So I turned in my qual, my junior qualifying examination in linguistics, last night. Now John B. Haviland is deciding whether I'm smart enough, a good enough linguist, or know enough about linguistics (take yr pick) to write a thesis in/on linguistics. I've mainly gotten over the problem that's dominated my semester, that he will never think as highly of me as I want, but it's still tough for me to have him determining fairly broad swaths of my future right now.

I feel like a zombie. I'm physically exhausted, mainly b/c I'm fucking sick again. If I'm gonna be sick every goddamn month, why the fuck did I bother to quit smoking a year ago? I'm intellectually exhausted b/c I have zero intellectual endurance these days: 4 consecutive hours of work is the best I can possibly hope for, after which I'm useless for an hour or hour and a half. & I mean useless, like sitting in a corner of the library lobby eating a tin of sardines, staring straight ahead, not focusing my eyes on anything. Playing Area 51 is abt all I'm good for in those moments. & I'm emotionally exhausted, b/c, well, b/c this is a big fucking boundary in my life, a big fucking transition. I'm officially preparing to begin the last phase of my undergraduate career. This phase also coincides w/ the beginning of my graduate career, my overall career, the thing I expect to spend the rest of my life doing.

So I'm at a rather low ebb just at the moment.

Turning in the qual last night was a very lonely experience. Tim & Ann, my closest friends in the department, are both preparing to graduate, finishing their theses & all. They got to take the qual together last year, & all of us were in the library computer labs all the time, finishing our papers for the classes we had together, they were taking the qual, & we were all stinky & tired & miserable & it was great, b/c it was very solidary & communal. I took my qual w/ Andy Wallace & we never talked. We'll be the only seniors next year, & we'll never bond. It's going to be a very lonely year next year, & I'm spending altogether too much time thinking about that these days...

But I think it's mainly the sheer fact of transition that's taking it out of me so much right now. I'm planning to mark the transition pretty strongly. I'm going to buy a new watch (I don't have a watch that I can wear: the watch I use has its band a length of bike innertube safteypinned into my hoody), I'm going to buy a bunch of niceish shirts so I don't look such a slob all the time, I'm going to stop wearing pants w/ holes in them. I'm also gonna get another tattoo. This is all stuff I'm gonna do once I've gotten word that I've passed the fucking thing.

In my fantasies, that happens tonight & I go shopping tomorrow. But probably it'll be longer than that.

But how am I supposed to recharge my batteries? Durkheim sez it's by spending time w/ people, but I so often find that a draining experience, a situation in which I have to give more than I get. Whatever.

I don't have the energy to think about this right now.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/29/2001 12:13:20 PM

3.18.2001

2 things I simply must write papers on someday.
1:
A truly baffling sticker on a big Suburban-like vehicle: This is offensive to women.
2:
The sign on the Arby's on Colfax & like Race in Denver: Arby's roast beef sandwich is delicious.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/18/2001 11:06:15 PM

3.12.2001

An interesting ambiguity:
All his efforts were to fail.

I'm emotionally and mentally/intellectually exhausted. See yesterday's mammoth thingy for the latter, 4 hours of seeing through things and understanding the real patterns of interaction, the real skeleton of, uh, my head. (Or something.) Followed it up with around 3 hours of really similar work on the interpretation of a native american myth and some speculations on the utility of a procedure allowing the interpretation of myths. Interesting work, and even in the best of times I rarely have 7 such great hours in a single day...but my endurance is just plain for shit these days, just plain for shit. So I'm tired.

& the emotional side...well, I dunno that I wanna get into that. But I've done a lot over the past 10 or so days, & it's beginning to take a real toll on me. I'm getting tired. I really really am.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/12/2001 01:18:47 PM

3.11.2001

So I've been thinking about this as something like a problem in information theory. Starting off with the goal of extracting one bit of information from a conversational partner (think of this as either a zero or a one, though really zero and one are here more like variables, answers to a question, and thus their value can and will change depending upon the question. This has introduced no little room for error or confusion in and of itself, but will recieve no further attention for these purposes.) the problem has quickly blossomed into something like two mutually influencing meta-systems, each comprising several highly complex and poorly-understood systems of their own. Basically, the problem moved from trying to extract a piece of information from a stream of data (get some signal out of the noise) to controlling for the other pieces of information (signals) that could just as easily be extracted from the data. So rather than information theory simplex, it's now a matter of cryptography, or of interpretation, which for my purposes more or less amount to the same thing.

