xtcian

family von catt

10/31/07

Halloween is the kind of holiday that adults can really hate, because it almost possesses the same commitment and expectation level of the most-hated holiday in the lexicon, New Year's Eve. There is always the sense that someone is trying harder than you are, that you'll go to a party where the lesser-evolved will use the holiday as an excuse to be a nipple-baring strumpet, and nothing screams ZANTAC more than alcohol and chocolate.

Then again, if you don't do anything at all, there's a fair amount of cultural pressure for you to be involved - either you've got friends demanding you meet them somewhere, or you've got gaggles of kids lining up at your door for Miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I can see why it's a drag for lots of you, and weirdly enough, "people who hate Halloween" as a Google search term has led thousands of people to this entry for years.

To which I say, of course, tough shit! You gotta keep trying in this world, because the day you stop dressing up for bizarre events is the day you start to wither. If you didn't bother doing anything this year, I'm callin' you out, mister: dress up next year or your joints will grow less elastic!

To wit, we decided on a feline theme this go-round, with Lucy as a black kitty-cat, me as a felt lion, and Tessa (and friend Monica) as two sexy tigers:

Because Daylight Savings Time is still in effect for Halloween (for the first time in decades), it was late before we got out, and Lucy's expiration date occurred mid-trick-and-or-treat:

So we let her eat a Kit-Kat bar - because we're commies, it was her first actual mass-produced corporate chocolate candy product ever - and needless to say she rallied for the ninth inning!

Happy Halloween from us to y'all!

yes, I'm aware I look like an wet orange dog

the old hundredth

10/30/07

Okay, so I covered Whiskyfest in New York City last night as a journalist, sampling and making tasting notes for almost 20 different single-malt scotches. Full report later for anyone who wants it, but right now I'd like to thank the following two products:

Hangover Stopper - 2 pills when you start, then two every other drink

Chaser Pills - two when you start, then one every other drink

I should be in an alley in Hell's Kitchen singing pirate songs with my shirt untucked and stinking of urine, but instead I'm sober and writing a blog! YAY hangover technology!

no hats hanging in tennessee

10/28/07

We took our yearly trip to Texas last week to hang with Tessa's mom and take care of urgent family business, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the experience. I have to say this trip was probably the best we've had: her family was great, the weather was insanely wonderful, and Lucy had the time of her life (even as we had about ten meetings to attend). First off, we went to the San Antonio Botanical Garden to see Diego from the Dora books, but the view eventually captivated our daughter:

At the hotel, two images stuck with me. First was the laminated, specially-lit portrait of an oil rig blowing off fire, placed in the foyer for all to admire:

But there were also those "Support the Troops" magnets that always give me the grippe. HOWEVER... now they came with optional inserts that said "Bring 'Em Home Safe". If that kind of lefty propaganda has infiltrated the George Herbert Walker Bush Intercontinental Airport Marriot Hotel, then maybe things have changed:

She's always been terrified of the ponies at the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica, but when she got to Tessa's Aunt Brenda's farm near Cut'n'Shoot, TX, my brave little girl met "Miss Puff" and asked to get on bareback. We also put a saddle on Puff, and she rode by herself (with help) - oh my god, I was so proud of her:

A motel in San Antonio - I love the utterly rusted "Kitchenettes" sign hanging off the bottom:

The Kodak Film Dispenser at an ancient amusement park for toddlers in San Antonio. Note plug sadly dangling from back:

If you saw "Five Wives," you saw Tessa's friend Louis, the boy she grew up with. He has three daughters now, and our kids got along... well, like this:

Lucy's pumpkin at far left

Finally, at the mall in San Antonio, there was this ad for today's new hair fashions - which looks oddly like something we might have made fun of in 1983:

send in the nouns

10/24/07

Can someone tell me how "Patch Adams" happened? In Chapel Hill, arguably the most beautiful college town in America, we've had exactly ONE motion picture filmed on campus in the last thirty years (discounting a couple exterior shots in "Kiss the Girls") and it was frickin' "Patch Adams".

