weekends rule YOU DON'T GOTTA DO SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOATSE AZTECS

It just occured to me that the URL for the official SDSU Aztecs athletics website, goaztecs.com, is somewhat similar to the domain of the legendary yet recently-castrated webspace http://goat.cx.

Somewhat. I mean, at least if you pronounced them out loud.

CREAM OF WHAT

Antique postcard of the Cream of Wheat Building, downtown Minneapolis. Cream of Wheat Building!

The interview I had on Friday went well, but the HEAD GUY who directed the interview was a douche royale who decided to eat a fucking donut while he interviewed me. It was the last interview of the afternoon, I guess he was resigned to not even attempting to give the appearance of professional consideration. I also got home to find he had left me a phone message two hours prior asking if I wouldn't mind coming in two hours earlier for convenience's sake, but he was difficult to understand because his voice sounded all mumbled and detatched, leading me to wonder if this guy has a nasty habit of stuffing his mouth with donuts every time he's trying to make formal contact with strangers. Anyway, fuck the City of San Diego and their lucrative, worthwhile "jobs." Oh, I'm just bitter.

ILE asks, "What is the most rubbish U.S. state?" I voted for Florida, but would have also voted for Indiana, might also vote for South Carolina if I had a better idea of it, wished to stick up for poor Alabama and Mississippi, and didn't feel it was right to pick on the Dakotas.

Finally found what has to be the most interesting confluence visit at the Degree Confluence Project. This one's in the Himalayas, and two dudes had to literally freeze their lips off to get there. It was worth it, though, cause they got to have yak meat and yak butter tea for breakfast every day.

THE REST OF YOUR POST-NEARLY HALF-REALIZED BIRDLIKE THOUGHTS

Twilight Cat Dreaming of Flames by David Tibet

Passage from the book I'm reading currently, Women of the Forest by Yolanda and Robert Murphy, based on a 1952 ethnography of the Mundurucu people of the Tapajos river, Brazilian lowlands.

The majesty and mystery of [the Amazon basin's] raw nature are conveyed in stories told among both Brazilians and Indians of dark, bottom-less areas in the river where dwells the cobra grande, an anaconda as large as a steamboat with eyes that have a fiery glow. And the forests are populated by strange and dangerous creatures that must either be avoided or placated if man is to maintain his delicate balance with nature. The Indians have a keen sense of the tenuous quality of the relationship between human culture and the natural environment. One Mundurucu myth tells of a young man named Perisuat, who left his home and traveled through the forest for years, having remarkable encounters with the animal kingdom along the way. At the end, he returns to his village covered with insect bites and bee stings, really more animal than human, and dies shortly thereafter. There is an allegory here of man's regression from his delicately contrived cultures, of the irreversability of his progress from the natural to the human state, of the death that lies within nature. But it is an attractive regression that appeals to the atavistic tendencies in all of us. The jungle exercises a pull to enter more deeply, to penetrate beyond man into unknown wildernesses, to become unfolded in the great forests. Seemingly an impulse to set out, it is really a call to return -- back into nature, back into ourselves and our origins. It provides the realization of what, to most of urban mankind, is fantasy, and it is not adventitious that twenty years later it appears to us in retrospect as a dream.

REAL-LIFE CAREER-TYPE activity detected happening today. I talked to a lady today (on the phone) from the City of San Diego Development Services Department who wants to interview me for a paid student internship position assisting their senior environmental planners. PERFECTO! Will summon all my spirit animals for Friday morning at 9:30 AM and take them into the elevator with me to the fifth floor, where I will exit the elevator with the spirit animals and approach the desk of Tony Something Or Other, who will interview me (guided by invisible, empowering spirit animals). Little does he know that I, with the help of my excellence-granting spirit animals, will totally shred his interview to pieces and eat it for breakfast -- a good thing for me!

So I guess our president has now made the transition from awful president to total media illusion, have you heard about this? Hundreds of volunteer firefighters converged on Atlanta, and after awaiting instructions on how they would be dispatched into New Orleans to do some actual physical direct good, they finally, finally get their assignment: be used as a backdrop against which the president can make a speech. FEMA ordered them to be used as "community relations specialists," relating a mindless, useless sense of security and, I don't know, sense of purpose? to the public eye. FEMA, of course, the same organization that wasn't capable of ordering their own workers to a large dome filled with evacuees when it actually, you know, mattered.

THERE'S TROUBLE IN THE HALL AND TROUBLE UP THE STAIRS

AND TROUBLE IN THE TROUBLE THAT'S TROUBLING THE AIR


Cabin at Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas (courtesy of Arkansas.com photo gallery)

My last semester as an undergraduate begins tomorrow morning. Here are the four classes I'm taking for the last time in California.

PA200 (The Urban Scene) Key issues in public administration, social policy, and city planning. Emphasis on government structure and public decision-making process, organizational behavior, effectiveness of criminal justice policies, zoning, and land use considerations.

GEOG312 (Culture Worlds) Geographical characteristics and development of major cultural realms of the world. Spatial components of contemporary conflict within and between these regions.

GEOG573 (Population and the Environment) Population distribution, growth, and characteristics as they relate to environmental degradation, both as causes and consequences. Roles of women, sustainable development, carrying capacity, optimum population, and policy initiatives in relationships between population and environment.

ANTH442 (Cultures of South America) Indian cultures in terms of origins, migration, relation to habitat, cultural variation and relevance to contemporary trends. Development of Inca civilization, the effects of the Spanish conquest and its aftermath.

TANGLEWOOD NUMBERS HERE IS WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT YOU

Tanglewood Numbers, the forthcoming new record from my most favorite rock band ever, the Silver Jews, has been leaked onto the internet and is now being discussed, criticized, analyzed, made sense of by my peers. Like them, I too posess an opinion on this new collection of first-rate music songs.