The other thing that happened (and this was really the thing that drove the elaboration of the problem I just sketched above) was that I realized that while I'm trying to extract a single bit, there's another party probably trying to extract a signal from noise which I am emitting. This drove me to realize that I have to do the same thing, that I cannot count on manipulating the situation such that it's a simple problem of information: rather, I have to treat this as a large field of data from which I must extract some patterns.

But that's only half of the task.

See, the other thing I have to do is figure out what data I am emitting. This is hard, of course, because even if I'm objectively correct about what data I am emitting, it doesn't matter, because the real task is to figure out how whatever data I am emitting are being interpreted by the other party. After I have performed this task, I have to alter the data I am emitting so that the signals I want to be extracted are the signals that are getting extracted. Note here that the problem is crucially complexified by the fact that I don't actually have access to the interpretive framework being used by the other party. Rather, I have to infer what her framework is by the data I'm getting from her. And of course I have to assume that she is tailoring her output to match her model of my interpretive framework...

So like I said, two mutually-influencing meta-systems.

So what I take to be the best way of handling this, given the range and complexity of the tasks at hand, is the following. I must get as clear a picture as is possible of the meta-system that is me relative to the overall goal of being maximally aware of my data-transmission. That is, I'll try to figure out what one (meta-) system is up to in this situation before trying to model in any detailed or intricate way what the other (meta-) system might be doing. I will sketch this out in terms of independent and dependent variables in causal relation, to the extent that I can. Variables will be represented by vaguely mnemonically-chosen capital letters. Throughout, single quotes will surround quasi-definitions of those variables. They are only quasi-definitions, and will recieve varying presentation at various times. The actual definition of the variables is assumed to encompass all variations in the informal exposition below. No actual quantities shall be assigned to the variables, but their values are assumed to be numeric, thus continuous. If one wishes to assign them a fixed range, one may, but such will not take place here.

The dependent variable, let us call it X, will be 'displaying behavior (tailoring the transmission/expression/emission of data) which will demonstrate sexual/romantic interest in the individual (conversational partner, the other meta-system)' we will call A. (For the purposes at hand, the local meta-system may be abbreviated as F.) A good first approximation might posit or stipulate that the primary independent variable driving X would be Y, which is 'actual internal mental/emotional interest in A'. So we would have the following diagram (1):
(1) ^Y --> ^X
(Where "^" indicates 'as the value of the variable goes up', and "-->" indicates a causal relationship.) So this would mean that as actual internal mental/emotional interest in A goes up, behavior demonstrating sexual/romantic interest in A goes up. Not a bad beginning, really.

A brief digression. (Robert Brightman would have called it "a brief illustrious digression".) We know already that there are several potentially problematic variables driving Y, and a brief sketch thereof is perhaps not out of place. First, we have B and N, where B is 'belief that A is interested in F' and N is 'need to have something to do and think about, given F's current depression issues, failures in school, and so forth'. Both of these have direct linear effects on Y, as in (2) and (3) below.
(2) ^B --> ^Y
(3) ^N --> ^Y
However, N' (pronounced "N-prime" or "N-bar", depending on my mood) has an inverse effect on Y, such that as the value of N', which reflects 'F's awareness of possible bad reasons for the value of Y to be high' goes up, the value of Y goes down. We will show this in the following fashion.
(4) ^N' --> !^Y
(Where "!^" indicates 'as the value of the variable goes down'.) Note that in general, the prime or bar operator "'" shall be used to indicate doubts about the validity of some previously-introduced variable's value, and that it will tend to correspond to a decreasing of the effect of that variable.

A variable that can drive the value of N' up is O, which stands for 'interest in other girls (meta-systems, conversational partners, etc.)'. So we have a relation as below.
(5) ^O --> ^N'
But we have another complex interaction between variables, such that:
(6) ^Y --> !^O
Note the possible complexity we already have here. Holding all other factors equal for the moment and for the sake of the argument, let us raise the value of B, 'F's belief that A is sexually/emotionally/romantically interested in F'. By (2), the value of Y raises. As the value of Y raises, the value of O, 'sexual/emotional/romantic interest in other girls (...)' drops, by (6). Dropping the value of O drops the value of N', (we assume in general that we can conclude this by (5), though it is an empirical matter whether or not this is true in general. Here, I think it is true, but I think that in general we will find this to be a false generalization.) Dropping the value of N' drops the negative or "restraining" effect that N' had on the value of Y in (4). We then have here a possible self-perpetuating system.

