Harrison, or Jack if you prefer

03:20 am: This is too easy
( I've always wanted to do one of these )

As of late this e-space has seemed more like an excuse to play with form than a space for communicating, and is, subsequently, rather e-fakeandmisleading. Therefore, I am quitting indefinitely. Cold Turkey! See you fuckers on Facebook.

03:11 am: You just like destroying things that are good, don't you?
All right, Aight, boys and boyos. All's well? Same, same. I seem to be sleeping a lot.
(There is a geometry problem that I have been unable to solve for literally 6 years now. This is what I do with my free time.)

Also:

Macs are great for boredom.

Ample time for nostalgia. It strikes me that I've always appreciated a narrative gimmick-- even before my first Charlie Kaufman movie and more recently than my playwriting class. My favorite/own fictions/relationships always value form over content-- which is not to suggest that form is not a type of content, but instead that I am detached from "straightforward" emotion. Shucks.
(This, of course, is the root of my disingenuity. Social structures take precedence over the desire to sob/scream "I hate you"/"I love you". Then again, sobbing and screaming only have social meanings.)

Songs of the Day:
Someone Great- LCD Soundsystem <-- just bought Sound of Silver, and it is amazing. A techno album about moving past teenagerdom = yes.
Fear No Pain- Willy Manson <-- Emma introduced me to this guy. I uploaded this song to a lame site, but it's worth the effort to download it. Beautiful.
The Devil Never Sleeps- Iron and Wine <-- Always liked this guy's music, and always wanted to sing like him. I'm glad he got a band-- this is that much more fun because of it.

No job as of yet, but I do have a bike, and a house, and a girl. Oxford in t-minus 7 weeks. Come visit before I leave:
64 Henich Lane
Hillsdale, NY
(P.S. Adulthood in T-minus question mark?)

01:54 pm: Live every week like it's shark week

Holy Matrimony, Jan Saudek, 1990

Hey guys, what's up?
"Not much, what's up with you?"
Well I got into a study abroad program at Oxford.
"Wow! That's awesome."
It's pretty cool. But I don't have anything to do until I leave in April.
"What are your plans?"
Uh, I don't know. I'm going to rent a place near western Massachusetts and find a job.
"Have you found a place?"
Yeah! It's great. It's cheap and huge and isolated and my only neighbors are sheep and horses. I'm really excited to live there.
"You're living with SHEEP?"
Yeah. I've decided that people aren't really worth the effort. I prefer animals. The great irony of my life is that I'm allergic to them.
"Hahaha. Yeah. So what are you up to now?"
I'm bumming around New York City. I got into an accident in Manhattan, so my car has been here for the last few weeks.
"Was anybody hurt?"
No, everyone's fine, but my car is fucked. I came down to get my car back, but my insurance just told me it's cheaper to buy the car from me than to fix it. So now I have no car.
"Shit. What are you going to do?"
I have no clue. Buy another car or a bike or something. A car is expensive, but it's awfully convenient, especially considering how much shit I have to transport.
"Yeah I see what you mean... So how about them Giants?"
I'm a Patriots fan, personally.
"Oh, okay. Well it was nice talking to you."
Nice talking to you too. I'll see you around.
"Yeah. See you around."

As a side note, I want this song played at my funeral:
Death of a Clown- The Kinks

11:22 pm: I apologize for this in advance:








(two classes down, two to go over intercession)

Emma: The saddest thing is a college student who fails his finals and calls home to be comforted by his mother only to learn that his entire family has been killed and eaten by a roving band of cannibalistic gypsy orphans.

Me: Noooooooooo!

Emma: And his only remaining family member, a three-legged dog, wimpers with hunger into the phone.

08:21 am: Study Music:
I Want Your Digital Love (Jackson 5 + Daft Punk)- Ben Double M
Two of my favorite song of, like, EVER, man! The first minute is actually a pretty awful mashup, but the sample at the minute mark and the rap at the two minute mark save it. Anyway, the two songs are so good they're impossible to fuck up when put together.

Bridges and Balloons with a Bagel (Joanna Newsom + Tego Calderon)- P. Neezy on certifiedbananas.com
This just makes me incredibly happy. It is the one and only time I have liked reggaeton.

two videos, because I can't find the songs online:

99 Problems + Voodoo Child. Emma showed this to me. Apparently it's thing to put jay-z songs with hendrix songs? this one is legitimately badass, and more fun than either song by itself, 'cause it keeps 99 problem's drums but switches the guitar sample.


Drop it like it's hot + close to me. This one is kind of famous among my friends, because i always talk about when a DJ came to simon's rock for our "prom" and did a similar mashup. Unfortunately, this doesn't use the horns from the cure song, and the video is retarded.




