Further Tales of Financial Aid

I found out today that, due to a mix-up on my part, I only received a little under $3000 in student loans for this, hopefully my final semester. So after my classes are paid for, I have $900 to pay for books, graduation fee, and miscellaneous expenses. I have the practicum and the final research class this semester, and had hoped to go to very-part (or even no-) time at my job until graduation. Apparently that will not be the case. On the one hand, I'm happy to not have that much more debt to contend with upon graduation; on the other, I really wanted to concentrate on school, and the amount I will be refunded won't be enough to pay off my car insurance for the remainder of the year, much less pay for my cell phone, credit card, medication (since I don't have health insurance), and other expenses. At least I've paid my car off. I should just be happy that housing isn't an issue, and my job pays for my gas. It would be nice to have a little money for after graduation, too, but I earn so little from my job, and tuition is so expensive, that I should get another $3000 refund from the IRS next year. My dad says that I should realize that the refund is due to Emperor W, to which I counter, Yeah, at least when Clinton was in office I could find a job with health insurance that paid double what I'm making now. But that's another story.

I just want to graduate. I go in to talk to the woman in charge of my practicum assignment Thursday, so as to arrange a schedule before classes start. I'm still a bit nervous, not least of all because I slacked off so bad during summer semester. Part of this was because the teacher was a complete space cadet, but I also really lost any drive to excel. In the research class, you have to design and present a research assignment for the rest of the class to critique, a prospect that makes me nauseous just to think of it. I just remember when I had to present my final paper as an undergraduate, on the Arturian Legend in the works of Jean Cocteau; I was sweating so bad (it was a hot May) that it was dripping on my paper as I was reading it. The professor loved it, though, and suggested it might be work as the beginning of a thesis. Library science presentations have been less stressful, if only because I don't care as much.

I ended up getting an A- in my Science & Technology Reference class.

On a completely unrelated note, I watched the season premier of "Scrubs" with my mom tonight. I also watched that "Father of the Pride" show, which I am sure will fail. Except for the setting, it's honestly a fairly standard sitcom format. The inclusion of computer-generated Siegfried & Roy gives it a bit ghoulish. And even in the commercials, NBC seemed to be complaining about how expensive and time-consuming the show is.

Song: "Seventeen" by Ladytron.

Beating the Bishop

There is a butcher shop in the area that occasionally advertises on television. Standard issue poorly-done local advertising, computer graphics circa 1983. The commercial has two old men (presumably the owners) frollicking about a variety of meat products, and then the tagline is: "Nobody can beat our meat!"*

Song: Hot Hot Heat "Get In or Get Out".

*Apparently this is not the only butcher shop to use this in advertisements.

Godzilla... or Godzelig?

Check out FARK.com to see Godzilla photoshopped into a bunch of other classic movies, in honor of his 50th birthday. My favorites: "Public Enemy", "Clockwork Orange", "A Star is Born" (Kristofferson has more sexual chemistry with Godzilla than with Streisand), and (naturally) "The Seventh Seal". I think I would have preferred some of these movies ("Backdraft," I'm talking to you!) if they had actually starred Godzilla. (via Giant Monster Blog)

25 Golden Greats

For no apparent reason, a list of albums. These are not necessarily my favorite albums; they are just the ones that, when I look back, had the most effect on my musical tastes. That said, I am a fan of virtually all of these albums, and listen to each of them on a regular basis. The dates aren't when the albums were released, but rather when I obtained them. The high water mark seems to be around 1998; I think that was the point I had the most disposable income, and before I really had a job to worry about. Looking over the list, I'm sort of surprised; I had always assumed that I had done the alternative thing first, and then sort of discovered disco (and through that, soul music), but looking it over it's clear that both strands of my musical taste developed simultaneously. Soul and disco appear to be under-represented, partially because they tend to be so single-oriented for me, collected on compilations. Norma Jean's "I Like Love" and Sylvester's "Over & Over" were both defining songs for me, but they both are songs I first heard on compilations in the mid-to-late '90s. There were also songs I first encountered as singles, like Morrisey's "Interesting Drug" or Suede's "Stay Together". But the emphasis here is on cohesive albums by a single artist. These basically represent the albums that proved a revelation to me, where they opened up new musical avenues, or I just loved every single song on them.

• 1985 Duran Duran "Rio" tape.
• 1987 The Smiths "Louder Than Bombs" tape.
• 1989 The Velvet Underground & Nico "The Velvet Underground & Nico" tape.
• 1990 Devo "Q. Are We Not Men? A. We Are Devo!" used LP.
• 1990 Laurie Anderson "Big Science" used LP.
• 1990 Patti Smith "Horses" used LP.
• 1991 The B-52's "The B-52's" tape.
• 1991 The Pixies "Doolittle" tape.
• 1992 The Buzzcocks "Operator's Manual" tape.
• 1992 Danielle Dax "Blast the Human Flower" tape.
• 1992 Pet Shop Boys "Discography" tape.
• 1993 The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" tape.
• 1993 Donna Summer "Anthology" CD.
• 1993 Roxy Music "Country Life" used tape.
• 1994 Ella Fitzgerald "Verve Jazz Masters 6" CD.
• 1996 Orbital "In Sides" CD.
• 1996 X "Los Angeles/Wild Gift" CD.
• 1997 LaBelle "Something Silver" CD.
• 1998 Belle & Sebastian "If You're Feeling Sinister" CD.
• 1998 The Jam "Compact Snap" used CD.
• 1998 Plug "Drum & Bass for Papa" CD.
• 1999 The Gentle People "Soundtracks for Living" CD.
• 1999 Gus Gus "This is Normal" CD.
• 2001 Fantastic Plastic Machine "Beautiful" CD.
• 2002 Missy Elliott "Miss E...So Addictive" CD.

Song: Bibi Presents "Summer [Full Percussion Mix]".

What kind of punk are you?

a punk in the non-punk way!




you're punk in your own way. You are really comfortable with who you are and do things however you wanna. whatever people think about you, you let them think.
you don't label people by what they wear or listen to because you know it's what's beneath the surface that means the most. you're what punk was supposed to be about. (lost in this society...)

What kind of punk are you?