I look at "Patch Adams" the way I look at terrifically ugly office buildings: at some point, the architect rolled the plans out on the table, and three other guys said "YES! That's IT!" And then they built it. And then we looked at it for seventy-five years.

When Robin Williams takes the nasal aspirator bulb and puts it on his nose... you know, to be a "clown"... entire swaths of North Carolina history were rendered irrelevant. Forget Andy Griffith, forget James K. Polk, forget Michael Jordan - hell, forget Caleb Bradham, inventor of that vile drink Pepsi. In one moment, it kinda all ceased to matter.

What movie moment made you die a little?

brimstone, treacle and invisible suns

10/23/07

Anyone mind if I take care of a few things here? Good. First off...

1) Ramone, I appreciate your contributions here, because you obviously have a lot invested in your hatred of deadbeats, and it's always good to see a guy who's got some passion. But ever since your other comments, most notably about my "money and plastic and keys to important houses, and the turtleneck-wearing ID to [my] so-called Pubic Ivy"... you gave your mean-spiritedness away long ago.

But let's just take you at face value. Anyone who writes that obese men at an NFL game are all voting for Hillary - I dunno, it strains the imagination that you're trying very hard here. As for your other facts and figures, and your analysis thereof, I can't find fault with the way you feel. It's obvious how many people in America bother you, and while you think liberalism encourages handouts and a subsequent loss of dignity, I think you have no concept of the suffering of the lower classes in this country and you've lost the distinction between miserly and mean. Which one of us is right? Being the liberal, I'm open to discussion.

Your wife is much nicer than you are, so at least we have that in common.

2) The feedback I've gotten from a number of friends (who lurk on here) is amazement at the amount of antipathy directed at artists over the last week or so. I have to admit, I was expecting the usual eye-rolling, but nothing compared to the comments and emails that came my way. Again, the common theme is that we're all "getting away with it" and thus have lost all permission to complain (or, apparently, to go on strike). In lieu of other emotions, I have decided to find it "interesting."

Whatever. When capitalism takes over absolutely fucking everything, have fun buying your paintings at Target. To paraphrase Green Day, I guess we'll have to be content being Faggot America™. In the meantime, if you hate your job, please don't take it out on me. This is where I agree with Ramone: you made your own goddamn bed.

3) Our babysitter, an absolutely wonderful woman named L., accidentally poked her finger on a palm frond near her house in downtown Los Angeles last Monday. Not being able to afford health insurance for herself (she's already partially caring for her grandson), she checked into the emergency room, as her finger went numb.

She sat in the emergency room for four days. Meanwhile, the numbness and nerve damage crept up her arm. At the end of the fourth day, she was finally seen, having not slept for about 36 hours, with the pain throbbing through her body. She woke up from her operation with a bill for $18,000.

Yes, she could have come straight to us and we would have paid cash to get her seen right away. But now she is on a payment plan to the hospital every month for the next twenty years. A single mom with two kids living at home, and partial caretaker to a small baby, barely earning above the poverty line. Who touched a palm frond.

4) Since we live near the beach, the fires raging out of control are all around us, but many miles from our neighborhood. Our thoughts go out to commenter Rebecca and the million+ people who have evacuated their homes - and hope they return to find they'd been spared.

sucez ma jean-thomas

10/22/07

Sorry about this, but the blog has been absolutely destroyed by spam over the last four days - it actually shut our server down. It used to be only a few hundred a day, containing actual links, and then it was a few hundred a day containing randomly non-working links... and now I have spam numbering in the THOUSANDS that doesn't even have any content.

What the FRICKIDY DOO-DAH is the point of spamming someone's blog so hard that it simply obliterates it, without even trying to sell a goddamn product? Anyway, my brother Steve is migrating xtcian.com to a new server, and hopefully we'll be installing the latest version of MT with a real spam-destroyer (like Akismet, etc.) so I apologize ahead of time for any bumps on the road.

