Bryan

Okay wait wait wait, I have one more thing to say on this blog before it poofs:

I was just sitting here between a beer and a cheese cracker, and I thought to follow up on a couple of curious comment notifications I've received in the past year or so. These weren't comments posted to anything recent, but rather to a rambling entry from June 2005 (which, in hindsight, was poorly written and based entirely on hearsay I didn't even remember correctly).

So I thought I'd Google "Hazel the Mummy" and find out if for some reason that particular entry popped up high on the list of returnables.

... no, but it turns out that if you read to the bottom of Hazel Ferris's Wikipedia page, you'll find a link to my blog tagged as "A brief remembrance at Livejournal.com" ... so there.

THE GHOST OF INFORMATION PAST!!!

Well people, needless to say, there hasn't been much going on around here for the past... erm... year, despite my original best intentions otherwise, but hey! A new life has been blooming oh so slowly in a private sector of the internet, and I think it's time to just band-aid-rip come out with it:

Sergeant Pluck Himself: At the moment, a 10-month pictorial retrospective of what the hell I've been up to since ex-patriating the country (oh, but I re-patriate myself next month, Uncle Sam!) and a similarly loose-ended and infrequently updated nonsense blog catered to those who, for the justification of their choosing, wish to pin me down to place and time (that wistful mistress!)

So yeah, check it out if you wish, and Chiefbroom, I'm sorry I couldn't sweep your floors into the afterlife, which I once thought incredibly likely. You know, life is all about shedding skin for 67% of the earth's inhabitants.

rip rip rip,
Bryan

I was holed up in two different hotels for the past two weeks, until yesterday, when a couple of things happened: 1.) I moved into my new apartment, Leo Palace, and 2.) Returned to Katano-shi for the second time, the first of which was me dropping in on Chie with no prior notice and surprising her to tears, so this time was a little more organized and congregated; my second welcome-back party so far, this time with beer-flavored non-beer, squid jerky, and corn potage-flavored corn snacks, among other things.

The first hotel had a TV that swiveled via remote control, which didn't help the televised programming one bit. And that's how I passed training week, it feels like, two months ago. The second hotel had a plastic-encapsulated bath, and i mean this, room, so I could shower while sitting on the toilet, if I had so desired. It also took me almost the entire week I stayed in this second hotel to find out that an iron was waiting for me behind the front desk, if I would just ask, and so I did (my Japanese is improving from horrible again, slowly), but still, the iron didn't help my dirty shirts (I packed for the one week of training, not the second week of purgatory) with its ironing board, smaller than my lap. I steamed away some leg hairs, trying to iron in my underwear, very painfully, and not for long.

Takatsuki has real color. Small streets, bicycles, flashing neon grab-ya-by-the-eye signs, 24-hour bento, all-day-crowded okonomiyaki/takoyaki/yakisoba stalling on the corner claim tickets, covered shopping arcades, and I found out how and where to eat for $2 a meal... microwavable packs of rice and boil-able vegetable curry pouches.

Training week ended, and now I'm a teacher. It's really stressful right now, but I like it, I think. It's just hard to gauge whether the students like it, or more importantly, if they find it worth the money. I hope I can figure out, quickly, how to balance fun and educational lessons, and the part that really kills me right now, the preparation time involved to make these happen on schedule, one after another, someodd 30 times a week, and still have room in my day for myself. BUT. The people I'm working with really are a joy, my students too, so far, and that goes a long way to help work feel less like work, you know?

And so, my apartment has a loft above the kitchen, where I can sleep and wake up to parade music on Sundays, and a washing machine full of dirty water, now that I've washed some clothes. If anyone knows how to drain a Japanese washing machine, please let me know; the clothes that so previously occupied the water are now hanging above my bathtub, in a room, with its 4-function fan, that doubles as a drying machine. I'm also trying to decode the elaborate poster on how and when to throw away my different types of trash, of which there are about fourteen. I could, in theory, chop some vegetables on top of my refrigerator, in front of the microwave, the most likely place of doing such a thing, given the size of the kitchen. Chie told me to ask whether or not the faucet water in Takatsuki is potable, which I hope it is, because I've been drinking lots of it, happily, to replace the lots of water I've lost in more unpleasant, diarrheal means; I was thinking instant rice and curry pouches, but if water's the culprit, I can keep my secret love...

