Oh, hey, check this out

http://www.dancingrobots.com

we'd rather be paid to perfect the pastimes that we have harbored based solely on the fact that it makes us smile if it sounds dope

this is my profile on www.dancingrobots.com

bless me, father, for i have sinned. it has been... well, a long time since my last confession.

where do i begin? there’s quite a bit about me that i’m not proud of. i’m filled with self-righteousness and self-loathing, conceit and shame. i’m not a gray area: i’m both white and black. i’m a contradiction in terms. i’m a misanthropic bleeding heart liberal. i’m a talentless critic. i’m pretentious and i have nothing at all to say.

i lie constantly. i lie about things i like, things i hate, things i know, things i don’t. when i don’t know the answer to a question, i make it up--most of the time i am right. sometimes i believe myself. i lie about lying.

i once stole from a grocery store. i ate some yogurt-covered pretzels out of the clear plastic candy trays in the back. i drank before i was of age and i have used illegal substances in the past. i punched through a bedroom window once. it was not my window. i gave the guy’s girlfriend forty dollars and told her that would be enough to cover it. coincidentally that is pretty much the defining moment of my life as it stands now.

i judge books by their covers. i can’t stand guys who wear hats in the gym or girls who wear skirts with uggs. within the first three-quarters of the first second we meet, i have already made up my mind about you. the worst part is, i’m almost always right.

i write in lowercase because i think it makes me sound more intellectual. i try to pretend it is a device i use to make my writing feel more natural, but it’s not. i’ll have to go back through this and un-capitalize a lot of things i accidentally wrote correctly. i like to write, but i’m really pretty awful at it. i’m much better at breaking something down than i am at building it up. i’ve never written anything truly original in my entire life, but i can’t help but feel that when i finally do it will be the greatest thing ever written.

i pretend to like bands i don’t really like because it makes me feel cooler. i also pretend to hate bands that i don’t really hate. i say things with the knowledge that i’m probably right anyway, so it doesn’t hurt to pretend. my taste in music is very wide but almost completely arbitrary; i may give reasons, but if you listen closely, the reasons don’t really make any sense.

i whine about the passing of the golden age, but when it all comes down to it a whole lot of the things i’m so nostalgic for i don’t even think i could stand now. i just don’t have the patience anymore. i’m incredibly impatient and picky and bitter when it comes to things like games now. i think i should lighten up, but i just can’t. this seems to be a chronic problem in my life.

i make my life out to be much worse and much harder than it really is. i have yet to figure out why i do this. i’m surrounded by people who love me and i have a good job and i live in a beautiful city, but every once in a while i’m miserable for no reason and i don’t really know why. it’s not that i have no direction--i have too many directions, and i can’t pick one. i have trouble making decisions. it’s also not that i have no ambition, i just usually out-think myself and get discouraged. maybe i’m too hard on myself.

that should just about do it. huh? act of contrition? oh no, i’m sorry, i’m not catholic. but thanks for listening.

death cab is great zombie writing music

seriously. my zombie movie will open with "i will follow you into the dark."

in other news, i followed some of your advice and moved my story to its own separate blog. you can find it here. i added a paragraph and a couple sentences to the first entry just because i felt like it needed it. i have to go to bed now, but i promise to work on the next day tomorrow.

i promise to work on the next day tomorrow. that is a very profound sentence. melodies softly soaring through my atmosphere.

cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good

well, i've got to stay up for a few minutes and see if the sleeping pills i just took are actually going to have any sort of an effect on me, so what better way to spend my hopefully inane and drowsy last few minutes than a new blog post, eh? it's been a pretty long time since my last real post--not really because i haven't wanted to write anything, really, but because i haven't really been able to find the words to say what it is i want to say.

i mentioned in my last short post that just about everything i wanted to say about this whole hurricane thing has already been said by other people, most of them far more articulate than i. well, that still stands as the case, but that doesn't mean i shouldn't at least attempt to do something.

a while back--sophomore year in college, it was--i read a play called twilight: los angeles, 1992 by anna deveare smith. it's basically a series of interviews with a whole wide range of people about the la riots written to be acted out by a single person (smith herself being of course the only one to do it, she writes a lot of one-woman plays for herself if i remember right). all the people and their stories are real; smith did the interviewing herself. anyway, it painted a very different picture of the riots than the one i had had before: instead of simple outrage at the rodney king verdict, the story she tells is of a powderkeg that would have eventually exploded without such a controversial fuse. her interviews show us a snapshot of la that erupted due to social tensions that did not begin and end with race but instead dealt with a very large group of people who, to put it bluntly, just couldn't fucking take it any more. in the immortal words of one mr. bradley nowell, everybody in the hood had had it up to here, and it was indeed getting harder and harder and harder each and every year.

