I have been unable to set up my wifi for two or three weeks. Result, I have inadvertently weaned myself off of the internet. Obviously this is a generally good thing except for the fact that I pay eight hundred thousand dollars American per semester to attend classes...ONLINE.
Lux is my main coffeeshop but there are so many little hip children there with their ipads and laptops that the internet speed is pretty much AOL circa 1996. It's about as bad as accessing the internet on a phone, which is more or less the most irritating and pointless thing ever[1].
Anyway my main sadness about this whole "living in the real world only" thing is my very random youtube life playlist. I cannot listen to any of this stuff at home anymore and it is painin' me. Portishead at Roseland, Bowie in '73, Marvin Gaye live, Gabor Szabo covering Lee Hazlewood, obscure psychedelic rock from bands that never went anywhere like Creme Soda and the Third Power...this stuff is not in my itunes!!! And I need it to live my life.
[1] this would be referred to as a "piss-pants luxury problem"
Loved these dogs. Lying there looking like a couple of fat arctic wolves, motionless except for lazy breaths and fur flitting around in the wind. Outside of Walden Pond Books in Oakland.
I was sick for most of the time that I was in San Francisco, which was really unfortunate and awful. I did have one good day. The last two times I've been there have been so magic-free, though. I loved it when I was younger. What happened? Maybe I just need to go when the desert is on fire again.
I'm having a serious twentysomething or death-induced existential crisis at this time. Although I do think it will end positively.
Life has been difficult lately. Personal problems, I've been sick forever, strange Guatemalan-style coup at work... That's really a short story in itself but the summary is half the company defected to an illegal, made-up "new" company sans all the necessary licensing (healthcare) and which was still running all its financials through this one. They stole workstations over the weekend and a few days later they stole all the servers too. That was dramatic, with my boss running around frantically on the phone with the police and lawyers while 5 guys from our new ~satellite office~ formed a human wall around the server room as an outside IT guy packed it all up. That stopped business completely, but it seems to have been worked to a temporary truce state at this point. I had assumed that it would go to court and that assets and jobs would be frozen until the bitter divorce was over, but we are back online now.
Things are generally terrible which is why I am spending all of my free time watching Alex videos. I love Alex.
When he asked for a banana but was offered a nut, he would either ignore it or throw it back at the trainer, screaming "Banana!!" He called his first apple a "banerry" because he was more accustomed to either bananas or cherries. After being asked to name the colors of so many objects, he eventually asked what color he was, and learned the color gray. HE ASKED WHAT COLOR HE IS. I can't get over this.
He says "wanna go back" (to his cage) when he's tired of being tested. Go back?
After watching so many parrot videos, I am now using a parrot voice at work sometimes. This fixes a lot of things.
This house that I photographed was recently featured on Deadly Women.
This is the Winnie Ruth Judd murder house where she allegedly murdered 2 girlfriends in the summer of 1931.
Someone helped her to cut up the bodies and pack them into steamer trunks. Winnie was caught with the trunks in LA.
The rumor was that this house was torn down many years ago. The house is located at 2947 N. 2nd St. Phoenix, AZ.
After the police allowed the owner/landlord to have the house back after the investigation, he opened it for tours and charged admission. Hundreds if not a few thousand toured it. The killings made national news.
Kids are so scary obsessive, like the bedroom with 30 pictures of Julian Lennon. And there's nothing like the ridiculous juxtaposition of leftover glossy white childhood furniture sets now graffitied or covered in angry jaded teenager accessories.
My favorites.
My bedroom was constantly full of stuff, cds, old food plates, garbage. There was nowhere to step. I would just make small clearings on the floor to sit on and do whatever I did. Reading, making mix tapes, cutting magazines apart. Candle wax was melted into the carpet. I was so busy all the time, focused completely on personal pursuits and living inside my head. I wouldn't hang out with my friends after school and usually didn't want them to come over either. I just wanted to be alone to write or sit in the dark listening to stuff like this.
My friend Vickie's room was the opposite, it was like a furnished dorm. She kept nothing. She had a bed, a dresser, and I think there was one photo of Courtney Love taped to the wallpaper by her light switch. A couple of cds splayed on the floor. I've always envied people who don't want to keep anything. Stuff is such torture.
This is the sort of sweetly generic mellow song that reminds me of dust motes and looking through heavy-papered magazines and National Geographics from the 70s on my grandmother's living room floor.
This week's broadcast reminds me - what the hell am I missing about Scott Walker? He has a great voice but it has a sort of absurd-sounding pitch sometimes, although a lot of great voices do. Tim Buckley? Or like the first time someone does a Morrissey impression for you in Marvin the Martian's voice and you realize there is actually no fucking difference between the two.
Actually, that's a whole thing for me. I always hear about artists first and then once I hear their voices, I am often disappointed. I would never admit it in mixed company (cred), but that's how I felt about Billie Holiday. I can say that now because I got over it and loved her and usually my favorite things/people are ones that I did not like at first. They prove you wrong and suddenly you find that you are fixated with something really foreign, which is brutal/incredible.
I love the way he writes. Unsentimental but still pretty in its perfect word choice, not just because it reads well but because it imparts perfect imagery, vivid but blurry and half his, and half yours.
is where i work and where my co-worker amber was born but this is not news.
this morning i was standing in the kitchen at work, quietly pouring coffee into my cup when i heard a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass coming from the owner's office directly outside the door. this is not that unusual and i didn't look up until i noticed people rushing in there and pulling the other owner out, red-faced and struggling. they had a fight and one tackled the other and started beating him into the floor. still not really sure what it was about but perhaps our company will be liquidated and i can go live on the floor of my gangmate's apartment in san francisco (fine - oakland).
i didn't realize how numbed i had become to the crazy atmosphere at work until one afternoon in a grocery store. a guy a couple of aisles down had a seizure and took out some shelves of items as he fell. people were screaming. i continued to idle along my way, only dimly registering the ruckus, and didn't realize that something had actually happened until i tried to walk past them. over two years of ignoring screaming, fighting, cubicle-jumping, vomiting, drinking and feats of strength at work has completely killed off my natural reaction to human panic and alert sounds! if this was the wild i would probably die.
