tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57398132011-07-08T04:13:58.218-07:00Malevolent Owls!Now with far fewer topicsindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.comBlogger3621100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-16611166503376089312009-05-31T16:02:00.000-07:002010-02-06T18:00:04.734-08:00Hurt his feelings and an hour later, a perfect pearl rests beneath his kitten-pink tongue.Hurt his feelings and his eyes go from Blu-Razzberry Frostee to a smears of pulped violet plum on hail.When he throws his wet hair back after a night swim stars get struck and stick.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-91712369088682024832009-04-27T12:48:00.000-07:002009-04-28T11:54:41.836-07:00Today a local denizen of the streets inquired of me, as I entered my caffeination station, whether I had any change so he could obtain "a donut". Oddly, he smelled strongly of fresh, unsmoked pipe tobacco, which I doubt he had on his person, being less of the gent class and more of the literal crackhead class. I noted this olfactory puzzle but moved on, prompting the hungry seeker to scream "indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-88346810316521566722009-03-14T13:01:00.000-07:002009-03-14T21:31:58.827-07:00Being of a Victorian sort of temperament myself, prone to myriad spells and nervous disturbances, I long for a society that slaps such souls not with clunky, unendearing labels like "PTSD case" and "multiple personality disorder", but the less pathologizing and more picturesque "highly-strung", "fragile constitution", "susceptible to vapors", etc. I need a fainting couch, not a prescription drugindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-22388539723855678502009-03-01T12:19:00.000-08:002009-03-02T14:32:31.379-08:00I am uncomfortable with the thought that there may be exist feminists more radical (though I prefer "incendiary") than myself, so I'm careful to keep a simianishly tight toe-grip on the furthest fringe at all times, right. And yet. Breaking up pigeon mating rituals, grunting "Leave her alone, see how she's walking away from your stupid puffy chest?" . . . I suppose even the most flawless, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-38654887809754846152009-02-28T16:55:00.000-08:002009-02-28T17:12:27.202-08:00Will Oldham, in his enormously valuable one-off appearance as half of the duo Superwolf, opened the record with the lyric "I have often said/that I would like to be dead/in a shark's mouth", which was earthshaking to me then as a shark-obsessed suicide-in-waiting who revered W. Oldham as she has never revered another. Too much a coincidence not to seem special and meaningful and fated, since it indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-69317429457879284792008-05-25T13:54:00.000-07:002008-05-27T14:40:06.471-07:00Now that the Death Camp project has been wrapped up in a tidy bow of purply-pink entrails, Lil' Copenhagen and the Andychrist are free to construct a new legend, a new legacy of brutality. A period of respectful mourning must first pass, in which we face a present and future bereft of blood-stinking warehouse gigs commenced by Copes's black sermons; the growled "Bow your motherfucking heads" indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-27522181392180841352008-05-04T13:00:00.000-07:002008-05-04T13:09:22.456-07:00A drawback of being thoroughly hydrated at all times is that one's tears lose a surprising portion of their salinity. One thinks of tear-taste as being a fairly stable thing. As it turns out, bulk Evian plus a diet extremely heavy on fruit equals only very subtly salty tears that are sweetish.On paper this may seem an enchanting and/or tantalizing novelty, but ultimately I feel something's lostindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-40986608837573197492008-04-25T15:43:00.000-07:002008-04-25T16:06:45.807-07:00Among the things I can "[verb] people under the table" at or with is volume. Baby here doesn't employ earplugs but camps next to the amps at shows, and typically emerge from my truck so decibel-dazed I can't walk a straight line. Yet even I don't venture into the volume range available by maxing out both my computer's volume & the independent volume control on the headphones plugged into it. indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-40596823217774551692008-04-16T18:44:00.001-07:002008-04-16T21:31:41.562-07:00Sometimes Li'l Copenhagen can be trying. He may test one, he may vex. So much so that one might find oneself vividly imagining, say, bludgeoning him with his own skateboard and pushing him into a halfpipe and watching his limp corpse roll about humorously a bit before slowing to silence, eternal silence. Pretty, pretty hair caught in a last breeze before being slowly soaked into the pretty, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-12773681440093578092008-03-26T14:32:00.000-07:002008-03-26T14:49:58.967-07:00The 'El seemed a touch cross about our nonconsensual "sanitizing" of his record collection - hey, we would have asked you, blondie, but you weren't home, and since you live alone there was no one to leave a note with, and also maybe we shouldn't have keys, hmm? - but just as Lil' Copenhagen refuses to swallow the semen of meat-eaters, so too do I with that of people who willingly expose indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-80374808783812573982008-03-20T14:00:00.000-07:002008-03-20T14:10:09.753-07:00This, from a friend: "A really cute thing about you guys is how you'll pull up and both be wiggling and dancing and bouncing in the truck like you're listening to Green Day, and then the door opens and this horrible wall of shrieking and Satan-worshiping that isn't exactly even music comes pouring out."Yeah, it is pretty cute. The real ass-shaking happens when it's Lamb of God though. Compared indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-70811245324833872192008-03-16T12:26:00.000-07:002008-03-16T12:56:46.807-07:00Hey, remember when this site featured commentary on non-rockin' out-related topics? A taste today, a