08.21.06
Love
If the OK Go music video “A Million Ways” is best example of dork-dancing ever, with moves that look like they’re lifted straight out of aerobics videos and an intro jazz dance class, then the YouTube contest that has hundreds of dorky dork-dancing fans mimicking the band is somehow even better.
And if that’s the case, the four boys reenacting the video blindfolded is why the Internet was invented in the first place.
A lot, lot, lot of the videos are from school performances — you can tell by the awkard angle, the bobbing camera work, the silhoutted heads in the way of the stage and the obvious youth of the performers. In almost all of them, the four dancers arrange themselves in a square formation to either dead silence from the audience or derisive giggles or hoots or wolf-whistles hurled at the dancers’ stillness and ostentatiously dorky, formal outfits. Then the song’s intro guitar riff begins, and maybe one person shrieks “Omigod, it’s OK Go!” and the dancers turn their heads 90 degrees to the left and back and begin the deliberately goofy arm movements and then everything gels in the audience’s heads and they just explode, every time. It’s beautiful.
08.16.06
Thank you Virtual PC
Thanks to the magic of Virtual PC, I can run Windows XP on my Mac. I started using Windows with version 3.1 (and MS-DOS before that) and this is the first time I’ve used Windows on a computer of mine in about a year and a half.
I feel dirty.
08.15.06
To-do list for tonight:
1. Find room around the house for a giant fiberglass hot dog.
2. That’s about it, actually.
08.12.06
Can’t make a good French onion soup without it
I’ve only cooked with vermouth, never really drunk it, but if that’s all that’s left after the beer and Kahlua, then that’s what I’ll drink.
Beer calls. And Kahlua. And then the vermouth. I hope I don’t last that long, because I sure like cooking onions with vermouth. Can’t make a good French onion soup without it. Can’t make French onion soup if I clean out the liquor. Can’t, can’t, can’t. I think I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.
Drunk. G’night.
07.19.06
I had the most amazing dream
I dreamed I was moving into an old thrift store, converting it into a mega-giant loft-style place for me and Justin to live in. There was a small living area at the back, but most of it was big, gray-carpeted space. The store still had a lot of things in it, so I was selling the things for really cheap. I think I had already (probably) picked out what I liked.
Somewhere in the dream, I had a discussion with someone about how much I like Eichler homes.
P.S. Dear people who write obituaries: please learn the difference between interment and internment. When people are being buried, they are rarely feisty enough to require imprisonment.
07.05.06
Some days, I feel sorry for anyone who’d date me.
Some days, I feel sorry for anyone who’d date me. Today is one, but not for the reason you’d think.
I bought another skull on eBay, this one a really nice Jacob’s sheep with three horns instead of the usual two or four. I set it on my desk yesterday and when I came home today, there were several very small, very squirmy bugs underneath it. They were most likely dermestid larvae, since that’s what most people use to clean skulls for the commercial market. They weren’t especially gross except when I could feel their little bodies pop under the paper towed I used to wipe them up.
I very gently chided the eBay seller via e-mail, since it’s a bit unprofessional to leave cleaning equipment out where customers can see it, whether you’re cleaning a suit, a bathroom, or twisted head bones. Then I set the skull up for a nice, long soak in order to drown any remaining bugs.
I put the skull in a tall bucket with just the tops of the horns poking out. As I was running water into the bucket, I wondered what it would be like to peer into a bucket that wasn’t there yesterday and that had something odd-looking coming out the top of it — and to have the indistinct white shape at the bottom resolve itself into a pointy skull with too many horns grinning back at you past a few drowned wormy things floating at the water’s surface.
At that moment, I felt very, very sorry for Justin, or anyone who would live with me, and I felt just a little gleeful.
07.02.06
Hello, Bee Gees
Please, please, please don’t let me buy anything else on eBay tonight.
I’ve already bought a photocopy of the manual for my record player. Who ever heard of a record player having advanced enough features that you needed a manual for it? It’s pick up the needle, set it on the record, and then hello, Bee Gees, as far as I’m concerned. Why make it more complicated than that?
06.29.06
Words and phrases I hate
Words and phrases I hate:
- Currently
- However
- Is located at
- As such
- At present
I get to see a lot of them, since I work at a paper.
Tonight I rewrote a sentence at work. This is not unusual. This sentence
She said town staff are characterizing the investigation as a personnel matter that is precluded from disclosing details
is being rewritten as
She said town staff are treating the investigation as a confidential personnel matter.
I won’t lie; I hated the original. It’s OK with me if the author of it stumbles on this criticism because I wouldn’t be afraid of telling her in person that I hated it. It’s a speech I’ve given before. I have told writers, “This bit right here? This is crap. It means nothing. Fix it.”
I can’t stand when people — writers, interviewees, spokespeople — shoehorn extra words into their sentences in an attempt to gain a little bit of authority by impressing others with obfuscation. Not all writers do this to impress; some just regurgitate the stiff, deliberately vague crap they’re fed.
You won’t impress anyone with complicated sentences. You’re far more likely to impress with strong, clear, precise language, since that implies confidence in what you say and a good understanding of the topic you’re speaking about.
What matters is how well you choose your words, not how many you use.
All the words and phrases in my list can be cut from any story I read without altering the story’s meaning. In most cases, cutting things like that actually makes the story better.
So, writers: don’t be afraid to write clearly, and frickin’ learn to spell already.
Maybe too much
Yesterday I was wearing all-thrift-store clothing except for my shirt, which was bought from a hip little online shirt company. I was carrying a Lomo — a Smena Symbol, a little manual 35mm film camera that I paid maybe too much for on eBay. My glasses were, as usual, squarish in a retro but likeable way. I was snapping pictures of a sweet 1970’s Plymouth Valiant and explaining about how cast iron cookware is so much better than Teflon. At the Salvation Army a couple days earlier, I had bought a collection of swing music — 14 volumes on eight-track cassette — and ridden home on my 1973 Schwinn. Just to make myself seem more of a type, I just wrapped up a little freelance Web design.
I’m one of those people. The more embarrassed I get for looking like a hipster, the more I end up being one. Aren’t I supposed to be an artist or something, just to top off the cliche?
Now I’m off to retrieve hash browns and breakfast sausages from my cast-iron skillet (“It’s so much better than new pans. I swear, you can get them at the Salvation Army for practically nothing”) and maybe read a little porn before I go to bed.
05.12.06
Dustroyer
The way to keep from getting frustrated with cleaning is to repeat “I am become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds,” the words from the Bhagavad Gita that Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted when he saw the first atomic weapons test.
I know that nuclear warfare and the reduction of clutter have no real parity, but hey — it works.
