06.12.2002 – travel, rock show, zinesters

originally written 06.12.2002

08:30 – costa coffee in glasgow international airport, sipping good orange juice that i bought with the last of my gbps. my flight doesn’t leave for another three hours, but i figure the earlier i get somewhere the less can go wrong. as much as i’d love to bop around the uk for a few more weeks, i need to make this flight back to the us. it’s early morning, but it feels like midday. i’ve been up all night packing, cleaning up the flat, and shooting the shit with iain, marco, and pete. the sun’s been up since 03:30. already i’ve taken three different modes of transportation and had my bags searched. orange juice and loud music (icky line) help me slow back down.

walked with iain around 04:30 to the 24 hour shop for probably the last time in my life. that must be where he got the porno mag that i found slipped into my backpack. amateur. that’s nothing compared to the laxative prank. luckily i discovered the mag before i opened up my bag for security. i disposed of the mag by giving it to a young boy a la jason lee in chasing amy. that’s a lie. it’s actually in trashcan somewhere in edinburgh. and no, i didn’t look at it before i threw it away.

so yeah, been up all night. played a little magic, did everybody’s dishes and chit-chatted with marco to stay awake. later i watched a movie version of d.h. lawrence’s short story the rocking horse winner. pretty crazy how they can turn a short story into a two hour long movie. needless to say, it didn’t help much in terms of keeping me awake. once the sun came up, i knew i was golden. dumpster dove behind the tesco for a box for iain’s cutlery, and in the dim morning light i realized once again, how foreign edinburgh really was. even off the main street one finds little alleys, closes, kirks, and any number of secret places. in the morning this revelation is even more exciting. in the hour after the clubs have closed but before the city wakes up the streets are silent and the secret cobbles seem yours alone – quiet, intimate.

the last few days in edinburgh have been rad. hectic but rad. yesterday i hoofed it around old town to procure various items for people. i hate shopping. i think i did ok though. after that, i met timothy for a meal at bann. the food wasn’t as good as it has been, and i found the conversation a little akward since timothy had brought his older brother along. my problem. felt even more dumb in conversation when there were two of them there. still it was good to see him one last time before i headed back stateside. he’s definitely one of the most interesting people that i met whilst in scotland, and the kind of kid that isn’t exactly the norm at osu. made tentative plans to check out shows in philly in the fall, but who knows if that will happen.

rob left for his home near manchester yesterday. it was a strange goodbye. no embraces, no long remarks, just a quick “it was nice meeting you”, and that was it. rob made the observation that he’d probably never see me again the other day. it was actually refreshing. it’s nice to entertain the notion of maintaining friendships across continents, but it’s hard enough staying in touch with people stateside. it’s sad, but once you go off to uni, you really realize how fleeting most of your relationships are.

by far the coolest thing that happened recently was the show on monday night. getting ready for this show, along with the world cup, made research and exploring the city fall to the back burner. odd perhaps, but sometimes the most important things about a foreign place aren’t the most obvious. it’s strange that i had to travel across the atlantic to find people who were up for mucking around musically, but what’s important is that i had a great time at el bourgo’s first and only show. i had e-mailed timothy weeks ago to see if he wanted to play, and he said yeah. i thought it might be an odd situation because we didn’t have a lot of time to hash out details, and after hearing we were doing kylie minogue covers, he seemed a bit nervous about playing his “sincere” tunes. turned out to be no problem at all. the biggest obstacle was, like most of the shows i’ve played, the equipment. it took forever to figure out how to rig up the tron’s ghetto pa system, and marco was really freaking out. i just kept thinking that things were just going to end badly. marco’s high strung, and with pete, you can’t really tell if he’s just really low key, or if he just doesn’t care. so i thought that we were going to hit the infighting stage of our band early. luckily, the guy who usually sets up the sound was called, we plugged stuff in, and the instruments and vocals all sounded ok.

timothy played first, and he was just awesome. i confess, that my intent in inviting him to play wasn’t only because i was excited to play his stuff, but also because i thought it would be good to have a sacrificial lamb. well, between his pounding on the classical guitar, the sincerity of his vocals, crazy kool keith-style shades, and anectdotes about scottish kids throwing shoes at him (complete with groundskeeper willy accents), the set was super cool. i was completely impressed.