trickle comes, as my breakfast was almost soured by a reopening, w/Yuoshka, of the only topic more searingly divisive for us than whether Maiden's first singer was worth a damn. (That I won't even name the dork should imply my position there.) The one that can make us go days with nothing to say indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-78923079704820104392008-03-15T13:50:00.000-07:002008-03-15T14:13:57.243-07:00Nothing in me, no uncertain cell, desires to resist stating that Jonny Greenwood's score for "There Will Be Blood" is the greatest thing ever composed to accompany a film. Hyperbole's not even up to the task. When permitting it to penetrate me via iPod in the Whole Foods, fr'instance, I sometimes am so struck by the adrenaline-stinking dread I abruptly stop all motion and my mouth falls open indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-58834172079838014172008-03-12T14:23:00.000-07:002008-03-12T16:09:51.988-07:00Hails to Figgis for letting me use this in my upcoming black metal photography coffee-table book. Horns facing down, though, for briefly believing me when I said this here blog was called Vegan Gauntlets. Speaking of dishy horde members. Homepiece here doesn't getting enough credit for overall Nailing It, possibly because his band wears costumes & possibly blush - sorry, y'all do - but dude indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-79274767185964510102008-03-03T13:57:00.000-08:002008-03-03T14:01:44.797-08:00Surely there could be no credible aesthetic objection to basing a large tattoo around the chorus of The Mars Volta's recent phat-azzed hit single "Wax Simulacra": "Am I waiting now?/Does my waiting howl?" Jesus Lord have you seen a better two-line poem? It shall involve buzzards.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-13495213723538202492008-02-14T18:09:00.001-08:002008-02-15T14:47:34.183-08:00Lightning Bolt. Dude. Lightning Bolt. Sometimes when I horrify myself by imagining alternate realities in which given important things did or did not happen, I think "What if I'd never needed to cover my ass by buying Lightning Bolt's entire back catalog after I told Aleks Prechtl I liked them a lot, when really I'd heard like 2 songs?" If he'd never asked me that day, sweeping granola and indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-77395314164179805172008-02-12T11:01:00.001-08:002008-02-12T11:23:55.220-08:00[The following contains a great deal of anthropomorphization, a charge which I am hereby simultaneously acknowledging and dismissing.]Once I was the primary driver of a '65 Ranchero that served for a time as the home of a jumping spider, a jolly little charmer I came to have heart-brimming affection for. Loves, it's happened again! A new spider superball now lives in my Tacoma, a marvelous indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-39832855357432059732008-02-06T21:50:00.000-08:002008-02-06T21:57:09.513-08:00I save any down shed by his outerwear. I could not do otherwise - they're relics! - think of it! - a snow-white fwuffy feather that once held his warmth, held it near him, dearly? Where could this down possibly be bound but one of several treasure chests, alongside sea glass approximating his eye color? indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-66043601513808744682008-01-30T12:14:00.000-08:002008-01-30T12:38:26.831-08:00The spinning, dazzling, snake-throwing orb has touched down, oh Jesus, oh El Paso, as an e-mail sent to my boss yesterday said, you want to talk shit on the Mars Volta, you best do it out of my earshot. (Since it was a message to Dave Craib, I should have added "And were it sane to say both their names in the same sentence, I'd add 'Let these motherfuckers show Slipknot what 8 dudes should soundindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1167349779099770252006-12-28T15:44:00.000-08:002006-12-28T15:53:36.366-08:00I make a pest of myself to Mr. Prechtl here, stammeringly re-asking the same questions - "Uhhhh, you guys auditionin' drummers yet? Uhhhhh, there's still a Battleship, right?" I hate to risk engrumpening him, longing for his approval as I do, but how can I squelch my whines when the world risks losing this action?indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1166773110249036162006-12-21T23:16:00.000-08:002006-12-21T23:39:34.986-08:00Lil' Copenhagen's skin's so luminous & buttermilky I half expect daffodils to issue from it come spring. This plus the obscene 3-tone Blue Razzberry irises he's got, plus the bolts of rosy apricot blushery whenever he's chilly or even halfway excited about something, plus the artificially black hair, equals a boy of almost lurid coloration, and it makes everyone else look like gruel of no indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1165213036622029742006-12-03T22:04:00.000-08:002006-12-03T22:18:48.116-08:00Anyone considering cohabitating with Lil' Copenhagen should know that Bragg's Liquid Aminos must be on hand at all times, both in original undiluted strength and diluted 4:1 with water in a spray bottle. Failure to maintain adequate stocks of Bragg's - for example, should the fluid level in the dilution spray bottle fall below 75% - makes Lil' Copenhagen bummed, and when he's bummed, you're not indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1164781143559200602006-11-28T21:43:00.000-08:002006-11-28T22:31:49.450-08:00I suspect my Foto Barrage! posts are the most insipid of all, but, uh, Barrage! incoming. But first, lest anyone think I was randomly harsh on a poor unstylish vain little Finn in my last post: I can't go into it here, but KALLE KNOWS WHAT KALLE DID. Aside from the hang of his pants and his wearing black nail polish like we're all about to watch a Nine Inch Nails concert DVD together. indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1164596257058800402006-11-26T18:52:00.000-08:002006-11-26T18:57:37.173-08:00If it weren't for Kalle here I might've gone, oh, perhaps several more months without learning that "rock and roll" (noun or verb) is "rokaten ja rollaten" in Finnish, and I do