Beating Back Modernity
Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "meurseult" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
|
07:20 am
[Link] |
I believe I can fly
Nothing could make my skin crawl like that girl, high on E, busting out with her acapella version of the above, thinking that that was what the room needed at that moment, forcing everyone into 30 or 40 seconds of silence and then a few phrases of mumbled appreciation. Why does everyone think they are so bloody profound when they are belting out a hackneyed ballad of overcoming?
You know when it's been one of those years that feels like ten? And, gentle reader, if you had to compare your year to a human pursuit, would it be buying coldcuts in a Ukranian deli? Believing, in the face of overwhelming odds, that you can fly? Getting pilloried in the popular press for something you mostly didn't do? Getting run out of town by a vindictive ex? Trying to avoid eye contact with an OCD man on a city bus? Running on a treadmill with an apple-colored iPod on your arm? Getting a paper cut and suckling syphilitic turtle balls?
I doubt that turtles can get syphilis.
Current Mood: crackin'
Current Music: the garbeurator
|
|
05:03 pm
[Link] |
weltschmerz (VELT-shmerts)
Oye oye
I'm feeling fukn tragic.
Ever had one of those lunchtimes where everyone you encountered on the street, in the post office and in a restaurant was rude and miserable?
At a buffet restaurant, a woman elbowed me in the neck while squeezing past me with an abrupt "Excuse me". I spat my half chewed greens back onto my plate and glowered at her, but she was insensible to it. What started off as a smiley encounter at the P.O. descended into a series of remonstrations and recriminations where the clerk berated me for not addressing the envelope correctly in Chinese. I had no excuse to offer, only a plea for understanding.
But then I had a nice encounter with yr coffee lady and her sister's children and it sapped me of my anger, leaving me only with an unaccountable feeling of loss.
I wish I were Saddam at the height of his power and poetry.
I wish I were Kim Jong-Il in his train speeding across Siberia, soaked in whores, champers and caviar.
I wish I were Ferdinand Marcos grooving on his wife's shoe collection and shaking his head gently as if to say 'women'.
|
|
04:05 pm
[Link] |
Good Friday
Good Friday. Barabas had the naming rights.
A woman I work with (who wears a great hunking cross around her neck like she is lurching down the road to Calvary herself) didn't know who Barabas was. Being Protestant is no excuse. If you're going to be a Jesus lover and believe that his supposed anabiosis is a sign of eternal redemption the least you could do is familiarise yourself with his tale. She is probably one of the twelve percent of Americans who believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.
Wilful cultural ignorance.
Current Mood:  distressed
Current Music: scared weird little guys
Tags: scared weird little guys
|
|
08:47 am
[Link] |
Randy
Fucking Randy. He must get on the subway at 7:00 to arrive at work when he does. And I know why. It's not to get a jumpstart on the day's work, gentle reader -- if it were, he wouldn't be sleeping on three rollerwheel chairs pulled into a line, a makeshift bed, when I arrive at 8:30.
It's to put on his music. We're two computers in a small area, and we have an unspoken rule that the first one in gets his music for the day (or, more likely, until lunch, when I feel it fair to shut his off and turn mine on). By "his music" I mean KFOG San Francisco. It's all he plays. I know the 50-odd songs of their rotation by heart, commercials, too, which pisses me off enormously, especially when I catch myself singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with the girls promoting science education for girls.
I'm going to get him excluded from the aforementioned blow-job and sedation services.
Current Mood: bellicose
Current Music: KFOG San Francisco
|
|
11:50 am
[Link] |
On My Desk
Three manila envelopes; a neon-green Nalgene bottle; two jars of Omega-3 fish oil; a tobacco pipe; a lighter; a Chinese "chop" with my name engraved in the base; a packet of two disposable Gillette razors, still unopened; a half-finished crinkle-pack of finasterade; "On Writing Well," by William Zinsser; a Nokia T29 that doesn't work; some Japanese "wash whip" in a pump bottle; a blue, single-serving bodum, grounds compressed in the bottom; a tin of Ahmad English tea; a Costco-sized box of Twinings Earl Grey tea; Rohto menthol eyedrops; a small bottle of Holiday Inn shampoo; a half-box of business cards; the Chicago Manual of Style; Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary; Roget's International Thesaurus; a 3M lamp; a red Pilot V5 pen; a Tupperware container one-fifth full of coffee beans; "Letters for All Occasions," by Alfred Stuard Myers; a Ralph Lauren Purple Label tie; two magnets; a packet of staplers; a business card from some guy at the gym; the speech I'm working on.