it's a situation that, in la, hasn't gotten any better. it hasn't really gotten any better anywhere. for a frightening percentage of our population, there is very little hope left. our urban centers have deteriorated to the point that most people really honestly think there's nothing left we can do. and it continues to get worse as our economy moves further and further away from these areas; no one wants to spend the time or the money to fix something that offers no return on investment. maybe i just listen to too much kanye, but really, what does a young kid on the streets of la or detroit or chicago or new york have to look forward to? what does he have to keep him out of the criminal element, the only success that he sees anyone around him afforded? what can he do to get out, be he black or white or brown or whatever? these cities are crushing them, destroying anything human in them, killing whatever chances they have to become what we privileged think are meaningful contributors to society.

*interlude*
you must have noticed that "we privileged" i threw in that last sentence. the most interesting interview in smith's play was with a businessman at a restaurant in hollywood. he begins his talk by referring to the day the riots broke out, and how he had been in a very crowded public place when he heard on the radio that there was rioting just a few miles away. he talked about how everyone around him started to panic and ask themselves what they should do, how they should protect themselves. the man, however, said that all he could think was not what should i do or how could this happen, he thought it's about time; we deserve it.

do i sometimes feel guilty for being an upper-middle class white guy? yes, yes i do. is it my fault? no, of course not, but how can i walk around preaching equality without first recognizing the inequality in myself? to not recognize that, to not realize the fact that i have it so much better than so many others, well, that's just wrong. but what can i do about it? apparently nothing but sit around and whine about it on the internet. this is one of those things that i try to think about but it doesn't ever go anywhere. if anyone would like to talk about racial or socio-economic guilt, please feel free to engage me. for now, i'll just continue my first train of thought and leave this for another day.
*end interlude*

so let's take this situation. then let's smash it with a huge fucking natural disaster and fill it with six hundred billion gallons of poisonous water. then let's all sit around and look at it for a couple days, then start arguing about why we haven't done anything about it yet. then let's all pat ourselves on the back with every single organization in the united states starting a charity fund and let's all fucking pretend that we're not going to forget all about it in another three fucking months.

all right, yes, i thought the same thing about 9-11. i said that we'd get all patriotic for a year or so and then we'd move on, because well, that's america. i was wrong, yes, but then again we weren't exactly allowed to forget, were we? what are we going to do to keep katrina in our hearts and minds, huh? we certainly can't declare a war on hurricanes. we can't very well blame this one on anyone, can we? i get a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that we're going to accept this just like human beings accept anything that can't be avoided: we forget about it.

we can't afford to forget about this. everyone needs to sit down and understand that we knew the fucking thing was coming and we knew what it was going to do once it came. i've spent a good ten minutes trying to write this next sentence, but it's just not coming out. i could make all sorts of comments here, saying something about the principle role of government or about how we need to put more faith in technology and advancement, but really, i just can't. i wrote a lot more than i thought i was going to, but now i'm definitely out. i hope i push the right button and this gets posted. adam out.

atlantis

i've been trying to think of how to begin this post for a few days now, but so far i've failed. luckily, there are people out there who can do a much better job at this than me--i suppose that's why they're on tv. this is keith olbermann talking about katrina, and you should all watch it:

http://home.sandiego.edu/~adamp/olb.wmv [3.3 MB WMV]

now i'm going to bed, because i'm thuroughly outdone here. seriously though, watch that.

last one out of liberty city: burn it to the ground

well, i didn't play my guitar tonight, so i guess i'd better write.

upon my usual night's random internetting i came this interesting wiki entry. i wonder who wrote it. there are a couple of things in there that i already knew, but most of it i hadn't. now i have more things to say during my grand poway tour other than "and here's the wal-mart" or "there is aibertos, the greatest taco shop in the world."

poway is a very interesting place that i've written about many times before. just sitting here thinking about all the stuff i've written about my town throughout the years is entertaining enough. as with just about everything in my life, i've never really felt neutral about the place; i either wanted to raise my kids in the city in the country with its rolling brown hills and green groves or i wanted to take the first train to anywhere-the-fuck-else and burn the mother down on my way out, the varying degrees usually directly proportional to the amount of less than jake i was listening to at the time.

