Cold makes it a lot easier to feel alone.

The heat has broken all at once and it feels like fall. It's like summer took one look at the calendar, realized it was October, muttered "shit" under its breath and booked it to the Southern hemisphere, and it's all the sudden sweater weather. Well, not quite. It's nice enough that I drive with one arm out the window, enjoying the breeze and slapping the occasional biker.

I need a sweater. One from which my thrift-store shirt protrudes, and I need vanity Buddy Holly glasses and a kick in the nuts, 'cause tonight, we are feeling emo. The playlist is stocked with Getup Kids, the prognosis is not good. I could blame it on the sudden change in weather or the fact that I learned someone I've always been fond of capital-H hates me. I always suspected it, but confirmation is a bitch, and I ain't talking about the sacrament.

I hate these fucking mood swings. It'll all be forgotten tommorow after I'm off work and cleaning out my truck for the first time since I got it and picking up a girl to take her to a punk-rock show, but right now, we are basking in self-pity, even with the knowledge that given twelve hours I'll be back to my loud dopey self again.

Is there a psychological term for when you only want things until you get them? Terminal Gatsby-itis? I've got it. Don't let me have anything because I'll be instantly ungrateful. Leave me here with my fancy words and my ceaseless introspection until I learn to appreciate what I have.




Red Dragon is, by the way, a'ight. Not great, not even good, really, but definitely fun. Which is, in a way, too bad. Hannibal Lecter is too great a character to be wasted on movies that are merely okay. But it's got Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton, who are always competing in my book for the title of Coolest Actor Ever. I had a good time. Plus Emily Watson plays a blind girl with all the right moves, and it has more Ralph Fiennes ass than any movie this fall, according to the film's website ("Ralph Fiennes' Ass: The Musical" comes out in December, thus it doesn't qualify for the fall Fiennes-buttocks season.) There have been worse serial killer movies. Like "The Cell." Or "Bridget Jone's Diary."

I owe a photo-essay on the Logik/Fourbanger show last Saturday. It'll be good, when it happens. Promise.

Goodnight.

Someone dropped a test copy of the new Jackie Chan movie off on my doorstep. I didn't have any homework tonight, so I popped it in.

No, it's not "The Tuxedo." That already came out. Idiot. It's the one after "The Tuxedo." It's called "Jackie and the Drunken Hot Pants." Jackie is a choreographer living in Las Vegas, and his choreographing mentor is killed by rival ninja choreographers, in what we can only assume is a long series of brutal dance-related slayings. Jackie then learns that his sensei was given his magnificent boogie-ing powers by his magical hot pants. So Jackie, no longer a carefree Vegas choreographer, instead a bitter, hard-hearted Vegas choreographer, straps on the hot pants and goes to seek vengance for his slain mentor. It's then that he learns (Jackie learns a lot in this movie, and so do we, as an audience) that the hot pants are not only magical, but they are also alcoholic. So most of the movie consists of Jackie getting into kung-fu disco fights in dance clubs, while the hot pants force his legs over to the bar, and Jackie mugs comically, waving his arms like an idiot and yelling in his shitty English, "No, hot pants! No time for drinking! Can't you see we have to fight the bad guys?" In the end, they defeat the evil ninja choreographers and the hot pants start going to AA. Jackie learns to accept that all magical semi-animate articles of clothing have their ups and downs, and we have to accept them for who they are, and take things one day at a time.

It's really pretty good. Especially the part where the hot pants get drunk and say things that they later regret. Like "You have very flabby legs for a kung-fu dance virtuoso" and "You know, I always wanted to be sweat pants." I liked it a lot.




Ever read Homer's The Illiad? Yea, me neither. But I have read parts of it. And those parts of it are filled with crazy extended metaphors. Homer can't go two stanzas without comparing someone to a snake or a duck or a snake chasing a duck into a river, and OH, that reminds me, the river is a lot like...It's pretty pathetic. Not so much because Homer is addicted to comparing people to natural phenomena, but because none of it really makes any sense to me. At one point he says someone cowardly is like a man finding a snake in a field, and then describes what happens when a guy finds a snake in a field. And the thing is, he could be totally making it up and I'd never know the difference, I've never found a snake in a field, nor have I broken wild horses, or forded a river, or anything. Technological advancement has rendered all Homer's comparisons obselete. Technology seperating man from the natural world? Fine with me. But when it gets to the point that the lame-ass similies of one of history's fave blind bards, things have gone too far.