Worker's Playtime

Over on Return of the Reluctant, Bondgirl has posted a letter she received from Wilton Barnhardt; his comments on the most memorable theater performances are hilarious -- and in the case of the pigeons, just a wee bit disturbing -- and I intend to check out his novels once I've winnowed down my TBR pile a bit.

One of the plays he talks about was a performance of "The Tempest" in a planitarium. While I do not have any stories that quite compare, I have found that I have yet to see a performance of that play that is really -- well, normal. The first time I saw it (sort of) was in 1998, at the Globe Theater in London. I was there, tagging along with a group of kids from Grand Valley University in Grand Rapids; it's a reasonably conservative public university in the heart of West Michigan. My best friend Julie was the TA for the class, so she arranged for me to come with them for a few weeks the summer after I graduated from college. I was a bit excited to see the play, because I had become a fan of Shakespeare's late Romances in college (I wrote a paper on "The Winter's Tale" in my Shakespeare class), and to see it at the Globe, no less! Julie had bought the tickets for the prof, but she hadn't been paying attention to the details. It turned out that it was a performance by a Cuban troupe, and what dialogue there was (and there wasn't a lot) was completely in Spanish. The play itself had been significantly rewritten, and a general outline of the altered plot had to be included in the program. When the play started, we also realized that all the women were going to be performing topless, and the men were a hemp jock-strap away from being completely naked. Well, that last part I didn't have much of a problem with, since these were the sort of guys you (or more to the point, I) don't mind seeing in nothing but a hemp jock-strap. But you get the idea: it was a bit outre. There were tribal masks, weird chanting, interperative dancing, and characters that didn't really correspond to any in Shakespeare's play. I eventually somehow realized that their version was essentially a veiled indictment of Castro's regime, and could be understood metaphorically as a larger history of their homeland; once I understood that, it helped me make sense out of what I was seeing. Most of the kids in the class hated it, and I suspect that Julie did too -- she was laughing about it just the other day. A family from a church group that was vaguely affiliated with our school group left about midway through. I don't think I enjoyed standing for all that time, either, especially without some bear-baiting to warm up the crowd a bit. Once I got past the pendulous breasts and incomprehensible chattering, I actually sort of enjoyed it. It certainly made my trip to the Globe more interesting than if I had seen something more... conventional.

The other performance was at the Stratford Festival, and not nearly so colorful. Not long into the play, the actor playing Prospero broke out of character to tell the audience that he had forgotten a full page of the text, and because it included some dialogue integral to the plot, he was going to start the scene over. The audience, for their part, applauded. His candor was admirable, and I was impressed, but once he did restart, I found it impossible to not think he was simply an actor playing Prospero, rather than Prospero himself, if that makes sense. It seems a bit graceless in retrospect, and I wonder if the audience would have clapped so enthusiastically if it had been a younger actor, or a more modern play. In retrospect, I can remember precious little else of the performance. It was, however, a Preview; the play had yet to officially open yet, so it was significantly cheaper to attend, so I probably shouldn't complain. But still, I sort of preferred the Cuban version.

Song: "Anything Goes" by Ella Fitzgerald.

Brother, can you spare "My So-Called Life"?

I got sick last night while watching "Taking Lives" (Or, as I dubbed it, "Brother, Can You Spare a Life". I decided it would've been a lot more compelling as a romantic comedy staring Parker Posey.) Not because of it, just during it, although it's not a film I recommend. Anyways, so I've been in my bedroom all day, doing nothing useful. I feel bad enough not to want to do anything, but not bad enough that I don't feel guilty just lying around, doing nothing. I haven't read, I haven't written, I haven't cleaned, I haven't even checked on my grades online. I've ended up watching the entire first season of "Felicity" on DVD. Sometime around episode 19, I pulled out the digital camera and started taking pictures of the TV screen, maybe just because I had to feel like I was doing something with my day. I was supposed to rake up the back lot today.

Song: "Rapture" by Blondie.

Good Godfrey, am I bored! Undoubtedly, I'm breaking some copyright laws.

This reminds me of a Warhol movie, for some reason.

The clay/tone and rage is full

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
From MacBeth
by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and ramp tomorrow,
This easy newspaper stage,
For the last syllable of the remarkable time;
And our whole it ignited deceives the kind
Yesterday at dusty death. Outside, of the short candle!
The life however going nuance to obstruct, a poor player
Props and its hour after the stage
And then does not belong longer: it is not history,
Which by an idiot is explained, the clay/tone and rage is full,
And possibly to something meant.

(Via Google Language Tools)

I always like massacring language with translation tools. It is a slow day at work today.

Revenge Return of the International Playboy

Got back from Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario this evening; I went for one night with my mom. It was her gift to me for not having a proper vacation since 2001, and for not failing (hopefully) summer semester. We ended up just seeing two plays, Anything Goes and MacBeth, mainly because we didn't really have that much money to see more. (I had wanted to see The Human Voice, because I have liked Cocteau since I was a teenager, and I remember the LP of Ingrid Bergman's performance of the play quite fondly; the play wasn't showing while we were there.)

"Anything Goes" was simply fabulous. We had seats in the very first row. This had it's disadvantages -- occasionally the orchestra overwhelmed the singers, because we weren't far enough back to hear them through their microphones -- but I wouldn't have been any further back. It almost felt as if they were performing just for us. The actress who played Reno Sweeney, Cynthia Dale, was absolutely amazing, and it was almost as if the strength of her performance allowed all the other actors to rise to the occasion. The male lead, Michael Gruber, seemed sort of square at first, but that sort of turned out to be perfect for the role. The list of songs from the show is really fantastic: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Easy to Love," "It's De-lovely," "Anything Goes," Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "All Through the Night." (The version we saw was the revised version from 1987.) I mean, that basically accounts for a good portion of Ella's "The Cole Porter Song Book". It started off feeling a little tenative, but after the intermission, the whole cast seemed to be having a lot more fun with it. The orchestra, too. My first experience with Cole Porter onstage has turned out to be wholly pleasurable.

It's misleading to compare "MacBeth" to "Anything Goes", but compare I shall; to begin with, because the production was so quiet, every time some jerk cleared his throat, you could hear it all through the theater. It was sort of a rude audience. Some octagenarian four rows in front of us was unwrapping cellophane candy through the first half, only really slowly, so I wanted to leap up and scream, "JUST UNWRAP THE DAMN THING!!!" And some yahoos on the other side of the theater were laughing at inappropriate times, e.g.:


Macbeth:
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!"

