MisterNihil.com
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28.4.03I had a good weekend. I climbed on a rock, I cooked chicken, I went to Karaoke night at KoKo's Taiwanese Cafe. Busy busy busy. It's a good feeling. OH! and I'm all signed up to speak at a near-future Toastmasters' meeting, and I learned new guitar junk. Always nice. See? Plenty. I slept well last night, and I feel like I'll sleep well tonight. It was a good weekend if it takes you two solid nights' sleep to recover. The day, lemmetellya, was gorgeous yesterday. It was sunny, and as we climbed, the barometer dropped. A wind kept picking up gently and dropping off, so it was cool without being scary to be on a rope on a rock. My parylizing fear of heights made it a little hard being up high, but from where I was, I could turn around and actually enjoy the view. Toshi and I learned how to tie what seems to be the standard knot for rock climbing, a rewoven figure of 8 knot, capped off with a simple sailor's knot. It was a fine day for climbing and a fine day for cooking outside. I learned that the best way to waste the process of marinating chicken in rum is to cook it over mesquite. I learned that honey in a marinade does bad things if it clumps instead of mixing in. I rediscovered the joys of cooking with hard liquors (vodka-kahlua barbeque sauce is a thing of beauty, and if you make it right, it's black.) I remembered what it is to have a quiet afternoon with good friends and simple food. I am slowly remembering why I wanted to learn to play the guitar, and I am on the verge of knowing some songs. I spent a wonderful afternoon and evening enjoying Natosha's friendship, as a lover must from time to time. It was a good weekend. Posted at 3:20 PM - - - - - - - 25.4.03I am tired. It's funny: I can be exhausted bodily and emotionally fresh, but my feelings always drag me physically down with them. Posted at 4:51 PM Am now the proud owner of an inexpensive used amp. Notice, did not mention vomit, as this one comes without that feature. Perhaps I'm squeemish, but I really don't think I'll be taking back the amps Tim borrowed semi-perminantly, as they've got thrown-up egg-beaters on them. There was this show, see, and the Influence had to prove they were better than the other bands, and that they vomit onstage better than anybody. I am properly glad I wasn't at that show. My amps were, however, and so I probably won't be in possession of them any time soon. I mean, eeew. Posted at 4:48 PM It's Friday. I'm still here. Are they related? I dunno. I owe somebody a check, right? Confused. Posted at 2:08 PM - - - - - - - 24.4.03This is what "At Work Late" looks like, huh? Posted at 8:10 PM I am as unsubtle as a person can be. And yet I am accused of sneakiness. Posted at 3:36 PM I have so much to do, I think I'll do nothing. How 'bout that? Posted at 1:39 PM - - - - - - - 23.4.03Almost done. See some o' y'all tonight. Posted at 4:45 PM Haze hangs between my eyes and reality. Matter Wavers, fades, and comes momentarily into sharp focus. My eyes are heavy; their gravity attracts my lids. I revert to very slowly making repetetive gestures with my hands. I slide my left thumbnail up and down my right thumbnail as if removing a sheet of scum from it. The world has stopped. I am still. Inside, I scream, silently waiting. The world grinds back into motion, life begins again. Posted at 1:43 PM On the plus side, though, I may have a new amp soon. Well, new to me, which is, lemmetellya, fine. Posted at 1:40 PM Ssssssssss Posted at 1:36 PM Y'know that feeling where you're either gonna fall asleep or yell a lot at somebody. That's Me. Posted at 1:21 PM Two small dots on the horizon. A bird, drifting, sees itself in a lake and dives down, skimming the water. A mountain chained to the ground strains at its restraints but still does not move. A crane stands at the waters' edge, believing in the power of trisilicophosphoroacetate. A cloud overhead remembers the day when, looking skyward, he began, slowly, to live. Posted at 10:08 AM There are just days when you wait for the inevitable like a hammer, and it still won't come soon enough. Time, time, time is on your side, it ain't on mine. Thanks, Flash. Posted at 9:22 AM climbing tonight. Climbing this weekend. What's anybody else think? Barbeque? I wanna try this thing with dark rum as a chicken marinade which I am ripping off from broangelbob. Posted at 8:17 AM Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man early to work and already kind of tired at about 8am. Posted at 8:15 AM - - - - - - - 22.4.03Man, I am convinced, this is a life full of silly. Posted at 3:58 PM Why yes, I'll be eating animal flesh for lunch. Yes, I do like the way it pollutes my body and I enjoy being haunted by the souls of the... um, it's tuna haunting me today, actually. No, they