Current Music: Howling Wolf -- Mannish Boy
|
|
03:57 pm
[Link] |
The boy bands, the cell phones
Told them I had a dentist appointment this morning and slept in. Had that first porridge-thick cup of coffee at 13:00, not 8:30, so I gots my buzz on now, and there's a decent song on iTunes, and only two more hour of labor for today, which is a mild one for late-winter Asia.
How To Improve My Office Productivity
1) Blow-job Teams. I can't believe no one's thought of this. They come around, tap you on the shoulder at your workstation, and ask whether oral attention would, ah, unh, gratify you. That'd be cool, no? Who's doing it? Good question. Not the homo in Division Three, the one who, in your third month, asked you how to translate "erotic" from Chinese. The girl with big eyes from Division Two, for sure; maybe that one from the bank downstairs.
2) Sedation Teams. I can't believe no one's thought of this. They sneak up and plunge a syringe full of seconol into the back of your neck. You turn to object, but as you speak, darkness crowds from the edges of your vision. You slip out of your chair, into the dust and cockroach eggs on the floor beneath your desk. You're woken hours or days later by the blow-job team, who suggest Italian food and a few blow jobs.
Current Mood: torpid
Current Music: King of Spain -- Galaxie 500
|
|
09:31 am
[Link] | I need an honest working definition of "macking." What does it mean?
|
|
09:30 am
[Link] |
Friends and editing
It's the holidays. Friends don't let friends drive drunk, and friends don't let friend edit other friends' touch-feely statement-of-purpose essays to Montessori schools in India, of all places.
If a huge guy comes up to you in the gym and shows you how a narrower grip on the EZ-curl bar gives you a better burn in your pipes, you listen. If a carpenter tells you that using a smaller router bit will help you build a stronger cabinet joint, you listen. But if an editor tells you that it's more economical to say "they" than "the people that are over there," you get huffy, and your dad who is a schoolteacher gets huffy, and the post-Christmas bonhomie founders, and you wonder why, if they wanted your advice, they are huffily pretending to wash dishes and wishing you to leave.
Next time, corrections in pencil. The rebuke of red ink.
Current Mood:  cold
Current Music: KFOG San Francisco
|
|
10:49 am
[Link] |
Earwax
My hearing hasn’t been too clear of late. I often mistake a word or a phrase for something else. Yesterday I went to see the doctor. He wanted to listen to my heart so I took off my shirt.
“Big Breasts”, he said with what I took to be a touch of admiration.
I was about to thank him for this strange and unsolicited comment when it occurred to me that:
1. I am a man
2. My pectorals are not that developed, yet.
3. I am not afflicted with man-boobs.
4. That he was placing his stethoscope on my back.
Ah. “Deep breaths”.
Speaking to a fellow-penitent after mass last Sunday he told me of someone he knows who runs a website, “Gayporn.com”. I begged his pardon and once again he said “Gayporn.com”. The organ was rather loud but I’m sure he said it twice. I must have looked befuddled because he asked me what was wrong.
“I’m sorry”, I said, “but did you say ‘“Gayporn.com?”’ He took on a deep red color and looked very offended. He said, “I said ‘“Gamepro.com”’.
We haven’t spoken since. He may have thought that I was hitting on him.
There have been many other incidents similar to this and I’m a little concerned. I think I need a professional ear clean but I’m not so sure how they’d do it. My imagination runs riot at the prospect. Are there gallons of earwax that I have thus far been unable to excavate awaiting removal? Will my head feel lighter afterward?
Current Music: Anything by Fischer-Dieskau
|
|
09:25 pm
[Link] |
Divulgement and dissimulation = Rant
I think I lack challenge. It occured to me earlier that I defined myself in my own country more by what I was not than what I was. Living in another culture, I am obviously not of any of it. So what am I? A memory of what I was not? I need a refresher course.
I seek refuge in things I can control, my body, my appearance.
I grew a moustache in an effort to shake things up a little, but I shaved it off when two people said I looked like a pedophile. Since when do people equate the look of a '30s matinee idol with pedophilia?
I think more about the development of the 'teardrop' muscle at the base of my quads than I do about international politics, the Kyoto Agreement and its naysayers, or that poor Australian kid that was executed in Singapore earlier today.
The scowl on my face grows and is attempting to wrest control of my demeanour.
Sophie, my love interest, puts up with me, but I'm not sure that I want someone who is prepared to. I wouldn't.
Sitting underneath an a/c vent doesn't improve my temper but the management fail to listen. Has anyone written a good opera about modern life?
Current Mood:  blank
Current Music: The Girl Of Yeye - Joe and the Stormies
|
[<< Previous 10 entries] |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
meurseult's journal