Inappropriate Audience Member:
"HAW HAW HAW!!!!"


I had drunk a couple of cranberry-raspberry martinis at dinner, and I was just really irritated by the audience. At least no one's cell phone rang in either of the performances.

The production also suffered from the man playing the title character; I've seen the actor in other productions, and while I like him a lot, he didn't really display the sort of emotion (dare I say gravitas?) neccessary. Lady MacBeth was really well cast; when she was onstage speaking, I swear no one was clearing their throats. All through "Out, damn spot..." silence. That whole sequence was dazzling, literally; a white sheet covered the entire stage, and the lights were all suddenly turned on her as she was beginning to speak, so that you had to wait a few seconds for your eyes to adjust before you could see her. The staging on the whole was really sparse, which I think worked in it's favor; it added to the eerieness of the play. In spite of her initial dread, my mom insists she really liked the play. She pointed out that it took her a while to get into the dialogue; she says Shakespeare's tragedies tend to be less accessible to her than his comedies, which I get. I also think it's a little difficult to play the tragic roles so that they are dramatic enough to be affecting, but not so much that it becomes camp. Maybe that (camp) was the cause of the inappropriate laughter.

I convinced my mother to buy "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler at the Book Vault (a great little store, with an impressive collection of graphic novels, in addition to having an impressive collection of capital-L Literature! Although, sadly, not du Maurier's Rebecca), just so I can read it, and because I'm tired of waiting for the library to have a free copy. I also bought some mixing bowls, a candy bar, and an used George Elliot book. Hey big spender!

My mom accidentally stole some person's parking space, which she felt bad about, until I told her that the person had been from New York. That made her feel less guilty.

The Olde English Parlour in Stratford provided wonderful accomodations, a pistachio-encrusted whitefish and asparagus with a citrus-raspberry sauce, a Pavlova, and two excellent raspberry-cranberry martinis. I highly recommend it.

We both agreed we had a very good time. She even was willing to let me listen to whatever I wanted (The Polyphonic Spree "Together We're Heavy"; Blondie "The Platinum Collection"; "Avenue Q" Cast Recording; Badly Drawn Boy "About A Boy" Soundtrack; Komeda "Kokomemedada"), as long as I listened to the "Mamma Mia" Cast Recording. Having been the one to introduce the scourge of ABBA into her house in the first place, I figured I could handle it.

Tomorrow I go back to work... and then my three-day weekend!

Song: "Always There" by Side Effect.

Video-rental Place of the Damned

OK, so I go over to my friend Michelle's place to watch videos; because she just has a VCR right now, we go to Blockbuster Video to rent a movie. We specifically went to get the original "Village of the Damned"; it was the first scary movie that I watched that I actually enjoyed. (I should point out that I have always been notoriously skittish; one of my first memories was a recurring nightmare I had where the Count from Sesame Street was about to suck my blood. Batman and Spiderman both came into my room to try and save me. [Batman freaked me out because of a read-along record I had. Spiderman wasn't the wise-cracking web-slinger of the comics, but rather the incredibly creepy silent Spiderman that was on The Electric Company. In the dream, the two of them were almost as horrifying to me as the vampire puppet.] The Count killed both of them, and then would be coming up to me when I'd wake up. It was quite cinematic, considering I was 6 when I dreamt it. Up until my late teens and early 20s, I have avoided all horror -- Stephen King, slasher movie sequels, all of it. I now can handle scary stuff, although I am still uneasy with anything overly gory or smacking of cannibalism. I recently watched The Exorcist for the first time and thought it was great, although it really didn't frighten me that much. But I digress...)

Anyways, so we go to Blockbuster, only to find they don't have "Village of the Damned" -- not even the crappy remake with Kirsty Alley. So then I check to see if they have "The Island of Dr. Moreau" -- again, the original -- and again, no go. Eventually we decided to rent "13 Going on 30", because I think Jennifer Garner is the bee's knees. Michelle agreed, although later she admitted she thought it was going to be complete crap. But it wasn't; it was an amiable enough movie, predictable but not so much that you feel like screaming. Garner was perfect -- she sold the conceit quite well. Some of the music used felt wrong -- as a 30 year old, I can attest to the fact that Rick Springfield and Pat Benetar were pretty passe in 1987, and I say that as someone whose MusicMatch jukebox just happens to be playing "Jessie's Girl" as I'm typing this. Completely coincidental, I assure you. 1987 seemed to be all George Michael and U2, and the contemporary Michael Jackson album was not "Thriller", but "Bad". I myself was transitioning from Duran Duran's "Notorious" to The Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen. I do like "Thriller" better than "Bad", of course, and the dance is easier to choreagraph to the former. (BTW, I was actually scared of "Thriller" as well. Both the video and the song. I've recovered, though.) This is splitting hairs, of course. I do appreciate that the leading man still seemed geeky enough to have once been an overweight nerd in high school, rather than casting some absolutely gorgeous guy as the lead. And the young actress playing Jen Garner as a kid did look convincingly similar.

Anyways, I think my point might have been that Blockbuster Video sucks. But maybe you already knew that.

Retro Song (1987): "U Got The Look" by Prince & Sheena Easton.

Spanking the inner sea-monkey...

I went to the comic book store yesterday; I hadn't gone in a couple weeks, because I haven't been all that interested in anything that was released. I did want a copy of Terra Obscura Vol. 2 #1, which naturally was sold out. It was a first issue, after all, so I guess all the fanboys bought two copies -- one for reading, another for double bagging and stashing away. I ended up buying Blue Monday: Painted Moon #2 -- I like that comic, because it reminds me of my years of high school, no more so than in the latest "Everybody masturbates"-themed issue. **"ADULT" CONTENT WARNING** (just in case) I had this talk with my friends back in high school, and was disconcerted to find out that one of my friends claimed she broke her hymen, she was masturbating so vigorously. (It was at night and she had the light off; she received a telephone call, turned on the light, and was naturally pretty distressed to see her hands all bloody.) For some reason, I don't recall being all that shocked by learning all the girls -- er, young women -- masturbated, bloody fingers notwithstanding. Another friend admitted he had first masturbated while watching "The Golden Girls". Which is weird to begin with, but he's gay. Surely Bea Arthur isn't that mannish! **END "ADULT" CONTENT WARNING**