consider that a pretty important piece of information to have. So thanks. But having said that, Kalle, I have some less positive things to add.Not a girl on earth loves a scumbag with his scumbag jeans riding way too lowindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1163561119997169242006-11-14T19:15:00.000-08:002006-11-14T19:28:03.746-08:00I purchased some Arkansas Black apples today, and they shocked me into realizing I've never not once posted a word about Saviours, nor about their teen-dreem frontman Austin Barber, who came to us from Arkansas to infect the populace with his black gospel of KILL FOR SAVIOURS. The beauty of this band is that their deal, their "message" if you will, can be summed up thus: "Hey, do you guys like indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1163280674273996892006-11-11T13:16:00.000-08:002006-11-11T13:31:57.233-08:00I'm thinking of changing the name of this page to Why Don't People Talk About Disembowelment More? "The Tree of Life and Death" was, just minutes ago, almost visible in this room, oozing though the air through the air like an animated algebra problem of heaviness. You think that's a strange and unintelligible analogy, but you haven't listened to Disembowelment lately, have you? Their songs areindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1163043806985130242006-11-08T19:12:00.000-08:002006-11-08T19:50:15.826-08:00Just said to Yuoshka and I, in a whisper-shout as inflamed as Avenged Sevenfold's abcesses: "You know, from you people's body language right now a person would think you were listening to metal, but you're actually listening to Coheed & Cambria. How's THAT?" Spittin' mad at us, Lil' Copenhagen was. We ignored him 'cause we were just getting to the third-best part of "From Fear Through the Eyesindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1162776557427468162006-11-05T17:27:00.000-08:002006-11-05T18:02:03.246-08:00Havoror here was kind enough to explain his name's Old Norse origin - something to do with "high" and "battle", I'm not kidding - and though his English is far clearer and more correct than mine (ain't it always, with these Scandoids?), I didn't get much of it, because I was stuck doing my retarded parakeet impression, staring at him goggly and tilt-headed. I swear he smelled of glacier. He andindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1162691851633654392006-11-04T17:56:00.000-08:002006-11-04T18:03:21.696-08:00What did the crazy lady just do? She just bought the same Cattle Decapitation songs off iTunes twice apiece, as a sin tax of sorts on not being strictly vegan and listening to the band anyway. Here's some extra money, guys, for that goat cheese yesterday. Still, despite how batty that is I feel the purer for it. I do feel somewhat absolved. I feel like a towering poser for not getting Celticindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1162457405670841692006-11-02T00:39:00.000-08:002006-11-02T00:50:05.683-08:00The itchy, twitchy life of a highly-strung neurotic who loves too hard! When I look at Chris my blood feels carbonated, a baby-pink fizzy-drink where the bubbles are little quivering exclamation points (shit yes I'll reach for that metaphor! shit yes I'll strain it!) - yet lest this sound sunny and pop-songish, THOSE BUBBLES ARE BROKEN-LIGHTBULB SHARP and COLLAPSING MY VEINS. When perfectly indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1162372237589488082006-11-01T01:02:00.000-08:002006-11-01T01:12:11.340-08:00Your first, callously ignorant response may be "Air guitar always looks stupid." But a glance at these two dollbabies here should make clear that if you can bring it on stage, you can bring it at a shitty party with a pool cue and a rifle, too. YR COL' KILLIN' IT, GENTS. Hails.(Everyone sees that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle back there, right? You're all noting that?)indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1162281119675991882006-10-30T23:32:00.000-08:002006-10-30T23:54:17.873-08:00WELCOME SCEINCE OLYPAINS, was what it said on the marquee sign at Roswell High in Roswell, NM, when a PBS film crew on campus filming some doc thing I saw recently.Why isn't this as crushingly poignant to anyone else as it is to me? People are just about waving that shit off when I try to talk to them about it, unharmed, dry-eyed. WELCOME SCEINCE OLYPAINS, the fucking marquee read! I sure talkindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1160347719314519772006-10-08T15:24:00.000-07:002006-10-08T15:48:39.356-07:00Staggering in after a seven-month absence to post an always-inadvisable Too Many Pills Post:Watching the Raiders-Niners game right now. God, is there anything the cholesterol-sheened good ol' boys who do television football commentary hate more than excessive niggerishness? The hard-ons these pigs get when Randy Moss drops a pass in the endzone, fuck, nothing pleases their greasy racial indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1142584330900587452006-03-17T00:30:00.000-08:002006-03-17T00:32:10.910-08:00Little has gone my way in my life thus far but SLAYER, MASTODON AND LAMB OF GOD ARE TOURING TOGETHER THIS SUMMER, so what difference could the foregoing twenty-odd years possibly make? "That's my dream line-up" has been said about many a tour, surely, but anyone who's said it about any other lineup, even decades ago, was totally full of retroactive shit because SLAYER, MASTODON AND LAMB OF GOD indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1141805596959658222006-03-07T23:58:00.000-08:002006-03-08T00:19:22.200-08:00Do you know what Lee Madueno said to me a few days ago, after viewing that reallly dreadful documentary about the more famous murderers in Norwegian black metal? He said - I'm making hideously exaggerated faces of mock bafflement as I type this, at him, and he's not here - "You know, back in the day Varg really looked a lot like Chris K." Lee? Were you really pointing that out as something I indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1141804427436770302006-03-07T23:39:00.000-08:002006-03-07T23:53:47.460-08:00Mastodon's "Leviathan" album came out - Jesus - almost two years ago, somehow, and I've only rarely gone more than 48 hours without listening to at least some of it. I know I'm too breathless about these things but still, the MIGHT of that fucker, the I swear to God literally palpable weight of it. It is fucking palpable - take several bong hits and lie on the floor between two speakers, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1138174800962658662006-01-24T23:36:00.000-08:002006-11-27T23:47:51.683-08:00OK I have an Aleks *problem*. No one reads this any more, so I feel strangely free to disengorge it here. At home I listen to Battleship records, which are so good I listen with throat adrenalined shut and my heart at a kinda troubling gallop. Battleship are fucking devastating, only fucking MASTODON are as much so, MASTODON, all right? All right, so, permanent heavy rotation for me, the indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1137650202203962182006-01-18T21:54:00.000-08:002006-01-18T21:56:42.223-08:00And what I'm saying, Los Blue Eyes, is that once you've totally lost track of your number of gay experiences you may no longer claim to be "not gay enough" to be in a band called Cockfight. Who's with me here? Every last soul, yeah?indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1136701539129789412006-01-07T22:18:00.000-08:002006-01-18T21:58:14.430-08:00Lee doesn't get enough shoutouts here on Owls!. ("Shoutowls"? No, I couldn't possibly.) But here's one now. I value you, Lee, not just because you're my favorite drug buddy but because you're important enough to me that when I listen to bands you particularly disdain me for appreciating, I say aloud "In your FACE, asshole!" - to you, when you're nowhere near. And that is a special kind of indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1135844272411217602005-12-28T23:44:00.000-08:002005-12-29T00:17:52.490-08:00MAN you know what my v. favorite part about the v. evilest Norwegian black metal is? How a substantial percentage of the songs start with the vocalist making that super-Luciferic evil-vomiting noise, that short, rasped, infernal-retching bark. It kinda always sounds the same, but the venom warms my heart every time. Satyr from Satyricon did it best, in his early days. Hails & all that.Funny indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1135403124845111832005-12-23T20:49:00.000-08:002005-12-23T21:55:04.796-08:00Fucking seven days after I post the below photo, the #2 sexiest boy in the East Bay voluntarily dissolves his longhair status and shows up for work with that hair gone. Fucking 3 girls in my dept. inc. myself were ASHEN when we learnt it & saw. But through the day we moved from shock and grief, to numb acceptance, to “Well shit, I kinda can’t believe it but he’s still that hot." Still and all.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1134798637390880052005-12-16T21:28:00.000-08:002005-12-16T21:55:31.773-08:00I've realized why it's such a rabbit punch to my heart every time Kierstedt states that Black Sabbath is classic rock only, not metal, or some related sass. Even if he likes Black Sabbath's (very imitative but majestic & invaluable) stoner metal progeny, like Sleep & Electric Wizard and all them godsends, rejecting actual Sabbath means that at a fundamental level he rejects the to me obvious indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1134709011859239052005-12-15T20:52:00.000-08:002005-12-15T20:56:51.870-08:00I have been granted permission to reestablish viewing of Antiques Roadshow, but only if I consistently refer to it as "The Arbitrary Values Assigned to Garbage by Rich Pieces of WASP Shit Show". (I have also been told, without having asked, that abbreviations will not be tolerated.)indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1133328208209009262005-11-29T20:56:00.000-08:002005-11-29T21:23:28.280-08:00I handed him a dried cherry - a single one, and a small one - not immediately realizing the danger I had put myself in. (This was an admitted misstep on my part. It's astonishing to me that, at this stage, I have still not learned to sit quietly alone and think, for five solid minutes, about whether there are any possible exceptions Kierstedt may take to any food presented to him, OR SUFFER.)indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1131769175220775292005-11-11T19:40:00.000-08:002005-11-11T20:25:30.206-08:00"Jesus. Jesus Christ. Y'know what'd be sooooo great and fancy? If you could one single time manage to be within 50 feet of a cop without needing to somehow, through whatever means of communication, get him to understand how much you hate cops."[in the voice one can only rarely push him hard enough to evoke, the one that veers so close to that of "The Simpsons"' Snake that God, not to giggle, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1131694345529327882005-11-10T23:23:00.000-08:002005-11-10T23:32:25.540-08:00So that "Brokeback Mountain" adaptation I've been biting tongue depressors thinking about for what, God, two years now, plus? arrives in theaters soon. The v. good Annie Proulx short story from which it is adapted features a certain line of dialogue I hope is intact in the screenplay. During the male protagonists' first fuck, as the bottom cowboy is about to come he says, I'm serious, "Gun's indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1131082682109745782005-11-03T21:30:00.000-08:002005-11-03T21:38:03.963-08:00While everyone else was making hot Halloween party, I was having drunkenly hollered at me "Aw fuck did you let that boil? You're cooking seaweed, you're not fucking sterilizing hospital linen." And some time later - "Kin'y'taste the broth pleace.""Yeah, but uh, what am I tasting for exactly?"