we went on after timothy, and up on stage, i realized that between timothy’s friends, marco’s friends, and pete’s friends, there were probably fifty people in the basement – i expected ten max. what made things more intimidating still was the fact that these people didn’t stand cooly with their arms crossed in the corner. they wanted entertainment, they applauded emphatically, and talked amongst themselves when they were bored. the set whizzed by. i fucked up a few times, but was able to cover it for the most part. marco seemed more relaxed than when we were dealing with the pa (and he didn’t even have to drink the bottle of buckfast that he had purchased). all in all, it was a huge success. our songs went over well. people laughed when we sang about iain and kendell nunn. rob even liked the one sincere song that i wrote. after our set, pete and friends played a few covers. it sounded good, but as they got drunk, things degenerated into extended versions of no woman no cry which, despite being an amazing song, loses it’s pleasure after two dozen choruses. but yeah. it feels amazing to play a show again. it was an accomplishment. in like a month we wrote ten original songs and learned two covers and rehearsed them to an acceptable level of quality. i just keep thinking what we could have accomplished if we would have started in january. aesthetically, this project was far from my ideal band, but in terms of sheer fun and creative output, it was an amazing success. marco and pete, despite their musical talents were receptive to what i wanted to do, as well as forgiving when i messed up my guitar parts. it was sweet. i’m going to miss playing with them.

ok. off to find out what gate my flight departs from and who’s winning the various world cup games…. (too bad about france. we gave a hearty nasal huh-huh-huh yesterday when we found out they got stomped by the danes).

sweden draw argentina. argentina’s out. sweden’s in. argentina and france are not going to be in the final 16. the pundits must be going crazy.

i am a bad person. i am sizing up the other passengers on the flight, and i’m disappointed that i don’t see anybody interesting, or, should i say, i’m disappointed that i don’t see anybody like me. there’s not even the young male who skates. no precocious six year olds with maurice sendak or bookish pre-teens with harry potter. now it’s not entirely my fault. i think i deserve to be a little cynical since i’ve never sat next to anybody who has deemed me conversation worthy (or vice versa) in any of my flying experiences. so, at this point, i’m hoping that i don’t have to listen to the mindless chattering of the elderly folks around me for the entire flight (which, it turns out, i don’t), and i’m hoping that nick hornby can write (which, it turns out, he can).

young child is being, well, a young child, which is to say loud and rambunctious. stewardess, no wait, that’s wrong – flight attendent tells mother that she’ll have to put the tray table (which is somehow acting as a play implement for the kid) up. but, assures the flight attendent, she’ll bring some cookies for the child later. this is when the 20-something guy in the next row forward asks if he too can have some cookies. i’m convinced that this scene is out of a movie or a book or something. at the very least, the flight attendent had heard this one before. i’m glad i’m not too clever when it comes to being able to banter with fligth crews..

so this plane is tech. lcds in the backs of each seat rather than shared screens, control handsets that look like playstation controllers but require a far more advanced diagram to operate, and adjustable headreasts that seem remarkably like the special pillows that peter insisted would be the cure to my problems of sleeping on planes, if only i were to purchase one.

i must have dozed off because i somehow find myself clutching a pair of earplugs and an eyemask and not remembering the last minutes (hours?). i look out the window and see something that i’ve never seen before. white, whispy clouds and below, only blue.

16:00 in what i’ll call “scotland time”. i’m bored now. finished reading how to be good. i’ll have to think on my reaction to it. it was an enjoyable read, but i’m not sure how much more. read through all of my thrasher as well. i’m starting to get bored with skate mags again. at least the pictures are pretty.

so plain blue beneath the clouds has given way to rocks and snow and ice. i have no idea where we are right now. could it be greenland, or canaduh? i’m hoping it means that we’ve crossed the atlantic and it won’t be too long before i’m in jersey and heading for some good veg*n chinese. wakerly and dom said that the first thing they were going to do when they got back to the us was to hit up the taco bell. me, i think i’ll up the ante and go for some mi mariachi, or el rodeo, or whatever that place is called. can’t wait to get on the ground and have some fun.

listening to records ot kill the time. this the rocking horse winner record is ok. not sure if i really dig it though. it’s really wussy. the band name is great though. i sort of like it now that i think about it. my first impression is keepsake with a female vocalist.

played magic against marco last night. it was sweet. he even gave me the black deck that i’m so fond of. damn i’m a nerd.