don't have sad cow-eyes. No, I honestly just think Tuna eyes are creepy. Me? I eat fish because I hate them. Yes. I hate all of them. If they were all dead? I'd dance. grumble grumble nosy vegans grumble. Posted at 2:52 PM Cindi's still kickin'. We saw her recently in a Dr. Pepper Ad, and I had to wonder if there were a newer release than shine, which there doesn't seem to be. I hadn't heard of this one, though. That seems to be what's up, other than touring and the odd greatest hits collection in the pipe. I suppose, too, if you've read this far you're interested, and so this seems a nifty thing, if only to see them all in one place. Posted at 2:12 PM reposted from Dave Barry's blog. (as was the Madonna thing below) Posted at 1:37 PM Dude. Harsh. Posted at 12:53 PM - - - - - - - 21.4.03Everything looks more edible when you're hungry. Posted at 3:25 PM Stew on toast is lunch. On fine afternoons, anyway. Posted at 3:20 PM I commented on this in February, but here goes again: No, no, we keep narrowly AVERTING armageddon. Pessimistic nihilist assholes, I swear. The new Left Behind book, number 11, Armageddon, is no.1 on the NYT bestseller list. If you people all think yer gonna die, why are you buying these books? Posted at 1:55 PM So, exciting news for me and perhaps as many as two other people who'll read this, I saw Bill (Whiz!) at work today. It was good to see him, as I keep managing to miss him at Toastmasters meetings. Posted at 1:33 PM - - - - - - - 20.4.03Every time you say "I don't know," what are you really saying? I forgot, personally, but that's what makes me me. Posted at 10:43 PM - - - - - - - 18.4.03She Posted at 10:00 AM - - - - - - - 16.4.03Ahh, the web. It's like TV you read. Posted at 10:19 AM - - - - - - - 15.4.03I work with poets. I've got a whole long thing I could post, but it was sent via store email, so I'm reluctant to post it to an outside source. Point is, I work with poets. Posted at 2:08 PM - - - - - - - 14.4.03Be amused. Why? 'Cause she's making a stop at BookPeople on her national tour, that's why. Posted at 5:15 PM Hey: Hee hee. Posted at 4:43 PM Hey: Live in Austin? Know your candidates. Also, on Sunday morning, we went out to Barton Creek Greenbelt, and lemme tellya, Spring is Here! Yay! Ben's take on what it is be Texan:After a long winter inside, doing what you always did, but fearing storms and other evil falling from the sky, spring arrives. You turn your color-starved eyes out for the first time in months; winter is a series of bleak brown months, reminding those Texans of almost any generation of the bleak brown decades of youth. Spring is the end of those decades, the end of brown, the beginning first of green, and then of those improbable colors that pop up between highways and through pavements; red, blue, Yellow, even vibrant stationery white. There are two feelings spring brings with it: first, it was clearly a Texan who felt the need to invent a gasoline-powered lawnmower; and second, if all of the people moved out of Austin, the town would be swallowed by ivy and grasses inside of five years. Barring another decade-long drought. It is the way of things here. If you watch, you can see the longer cycles everything is moving in. Some places get the same boring four seasons over and over, growth, sun, death, snow, growth, sun, death, snow. Texas moves in longer and shorter cycles, growth, sun, death, sun, growth, freeze, death, growth, sun, freeze, growth, sun, growth, rain, growth, flood, death, sun, freeze, sun, growth, sun, death, sun, growth, sun, death, sun, freeze; that's the cycle today, this week, this month, this year, this century, this geological age, you name it. Fractal weather. These new children, though, don't appreciate the weather. They see the spring come in spring time, they see the mild winters and hot summers, all happening when they should. They don't remember grassy fields turning into patches of red-brown dirt, cracks you can stand in up to your head (isn't erosion a problem? Nope. You gotta have rain for erosion, and if it rained, it'd get sucked into the ground as fast as it could fall from the sky). They don't remember forgetting what rain is, or the pleasure and strangeness of morning dew; they don't know what it looks like when a lake turns into a puddle, or when a public pool becomes a scum of chlorine on scratchy tiles; they didn't grow up thinking snow was made of plastic and that real cold was a myth; they've never thought of humidity as a gift from God. I can't go out but I remember the bad times. I was reminded of that this weekend, out on the Greenbelt. It's thick like the greenery of my youth, toughened by knowledge of thirst and full of the memory and meanness that comes from years of uninterupted heat. There are brambles in that green; brambles on trees that don't grow them. The