Conclusion of digression: though we have glossed over a number of complexities already, to be sure, we have already seen that F by reflecting on his situation has a causal impact upon it, represented here specifically by the variable N', and more generally by the bar/prime operator. An interesting consequence of this is that meta-system F is fully capable of changing the situation completely without the presence of externally-provided data. Which is at least interesting, and at most, potentially, devastating.

Relaunch of main discussion. To this point, we have focused on the "back end" of the problem, on the value of Y and the things that affect it. But while all of this is important and interesting, the real meat of the problem is surely between Y and X. Remember (1), reprinted here for convenience:
(1) ^Y --> ^X
A moment's reflection will suffice to demonstrate that the matter is overwhelmingly nowhere near that simple. What then might be the relevant intervening factors? For our purposes, we can divide them into two broad classes, the first having to do with broadly contextual matters and the second concerned with more complex and internal/interpretive aspects of the situation. I treat of these in turn.

There is a variable P, which represents F's 'urge to keep personal matters, which may safely be exemplified, even in fact apotheosized, by Y, private'. P affects X as in (7):
(7) ^P --> !^X
The crucial factor that drives the value of P up is the feature of the context [+public]. The following three variables all represent contexts in which the feature [+public] is present:
(a) +R, where R is A's 'chaperone'.
(b) +B, where B is 'A and F being at the bar'.
(c) +S, where S is 'A and F being at school'.
Note that most contexts featuring A and F are +R and then also either +B or +S. (No situation may be +B and +S, of course, as they are in complementary distribution.) So the net effect of presence of [+public] is to suppress the 'display of behaviors expressing sexual/romantic/emotional interest in A on the part of F'.

Another brief digression. Note here the truly epically complex nature of X as a variable in the first place. For what counts as a high value of X for F, that is to say, what evidence will lead F to conclude, using his interpretive system, that the value of X is high, may well differ radically from the evidence that would lead A, using her interpretive system, that F is displaying a high value of X. Assume for the moment, however, that what counts as a high value of X is the same for F and for A, perhaps by explicit negotation with respect to interpretive frameworks.
(This might take the form of interaction between F and A such that the following was communicated via email from F to A:

Since I know you're busy these days, have a lot on yr mind, lot to do, etc etc, I'll keep this short.

It seems clear to me that I owe it to you to make it maximally explicit to you that drunk or sober, awake or asleep, at school or the bar (iterate oppositions at will or as needed) that you are what I want right now. & that the most important & interesting thing I have going on right now is figuring out and finding out how that's going to play out over the, uh, future.

And one can imagine other ways in which F and A could arrive at the conclusion that their systems for determining the values of X, given certain shared (behavioral) data, were similar.)
So assume that. What does not immediately follow is that A will then reason from the high value of X to there being a high value of Y for F. Other explanations might be possible. I will mention only a few of these. Perhaps F is merely displaying X because F is [+drunk] or [+horny] or both. Perhaps F is using his status as a long-term friend and colleague of A to engage in a bit of harmless flirting, or display of high values of X (or something like X, at any rate) such that the inference from X to Y is not just unlikely but in fact suppressed. Perhaps, A might reason, F actually does have a high value of Y but is wrong to do so for whatever reason (the craziness or instability or lack of worth or whatever of A, for example)... And so on. End of digression.