my freshman year of high school, i tried to write a story about a bunch of kids in my high school saving the world from something--aliens or extra-dimensional beings or something, it doesn't matter. it was supposed to be something of a comedy, a b-movie horror story about how much i loved poway. everyone from my little suburb was going to get together and show the world what happens when you mess with the city in the country. i had the plot outlined and i wrote three chapters before i realized how awful it was.

i spent my senior year in writing seminar writing about how much i hated the place. one specific piece was one of my senses; the only actual assignments we had in the class were pieces that defined a sense--the first five were sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, but the others were abstract ideas. this particular piece was my sense of language; we were to write dialogue as it would actually be expressed by real people. i wrote a conversation between a friend and myself, a fake conversation at a real party we went to a couple weeks before. it really was one of the most bitter things i've ever written, and if you know me you know what that would mean. i was really ready to get out of poway.

of course, i only went about twenty minutes out of poway, but even a little space is enough to get a different perspective. in my sophomore year of college i wrote a paper on the south poway/north scripps ranch area and how the suburban sprawl here was the final decline of the american dream and would ultimately lead to the end of western civilization. sure, it was completely overdramatic, but that's who i am, and it's also who my professor was--she gave me an a.

a semester later all of the sudden i was a poli-sci major, and having taken a class in local politics and having a subject to analyze, i discovered what i had already suspected deep down in my heart but didn't want to admit to myself: poway is just like every other fledgling suburban city in america, flopping around in a constant state of identity crisis, trying to control growth without limiting opportunity, desperately striving to give its citizens a reason to call themselves powegians instead of san diegans.

what do i see now, now that i'm officially gone? i see my hometown, a miserable class-stratified trap, the only place i ever seem to be able to call home. there are those that would speak of leaving it forever, i know, i was one of them. after my long years of experience, however, i can say that it's not poway's fault it sucks. there are enough good people still around to make it worthwhile. the fences that we thought were holding us in are only imagined; nothing's keeping us from the rest of the world. just know that no matter where you go, poway will always be there, and it will always be home.

impressions of size

i'm a little lost again. i went on vacation. i bought a guitar. lindsay and i finished veronica mars last night. i applied for a few more jobs. i got sunburned, but just a little. i had a dream i was flying in a small plane over a clear ocean filled with giant fish and one enormous alligator. the weirdest part about the dream, i think, was not that we landed in a ruined city filled with broken televisions and microwaves, but that i absolutely knew that it was an alligator and not a crocodile. it was the size of a city, and it left a deep trench in the ocean floor when it shuffled away from us as we passed overhead.

rarely do i remember specific images from my dreams, but the shining blues, purples, and greens of the ocean floor have been stuck inside my head all day. the alligator itself was a very dark purplish-brown and was nestled in a wide sloping plain of purple and green grass that waved around as sea grasses are wont to do. we flew in our tiny plane for a long time, i rememeber, and i can vaguely recall a few other images, mostly of huge fish the size of skyscrapers and neighborhoods. interestingly enough, there is really only the impression of size remaining; there was nothing i could scale them to, i just remember thinking my god, that alligator could eat a city.

what i do remember often about my dreams are these kind of ideas: not images, exactly, but the impressions of them. often i'll wake up and remember that i had a wonderful dream but not be able to remember anything about it at all; other times i'll wake up terrified without knowing what was chasing me. anyway, along with the images of the crystal-clear ocean came an overwhelming feeling of being completely alone. interestingly enough, i know there was someone with me in the plane--two someones, i think, one to fly the plane and another next to me--but the feeling remains that we in the plane were over an ocean that no one had ever seen before. finally landing in the ruined city i realized that we were the only ones left in the world. i wasn't scared or even particularly dismayed, i just felt like there was a big world out there and i was the only one in it.

this world had moved on.

now, of course, i realize that i've just been reading the dark tower too much, but that's okay, it was a neat dream. i haven't really had very many of them lately, at least not the kind that i remember upon waking. i think that sort of goes hand-in-hand with not being able to sleep. the other night while tossing and turning i did something relatively impulsive: i rolled over, grabbed jenny, went online, and bought a guitar. it didn't cost me a whole lot of money--only a hundred and thirty dollars--to get a not-too-terrible acoustic guitar, some extra strings, a tuner, and a self-teaching book, so i think i made out okay. it got delivered to my house in poway and i picked it up when lindsay and i stayed there on thursday night. i tuned the guitar--the first lesson--and learned how to play six whole notes--the second and third lessons--before putting it down and going to bed.