some kids have a new e-zine called ant zine. i don’t hate it.

carnage, sunlight, foot in my mouth

originally written 06.10.2002

end of the year (for me june has always had more significance than january in terms of the changing anum) means end of the year pranks. so it all goes back to pete bringing home a super soaker type water gun. so of course we got engaged in a flat water battle and i got toally soaked. but, in addition to that, rob made an offensive against the girls in flat 8. not to be outdone, the next morning, anais nonchalantly came into our flat, walked to the sink, filled a pint glass with water and dumped it on rob. today rob got her back by squirting her with the water gun while she was obliviously engaged in conversation. but the real point of all that buildup is that rob suspected that iain (who gets on with the girls upstairs exceptionally well) had tipped off the girls that rob was responsible for the initial aquasault on flat 8. so rob was out for vengence, and i think he always fancies a good prank anyway (he did after all go on and on about the amount of urine that was unknowingly consumed on his rugby tour over easter break). after iain shaved a penis into my head, i, of course, had to initiate some form of reprisal. rob made the suggestions of a technique often cited in prank lore, but never, at least in my or rob’s case, executed: laxatives. so we made morning run to the mall to get laxatives, minor groceries, and nick hornby novels. to our chagrin, we found mainly wussy natural laxitives – not the kind of harsh chemicals that were sure to inflict carnage on our naive flatmate’s bowels. back at the flat, i employed the crush-pills-with-one’s-student-id technique i learned freshman year from watching (i’d totally have sex with dave mathews but i’m not gay) mike to crush the laxatives into a fine powder which we added to various beverages that iain was likely to consume. we put two 5 kg tablets in his cherry coke, and 5 tablets in his milk. he consumed the coke throughout the day, but not the milk. rob was really disappointed. i think he expected south park-esque explosive diarrea right away. well, by the time evening had come, iain was getting a lot more regular, and after he drank the milk i knew we were in for some fun. luckily, i think we got the dosage right so as to cause discomfort but not danger. i was a bit worried because you always hear the urban legeands designed to prevent such antics, but to be honest, the results are amusing but not spectacular. there’s no spontaneous excrement. iain described the experience (unknowingly of course) as having controllable but watery shits. rob managed to convince him it was on account of bad kung pao chciken from the chinese dinner we had last night. to be honest, i feel quite bad and am having some sympathetic indigestion myself.

so i’m going to have to eat some crow here. i tend to watch movies with iain quite a lot as he’s a movie addict. the thing is though, he’s one of the most unprejudiced people i have ever met, so he can even enjoy a cheesy british werewolf flick without criticizing it. so, tonight we just got some cheesy movies, both of which turned out to be completely entertaining. “zoolander”, a comedy written, directed, and starring ben stiller was a film that came highly recommended by tim, but that i thought looked like normal hollywood drivel. it’s one of those movies that is really good buck just has shitty trailers. the movie just ended up being a great satire of the fashion industry and is one of the most consistantly funny movies i’ve seen in awhile. we also watched “bring it on” which wasn’t exactly good, but was at times so cheesy that one couldn’t help but like it. for example the cheating college boyfriend saying “but you’re not my sister” to his dorm room bed buddy, as well as the token street girl from “east compton” saying “you’ve been touched by an angel girl” cracked me up and caused both phrases to enter my vocabulary. the movie was fun, and it’s good to see the punk rocker get some ass every once and awhile, even if it is on the silver screen. too bad it’s still the cheerleader. though, sadly, i must confess, in my high school days i wasn’t without secret affections towards the more intelligent and academically minded cheerleaders.

it’s 4am and already starting to get light out. the sun doesn’t set until after 10. it’s cool, but completely destroys my sleep patterns.