All this is to say that the first half-month of this experience has been a whole mix of things, many of which have strayed far from pleasant. I'm still trying to figure out how to live my life in this environment, but given that I've only been in an environment that I can call "mine" for less than 48 hours, things really aren't bad at all. It takes time to problem-solve. I teach my first kids' lesson tomorrow (5&6 year-olds), so I'm looking forward to singing songs at work. Especially the last one:

English class is over, we are going home. Goodbye, goodbye, we are going home.

Hello Blog. How many times have I written a sentence on your face just to delete it, thinking, things are too good to be wasting time writing about life when I could be out living it? It's nothing personal. It's just life getting in the way of reflecting on life to you.

In a week and two days I'm leaving the country for the foreseeable future. (The future being, in my case, much less than that -- a year, two years... who knows? The foreseeable future, then.) Life in the United States has become increasingly disturbing for me, and I'm extremely excited to cut down the excesses, trim the fat in society, etc. The latest reasons, a combination:

1.) Watching the BBC's "History of World War II" documentary on Hiroshima
2.) Visiting the Georgia Aquarium (the largest in the world, measuring four whale sharks), where I saw a quote carved into a wave-shaped bench: "History is written by those who make the wake; not by those who ride it or watch from the shore."

One year ago these things wouldn't have bothered me, but so much has happened in that year... I sometimes wish I had never gone to Japan in the first place, and that I had never finished my last year of school. And anyone who knows me today will know how that's the lie of lies; it's just that the intellectual responsibility that comes with my past year's experiences is proving to be much more difficult to manage than I ever thought possible.

It's extremely sad to me that an organization as reputable and wide-spread as the BBC still creates blatant lies in writing its "histories". History, for the western public world, is a movie, a dramatization, a stereotype that will never die. It's simply entertainment, when actual, compelling, worthwhile history is more along the lines of anthropology; compiling all sides and perspectives of a situation in order to arrive at a more complete (and fucking COMPLICATED) truth. It's not a script; it's not something you watch in an hour and a half. And in that sense, the quote at the aquarium is right; history is written by victors, but that one version of history is only relevant to the victorious. Every person outside the English-speaking sphere of the world (which is still, reassuringly, very, very large) is living a very different reality in very different histories. And in that sense, yes, history is written by those who make the wake; and a wake, by nature, is a disturbance to the natural ways of the world that expands until the wake itself exists so far from its source as to be completely blind to what it originated from in the first place.

Blog, we live in the Information Age. It's time we use that technology to actually connect with the rest of the world on a human level and learn. It's going to be really difficult with all this information in the world, especially when it turns out to be completely different from everything I have ever known in life, but I'm ready for change, and I hope you are too.

With that said, I wrote more than just that one sentence I can never pass, and I plan to write many more.

People who read the blog, you can expect to hear all about my trip (and maybe even see a hundred pictures or three) in between the other clutter, which I hope turns out to be as important as it feels to me.

-Bryan

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

How often do people use that phrase out of context, I wonder? What does it take to make a sentence, or a half-sentence, that transcends its own context? Not that I've read A Tale of Two Cities, or plan to anytime soon, but still... people should be more literary and crap, and recognize when they speak in quotes. What else would we need to say? (Later: Music, I think. Speak music.)

That's why I took this job, I think. To stay awake until eight in the morning, either writing words or reading words, working on that on-going literary education. I guess that means I'm writing these words, in-between reading Julio Cortazar's words out of Blow Up: and Other Stories. Judging from "Axolotl", these late-night readings will be nothing but entertaining. I hope I can re-create something of that for the all-knowing You, who will probably be reading a lot more of my words, now that I have some time to write them...

