Fun

Game I used to distract me from work for a brief moment.

Jesu

I'm...8 minutes into Jesu record.
It's awesome. The lack of guitar workings means I probably won't love this like I do Pelican.

But it's still fucking awesome.

Pirate for Congress

Stuff like this reminds me why I love America.

Happy birthday, Fuz!

Sorry this is a few days late.

Thanks

To everyone who sent good wishes.

Dad's in the hospital; he had something like an 80% blockage in one of his arteries.

But he's OK. He's on his back for the next 12 hours. He's on blood thiners, and apparently he can't drive for the next 3 days b/c if the act of breaking the car might cause the bloodclot that forms in his chest to come out.

I mean. Fuck.

But. He's ok. That's what goddamn matters.

sigh

Not to rain on everyone or anyone's good time.

My Dad is scheduled to have an angiogram tomorrow. Could be nothing. But he went into the hospital with chest pains tonight. I come back from the bar to find family happenings in a big way going on-shit he, of course, downplays hugely. But he's by himself down there, and that's a concern too. So.

Any good thoughts you got, are certainly welcome. You don't have to post anything here. As a matter of fact, he's the kind of person who'd just as soon you not-prayer being a quiet thing for him. But I'm worried, of course, and might have to travel down to Vegas soon for a little while, just cause.

Bradbury

Hey, it was Ray Bradbury's birthday yesterday! How cool is that?

I just like Bradbury's work.

A long one

This comes from my paper journal, edited for privacy reasons, but the essential thoughts are ones I'd like to share

....Yeah, I want a girlfriend, I want a partner. I want to be chosen. Not under duress, not because there's no one else. But because we honestly like one another. ButI have no idea how to get that to happen, beyond a friendship.

There is so much to learn I know, about how to to...sustain? Enjoy? Fuck. I don't even know that I have the language, in a romantic sense. I know how to make friendships work, so romances frighten me. Not because the risks seem greater. If one of my friends and I got into a fight, or for some reason couldn't be my friend anymore, that would break my heart as hard as anything. But because I don't know how to do the romance thing, I'm afraid of doing it badly.

Here's where I recall what my therapist said to me once: Love is about asking the other for the thing they are most afraid to give. We don't mean that, it's just part of what we're attracted to, somehow. But it's also got to be scary to ask for. Conversely, this means that love is also about giving that thing you are frightened of. How the fuck do you do that?

In friendships, there's a kind of vetting process-as well as an undersatnding of where the line is-so you dont' establish an intimacy you can't trust. But because a romantic relationship almost always means sex, and usually the sex happens pretty quickly, because we like sex, we usually have a sudden intimacy, because nothing pushes your buttons like sex does, nor as quickly. At the same tiem, there are still all of these emotional paths and barriers, some of which are normal and protective, others weight that we carry because we don't know how to put down, that now have to be dealt with. And we have to ask for maps to figure out all of those spaces-yet we already feel like we should have them, or the other person should, because we do have a connection to them.

Asking for directions isn't easy. The odds of being told no are fair, considering. When you have a friendship, those paths are followed at a mroe deliberate pace, and tehre are fewer shortcuts, so there's less fear. It's more controlled. Of course, at some point we still have to hang our ass out there, or the friendship either plateaus or withers. With romance, there's now a tension, the fight between the wonders of sex and the need to not reveal everything, because having everything revealed is scary. And usually unnecessary. We need private lives too.

So I hold the friendships up, because I know how to do them, but also because the romance takes time, I think. And if you aren't willing to give someone time to flourish on it's own, then can you ever really expect to get romance?

And we should get it. We deserved to be loved in friendly and sexual ways.

Addendum:
I think that there's something to be said for being open to the love that comes to you, and feeling like you can ask for it to manifest itself in ways that are positive. How we negotiate, I think, plays a large part in the kind of love we get-or if we get love at all.

And I know I have a ways to go, in understanding how and where it's OK for me to be romantic. That I won't be laughed at or mocked for doing something sweet for someone who loves me by the person who cares. Or that it doesn't matter: I can be brave and do this and anyone unwilling to see how good I'm trying to be probably isn't for me.

Concerts

There seem to be a bunch of cool shows coming up. Some I've already discussed here, but Wolf Parade is the 22nd of August. Muse is on Oct 3rd (and I'm told tix are very nearly gone). I'm told Secret Machines and Suftjan Stevens will be playing soon-October, I think.

Just a whole lot of good shows to go see and enjoy. Looking forward to carving up my time appropriately.

Warpup

Read this, and thought: yup. This is one of the great challenges facing me.

At the same time, it also makes me wish I was smarter. I think that the Stewardess has pretty much been saying this for awhile now. In her own perfect way.

Sunscreen

If they're right that PDX is going to be in the 90's this weekend, I'm going to need more of it, due to my haircut.

Do I look good?
Maybe if you dig on Travis Bickle

So cool!

Now gimme my landspeeder, bitches!

you go away for a little while, and it only takes 5 seconds to piss you off

Found this in a Salon round table discussion
(Louanne Brizendine says) "Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," she writes. Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."

Gee. Thanks for basically justifing every stereotypical comment made about gender for...like, EVER.

I know she's a doctor, and the quote I saw may've been taken out of context, AND that there are differences between the ways men and women process sex and emotions. But.

How, exactly, do comments like this help us appreciate those differences, or even overcome them to the extent that we can actually get along?

Meh. Maybe I just need to get laid. I'm grouchy.
/oh, wait...

//if you want some fun, read the link. It shows a whole bunch of people not taking her statement very seriously, and is greatly cheering.

OK Go on treadmills

Link takes you to YouTube video.

Pretty damn cheering to watch; even in your darker hours.

Yeah!

It is quite likely that Fuz arrives today, starting at least one year of his teaching position.

I insist that today be good.

Guess what?!!

You know how it's exciting, when you come home and your ceiling is leaking? Which leads to a near keystone kops level of semantics called "where is the house leaking water now?"

Yeah.

Hey, it's a party!

Wait. You want to do what?

~backs very quietly away, starts car, drives away at high speed.~

If it's all the same to you, I prefer my parties to involve my penis in an entirely different manner.

Cleanup

I've been cleaning my room. Throwing away papers, and itemizing trinkets, photos, drawings from my niece.

I've stumbled upon a folder, the collection of pages and photos from an old, difficult relationship. I don't linger on it. I shove it away, since really, it's over, over, over. Those photos we smiled in are nice, but they are from a time when I was unaware of the lessons I had to learn.

I think I smile differently now. Not in a bad way. Just...I'm different now. Better, mostly, but just not the same.

The room is almost tidy again. That feels good. Even if other things in the universe are confusing, I can make the room a more welcoming place. Time to rest, and then finish my cleaning tomorrow.

perplexed

This last week has been excessively hot. Not just here, but in many parts of the country.

I don't own a car. I walk nearly everywhere I go. When I related to female coworkers (the majority gender at work) that I'd run a shirt through a rinse and spin cycle in order to wear it on a walk to the grocery store in upwards of 100° weather the reaction was that I had done a 'very guy thing'.

I honestly thought I was being sensible. I didn't realize I was such a dude.

We all know I'm weird

And this just kinda proves it.
I don't mind helping people move. Really. I mean, this is assuming they've done the fucking work they're supposed to do: boxing their shit up, getting an appropriate moving vehicle, etc, etc.

There is almost always beer afterward. I mean...beeeeer. Fuck man, for pizza and beer, I'd consider helping George Bush move. Especially if it's out of the White House.

Maybe I just like any excuse that brings people together to drink. This is most likely.