september: initiation, activism and string sections
9.30 hey! big news! it's important to me, at least: tonight marks my return to radio after almost three years! given the, ahm, unique state of WMCP when I left it, some would say that tonight is my radio debut. but I don't rate that at all cos Rory (my once and future radio collaborator) says that he heard that someone did actually hear us once when we were doing dramatic readings in latin. so there. now that semantics are over with, I'd like to issue a formal warning to everyone to vacate the frequency 90.1 fm come midnight tonight because I call it. it's mine until 2 am. fair's fair, darnit. I'm substituting on the hardcore metal show (you know me...I'm all, um, distorted and stuff...) so if you're in the C-U area and don't mind the noise that kids these days are listening to, turn on your radio and tune in! we'll take care of the dropping out part.
my little brother is very sorry about the chain letter thing. actually, truth be told I suspect that he feels no remorse and will be killing you all shortly.
not to enter a complaining mode, but my mailbox is stuck. and no one at the landlord's office seems overly concerned. god, if my psychic hadn't assured me that this was all for the best, I don't know what I'd do. go straight out of my mind, I guess. voting on the $68 athletic fee thing ended today - if you're a UIUC student and you didn't vote, you're a fool. he who would surrender any of his liberties does not deserve to have them and all that. yeah. you go, girl! I think there's a blood drive over at the union this week, and if so that's cause to celebrate. come on, people, drain yourselves. time to separate the vampires from the pasty-faced suburbanite wannabes!
why, just look at all the good it's done for me.
raves:
baked (not fried), "What About Bob?", finishing classes at 10:30am, free wood chips, karmic justice.
distastes:
wankers who eat five slices of pizza at the midnight sale and cause all the pizza to be gone by the time real fans show up, places that require the actual coupon for the discount, senile quiz writers.
9.29 apologies to all who received an idiotic chain letter from my little brother (who is currently using the aqueduct@wwa.com address). I had nothing to do with it. his account access has been temporarily revoked. should you a) seek good luck b) worry about your love life/size of your organs or c) desire to express solidarity with other "children of the 80's", those of you who were victimized by his little episode hereby have my permission to spam the little bugger. dig? ok.
I had a good day today. I'm not sure what was so good about it, but it was nice. I outmanuevered Canon and IBM tech support and fixed my new printer by myself this morning, missing a class in the process which means I'm less of a person now. in pointlessly distant news, it appears as though I'll be taking a class over the summer in the first session (from may 15 to june 15). UIUC students - take action today and tomorrow, vote against the proposed $68 athletic fee in the student union or at the illini orange. democracy is ace and the concept that the bullshit racist (down with the chief!) football program has a single thing to do with a quality education is ridiculous. let memorial stadium rot, we can turn it into a playground when the walls are finished crumbling down.
Kurt Vonnegut in Chicago on friday october third! take notice! make travel plans now! in tangentially related news, the movie "Footloose" is on TV right now and it's just great. I think we should be allowed to dance, damn it. who's with me? and, finally, I ended my 24-hour fast in protest of death a few minutes ago. it was a rousing success - I haven't seen a dead person all day. next up - fasting to protest entropy! who's with me?
anyone?
update: just as soon as I finished uploading this page, I discovered that Roy Lichtenstein died today. was my anti-death fast the only thing keeping him alive? how many more will die because of my consumption of food? crap.
raves:
cool wind through my window, free pizza at Record Service at the midnight sales, all-night grocery stores
distastes:
violent dusty wind while walking outside, 2-for-1 sales on deceptively old bread, rice-a-roni that keeps burning.
9.27 yesterday I didn't feel well. today, however, I'm at peak performance. so far. although I just yawned, so I don't know. I had a bowl of Lucky Charms this morning. they have apparently introduced a new innovation: "swirled" colours on the marshmallows. man, the things those wacky underpaid starving malaysian factory workers come up with! neverending fonts of inspiration. I think I'll probably have something else next time, though.
words from Kurt Vonnegut, courtesy of Svetlana:
(excerpt from an NPR interview) "You remember the mathematician who said that a group of monkeys locked in a room with typewriters would eventually write the works of Shakespeare?" (at this point all of the cognoscenti who listen to NPR nod sagely) "Well the World Wide Web proves that to be false."
this web page alone is incontrovertible proof, I think.
this morning I awoke early (well, before noon) and purchased David Bowie tickets for october 17th in chicago. rah! I played in a vampire live-action game last night. strangely enough, my entire recollection of the event is indistinguishable from an episode of "Jim's Journal", from the art to the words. so if you're wondering exactly what I did last night, look it up in your local bookstore under "Jim". today, I'm not sure. if I can find the armanents, something definitely needs to be done about the currently rampaging greek system down here. several thousand cave men and women in mating season is not a pretty sight.
raves:
q-tips, John Cusack, movies with a 90-minute running time, inexpensive chinese vegetable dishes.
distastes:
people who refuse to evolve, the short shelf life of the average banana.