In the meantime, continue with your debate on the last entry, which has been fun to watch. That is, if you like your conservatism delivered to you via bloody sandpaper to the face.

the faerie queene vs. beowulf pay-per-view

10/17/07

It's my own damn fault, but I've found the blog fairly demoralizing this week, so I think I'll wrap up this theme with one more thought. To wit: capitalism isn't good at everything. In fact, it's absolutely terrible at three things: health care, news media and art. Show me someone who says the "free market" is the best solution for those three ideas, and I'll show you a misinformed rube with terrible taste who's about to get sick.

Except for craighill, who is none of these things and whose taste runs Carolina blue. But I digress.

After the Civil War, we drafted the 14th Amendment for freed slaves, which was later warped by businesses to create the concept of corporate personhood. This meant an American company could have many of the same rights as a person. Lots of progressives believe it to be one of the worst things to happen to modern society (see The Corporation if your stomach can take it) and claim the "person" in the form of an American company is - by definition - a sociopath.

However, I look at it anthropomorphically: if a corporation is like the many sociopaths I've known, you can't be surprised by its behavior. Nothing personal, but you have to assume that they'll eat you alive with no regrets. Like Neva says, think of the scorpion and the frog; getting your feelings hurt is your fault, not theirs. The individuals in the corporation are fine; they love their mommas just like you do, but the beast of the company itself is altogether different. As such, you have to expect war - the beast would consider anything else to be, well, confusing.

The beast feeds itself on one thing: profit. Not just profit, but also expectation of growing profit. That's it. Everything else is towed along by a dry rope, the easier to set adrift when times get tough. Yes, I know I'm stating the obvious, but the bigger point is this: there is a moral incumbency on all of us not to let the beast take charge of everything. Almost everything? Sure. But not, for sake of argument, things like health care, news media and art.

We've seen what happens when the news, once content to break a little more than even, is forced to deliver ad revenue 24 hours a day. Americans are being ripped apart by the red/blue definitions being forced down their gullet by cable news, and we've never been so wildly misinformed about our choices. Every channel echoes the War on Terror bullshitfest not because they're in cahoots with the Bush Administration, but because an angry, terrified audience keeps watching through the commercials.

As for art, writers simply have to believe that the beast will try to take everything away because it thinks it can. Again, it's nothing personal. It doesn't know any better. But every dollar a writer doesn't get, it gets, and it knows that is good. The beast will demand things that are beyond humiliating, because it doesn't understand guilt or compunction. It just wants the money, and you have to be okay with that.

And in your own way, you fight it. Our free market - it's fine for roof shingles, shoe insoles, fiber optic pipelines and beets. But there are places where capitalism is far too cruel and the stakes are too high to entrust your livelihood to a sociopath.

check the earl too, mister

10/16/07

We interrupt Art vs. Commerce Week here on the blog to bring you that special moment we've all had: the day you learned the word squeegee.

money both dirty and/or sexy

10/15/07

Man, you get some interesting responses anytime Art and Commerce are forced into a fistfight - with people overwhelmingly choosing Commerce as their favorite. The comments/emails from yesterday's blog show what an uphill battle it is to get people to understand the larger picture.

In a nutshell, these are the major deceits:
1) Nobody should pay for art, it should just exist so we can enjoy it.
2) Artists are, by and large, "getting away with it."
3) Doing art for a living isn't a Real Job.
4) Artists should consider themselves lucky to get anything because so many other people will be happy to do it for free.
5) TV writers, movie scribes, architects, hairdressers and the people who write all the words on a website are not artists.
6) Art is demonstrably less important than money, sports, science, alcohol and most sex.