Which is to say, I graduated, and it was the worst month of my life. I had no time for anything, relentlessly, and I still didn't even have enough time to finish everything in a timely manner. It was a little embarrassing, having such an ungraceful exit, but now I have what may come to seem like too much time, so I'm trying to enjoy the transition. So far: one hour, no boredom, White Album, dessert leftovers offered for later. Things look good if the next seven hours continue in similar fashion.

By the way, it might be hard to reach me this summer. For example: Today I work until 8am, sleep until 3:30pm, I hope, and work from 4pm until midnight. But I'll have a whooooole lot of time here in front of the computer for two-thirds of the day. If you need to reach me on Thursday, June 21st of 2007, send me an e-mail, because I sure don't want you poking around in my dream space, even if you can.

But really, I've already forgotten how busy I was only a week ago, because the past month has had more than its share of pleasantries. Take a handful of the following to forget the pain (and brain burns!):

-- BJORK. Event of the year, second only to the potential of the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago (tickets to which have already been birthday-given-early to me by the One and Awesome). Events include (while I look at the website) SONIC YOUTH PLAYING DAYDREAM NATION IN ITS ENTIRETY (which is, I declare, THE ultimate windows-rolled-down album of every summer since 1988, even though I didn't know it for those first 12 years or whatever), GZA and Slint both playing full albums as well, Yoko Ono, Cat Power, Iron and Wine, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, Voxtrot, Battles, Dan Deacon, The New Pornographers, Stephen Malkmus, Del La Soul (?!), Of Montreal (!!!!), Jamie Lidell, The Sea and Cake, Junior Boys, Deerhunter, The Ponys, Menomena (!), and so on from there, all for only fifty dollars. Holy crap, and give me my advertising check.

-- The aquarium. It sounds lame, but Denver's aquarium is really great. I've been twice in the past month, but I only fed the sting rays one of those times. (Insider trick: make a fist and stick your thumb out between your fingers to make a trick fish = heavy petting!)

-- Movies! Between adding film to my senior Asian studies thesis, a year's worth of free rentals from Blockbuster (one per week, won by my dad in an amateur golf tournament?), and Jessica's French class, there have been many, many movies this past month, most of which were either foreign or otherwise obscured in nature. Most notabled include: Hiroshima, mon amour, The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna), Enjo, Silence, The City of Lost Children, Oldboy, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and at the drive-in, the new Pirates of the Caribbean, and at Red Rocks, Pulp Fiction, which was super great in that setting.

(How strange, my life all raveled out into lists.)

-- Family! Along with graduation, and along with the torture of finals, and with the torture of moving out, the torture of starting job training, of finishing my thesis three days after graduation, came family! And it was oh so good to see them, and much less exhausting than I was prepared for.

-- Uh, a world-record-breaking mass doggy wedding? This was one of the single most absurd events of my life, right up next to seeing Maximon in person...

-- Realizing over a year ago that yeah, the last six months of my college career are going to kick me in the ass, but realizing now that yeah, I double-majored, wrote two theses simultaneously, churned up a girlfriend who can show up in pictures with my parents on graduation day, got a job overseas, and a second job to cover me until then (or, mostly), all in the time it could have taken me to do any one of those things on its own.


I'm sure there were other notables in there, but I think that's enough to help remind me not to forget the past month entirely.

And now it's summer, and time is slow.
Five more hours to go . . .

Hmm.. maybe if I write this out of my system I'll be able to sleep again, because I've barely slept at all since it happened:

I don't mean to offend anyone with whom I've seen a fairly large number of mind-blowing shows over the past five years or so, but the other night's Bjork and Joanna Newsom concert at Red Rocks was, and this is no contest in my head, the best concert I've been to, ever, period, etc. etc. Everything about it was perfect, and Red Rocks is its own perfection, so it was a gooseflesh party of the highest degree to watch perfect people filling a perfect place so much bigger than themselves with, sometimes, only a voice and a harp, and at other times, with FIRE AND LASERS AND AN ICELANDIC BRASS BAND AND THE DRUMMER FROM LIGHTNING BOLT AND, again, that relentless and beautiful voice that won't let me sleep tonight, just like last night. It was the perfect concert, and it's been years (Radiohead? Beck? Wilco? Pixies? ..and which time?) since I've been able to walk out saying that. Only this time, I really really really really mean it, and I hope for my health that I mean it for a long, long time.