9.26 I was walking to class today (wipe that surprised look off your face) down Armory Street (named after, yes, the huge armory that resides on that street, and if you stand there very quiet some nights you can almost hear the ghosts of drunk hicks running around in there looking for their shotguns to protect their moonshine with) today when I noticed that someone had carved "down with the man" in the sidewalk in front of a church. I wondered first if that was necessarily the most effective way to communicate with The Man, and then it occured to me that perhaps concrete itself is The Man, that there's another side to it that we're either not noticing or not perceiving because it doesn't want us to, because in urban settings it is truly all-pervasive and urbanization is swallowing the entire globe at a very rapid rate. run to Antarctica, now! but then, supposedly there are aliens underneath all of that ice, and one hundred years of hollywood cinema have taught me, if nothing else, to fear aliens. and then, in another moment, I completely forgot that entire train of thought because it was early in the morning and I'm rather dumb if you catch me before noon or so (the only reason I remembered it is because I walked by the same carving on the way home).
wednesday I joined in on an anti-Chief Illiniwek meeting being held by the PAR/PRC (I forget the address of their web page, otherwise I'd link to it and look like a clever little multimedia monkey) and we all agreed that we were right and the College Republicans are now and ever shall be wrong. it was a rather well-organized meeting, actually. wednesdays at 7:30 pm at the Illinois Disciples Foundation on Springfield and Wright, if you're a CU-located type. not much else has happened over the last couple of days. I tried in vain to find plain black sweatpants but was treated like a freak for not wanting to plaster illini logos all over my legs. who knows, maybe they had a point. Tom and I were going to riot at a bookstore's stereotyping of plastic-americans, a much abused group, but then we didn't, because we suck.
in an effort to boost my ratings, I am hereby announcing that I will be existing live, without tape delay, all of saturday the 27th of september. you never know what might happen! this is the real thing, folks!
raves:
sleeping on my couch, cheese sandwiches, air circulation, the rise and fall of Marv Albert, motion.
distastes:
conversations about alcohol, capitalism on the internet, "finding the sex in every scene".
9.23 have you ever tried to imagine an actual conversation occuring with answers and questions from Jeopardy?
Terrence: What is a bikini?
Phillip: Well, the United States conducted their first atomic detonation in that atoll.
Terrence: Oh, okay. Let's go get wasted.
I don't know why every single time I write a new page it ends up being finished some time after 2 am and I do a hasty job polishing it off and uploading it. antipathy from a certain deity, perhaps. a few minor things have been fixed and added here and on the feature and link pages. no one notices these things except me, I think. you know, every single teenager/young adult ever featured on MTV is a blithering idiot. the link-adventurous are advised that a handful of other web types updated their pages today. the entertainment doesn't end here, folks!
not much was done today. a violent debate between two ends of my schizophrenia over rain and the value of grad school led to me skipping class and going back to sleep. Henry and Tom surveyed the security points of various campus locales for anti-Chief protests to come at a later date while I stalked trustees around the Union and gave them the evil eye. as for the rest of the night, who knows? who cares? temperature decline ("pressure drop, oh pressure...") continues, which is good. what to do, what to do?
important notes: firstly, the new and possibly final Kurt Vonnegut novel was released yesterday. the man remains the best writer alive and you would do well to pick up a copy unless he is coming to a bookstore within a 300 mile radius of you, in which case you are expected to go meet him. October 3rd in Chicago he will be as will Rory and I. secondly, Chuck is not well. please do not email him with provocative thoughts and comments because he has been alerted that his spleen may, in fact, burst. so please be careful.
raves:
sunflower seeds, sodium, midnight sales with pizza from Bjork and Stereolab, Matt Pinfield.
distastes:
petty attempts by academia to get me out of bed before 9 am, unadorned salads from Blimpie.
9.22 down by the seaside, ten smiles in a row. but the dirty dishes remain...
so the new page is done. like it? I hope. it's been a rather relaxed creation, actually, although no schoolwork has been done since I began work on it. I guess I can't entirely blame the web page for that. after a trip to Perkins in order to find some ice cream to alleviate nasty stomach hissing, I sit here following my nightly routine typing away and watching late night TV. it occurs to me that I never find myself in bar brawls anymore. I want to be the thin, crazy guy who comes leaping down from the bar with a maniacal look on his face and tackles a few people. the fact that I hate bars might be at least partly responsible, but that's no excuse. life is so unfair. why do the networks choose to subject me to endless psychic phone talk commercials? plenty of good, decent people are up late trying to find worthwhile entertainment. ah, the chocolate-covered injustice of it all.
hello to the new entity, goodbye to Outside the Asylum, you did well, I'll miss you, cha cha boom. updates arriving soon, so open your eyes every once in awhile. and don't forget to update your own page. dammit.
raves:
Coolio, ice cream, WEFT 90.1 FM, weather cooling off.
distastes:
soup with chicken in it that doesn't admit that in big letters on the front.
return home, comment, or experience deja vu.