06.08.2002 – mike, exams

originally written 06.08.2002

so california mike goes back to the states this morning. he’s this kid who goes to ucla and was in my computer security and distributed systems classes. he’s intelligent, clever, nerdy and i had a good time just talking shit with him and his partner in crime, dom (chicago to la transplant). got a text message from him yesterday saying that he wanted to hook up before he left. that’s always flattering because i sometimes don’t know where i stand with people. especially when i can be a real bastard about returning phone calls. part of it has to do with the fact that most previous invitations had to do with going out to some club and i’m always a bit reluctant to go out with people if they’re going to get absolutely wasted. it really shouldn’t be an issue when my tolerance for drunken antics has increased 100 fold on account of my flatmates. perhaps it’s that i just don’t want to be disappointed when i find people who i regard as very intellgent and clever acting completely stupid. there was no reason for concern last night. we went to this chill club on lothian street called medina. it’s a middle eastern themed joint and has these giant couch-like corners where you can just lounge about with your friends (or practically have sex as was the case with the strange couple going at it in the corner). the idea of a chill out club seems pretty foreign to america, or at least the middle america represented by columbus. in columbus, there seems to be two kinds of bars: bars with bad house music and patrons intent on date rape and scuzzy dive bars filled with punks and grad students that are only tolerable because they don’t fall into the former category. so yeah, i’d say that even though it’s not really my thing, edinburgh has a really good nightclub scene, especially in terms of having diverse offerings to appeal to tons of different going out tastes. but yeah, it was great to talk with mike and dom one last time. mike is just a generally gregarious guy who likes engaging people in conversation and isn’t afraid to talk about his jukebox software in a night club. dom is more quite but really intelligent and interesting. anyway, they drank, i talked, and we made tentative plans to rendevous in august for a midwest adventure. it’s always weird going out with other people’s friends, and mike, being the gregarious guy he is, had lots, and it’s even worse when they’re really smart, clever people who can put you in your place. i was able to strike up a conversation with one girl who happened to be from westerville. she had gone to high school with kids i had met during my first year at osu. it truly is a small world after all (insert mental image of singing, smiling, ethnic children here). but yeah, we talked about columbus, siblings, school, etc. i always feel good about myself when i’m able to converse with strangers as i’m normally rather introverted. if there’s one thing i’ve seemed to learn to do a bit better since i’ve been abroad, it’s been the skill of talking to girls. the reason, i think, probably has more to do with the fact that i have a girlfriend, and that many of the girls i meet, also studying abroad, are similarly attached. so, i think that romantic tension that sometimes underlies conversations one has with members of opposite sex when a conversation gets rolling is largely nonexistant. so, conversation seems easy and natural as opposed to contrived and arduous.

i finished with exams today. destroyed human communications yesterday, and computer architecture went really well today (even though i’m pokey and didn’t get to the last part of the second question before time expired).

06.02.2002 – world cup, elmer gantry, the promise ring, pink, andrew w.k.

woke up early this morning to catch the pre-game. iain was still up from the drunken festivities of his mates’ housewarming party, but soon retired to bed, and didn’t even wake to utter obscenities when i knocked on his door to get him to come to the pub. we got to the pub just as it opened at 10:15, and took our seat. the pub wasn’t licensed to serve alcohol that early in the morning, but there were still people there watching the game. it was a good game. england dominated during the first half and scored on a powerful header off a corner. they looked in top form. they were winning a lot of 50-50 balls and generaslly taking it to sweden. beckham looked great. he was playing confidently and placing balls into the box as is his typical duty. not a bit of hesitation from his much publicized foot injury. he did, however, get substituted due to fatigue around halftime. and after halftime, the english side was really a different team. sweden score early on, and really dominated the second half. england was lucky that the swedes didn’t score another goal. rob chalked the change up to a strategic error. he said that sweden had compressed the midfield making it difficult for england to maintain control of the play, and the large swedish defense easily won the long balls in the air. sweden’s the team i’m pulling for in the this world cup final because they have freddie ljundberg, and because the us’s hopes of advancing, despite rumblings that the team is one of the most respectable yet, are pretty small. still, being in a group with the likes of england and argentina, sweden’s chances might not be much better.