..and since when was Red Rocks so GREEN?! I guess I've only been there in the summer or fall, with all the dead or burned-out prairie grass, but nope! It's lush, suckas! Time for picnickers, methinks, maybe every day..

Unh! If I could just catch up, graduate, and SLEEP... everything would be soooooo haaaaappyyyyy-y--y-yy-y---yyyyy.... y!

So, let's say someone came up and told you, "Hi there. Wanna teach English in Japan literally right across the river from where you've already lived before? And uh... wanna leave October 4th?"

What would you do?

Let's take a break to talk about me, yeah?

Times have been rough, kind of like a nice deer pelt -- jaggedy hairs stuck on one side with smooth and comfortable skin underneath. I've been getting into some pretty intensely psychological stuff for my Asian Studies thesis, namely the respective book and film versions of Fires on the Plain (Nobi), Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna), and Black Rain (Kuroi Ame). All are investigations into what happens to the human condition when pushed to do truly horrible things, and it's difficult to maintain a level head on life when I have to spend so much time unraveling intense pain like this.

But I'm turning it around -- things took a bad direction for about a week, but I finally stopped feeling pathetic enough to shave, do a load of laundry, clean my apartment, buy some groceries, and mentally get my shit together. Now I just have to follow through for a month.

And what a month it will be (and has been)! Oh, let me count the ways...
- This is old news, but about a month ago was the most pleasant surprise of the year! One Jimi Troup got stranded in Denver's layover purgatory for about 7 hours, so I picked him up and we proceeded to add to my on-going list of get-rich-quick schemes. Watch out for Legend of the Blinking House...

- But really, even though I have about a dozen ways to make a ridiculous amount of money on things too stupid to be taken seriously, I know I should probably have a more secure future plan for this whole graduation thing that I hear is quickly approaching... which is why I spent about a week mentally preoccupied with AEON's application and interview process, which traveled through Denver in April. The great part? I got hired! I'm just waiting for an assignment (preferably in Kansai, which is why I'm still waiting, because it's up with the Tokyo area as the most requested assignment), but it's extremely nice to know that I can and will be back in Japan by the end of the year, if I just let it happen to me. Oh man.

- I'm working on having free DU housing and an hourly wage this summer, but I don't want to talk about it until after the interview. Actually, that's a lot of why I haven't been blogging lately -- because things have been so on the rails as to be a complete embarrassment if they should fall the wrong way. But so far, they're not! Which means I can say...

- I've been twice-over recommended for English departmental honors based on the 1st draft of my creative writing thesis! Final draft (and hopefully significantly re-structured and expanded for personal satisfaction) due in about a week.

- And after mentally dropping out of the honors program three years ago, I'm still graduating with University honors! Apparently I took 20 honors credits during my freshman year instead of the required 12, so the minor things I ignored in the past two years can be waived. And I'm double-thesising, so, whammy!

- And now the May 15th Bjork concert at Red Rocks is Bjork AND Joanna Newsom! Holy Holy Holy!


Now if I can just catch up where everything this week set me back...

Well, I almost drowned somewhere back there, having to read an average of about two novels a week, (roughly) finishing one thesis to be told to go out and start writing the second, etc.; but I did not, in fact, die at all back then, and I hope I can keep that up a while yet. Instead, let me tell you about why I'm checking my e-mail someodd fifty times a day:

The ideal plan for me in my life, now, is rolling. It should let me know by Thursday if I'm invited back for the interview stage of short-term security. If I can get through all of this, I won't have to think about my life at all for at least a year or two, which would be great for my head, considering how that's just about all I've done or been reminded to do for the past eight years or so. Oh, and I'll be leaving the United States. If, that is, I can successfully jump through these last fake finales of hoops and other miscellany.