Also, this site has 2747 mashups FOR FREE.

03:16 pm: Old news, renewed excitement:


Three from the soundtrack:
Stuck Inside A Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again- Cat Power (covering Bob Dylan)
Simple Twist of Fate- Jeff Tweedy (covering Bob Dylan)
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window- The Hold Steady (covering Bob Dylan)
(This last one gives me chills. If anyone can find the original, tell meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.)

02:47 am: Laugh Larf Barf
I'm going to my first ever wedding tomorrow!
Weird.
It's in Philadelphia, because that's where my cousin lives!
Weird.
My parents REALLY want me to go for some reason!
Weird.

It's going to be the first time in months that Emma and I have been apart for more than 24 hours. We sleep a lot. It's pretty awesome. I've been accused of being a recluse, which is not such a bad thing to be, though I still wish I lived closer to the partying peoples' of the world.

I have a 3.1 GPA for the first time in years! Yay! The bad part of this is that I haven't been keeping in touch with peoplez. Apologies. Have some music instead!

The songs with vocalists that vaguely remind me of Ian Curtis:
Not Even Jail- Interpol
To Fix The Gash In Your Head- A Place To Bury Strangers
Memoranda- The A-Frames:


I have the 6 good Radiohead albums in the 6 slots of my car's CD player. I'm such a loser.

06:41 am: A great music video, twice
Heartbeats--The Knife:

Jose Gonzalez's Cover:

The dude does the song exactly the way I wish I could. Too bad the video turns out to be a commercial.

03:13 am: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Haven't had much time for public e-masturbation-- I'm trying and mostly succeeding in busying myself with school. I am, despite my love of groups of people I know, on top of work in all my classes except playwriting. I'm in college, baby! I'm studying Franz KafKarl Marx!
(Though I understand approximately 1/16 of Grundrisse. I'm failing as a social scientist and Asmaniac, but Lukacs is bringing literature into the picture.)

Socially back in form too, mostly thanks to a week in NYC. The amount of money I spend or is spent on me is directly related to my sense of self, and my sense of self directly effects my relationship with mortality. Fo' serious. I was okay with death/starvation/apathy until I became a productive person-- when I care about people and what they think about me, there's a desire to be mourned. All mourning is selfish, maybe??? Ignore this. My language is loose, like sleeve of wizard.
(Am thinking about the drive on 1-95 when Grandma died, screaming into the steering wheel, "I'm so stupid. I'm so fucking stupid." That was weird.)

Went to the Met, saw some real Caravaggio, some real Dali, and some real Picasso. These two, Nude Standing By The Sea and Woman In White, Picasso painted in the same year:

The dude is like The Beatles and James Joyce-- he just can't stay still.

Also saw a 20-foot-tall this:

Neo Rauch, Die Fuge. His paintings are his dreams??

For a while there, with Leila gone, the isolation of my apartment, and my limitations as a student, I thought that sophomore year might be the apex of my collegiate career. I am afraid of being dull, boring, uninspired, or, alternatively, being obnoxious and annoying. As for the spectrum between those two poles, I'm afraid of becoming a person who is unable to have fun because he is too hip or too thoughtful or too preoccupied. The postmodern paradigm for white dudes like me is to be ridiculous. You gotsta make people laugh, bro! Think: Stephen Colbert and associates, Vonnegut + Barthelme + Foer, the picture above, etc. I'm not sure if it's good, then, that I feel for the first time that I am still the same person I was when I was five or six or seven years old.
(What do I do in my free time? Watch full seasons of Top chef + West Wing, play spider solitaire, write stories about widow(er)s left with three boys. Never anything that is expected of me-as-adult. I refrain from detailing my feelings towards certain puppies and their owners, as well as multiple large empty union-made glass bottles, because the feelings should be fairly obvious to those that care and unnecessary for those that don't.)

More later, including music.

04:28 pm: I haven't slept in a while
My problems are solved. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that thousands of dollars are a simple phone call away in case of emergencies. And, hey, everybody knows-- money = happiness.
(Then there's the part of me that wants to cry knowing that that electronic stackofcash gave birth to my mother and used to be one of the most gentle, benign, and misguided people I will ever know.)
Too much information? Nobody really respects the bitterness and inner woes of welloff white males these days, excepting the internet, which justs nods its e-head whenever you say anything.

What I'm trying to say is: FUCK CAPITALISM. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that. Not because I'm afraid the thought police are going to break in, but because I'm afraid some Profoundly Educated Simonsrock Theorist [PEST] is going to jump at me and reason that I'm in no position to participate in such barbaric yawping.