Return to main focus of present analysis. So we have seen some intervening effects which function to suppress the value of X even where the value of Y is high. Thus far, they have been "external", or "contextual" or "situational" and so on. There are however some "internal" (mainly to the meta-system F) factors which also need to be examined. We have seen, eg in (4) above, that F's analysis of the situation will affect the values of some variables, and it is to these processes to which we now turn.
(8) ^B' --> !^B
(8) may be taken to exemplify a broader pattern. The addition of the bar/prime operator has as its most fundamental effect 'calling into question the accuracy of the given value assigned to a variable under the current interpretational system in use by the current given meta-system'. Adding this 'reflection' operator to F's belief that A is sexually/emotionally/romantically interested in F lowers the weight (in connectionist terms) that can be assigned to that value. In our current terms, it has the effect of lowering the actual value. (This is something of a limitation of or for our current model of the situation, which is why I mention--though I do not in fact mobilize--the richer and somewhat more subtle connectionist framework. In such a framework, the reflection operator would not neccessarily change the value of some variable, it would merely have the effect of saying "yes, perhaps, but that variable is less important than these other variables here," which it would then go on to provide. Anyhow, in our current system, reflection on B drives the value of B down, which drives down the value of Y, as in (2) which drives down the value of X, as in (1), assuming for the moment that all other values remain equal. (The reason for the connectionist digressions here is that the process just sketched probably isn't actually accurate. This reflection operator is the single hardest factor to handle in a straight causal model. Informally, we would say as connectionists that when one variable takes the reflection operator, the general tendency is first for all other variables to take that operator as well, in a "cascading" or "rippling" sort of a pattern. Second, and this is really the heart of the matter, the effect of the operator is most crucially to call into question the accuracy of the value of the variable, regardless of the magnitude of the variable. The value is not changed: what has changed is the confidence that the value of the variable is something that can be reasoned from. Given this complexity, in our system here we shall no longer represent the effect of the operator as decreasing the value of the variable, but say simply, as in (8a), that the effect of the bar/prime reflection operator is overall to decrease the value of the dependent variable in our model overall.
(8a) ^B' --> !^X
Note that the notation has become something of a mess. The bar/prime is really just an operator performed on a variable, so it doesn't really make any sense at all to talk about the value that variable increasing, as in (8a). But these methodological digressions have allowed (forced?) us off of the main track. Keeping in mind that the notation is, with respect to the causal nature of meta-system-internal factors, not representing them in perspicacious fashion (nor frankly in accurate fashion), let us proceed.

Something crucially related to our changed variable N' is D, 'fear that the current value of B is incorrect'. (This has mainly to do with the recurring problem of what sorts of data F might take as evidence of A's interest. This matter of what counts when is outside the scope of the present inquiry.) D and N' have a mutually reinforcing character, as in (10) and (11), below, and D has the general effect of (9).
(9) ^D --> !^X
(10) ^D --> ^N'
(11) ^N' --> ^D
Another variable to be considered is W, 'fear that if things don't work out between A and F, then F will be emotional rubble for the foreseeable future, on the order of 9-12 months, perhaps longer'. This is a somewhat complex interaction, as in (12) and (13).
(12) ^Y --> ^W
(13) ^W --> !^X
(12) and (13) combine to form the saddest, and perhaps the most characteristic, paradox of the interaction between meta-systems F and A, it seems to me. As desire goes up, so does fear, and fear massively constrains display... Perhaps (14) and (15) will ameliorate this sadness somewhat.
(14) ^Y --> ^H
(15) ^H --> ^Y
Where H represents 'hope that A could really be the one'. There will be as a result of this, by (1), an indirect increase of X as H goes up, which is heartening, though not really conclusive, given the direct negative effect on X of W. At present, the values of H are higher than those of W, and it is certainly, I think, to be hoped that this remains the case.

Some final thoughts. What we have represented in (1) through (15) is a reasonably accurate and probably reasonably comprehensive picture of the state of meta-system F with respect to meta-system A. We have seen complex interaction effects between a host of variables, and we have seen that a massively high value of Y will not necessarily lead to a high value of X, more is perhaps the pity. We have elided a few factors, of course. The most salient of these is one we actually alluded to, which is the status of meta-system F as [+drunk] or [-drunk]. In general we would want to say that the overall effect of [+drunk] is to reduce the values of P, 'desire to keep personal matters non-public'. Other than that, the possible effects of [+drunk] are thoroughgoing and wholly unpredictable. [-drunk] is largely unattested as a state as of late. Our handling of the reflection operator has been quite inadequate, as we have seen, but some intuitive understanding of its overall negative effects on X has perhaps been conveyed. (As perhaps has some further understanding of the mechanism(s) by which that negative effect on X comes to be.)

The question for F, of course, remains as it was in fact stated to A. How will this high value of Y play out? How indeed... Given that F and A regard a high value of X in the same fashion, what conclusions might A come to? Some speculations are possible, and perhaps desirable. First among these is a question as to whether the analysis just performed will, can, should (and so on) lead F to consciously raise the values of X. Since the answer is "most likely, yes", F is left in the position of having to think about (if not actually perform) something like a parallel analysis for A's position as a meta-system in relation to F. This is of course massively difficult, daunting, and so on, since even with relatively direct access to meta-system F, F's analysis of F has taken the form of oversimplifications and crude sketches. To perform such an analysis based wholly on behavioral evidence, as we noted above, is perhaps not even possible.

