on her), so i went to the bookstore to buy a book to follow good omens. then i sat outside the building of my next class in the shade on a mild, breezy, and wonderful afternoon and read good omens for a while, which i absolutely adore. it’s so enjoybable to read, and it’s so funny and quirky. not always in a laugh out loud way — though it’s sometimes that too — but usually in an “oh my, that was really clever” way, or that way that you smile inwardly because you get it and appreciate it. and there was a really spectacular line in it from what i read this afternoon that went something like, “she was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful; something to be admired from a distance, not up close”. i thought that was such a cool description of this girl, not because she wasn’t beautiful up close, but because she was just so beautiful (and dangerous, in the case of this character) that you shouldn’t or couldn’t get close. and i think it hit me extra hard because ms. heartbreaker has this amazing maroon-red hair. ouch.

see, i can’t even keep my mind on books for very long, and i’m a reputed bookworm.

is there anyone out there who’s both read the book atlas shrugged by ayn rand and also payed close attention to the lyrics of the song pacific 231 by burning airlines? listening just now — and i mean really listening — i swear that he must have written the song after reading that book. talk of contradictions, crushing fragility, and a lot of train/rail/engine/motion references . . . it can’t just be me. unless j. robbins just happened to have the same ideas about society as ayn rand, which would be sort of weird if the two were independent.

well if anyone agrees, feel free to write me and tell me i’m not just a crazy nerd.

and what’s this? no family guy tonight? i turn on the tv at 9:30 to see the premier-freaking-episode of temptation island!?! words can’t describe my disgust and disappointment. it was going to be the highlight of my dull wednesday night. goddamn televeision.

i can’t report much in the way of eventful things today. sorry, folks. at least family guy is on tonight . rock.

the only thing that sticks out about today is how painful it’s becoming to go to my finance class. it honestly makes me want to cry. that’s not an exagerration. and yet i keep going. i don’t see why i do, but i do. maybe i will take the easy solution, and stop.

i only wish it were that easy.

today i added another link at the left. i found out that it costs 2 dollars and 80 cents a minute to call and wish my friend josh in australia happy birthday if i use my USC long distance plan to call from my dorm room. how nice. i sat next to a girl so great looking in my visual culture class that i think it actually hurt me to be near her. naturally, i didn’t talk to her or anything. i’ve had two pieces of pumpkin pie so far today. i longed — again — after rachel from the real world. i have to write a one page paper about which type of hinduism appeals most to me before the night’s through. i’m almost done cooking a deep dish red baron pizza for one, arguably the saddest dinner of all. i’m hungry and sort of bored.

but today isn’t all sad, even if i feel awfully empty today. shiner has a new website up which is impressively sharp and neat, and you can download “the egg” from the same-named album which comes out in october. good song. yesterday, my very nice grandmother sent me a box full of goodies. the store-bought pumpkin pie is actually very tasty. nothing i could call “bad” happened to me today.

see, you just have to focus on the high points.

the radio show last night was a lot of fun. my lovely friend emily called all the way from boston to say hi, too. i thought that was great. i got pumpkin pie at the store — i love pumpkin pie, although it seemed a weird time to have a sale on pumpkin pies, like they sort of jumped the gun a little bit. i watched politically incorrect because i heard it was in danger and wanted to support it and/or catch it before anything bad happened. they talked briefly about the banned song list i heard about last week, so i felt all informed and ahead of the game.

also, i found out that there is now a collapsing friend #9. that’s cool. with this kind of infiltration rate in only two months, by 2002 i’ll have a link on the white house home page or yahoo or cnn or something. i can’t wait. but until then, i’ll be here reading panaphobic.

file microfiche for three hours, and THEN go to really boring classes? why, i’d love to!

that’s right, week two of “can’t stop the rock” (that’s the lame name of my lame radio show), tonight from 7 to 9pm pacific time. if you listen, i’ll dedicate a song to you. and not a hateful one, either.