[eyes rolled spasmodically ceilingward, in a voice so snotty you could practically see it come out of indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1130126771548897312005-10-23T20:57:00.000-07:002005-10-23T21:06:11.573-07:00Due to relationship-related social pressures, I once had to post a plug for a show by a *shit* band (and a San Francisco band, at that). This ex and the shit bassist in the shit band were way-back chums. Since I pretend I have a readership, it pained me to suggest said phantom readership go see all that shit. Today, I'm no longer in that relationship, and I'm free to endorse only quality indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1130048854392937882005-10-22T23:17:00.000-07:002005-10-22T23:28:39.976-07:00I turned a two and a half hour drive into a five hour tour by totally misplacing Highway 205E yesterday, but there was a cuddly silver lining. I am in love with a Viking-proud Danish drummer raised in Stockton, it's rumored, and I learned, by seeing it on a water tower*, that this is their minor-league hockey situation:Stockton Thunder indeed. Oh it's too parfait.*My love for California's indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1129703522889069872005-10-18T22:50:00.000-07:002005-10-19T00:03:18.556-07:00Wow. Apparently, adorable pink suds are no excuse for buying grapefruit-scented but wholly unnatural and allegedly "gnar-gnar" dish soap.We viewed a pretty ridiculous National Geographic Channel job a few nights ago, in which two insufferable hosts pestered lots of meanie-mouthed animals with something called a "bite meter". When the targeted creature - great white shark, alligator snapping indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1129355212673150212005-10-14T20:23:00.000-07:002005-10-14T22:47:39.046-07:00All girls of a certain sluttiness know that most of your younger boys emerge from showers largely undried. I feel uncomfortably like a standup comic noting it here, yet I do so not to lampoon but to honor. Hardwood floors across the country suffer for it and towels feel underused, dry and merely encircling waists, but all these water-dropped torsos compensate, yeah?indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1129269199876525462005-10-13T22:46:00.000-07:002005-10-13T22:54:36.123-07:00I've got this newfound complete lack of shame about any dubious arts 'n' lit preferences I may have. I'd been attributing it to my generally enthickened skin of late but I just now realized the source's much more specific than that - how emotionally vulnerable to criticism can I permit myself to be when one of my favorite bands looks like this? Hails, Satyricon, for this emboldenment.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1129010684808011392005-10-10T22:55:00.000-07:002005-10-10T23:04:44.816-07:00An ongoing panel debate I've started: What is the worst possible band/solo artist shirt a theoretical blind date could show up wearing? Which fandom could most instantly doom? My #1's a three-way tie between Bonnie Raitt, Fishbone and specifically Achtung Baby-era U2. (Any U2'd start Blindie in a magma-deep hole, but an Achtung Baby job in particular, caw, scalding.) Lil' None More Metal indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1128836507165275552005-10-08T18:17:00.000-07:002005-10-08T22:42:12.490-07:00Good absent Christ, are there some romantic butterfly species names: The Atala, Gold-Drop Helicopis, Jeweled Nawab, Two-Tailed Pasha, The Mosaic, The Wizard (these are all actual, again, actual), The Gaudy Commodore, Himalayan Jester, Cocoa Mort Blue, Small Postman, Scarce Bamboo Page, Little Wood Satyr("But what of moths?" you cry, all tremulous? Fine, here: Argent and Sable, Garden Carpet, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1128574437370195922005-10-05T21:41:00.000-07:002005-10-05T21:53:57.380-07:00A "mix CD" of mine, consisting largely of Allman Brothers and Lynryd Skynrd songs, has been crudely (and hurriedly by the looks of it, coward) defaced. The disc, formerly unmarked, now bears the Sharpied legend "FUCK THIS SHIT" surrounding a crudely-sketched Confederate flag. Of course this only improves its value to me, but were I inclined to be upset about the vandalism, I wouldn't know at indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1128294860885343542005-10-02T16:13:00.000-07:002005-10-02T16:15:50.010-07:00People giggle, with unattractive snobbery, at "farmers' tans", but surely no one can laugh at a muscle-shirt tan. Surely this is beyond reproach. And if there were upon an elbow a tattooed pentagram, one could forgive even a personal Do Not Play Around Me, Ever list that includes fucking Led Zeppelin.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1128293872168762082005-10-02T12:52:00.000-07:002005-10-02T15:57:52.173-07:00An exceptional moment of premenstrual hyperemotionality just now - viewing a photo of two caterpillars approaching each other on a willow branch, inwardly exclaimed "They're going to be friends!" and was unfar from a single sob.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1127797275449320952005-09-26T21:49:00.000-07:002005-09-26T22:01:15.456-07:00And what of this confectionary dusting of scarcely visible chick-blond down shadowing - antishadowing I suppose - the curve of his tricep? O long-disavowed splendor, the literally golden boy!No one shadowed this animal's eyes.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1127605761918671892005-09-24T16:34:00.000-07:002005-09-24T16:49:21.953-07:00Verbatim, from a community bulletin board posting at my place of employment: "Join our rally to support the Berkeley Honda strikers and hear the celebrated Bay Area Rockin' Solidarity Labor Heritage Chorus!" Berkeley: Preemptively Defanging Satire by Satirizing Itself Since 1878.One thing that unites all the boys I've ever thoroughly lost my shit over: the ability to drive hard, fast and indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1127192779258292492005-09-19T21:51:00.000-07:002005-09-19T22:06:19.283-07:00The public-policy wisdom of the City of Berkeley's policy of providing, pretty much, permanent-disability-type benefits status to people with facial tattoos is debatable, but it is a boon to me, since it draws the inkfaced to Berkeley and I work in the cheapest "alternative"-ish grocery store in town. My God. Usually more than one per day, Jesus, what else