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Archive for March 2004 I have moved back to Westwood once again. It's strange being back there. The commute isn't bad, it never was. At some point Kurt will probably be joining me. I ordered EarthLink DSL again. The devil I know. And again, I paid for 2nd day delivery for the modem. But I forgot that you don't pay to have them ship it out in two days! You pay to have it arrive two days after they deign to put it in the mail! So I will probably see my modem by tax time. Also, the DSL line was supposed to be activated today, but that didn't happen. It probably won't happen until next week, but that's wishful thinking. I did that false new strip today for April Fools and so far have received two letters congratulating me on the new strip and that, although CxN was funny, they were tired of Chex and his quest for fame. (And one hurried retraction.) Someone in my forum left a similar sentiment. Maybe I will have to change CxN sooner than I thought! http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html This is amazing. Requires QuickTime (it's small). http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13905 I don't know why, but I thought this was an Associated Press article at first, and was stunned at how fawningly Long John Silver's-centric it was. So the short of it is, Long John Silver's is celebrating the discovery of a possible ancient ocean on Mars by giving every American a free giant shrimp on May 10. Apparently the shrimp is like the size of a hot dog. I think we need to celebrate more of mankind's discoveries like this -- it may increase public interest. Imagine! The completion of the human genome project, commemorated with a free McFlurry! Peace in the Middle East translating into a free six-piece chicken nuggets meal from KFC! When they find the cure for cancer, I'm going to be in line waiting for my complimentary Junior Western Bacon Cheeseburger. http://www.quorn.com/us/fistore.htm I gotta try some of that Quorn. The name is about as unappealing as the product itself, but I'm interested, and apparently Whole Foods has it. It's a meat substitute that's made from a mold whose threaded structure approximates muscle striations. It's been in the news lately because, although it's been eaten in Europe for 17 years, apparently like 5% of people get sick from it. But it sounds neat. Ha ha, I thought that would catch your eye, Dad. But seriously -- once upon a time, my dad mentioned how he hated it when a singer in a band shuts his eyes to sing, and grips the microphone like it was his passionate lover, and maybe strains and squints his eyebrows as he emotes whatever he's singing. I don't like all that either. I always liked Jeff Lynne because he goes up there and he sings it clean. He doesn't act tortured and soulful -- then again, his songs usually aren't. However I have noticed that, when singing, it helps to close my eyes so I can pay attention to the sound coming out of my mouth. I do better that way. I think that's why singers close their eyes. I forgot to mention it, but a week or two ago, I saw a shooting star driving home late at night. It moved far, far too fast to be a plane or anything else, and it was about twice or three times as bright as Venus in the night sky, and the same size. It went across my vision in about 0.4 second or more, and that was it. It did look like a star; I expected something more like a red or orange fireball. I've been trying to eat better recently, which most of the time still means eating out, but at least I can go to a healthier restaurant. There is a Koo Koo Roo within walking distance of work, and they serve hippie "California avocado and sprouts with chicken goddamn wraps" kinds of things. So I get there, and they're installing a Fuddruckers right inside! Well, I didn't want to eat a burger, though I considered it, until I get to the counter and I notice -- ostrich burger. I have to try an ostrich! So I get that. It wasn't cheap, but it was pretty big. If I didn't know better, I'd have said it was beef. So I ate ostrich today, that was interesting. http://www.nightlightpress.com/fiction/letter.htm This story makes me so upset. And here is the passage at the end I was referring to: The letter fell from his nerveless hands. He thought long and deeply. Yes, he had vague memories of a neighbour's child, of a girl, of a woman in a dancing hall-all was dim and confused, like the flickering and shapeless view of a stone in the bed of a swiftly running stream. Shadows chased one another across his mind, but would not fuse into a picture. There were stirrings of memory in the realm of feeling, and still he could not remember. It seemed to him that he must have dreamed of all these figures, must have dreamed often and vividly-and yet they had only been the phantoms of a dream. His eyes wandered to the blue vase on the writing-table. It was empty. For years it had not been empty on his birthday. He shuddered, feeling as if an invisible door had been suddenly opened, a door through which a chill breeze from another world was blowing into his sheltered room. An intimation of death came to him, and an intimation of deathless love. Something welled up within him; and the thought of the dead woman stirred in his mind, bodiless and passionate, like the sound of distant music. A day or two ago, I was looking at old college things, and suddenly I was struck by a very faint memory, something I never wanted to forget. It was the end of some story... I remember it was translated from some other language. It was about a man trying to remember something, and the way it was written I thought so perfectly captured what it is to desperately want to remember something, and almost being able to, but failing. And I couldn't remember how it went or what it was from!! By sheer coincidence I was looking through my brother's tapes in Westwood, and one of them was a tape I copied for my film class, Letter From An Unknown Woman. That's where that passage came from, from the short story by Stefan Zweig. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of that story online! They used to bath together... rapturousasparagus I don't know if I have anything to add. Received today: You are about to become an ordained minister A particularly boring Choose Your Own Adventure. Kurt, I "liberated for freedom and justice" the Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries CD from your apartment the last time I was over there. I don't think I'd play it, but I wanted to hear the music again. There's two games that, musically, kind of stayed with me. One was Descent 2, and I like a lot of it -- I wonder if I can find the tracks anywhere. And then there's MW2, which I played endlessly alone in Uncle's apartment, and spawned Clan Nuclear Slug and feeling like 25,000 visitors in a year was a big deal. There was something about that music, and crawling on the surface of the moon in a fifty-foot walking robot, that felt so lonely. |