I also bought Seaguy #1 & 2. I am a big fan of Grant Morrison's writing; there is a fairly sizeable contingent of fanboys who are quite vocal about hating his writing, claiming it is weird for weird's sake. And his stories do tend to be... eccentric. But I don't see that as a fault, but rather an indictment of the lack of imagination of the majority of mainstram comics writers. (Writers in general are given short-shrift in comics; with the exception of writers like Gaiman, Alan Moore, and the like, artists tend to be the focus for a lot of readers. I'm always surprised by people who buy a comic solely for the artist. Maybe I'm just too text-oriented, but I don't have the sort of storage space to collect artists, with the exception of Kirby and Ditko.) Morrison is one of the few writers capable of the sort of dizzying invention that Kirby and Lee were doing during the heyday of The Fantastic Four. Some inventions work better than others, but on some level they are all exciting. This is always clearest in the limited series he does, usually using his own milleau (Flex Mentallo, Marvel Boy, The Filth), than it is in the Big Name Franchise series (JLA, New X-Men, Fantastic 1 2 3 4). I collect the latter anyways, because even in the X-Men, he managed to make the stale flatulence of a series I despise(d) into something fresh and interesting.

Seaguy is yet another example of his abilities. I was initially drawn to the cover by its logo, because, well, I really liked the logo; I hadn't been aware that it was a series by Morrison. Then I saw the writer's credit, and I snatched it up. (I wasn't aware that the series was already completed, and I didn't see issue #3, so went back and purchased it today.) The first issue begins with the eponymous hero beating Death (dressed as a gondoleir) at chess yet again, owing to Death's inability to discern black from white. (So at least Death isn't racist.) Seaguy's buddy, Chubby da Choona, a fish that floats through the air, is afraid of water, and sports a little sailor's hat, doesn't see why Seaguy has to play Death every week...

You get the picture. Weird, true, but strangely compelling. We are told that the world has moved beyond needing heros, but we are also shown some very unsettling things that suggest otherwise, including the Mickey Eye themepark (imagine if the Residents had been invented by Walt Disney) and Xoo, a synthetic quasi-sentient lifeform marketted as a variety of foodstuffs at the local GrubStop. During the first read I was honestly stumped; the story had the strange fluidity of a dream, especially with the abrupt changes in tone as the hero suddenly finds himself in danger. Characters are introduced and discarded with little explanation, and the background characters don't seem as convinced of how perfect the world is than the primary characters are. The free-associative and absurd nature of the story occasionally seems to be more like some post-modern fairy tale than it does anything else currently available in mainstream comics. Strangely enough, it reminds me a bit of Dame Darcy's best stories. I was afraid that it would turn out to be a dream (Because seriously, how perfect is covering the polar ice caps with Europe's surplus of dark chocolate to keep them from melting? Or the moon being built by ancient Egyptians as the tomb for the most Boastful Mummy Ever? A mummy, I hasten to add, with alzheimers.), but Mr. Morrison did better than that. The ending was compared by other webfolx to the dilemma faced by The Prisoner, and this seems as good a comparison as any.

The art is phenomenal, as well; some might describe it as cartoony, but the fact is the entire world depicted is intended to be a cartoon, so it's difficult to say if this is just Cameron Stewart's style (not being familiar with it), or if it's meant as a deliberate mislead to make the audience believe the optimism. I'm thinking both. Either way, this is easily my favorite comic of the year; the sudden dearth of Alan Moore comics have done a lot to keep me from going to the comic book store with any regularity. Apparently this is the first installment of three mini-series(-es?); if the other two are as fascinating as this, I say VIVA SEAGUY!

I do believe I need to read the entire thing again.

Song: "Uncontrollable Urge" by DEVO.

Reasonably Productive Day

I had to drag all the hawthorn trees my brother cut down while he was here to the curb to be picked up. In the process, I managed to scratch myself to pieces, and I'm pretty sure part of one of the thorns is stuck in my right calf. It may just be aching because of the scab though.

Also finished my story. It's been a reasonably productive day, considering that I finally shuffled out of bed at 3PM.

I like The Venture Bros. It makes me laugh.

Song: "State Farm" by Yaz.

Wither thou, MST3K??

Watched "Godsend" with friends tonight; somebody must have sent that piece of crap to us, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't God. (Netflix?) Julie guessed the ending, which I don't get, because everyone was making fun of the film too vigorously to really follow what people in The Business think of as a "plot". Really, how cliche is it to have the cloned kid turn out "wrong", as if everything, personality etc. (including memories) are coded into The Magical DNA®, as if Nature has finally triumphed once and for all over Nurture? Kicked Nurture's ass, as it were. What I want is essentially the same movie, except for the kid to be completely normal, a sweet but not sacharine character, and the parents are complete freaks. And not played by Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Just throw the cloned kid in as a MacGuffin. And do these people have no idea how cloning works? Robert De Niro phones in yet another performance, proving once again that he's gunning for Christopher Walken's "Will Shame Self For Work" award. Maybe Bobbie just had some free time before filming the next installment in the "Analyze This" trilogy. This film just. Wouldn't. End.

Now I'm going to finish watching "All the King's Men," they called for me to come over right in the middle.

Song: "Robert De Niro's Waiting" by Bananarama

Early morning dreaming

I had a dream this morning that it was the end of World War II, and I had captured the infamous writer of grammar school textbooks (at least in my dream) "Edwards"; the textbooks were apparently very nationalistic and propogandistic. (The radio-alarm had already gone off, so I'm willing to bet that the name was suggested by a story mentioning the vice-presidential candidate on BBC Newshour.) I was looking at the books he had written, and they had black covers with gold caligraphy (titles and authors were in the Western alphabet, not Japanese), and camoflague fabric book-jackets. "Edwards" himself was a mild-mannered Japanese man with Eddie Munster hair, who seemed to be trying to tell me that writing the books was just his job.

My celebration over fixing the toilet was premature; I discovered it was leaking from the water line last night before I went to sleep. I haven't tried fixing it yet, I just turned off the water and drained the tank.

Is it just me, or is the fact that Oprah had to serve on a jury vaguely reassuring?

Flushage is GO!