started reading elmer gantry on the recommendation of tim. he described it as a slow-reading but interersting, though perhaps somewhat dated, critique of religion. dated? no way! a read a chapter or so, and the first thing that came to mind was “promise keeper”. seems the idea of the manly christian is a pretty old one, and i suspect that it will continue to be an attractive selling point for the christian right. closer to home, i can’t help but think that maybe some of the christian hxc bands that i generally regard as pretty innocuous are just a slightly hipper version of the promise keepers. that would be funny actually. to start a brother’s keeper rip-off band called promise keeper and sing about moral purity and manly strength. to be honest, that’s probably why sxe caught on in the hardcore scene. i can bear to call myself straight-edge because, as the term was conceived by ian mckay, one of the least promise-keeper-like males i can think of, i feel confident that sxe needn’t only be about mindless faith in an ideal that simply replaces vice rather than transcends it. to be honest, if being sxe had been an easy decision, like if the decision to become straight-edge had meant being welcomed into a cheering throng of throwdown t-shirt clad musclemen, i would probably be getting trashed right now. the fact that in hs, i was in the minority as someone who didn’t drink or do drugs, convinces me that my abstinence was more than just another fad. it might have made me more comfortable with myself, but it certainly didn’t win me any popularity points at school. but, i digress. i like elmer gantry so far. it’s criticism of “promise keeper” christianity is clever, and biting, but maintains the subtlety that marks all good satire. what fun would criticising an institution be if they knew they were the brunt of the joke?

i go back and forth on whether i like the promise ring‘s album very emergency. the tracks jersey shore and skips a beat are so cheesy, yet so good, that i can’t help but love them, but the rest of the album is a bit too saccharine for me. i’m interested to hear their new album, wood/water which supposedly sports a more sophisticated sound that is neither the emo stylings of their older material, nor the pop of very emergency.

i saw some live footage of pink on viva+ last night. the girl’s a rocker! who would have thought? her past efforts have always had an r&b twinge to them, and this is not entirely missing from her latest, more rock-oriented, release. but her live show has no choreographed dancers or bling-bling mcs. she’s got a full band and could just as easily be mistaken for allanis morrisette as eve. i’d say that pink is the most relevent female artist in music right now. appologies to ani and kathleen hanna, but pink is the only female artist that comes to mind that is positioned to break the prepubescent masses out of their britney-fied daze. the thing that i notice most, is that pink’s performance is seems to, at least in some part, reflect her personality. maybe it’s not completely honest, but it’s more honest than seeing a confused little girl shake by numbers. her music is angsty, but not whiny, and in a way that seems like it should resonate with real, live, human girls. pink is sexy, but in her own way. if you look at her, she’s a big girl. tough, square jawed, and muscular. hair cut sharply in a manner that could just as easily be considered butch as it could beautiful, but in a way, she’s both. britney, on the other hand, is a reflection of the same lolita fantasy that has occupied pop culture for years. boring. outmoded. meaningless. i’d like to think that society’s notions of female pop icons can just be cloberred, but barring that, at least i kown they are being caressed a little.

also saw the new andrew w.k. video for she is beautiful. i don’t hate it. catchy at best, tolerable at worst. like kid rock, but without offending every single one of my aesthetic and ethical sensibilities. more of an homage to multiple genres (ramones style punk meets hair-rock) than rock’s moreau-like monstrosity of rap-rock fusion. andrew w.k. is good if only to give me an example when i’m arguing with people about why certain acts are so lame. andrew w.k. escapes being lame only because he’s image-conscious without posturing. he distills mindless fun down to it’s most basic elements and thus avoids being an asshole. it’s partying hard without drunk hookers and hot rods. dozens of stupid r&b/pop boy bands can croon minutes of lyrical drivel and not capture the sentiment any better than w.k. does with the words “she’s beautiful” (which, if i’m not mistaken, is pretty much it for the song’s lyrics. he won’t need a teleprompter if he ever does a reunion tour). i guess that’s how andrew w.k. can create something that is neither particularly original or intriguing but is still incredibly refreshing. he keeps the songs short and the interviews long. that’s the way the world ought to be.

top 10 reasons geoff has a new stupid haircut

10. he wanted to show his flatmates that you can make an ass out of yourself without drinking.

9. he thought that having hair (or lack thereof) like ronaldo would make him play football better

8. he’s going to be cast as “hing the merciless” in an off-broadway musical version of flash gordon

7. he thought that if he could find a bright orange sheet, he could get the beastie boys to hang out with him

6. he loves it when rob strokes his scalp for hours

5. he’s taking the final step in a diabolical plan, started months ago with the aquisition of thick rimmed black glasses, to take over hosting duties of an mtv music quiz show.

4. he decided he didn’t really want to make it through customs after all

3. he decided to become a white supremicist

2. he’s moved back to the us to start a krishna-core band with ray cappo

1. he had a “peanut butter incident”*

* : if you don’t get this reference, you’re lucky. if you’re a massochist, go rent a movie by the same title, watch it, be thoroughly confused, and then imagine being subjected to it as one of those “reward” movies they show you in grade school. some reward. figures it’s canadian.

