Crown of Trinkets |
Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Tonight I've been wrangling with my ever-fickle but ever-beautiful Philips 212 turntable. I can't think of many things I owned back in high school that I still own--guitars? No (with one exception being my first guitar, which is mainly for show at this point being as it only has three strings, which are two inches off the fretboard and which emit a crackling, zzzkkktthh sound when they are strummed through an amplifier). Clothes? No, except for my Sonic Youth shirt, which has a hole in it, and is two sizes too large, and my math competition t-shirt, which is just right at this point in my life. But not much else (aside from a few Feelies and Meat Puppets records) has made the jump from my young and hyperactive days to my days of relative maturity and sloth. So it is kind of crucial that I keep this wonky marvel of Dutch engineering alive. Besides, it has touch-sensitive pads to start it up and mark 33/45 speed! Right now it is playing out of both channels and not skipping. We will see how long this detente lasts between it and me, but right now it is total love, tons of fresh Ozone Records going-out-of-business 7"s to feed it, oh my sweet darling, I will never leave you alone again. Oh my lord, I am talking to my turntable as if it were an emotionally unstable lover.
email me: jake@tapemountain.comFrom work, 9:02 am today: Monday, January 14, 2002
Beautiful Monday afternoon not working and getting things done alone! Faint kiss of sun!
email me: jake@tapemountain.comI got my aging Philips turntable to start working again (it had had some problems with its right channel) and it is greatly enhancing my life. I had been playing records on my slightly-sub-Fisher-Price-sounding all-in-one Goodwill As-Is $1 special upstairs, which gave my records that "yesteryear" Edison-cylinder sound and which interpreted "45 rpm" as being anywhere between 35 and 55 rpm, usually oscillating between the two pretty rapidly, but now I can sit downstairs soaked in much-needed sunbeam action and listen to my purchases from: The Ozone going-out-of-business sale! Ozone is one of those fixtures on the Portland scene, a record store whose selection was pretty damn intense and desirable in its heyday. I hadn't been buying many records recently, so I hadn't been frequenting this nice establishment much, but I went in yesterday for the first day of the half-off sale. The aisles were packed with the pierced-and-dyed crowd, the thrift-shopping crowd, the rare hipsters who are actually employed and consequently have spending money. The aisles smelled like incense (unescapable smell at Ozone) and thrift must. I recognized tons of people but didn't know their names, and they were all intently flipping clack-clack through stacks of CD's (or flap-flap through bins of vinyl) anyway. I envisioned all of these people as balding 50-year-olds bending over boxes of swap-meet vinyl, showing off butt-crack and bald-spot, smelling of sour underarm sweat; it was greatly amusing.
I know that no-one wants to hear about anyone else's dreams, but here's one that has some decent dirt in it, at least, plus a first in my dreaming life:
email me: jake@tapemountain.comI was on a radio talk-show with my ex-girlfriend. In our real lives, this relationship was primarily about me being screamed at, at least in my eyes; however, on this talk show, we were merrily and civilizedly going about talking about the other person's foibles. We traded jabs; oh, I like my music to be played in alphabetical order; excuse me, ma'am, I prefer my music to follow the shape and curvature of the album (images of rounded, colorful Fiestaware on the Salvation Army's bric-a-brac shelves), while you'd be content to be spoonfed whatever on the radio. It wasn't a pleasant exchange by any means but at least I didn't feel threatened. And in a pioneering moment of dreaming, this dream referred to a dream I'd had earlier in the evening, in which I stowed away in an airplane. I didn't get the details of the previous dream correct--for some reason I thought that I had transformed into a wasp in the previous dream, when the truth is I stowed away in the luggage compartment--but still. For those of you who still remember your "Life In Hell" books, you may refer to Love Is Hell: We transformed from "Woman and Jumpy" to "Jolly Jugular-Jabbers". We wrestle with our demons in any way that we can; this dream seemed more like giving my demons a wedgie than it seemed like hitting them with a folding chair, but it will do. Tuesday, January 08, 2002
Here are some recent messages to myself from Work, so you, the reader, can get an idea as to what I think about all day to keep from thinking about Work. Warning: long. Skip past if all you want is gossip and good dirt; there isn't really any here.