All to which, no offense, I call utter bullshit. Maybe the problem is using the term "art" when it has such pretentious implications. I wish there were a better word for it, but for now I'll stick with this formula: Anything someone creates from their imagination for the enjoyment, edification, reaction or affirmation of their fellow man = ART.

As such, art is as important as every single fucking thing listed above, unless you want to live in a country where all the houses are square, where there are no stories, where there are no pictures or paintings, everyone's hair is a dull brown or grey, and nobody shares any cultural experience outside of the NFL. Take the NFL off that list, and you've got Albania in the 1950s.

This stuff is like oxygen; you don't realize how much you depend upon it until it's gone. And bit by bit, that's happening: already music is pretty much extinct from most public school systems, and when it's budget-crunch time, who gets the money, the sculpting department who wants a kiln, or the defensive linebackers who want new crotch cups?

In essence, that's why I say this fight between the WGA and the major studios can be construed into a much bigger picture: it's the same damn thing being played out on a larger scale. Tregen claims that nobody in Hollywood wants a living, they only want to make it big - again, somehow, writers are "getting away with it." Andrew compares the WGA to a bunch of florists. In doing so, you've both played perfectly into the hands of giant companies who want nothing more than to dismiss all of us as entitled, pathetic twits.

They don't have to try very hard, when you're doing their work for them. It's so easy when the American caricature of a self-proclaimed artist is a self-obsessed, needy idler who is probably a fag. People in this country are cruel to many people - different races, the gays, fat women - but they reserve their deepest hatred for those who, by their estimation, "don't work for a living."

And god frickin' forbid that they ask to be paid for their contributions. This has led to most artists simply not asking for money, believing, in a self-loathing haze, they aren't worth it. Thank god my dad, an amazing symphony conductor, taught me early on to FUCKING GET PAID for any work you do, and not meekly consider it an honor just to be invited.

In this country, you are rewarded for having a real job. Many of you, reading this right now, are being paid to sit in that chair in the morning, when fully 50% of you would rather be doing anything else. The fact that you don't act on that "anything else" is guaranteeing you health insurance and food for your kids, and I have unfathomable respect for that.

Someone who has chosen to be a writer can't do your job; they'd be no good at it. If they were in Neva's shoes, they'd prescribe the wrong medicine; if they were in Kevin from NC's bike shop, they'd destroy every derailleur they came across. Writers at our stage of the game have worked their lives to get here, and can't do anything else, just like you can't.

I don't mean to pick on anyone specifically from the comments, and I'm sorry for singling anyone out. But this is a battle we're destined to fight for the rest of our lives. There's no more money in journalism, nothing in novels or non-fiction, and off-Broadway is a pauper's game. There's hardly any money left in movies. The only place anyone can make a living writing anymore is in television, and now we're being told that we're worthless. As Winston Churchill said, that is something up with which we will not put.

joanie thinks chachi is an unreliable narrator

10/14/07

I don't know how many of you know this, but the Writer's Guild is set to strike on November 1st - a little over two weeks from now - if things aren't worked out between them and the major studios. To put it plainly, don't get too comfortable with any of your favorite TV shows. There might be enough to last you until Christmas, but that's about it. "Heroes"? "House"? Any of the "CSI" or "Law and Order" shows? Your new favorites like "Pushing Daisies" or "Private Practice"? A long strike means they're all gone, maybe even 'til next fall, possibly forever.

You might be spending the next year watching bottom-of-the-barrel reality and game shows, along with months of reruns you've thrice digested. Sure, for some of you, who cares? More time reading, less time for your kids to be sitting in front of the tube, and besides, there's always sports. If you don't give a shit about TV, you'll have nothing to miss.

For a lot of other Americans, though, it will really suck. The people it will suck the most for, of course, are writers working in Los Angeles and New York, people who depend on that paycheck just like you depend on yours. You may think of all Hollywood writers as sitting by their pool with a laptop, a martini and a fellatrix, but that's a convenient canard.