Three Songs With Great Sad Male Voices:
Graceland- Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (Paul Simon Cover)
A friend made Harry Marker a mix with the song I Love Creedence on it, which, although being perhaps the saddest song evarz fo'realz, is impossible to find online except for here.
I Hear The Bells- Mike Doughty
This one I got from Veronica Mars. The unabashedly silly TV show, that is. There's something that always gets me about clever, resigned, deep male voices, in a completely unhomoerotic way. The dude's playing colleges, too... maybe we can get him at school?
Peacebone- Animal Collective
This one's not exactly a tear-jerker, but it's still badass. I guess there's something sad about moldy Chinese food.

If I had a time machine, and, assuming that the multiple universes theory is true and it's okay to go back and kill my own grandfather, I would kill George Harrison right before the Beatles broke it big. Like, we all know they could go without Ringo, although Yellow Submarine wouldn't've been as awesome.
My real question is this: could John and Paul've carried the band to fame on their natural songwriting talent, and, assuming they could, how would their music / all of history be different?
That's the type of thing budding social scholars like me NEED TO KNOW. For my next experiment, I'm gonna whack Bob Dylan.

A parting gift,
or,
a SeeYouSoon gift for those returning to Simon's Rock:

03:42 am: I wish I could dance like this guy

I disliked Spoon until they used I Summon You in Veronica Mars.
(Which is a damn good show, by the way. First season was a bit too much O.C. highschooldrama without enough Buffy or Brick spunk, but season two has more subplots and ridiculous twists than Lost.)

Also found this on my youtube wanderings:

How had I not heard it before? Awesome.

I've dug myself into a pretty deep hole. I want to be at school right now, but, uh, my tuition isn't paid yet, along with my car insurance and my rent. I'm also out of allergy medicine, I have no health insurance, and it's been raining nonstop since Rockers left.
It's not just that I can't play the system. My incompetence is aided by the fact that God hates me.
/whining

11:57 pm: Whoa.


Just found out about this. Written by Micheal Ian Black.
Simon Pegg may actually be the greatest comedic actor I've ever seen.

Not much else. Well, lots, but later, eh? For now, chainsmoking through british sitcoms, because NOTHING ELSE MAKES ME HAPPY.

I'm leaving Pittsburgh august 15th.

PS The song in the trailer, Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis, is pretty rockin' too, as far as brit pop can actually rock. YEAH I SAID IT.

07:25 am: I'm sorry I'm not Michaelangelo or his David
Thanks for the advice on scurvy, guys, but it was mostly an exaggeration of the sad state of edible affairs in this house, aided by a little but of hypochondria. The problem's solved anyway; my parents saved me with some much-needed $$$ and some watermelon.
(so my dad reads this?? I just hope my four-letter words don't offend his heightened linguistic sensitivities. He's a lawyer, you know.)

Not much news on my end. Pretentious activities: Chess and Go on yahoo. Unpretentious activities: watching full seasons of Avatar and Black Books. Al Pachino movies, too.
Yeah, I have a lot of free time. But I start my first day of working at a burrito place in about 25 minutes. Also, I'm going to go see Interpol tomorrow.

Song of the Day:
1234- Feist
I'd heard Feist before, and it smacked of Broken Social Scene, in a good way, but this is like an aural orgasm.

And a free youtube tidbit:

This house can get pretty nuts. For instance, last night I was playing a three-person game of pool with a strobelight and Beethoven going in the background. Zany! Come visit.

06:21 am: !
I think I might have scurvy.

This sucks.

08:52 am: "Which came first: the phoenix or the flame?"
Not to, uh, brag or anything, but I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I put my flatscreen monitor on my lap and read it like a luminescent book. The future of literature = yes.

My review? Ain't gots the plot or pacing of Prisoner of Azkaban, nor the imagination or emotion of Order of the Phoenix, but it still kicks serious ass. Equal parts Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and Ocean's 11 + some biblical shit thrown in. Not just Jesus neithers.

Anyway, today will go down in history as the day that I read Book 7 a good day-anna-half before just about everyone else ever did. I expect the authorities will be entering to arrest me shortly.

01:24 am: "Is the number 846 possible or necessary?"
I'm back in Pittsburgh, with a quarter tank of gas and $5 to my person. After waking from my post-6-hour-drive nap, one of my first thoughts was "Now I remember why I hate this place." In this house, it's deliciously easy to waste my time/days, and disgustingly difficult to find any good food. Saw Delicatessen, which rocked, and I've got a job interview tomorrow, though.