so why did i buy a guitar? have you ever seen or read high fidelity? of course you have, you're my friends. anyway, somewhere in there there's some mention about being a music critic and always being an ass to people and not knowing what it's like to actually make music. how can i really know what rock and roll is if i haven't ever made it myself? this will probably find its way into the pile of things that i wanted to do with my life that will never get done, but i'll never know until i try, so there's my guitar sitting in the corner of my room.

i'm posting this because the people who read this are the people who see me every day, and i want those people to bug me about playing my guitar. this is one of those things i'm going to have to get on myself about, and it wouldn't hurt to have you guys get on me too. jordan remains the only person to actually make me feel bad about not constantly updating this here blog, and for that, i thank him. seriously, though, annoy me about it.

in other news, veronica mars is the greatest television show in the world. it's going to have to have its own separate post, but it needs to be said. expert writing, perfect pacing, a phenomenal cast (with special consideration for kristen bell as veronica and jason dohring as logan and the exception of teddy dunn as duncan, who is not a very good actor), and a fantastic setting in sunny san diego. it's the most wholly entertaining thing on television since firefly. if you haven't seen it, ask me for some episodes and get to work; the new season starts at the end of september and attempting to watch it without knowing what's going on will ruin you.

hey look, my first lawrence arms reference (i stand corrected; this is actually my second, thank you jordan)

i knew it would happen. here's a blank page all over again. knowing it was going to come didn't seem to help me avoid it any more than it ever has in the past. every little piece of my life is a metaphor for the rest, and my writing is no different. inspiration will hit eventually, and it will last for a night, or maybe a whole day, or even a whole week or month or year, but eventually it will fade as quickly as it came.

perhaps it's just a consequence of living the intensely overdramatic life, but nothing ever comes gradually to me. i began the last paragraph by saying that i knew it would happen, but, like i said, knowing it was going to happen doesn't mean it didn't surprise me. because, like everything in my life, it came fast and hard. it's very cliche to say that one's life is like a rollercoaster, but there's a reason people say that: it's a very accurate metaphor (i guess technically that's a similie). i go up, i go down, i go faster and faster, i'm burning the gears, my tears are streaming back into my ears. i constantly refer to myself as bipolar; perhaps histrionic is the more accurate term, but either way, my interpretation of my own life is the only one that i'm going to follow, and if that's the case, well then, i guess my life is like a rollercoaster.

so what's the point of this rambling? didn't i begin by talking about how i was having trouble writing again? oh look, there, i've written a little bit. here's hoping i keep at it.

and here's an edit before i go to bed from something i found on slashdot and thought "that's awesome:"
Study Finds 1/3 of All Studies Bullshit

go to bed, jordan

see post title.

i'm sorry, i'll start again soon. note that this apology is to myself.

i'm a bad scene and there's everyone to blame but me

ladies and gentlemen, there is something wrong with me. tonight i have finally come to terms with a very simple fact: i am a sociopath. though maybe not quite to the serial killer level, there is clearly something about me that is very different from what has become a societal norm.

you see, i don't like to go to bars. i hate them. i go anyway sometimes, you know, to hang out with my friends, but when i'm there, everything about it makes me angry. i despise a large majority of the music played at twentysomething bars, which just so happens to be played at a level of volume only fit for a live show. i hate buying drinks, even more for the futile act of getting a bartender's attention than the incredibly high cost of the beer. i loathe how crowded they are, full of girls with too much makeup and guys with too much axe body spray. i just really don't like the places; in my opinion, they're all the worst in people.

some people--well, lots of people--love this scene. i once had a theory why: no one, i thought, really actually likes it here. they're all faking it because they don't want anyone to not think they're cool. but really, they all hate it, it's just that no one's spoken up since the sixties, and so this thing that was created in the seventies has never been challenged.

i don't think it was just tonight that i came to my new conclusion, but it was definitely the first time i've officially admitted it to myself. my new conclusion is simply that i'm wrong: i really am the only one who hates going out to bars. as i watched a couple of my friends engaged in a conversation, not having any idea what they were talking about simply because i couldn't hear them, i realized that i must be on some other frequency; they could hear and understand each other just fine, even through all the oppressive noise and heat and bullshit of the bar around them.

what is my problem? why does this situation always make me feel so damn awkward? why can't i just relax and enjoy myself? i'll tell you why: because i'm a sociopath. i'm sure i'll write more on this later, but right now i'm sleepy and i've got a big day tomorrow of not being hung over like all the rest of you.