I have plumbed the mysteries of J.F. Brondel! With relative few injuries! (I did get a brass sliver in my index finger when I accidentally ran my finger across the bolt.) I'm feeling quite useful. Now it's time to have dinner.

Plumbing is hard

Who knew? (Plumbers, probably.) I spent all last night trying to get the tank off my toilet -- the floater had snapped off and needed to be replaced. The bolts kept spinning around as I tried to remove the nuts. By the time I removed the tank, I was too exhausted to do anything with it. But I'm determined to show this toilet who's boss.

Two toilets in the house became useless the other day: my floater snapped off, and the toilet tank upstairs started leaking. We wouldn't have known, but the water was accumlating in the ceiling of the kitchen, between the plasterboard and the paint. It was like the ceiling had a zit.

I'm reading The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 17th ed. Actually, I've sort of been reading short stories from all sorts of places: I'm also reading stories from Carol Emshwiller's Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories, McSweeney's, Say... and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and the occasional story online. I used to hate short stories, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I just hated short stories in the genre of literary fiction, where they tend to be less stories than they are sketches or portraits. Now I like them, because I can skip around from book to book (to zine, to the Internet), and I've read a complete work, even if I haven't finished the book. Plus, if you don't like one, you can skip it and not feel like a complete failure. There's the whole "sampler platter" factor when it comes to anthologies -- you get to find out what writers whose work you would like to read more of (which is how I became a fan of Kelly Link), as well as those that you have less interest in. This is, of course, assuming that the stories are worth reading in the first place (as they are in Trampoline and McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales).

Song: "B.O.B." by OutKast.

Library Kvetchin'

I found out where I am assigned to for my practicum for Fall semester: the very library (Purdy-Kresge Library) that I'm sitting in now. This irks me a little bit: I had applied for a (paying) position here last winter, and even came in for an interview, but I didn't get the job. So now I have to pay a couple thousand dollars for the privilege. Plus, this library also functions as the base of operations for the Library and Information Science Program at WSU -- which makes sense, actually. But that means all my classmates will be audience to my innumerable screw-ups. Plus, I know a bunch of the people who work here -- WSU's graduate library is heavily staffed from LISP, rather than proper librarians. Which makes sense, too, but still... I sort of wish I were assigned to, say, U of M Dearborn, or one of the smaller universities in the area, where no one I know could watch me embarrass myself. Oh well...

Tonight is my last class for Summer semester; I still have my final project due (by Friday, 8:30AM), but no more lectures!

Song: "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" by The Velvet Underground.

Acropolicious!

In honor of the Olympics: Me in front of the Caryatids, in the Acropolis, Athens, Greece. This was taken in August, 2001, and the Parthenon was covered in scaffolding to prepare it for the Olympics. (Yes, I meant to look like that; I'm not a big fan of being photographed. I probably could have done with a shave. And a personal stylist.)

Take note, IOC

So I spent most of the evening watching the Olympic coverage with my parents, my cousin Ryan and his wife Liesel. We were switching from NBC to CBC and back again with each commercial break. Every Olympics brings a renewed sense of relief that I live maybe 20 minutes from Canada: the coverage on CBC is less intrusive and less (overtly) jingoistic than the coverage provided by NBC. The CBC actually featured a commentator that said that the Canadian swim team sucked -- his exact words when the host asked him about it: "Ugh, terrible!" I suspect he might have been a swimmer for the Canadian team himself in the past, which may explain his frankness. That is the sort of honesty that Americans apparently can't handle. (NBC has been doing a lot better with avoiding the syrupy profiles that have become their trademark, although Bob Costas's remarks during the Opening Ceremony regarding the plight of Oedipus [killing his father and marrying his mother was "...a sequence of events that seldom turns out well"] had my cousin and I giggling all night.)

But anyways, we spent a lot of time trying to come up with new Olympic events. It's not so uncommon to do that, I think, especially when you're feeling like the commentator during the synchronized diving competition is a condescending harpy. Anyways, among the events we were most enthused about are:

1. Marco Polo.
2. The Barathalon. (Darts, billiards, Pac-Man, and bowling, in a single brutal day)
3. The Suburbathalon. (Lawn darts, bocci ball, lawn sprinkler jumping, and Slip-N-Slide, in a single brutal day)
4. Speed Reading.
5. Break dancing.
6. Freestyle karaoke.
7. Synchronized falling in the pool.

These are just suggestions. Also, we feel that interest in the Olympics would increase if the gold medal winner(s) in each event were forced to sing their national anthem for the audience from the podium. This idea brings together the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, since I assume most of these kids (is it just me, or do they all look really young?) don't have phenomenal singing voices. It'd give the whole event an "American Idol"-type edge. Maybe at the end, there could be a phone-in vote for who had the best anthem performance.

The problem with the Olympics is, I don't usually want the Americans to win. Or ever, actually. I want to see every country win something, which I don't think is even possible. (To be honest, I usually want whichever competitors are the cutest to win. I wanted the Romanians to win men's gymnastics today; it was awful when that kid fell off the bar. Why were all the gymnasts having such a difficult time landing when they leaped over the pommel horse? It seemed like none of them had a great landing; are they supposed to have a good landing? I suspected that maybe the mat they were landing on wasn't firm enough.)

Song: "Do It Now" [Knee Deep Club Mix] by Dubtribe Sound System

Common Pipple

Via Empire of Dirt, I came across a link to William Shatner and Ben Folds doing a cover of Pulp's Common People. It's not "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", but it will do. ( I still prefer Leonard Nimoy's version of "If I had a Hammer".)

I prefer the Winter Olympics, myself

Up way too late last night, editing my short story. Which is stupid, since my final project is due this week in LIS 7120: Science and Technology Information Services and Resources. I'm supposed to be doing Science Tracer Bullets -- essentially, an annotated pathfinder for an academic library. I was going to do mine on Dark Matter, because I find it truly fascinating, and I'm a fan of physics. Unfortunately, I may be a fan, but I don't understand it at all. So I decided to do Genetically Modified Foodstuffs instead, because it has a lot of material available that is geared specifically at non-science types. It's due Friday morning, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon at the Science and Engineering Library digging up resources, so I should be in pretty good shape. Other than this project, I have a solid A in the class so far.