Let us be left, as always, with a richer understanding and the words of others.

From Mary Timony:
Do you need help at all like me?
Saw you listening from the hallway
I was too scared to say
anything.
You make a big part of my head,
I can't talk about anything else instead of you.
--I'll try to.
I'll be the pirate if you'll be the loot,
I'll jump out of the plane if you'll be my parachute.
--You better catch me or I'll kill you.
Please don't think I'm rude,
don't think I'm corny...
I don't know how to say this because I've never had to.
Now I want to.
You don't wear on me like I do,
you don't wear on me like I do.
I'm gonna get you,
gonna get you.


From Yukki Gipe:
Not too dirty and not too clean,
sometimes my thoughts turn from nice to obscene,
and I won't tell you where I've been
because I know reality from my dreams.
I don't want to scare you off
but I wouldn't play it safe if I could.
Sometimes you know it's true that
you gotta feel bad to feel good.
We're all so clouded with our own observations
we're so fogged up we don't even hear.
How can we listen to others' conversations
and have the nerve to say they're wierd?
Well granted some people are truly that way
and I guess it stands to reason
at least let them have their say
instead of just some form of treason.
Look into my eyes and tell me:
what do you see?
Look deep inside, won't you try to see
what this life has done to me?
Well I'm sorry to say
that sometimes these words are useless,
but then again, without them,
my life would be more or less a mess like you.
Shake. Work. Pump. No!

posted by C. L. Flink 3/11/2001 04:02:43 PM

3.9.2001

So my shrink sez she thinks that if I were to try to "moderate" my drinking, that I'd be successful. I'm not sure what exactly she's trying to get at by that. In other news, I think I'm in love.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/9/2001 04:22:05 PM

3.7.2001

...made a dream last night...wish I hadn't awoke...

I had the most amazingly tactile dreams last night/this morning. That is, I felt stuff. The 1st 1, I smoked a cigarette that I'd rolled (I'm something like 2 weeks away from the 1year anniversary of the last cigarette I smoked). As such cigarettes will do, it went out when I paid not enough attention to it, & as I held the half-smoked thing in my hands, I swear I cd feel the coal still warm, there under the unburnt paper. Was wierd. Don't remember the rest of the dream.

The other 1...was a bit stranger, & took place during that wierd interstitial time either right before my alarm goes off (& I officially "wake up") or between instances of my alarm going off, during the snooze periods. I was on the back of a flatbed truck w/ my friend Steve & this counsellor I saw once, a reasonably tall, slim woman with a lot of frizzy grey hair. We were rocketing down the highway, looked rather like the 1 between Portland & the southern border of Oregon, all in all, though the truck never turned. I was a little afraid to be on the back of the truck, & I was holding myself very close to the cab, as the truck was the size of a semi, but was not jointed. I was afraid that we'd all fall off if the truck turned, & I was particularly concerned about what would happen to A, the counsellor, as she was standing there in her socks right on the side edge of the flatbed, about a third of the way toward the rear of the truck. I kept wondering why the wind didn't knock her off. Steve somehow crawled into the cab of the truck, which was much larger than I'd thought, & eventually somebody's little golden retriever showed up. (We may no longer have been moving by this point: we may have been in a truckstop or something.) It might have been A's dog. Anyway, the dog came over & lay down by me, & it was really nice. Then the dog turned into a girl & mounted me, & that was the 2nd exceedingly tactile experience I had in a dream this morning.

It was very strange: I was awake enough to know that I wasn't actually touching myself, so I now know something new about what my mind can do in terms of, uh, spoofing signals from a particular source. It's amazing, this mind/brain/thing.