06.01.2002 – drinking urine, denmark v. uruguay

rob drank his own urine.

went to the pub with a rather haggard looking rob to catch the denmark v. uruguay game. it was quite a good game with denmark coming out just on top with a 2-1 victory. the uruguay side was talented and agressive, but the danish side just played some beautiful football. someone once said that football is like art, and i’m inclined to agree. if you think art is about perspective and space, you’ll see the parallel when you watch a team like denmark play. sharp, crisp passes, a well-structured defense, all the players with a great knowledge of where their teamates were, and overall wonderful movement off the ball. that combination made it difficult for the uruguay defenders to provide coverage in the box. i’m so excited about the world cup! tomorrow is sweden v. england. should be rad.

05.30.2002 – songs, e-mail, emo, tysonbrow, weakerthans

originally written 05.30.2002

song ideas for my still ephemeral project with tim: “special interest” a song about special interest class in elementary school. the most optimistic time of my life. also, want to write a song about the library. about bibliophilia. more tim’s department than mine, really, but sometimes i think i can feel what he and peter talk about. like when i checked out the collector, i found the hardback more than a little satisfying. substantial. tangible. old pages. spilled-on, yellowed, penciled notes in the margins. nice. but yeah. when i think about it libraries have been a really big part of my existence. some of my earliest memories are going to the library with my mom. my dad has been, basically, a librarian for a large part of the time that i’ve known him. they’re such a cool institution. seditionary in a way. what? anybody can get information? for free? i wonder if there was the current copyright debate when public libraries first became common. but yeah. if i wrote a song about libraries, i would make a play on words with “patron” and “patronize”. some kind of word pun. i know it’s there. there aren’t enough puns in songs these days.

speaking of songs … rewrote the intro to e-mail from mallory, so it sounds a little less like the main hook in laid, that now-ancient single by james. that song’s ancient by my standards. wrote ages ago, but i still like it. simplistic as all hell, but the most honest song i’ve ever wrote. a song that wrote itself the summer i was bummed out in austin and got the nondescript e-mail from an admirer of this website. the more and more that i think about that titular e-mail, i’m convinced that it was one of my friends who wrote it to me instead of the mysterious 16 year old girl from pa. at first the idea of that made me really angry. i fealt fscked with, my feelings violated. but, now i’m completely at-ease with the e-mail. whoever the source was. either way it’s a win. if the letter was genuine, it means that two summers ago, there was some kid out there who fealt what i was feeling in life and our mutual knowledge, of just the existance of each other, was enough to make us both feel a little better. if the e-mail was fabricated, it means that one of my friends knew me well enough and cared about me enough to know, precisely, what needed to be said to help me through that period in my life. like i said. a win, win situation. maybe that’s why i thought the idea of a fake letter was so cruel at first. it takes the same thing to be very, very kind as it does to be very, very cruel – an intimate, naked, knowledge of someone.

rock action is such a cool album. good study music for sure. yon sucks because she got to see the mogwai show. figures that they tour the us while i’m in scotland.

peter said this would make me explode. he was right. it’s awful, but seems to be the norm these days. at least they didn’t mention any bands that haven’t already blown up. i still like dashboard and jew, but in a different way than i used to. it’s hard for music to be “emotional” when it’s played in a stadium and you’re surrounded by post-fratboys. if i hear one more person call weezer an emo band i’m going to slit my wrists.

rob and i shaved lines in our eyebrows like the people in the big brother house. sort of like the tyson-line that “iron mike” (shit-talking boxer and rapist) tyson has in his hair except in your eyebrow. totally stupid and horrible looking but good kicks. i think doing crazy stunts cold sober helps redefine people’s notion of antics. also tried to shave a line in hair elsewhere with less success. uhhehe. hopefully the videotape won’t make it across the atlantic.

tim hooked me up with weakerthans mp3s. awesome. emo? maybe, well, not really. weaker than punk rock actually. singer is ex-propaghandi, so the music is like the more melodic propaghandi songs, but moreso. really good. as long as this stuff isn’t mentioned in time articles, the world is safe. letter of resignation is one of my favorite songs ever.