But then, let's say I DO make it to my ideal life, for now, within six months. (And when I say "ideal," I'm implying words like practical, culturally-acceptable, and humanly-possible along with it, otherwise I would be talking about something totally different and awesome.) I can't help but feel a little guilty for abandoning the life that's cropped up here over the years . . .

hmmmmmmm, yes, that was a heavy ellipsis.

But for now, I have two Bjork tickets for me and her birthday (who, I have to say, has proved to be really and somewhat disconcertingly special to me, and probably in disguise for the first year I knew her), and yesterday this came appropriately printed on my Papa John's receipt: "Your pizza experience managed by Christ," so I know things aren't all bad. Actually, the only things bad are how all my forks and spoons are rusting to the sink, and how I seem unconsciously determined not to contact the people I love - a regrettable paradox.

In fact, things are quite good (but busy busy busy), and did I mention there's a mass doggy wedding on the horizon to look forward to?

..well, there definitely is.

In the writing of this, I'm going to try not to let myself get too distressed. It's just that I really wish I could find a way to make a living out of this past weekend..

But to do that, I would have to get people to pay me while I surround myself with amazing and hilarious and genuine people who don't mind living now instead of then, let my dear friend Brandon sleep in a tent in the middle of my floor while he visits from New York (a tent which I'm not sure when or why I'll ever take down), make poor art out of magazine clippings and graphite, record thoroughly terrible crunk rap that becomes more than just a mockery of itself, and live a life that's uncompromisingly funny in the most unadulterated sense of the word "fun."

Of course, no one will ever pay me to do this, unless I can convince someone that it's genius, which I'm a little hesitant to declare. Instead, we're all going to change in directions we haven't quite figured out yet, and functional levels of sanity will be restored just before the lid blows off something truly great. And that, to me, is the most depressing part of all -- that all of this will move on with little to no consequence. I think endings sometimes make the best beginnings -- I just hope I figure out how to apply that to my life and really take myself somewhere..
But if it weren't for the quickly changing situations underneath it all, I would stay right here for as long as possible.

I truly think that one of the most perfect songs ever written is almost 17 minutes long, which seems a bit of a contradiction -- doesn't a notion of "perfectness" also come with an inherent sense of efficiency? In any case, Joanna Newsom's "Only Skin" is still as perfect as the first time I heard it. Seriously, do yourself the favor if you've somehow managed to miss this one.

Well, I guess I got that scattered bit down. I hope that's something..

In case no one was there to hear me, I just yelled "Fuckin YES!" out loud to myself and a plush booger that's sitting on my desk in suspenders. Class is canceled!
...animatronic monkey head nods in agreement.

So, it turns out that I'm really passionate about whatever I'm doing in life. It's a little frustrating, though -- once you start doing things really well, people start expecting more and more from you, so somewhere in the back of my head I know that I'm well on my way to failing at something or another... I just don't know what it's going to be yet. It's just really difficult for me to consciously be a mediocre person. The trade off, then (I guess), is forgetting birthdays, forgetting needed correspondences, and forgetting all the relatively minor things that add up to make me a completely unreliable person instead. All stuff for which I relentlessly and, I hope, needlessly apologize.

Yeah, I kind of suck sometimes. But other times I'm fucking greaaaaaaaaat!
Tomorrow, with class canceled, I'm going to try to get real passionate about my dishes. I've ran out of spoons. And calling my sister..

Me! Be realistic! Megalomania!

But really... the things in my life right now are so unrealistic it's ridiculous.

So, wow, more or less..

It reminds me of that time my mom called around dinner on Valentine's Day to see if I had any plans, and I said, no Mom, I don't have any plans; I was planning to just sleep through it until you called and woke me up, actually. Then one thing led to another (namely, a second phone call about 15 minutes after that first -- this one containing, implicitly, dinner, wine, and everyone's favorite French movie) and then I had a girlfriend out of nowhere, or, somewhere very specific at the time, assuming her not to be, in fact, imaginary..

