Hi

What's missing?

I wrote something earlier, deleted it. Will I delete this one? Right now I'm reading Mysteries of Pittsburgh--debut novel of one Michael Chabon--probably one of my favorite writers. I haven't read everything he's got, but I read a couple and he's fucking good. I don't know what it is about him that fascinates me, or why his prose is so easy for me to gobble up like cheeseburgers straight from the grill (with those little squares of american cheese laid oh-so-perfectly upon their tops). But every time I start one of his books I feel like I have landed inside a strange bubble of reality and time--usually one that is almost my own but not quite. This one is less maddeningly confusing as the first I read, The Yiddish Policeman's Union but not as epic as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, but that's okay, because it's about being drunk and confused in college. I know that undersells it, who cares? If you want to read it, go do that, or you can borrow my copy, alright? If you're reading this than maybe my opinion matters to you. Either way, this isn't a book review.

On the other hand, I'm listening to Anderson.Paak's album Malibu and I kinda dig it but I don't get it. It's weird and unruly and not repetitive and I haven't changed it. This following a week where I listened to Minor Threat by Dave's suggestion as well as Arcade Fire's Funeral which of course which's genius I am only now discovering like 10 years after the fact. It's usually how it goes.

I'm not trying to structure an argument here, I'm a little too self-aware that I haven't written here in three years and the last things I wrote were for my friend teecozee's blog called "theoretical Thursdays" (found here) and the last thing I wrote for myself was a little over a year ago. Can't let it get me down though, gotta power through the weariness and the nightmare of self-effacement before it unspools into whatever that other article was about (don't worry, it's gone now. Shhhh, shhhh, I'm here now, all will be okay and the mean truths can again go unspoken).

Before I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh I read Unknown Man #89 by Elmore Leonard, who is an author every single person (especially aspiring authors) shoud read. His dialogue is spot-on and I like that his charaters are visceral and give absolutely no fucks about anything else but what they're up to.

There is a fire-siren going off every forty seconds or so, starting low and reaching a crescendo within seconds and holding there, right on the outer edge of steel-blade slicing evil, mind-numbing, wriggling excruciation before dropping down below the line of hearing. And then of course it winds right.the.fuck.back. UP. If it goes on for another hour it will drive the entire neighborhood insane. I'll have to cordone off the stairwell as sound-induced zombies crawl up the banisters and toss molotov cocktails up onto the foyer, parents will overturn carriages, skip over the baby formula for the hard liquor and hand soap, drinking both with fevor only matched by the way the children throw chunks of the torn up street through the windows of local businesses. Fire will start in the corner of the gas station and the whole thing will go up, engulfing the whole block, and probably half of the next one, an M conductor traveling past with be inundated with sound, drive the train too hard and fast and whip through the station and rattle the bridge until it collapses onto the street, filling it with wrecked debris and cars and train parts and lives and then they'll call the locals, and they'll come in, go mad and start gunning down the innocent, then they'll call in the SWAT and the same thing will happen, and my normally mild, boring street will fill quickly with warring factions of madness driven by a sound that holy fuck it finally stopped. Whew. That was trouble.

I am 8 songs into this album and still haven't changed it. I think that is a good sign. I don't really know how to listen to music anymore, or how to find good shit. I don't even know if this album I'm listening to is any good. I do know it's not shitty. So I like it. I recently tried to discuss how I am an album person with Dave (after he called himself "an album guy") and realized that it's a topic that doesn't really warrant a conversation. We're the new Old, aren't we, Dave? Give us another fifteen years and our children will draw comics about us gumming our food we're so old.

In conclusion, this is my conclusive paragraph. In it, I will make vague references to my earlier statements and try to tie them together in a conclusive way, so that I may conclude this paragraph as well as this group of paragraphs that couldn't be called an essay even if I wrote it in double-spaced type in 14 pt font (Times New Roman). With any maybes, I will be back soon to put more thoughts into your heads. Hopefully with more, "you know"s and long-winded extrapolation of what I really meant earlier when I said. Not to mention the unmentionables and the way sometimes you just want to write something and say it instead of having to have a real point. It's nice.