not falling down

I kind of wish we’d had Facebook lo, those many years ago when I was referring to coeds by pseudonyms (note that I’d already learned to fear Google).

I read Dr. Weston’s post above and was a little startled to note that people are using a pretty new website to provide that kind of (subjectively) important social function. Then I’m like, what were class rings? What were letter jackets? They weren’t totems, magically created out of pure student ardor; they were business items co-opted by people seeking to fill exactly the same gap.

I saw Summer again when I didn’tthink I was ever going to see her, and there was music and puddles and ending up on the floorlaughing and it’s three in the morning, and you know, half of that’s not even because of her. It’sbeen a hell of a day. Class tomorrow.

New euphemism For NFD Use Only (in addition to A and B): Summer. I talked to her for maybe the last time tonight, gave her thestupid mix CD I made, watched her dance out the door. There was a time, I think, when she wouldhave been the one sorry to see me say goodbye; tonight that was reversed, and that’s entirely myfault, but that’s okay. Given the choice, I’d rather be sad myself than watch someone elsehurt.

(Most of the people who talk to me regularly know who I’m talking about anyway. So why Summer? Two songs.Take your pick.)

My mp3 collection is and has always been fairly bloated, but not because of downloading. Sure, Ipirated my fair share, back before the Coming of the Firewall. Mostly, though, I use WinAmp as akind of über-jukebox for shuffling through the best parts of my CD collection. I went throughand cleaned it up back in February, trying (failing) to limit myself to three songs per album; thatgot me down to a gig and a half, though I’ve added a few since then. My playlist right now standsat 484 entries with a total running time of 29 hours, 38 minutes.

Jon moved out Tuesday, and the room gets boring when it’s quiet. So as during the redesign, I’ve had music playingmore or less continually for the past couple of days, and once again I think I’ve managed to gothrough said entire playlist. It’s very different music than it would have been when I got toschool last fall, and that’s a little strange to think about. This year hasn’t… well, in a way itdoes seem longer than sophomore year. But in a way it seems like we just got into Bingham.

Even so, now that I’m packing and boxing and taking down posters, it’s hard to imagine not livinghere. Bingham 212 feels more like home than home. That’s not really a bad thing–it’s just thatRichmond is usually a place where I crash on the way to other things, and this room is where I comewhen I want to sleep or play or feel comforted. Now I’m deconstructing it (and finding afrightening number of insects), and that’s all going to change tomorrow evening.

I’ll be too busy this summer to get homesick, I’m sure–besides GSP, I’ve got my first pro designjob to do, and the full automation of this journal, and maybe some redesign work on the rest of thesite. Plus I want to turn part of my desk into a light box. I won’t lack for occupation.

Even so. Even with one working shower and screaming fights next door and a horrible, evil janitorand an elevator that smells like pee, I’m going to miss this place.

but this is where weused to live

Hookorcrook.com is not taken; byhookorbycrook is, unfortunately, and there’s of course nothing there. Anybody whosquats on a domain name and a) points it to some popup-ridden, cheapass “portal” or b) doesn’t even bother to point itanywhere should be taken out in the street and shot. Fuck the registrar, and fuck register.com.

(Mom: that wasn’t the part I wanted you to read exactly. More the picture. Please sit down.)

Exams happening, haven’t had a chance to see Clones yet, blah blah blah I won’t care in a month. I’m not in much of a mood, as two of the mostbeautiful people I know are leaving my school for other schools this week. I’ll have a hard time not remembering Anna;I wish I had more memories to remember of Summer. I wish anyone but me had tried to convince her to stay. I wish anyoneelse had really wanted her to.

But!

I love the Post dearly, but I think they need geography lessons.

I think this is a koan.

So yeah, I feel fairly awful about whining the othernight, as it turns out Emily was busy being stranded on the side of the road. I am a loser, but mostly I’m just gladshe (and Object B, who was driving) are okay.

Anyway. Yesterday morning, my uncle John gotup at some ridiculous hour and ran fiftykilometers. Fifty kilometers. Then he went home, had something to eat and went to an unusual retrospectiveof his work.

Uncle John makes custom birthday cards, and hasdone so since he was a teenager. A few weeks ago, my aunt Dana started sending letters to friends and family asking toborrow any cards we might have saved. Of course, everybody had saved everything–you don’t get a personal work of artin the mail and throw it away when you’re done.

They got enough cards to fill four rooms full of shelves (and they had leftovers). During the day it was an exhibitionfor clients; that night, when I got there, it was food and a jazz band and my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party.

It was one of the best gallery shows I’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of work and creativity and originality washumbling and inspiring and it still stuns me a little to think that I own at least a dozen of those original piecesmyself.