It's also probably perfectly predictable that this is happening now, since I have not executed any Manual Overrides in over a week. This is the longest I've gone since my last major depression, & it has honestly, I think, raised my overall energy level to/by a slightly ridiculous degree. It's amazing. (It's also possibly the case that I'm just in general in a bit of a manic phase right now. Hard to tell what's due to what.) Anyhow, it may be a dorky move inspired by me wondering (inspired by Cryptonomicon) whether or not stopping executing Manual Overrides will make me smarter. I know it'll make my brain do interesting things, so that's a step, I guess, a step.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/7/2001 07:30:16 PM

3.1.2001

So I do have other things on my mind sometimes, you know. Lately I've been thinking a lot about denim. They say it was invented so that cowboys could wear their jeans on the trail for months at a time. Well, I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for about 6 weeks now, & I may not have, y'know, busted any broncos or nothing, but they're holding up in a kinda interesting fashion. See, I did the same thing (though I think w/ a different pair) last semester, & they got all shiny on me after like 3 weeks. This time, though, they only started to get shiny on me like this week. It may be b/c these are so much older than the other pair was... This pair, though, has demonstrated a really interesting wear pattern over the last 6 weeks. The knees were worn a little through, and they've worn more & more & more out, & what happens after the hole isn't just a horizontal fray-wear thing, after the hole goes a little bit along the vertical axis of the pantleg, is that the pants start to ride a bit differently on yr knee when you're sitting. The point is, after any vertical dimension to speak of appears on yr knee, every time you sit down, you run the very real risk of running yr knee hard into the hole, causing, most likely, the hole to become rather larger along that very vertical dimension. & the bigger that hole--really by now just a flat-out tear--becomes, the more likely you are to blow it out just that much more every damned time you take a seat. So once that hole starts, there's no finish short of patching the S.O.B., which, if you know me & my inept tailor/seamster skills, you know ain't gonna happen. (Alternately, you might know this if you have seen my hoody modification skills & have thus seen the truly inept job I did putting the Butthole Surfers patch on. Man, was that inept.) &, back to the jeans, the butt wearing has been interesting too. It's been much more even, since my ass is, well, frankly...let's just say that my ass ain't exactly bony & knobby like my knee. Oh yeah, & the back pocket wore through so badly that my wallet can fall right through the hole that's now there. So I put my wallet into my left back pocket, & that just freaking feels funny to me. Wrong buttcheek & all. & to beat all the bands right to hell, in just like 3 weeks or whatever, the left pocket has already worn through, creating a hole about half the width of my wallet. I mean, what's up with that? It took like 4 years or whatever (I'm not quite sure) for the other pocket to wear all the way through, & that was w/ a wallet in it every damn time I wore the damn pants. Go figure, man. Some things in this world just don't make much damned sense, do they?

So anyhow, that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Denim.

That & how strangely unsatisfying "I'll make you famous" is as a macho phrase. But that should/can probably wait for later, right? Anyhow, I'm gonna take my beer-soaked ass on up to the bar to watch some Smackdown.

Sigh.
posted by C. L. Flink 3/1/2001 07:42:18 PM

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention something crucially salient about the beautiful hippie girl. (We'll call her C.) See, somebody in our class asked me how another class had been going. I told her "oh, I dropped that class."
"why?"
"well, I've been depressed this semester, & I only have 2 or 3 good hours a day, & I can't do that class in the condition I'm in."
Which prompted the following email from C:

Last Thursday Caroline asked you why you were going to drop Mayan. You said that you had been depressed this year and couldn't do it. I keep meaning to tell you I admire you for being transparent and for knowing your limits.

Sigh. She's dreamy.
So maybe it's not just the cheekbones?
Back to work, slackerloser.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/1/2001 01:40:40 PM

This is getting out of fucking hand. I'm sitting here trying to finish a test (all I've got left to write is about a page or so, then some proofreading & the like) at the very last fucking minute because I let my friend drag me to the bar last night. Not cool, Flink, not freaking cool.
The other thing that's out of hand is that there's this beautiful hippie girl (also finishing her test, also in this class) sitting 3 meters away from me & I'm finding almost impossibly distracting. The reason this is out of hand is that:

1. I asked a different girl out a little under a fortnight ago. That girl, we'll call her E., was a friend of mine. For no good reasons at all, it caused much tension btwn us & some of our mutual friends, so I told her "nevermind". (I also told her "nevermind" b/c it came to light that she's not interested in being a girlfriend right now, where my primary interest in life right now [for reasons that I have not yet fully figured out] is having a girlfriend.)
2. I'm almost convinced that I have a huge crush on a friend of mine, we'll call her A. This would surely work incredibly badly, end w/ tears & agony on my part, & drive me away from interacting w/ another woman for another 9 months or so. I mean, if it ended, I know that's how it'd end. But...but on the other hand...it might work so well... She & I are more or less the same person, which is interesting in & of itself, but we handle being that person w/ dramatically different styles, which makes it (her) that much more interesting.
3. So why the hell am I interested in this hippie chick I don't even really know? It can't just be that she's got cheekbones like a fucking snowplow (thanks, Neal Stephenson), is much less afraid of eye contact than I am, & has a great voice. Right?