email me: jake@tapemountain.com12/26, 2 pm Today I am alone in The Pod, no tinkly Christmas sleighbell music Wandering Stars "A Star Is Shining"/"I'm Poison" We will see how observing this delicate beast called melody affects its Simon Joyner "Address" My left forearm is achy, probably from playing too much Dreamcast (NFL 2K1; The Benefits Hotline has been open for 12 minutes and no calls yet; it is Tarnation's "Game of Broken Hearts" intrudes (thanks to a worksheet for Sue I remember the day I had to go in to work in the dishroom at Meridian Park I was premature in saying that the Hotline was dormant. It is not dormant. Ass Ponys "No Dope No Cigarettes". I borrowed good old _Grim_ from Dan 12/27 Last night I made cauliflower-and-potato-and-garbanzo-bean curry, rapidly Last night I got wrapped up in a consuming evening of sports simulations on (3 pm) The image of a bowling alley in West Seneca, NY, just after dusk. It is The Terminals' wonderful "Do The Void" colliding with some smarmy Doobie Someone at the office mentioned puppies and this horrific image from last The horrible images and horrible collision have ceased 10 minutes later and Why on earth did that caller Diane close the conversation (after "have a Squalling babies over the receiver, discussions on what sort of birth 1/3/02, 8:55 am Why must unpleasant memories from the past gurgle up? Okay, this one is not I really wish I could be listening to the Velvet Underground's "I Heard Her
Saturday, January 05, 2002
Happy end to sad day (see the previous post for details): I went to TBO's wedding reception and it turned my pissy mood right around. Jordan, Brian, Jen, Matty B, the bride and groom, all there and in rare form (the fact that it was at McMenamin's Edgefield, home of alcohol, probably added to the mirth factor). Matty B was in rare form, like a foghorn, throwing out lines from "Big L" and other fabulous rap stars who I had not heard of, and everyone else was their own selves, only amplified and lubricated, and it beat the hell out of the crypt/human-resources-sweatshop atmosphere of the day. Amen, amen, amen.
email me: jake@tapemountain.com
Oh Work, you cruel master! Oh I was livid at the thought of coming in to work today (a Saturday) but I thought: oh, it will only be a half-day, and then I will go back to whatever merry and idle things I do on Saturdays. But no: work came at me frantically like a swarm of wasps, a swarm that seeped out of god knows where (okay, two missing people in the department) and I got madder and madder, in both senses of the word "mad". Drudgery repeated, drudgery repeated, drudgery repeated. Process, reenter, reprocess, reprocess, keep track of. I ended up leaving at 3:30 and then on top of that the bus was fantastically late as well. When I envisioned this job, I envisioned something that was a) 28 hours a week, after which I could go home; b) not psychically draining; c) something at least marginally rewarding of creativity, independent solutions, funny statements made in the workplace. I can now ashamedly say that none of the above are true. God help us. If I'm still there in two months, please email me and remind me to wake up.
email me: jake@tapemountain.comOff to Jordan's pal Todd's wedding reception (he got married in Florida but is back for a relatives-and-friends get-together) and while I think T.B.O. is a fine young man, I dread the thought of actually having to interact with other people. Yeck. Wednesday, January 02, 2002
I haven't posted in ages; this is due a) to this "holiday" thing, b) to this "end-of-year" thing, which basically means lots of work at Work, and c) temporary lapse in Internet connection. (C) was actually kind of interesting; I found myself doing things other than endlessly browsing the Web, which is nice! There are a lot of things out there, like nice books and trees densely filled with birds, and calisthenics (I am trying!) and this novel I'm going to write. One page done so far, no progress tonight. Sad but I am resolved, and noveleering pal Holly called today: her plans are big and sweeping and I have a lot to live up to.
email me: jake@tapemountain.comWeiner Dog Update! I have not yet commented on the passing of Good Dog Pippen in this space, but it needs to be said: He was the best dog I've ever had the pleasure of associating with, just pure lithe, low sweetness. The boy's kidneys gave out, making his last days kind of sad and making his bladder lose control (embarrassing for him, it seemed), but we will remember his pure heart forever. My dad is working on a C D B-style eulogy for the little guy (you should have seen the elaborate paeans to dachsundhood written when he was still among us!). And in new news, the folks have a new wriggling weiner among them: his name at the breeder's (apparently a cesspit) was "Digimon"; I am lobbying for "Didgeridog". We will see if that sticks... Off to sleep, and curse the addictive and playable NFL 2K1 for Sega Dreamcast... |