Yeah, that was a good one... reminds me of that.


In other news, I really need to slow my intake of monkeys. So many things have happened in a relatively short period of time (say, no less than two months, no more than four) involving serious monkey magic that I'm dangerously close to reclaiming my "Monkey" moniker of olde.
...not that it would be a bad thing. That was a very happy time in life, too.


[EDIT:]
By the way,
Listen to Splinter say WHAT?! with Me and Nick,
which has been going on RIGHT HERE for a couple weeks with minimal publicity.
Tuesday nights, 8-10pm mountain time. Get it.


Splinter say... Raphael, you mustn't be so hard-headed.

I don't know what this is or why it's written in a sticky note on my desktop, but I think it's hilarious and I wish I had seen it myself:

"From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo:
When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor."

There's really no reason to go teach English in Japan.. I think they've got it together just fine.

So what a strange weekend that was, huh?

I wanted to make a portrait of all the things bought between the three of us at the Mile High Flea Market, but didn't. It would have looked something like poor cinema, crappy candy, plastic toys, and a wooden polar bear, all suspended by turkey legs, with a gallon of salsa poured on top. A real masterpiece.

Speaking of masterpieces, I WON Iron Chef: Phil's Kitchen (secret ingredient = peanut butter). The secret? Wheat saltine crackers topped with peanut butter, carnival popcorn, cocoa puffs, Ms. Butterworth's syrup, and a special peach garnish I pulled out of the freezer. It was delicious, kind of, but I don't recommend it at all.

And then there was Monster Jam. What the hell. And Fantasia, and Edward Scissorhands, and a Beck dance party, and someone I hope sticks around a while.

Which gets me thinking, when new people pop into life, what a great time for a change in character! I suddenly realize that I haven't really had to think about anyone but myself for almost a year, and the change, or wanting to change, points out all the little imperfections that are always around but never really noticeable when you're dealing with just yourself. But man, screw that -- I am who I am. I'm not punctual, ever, with anything, but I'm not, let's say, into incest. So instead of consciously changing myself, I'm just not going to let myself get hung up on the little mishaps. I think that's more in line with what I've been all about recently anyway -- simply maintaining a more positive side of me that I never used to know. It's still strange, though.

Unrelated: Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones is a book I hate and love, and I'm not sure yet which has the better of me. It's a book you can easily read in a single sitting (I did, but why would you want to?), but the actual process of reading it is very unpleasant, mainly because it's a series of brilliant, unrelated, sometimes nonsensical passages that become related with the more nonsense that's piled on. Or something. It's all pleasantly sticking in my head now, but I'm left a little uncomfortable at how I can retroactively love a book I hated to read.

So, to end, a paragraph from Dreams and Stones followed by Draco, the fire-breathing backhoe:

"Even events themselves are not needed to set flowing that which is meant to flow. In fact only words are essential. Thus on a rainy day an incautious pedestrian dies at a busy intersection and a drunk driver causes a fatal accident, from one moment to another becoming a criminal. The family, plunged into sorrow, bids farewell forever to a father and grandfather, a teacher of many years, while children carry their ink-stained backpacks to school and rejoice at the fact that their test has been canceled. The police escort the culprit from the lockup to the courtroom; at the same time a taxicab is taking a woman in labor in the opposite direction to the maternity clinic. If someone should desire a telephone connection between the courthouse and the delivery room it is technically feasible, but the gaudy, hollow buoys of words that mark roles and the course of matters render such a telephone a needless waste of time, a caprice and even a suspicious subterfuge, a trick employed in bad faith. The words criminal and escort fix figures in their roles, in freeze-frame. Names delimit the boundaries of what is possible. On a different day, another person dies at the same intersection; in the courtroom, another trial begins (the escort and the arrestee have the same journey to make, though the section numbers from the criminal code cited in the charge sheet are different). A woman in labor rides to the maternity clinic in a taxicab; perhaps rain is falling again; the same children carry their backpacks to school and, on the way, are gradually imbued with the mournfulness of grammar and of exercises involving trains. The victims of accidents, the police officers, criminals, schoolchildren, the women in labor and the cab drivers have no choice: They have to make their way in the direction laid out by the street, to enter and exit through doors, and to do so during the hours they are open. They never come into the world or die, except in connection with the circumstances that precede these events and then follow them; they are utterly bound by rules determined by the relations between words. Nothing will occur that cannot be named, and everything that can be named will sooner or later occur."