Kidding, kidding. I don't lose any sleep over the fact that I can't accurately compare anyone to an oak tree because I couldn't pick one out of a lineup. If the price for indoor plumbing, refrigiration, penicillin and cable TV is a reduced capacity for stuffy metaphor, fine. If that means that we have nothing left to compare things to than "Star Wars" and "The Real World," that's fine, too. There's more fucking on "The Real World" than in all of nature, anyway.




This Chelsea, the Trevor-kissing, birthday-yesterday, punk-rock Chelsea pictured at left being almost-kissed by this other Chelsea, is always recommending I download songs by various bands. Wonderful, I like being introduced to things I might like, as do we all. The thing is, half the time, when I download whoever's stuff off Kazaa, it's HARDCORE. So HARDCORE the walls shake as the mp3s zoom down the cable and into my computer. So HARDCORE they immediately start pushing around other files in my shared folder, taking their lunch money and calling them "fag" and things. They feature crunching guitars and screaming guys, and I wonder what kind of sixteen-year-old girl likes these sort of things. Then I look at my playlist full of poppy punk and whiny-voiced acoustic pretty boys, and just feel hopelessly uncool. I hate being out-HARDCORED by sixteen-year-old girls with better websites than me.

By the way, happy birthday, Hotson. You're seriously one of my top three favorite girls with your name.




Now go forth, and make merry. Or make shoes. If that's your thing.

Keeping it brief tonight because I just put some bread in the toaster for a midnight post-homework salami sandwich. Trevor and I came to a strange realization tonight leaving softball. We're both doing homework. Like, at home. This is a disturbing development and I don't wish to give it any further thought, but it's true. For the first time in my four years of high school I'm actually working. My eyes hurt.

Want to buck up an otherwise mundane day? Ask a cute girl in your Chemistry class if she wants to go to the Midtown concert on Saturday with you. I guess the bucking-up is entirely dependent on whether or not she says yes. Mine did. So that's all I care about. I'm sure there are other methods, but I don't really want to hear them.

I get to have a wheelchair in the play. It is the tightest thing ever. Pretty soon I'll be able to take real-life handi-capable people to the cleaners in the 500 M dash...well, spin, I guess.

Sorry I couldn't come see you tonight, Elvis. But you're still my favorite singer-songwriter ever, ever. Promise. Way better than that other Elvis whose greatest hits collection just hit the top of the charts. He's all show, anyway. You, Elvis Costello, you've got substance.

Bread just popped up. Now go in peace, to love and to serve...whoever it is you feel like serving. I'm not about to preach.

Over the intercom tonight at Fry's: "DC, after you come back from break, please do a trash run."

Now if that doesn't smack of "reason to get a college education," I don't know what does. My goal, a lot of people's goals, I'll bet, are to get enough of an education so that they'll never have to hear their names associated with the words "trash run." If I'm ever a professional writer, I fully expect my name to be used in the same sentence as the word "trash," but only when it's in conjunction with all sorts of other fun adjectives: "pedantic," "exploitative," "lazy," "worthless," "eye-bleedingly pretentious." You know, that sort of thing. I can't wait to get out of here so I can stop putting trash in bags and start putting it on the page.


Seems I won't be going to see Elvis Costello tomorrow night, nor will I be going to Jimmy Eat World later this week. They're both victims of The Bunch Of Shit I Have To Do and The Little Money I Have In The Mean-time. Usually the first two things to be sacraficed when I'm busy are Sleep and Sanity, but the twins are tired of being dragged out behind the barn and shot dead every time I have a project due on Friday and a play to rehearse. This time, they demanded to take with them live appearances by two of my favorite recording artists. Fine, Sleep. Fine, Sanity. Be that way. I'm still going to see Midtown on Saturday night, so ppthhtpppmbththpppt. Elvis is old, but he ain't that old, he still writes like eight songs a day, and he'll be back. JEW lives here, fer chrissake. And maybe their ticket prices will come down after their brief tango with mainstream popularity.

Or maybe they'll release another album that will knock everyone on their asses and I'll have to sell my left nut to get in to their show next time around. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not. If it's as good as "Clarity" then so be it.



Like to take a moment to spotlight Dianne, who I sort of know from FOD, who took time out from a busy academic schedule to link to me. Go visit. Her blog is much prettier than mine can ever hope to be, although it features no pictures of Elvis Costello. You win some, you lose some. When you're me, all your wins involve aging British popstars, for some reason.

'Night all.

"Extraneous posts," wrote Radley Balko today on his blog The Agitator, "are the bane of a poor blogsite." If I said that I wasn't exactly sure what "bane" meant in that context, would that save me from the fact that Radley's declaration makes this by far the worst site ever? I don't think it would. I mean, come on, ALL my posts are extraneous. I posted tonight from the library just 'cause, sort of a "LOOK I AM WRITING TO YOU ON A COMPUTER!" sort of thing.