I'm pleased with the story, though; it seems to have an actual beginning, middle, and end, although I do need to punch it up a bit before I do anything more with it. Thanks to those who have been patient enough to read it and discuss it with me, as well as suggesting improvements. I was pleased with the fact that my mom actually thought the story was wonderful. The story that won me The Coveted Arnie Award while attending Western Michigan University was of a nature that I was reticent to show it to my folks, so it's good to know that my mom at least thinks I have some talent. (She also patiently listened to me telling her all about everything the story means -- sometimes she has the patience of a saint. Other times, not so much.)

My cousin and his family are staying overnight tonight, with their two weird dogs. One of the dogs is cross-eyed and really cranky, and the other dog acts like a puppy but is just this side of being mistaken for a pony. Size-wise, I mean.

Songs: "Along Comes Mary" by The Association, and "Creeque Alley" by The Mamas and The Papas. For some reason I'm singing both of them this morning, in a fit of 1960s AM-Radio mayhem.

Rent-controlled in Redford, Michigan.

Swedish Meatballs

I've been watching movies all day. I watched Winter's Light, The Merchant of Four Seasons, and "My Fair Lady" tonight. Sort of an odd triple feature, but I've been on a Bergman and Fassbinder kick lately (usually not at the same time), and my people are historically drawn to musicals. I'd seen "Merchant..." before, and it wasn't as good as I remembered, although at the point I saw it, the only other Fassbinder film I had seen was Querelle, a film that desperately made me want to shower. And I've come to the conclusion that, rather than the pretentious hack I thought he was, Ingmar Bergman really is a great film-maker, and a lot of his films (especially the ones that feature Gunnar Björnstrand prominently, an actor whom I have enormous respect for: he's sort of like Bergman's Toshiro Mifune) are actually quite entertaining. I dare you to watch "Smiles of a Summer Night" and make jokes about Swedish cinema being depressing and boring. "Wild Strawberries" is highly recommended, too, and I presume that many people reading this will have watched "The Seventh Seal", if only by accident.

Now I'm going to go work out while watching Buffy season 5.

FCC decides fake lesbian and heterosexual sex is decent

Speaking of the Parents' Television Council, the FCC has rejected claims that scenes of heterosexual and fake lesbian sex (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Will and Grace respectively) are indecent. PTC brought the complaint against Buffy, indicating that they are not concerned, lest they should provoke my ire. More's the pity, then. And the only thing indecent about Will and Grace is its over-reliance on Big Name Guest Stars. I mean, the show can be funny, but endless cameos by Celebrities Showing How Open Minded They Are just seems sort of desperate.

While I am not interested in watching either heterosexual or faux-lesbian sex during prime time, I have to commend anything that stymies the efforts of the PTC to conquer the viewing habits of the entire frigging world. I salute you, FCC!

Song: "Tony's Theme" by the Pixies

Letter from Memphis

The Pixies have reunited. Why is it no one thinks to tell me these things?


In totally unrelated news, file under "Libraries in Crisis": apparently, libraries in Northern Ireland have halted print acquisitions until further notice. That's rather harsh, but I suspect it may become a lot more common in the near future. (Via Maud Newton.)

Give Amy Acker an Emmy!, and other thoughts

I received this article through the library program's listserv about CDs that have been banned in Kansas public libraries. Now, censorship issues (always a big topic with us library types) aside, I'm sort of puzzled. I'm a fan of OutKast, Lou Reed, and Devo. I can sort of see the logic in censoring OutKast, although honestly I don't hear all that much that I object to. Sure, there's occasional gangster-ism. Some of the sexual content, maybe, although I find it less offensive (and less creepy) than "Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy". Any group that can make a catchy dance song that makes Rosa Parks sue them, and then bring back the time-honored tradition of shaking Polaroid pictures, shouldn't be banned. But moving on... Lou Reed is a bit dodgier; while he has always dealt lyrically with topics that may potentially be deemed unseemly -- botched sex changes, being joined to an illegal opiate in the bonds of Holy Matrimony, New York telephone conversations -- he's rarely depicted them as very glamorous. While I'm not familiar with all of his solo work, most of what I do know (even most of the Velvet Underground stuff, certainly most of it after White Light/White Heat) I would probably consider pretty tame by today's standards. But Devo? What the Hell is going on there? The worst (in terms of content) song they did was "Penetration in the Centrefold", a track that I don't believe is even available anymore! Is this about "Whip it"? Because, to be honest, a song considered suitable to shill Swiffers really can't be considered all that outre. Are kids lining up for the library's copy of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo? I'm at a loss.

In a quasi-related note: I like Everwood. The TV show. Those not recoiling in horror probably don't know what it is -- it's a dramedy on The WB. Anywho, the Parents' Television Council named their best and worst family shows a couple weeks back. This being the same group that declared Buffy the Vampire Slayer the worst show for families during the show's sixth season, when the titular heroine's best friend went insane and skinned a guy after he shot her girlfriend, and when every woman in town seemed to be lining up to boff a British vampire with bleached hair. So anyways, leading the pack of offenders, ahead of all the CSI's and Law and Orders and The OC is... Everwood.

"Everwood" tops the worst list primarily for its "careless and irresponsible treatment of sexual issues," but it also loses points for being sneaky. The show "gives every appearance of being a family drama, but it's nothing of the kind," the group says. "... 'Everwood's' reckless messages about sex without consequences are expressly targeted to impressionable teens."

Because, you know, getting the first woman you ever sleep with pregnant -- that's not a consequence. Nor is having to break it off with the woman you love because your kids have already lost their mother, and because to continue an affair with a woman who is HIV+ is too much for them to handle. Last season, there was an epidemic of oral gonnorhea in the high school, and another young woman who got knocked up and considered (but didn't get) an abortion. This just infuriates me to no end. I think the PTC is just pissed that Everwood hasn't settled into the monotonous, chaste mediocrity of its lead-in show, Seventh Heaven -- number five on their list of the best family shows on TV, after some dreck from PAX, and Joan of Arcadia.

Everwood, in spite of its name which continues to inspire hearty guffaws from my father, and which sounds like one of those male enhancement products which clog my Junk Mail folder with astonishing regularity, is a good show. Not as good as Angel or Gilmore Girls, but better than Joan of Arcadia. I watch it with my mom, so as far as I'm concerned, it's totally family-friendly. (She claims to agree with my position, too.)

