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Brendan: |
I need a journal entry for tonight so I don’t have a blank spot in my calendar. Give me an idea. |
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Maria |
Um… I don’t know? This is why I don’t have a journal. |
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Brendan: |
But you should! |
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M: |
If I had a journal it would be made up of random snippets of conversation. Out of context. |
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B: |
You’d have a quote log! |
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M: |
I think quote logs are supposed to be funny. |
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B: |
I just got an email from Mindy. I was hoping it was from my friend Mindy, but no. |
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M: |
No? |
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B: |
No, this is more “Girls In Heat Playing With Horse Studs.” |
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M: |
Maybe Mindy is trying to give you a message. |
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B: |
I’m so putting that in my journal. |
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M: |
No! Don’t! |
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B: |
*click* |
Page 169 of 181
It’s DONE: I have successfully categorized (frequently up to five times) every single blasted entry in the history of NFD. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Besides going through one month at a time and filing them all, this also included a second sweep through the entire thing to fill an important slot I didn’t think of until I was almost done (landmarks).
With that done, I’m going to my apartment* with Maria to take measurements, then we’re both heading to Richmond so that a) Maria can see my ancestral** home before Mom sells it and b) I can help Mom empty the house of objects so that she can sell it. I’m not actually very worked up about this. I moved out emotionally and mentally at the end of my junior year of high school; that summer I lived at GSP, and the summer after I lived in Brazil, and in between I lived in Erika’s car. Mostly I’m glad Mom found a good family for it. I hope they appreciate the trees.
So yeah, I’ll be home all weekend hawking the remnants of my childhood at The Yard Sale. Expect posts to drop precipitately, but not entirely. I’m pretty sure Mom isn’t selling the phones.
* Did I ever talk about our apartment hunt? Sufficient: It was long, it was hot, nobody in Louisville thinks having two bathrooms is important and we ended up with the first place we looked at. Which is great, but not cheap.
** Not actually “ancestral.” More like “built in 1989.”
In addition to the usual comments about “whelming” and “gruntling:”
You can be inscrutable, but can you scrut anything? You can be ineffable, but can you actually be effed? (“I think you can in Europe.“)
Today’s Doonesbury, even though it’s the “Summer Daydream,” implies that Mike is interested in someone other than Kim. The original (1998?) Mike-and-Kim story, including both major arcs, is collectively my favorite Doonesburies ever. If Mike is tired of Kim, Mike needs to die.
Speaking of great comic storylines, Checkerboard Nightmare just wrapped up (I presume) probably my favorite continuous run of strips in its history; Wednesday’s edition packs more great lines into four panels than the fire marshal really allows. I talk about Checkerboard Nightmare a lot, and I still don’t talk about it enough. I was going through the archives a while back and noticed that Mr. Straub produced these three strips all within one week. Those are some of the most perfect one-shots ever committed to pixel. I can’t stand it!
About half the books I requested from the library arrived yesterday (and the magic Library Computer telephoned to tell me so!), so after I got off work I biked on down to get them. About a block away, I got a flat tire.
I really should have had them replace the tires when I got it tuned, but I thought I’d save a little money and just get new tubes. Smart me. I’ll take it in this afternoon and get two new ones–the back tire is the one that popped, but I’m sure the front isn’t far behind.
Anyway, I walked the rest of the way to the library and picked up another packful of pages (Lovecraft and Lem, both of whom I’m trying for the first time, and more) and started the trek back. A few blocks on, I noticed that this store called Twice Told Books was actually open–it had always been closed when I passed before. So I decided to check it out, locked my bike to a parking meter, walked in and was eaten.
The books were so dense there. The shelves weren’t nearly enough to hold them all, so they were stacked on top, piled at the bottom, stacked on top of the piles at the bottom, everything. It smelled like dry paper and glue, exactly like the stacks at the old EKU library, before they tore it up and made it big and glassy. I spent a lot of evenings there in middle school, while Mom was earning her Rank I (again), and read a lot of books. The shelves and the overstocking and the smell were all the same, and it was a pretty memory-intensive experience.
They apparently live to buy old sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, too, and I picked up a lot of them–Le Guin, de Camp, all books about which I’ve thought “I should own that” but never got around to buying. I even got a book I’d been thinking about lately but never thought I’d find again, because I had no memory of the author or title, only the cover illustration. It’s called The Sword and The Satchel, as it turns out, which I learned when I found its cover staring up at me from one of the aforementioned piles.
They had to kick me out when they closed. I was enthralled, and for the first time I honestly wish I wasn’t leaving Bardstown Road. The music stores and comic shop and ice cream I could do without, but I’m going to sneak back to that bookstore whenever I can.
Think they’d give me a job?
Just GUESS who’s on the first page of Google image search results for “MULLET PHOTO BEST.”
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
MSN:
… The mastermind behind “Gothika” and Halle [Berry]’s glammed-down and physically demanding role is producer Joel Silver.
“She broke her arm in a very violent scene where she’s being restrained with restraints in a cell and she was fighting the restraints,” explained Silver.
That’s such a brilliant line. I couldn’t have come up with it myself, so I’m stealing it.
I should explain that the reason all these MSN headlines are popping up in here is because, after a year of getting my Hotmail via Outlook Express, I’m now suddenly being deluged with teaser headlines whenever I check it on the interweb here at work. The sheer dumbness of them is still a novelty. Trying to get people to read your insipid articles by putting teaser headline boxes under every sent mail confirmation is dumb too, but, well, obviously it works.
Did I say six of seven? Because officially, it turns out to be twelve of twelve. I generated an entire point release myself! I am Bug Barbecue!
Abruptly and without transition, check out Ken’s two–part account of his trip to Lollapalooza. It’s extreme!
“I, Ken Moore, the person you all know as a calm and not easily excited person, was jumping around and loving every second of it. These guy are the saviors of rock and roll.”
It’s great stuff, and I wish I could have been there, and I’m very glad Ken’s writing regularly.
MSN:
50 Cent touts new duds
Who the hell says “touts” or “duds?” Headlinese is so far removed from English now. You should get a foreign language credit if you take journalism in high school.