The vision of the writer as a spoiled, pretentious hack is a vision that serves the major studios when these sorts of battles are fought in the courtroom of public opinion. Sure, there are the multi-millionaires too busy driving their Porsches to finish assignments, but the vast majority are working moms and dads trying to get gigs any way they can, hopefully scoring something every other year so they can sock money away before they're too old to be taken seriously. The rest are twentysomethings desperate for health insurance and a shot at proving everyone in their tiny hometown they aren't crazy.

In the larger picture, this country routinely derides and disdains creative people - there's a reason the Suits who started the dot-com craze in the mid-90s called all writing "content". By referring to all words, pictures and ideas as simply Product, they were able to marginalize it and de-mystify the process by which it's created. That attitude has taken firm root in all major companies, where the only real "idea" anyone wants to hear is one the company can patent.

God forbid you try freelancing. The tax laws and health benefit woes alone make sure even the heartiest of creative types run back to their 9-to-5 desk jobs to be properly anaesthetized.

The Powers That Be would like you to believe that any creative endeavor can be done by anything south of a Taiwanese computer and north of a chimp. The fact is, creating a movie or a decent TV show (or hell, even a good website) is incredibly hard, which is why so few succeed. Besides, strip away the creative magic around a company and what have you got? Cold steel, rebar and concrete.

I think about the air-traffic controllers that Reagan fired in the early '80s and how that must have devastated them. I know many of them filtered back to the job as the years wore on, but how did all those guys get through those early months? Sure, it's hard to imagine your Hollywood TV writer swapping stories in a bar with an air-traffic controller from St. Louis, but they're both just people trying to market the only skill they've ever had.

push butt

10/11/07

Tonight at the AMC movie theater inside Century City Mall, I was taking a pee break in the men's room before "Michael Clayton" started. By the time I got to the urinal, however, something erupted in the stall about ten feet to my right. To call it a "fart" would be doing it a grave disservice to all other farts, even those forced into the world by my brother Sean.

Yes, even the farts Sean created in the car en route to Utah in 1981, which I think we can all agree was his Golden Age of Farting.

No, this was another beast altogether. Deep, rich and sonorous, it was the kind of basso profundo that ricocheted around the tile walls with stunning clarity, like the Whispering Gallery atop St. Paul's Cathedral. After a few more seconds, with the bleat not stopping, I knew we might be on to something.

A man in a denim jacket came into the bathroom, as well as a gay Asian couple, and all three immediately froze when they heard the din. It was not the kind of noise you laughed at; no, it was the kind you experienced with jaws relaxed open with the possibility you might be witness to history.

At this point, I checked the second hand of my watch and backtimed the fart to about 12 full seconds. Now it was much more than a fart - there were ungodly noises of wet effluvium, vaguely reminiscent of when they open the release valves on the Hoover Dam. I looked at the gay couple, and they looked at me. This had gone past humor, past absurdity, and was now entering another realm altogether.

At eighteen seconds in, it still hadn't finished. I was beginning to calculate who could possible have that much gas, or really, anything inside them. Plus, who was this Anonymous Farter? Was he six-foot-eight, round as a toll booth? One thing was for certain: he possessed a lack of self-awareness that defied all social convention. As the vibrating, thunderous ass gasps continued, I knew we were dealing with someone who had broken the chains of moral obligation and drop-kicked inhibition to the wind.

Still others came into the bathroom, and were slowed by wonder. At some point, tears came into my eyes, because it had come all the way back to being funny again. I simply couldn't believe a human being's butt was capable of such cacophony, and by now, nor could anyone else. We were all strangers, but smiling now, knowing we were sharing something truly special. By the time the dying blasts emanated through the room, I checked my watch: 25 seconds.

