Ceci N'est Pas Un PowerBook

It is 93 degrees outside and I am sitting in my apartment, naked and wrapped in a blanket, shivering violently. This has been a most satisfactory day, thus far. I organized my wallet, ate tofu and corn chips, and began a wi-fi map of Champaign-Urbana.

I also discovered the coolest thing ever:


I want one desperately.

My Roommate, the Flim-Flam Artist

Let me tell you all a story about how Erin Hogan began and ended the evening with generosity, but in between lied through her filthy fucking teeth.

Today is Friday. On Friday, the guards at the museum are given (GIVEN) all the leftover food from the in-house cafe. Today, that added up to quite a bit. I had a turkey and avocado sandwich on rosemary focciacia, a turkey and pesto sandwich on wheat, and two (TWO) pieces of chocolate chip banana bread. On my way home from work, I was incredibly productive. I located Jessica's I-Card, reported a high-pitched beeping in the apartment next door, and brought in my dry-cleaning.

But none of this has anything to do with Erin's munificence or duplicity. When I returned home from my many travels and travails, Erin invited me to join her at the local bookshoppery (Barnes & Noble). I agreed, pending consumption of my turkey and avocado sandwich on rosemary focciacia. Erin agreed to wait; this action, combined with her invitation compose her first instance of magnanimity. It was all downhill from then on.

That's a lie of my own. She was actually a perfectly delightful reading companion, losing herself as fully in the tribulations of the rich and famous as I lost myself in the trials of Jason Bourne. Periodically, we engaged in light conversation. In one such exchange, Erin Hogan lied her fucking head off.

"At my library, we have to rent books. It costs a quarter for each book."

I challenged her. I am quite familiar with libraries and their inner-workings. I've been fired from employment at almost four of them. There's no renting, there's lending. And fees only kick in for lost or late items.

"It's true," Erin wailed unconvincingly, "ask my mom!"

So I did. I called that deceitful girl's mother. Her mother agreed that Erin was prone to tall tales and wild inventions...that is, until Erin got on the phone with her. Using the persuasive and treacherous abilities essential to flim-flam artists like herself, Erin poisoned her mother's mind. She poisoned it as skillfully and coldly as a master mind-poisoner might. The poor woman has probably rarely been free of Erin's nefarious clutches.

"Now that I think about it," her addled mother amended, "we did live out of district when we lived in Texas and there was a small charge for borrowing materials."

"Poor woman," I murmured.

After hanging up with Erin's mother, we drove by a McDonald's and Erin bought me a SnackWrap, presumably to buy my silence. I have integrity; I would not be swayed; after consuming the tortilla-wrapped chicken tender I turned to the Internet to faithfully report my experience.

Erin Hogan will have to learn that my silence costs a bit more than $1.29+tax. I might also require a beverage.

True Story.

My Head Aches in a Very Serious Way

I thought that the Interrobang was the alpha and omega of cool.
I was right.

This is really cool too, though.

Downloading Music

I download a great deal of music. I feel an entitlement to it because I enjoy it so much. It isn't really a matter of supporting the artist; most of the musicians that I listen to are very much not alive. I know that any way you look at it, it is still a variety of theft. That doesn't bother me the way it might. A lot of people ignore the fact that downloading music is illegal; I don't ignore it, but I cannot seem to care. I feel a thorough morality whenever I download music. "Who has the right," I ask myself, "to tell me that I cannot listen to Sarah Vaughn, Eartha Kitt, Maria Callas, or Edith Piaf whenever I choose to do so? I could love them more than anyone else could possibly love them."

I often become very belligerent when I consider the things I love and enjoy. I think, at times, that no one could have as deep and as spiritual an enjoyment as I can have and I feel that my depth of feeling constitutes such a personal familiarity with an artist that I have a right to their art.