Oh, and FYI, the librarian with the Tec-9 only clipped my right leg before I hit the door, which is why I won't be running tonight.

But yea, let's face it, nothing in here was just itching to be said. Tony Pierce's blog-motto is "Nothing in here is true." Mine oughta be "Nothing in here is necessary." I'd like to that there's a monastery full of monks with high in the Himilayas with DSL who think that my every post about things I have to do for school or concerts or hot girls is a message from Buddha, telling them to be not afraid of school or concerts or hot girls, that these things are the keys to enlightenment. But I can't. I've already convinced myself that every time I put something off, an assignment or something, five dollars are donated to a local children's charity. In my own mind, my slipping grades and sleepless nights have funded a wing of the hospital for no-lunged kids. But it's all in my head, much like earwax, my parietal lobe, and that bullet from 'Nam.

But seriously. Anyone out there amused? Entertained? Enlightented? Anyone besides Ben? Any monks or sick kids want to speak up? Is this helping at all?


Oh, and by the way, Tony is back from vacation. If nothing else, his blog always has more hotties per square inch.

Coming to you live from the Tempe Public Library, the belly of the beast, where I just turned about twelve books that were due on the long-since-past Ninth of September. I probably owe them about fifty bucks, but here I am, miss Librarian, and I ain't payin' shit.

My Honors Economics group is dashing about the cavernous aisles looking for these books we have to read before Friday. Chelsea's looking over my shoulder. Eamon and Chris want to know if they can check out their books on my account. The answer: Hells naw. Not unless I want to take out a second mortgage on my house, or let my left hand become property of the Tempe Public Library.

A librarian just pressed the little red button on her desk. I can hear the snipers taking their positions over in periodicals, so I got to go.

Enemy of Public Literacy Number One, signing off.

Things I have to do by Friday:

Read a book for Honors Economics, then write a paper about it

Read a book about creative writing for Creative Writing, then do a presentation about it

Read nine books of Homer's "The Illiad" and write six RN's

Research the economic forces at work in Atlanta and then do a presentation about that

Do various bullshit Honors Chemistry work

Write a grip of play

This is in addition to such day-to-day activities as keepin' it real and pimpin' dem hos, which are in and of themselves exhausting activities, even to the most limber tru player such as myself.

And here I thought senior year was supposed to be all...easy.

Things I Am Officially Tired of Hearing:

It looks good for college.

This is due Monday.

Yea, but she's hot.

DONALD C. PIERSON, enlarge your penis, safely and naturally!!!!

Sir, this is a church.

I'm so fat.

Oh, you stupid, brutal Americans.

Three to five typed, double-spaced pages

What do you mean you won't father my children?

For the essay, I've decided to do Fight Club. Not the movie, the book. I've tossed around a couple paragraphs and it just sounds horribly terribly academic. The last thing I want to do is discuss its "artistic merits" and "historical significance" of this book, because there's really no way to accurately capture the way it punches you in the damn nose, the way it grabs you by the lapels and shakes you around, the way it doesn't tell about something that happened but rather it happens, right in front of you, every time you read it. I hate taking something so alive and pinning it down in a academically digestible way, it's like autopsying a loved one or something. Let other people figure out how it works. All I know is that it does. And that's why my essay sucks. The paragraph I have of it, anyway.

I would not make a very good bulimic.
Which is really a shame, because that's one less possible career I can list on guidance-counselor questionaires.

Never, ever try to drink a gallon of milk in an hour. Unless you're in a park on a Sunday night with a bunch of your friends, all of whom are doing the same thing. In which case, you should. But just don't expect to keep it down for very long.


I have to write an essay for Humanities about a "cultural artifact" that's influenced my life, and it can be anything. Even movies, recent movies. You'd think that I'd love that, right? I love movies. I could do Fight Club or American Beauty or Almost Famous, it could be great, you'd think. But you'd be wrong.

I'm going to go take the world's longest shower, then try to bang out this stupid essay you'd think I'd enjoy.

Sometimes, after everyone else has left, three beautiful ladies say, "Stay with us, Sweet Don, stay!" But you say no, ladies, I can't. Got to pack up my Xbox and go. I've already had an evening of productivity and honesty, a really good omlete, the sun is breaking over a morning that feels like fall and this day's already too good, and it ain't even started yet.

Plus, Trevor was there.

After work, my friends and I are going to drink a gallon of milk in an hour, then throw up. Then I'm going to come home and write an essay.

It's important to plan these things out. Make a schedule, then stick to it.