05.31.2002 – baldness, world cup, weakerthans, making a fist

so … last night i shaved my head. not with the plastic electric razor length gaurd. not even with the bare metal clippers. i’m talking bic razor, to the skin, mr. clean shaved head. why? you might ask. well, the first reason is for my personal amuseument. that’s actually a big motivator. second, i talk a lot of shit around the flat. i figured it was time that i put my money where my mouth is. finally, i wanted to make the point that one can make bad decisions while completely sober. to be honest, it didn’t turn out all that bad. i wouldn’t say i like it, but i now realize that at the very least, i have a very symmetric head.

the world cup starts today. france v. senegal. was watching the opening ceremony a bit this morning. was talking about how odd it was that the world cup was shared between s. korea and japan. i thought there would be some huge cultural tensions because i think that japan fscked up quite a bit of asia rather badly during ww2. rob made the point that the us fscked over japan rather signifcantly with the a-bomb. quite true. really odd to get a perspective like that from someone who i see as having somewhat conservative political leanings. that kind of thing gets you into trouble when you say it in america. it’s refreshing to have that different perespective.

love the two weakerthans records that tim hooked me up with (fallow and left and leaving). great music. it’s the new folk music. well, not really folk music, but folk music in the sense that bob dylan used to be folk music. more like fringe-pop. melodically accessible music grounded in the modern human experience. downtempo laments and speedy rockers fit nicely next to each other on this record. sturdy music. appropriately canadian, whatever that means. as i said yesterday, this is the other half of propaghandi. it’s what made them so amazing. the technical mastery of the metal influence but also that great melodic intelligence. billy bragg can move you to action just as easily as anti-flag.

wanted to get into an argument about middle-class apathy with erin on the phone last night. she wouldn’t oblige me. it’s hard to communicate with her over the wires. i wish i could have phone conversations with her like i do with my dad, or e-mail/im dialogues like i do with tim or patrick. i don’t know what it is that’s different. i’m almost convinced that the best way to make it trhough a long-distance relationship is to procede as if nothing’s changed. maybe it’s just easier to do that with friends and family than it is with a girlfriend. anyway … she’s kind of critical about kids who are spouting the violent “take the streets” rhethoric, and we have this mutual friend who’s particularly inclined to that and she always sees it as foolish if not a little dangerous. i’m not about the throw a brick through a starbucks window, and i’m not always sure how effective direct action is, but i was thinking the other day that it is important. the important thing, and also the thing that many, many people criticize, is that the kids who do the whole black-block thing, at least in the us tend to be middle-class white kids who, directly, have very little to complain about. but, in the end, these are the kids who need to be spurred to violent action the most. i see the middle class as the group of people who are always along for the ride in the world, but who never shape it. we always want something more, but are afraid to risk what we’ve got. and to me, that makes us slow and frightened. afraid of conflict. i feel that whenever i try to rationalize to myself why i don’t get in the face of someone who makes a racist or sexist joke or comment. and maybe letting it go is the right call. maybe working within the system when it comes to fighting the war agaisnt the plague of homogenous corporate culture is worlds better than smashing the starbucks window. maybe inflamatory crticism of our government, however warranted it may be, is counterproductive at this point. but there could be a point where those things are no longer the case. there comes a point when those in power abuse it to the point where there is no choice but to react. perhaps not violently, but certainly not passively. i just sort of wonder about middle class germans leading up to the rise of nazi power. i don’t want to believe that they all supported the regime, but if i don’t believe that, i’m forced to believe that they closed their eyes, put their hands over their ears, and went along for the ride. i could very easily see myself in their position. i certainly can’t condemn them for that, but i’d like to be better than that. but, i fear, i may be too much of a coward. i may be willing to wait and see how things work out. to have faith in a better tomorrow, but not willing to sacrifice for that tomorrow. so i think that every angry protest, every attack on the police, every brick through the starbucks window is not just middle class kids playing a game, but the kids trying to convince themselves that if it ever came down to it, they’d be able to do what needed to be done. i hope i would.

saw a father and his daughter having lunch in the cafe today. they looked pleasant. natural. unpatronizing. always makes me happy to see that. my ex-girlfriend and her dad had such a shit relationship, not just in the way that people who are close can hurt/annoy each other, but in the sense that there was no enagement whatsoever. erin gets along with her parents well (in many ways, better than i get on with mine). that’s really good.