And yes, Amy Acker does deserve the Emmy for her role on Angel this past season. Actually, just for that one scene in "The Girl in Question" when she seamlessly shifts character with no makeup or special effects. She just changes. It still gives me chills. Her stunt double on the show was from my mother's hometown of Monticello, Indiana.

On that note of randomness: Guten Nacht.

Why? Because we like you!

Another silly quiz (again, swiped from Ms. Gwenda Bond). I'm not sure that I buy my result; although I am certainly not a social butterfly, another close friend or two is certainly not something I would be averse to. Ah, well...

Category IV - The
Musketeer

You have a small, highly edited social group, and
you like it that way.


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Gilmore Girls: KirkWatch 2004

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I've been watching Gilmore Girls Season One on DVD lately -- so far, I've watched the first two disks, and am waiting for the rest. I have been especially interested in the evolution of Kirk as a character. The actor who plays Kirk, Sean Gunn, appears a couple of episodes in as Mick, the guy who shows up to install DSL in Lorelai's household. He exhibits none of the qualities associated with Kirk, most especially Kirk's aggressive eccentricity. Then Mr. Gunn appears an episode or two later, as a swan wrangler for a wedding at the inn. Although he interacts with Lorelai, there is no acknowledgement that this is the same guy who tried to install high-speed internet at her house. A couple episodes later, Mr. Gunn re-appears as the assistant-manager (I think) of the grocery where Dean works -- named Kirk. No indication that he has ever, at any point in his life, installed DSL or wrangled swans. He berates Miss Patty for putting produce in her mouth, and later must beg her forgiveness at the wake for Cinnamon the Cat. While this is, undoubtedly, Kirk, he still doesn't exhibit the weirdness that will reach its peak in that painfully funny black-and-white movie he made, where he spends most of it dancing to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "White Lines". I'm laughing just thinking about it! I think the use of the actor in a variety of secondary background roles have contributed to that other Kirk attribute: his apparent inability to maintain employment for any length of time. As I continue to receive the discs in the mail, I will keep you abreast of the further evolution of Kirk.

It's nice to wake up in the morning and find a nice e-mail. It's like starting the day right. Not like when you wake up and find that the people trying to get you to ENHANCE YOUR MANHOOD have found a chink in the armor of your e-mail filter. My manhood needs no enhancement, thank you very much.

Song: "The Once Over Twice" by X.

Homo-superior in my interior, but from the skin out I'm homosapien too

I have never been gayer than when I dance around the room, listening to Pete Shelley, howling, "I don't want to classify you like no animal in the zoo, but it seems good to me to know that you're homosapien too." It's times like that that make me glad I'm me.

Song: "Homosapien" by Pete Shelley. (But of course!)

Exotic Petshop

The Pet Shop Boys have recorded a new score for Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. This may not be important to anyone else, but as a fan of both silent films and the Pet Shop Boys, it is a nice bit of news for me. An article explaining the pairing (as well as outting Eisenstein -- I didn't know he was gay!) is available through The Moscow Times. It's not so strange a pairing, either; on most of their albums, there have been songs with lyrics that are narrative histories (most relevant, in this case, "My October Symphony" off of Behaviour). As much as I rationalize it, though, in the back of my mind rises a spectre, a vile abomination that fills me with terror, three simple words that should inspire fear in the bravest of movie-goers: Giorgio. Moroder's. Metropolis. I'm pretty certain the Pets have enough sense not to employ the AOR cockrock of Loverboy or Billy Squire for Potemkin, so I'll keep an open mind.

In other strange PSB news, it turns out that they've done two remixes for a Rammstein single, including one called the "There Are No Guitars on This" Mix. This follows the remix work they did a year or two back on Yoko Ono's classic, "Walking on Thin Ice". I do believe the Boys are going daft in their old age. I love it.

I got all my work done early, so I'm heading down to the campus and doing the Science Citation Index homework I've been putting off for two weeks. Wish me luck navigating Physics Abstracts.

Song: "Positive Role Model" by Pet Shop Boys, natch.

What would I give to go back and live in a dorm with a meal-plan again...

Received Gary Panter's Jimbo in Purgatory yesterday; it is freaking enormous, almost a foot and a half tall. It's actually really dense reading, and I have only gotten to page 7 so far. I like it a lot so far, but I'm at a disadvantage, having not read Purgatorio yet. When I read the "Jimbo's Inferno" in the late, lamented Jimbo comic book, I had already read the wonderful translation of Dante's Inferno by Robert Pinsky. Between this and the previously mentioned Inferno Test, this has prven to be a very Dante week for me.

Woke up way late today, like embarassingly late. And I'm not embarassed by sleeping in until 1 PM. I guess I should have gone to bed before 7 AM last "night".

I am listening to "I Wish I Could Go Back to College", from the Avenue Q Original Cast Recording. Well, not so much listening as singing along in my strong, rich baritone.

"I AM NOT A NUMBER!"

Went to see The Village with some friends of mine this morning -- that's 108 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. Like the reviews say, the acting is great, it's the writing that blows. The atmosphere was effectively established, but then there wasn't anything to deliver -- I ended up feeling like it was all foreplay with no climax. Which can be OK, except the foreplay itself was clumsy and not very stimulating. I guessed the "Big Twist" even before I entered the theater, but had rejected it as being too obvious. Apparently it was just obvious enough. How are they going to survive with apparently all their farm animals mutilated? Why are people in 1897 talking as if they were in a high school production of The Crucible? Most importantly, was Adrien Brody supposed to look like Paul Reubens? These are among the many questions that I find I don't actually care about.

The comments I heard on the way out were almost uniformly negative, but the fact that these were hairy-knuckled frat boys saying this made me a little uncomfortable. I'm still pissed off that this didn't star Patrick McGoohan, driving around in a Lotus Seven, crazy bongos on the soundtrack, and a stocky dwarf with shifty eyes lurking around the corner. I would've liked it then.

Thus far I have only seen this and Unbreakable in Mr. Shyamalan's ouvre, and it is fair to say that I remain unimpressed, considering that Premier has declared him the "modern master of the horror thriller". I personally don't see anything the Rod Serling couldn't have done, or didn't do, in fact, and without the haut auteur pretensions.

