Kablammo!

Fuck, I’m doomed. An hour left to finish a semester’s worth of work. I only need to add another three and a half pages to one essay and figure out how to wrap up two more. Fuck.

Considering that yesterday I ate breakfast, several platefuls of complimentary sandwiches, then a hot and meaty midnight snack, along with drinking an acceptable amount of beer, the last thing I was expecting was to wake up feeling hungry this morning. Hell, the last thing I was expecting was to wake up this morning and not afternoon, but apparently my crazy sleep cycle is still forcing me out of bed at preposterously early hours. 9 AM? WTF.

Anyway, I was surprised to discover that I felt very very hungry when I woke up. It seems like every time I eat copious amounts of food, my body expects just as copious amounts of food the next day. It always takes a week or so of ignoring the noises and hunger pangs my stomach constantly produces before everything settles down and I can get back to my usual schedule of one or two greasy take-out meals a day. Today, for example, dinner consisted of a huge portion of batter-fried haddock with chips. After 10 hours of feeling increasingly hungry (and brushing my teeth 4 or 5 times to try to alleviate the taste of acid in my mouth) I finally caved in to my body’s demands. On a similar note, as I write this I’ve been having to pee for some time now. That’s just another physical urge I suppress when it inconveniences me.

Where the hell is this black stuff on my hands coming from?

You should visit cockeyed.com. It’s quite amusing. I know of no other site dedicated to such noble tasks as determining the exact amount of filling in a package of Oreos and dressing up like California.

This entry’s Song of the Moment would have been “The Monk at the Disco” by Bobby Bare Jr if his voice weren’t sadly horrible in the recording. Other than that it’s a great song.

Song of the Moment: «Streets of Baltimore» — Gram Parsons

Since last Friday night, when I stupidly stayed up all night for absolutely no reason and got no comeuppance for it, I’ve been physically unable to sleep for more than 9 hours at a go. I’ve even been satisfied with a mere 4 hours at a time, and sometimes I’ve even gotten up when my alarm has gone off.

This put me in an awkward situation just now: when the first of three alarms I’d set for myself started making noise, I woke up and got up. This turned the rest of the alarms, which went off in the next few minutes, from useful tools to meer nuisances. Now I’ve got a whole hour or more of time to work with that I hadn’t budgeted for, so it looks like I’ll be able to shower, wrap up an essay, and grab some breakfast before class instead of my usual plan of rolling out of bed 2 minutes before class starts.

At least I’m not the only one with sleeping problems.

Song of the Moment: «Auf Achse» — Franz Ferdinand

I can’t decide whether I want to laugh until I cry or just skip the laughter and start weeping. Maybe I could just settle for cold-cocking a few Congressmen.

First, read this description of two bridges scheduled to be built with federal funds thanks to the recent national highway bill:

One, in Ketchikan, would be among the biggest in the United States: a mile long, with a top clearance of 200 feet from the water, 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and just 20 feet short of the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. It would connect this economically depressed town of 7,845 people to an island that has about 50 residents and the area’s airport, which offers about six flights a day. It could cost about $200 million.

The other bridge would span an inlet for nearly two miles to tie Anchorage to a port that has a single regular tenant and few homes or businesses. It would cost up to $2 billion.

Then, as it turns out, Congress has risen to a new level of prostitution and pork-barrel riding:

…one of the most complex, special-interest-riddled corporate tax bills in years, lawmakers, Senate aides and tax lobbyists say. The 930-page epic is packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers, to name a few. There is even a $94 million break for a single hotel in Sioux City, Iowa.

Even one of the tax lobbyists involved in drafting it conceded the bill “has risen to a new level of sleaze.”

What happened to fiscal conservatism, Republicans? The only thing worse than a tax-and-spend government is a spend-and-spend government. Not that the Democrats aren’t assholes too. Ugh.

Sorry for the political bullshit, but I’m saddened and angered by this. Dear Congress, congratulations on showing the least bit of restraint, you greedy assclowns. I’ve never been happier to listen to anarcho-pacifistic punk.

Song of the Moment: «You Pay» — Crass

Wikipedia, you know I love you. But do you really need an entry for “heavy metal umlaut“?

I’m going to bed.

Song of the Moment: «Heavy Duty» — Spinal Tap

The professor for my 5:00 class today didn’t show up. This was the third or fourth time he’s been really late (30+ minutes) this semester, and today the class just didn’t feel like waiting around for him to show up. Maybe the traffic was particularly bad on the LIE today, but once the 45-minute rule goes into effect, can’t nobody repeal it.

It would have behooved the class to stick around, seeing as we have an exam next week, and it would have particulary behooved my project group to stick around, so we could show the professor that we have in fact done a nonzero amount of work on our project, but fuck that. It’s time for me to actively waste the next couple of hours to make up for having this hour wasted for me.

Song of the Moment: «Vitamins» — Supernova

It looks like Arne doesn’t know what words mean. He is convinced that I was accusing him of not having heard Comfort Eagle, despite the fact that I felt I made it fairly clear that I’d heard it before while I was accusing him of falling into the same trap I did in the previous entry.

He mentions that most of the album is unremarkable, as evidenced by the fact that he can’t remember more than one song from it. This same unremarkableness, and its accompanying homogeneity, is what leapt out at me and stuck in my mind. Cake used to be remarkable for just how remarkable they were. Unfortunately, I’m now officially sick of this topic of conversation. Rather, I will be as soon as I’m through typing the following:

Weezer’s Weezer [Green], despite tragically failing to live up to the precedent set by, for example, Pinkerton, is by no stretch of the imagination anywhere near as mediocre as Comfort Eagle. Its failures are awfuler, but its successes — particularly the duo of “Crab” and “Knock-Down Drag-Out” — are definitely on a par with the best of other Weezer work.

Whatever.

Song of the Moment: «Knock-Down Drag-Out» — Weezer

I tried once before to like Cake’s Comfort Eagle, and I just tried again, but it still just strikes me as a soulless, repetitious, pale imitation of the essence that made Fashion Nugget and Prolonging the Magic such absolute gems. Even the lyrics, which were always delightful in their absurdity, now seem absolutely cloying. Rhyming “typewriter” with “prizefighter”? Maybe it would have worked if — wait, no, it still wouldn’t have.

A few of the songs — “Commissioning a Symphony in C” and “Long Line of Cars” in particular — remind me why I liked Cake’s previous work so much. This whole album, therefore, acts like nothing so much as an effective advertisement for its predecessors — the unremarkable songs that constitute most of it make me desperately want to hear Cake songs I like so I can get back to liking the band, while the good songs and their slight imperfections make me even more nostalgic for Cake done right.

Song of the Moment: «Let Me Go» — Cake