Insomnia ruminations

As should be gathered by the title and the fruitlessness of my melatonin, I can't sleep and am officially annoyed by this. Again. It's turning into an old story. So you get a blog post in return.

Thoughts:

1) The slate gabfest plugged an article which I cannot find, but sounds freaking great: The breakdown of all sounds considered's top albums list. Which, long story short and to further prove my disdain, simply reminds me of the middlebrow banality of the entire NPR franchise. Half the time I think Congress would be doing the country a favor if they followed through on the cutting of the damned funding, if only for the fact that people might actually experience

2) I made a batch of chili last night, which should have turned out delicious and actually was quite tasty, but the damned thing smells like someone upchucked in the frakkin soup. Now, I don't know if this is a bad beer experiment or what, but it's overall quite annoying. Which leads to point three:

3) The fridge in the apartment here is actually not working. Seriously. The freezer is absolutely fine, but the fridge? It's noticeably cooler in the kitchen than there. And we've had the windows shut in this nor'easter.

4) I need some more coffee right now. But I need sleep even more. Enjoy this, enjoy the nothingness of this post, nihilism sucks, creation ex nihilo is a lie (but the truth isn't that compelling, either). Later, kids.

One last thing, and yes, I know this is a postscript but I'm still sleep-optional at this point:

Monday morning one-off

I'm procrastinating getting ready for work, and so in doing I stumbled on this article in the NYtimes: "A Quest to Read a Book a Day for 365 Days." Okay, so this is admirable: basically, this woman has decided to read a book every day for a year. I'm cool with that, to a point. But really, browsing her blog (Read All Day), her assessments are largely superficial. How many book are "beautiful," "wonderful," "one of the best"? Really, while I appreciate what this is, the act of reading, reading a piece of art should elicit a response beyond just the "hey, look, I'm reading."

Now, my father used to read quite a bit as well. Mack Bolan, Marcinko, the occasional Ludlum. Which is fine also, but nobody is going to equate this to reading of depth. These are novels designed for consumption, serving much the same purpose as a big loud explosiony hollywood blockbuster, and should be considered as such. What's my point here? Basically, reading a lot can dangerously lead to treating all books as crap.

To my avid readers out there, take stock. I'm talking (somewhat) to you. Not to complain, but mainly to say that there's more to a novel that sheer rampant consumption is not going to help. It's like physics: every action has its consequences. Reading is still a slow activity, that's where it gets its power. Reading fast is just wasting time.

Hmmm...this post felt like a waste of time. I'll revise it when I think of a point later.

To Whittle this Down to One

I've had a lot come across my plate the last few days that seem blog-worthy. Or rather, rant-worthy and I need to talk about it: The implicit racism of Barbara Walters (or the denial of such underlying racism from Whoopi Goldberg), the fuck-you-in-the-face-W-Bush granting of the Nobel to Obama, the rise and codification of the vocal level "squee," the reminder to my San Francisco denizens that you don't mess with the Chinese woman on the bus.

No, what really got my attention was this:

Now, I know what you're thinking: it's about the cheesecake. And taken into account along with the prostitute story from earlier, that's understandable. But that's not it. Okay, a little bit, but not much.

See, I view this picture -- and mind you, we ran this at work -- I view this picture, and the eternal flipping rolodex that is my fractured memory system remembers a book: Ballard's Crash. Sex, car crashes, removable prosthetics. Beautiful shit. But no, that wasn't the full end of it: From Crash to "Good Country People." Preachers, hollowed-out Bibles containing condoms and whiskey, a hayloft, another prosthetic. And if this is what Hulga looked like, then I can suddenly go to sleep (well, pre-sleep) content.

Thank you, ESPN The Magazine, for re-invigorating this fine, fine work.

The Whores of Midtown

I'm taking a break tonight from the sweltering newsroom (read: the only thing enjoyable about saunas are the humidity and semi-circulating air), when this girl walks up to me, pink dress covered by a studded black cotton jacket, and asks me if I need company.

Reflexively, naturally, I say I'm doing just fine, and frankly I was, the sting of the pre-autumn air doing wonders for my mood, but that was not the reason. Let's face it: she was a whore. Really, a bonafide woman-of-the-discretionary-last-minute-hotel-rooms whore. But that wasn't even the reason. More on that later.

We're going to now rewind to another episode, this time to a planned post-BW retirement celebration about three, maybe four weeks prior. I have the chance to mingle with some of the people in full on decent mood, what now that I'm at this point finally getting my feet on the ground out here. For avid followers, this was the same weekend I moved into the new digs.