green grows sharp in this state, and it's just how many of us grew up. I'd forgotten, I think, how to treasure it, and gotten bogged down in the bugs and heat and glorious discomfort of it all. I was reminded again this weekend, that when something precious goes away, it comes back changed. Posted at 2:46 PM Calmer now, found out the following: the 22nd amendment repeal has been sent in several times before and died in committee. The UN pull-out, though, could go either way. I believe, and this info might be out of date, that it's looking for a co-sponsor; if another representative stands up for it, it'll come to a vote. Posted at 1:53 PM So, just to paraphrase BroAngelbob, Holy Fucking Shit. That link's to the introduction of the measure. It is in committee, which is better than I was afraid. Oh, and hey, since we're playing this game, Holy Fucking Shit. This is a bill to end our participation in the UN. How bout 'dem apples? Posted at 1:21 PM - - - - - - - 11.4.03Everything looks different today. Posted at 4:02 PM 2 things: First, looking at my post from yesterday, I realized that the reason the horoscope made less sense earlier is because it was a different horoscope earlier in the week. I was damn tired yesterday. Second, pro2.com is a web page, and if you go to it (instead of pro2.blogger.com), it opens a defunct internet company page with a great big Viagra ad on it. If you close it, it opens a page that says "Want a BIG Penis?" Life is funny. Posted at 4:01 PM - - - - - - - 10.4.03Brezsny sez: It's time to go straight to the source, Cancerian. Eliminate the middlemen -- and the middlewomen, too. Don't believe anyone who claims that he alone can connect you with the valuable stuff you need. As much as possible, wean yourself from translators, agents, and brokers. And don't worry: This won't result in you becoming lonely and isolated. I predict that whenever you shed a relationship with someone who uses and exploits you, you'll open the way for a new link with a person who is respectful of your gifts. Does that mean don't listen to Brezsny? Hee hee. Thing is, it meant nothing to me when I read it earlier in the week. It means a lot now. 'S funny. Posted at 12:27 PM - - - - - - - 8.4.03Sick, sick, sick. I'm sick. I live loud and quiet. I scream at the top of my lungs that I don't know what to scream. I cry from the mountain top that my feet hurt. I Sound My Barbaric "Eh." from the rooftops of the world. I am all power and no control. I am all direction and no purpose. WOE unto him that gets in my way, and WOE unto I who stand with me. Life stands before me and I stare into the abyss. Death stands behind me and I scratch my head and pretend otherwise. I face up, down, sides, any way but forward, anything but to see where I must, inevitably, go. I cannot build momentum. I cannot build strength. I cannot build character. Every start must, inevitably stop to wait for no one but myself. I am the conductor, I am the engineer, I am the passenger, and one of me is always late for the train. I am tired. I am restless. I am jittery. I am unconscious. I see a life before me, I see a life behind. I choose neither. Commitment: it is life and death; it is a drowning breath; it is the last refuge of those who see no possibilities. It is limitation. To be limitless, to be absolutely composed of potential is to be pointless and to rush toward death. Thus, I stand ready no longer. I will loose my arrows on the world. I will cry out once and for all and I will be no more the sluggard who will not Exist on his own terms. Life waits for no man. Time rushes past and he who does not seize onto it is left behind in a puddle of possibility. Expression is loss of potential. Loss of potential is life. Life is the One Purpose for which I exist. Wiser and more foolish men than I have asked "Why Are We Here." I answer, "To Live, and then To Die." Posted at 11:34 PM Paraphrasing Poi Dog Pondering, My life is like eating cold oatmeal. Posted at 5:41 PM I need more coffee. Posted at 5:32 PM Do you write a lot? I just went through my archives. It turns out I write a lot. Well Damn. Posted at 5:32 PM A sign of the apocalypse if ever there were one: A good idea from the usually useless RoboBelly. Posted at 5:17 PM Right, but then what the hell would I write? Posted at 1:02 AM There's something sinister about a man with a pipe. Posted at 12:41 AM - - - - - - - 7.4.03Wouldn't this make a great shirt?  