The movie was starting, and I knew the aftermath would take some nuclear waste know-how to tidy up, and thus I never met the man responsible. But I would like to say this: Dear Sir, you have a gift. It's not often one gets a superlative moment in life, so I must thank you for abandoning all care and letting us experience what will surely be The Greatest Fart We Have Ever Heard. I doff my cap to you, and wish you many happy returns.

get ich quick

10/10/07

Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce Hank and Ankle. Named by Lucy before they were even brought home, both Hank and his friend Ankle are carassius auratus, known to you and me as goldfish. Hank, the large orange one, is a Western Fantail related to the Japanese ryukin, and Ankle is a telescope-eyed Black Moor. They would both like you to know two things: they are relatives of the Carp family, and when they get together, they aren't a "school," they're a "troubling" (which they - and I - think is really cool).

I come from a very long and storied line of pet-keeping, and I've been chomping at the bit for Lucy to have a pet since she was about three weeks old. Therapists like to say that having kids allows parents to relive (or re-cast) their own childhoods, and I always wanted fish, but never got them. HA!

These days taking care of fish is so much easier than it was in the '70s when I was a little brat eating orange Push-Ups. The filtration systems don't use that horrible cotton shoved into the pumps anymore, and you can get rid of any water problems or "ick" with a few drops of solution. The system above - the Eclipse 12-gallon tank - even has a spinning "good bacteria" wheel that means you only change 25% of the water every few weeks.

Lucy loves Hank & Ankle with the dedication of most Americans to their TV shows: that is, she wants a good swath of time inventing stories about them before her attention span demands distraction. However, the person benefiting most is probably me.

At night, I'm able to sit on the couch in front of Hank & Ankle and stare into the water for vast stretches of time, the kind of zen-like trance that can happen at a campfire or an ocean. They were originally bought to give Lucy the inchoate first chapter of "taking responsibility for other beings," and I'm sure that's sinking in somewhere, but those two little dudes have accidentally provided me with something stronger: unexpected peace of mind.

motherfaqquers

10/9/07

The time has come to lay a few things to rest around here, so I'm in the midst of writing a FAQ for this blog. In doing so, I hope to take care of the following people: folks who want to make movie trailers, dogs who have overdosed on Rimadyl, those seeking Jarts™, and the general populace who wants a good place to start. But most of all, this FAQ will be an instructional tool for any would-be commenters (or email writers) who have come up with a list of unsavory adjectives about me, and are still toiling under the notion that they were the first to make such trenchant observations.

In fact, I'd offer a $5 cash reward for anybody to elucidate a character flaw they think I have that I don't already know. This isn't in the interest of drumming up more self-obsessed drivel about me me me, I'd just like to save some of you anonymous commenters/emailers all those precious hours spent crafting your finely-tuned invective. It can be a real drag to work so hard, only to find out your epiphany had been long ago accepted as fact.

In that interest, is there anything you longtime or short-time folks think would be a good question for the FAQ? It can be pretty much anything, as long as it doesn't impugn or belittle anyone else. I've already got about 20 recurring good questions from my years on here, but would be much obliged if there's something you'd like to add. I know it sounds self-aggrandizing, but hey, if I'm going to keep doing this, why not?

requiem for a purple wallet

10/8/07

On Friday night, somewhere between the Duane Reade drugstore on 52nd Street and the British Consul's house on 51st and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, my wallet disappeared. It was in the pocket of my backpack, there was almost nobody around, and the most logical place it went missing - a scotch tasting attended by some of the most highfalutin' folks in NYC - seems a bizarrely-unlikely place for such absconscion.

Oh, but you say, people lose their wallets all the time. Yes, perhaps, but I don't. I carried that specific wallet around for ALMOST EIGHTEEN YEARS. The last time I lost my wallet, I left it in front of a fake Gothic chapel at Dook University, and it was February 1990. I went to Townsend Bertram in Carrboro and Betsy Towns sold me a new purple wallet that held together with Velcro. Betsy was one of my future wife's best friends, and for some reason I thought her family owned the store because "Townsend" was so close to "Towns". But I digress.