And so I'm outside smoking, listening to a shoot-the-shit conversation from a bunch of this-establishment regulars, when I see an african american girl, all decked in white like it's a clubbing outfit (and like it is the 85 degrees at night it was), who waves. I nod, turn my head, ignore her for the ministrations of my tobacco inhalations. She doesn't leave, and instead stops and crosses the street.

"What's a guy like you doing out here all alone tonight?"

"Smoking."

"Well you know, you need someone to keep you company?"

"I'm doing well, but thanks."

"Oh, you don't have a girl in there, do you? Nobody to come in and break all this up?"

"She's waiting on me, actually."

That's essentially how the conversation ended, a few idle lines passed, then she goes clomping along -- clomping not being the proper term but what is the term for somebody wearing knee-high thick-heeled patent-leather boots who still walks with grace? -- and I go back to my smoke.

The bouncer: Holy shit, I haven't seen one of those in years. (descriptor: the guy is a seriously tatted up biker-looker who regaled me later on about going for his gun if t his one guy on the pool table would not...just...quit...egging him on...while he was working.)

Regular: One of what?

The bouncer: She was a whore. Haven't seen one of those around here in a while.

And so, this is my frame of reference. Were I a journalist, I'd probably pull out some prostitution stats showing the increase in such-and-such numbers over the last x number of years. But I'm lazy and a pontificator and a fictionalizer, so I digress. The sound of my voice is what I'm really looking for in all these.

Which cuts back to the story tonight: I'm walking, it's a whore, I'm reflexively prone to not trusting and say no. After the incident happened I dissected it for what it was: It wasn't that she was so obviously a woman of the trades, an ex-mortgage broker or derivatives trader (because really, both these scenarios tell me Pretty Woman might not be a figment, at least in that prostitutes exist that aren't completely cracked out and gumming for the next available stupid cash-laden john. See Spitzer, Eliot.)

No, the real reason why I said thanks, I'll pass, has just been a thing of breeding, an axiom I have: Never trust a woman whose wardrobe consists almost entirely of pink.

Up in the attic

So I'm breaking in my new desk setup, my computer, my spot aloft in the top of a three-bedroom apartment setup, with this blog post. Consider this the pissing-to-mark-my-writerly-territory blog. Today was the day to hang up pictures, to move around more furniture, to make the ever-cascading mound of cds seem less likely to avalanche on my toes.

As some of you may know, I've moved to brooklyn. I've also dumped the facebook (still not sure how temporarily), started reading saul bellow, bought a platform bed base (with no mattress -- at least I got a twin-size bed with the deal), and picked up a desk from my boss, the Karen-Ball of this post (who is in fact Karen Ball). In other words, in the week I've been in this unit, I've started to adjust. There will be pictures, but not yet.

Some of you -- in this survey-style blogpost of my life since the last one -- some of you may appreciate that I've also gone on a cleaning jag. At least, with my portion of the unit. And that, the rumors, are well substantiated by the first few steps into my place. The rest of it will have to be determined.

Anyway, enough of this simmering shithole of a rambling, stupid blog. I think I've pissed in the corner enough.

and yet i feel so european.

photo taken at the kitchen table this afternoon. i'll work on the shot -- the subject is not going anywhere.

And that bright light you will see will be the light reflected off the skin of my legs

Yesterday I had a conversation with my mother. I know, big news. Yesterday, I had a conversation with my mother about how long it takes to get rid of the San Francisco suntan. For this (and for anyone who has never graced the vaunted streets on the tip of the peninsula), this will need some context: apart from the rest of california -- what with it's sun-drenched vistas, playas, etc., san francisco is a city that was kidnapped by fog at some point. The sun is non-existent for save maybe three hours a day, and even when it is visible, it's typically wrapped around such a chilly day that carrying around a jacket is probably a very good idea. Shorts are not an option, and layers upon layers are what typically provide the SPF one would need throughout the day.

Well, I'm no longer in that. I'm back east, walking around, and lo and behold my legs are doubling as traffic reflectors. I've gotten by with wearing jeans as much as I can so as not to be a public or traffic menace, but frankly they're hot and feel ungainly inappropriate for the weather. Cue the conversation with my mother, a 33-year SF veteran before moving who also has twice the Latin blood I do:

Female Parent: So have you started getting any sun yet?
Me: No way, Ma. I'm still trying to get that skin tone that I lost in Frisco.
F: [laughs] It took me about three years, you know. Three years of looking sickly and no skintone before I started getting some color.

Well, at least the feeling's mutual, but now I have to wonder if it's something to even attempt to remedy, or should I just go back to the pale? This is a false problem, really, but kind of funny that the two of us went through it.

The Coffee-fueled blog: now solar-powered.