Murakami Redemption

He wrote his first novel at 29 after attending a baseball game. An American player hit a double and, according to my buddy Wikipedia, Murakami decided he could write a novel and went home to start.

I am 29 for 9 1/2 more months.

Murakami Drop Kick

"She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They're blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can't make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I've seen my share of people like that. At first you think they're amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you're overwhelmed. You think, 'I could never do that in a million years.' But that's as far as they go. They can't take it any further. And why not? Because they won't put in the effort. Because they haven't had the discipline pounded into them. They've been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they've been able to play things well without any effort and they've had people telling them how great they are from the time they're little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so teacher figures they've put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required for character building. It's a tragedy."

Sigh. Thanks for the kick to the gut.

PS: This is from his novel "Norwegian Wood"

sex, sex, and more sex.

misty keasler's pictures of japanese love hotels are up at the museum of contemporary photography. i admit to being hesitant to take someone named misty seriously and i now know not only is she a misty but she is younger than me. the photos are beyond interesting. some of the themes for the rooms included bondage hello kitty, bondage christ complete with cross and shackles, and a room for alien abduction exams. there were creepier ones with manga pictures and kids smiling from the walls. the photo from the brochure, which is below, is of the much tamer "school room."



the photos are upstairs with the work of larry sultan who takes pictures of regular homes in the valley that are used as porn sets. downstairs is robert heinecken's sex and food memorial exhibition. he does cool stuff using magazine and catalogue photos and showing how they replicate imagery commonly found in porn. there were also pictures of food, but definitely more naked ladies than food.

i will say, the three photographers' work intersected neatly.

little miss productive.

today i made all the appointments i've been too busy (read: lazy) to make. they are all for the same week so it's going to suck, but then it'll be done. i will be poked and prodded and pricked and all kinds of unpleasantries. yay modern medicine! and modern dentistry!

Take the good, take the bad

So, I'm a snake in the Chinese calendar. Here's more on me from the Chinese cultural center:

People born in the Year of the Snake are deep. They say little and possess great wisdom. They never have to worry about money; they are financially fortunate. Snake people are often quite vain, selfish, and a bit stingy. Yet they have tremendous sympathy for others and try to help those less fortunate. Snake people tend to overdo, since they have doubts about other people's judgment and prefer to rely on themselves. They are determined in whatever they do and hate to fail. Although calm on the surface, they are intense and passionate. Snake people are usually good-looking and sometimes have marital problems because they are fickle. They are most compatible with the Ox and Rooster.

I clearly don't say little. I am very selfish. I do overdo. I hate to fail. I am not calm on the surface. Good looking? Really, I won't even go there.

Know any oxen? Roosters?

this is...

much cooler in person. it reminds me of the bubble city in total recall.

sorry jeff, my bad.

i've been listening to jeff buckley lately. he's not new to me but i've been thinking that i wish i had been listening to him when grace first came out. i was a sophomore in high school. he died when i was a freshman in college. why didn't i notice then?

this is...

discovering the giant fur collar of your coat folds up like an elizabethan ruff.
so warm!

don't wait till '08

find your political bearings

i'm somewhere south of gandhi

my winter equation

this is...

winter at my house

old college try

i have had nothing of import happen lately and thus had nothing to write.

today i took a bunch of snowy city pictures since at least chicago is staying interesting.

my camera cable is at school. i am at home.

bollocks.

blame the booze.

gavin newsom has announced that he is going into alcohol rehab in light of revelations of an affair with the wife of one of his top aides. maybe he and mel and that guy from grey's anatomy and michael richards, et al can hang.

i kind of feel like now anytime someone in the public eye does something stupid they run away to get alcohol counseling. it seems like alcoholism is the greatest scapegoat. caught on tape burping a racist slur? blame the vodka! boff your friend's wife? must be the jack and cokes!

i am all for treatment and sobriety. i am also all for taking responsibility for your actions and not looking to blame it on things other than your own poor decisions if that's all that there is to blame.

if these folks are truly in need of help, godspeed. if their publicists told them no one can hate someone in rehab, guess again. you can still be an asshole when you're sober.

my computer is home.

two weeks sucked.

mr. condescending was there today. i would like to hit him with my car. when something bad happens, i don't need a lecture on how, ultimately, it is the computer user's responsibility to back up data. i know, alright? just say, "man that sucks sorry. total pain in the ass for you. it's going to cost 800 dollars." got it? i look to my parents, TV, and my long-standing ability to beat myself up over stuff for life lessons. not you shitbird.

i find nothing more irritating than people power tripping over their small amount of power.

ew. ew. ew.

ew.