My Sole (Soul) Savior: amphetamines. I left all my meds and books in The City, but I read spare stuff from the freshman seminar handbook, some Rushdie, and Pinter. Quoth the Laureate:
"We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: 'Failure of communication'... I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rear-guard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to other the Poverty Within Us is too fearsome a possibility."
cliche reversal = yes.

/whining
Barnpoolparty was amazing/exhausting and I wouldn't trade it for the world, only perhaps a unbroken collarbone. Recall thinking, "I feel lecherous" though I can't remember the context.
Postbarnpool was great too. Nothing quite like the guilt inspired by living off the people you care most about. Recall thinking, "I feel leech-erous"  in many different contexts, but that didn't stop me from eating more pizza. Many thanks, rockers and citykids.

No new music for you or for me, seeing as how I've returned to my speakerless computer.
(What a metaphor for Pittsburgh! Whenever I leave or return to the Simon's Rock Community at large, I think of an F. Scott passage. No, I'm not even kidding. It goes: "She had been away--he could have wept at the wonder of her return. She had passed through enchanted streets, doing things that were like provocative music. All mysterious happenings, all fresh and quickening hopes, had gone away with her, come back with her now." The girl in question is you, my friends.)
Pimp Shit has a new song, which will be available when Conor either sends it to me or uploads it himself. If you see him, punch him in the shoulder. Also, try and make him feel guilty about something.

P.S. Oh god now I'm looking at icanhascheezburger.com. I am


P.S.S. I have the first 495 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on my computer.

07:24 pm: 2 songs and a video
Kiss- Prince Vs. Daft Punk
(Two of the funkiest musical acts in one!)

Girlfriend- Avril Lavigne
(I've heard this song about a dozen times in the last 24 hours and every single time it's made me laugh.)

You Take My Breath Away by The Knife:

(Every single one of their videos is amazing. Youtube'm.)

Also check out this.

Miss like whoa. I've said that ten times already, but it needs to be said again.

06:08 am: I desire to see the Queen grind pastries mercilessly beneath her nude bottom


Achewood is God?? I'm just putting that out there.

3 Songs That Use A Repeating Piano Chord Which I Intend To Use Abundantly On My Forthcoming Album Which I Haven't Begun Yet:
Rebellion (Lies)-  Arcade Fire
I Wanna Be Your Dog- The Stooges
All My Friends (Video Edit)- LCD Sounsystem

The last one is rather appropriate at the moment. Part 6 of He Looks Like Me Only Hotttttter??

I'm writing papers. I probably won't get them all done. On the upside, here's the last line I wrote of a play for Asma's American Political Thinkers class:
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: (excited like a schoolboy) Yes! Industry! Lose no time, always be employed, cut off all unnesecary actions! It is one of my thirteen virtues. The others are temperance, silence, order, resolution...
ANDREW CARNEGIE: (not indulging him) Yeah, uh, I think you're talking about a different kind of industry.

01:57 am: Endorphin Affection
I could be writing a paper. Psh. I only have two this time. Easy.
So of course I'm surfin' the internets. Ingesting instead of the planned regurgitation. Ah well. Soon enough, e-friends. 

So.
I lost fifteen pounds over finals week. I was too small for my tightest jeans. I've probably gained back ten of those pounds since the graduation ceremony last week.
I also lost my phone, but I will be getting another one with the same ### soon. I will be living with my older brother for probably most of the summer. I will shower appreciation and rewards on anyone who comes to visit me.
More? More. I eye I eye I eye I.

Songs to Keep You Awake While Driving Long Past the Hour of Midnight:
Misunderstood- Wilco
(Jeff Tweedy has a knack for summing up into a single song any situation I'm in. The title/refrain is ironic, of course.) 
Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse- Of Montreal
(Catchiest song about bi-polar disorder I've ever heard. It's got a cool video, too)
Keep The Car Running- Arcade Fire
(I listened to a lot of old music during my Taconic and I-95 wanderings over the last two weeks, including mixes made for and by me from as far back as freshman year of high school, but by far the most moving and (re)memorable were whatever the fuck I was listening to when finally driving away from campus at 3 am and In The Backseat coming up from NY right before the terror of final papers. Every time I'm alone, that song creeps up on me like a Lon Chaney character. I hadn't listened to Funeral since it was coincidentally playing when I found out my grandma died. That was intersession; I was driving on, surprise surprise, Interstate 95.
Possible thesis topic: metaphorical value of cars in american pop culture, starting with The Great Gatsby / The Magnificent Ambersons and ending with Arcade Fire. That's much too literary and boring, though.)

ALSO!!!

01:59 am: YES