That purple wallet came to signify consistency in a life that was utterly maniacal. I had that wallet writing the last of my Wednesday's Child columns for the paper; it saw me through my first book, countless moves from different houses, to New York, to New Orleans, to California, back again, back again.

I may have been a fuck-up, but at least I still had my wallet. I might have done ecstasy at a rave in the Garden District and drank a whole bottle of Skyy Vodka, but I didn't lose my wallet. When I got so destitute and had to move from McCauley Street to a patch of cold basement floor at the Lodge and work every night at La Rez so I could afford to eat, I still had my fucking wallet.

In fact, as ADD encroached, and my life became the butt of jokes amongst those who preferred to live in one place longer than a year, I used to ask them how long they'd kept their wallet. Tessa is infinitely well-put-together and has organization systems for her organization systems, and she's lost her wallet TWICE since we've lived together. Whenever she mentioned some piece of arcana about my inability to keep my environment out of the clutches of chaos, I'd say, "Yes," while holding up my purple wallet, "but I still have this."

Thus, on Friday, I lost:
- hundreds in cash
- my driver's license
- four credit cards
- all my keys (attached)
- and, worst of all, my Carolina ID from 1990 where I was wearing a green turtleneck.

But that's not all. I lost my moral high ground. Now, I'm just as bad, nay worse than everyone else, because I'm a disorganized, distracted yo-yo who also lost his goddamn wallet. I'd like to bid a fond adieu to my little purple Velcro overstuffed 1990 friend, and thank it for those countless years of loyalty. It was the one inanimate object that stuck by me, and I'm rendered mournful by the thought of it languishing, stripped of all value, lying in a bin thousands of miles away. I can only hope it finds its way back to me, or, barring that, rests peacefully at the bottom of a drawer belonging to someone too distracted to ever put it in the mail.

UPDATE:

Jordana went by the Duane Reade, and there it was, sans cash, but otherwise intact! I'd called the store three times without avail, but like all things, it took actually going there. Jordana - and New York - you're the best!

hey hey, we're the portuguese

10/7/07

Happy Columbus Day, everyone! In honor of our fearless conquistador, here is the image of Columbus arriving in the "New World" as depicted by Currier & Ives:

My favorite bit is at far left:

guy at top: "what the FUCK?"

i don't feel tardy

10/4/07

I'd like to know what your Fridays are like, because every job I've ever had... something kicks in around 1-2pm that makes serious work excruciatingly difficult. The same thing happened in school, when the teachers unlucky enough to get us after lunch had to deal with the breakdown of basic rules that they, too, felt hard-pressed to take seriously.

Now, in the freelance world, it's quite a different story. Friday afternoon forces a reckoning, a "did I accomplish what I set to do this week" that is usually distilled into a "um, perhaps not" and it wasn't that long ago when that meant something close to financial disaster.

When you work a freelance life, there is no weekend, there is no time when you are truly "off", and back when I had no health insurance and was desperate for every frickin' gig, Friday afternoon meant no good news for at least two days. I'm blessedly lucky to have managed an occupation that has no office, but any of you who have freelanced know it can wreak havoc on your stomach lining.

To quell that horror, I took That Internet Job, and before I started to loathe it (and it loathed me back), I recall the joy that accompanied Friday afternoons, because we were all truly able to leave it all behind. The 8am-6pm grind would flitter away like it didn't exist. Friday afternoons felt like summer vacation, an impossibly long swath of time that would never end. Sunday night? Never heard of it - sounds crappy!

Even at the dot-coms, we'd stop looking at the internet on Friday afternoons (and the stats for this site show something similar). And so I ask - what are your Friday afternoons like? Can you focus? Does it still feel a little like school?

fish needs bicycle, film at 11

10/3/07

I had a nice rant about American wealth all designed for you readers when I got sidetracked by... yes, you got it, the UNC Basketball schedule for Outlook imported into iCal using iCalTextImport! It does require a lot of pruning and reshaping once you get it into your calendar, but now none of us have any excuse to miss the barnburner soon to be known as the Carolina-Iona game at 3pm on November 18 (among many others).