Sigh.
This life thing is more confusing than is good for me.
Note to self: go to bank, pay rent & the like.

posted by C. L. Flink 3/1/2001 01:31:04 PM

2.28.2001

Some guidelines.

1. Listen to things that make you feel like a rock star. The creepier the rock star the better, sometimes. I mean, anybody can want to be Jim Morrison (on my mind b/c, well, b/c there was like a 6month period when all I listened to was the Doors & Cypress Hill, a time when I read Wonderland Avenue and No one here gets out alive way too many fucking times, a time before I really loved the Stones & the Stooges right...couple those contingent historical facts w/ a couple of readings for an anthropology course on white appropriations of "shamanic" "traditions" & you get me thinking about Jim Morrison. Of course, he got everything from Rimbaud & from odd 2ndhand Freud (from Norman O. Brown) & probably 3rdhand Neitzsche (albiet straight from Neitzsche: it's complicated & I'll explain later) so maybe it's not fair to bash on the ol' Lizard King for his nonsense. I mean, fundamentally his was far more entertaining nonsense than the current crowd of vile hucksters, in addition to being far more honest. I mean, the band's own frigging mythology sez that when Ray & Jimbo wuz on Venice Beach that 1 time & Jimbo sung what I want to call "Moonlight Mile" but that's probably wrong b/c "Moonlight Mile" is 1 of the last 3 songs off of the Stones' Sticky Fingers record (probably their last great record, natch) but anyway after Jimbo sang the sang, Ray & Jim looked at each other & sd "Let's start a band & make a million dollars."
   (Stops for breath. Looks around. Sez fuck the fuck & get on w/ it.) So I'm listening to Steel Pole Bath Tub. It fucking rocks. Oh, right. Morrison. So anyhow, he was relatively up front (think Poison Idea covering the Wipers) about what he wanted: like a sculptor, he just wanted to get his rocks off. ("Rocks off" is probably my favorite Stones song, insofar as it makes sense to talk abt a favorite Stones song. I mean, I don't talk abt my favorite molecules of oxygen or caffeine either, now do I?) Anyhow, anybody can wanna be him, b/c he is, all in all, fairly straight at this point, really. Jesus, when college professors are buying leather pants at Nordstrom's, what price transgression?
   So sometimes a creepier brand of rock star is what you need. Take what you like, yr Alice Coopers (his Greatest Hits record is on the jukebox at the bar, & I play more than a few songs off of it...I gotta admit, though, that minus the stage schtick, the music is pretty frigging dull) yr Marilyn Mansons, whoever. Me, though, I like to feel like David Yow.
   David Yow, baby. I've seen them (the Jesus Lizard) maybe 3 times now, & I reckon I'll not see them again, as I reckon they broke up, which is a bit of a shame on the 1 hand but basically okay, I guess, especially since the bulk of their fanbase has probably hated everything they've done since like 94 or so. But me, I thought they leaned how to write catchier pop songs & the production changes didn't change that much anyway. Anyhow, the point is that 2 of the times I saw them were in that stretch of time when my concert-going mode was to fight my way to the very front of the stage, then lean there. (Now I'm too busy drinking beer just outside the pit, if there's a pit.) So there I am, getting beaten into the stage by a few hundred drunken assholes. David Yow on stage hollering, w/ what I consider the world's finest dance band rocking away behind him. I'm singing along holler-style w/ what I know, & occasionally pounding on the stage w/ my fists. You know, it's a rock show. So anyhow, long story short, David Yow comes over to me, bends down & sings the following verse while playing w/ my beard w/ his hand:
   you're more beautiful than Barbie
   surely a sight for sore eyes
   first-rate & lovely
   ahhhhhh IIIIIIIIIIIII
   . So pick a rock star that allows you to feel kinda creepy. Yeah. That & coffee, man, what the fuck else is there?
   posted by C. L. Flink 2/28/2001 02:35:29 PM