'Course, I also think that "The Surprise Jesi" is a good band name. From a Chick tract. When I first heard about them, some Cammies told me about "these little comics that really offended me," called "Chick Tracts." I was thinking Tijuana Bibles. Imagine my surprise when we found one in the Sci/Fi section of the store. Posted at 4:25 PM We went to the Alamo for Toshi's birthday, and saw the newest "stolen-from-Stephen-King movie, "Dreamcatcher." The casting, let me just say, was great. Jason Lee was Jason Lee. Donny "Donny-Don" Wahlberg was his usual, unrecognizable self (I hope that comes out as a compliment. It was supposed to be). The cast was good. The location was good. It was written by William Goldman, whom I can't hate if only because he gave us the Princess Bride. So, who do I hate in this movie? I blame the director, Kasdan. Why? Because I read the book first. I know, I know, you should never read the book first, especially if it's a Stephen King and he had nothing to do with it (he doesn't even appear in this one). But, see, that's the thing. The book is good precisely because it's a monster scar-'em BOOghost book, without a big nasty monster. Yes, there's some grossness, but by the time you're half-way through the book you're done with the weasles, and you're actually ready to pay attention to what turns into really a pretty good split-personality thriller story about how a person deals with stress in life and the inevitable conclusion that one has failed at everything and still has to go along and cope with everyday life. Very few of us are cowboys and astronauts. How do you cope? OK, but that's not even what I hated about the movie. You can't DO that in a movie and make it interesting to sixty million people who'll want to pay seven fifty to see your three hour piece of crap. I understand that. So, why did I hate this movie? King wrote Dreamcatcher as a long-ass episode of XFiles. It's a good story about psychic phenomena and alien invasion. It ties in a little with other books he's written. The book-on-tape version will get you most-way across europe by car. The premise is that all the aliens we see (as a species, I'm talkin' about here) are actually this sort of gross, psychic red moss (a very Leistikovian idea, in mine own humble opinion) that we see as tall grey aliens because we want to see them as tall, grey aliens. In this movie, there were big, black, slimy aliens. They were everywhere. Like fucking cockroaches they were. King wrote a book without big, slimy aliens. Kasdan and Goldman put 'em back in. That's why I hated this movie. It's gettin' so I hate most stuff. I should really learn to chill. But it was sodisappointing. Part of me hopes that Bag of Bones is made into a good movie. Part of me hopes Hollywood looks right over it. As far as I can tell, there are no plans right now to make it into a movie. It's the ghost story Toshi is always looking for in the Horror section. The Others was a comparable ghost story. It was smart and scary, which is a pretty rare combination. So is Bag of Bones. I'd hate to see what the movie would be like. Sorry. Digression. Point is, Dreamcatcher: Novel-atypical King; movie-turned back into typical King; me-peeved. So, yeah, save yer $5. Or even better, for the same price, go buy the paperback. It's a good book. Posted at 12:17 AM - - - - - - - 2.4.03I hope you're having a good day. I sure as hell am. Cause I know what Toshi's getting for her birthday, I know what Toshi's getting for her birthday, I know what Toshi's getting for her birthday. Which is, by the way, Friday, for those of you who are counting. Posted at 5:07 PM Just to make myself crazy, I checked out the free stats on my forwarding page (it only knows how many times it forwards a person from misternihil.com to the content of this page, not what they do before or after, just in case you're worried), and I was shocked to learn that I got more than 400 hits last month. I averaged close to 240 per month last year. But what really scares me is the robobelly topped 220 last month, although I think the site's stats are a little off, as it thinks there were 0 hits for robobelly in December, and I know I went to it if nothing else. Who the hell are all you people, reading thoughts on a robot's belly? Ya buncha wierdos. Or, in normal person talk, thanks. I'm kinda touched. OK, back to yer life. Posted at 4:57 PM - - - - - - - 1.4.03Annie Proulx cancelled her event. She called last week to say she wouldn't be here today. We've got 33 copies of her new book here now, after we had to return almost 400. She's the person who wrote Shipping News, from which they made that movie which you all, of course, watched until your eyes fell out of your head. Or not. She cancelled her whole national tour. All over the US, bookstores are returning her books by the boatload. We got them to pay shipping on the return. Her reason for not signing books for the thousands of rabid fans out there who'd pay money for her writing? "The War." That's as much as she'll explain. She cancelled the tour because of "The War." That's not a reason, it's an adjective and a noun. Grrr. Posted at 3:49 PM - - - - - - - | All material copyright 2002-2003 Ben Gibbs. | |||||||||
