Kablammo!

I’m not normally the type to fill a blog entry with song lyrics, but here goes.

You are every bit a soldier
I won’t forget you too soon

You’ve got pies in the oven
All across the sea
I’m just here fighting for our liberty
That and a cold glass of beer
That’s why I’m here

…

Ships at bay
I tattooed an anchor right beside your name
An anchor so sure that I won’t float away
It’s under my uniform sleeve
It’s there till I leave

Perhaps I’ll explain why I put the above lyrics in this blog later in this [or some subsequent] entry. For the time being, however, I’ve decided that I haven’t filled enough space here complaining about various forms of drama in my life. I mean, I’m falling behind the blog curve here!

As I was saying, if you’re afraid you don’t loathe yourself enough, just write an email to a good friend of yours while she’s asleep in the next room. In the email, be an ass and make it clear that you loathe yourself and that you know full well that you’re being an ass. Be sure not to state anything that could possibly help any matter at all, ever. With any luck, you’ll have ruined a perfectly good friendship and given yourself a fairly robust reason to loathe yourself in the future. Bonus points: act perfectly normal in the morning. Double bonus points: mention in the email that your normal act in the morning will have been just an act. Triple bonus points: write all about it in your shitty blog, treat it in a flippant manner, and don’t act the least bit sincere or apologetic.

Perhaps it’s the case that I’ve been the agent of my own undoing every time I’ve been undone in my life. If it’s not the case, it hasn’t been for lack of trying. You know, maybe I enjoy ruining things simply because I’m afraid of happiness. I mean, I enjoy the fleeting forms of happiness as much as the next guy, forms like drinking myself stupid, reading the Onion, or making sure [KF] never talks to me again in her life, but maybe there’s some kind of more meaningful form of happiness out there. If so, it must be for suckers.

For the record, I’m damn sorry I’m such a jerk to you, myself, and everyone else in the world. Also, I hope at least one person on Earth has some idea what this is all about, so it looks slightly less insane.

Edited, 15 Nov. 2009: KF’s name removed upon request.

How does Dean Weir intend on ensuring regular attendance for his ‘Decadence & Modernity’ class? By promising that during some unspecified future class, we will enjoy an absinthe-tasting party. Yeah…

The trek to Brooklyn last night was well worth it, except for the whole wasted hour waiting for subway trains at 5:30 in the morning. Also except for the fact that I’m going to have that fucking door in my nightmares for the rest of my life. Where did it come from? Why was it there? Why was it trying to suck me in?

I can’t wait… I get to spend this weekend with an awesome person, see Cake perform, and blow off everybody who’s going on the Cooper Cruise. What a wonderful time I’ll be having!

Song of the Moment: Flash Man’s music — Mega Man 2

If anybody asks you whether or not classes at the Cooper Union are overcrowded, just show him this picture.

You might also like to show people Nettavisen, a Norwegian newspaper that has recently had such articles as “Switching TV channels ended in murder“, “Lecturer acquitted for erection“, and “Last fart at the Swedish national bank“.

Song of the Moment: “The Dead Only Quickly” — The 6ths w/ Neil Hannon

Want to see just how little people care? Try to buy some beer, show a fake ID with one name on it, then pay with a debit card that has a different name on it. Nobody gives a shit. Sure makes my life easier…

In other news, Blogger‘s been acting up lately, and IE refuses to let people read certain entries in my blog. Sure makes my life more annoying…

In yet more news, Scratch that. What I’m about to tell you isn’t news; it’s been the case for years. Pinkerton is a work of genius. Go and listen to it.

Song of the Moment: “Why Bother?” — Weezer

ScanFest last weekend was pretty cool. I picked up a sweet pussnuga, a Saku hat, some nice pictures, and a decent hangover. The dancing went smoothly, Oldy McGee wasn’t too annoying, the weather was beautiful, and the selection of people around was generally satisfactory. Overall, on a scale from ‘3’ to ‘serpentine’, this year’s ScanFest gets a solid ‘46.3’.

In other news, school began anew today. Kutt was his usual well-prepared, clear, methodical self, and even managed to inject a little humour into today’s lecture. How queer.

Speaking of which, I also had Abbott’s class today. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out he was gay. Know what tipped me off? The first thing he said to the class today was, “I’ve been openly gay since I was 23.” The class seems interesting enough, though. The concept of uniting artists and engineers in a design class could work out really well, but look at these excerpts from the syllabus:

Together we will write a book on how to throw a dance party…
The class project will be to create a sonic/visual environment for dancing…
This overall design will be realized in a 24-hour dance-a-thon in the Wollman Lounge towards the end of the term.

What am I getting myself into?

Song of the Moment: “It Came From the Ground” — Badly Drawn Boy

In other news, there’s nothing like living in New York. People throw away all kinds of great, useful stuff which can be yours for the price of hauling it back to your apartment. Zoidberg‘s monitor, for instance. Or the fucking wheelchair I just snagged.