Proverbs of the World (with Strouse)

There are 40 kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense.
African Proverb

A lazy boy and a warm bed are difficult to part.
Danish Proverb

Lazy men get active when it's time to sleep.
German Proverb

Be sure to send a lazy man for the angel of death.
Jewish Proverb

It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.
Indian Proverb

And our favorite,

Death is a black camel that lies down at every door. Sooner or later you must ride the camel.
Saudi Arabian Proverb

Goodbye, my Strousey Friend.

Addendum, some minutes later...
I realize that it may sound as though Strouse is dead. I assure you all that he is alive and rather well.
Strouse is departing for S. Afrika to redeem the reputation of the United States of America through good works and wishful thinking.
I'm sure you all join me in wishing him precisely as much luck as he will need.
Excess luck will merely weigh the boy down.

Godspeed.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Encode...

I am trapped in the staticky undergarment of anxiety. The Internet has always seemed like my friend. It provides me with hours of enjoyment and the means to communicate with bundles of buddies and piles of pals, to use imagery that is oddly evocative of the Holocaust. Tonight, the Internet fills me only with the violent feeling of abandonment. I have been left by the side of the information superhighway, completely helpless and unable to do anything but use an over-tired phrase from Al Gore's 1991 campaign speeches. I am not exactly technologically savvy. In fact, I am so lacking in savviness that I have used the word savvy (or some derivative) three times already and that's not really very cool. You might be interested to know, however, that the word savvy(#4) is, according to the Oxford American Dictionary anyway, a late 18th century pidgin English word from the Spanish sabe usted. That IS cool, but I am not. I cannot write or edit HTML effectively and I do not know even what kind of software I would need. I'm really good at deleting useful portions of code that I didn't write and cannot replace. Sometimes I download new software and I delete it all because I cannot figure out how to use it. I pretend these events don't happen, but they do.

Basically, I never know exactly what I am doing and I feel troubled and lost and betrayed by misleadingly simplified websites like Blogger and Geocities that have lulled me into a false sense of competence with their formulaic methods and ease of use.
I am ill-equipped for the future.
Hell, I am ill-equipped for the present.
What's more, I am too panicky to more properly equip myself.

M'aider! M'aider!

My New Hero

My new hero is a South African writer named James Matthews. I've never read a word that he has written, but he simply has to be a good writer. There is no way around that fact. It is a necessity of existence, a premise upon which the world is based. He is perfection, from his lilting voice (you don't know a lilting voice until you've heard his), to his grizzled beard (he is the very personification of grizzled), to his infatuation with Nina Simone. Word has it that he can frequently be found in jazz cafes in Cape Town. That's fine with me.


I love this weird little man.

Overheard in New York Revisited

One for the philosophers...
Boy #1: Damn it! I forgot my iPod.
Boy #2: Don't worry. The city is a soundtrack in itself.

Two for the cinephiles...
Tween boy #1: Do you want to rent Madagascar?
Tween boy #2: No, I've seen it.
Tween boy #1: So?
Tween boy #2: I don't like watching movies I've seen already.
Tween boy #1: How about Ice Age?
Tween boy #2: Seen it.
Tween boy #1, to video clerk: Do you have Bridge Over the River Kwai?

Hipster: Aren't you some kind of traitor? You're going to film grad school, and you saw Click on opening night?

For the vegetarians and cyclists...
A teen girl punches her father repeatedly in the arm.

Older sister: You know he can't feel that, right? He's wearing a leather jacket.
Teen girl: What?
Older sister: Yeah, that's why motorcyclists wear leather, so they don't get their skin scraped off when they go sliding across the pavement.
Teen girl: Oh! So if I punch a cow, it can't feel it?

For the patriotic...
Lady with five kids: You can't get anything here. We gots to get to Old Navy to buy us all our Fourth of July t-shirts so we match at the picnic.
Guy: They have the best deal. Shirts are five dollars each, that's like [counts kids, self, and wife] less than twenty bucks for all of us, and even the baby shit has a flag on it.

And lastly, for my mother
An ice cream truck is going up the street.

Little girl in wagon: Mommy, that truck song is annoying.
Hipster mom: Yes, the commodification of your desires is annoying, isn't it?

Good Night, and Good Luck