I think it was my tenth birthday when I got the foldout card. It was a huge battle scene my uncle had drawn and thenleft half-empty, inviting me to fill in the rest. It was perfect. It was one of the best presents I’ve ever received,and I could probably redraw it from memory.

I was a weird little kid, and if I’d been born to different parents I probably would have been a Ritalin poster child.The only things that could get me to sit still for ten minutes were a big fat fantasy book or a chance to draw with myuncle. I didn’t quite get all the genes that give him his talent, or maybe his dedication–he did better stuff atfifteen than I can hope for now–but everything I love about sequential art comes from trading panels with him on”Captain Zero” and “The Adventures of Petey.” That this site exists as more than a blog is due to him.

A dozen cards, a million comic strips. Happy birthday, Uncle John, and thanks for all my presents.

Bingham 212 represent! Me and myauxiliary roommate both made the school front page this week, accompanied by (no offense, Amanda)truly terrible photos. Mine is worse. I need a haircut so badly I wake up screaming about it, but because I’m in theplay I am disallowed from altering my appearance in ANY WAY EVER.

Most of my time nowadays is spent flexing my fearsome willpower in just about every aspect of my life. I have given up my credit card for Lent;I have sworn off soda and french fries at meals in hopes of stabilizing my waist size; I refuse to complain aboutObject A nearly as often as I think about it (complaining, that is); and perhaps most awe-inspiringly, I have managedto play a great deal of FF3/6 whilestill doing my homework. Unfortunately, I’m paying for it in other ways, like vitamin D and drawing time. I have two toonsdue this week (as always), which I’ve roughly scripted but only barely sketched out–tomorrow afternoon is going to bea pencil ‘n’ ink frenzy.

But I DID get Cyan through Doma Castle in the World of Ruin, which, y’know, is nothing to shake a stick at.

it’s a sunny day pleasedto meet you mister
I’m a brand new face love is just a blister away

(Preface: Apparently a lot of people are concerned that the last entry somehow is somehow related to Object A, which it’s not–at least not directly. It’s just a phenomenon I’ve notedfrom long and repeated exposure. It happens. Girls will be girls.

Anyway, I started writing this yesterday and it kind of just kept going. I tried to keep it from getting speechy, butwhen I get started on an essay there’s no stopping me! Enjoy, if you want, or tell me if you don’t.)

From today’s issue of Newsweek:

“The hallmark of a free and democratic society is freedom of the press. Take it away, and you would leavepoliticians, financial hawks and whoever else has things to hide free to hoodwink the public. The very thought of agagged press sends chills down my spine.”

That’s a reader response to Anna Quindlen’s column of Feb. 18, called “A Conspiracy of Notebooks” (I’d link you tothat, but–ironically, as it turns out–there’s a subscription fee to view back issues). It’s a very true statement,and I sympathize. First Amendment rights are up there with abortion and death penalty issues, for me, and they compriseone of the reasons I voted for Dave Barry. The free press is an important thing. I only wish we had one.

This isn’t going to turn into a rant about the “liberal media”–there is a bias to the left in most of the press, butit’s easy enough to filter out once you know where to look. I wish the same could be said for the sheer right-wingstupidity of, say, MallardFillmore, but that’s another rant all by itself. What I’m trying to get to is this: our news sources may be mostlyfree of political ties, but they’re still very much in the thrall of sales concerns. And that’s what produces thingslike the current Newsweek cover story, from the same issue as the quote above: “Sex,Shame and the Catholic Church.”

What happened to those people as children is a horrible, horrible thing. John Geoghan is a sick man beyond thethreshhold of therapeutic help. Cardinal Law made the same mistake too many times when dealing with him, and it’s longpast time for Geoghan to be separated from the rest of society. These three sentences are the meat of a good newsstory, ready to be fleshed out with statistics and related accounts.

The article has these. Unfortunately, it also has a great deal more. Judging by the pictures in the article, allCatholics are grim-faced, white-haired men; after they grow up, they become lapsed Catholics, and thus normal people.Judging by the lead-ins, sex is a concept entirely alien to Catholic thought (reproducing, as we do, by mitosis). Thearticle alleges an “epidemic” of abuse, then goes on to examine exactly one case, lightly touching on two more.Apparently, this leads to conclusions like “secrecy and silence have always characterized the Catholic Church.”

There is nothing about my church that is secretive or silent, and there hasn’t been in my lifetime, and I have towonder if authors Lisa Miller and David France have been inside a Catholic church since 1963. My church, to me, meanssinging and laughter during baptisms and yes, ritual–the power and communion inherent in call and response. I’ve nevereven said the words “church secret,” and I’ve never heard anyone else say them, and I doubt I ever will.

I freely admit I’m reacting to this because the article is offensive to me. It implies false and insulting things abouta group to which I belong, and that upsets me, and I’m reacting where I might not, were it about another group–this isa human thing. But I’m also trying to illustrate the principles at work here, and the central irony of the issue ofNewsweek sitting next to me now.