To which I say, Raawr!

Does anyone want to help me throw a mask party? Not just physical masks (which are very important, too), but philosophical, thematic masks as well? Could make for some interesting conversation and cheese, maybe.

Huh?

I never thought I would say this unless mocking some specific social group or another, but I really hope I can make it to the monster truck rally this weekend..

Phil is finally (we hope) posing as Jesus for a Christmas card photo shoot this weekend, right before the monster truck rally..

I think I've been ghost-reading a person's blog who has been ghost-reading me back, which is potentially really embarrassing. If something shows up about Jesus and monster trucks, the cover's blown, but if not, I think my situation just got a little pitiful..

Wow, the internet has sure complicated social dynamics for the awkwards in the world! (I say this like it's a new thing, huh..) But without it, how would I ever know that my favorite movie that I've never seen is Solla Solla Enna Perumai?!





Thank you!

Tonight, two things:
1. I went snowboarding today. It's been almost two years, and I was half-thinking about giving it up for a while. Kind of related, it's a little difficult to be too concerned about global warming when this has been the coldest winter I can remember. But I put on my wind-chill bomb suit and hit it, dude, swoosh swoosh all net. Wore myself out on a few blacks and got jacked on granola, what. So that's good, and it gets me thinking that I should maybe re-visit some of the things I used to take too seriously, like snowboarding, guitar, final fantasy (i didn't say that, and it's not like I'm casually playing through XII right now or anything...), Grand's biscuits...

uh,

2. I watched Lost in Translation with my mom for the first time since before I went to Japan, and it has me feeling really sad. Not for the whole post-partum depression thing so much (but some), but I just miss that disconnect -- wanting so much to connect with someone, or something, somewhere, and not finding it until it's not expected anymore. I guess that's a bit of a contradictory statement, wanting to get lost while finding someone/thing, but it seems the two should be able to coincide just once, for me, greedy me. How funny, the people I met and didn't meet, simultaneously.

Related,
Alpha Morning Kyoto would play the "song of of the month" at the same time every morning, which was usually somewhere between bites of bland egg, sesameed vegetables, and Kotaro biting at Chie's Wallace & Gromit apron. November's song of the month was "No Promises" by who I assume was a washed-up or otherwise unsuccessful American R&B singer.. "Hey baby when we are together... doin things ... that we love.."
What is... no promise?

So, assuming each song of the month was taken from America's cultural bargain bin, I thought the song of December, Peter Bjorn & John's "Young Folks," was a fantastic find, and I just wanted it to be mine. It got stuck in my head every morning as I walked an hour (both ways! uphill!) to school, and it was such a strange time in my life, too -- leaving, soon, an experience whose appeal I couldn't altogether explain. I just want the explanations not to matter anymore, and I've wanted that for so long. I want to think I'm making progress, but who knows.
Anyway, turns out that "Young Folks" has been a bit of the hipster anthem of late, and that makes me kind of sad, too. It was the music for something that was very internal and bi-lingual for me, so I guess here I go and add it as the last track to the on-going soundtrack of my life without any further explanation:




This has been a good mental reset in the mountains, I think, but I should have had less to drink tonight. But no, Lost in Translation is a sad and hilarious movie, and I'm sure this would have happened the next time I watched it anyway..
juxtaposition hurts.

I hate to say this, but the Power of Grayskull is done, dead, finished. No more.

Instead, listen to me an Nick put on an as-of-yet-untitled show that starts THIS TUESDAY from 8-10pm mountain time. Consult your local almanac for a handy time-change calculator.
http://www.kvdu.org (yes, the website still needs to come back more completely. Give it a week.)