In the evening, I headed out to Ann Arbor, where my friend Hope was going to participate in a poetry slam/concert benefiting a friend of hers who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and who has no health insurance. When I got to Hope's apartment, she told me to hang out while she took a nap, which I did. I should have woken her up, but I felt rather weird about pounding on her bedroom door and demanding she arise. (It was the first time I've been to her domicile since the mid-1990s.) Two-point-five hours later, a friend of hers called to see where she was at. By the time we got there, it was too late to participate in the open mic portion of the night, so Hope, her friend John, and I went to the corner outside the bar to busk for money, and to promote the concert. We made maybe $25.00, plus change. A group of people on a bar patio down the street actually requested she come play closer to them. They were trying to get her to play "A Few of My Favorite Things" ala Coltrane, and were singing it to her, because she didn't remember how to play it. It was nice. The resident of the loft above the bar disagreed, however, and sicced the police on us to get her to stop. After the concert, we made the requisite after-hours stop at Denny's, then went our separate ways.

I was able to finish Meet Me in the Moon Room while I was waiting for Hope to arise. It was quite good, and I liked it, although I did notice a lot of characters and references to Louis, Lewis, Louie Louie, Louisa, et. al., in the stories. It struck me as odd, since I don't know that I've ever met a Louis (et cetera) in my life.

Yabba-Dabba-Do!

The White Island crater in New Zealand has been playing host to an interesting visitor for some time now. Scientists not sure how he got there, but they don't plan on doing anything about it, pointing out that the heat and sulfur should eliminate him, eventually.

Walking and Talking

Last night, before I went to bed, I walked four miles with my dog, Zoe. This was around midnight; Livonia is actually safe enough (and I am actually intimidating enough) that I feel relatively safe taking a walk that late. Plus, walking in Livonia is easy to keep track of, because the streets are divided into a grid by miles. When I lived elsewhere, I was irritated by the fact that I had no idea how far I was going.

What I like about walking is, on the good days, it gets my mind moving. I've been working on this novel, and I'm thirty pages into it, but I had come to a snag in the story; I had reached a point where the initial action and problems had played out, and been resolved, but the story hadn't progressed far enough that the final problem my characters had to face would present itself. Plus, part of that final problem had to be worked into the story towards the beginning, in order to motivate the conclusion. I'm sorry I'm being vague, but describing the story would be labor intensive, and a little embarassing. Let's just say it's a gay romance in a science fiction setting. (I know the audience for that, if it exists at all, hardly merits the sort of effort I'm putting into the writing of it; honestly, I'm writing the sort of book that I would like to read.) So anyways, I was walking, listening to Kirsty MacColl on my MP3 player, when suddenly I had a "Eureka" moment, a point where things sort of snap into place, and make perfect sense. I used to have them all the time as an undergrad writing papers. For this story, I just decided to change one thing about an encounter one of the main characters has, and suddenly what followed made much better sense, and the character didn't end up seeming like such a self-involved loser as well. It gave the character depth, and the story more consistency.

People talk about inspiration as if it's something you passively accept, that you just wait to strike you. I don't think that's the case. I think you have to work to stay inspired, you have to keep your eyes open, and you have to remain flexible enough to use inspiration that presents itself. A few weeks ago there was an article in the New Yorker about writers' block. That got me started thinking about how writing has been sort of mythologized into a corner, what with inspiration, The Great American Novel, et cetera. It's all sort of Romantic mumbo-jumbo (thank you, Mr. Coleridge). I don't know.

Started reading Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich last night, after I walked. (I was going to start writing some, but I ultimately decided against it, as exhausted as I was.)

The song of the day is Victory Lane by Komeda.

Dreaming of Zoo Station and Rice-a-Roni

Exiting the driveway this morning, I almost slammed into a big red SUV that was inexplicably parked across the street. This after I had to put my patched-up tire back on my car first thing this morning. Then when I went to get my oil changed, the fellows at Carousel Oil Change were unable to pry my air filter off of my engine. This is honestly turning out to be a pretty lousy car week. Late at night, when I'm in my bed, with the fan on and my dog snoring, I fantasize about living someplace with a viable public transport system. I recall the London underground and Waterloo Station, the U-bahn and S-Bahn, and the sanctioned insanity of taxi drivers in Rome. Instead of these, I live in an area that has virtually no public transportation, and where the communities are so scattered and poorly-planned that a significant investment of your time is required just to walk up to get a Slurpee. Walking in Livonia has completely lost any practical purpose aside from being a low-impact aerobic workout. Hence all the senior citizens forever doing the circuit around one of our many malls.

A friend of mine, Jeff Rice, has just celebrated his 30th birthday in Chicago, where he lives, and where public transportation isn't regarded with loathing and suspicion. At least not as much as it is in metro Detroit. Unfortunately, Jeff has also broken up with his girlfriend of close to a decade, who has moved out west to start a life in organic farming. He has also recently graduated with a Masters in Education, which makes him the first one of my friends from high school to get his Masters, and he was a grade behind the rest of us. He was considering pursuing a degree in Library and Information Science, but I convinced him not to; once I graduate, I know I won't need that sort of competition. So, to recognize this confluence of life-changing events, I salute him with the poem I sent him in his birthday card:

Violets are blue,

Roses are red,

You're another year older,

And soon you'll be dead.

As I told him: gather those rosebuds, brother, 'cause time sure is a'flying.

I'm listening to the Buzzcocks' "Moving Away from the Pulsebeat" in M. Rice's honor.

Send me to Hell...

Apologies to Gwenda Bond, from whence was ripped. I guess I'm a gloomy, gluttonous sodomite, but I sort of already knew that.

See which level of Hell you belong in!









The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

I find this odd, because I am most assuredly a sodomite, which should cast me into Level 7 of Hell. I always assumed that a worse sin would trump a less worse one. But I guess in this case, we're damning people on quantity, not quality.

Tires and nails

You know the day is irredeemable when you leave work at your lunch hour, only to find that one of your wheels has gone flat, punctured by a nail. And that the tire rim has adhered to the wheel by the accumulation of dirt and rust. And that the tire place doesn't know how good the patch-up is going to be, even after they've done it.

It's so hot, though, that I haven't even put the tire back on the car yet. I figure the stupid gel donut should be okay, at least for a while.

I am listening to Komeda's early album, the Swedish one, and trying to convince myself that I really want to do my homework.