The first four records David Berman made seemed to be rooted in the very precious atmospheres of the world-famous Slacker Nineties that of course Pavement was such a big advocate of and helped to cast the Silver Jews in the image they would come to be known as. But this record, for the first time, is truly different in that the music, the attitude, the approach, everything involved with making the record short of a completely new band is totally different.

There are new dimensions in Berman's singing voice all over this record that started in Bright Flight but just now are becoming truly realized. The first time I heard "Time Will Break The World" on BF I was taken aback at the grizzly, mush-mouthed, physically uncomfortable croak of Berman's on some of the lines in that song (especially "sun-shattered... HAIR") that sounded to me like pretty solid evidence that the song was recorded on the floor of the studio with Berman splayed out, fiending, vomit in his hair, twitching a little maybe. A real wreck. The song was not a hit of sunshine. But of course on side two there was hints of something a bit more uplifting, ie "Let's Not and Say We Did." Basically there started to be more modes of expression than just the same old detatched monotone of all the first couple records. David began to let his freak flag fly a little bit, it seemed.

And then on Tanglewood Numbers it seems like now he's moved from being not ashamed of it to being proud of it and what it represents about himself and all the wastoid garbage he took himself through. It sounds to me like he's gotten out of it and is now on the right "path" (whatever you want to make of that) with priorities besides being an impressive genius who must hold himself back with stunting drug abuse and a continual four-year kegger at the crack house or however he'd best describe it.

And of course there's all the music on the album, too, and what all that sounds like. "K-Hole" sounds like a entirely different band, a modern rock one with outer spacescapes and genuine "bite" (sharp angles where clumsy weathered edges would have appeared in records previous) in the context of the Silver Jews slow country blues history. "Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" is a real honest-to-goodness rave-up that reinforces the long-lost feeling of happiness and excitement with sturdy, simplified bars of banjo and piano accentuated guitar rock. "The Farmer's Hotel" is an Edgar Allan Poe verse about an ominous stay in a ghastly hotel, almost Biblical in its lengthy wisdom. In this standout track, Berman has taken his time to allow the moral to slowly roll down to us at the end of the song, the literate devices used inside exactly as tasteful as we've come to expect from him. There are somber moments on the record but there are flippant ones too. In "Sleeping is the Only Love" Berman tells us a tiny bit about his old friend "Marc with a C" and in "I'm Getting Back (Into Getting Back Into You)" the apologetic husband re-introduces himself this time as coming equipped with a brand new point of view, "like a brown bird nesting in a Texaco sign."

TN is different; what it sounds like to me is Berman no longer hanging his head and feeling sorry for himself. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean before this record I for once certainly didn't think there was anything wrong with it. The previous formula is/was seriously sonic manna to self-defeating indie hipsters who LOVE to wallow in the angst to music that doesn't try as hard as it could.

But listening to this record a few dozen times proves that David has a new perspective on this record. He has wrangled his inner contempt and finally, finally, for the benefit of himself and all his admirers, directed it away from the self and onto external forces, be they political, cultural, whatever. He's standing up for himself. It's all over the lyrics, too:

"We've got no good will, no good will to give
to those who try to take away what we need to live"

"I saw God's shadow on this world
I could not love the world entire
There grew a desert in my mind
I took a hammer to it all"

Some people on some messageboard were comparing the new record to Stephen Malkmus's new record Face the Truth (yes he really called the record that) and asking which was better. I reasoned that Face the Truth is alright because it has "Mama" on it and I understand that Stephen Malkmus sort of apologizes in a very covert manner for being such a sarcastic twit for so many years (which is totally hilarious in a I almost feel sorry for the guy kind of way).

But Tangledwood Numerals is a superior recording to me just because I like a Berman more than a Malkmus. Malkmus looks into a lot of mirrors behind of the scenes of Truth, and this time for the purposes of serious self-evaluation and not for admiring his devastatingly handsome facial structure. And that's cool and everything, but I just prefer the way Berman looks at his in the dive bar bathroom after a long night of plugging toxins into his essence, and can't stand himself so much to the point that he has to clench his fist and strike at the mirror with a barn brawl rage, shattering the thing into spiderwebbed cracks ala comb-overed John Malkovich near the end of Being John Malkovich (which was also better than Face the Truth despite "Baby C'mon" being pretty good too).

FAKE FOOD

Website with lots of fake foods you can order and not eat.

SUPPER REVIEW: RED LOBSTER

I was feeling a bit bourgeois this evening so my ladywoman and I decided to dine at the world-famous LE RED LOBSTERE in La Mesa Towne. She ordered the "seafood gumbo," which turned out to be boiled chicken in some sort of dirt gravy. The gumbo was described in the laminated menu as including andouille sausage in it, but I guess their cuisine is so fancy that they employ techniques of "subtlety," because there was a singular little slice of sausage placed on top of the soup, no larger than a wild mushroom cap.

Obviously, we were left with no choice but to spit in our server's face and burn the restraunt to the ground. The blood-curdling screams of the other diners did get quite intense near the end of the horrible inferno, but I feel good having stuck up for the principle of the thing.

I ordered the Admiral's Feast, which is an assortment of various batter-fried sea meats served with a pathetic little pile of reheated vegetables (baby carrots and sauteed squash) that I could only imagine were unhappily ladled onto my plate from some neglected, lonely bucket in some stainless steel corner of the cook's quarters.

As expected, the bounty of deepfried shrimp and scallops were exquisite for the first three minutes, before suddenly becoming inexplicably disgusting.

The biscuits, however, were hot and fresh. Biscuits, you get an A+.