Then go see Pan's Labyrinth.
Then repeatedly kill spiders in your room with a hand vacuum and watch them spin around and around until they break into little pieces of leg.
Then get reacquainted with the tortuous/glorious spices of homemade Indian food & family.
Then, you will have had a good day.

Okay,
First. I'm having a really difficult time coming to grips with just how damn catchy the new Of Montreal album is. It's the tricky kind of catchy - it doesn't seem all that special or unique at first, driving home from the record store, but then one thing leads to another and now I've listened straight through the entire thing four times in the past 36 hours, classifying at least five songs as untouchably brilliant along the way.
...This doesn't happen.
(And then I disown it as hipless 36 hours later, probably, but I'm staying hopeful)

Second, I feel like sharing some media.
Why, look here! It's a new song from Andrew Bird! It's also a song that's not going to convince anyone who hasn't heard what else he does, but it has a pretty rad whistling solo, bro.
And what's that, a new video from OOIOO? It might be a bit more particular(ly odd) than their usual 9-minute jazz-blat scat-drone freakout, but it still makes an interesting watch. Especially if you're into claymation, animal dancelines, environmental awareness, or some combination therein.
And here's a macaroni necklace. Does there even need to be a reason? Happy Mother's Day, then... in January.


Third, I need to buy some earplugs. Going to sleep shouldn't sound like anything in particular, but my case of going to sleep sounds like laundry machines downstairs, squeaking monkeys above, and a girl laughing to herself through the wall. Unfortunately, once the subconscious half-sleep takes over, this all starts sounding more like I'm being digested in a mechanical whale, and the shock perpetuates a temporary purgatory the whole night through and through.

This needs to stop. Unusual and frequent coincidences, continue.

So this is how it happens, again:
I spend a single (masochistic) sitting typing out a workshop-able story, expecting it to be more or less throw-away material. The difference, in this case, is it can't be throw-away material -- it's what I've been working on, very slowly and with minimal progress, for over a year. I've spent so much time thinking about it that I've become completely sick of writing something I haven't even started writing. So, one thing leads to another, and I decide to ignore the 20ish hours of taped conversations, the pages of notes, and just let my head do some talking to help make everything interesting again. What I wasn't expecting was for the doors to blow completely and thoroughly off the hinges of the project, and for people to write and say the genuinely nice comments they did, along with substantial criticism that actually makes a whole lot of sense. If I were reacting the normal way, I'd walk around giddy for a week, like I'd just been on a great date, then not write again for months with the fear of not being able to better myself. But something about this isn't normal at all -- I open my notebook and bits of story fall out. Rich little bits I had completely forgotten about, and I'm excited, really excited to give this the attention it needs. And then I make a long series of apologies to family members for portraying them, or their likenesses, in lights that may not be altogether pleasant, or even remotely correct. (But it's for artistic vision, or something! I have to say.)

Yeah, real exciting. These headlines, too:

"THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL RETURNS!"
"INTERNSHIP ON THE HORIZON?"
"NEW ROOM NO LONGER LOOKS LIKE OPIUM DEN, SAYS FRIEND"
"INDIAN WEATHER FORECAST: MORE SNOW!"
"DU'S SOKA GAKKAI CHAPTER GIVES INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHISM IN JAZZMAN'S CAFE, WEDNESDAY, 7PM. BRYAN IS INTERESTED, first, IN HOW THIS STUDENT ORGANIZATION EXISTS, and second, IF AN ENGLISH-SPOKEN CONVERSATION ON THE TOPIC HAS ANY CHANCE OF ANSWERING ALL THE QUESTIONS HE'S STOCKPILED IN JAPANESE OVER THE PAST FOUR MONTHS"

And in sports, kind of,

"COMER'S WINGING TAKES JAPANESE TEST TO VICTORY!"

And in the margins it mentions something about how the page during which I poured myself a glass of rum is blatantly obvious and difficult to explain away.

Does one call a laugh 'hearty' or 'hardy'? I guess I'm laughing either heartily or hardily, depending..