Miller and France wrote the article the way they did–and the magazine produced it the same way–because it’s going toget good (controversial) response, and sell well. This, too, is a human thing. And a commercially driven presscannot, by its very nature, be entirely free.

“The liberal media” is an overused and mostly false phrase, and one to which Anna Quindlen doesn’t respond very well.It’s a reputation based on little fact and perpetuated by shortsighted people, but the same goes for the thingsNewsweek said about my church this week. And the only way to end stereotypes about you is to stop indulging instereotyping yourself.

Anyone have some Idiotcam© ideas? ‘Cause I’m running kind of low.

Running, in general, is not a pretty thing. Jogging isn’t bad, because you’re setting a steady pace, not pushing yourself, wearing your designer sweatclothes or whatever. But even when people goggle at runners in the Olympics, it’s about half admiration for their incredible smoothness of form and half fascination with the weird ugliness of any pro runner’s body. Let’s face it: nobody with that little body fat is really attractive (and yes, that includes supermodels).

Unfortunately, I have neither good form nor a body like a Slim Jim, and though I don’t exactly carry a mirror when I run, I’m fairly sure I’m more a sight to cause sore eyes than anything. I run in a loose white t-shirt and old black shorts. My hair (especially now that it’s getting long) flounces and flops where it’s not pasted to my forehead,so I appear to be wearing a particularly flamboyant hedgehog for a hat. And because my family genetically doesn’t get rid of heat well, my face goes piebald but for deep pits around my eyes, so I kind of look like I’m running toward the Battered Women’s Shelter.

This is something I’ve adjusted to. I do most of my route off-campus, so I don’t really run into anyone I know, and I usually go out in the early afternoon when everyone’s busy (these aren’t actually precautionary measures to keep people from seeing me, but they are convenient). Up until yesterday I hadn’t really given the subject of looking embarrassing much thought.

But it was yesterday when, around 5:30, I pounded up the last stretch toward Bingham–wheezing, zombie-faced, getting about six inches to a stride–and encountered, well, take three guesses who as she strolled down, puffing daintily on her cigarette.

She gave me a nice smile, in a “you know you look stupid” kind of way.

In other news, it’s just possible that because I’m “participating directly in the conference,” I could get free airfare and meal/hotel money from Centre for SETC. That would be a very nice thing. I wonder if I could get them to give it to me for Italy instead.

just as relaxed as the tower of Pisa
not ever missing that old Mona Lisa

Show opening kicked some butt. A-yep.

I’m on a diet. Don’t panic, Mom–mostly what that means is “no more french fries and soft drinks at every single meal.”Actually I’m trying to avoid fries period, as well as the greasy Cowanburgers that usually ride sidecar (of thedamned!). I don’t honestly think I’m fat, but the fact is that my pants aren’t comfortable anymore, and I misscomfortable pants. I’m the guy who wore sweats for two solid years in middle school. Comfort is a high priority, withme.

Judging by sleep patterns and hair growth, my metabolism is as frighteningly fast as ever, so I can only conclude thatthe sheer amounts of fat and salt I’ve been taking in for the past year or so have left my body no options butlong-term storage. It’s not something I’ve been doing it purposefully–Cowan food is some of the most cardboardlike,vaguely sickening stuff in the world, and the grease and sodium do wonders to hide that. Pretty soon theburgerfriesCodeRed at lunch and dinner got to be a routine.

Now, I still maintain that salt is a necessary part of every diet, and studies show that the only effect pop has ontooth decay is “milk deprivation.” But I want my 33 waist back, so I’m trying to get used to pasta-and-turkey-sandwichwith apple juice as my default food setting.

If nothing else, I’ve finally proved to myself that my body will change shape over time–after cross country left meexactly as muscular as it found me, I had my doubts. Now I guess we’ll see if it takes me a year to change back.

I think this is the most boring thing I’ve ever written. How to spice it up? Oh, yes, Object A did in fact go through with it and Ican’t seem to find whatever it is I need to go after her. Ah, the drama.

Give your average dumb animal (or, even dumber, computer) two objects. Both are locked up in wayssuch that the subject is unable to get at them, but they could probably be unlocked, with enougheffort and time.

Add in a condition such that, while both objects are desirable, they produce different effects.Being around object A makes him smile for hours afterward. Object B makes him nervous and stupidwhile he’s around it, and after it leaves he feels sad and vaguely worthless.

I can give you a pretty good hypothesis about which one he’ll spend more time trying to get to. Butthen, I’d also always thought I was smarter than your average dumb animal.

Tonight I’m playing the bongos, putting together a Theatre History presentation and studying for anevil, evil Calc test. We’ll see whether I live.

I’m so tired ofbeing inspired
only when things slip away