While we're on the subject of stuff that works, I'd like to single out several other things I've encountered this week. First, obviously, a shout-out to deck screws - and not just any deck screws, I'm talking about the ones that use "star bits", dipped in some protective enamel that makes them outlast the Solar System:

Screws at Home Despot are chained to the mediocrity of the Philips head, which strip bare when you're using a power drill. Some may sing the praises of the "square bit" screws, but I found those just as crappy. Nope, if you've got something in your house worth fixing, a star-bit deck screw is the only fastener worth fastening.

Another great piece of machinery? Good guess! In fact, it was the Brother MFC-240C!

We have several hundred important documents to scan, and this little guy has a sheet feeder... so you can stick entire legal papers into the top, scan them straight into Acrobat, and get instant 2 to 10-page PDF files in about fifteen seconds. Yes, that sounds boring, but have you ever tried to scan individual sheets by hand, them stick them together digitally? IT SUCKS.

We haven't had a printer that works at our house for a while, and this little guy prints 25 pages a minute, makes copies, gets faxes, and shaves your grundle - all for ninety bucks!

One last thing I like: Lewis Taylor. Have you guys heard him yet? He's magnificent. It's been a long time since I was psyched about a musician, and this dude can throw down like Curtis Mayfield, then suddenly turn into a chimera of Todd Rundgren, Queen, and Stevie Wonder. Ah, the joys of ROCK!

Update: check out this article about Lewis Taylor in a league with our own Greg Humphreys.

hair scrunchies: set of five, 79 cents

10/1/07

Can you truly recall the feeling of being nauseous? How about a severe headache, like a migraine? Can you put yourself in the emotional position of being hopelessly depressed? To do so, or at least to understand these Exceptionally Bad experiences, has been a fascination of my latter-day rehabilitation.

Nausea is nature's dealbreaker: when you constantly feel like barfing, there is little else you can do. Migraines, depression, deep-set hunger and cold can actually drive you temporarily crazy; you can say things you don't actually mean, you can watch your body doing things you didn't ask of it. You have effectively drowned in your situation and have no means of thinking outside it.

I mention this because I went to one of the most depressing stores in America today - the Walmart in Hudson, NY - and was overcome with snobbery and derision. These shoppers, these unthinkably obese, racist goons buying power-steering fluid by the case, are going to be lifelong obstacles towards electing people who will change this country for the better. They will vote for Hillary when somebody kills them, lops off their hand, and makes the dead hand pull the lever in the voting booth.

This judgment races through my brain within 5 milliseconds of being around these other Americans, and yet it shows an incredible lack of empathy, supposedly the benchmark of being progressive or liberal. These people could be living lives I once had but now cannot fathom: being one radiator leak away from no car and no job, chancing five years without health care, working all week without seeing their family. They could be caring for an elderly aunt who no longer recognizes them, worried about a son who won't stop coughing, driving through the rich neighborhoods of Greenport and Claverack and wondering why life is so patently unfair.

They make decisions because they can't see out of their particular situation, but what gives me any stranglehold on perspective? I went to prep school, graduated from a Public Ivy, hobnobbed in Manhattan in the literary elite, then moved to California to invent stories. I'm held together by a strong family, but owe vast swaths of functionality to an antidepressant and speed.

I'm trying to keep my side of the street clean. The drugs and therapy were implemented to erase misery, and now I'm trying a Buddhist perspective to actually attain well-being - but I also know my financial position allows for such introspection.

It's amazing: you try to see things from other people's point of view, but more often than not, you forget that YOU'RE the one with the flawed glass. It is you that has the migraine, driven slightly crazy by vague nausea, and while your feelings run strong and you're utterly convinced that you've attained the moral high ground, your perspective ends mere millimeters from the tips of your fingers.