would heaven consist of? (An indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1127188957751958152005-09-19T20:40:00.000-07:002005-09-19T21:02:37.756-07:00Two unrelated truths: Previously unerogenous regions of the skin can be gradually eroticized through frequent and determined touch. It's common, in cultures with arranged marriages, for a genuine romantic and carnal attachment to develop over time, even when neither partner felt much of anything toward his or her spouse at the time of marriage.Now, smash these two truths togetherindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1126999564040454772005-09-17T16:05:00.000-07:002005-09-17T16:26:04.046-07:00I envy you people on the outside, unsurrounded by, unintoxicated by drummers. You, never compelled to pursue and possess the Hammer of the Gods, are able to believe drummers have no craft, would never for example heatedly discuss drum motherfucking theory, in nerds-wildin'-out technical detail, over an entire two-hour Korean barbecue meal, despite countless presumably heartbreaking looks of indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1126671775834402742005-09-13T21:04:00.000-07:002005-09-13T21:22:55.853-07:00This kid in my aisle today, debating unscented natural deodorants with his mother, one headphone to his ear, singing along with "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" when not answering his mother's queries with fustily uncreative and toothless sass. Ugggh what is it about Beatles-loving teens that chafes me so smartingly? They look the same everywhere, these kids - shaggy indeterminate haircuts, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1126510467496133572005-09-12T00:18:00.000-07:002005-09-12T00:34:28.316-07:00He rolls around corners, this one, lollingly, lopes around them, with a juvenile delinquent's looseness about the head and neck. It seems like it'd take him ten minutes to cross an average-size living room, but he can be suddenly *upon* you, with his practically lurid blue-razzberry irises all aspin. He seems allergic to sleeves of any kind.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1126425050327963052005-09-11T00:17:00.000-07:002005-09-11T00:53:20.640-07:00It's socially critical, at the moment, that I not snicker at vegans, and I don't snicker now but I do say: rather a gruel-complected lot, aren't they, generally? Their faintly amphibian wanness worn with acrid self-satisfaction, yeah? Then I was introduced to - I'm not supposed to post a thing about all this but what else - this sort of flushed tender apricots 'n' cream dreamwhip skin, that indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1126150846269396452005-09-07T20:31:00.000-07:002005-09-07T21:52:32.913-07:00The Owls!, they forgot they don't migrate.Lee thought it was reasonable, was comprehensible to say to me, of a singer in a local metal band, that he's "pretty, pretty like a girl, but kind of a 'dude', uh, long hair, really metal", then imply he was thus not much my type. I haven't hung out with Lee in a couple months, but didn't expect him to forgot everything he'd ever known about me.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1110753359227718132005-03-13T14:32:00.000-08:002005-03-13T14:35:59.226-08:00Dear Anti-Walmart Activists:Obviously your chosen cause is unimpeachable - please know that my criticism is in no way ideological. But guys? Buttons that say " STOP WALMART!" in a red circle with a slash through the entirety don't really say "STOP WALMART". The slash through *your own message* in fact kinda reads like "Stop stopping Walmart." So maybe reconsider those.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1110593350957550752005-03-11T17:50:00.000-08:002005-03-11T18:09:10.960-08:00Last couple days I've been toying with the idea of writing several - in my preposterous fantasy it was 10 or so - posts at once, manually altering their dates, and insisting to my friends they'd been there all along and etc. There is an immediate problem with this plan, though. Content. Godblasted *content*. Couple things to avoid saying to people upon whom you've got a crush so intense it indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1107902642358824482005-02-08T14:39:00.000-08:002005-02-08T14:44:02.356-08:00A homosexual, pulling bread out of the oven, wearing a t-shirt with "Hoin' Ain't Nothin' Nice" handwritten on it: " . . . but if you try to cut it with anything but a bread knife you'll shred it. Anyway. Gimme your bread knife."
Yrstruly: "I, uh, I guess we have one, let me look around for a sec - "
Homosexual [shrilly]: "GIVE ME THE BREAD KNIFE THAT I KNOW YOU MUST HAVE BECAUSE *PEOPLE HAVE indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1107297410682109582005-02-01T14:23:00.000-08:002005-02-01T14:36:50.683-08:00Goodness, the date of that last post! The laxness appalls me, really it do, but this unemployment + certain personal upheavals're hitting me with a depression as asphyxiating as huffed cornstarch (my Palace* records haven't gotten so ceaseless a spinning in years), and no way am I turning this thing into a Journal.
*W.O.'s most-tattooable lyric, to my mind: "Go over yonder/catch you a look/indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1106205883535873772005-01-19T23:22:00.000-08:002005-01-19T23:24:43.536-08:00The French tongue, a mixed bag as always: it provides me both with my pan-national Favorite Surname (Thibodeaux) and pan-national Least Favorite Men's First Name (Thierry). How to determine the true value of a language that gives us both, the triumphant victor and the vile offender?indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1105996562259071382005-01-17T13:03:00.000-08:002005-01-17T13:16:02.260-08:00Here is what will soon be hitting the streets labeled a "Dodge Charger".
Here is what "Dodge Charger" has meant until now, until this.
Huh. You know, I think later I'll scorch some sugar cubes with a butane lighter, stick them on top of some dollar-store boxed flan mix, call it "creme brulee" and try to sell it. Apparently this sort of approach is good business.
indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1105478969936805282005-01-11T13:17:00.000-08:002005-01-11T13:29:29.936-08:00A "fantasy", now, that involves something one hasn't done, right? I'm trying to make sense of another (sexually suspect) billboard. For Coldstone Creamery, it displays some sort of dusky-complected ice cream cake and invites the viewer to "Fulfill Your Chocolate Fantasy". Does this billboard assume a reader who has never eaten anything containing chocolate, or is something other than chocolateindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1105302107708166542005-01-09T13:18:00.000-08:002005-01-09T12:22:34.786-08:00Ever watched a game with a Broncos fan, orange and blue team socks pulled up to knees, who before the game's start crouched in a corner with head in hands attempting to personally psych out the opposing quarterback, saying he doubted it would work but wasn't "prepared to rule it out"? I have, now.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104968033742038452005-01-05T15:32:00.000-08:002005-01-05T15:33:53.743-08:00Perhaps the least stomachable aspect of being laid out on the couch with some sort of Third World flu: commercials for places like IHOP and McDonald's featuring food that glistens. *Stop that glistening*.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104872252359294682005-01-04T13:52:00.000-08:002005-01-04T12:58:06.783-08:00Rain brings the ants out in the East Bay. Yesterday afternoon, before obliterating a small cadre of scout ants, I noted that one of the leaders was bearing most of the body of a fallen comrade. "Wow, they still do that?" I thought. Can you follow my imbecilic line of thinking there? For a second or two, I was basically thinking, if not in these words, "In today's callous, ill-mannered world, indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104638035768735252005-01-01T19:53:00.000-08:002005-01-01T19:53:55.766-08:00(I've not abandoned this, I swear it . . . )indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104282855252080422004-12-28T17:08:00.000-08:002004-12-28T17:14:15.253-08:00I'm not the only person driving around in a older-model vehicle. I accept that there are certain concerns faced by all aficionados of the vintage automobile. Funny, though, I seem to be the only such motorist who, when it's raining, must operate my 1965 vehicle with a squeegee in my f*cking right hand, to swipe away at the constantly-amassing fog on the inside of the windshield. With both indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104186070196399082004-12-27T14:18:00.000-08:002004-12-27T14:21:10.196-08:00I throw the term "gender traitor" around a lot, with much apparent vitriol, but usually my tongue's in my cheek, if invisibly. Seriously, though? The women who emphatically declare Oprah Winfrey a fine candidate for President of the United States? Are.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1104001921015811102004-12-25T11:08:00.000-08:002004-12-28T17:15:10.416-08:00Each year I lose more of my always-paltry share of holiday spirit. Nothing newsworthy there, But y'know what never loses its holiday dazzle? Photos of zoo animals unwrapping their "presents" and, even more devastating, eating food treats made to holiday specs. I saw this one shot of a polar bear destroying some meatloaves shaped like gingerbread people that OH, that made rubble of me, jeez. indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1103844182009028912004-12-23T15:11:00.000-08:002004-12-23T15:23:02.010-08:00Everyone knows one must never read one's high school journals later in life unless one's got an abnormally high threshold for pleasurable self-humiliation, but I figured mid-college journals might be OK. Wrong! On the very first page I peeked at through leery fingers, I spied this quotation (source not cited) written down with apparent approval and affection: "There's a crack in everything. indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1103659108618965272004-12-21T11:53:00.000-08:002004-12-21T11:58:28.616-08:00Exactly how uncharacteristically (to say the absolute least) personable and charming are the white-Rasta trust-fund glassblowing anarcho-hippies next door? So uncharacteristically personable and charming that when they open all of their doors and windows and blast endless dub reggae with Latin-jazz percussion, I only smile indulgently and think "Oh, those guys." indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1103237839511896362004-12-16T14:50:00.000-08:002004-12-16T14:57:19.510-08:00Our front door now bears its first-ever graffito: "KLEPTO", it reads. Christ. Could there be a more disconcering tag than that to show up on one's residence? Feels rather like a warning of some sort. KLEPTO, when you return and burglarize me, please make sure my cats don't run out the door. (And tell EXODUS that that's some nice work he did on the cheese shop across the street - fine use of indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102984488385989912004-12-13T16:27:00.000-08:002004-12-13T16:34:48.386-08:00An addendum to my post of 12/8*: No matter how many engines you've rebuilt, or how many tiny, crisscrossing scars your knuckles bear from the teeth of other bar brawlers, if you use both "recherche" and "dishabille" in a single e-mail, in unrelated paragraphs, you are a complete gaylord who should drop all aspirations toward pulsating virility. I do not feel many observers would dispute me on indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102720732992326522004-12-10T15:12:00.000-08:002004-12-10T15:18:52.993-08:00We all know the diamond-mining industry is so bloodily brutal that it makes the coke trade in South America look like a Lutheran bake sale. That's a given. But Christ, must the evil be compounded by all that (literally in this case) infernal advertising? This billboard I have to look at twice a day, for example: it shows a disco ball of a pendant with text above reading "Imagine the indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102547100300243302004-12-08T14:53:00.000-08:002004-12-08T15:05:00.300-08:00I've got this friend. He prefers men to women romantically, and is unpleasantly overproud of how shocked people are to learn this fact. A homophobic homo, and what a charming bunch they are. Sure, he ****s ****, but he's got a sweet jumpshot and a muscle car, so he doesn't "count" somehow. God, the tedium. Anyway, here's the point I'm getting to, a point I take pleasure in making in this indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102377080425764302004-12-06T15:44:00.000-08:002004-12-06T15:52:39.306-08:00I'm not sure what it is about lighters, but I operate under some sort of delusion that they cannot be purchased, only obtained through noncommercial means. Everyone's familiar with the phenomenon of coming home and discovering in one's pocket someone else's lighter; I'd bet that, conservatively, 25% of lighters reside with someone other than their purchaser. But why must I feel that it's only indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102120858492141352004-12-03T16:29:00.000-08:002004-12-03T16:40:58.493-08:00A workless work afternoon spent looking at online personal ads only cements my impression that no trifecta of words gives the American public more spelling trouble than "tongue", "gorgeous" and "maybe". (Yes, "maybe".) How these three bedevil us.indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1102031871632507642004-12-02T15:53:00.000-08:002004-12-02T15:57:51.633-08:00I just overheard a conversation between a broker here and a gentleman encouraging said broker to consider investing in a new, as yet inchoate company. Now, I have not seen the name of this maybe-company in print, and have only this overheard conversation to go by, but I can't imagine any other way its name could be spelled than "Lixor". Lixor. Lick Sore. Hey, investors, are you ready for a indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1101941841881723842004-12-01T14:50:00.000-08:002004-12-01T14:57:21.883-08:00Mike Nichols has a new film coming out, right, "Closer". Good cast, good buzz, but I don't care at all, really. I've got an arbitrary dislike of him and his work. It happens. Yet despite not caring, I have a compulsion toward reading any and all film reviews, completely irrespective of my interest in viewing the movie being discussed. So I've read two of "Closer" so far, and both have made indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1101858050633305082004-11-30T15:31:00.000-08:002004-11-30T15:40:50.633-08:00"Anyhow, I've gotten way off course here. My point's just that I can't stop thinking that people are as their blogs make them seem, like, on the rare occasions that I read other people's blogs, when someone seems y'know brutally cool, I can't keep in mind that it's absurd to consider that the 'real' them."