It was just sitting on the curb across the street, with some junk on top of it — I figure some invalid must have either died or been moved to a nursing home or something. There was one of those toilet chairs next to the wheelchair, too. I didn’t take that.

Song of the Moment: “Concrete Schoolyard” — Jurassic 5

I just put up some shelves in my apartment, finally! I’ve sorely needed some shelving for the entirety of the two and a half years I’ve lived here, and apparently I finally caved.

In any case, I can’t tell which of these two shelves is more humiliating. What do you think?

I had an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years stop by out of the blue today. Yuenglings were consumed, old times were caught up on, and Terminator 3 was watched.

Thence to the roof of the engineering building, where I got to look at Mars through a telescope and bump into a classmate, with whom Bases Loaded was played and more Yuengling was consumed.

…

When the fuck did this blog turn into a list of what I did on a given day? Fuck that. No more of this kind of entry.

Song of the Moment: “My Beloved Monster” — Eels

Today was a Wednesday. My first Wednesday in the city since a few weeks ago, in fact. As such, the late dinner at the Alehouse felt quite appropriate. Abbreviated, but appropriate. Speaking of which, there’s some cranberry juice in my fridge that looks awfully lonely…

What else happened today? I finished making a mix CD, into whose creation I put far far far too much effort. I can only hope that the relevant parties appreciate that fact. I also started work on my newest domain-name-related project. You can, should you like, see some mildly interesting things at http://www.pildid.net/radiohead… Stuff like short, low-quality bootleg videos of Radiohead’s concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

I’m never again restringing a guitar ‘just because the strings are old’, as it’s simply not worth it. Wait till a string snaps, I say. I broke that rule yesterday, only to have a bridge pin fly out and disappear, leaving me sans low E string until today, when I had to go two music stores to even be able to buy an 80¢ replacement. To top it all off, the new high E string I put on yesterday decided to snap today, apparently purely out of spite, so I had to dig my old dirty one out of the trash in a fit of ghettoness.

Speaking of 80¢, I discovered today that I’ve been wasting my life making the cent sign. While trying to find the alt-number key combination for ‘ñ‘ I made my way past alt-155, which produces the same result as alt-2536987412536987 with an assload less keypressing. Such is life, I suppose.

Song of the Moment: «Señor Burns» — The Simpsons

There’s nothing quite like coming home to your apartment after being away for three weeks, and finding the decayed remains of a mouse in the middle of your kitchen floor. I’m kind of impressed with the mouse, considering that in its death throes it managed to move the mouse trap it was caught in a good three feet or so from under the sink to the middle of the floor. I’m also relieved that I happened to stay away from my apartment long enough for the mouse to transform from bloated-corpse-that-gives-off-putrid-stench mode to creepy-but-stench-free-pile-of-bones-fur-and-tail mode. I had to spray various cleaning fluids at the floor and do some scrubbing to get all the mouse parts to dissociate themselves from it, but that’s better than having to smell dead-mouse fumes would have been.

In other news, Verizon is really pissing me off right now. It’s not that the service has suddenly degraded or anything; it remains as shitty as it’s always been. No, what’s irritating me is the bill I just got from them. It’s not that the bill was unexpectedly large or anything; the amount of the bill was reasonable as such things go. No, what’s irritating me is the form of the bill; specifically, the form of the envelope that the bill came in. The envelope is upside-fucking-down. I can’t think of any way to explain it other than that.

I picked up the bill such that the writing on the front of the envelope was right-side-up, fully expecting that there would be a flap along the top side of the back that I could gleefully tear open to find out just how much money Verizon claimed I owed them. I flipped the envelope over, only to discover, to my horror, that the flap they expected me to tear was situated along the bottom of the envelope. So now, instead of behaving like books or envelopes, Verizon’s bills behave like coins. Fuckers.

Verizon also loses points for having the gall to print “The Post Office will not deliver mail without postage” on their reply envelopes, instead of something that lets me retain my dignity like “PLACE STAMP HERE”, the way Time Warner Cable does. I sure am glad Verizon informed me about what the post office does and does not deliver, or I might have assumed that postage was a thing of the past and that I could send things for free. Boy, would there have been egg on my face when I tried to mail a mix CD to my friend in Italy without paying postage! Thanks, Verizon, you’ve averted another catastrophe. Fuckers.

Speaking of postage for paying bills for Verizon, I’m also pissed off by the fact that Verizon expects me to pay a 37¢ postage fee for every bill I pay them, while they send me two or three pieces of worthless junk mail a month. I’d much rather have them spend the money they waste on mailing me that bullshit on something useful, like pre-paying the postage on the bill return envelopes. Fuckers.

Why do you hate Verizon today? Leave a comment.