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    That’s Some Flat-Out Coolness

    I keep a playlist called “Flat-out Coolness” in which I drop tracks I run across while I listen to music that I haven’t yet rated in WIndows Media Player. The song in there currently is called “Spill the Beans” by Fila Brazillia. It’s on a CD called Ultra Chilled Vol. 2 (I also have Vol 1). Each of the Ultra Chilled volumes is a set of two CDs of… well, I don’t know the label for that type of music. Think Moby, Orbital, and Massive Attack. They usually have tracks on the CDs, actually. Anyway, this “Spill the Beans” has a great combination of vocals and calming, yet driving music.…

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    I want to be human

    I asked a grown man yesterday why he’d resumed an addiction that had landed him in his first bankruptcy and led him to have to fight off a slew of other addictions, all 13 years ago. I didn’t ask him in so many words, of course. I just said, “So why are you drinking again?” It was barely a question, given that I expected to be brushed off. He replied that what I thought was new had been going on for months, more than two years, in fact. He hadn’t told me at first because he didn’t want me to see him “that way”. He tells me he is doing…

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    The Interview

    The Books-A-Million interview went very well. The interviewer was cool and nerdy, and I’m at least nerdy, so we got along great. The job seems fun, with nice perks, and the atmosphere is relaxed. She was going to give me the job. Until I mentioned that I would be moving to go to school. Then, with both of us feeling horrible, she explained that she had already hired her seasonal workers and needed someone that would stay when they all went to school. Why do I suspect a trend is beginning?

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    A Fat Girl’s Rhapsody

    “A Fat Girl’s Rhapsody” is a fucking beautiful piece of writing. I wish I could write like this. One thing that struck me was the balance between blatant confession and a desire to protect oneself, and maybe even to make the telling a little easier. When talking of difficult things, people often switch to second person to make the story easier; it switches from being about me to being about you, in the general, plural sense of the word. It’s so much harder to talk directly about yourself. And yet the story is quite bald. I love it.

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    Friends and Money and Family

    This is going to be random. Consider yourself warned. I spent Sunday and Monday with my buddies Michael and Chris (and Mia, for a little while), from morning to the wee hours of the night. We introduced Michael to some of the delights of Diablo II, and taught Mia to play Starcraft. Time with the friends was all good. Particularly given Chris’ maniacal laughter. And despite his propensity to pass gas in enclosed areas and laugh about it. Ew. I have an interview Thursday at a nearby bookstore. It would quite make my summer to work there. But I hate to even get my own hopes up. I just found…