"Uh huh."
"'Cause like, people reading my blog, they've probably got a fascinatingly indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1101771926262737072004-11-29T15:36:00.000-08:002004-11-29T15:45:26.263-08:00This year, the holiday-tableaux designers at the Giannini building across the way have introduced a new note of poor taste to the usual orgy of PCP-eyed mittened snowmen, tweetastic electric trains and occasional carolers in full Victorian garb (who holler more than carol). Among the poinsettia lining the space between the two escalators are a few dozen orchids. Standard-issue white ones, with indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1101248264446514392004-11-23T14:06:00.000-08:002004-11-23T14:17:44.446-08:00[I'll pretend I still have readers, after yesterday's unbecoming (but not to be deleted) meltdown.]
A conversation I just had, with one of the two male co-workers (out of 12 or so) who've been able to force themselves to accept that I'm a credible sports-chat participant:
B: So what'd you think about the big suspension?
J [reddening, unsure if I will be able to remain coherent and professionalindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1101149176651152972004-11-22T10:14:00.000-08:002004-11-22T11:09:20.170-08:00[This post will be meaningless to anyone not aware of the situation and will probably alienate those who are, but I can't keep my feelings to myself on this one.]
25-game suspension for Jermaine O'Neal, 30 for Stephen Jackson, the rest of the season (73 games) for Ron Artest. I will never again in my life roll my eyes at any NBA (or NFL for that matter) player who claims the league treats him indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100816153014755412004-11-18T14:09:00.000-08:002004-11-18T14:15:53.013-08:00The marketing tactics of certain seafood restaurants strike me as inadvisable. Whenever there's a copious amount of shellfish on the market, and chain seafood eateries wish to share this bounty with their not-all-that-picky clientele, the advertising seems always to center around mental infirmity. Insane Shrimp Spectacular! Lobster Madness! Krazy Krab Feast! And so on. Is this wise? Shouldindeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100737504225711742004-11-17T16:20:00.000-08:002004-11-17T16:25:04.226-08:00These philanthropically-minded exhortations the New York Times dumps at the bottom of pages during the holiday season - they getting to anyone else yet? I finished skimming a theater review and was told, yes, bold and all-capped, "DO NOT FORGET THE NEEDIEST!" Then, one page later, at the bottom of an Ol' Dirty Bastard obituary of sorts, "REMEMBER THE NEEDIEST!" Are we really such a squirrelly,indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100642633694974882004-11-16T14:00:00.000-08:002004-11-16T14:03:53.693-08:00Soon, the long hallway in my apartment will be painted two complementary shades of quite strong pink, in large part a show of devotion to '70-'71 Cudas done up in what Plymouth called "Moulin Rouge" - a stock color for this vehicle, if such a thing can be believed. My point in mentioning it is this: friends and visitors inclined to call the hallway either The Birth Canal or The Barbie Aisle? indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100562455300385752004-11-15T15:46:00.000-08:002004-11-15T15:47:35.300-08:00Odd that folks who're cold when no one else is are considered pantywaists, while their hotter-blooded brethren, sweat beaded dreamboatily on their upper lips, come off as rugged, sexy. There's really no reason this should be. Why's one strain of poor internal temperature control a sign of weakness while the other's a sign of strength? In fact, aren't the cold-blooded in a sense tougher, as they indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100305209212110122004-11-12T16:19:00.000-08:002004-11-12T16:20:09.213-08:00The courier service my workplace uses is a small one, and nearly every time I call to arrange a pick-up, I reach the same dispatcher. After I give him our firm's account number, he asks "To whom am I speaking to?" This . . . this profane utterance, with its redundant "to", is uttered in a voice I can best liken to the auditory version of velour with a thick layer of mayonnaise on it. He thinks indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739813.post-1100131638018049162004-11-10T15:51:00.000-08:002004-11-10T16:07:18.016-08:00A tele-recluse, I subscribe to an almost Teutonically strict call-screening service, essentially nitro-powered Caller ID. Callers with blocked, unlisted, or otherwise Caller ID-proof numbers must go through a three-step process in order to cause our phone to ring. Each step is narrated by the same recorded female voice - I call her Yvonne - and her behavior toward the caller is richly comic to indeterminate identitynoreply@blogger.com0