remember when I said I was going to post more often? well, that was obviously a clever lie.

here's a funny thing: sometime after my last entry, I decided I was no longer happy at my job, and hadn't been for maybe a year and a half. based on that limited information, I sold most of my furniture and many other miscellaneous items, rented a uhaul trailer for my tiny scion (dubbed Old Smokey), and moved to Portland, OR.

and now here I am. takin' all ur jobs and drainin' ur economy. definitely not feeling like I've moved here yet. it feels like I'm on extended vacation, and so I spend a lot of time waiting for someone to eventually ring me up and demand that I return to Los Angeles. the first time I visit there as an out-of-towner will almost certainly require some mental gymnastics.

in the meantime, I'm living in my best friend's spare room, taking odd jobs from the gigs section of craigslist and shooting spreads for a local beer magazine. also, donating plasma. lots and lots of plasma. rich, delicious, molassesy plasma.


MEMORY SPIKE! here's what my world looked like for 3 days during the great northern migration:

8:44am. raining. curtains drawn, warm in bed. the first place that comes to mind on a list of places I'd rather not be today is my office in Burbank. and yet, in less than an hour, that's where I'll be. pressed into the fake leather of my ergonomically efficient desk chair like gum into boot treads. sighing heavily, going cross-eyed listening to the steady hum of corporate gibberish and meaningless marketing jargon that hangs sponge-thick in the air like the buzz under powerlines. I'm the little two-room house built beside the power plant. my job is giving me cancer of the will.

24 hours ago, I was clinging to a chain bolted into rock 1450 feet above a canyon floor in Zion National Park, making my way to the peak at Angel's Landing. I finished the hike to and from the summit in 4 hours, making small talk with other hikers at the top and along the way down, stopping occasionally to take photographs. I celebrated my accomplishment at the park lodge with a locally brewed beer and a burger, then made the 7 hour drive home through Vegas to Los Angeles with the friend who had invited me to her parents' home in Utah for the weekend. at home I changed into comfortable clothes, made tea, and finished Lost's second season with my roommate who is feverishly working to catch up before the series' finale. I read for an hour, watched the series premiere of Doctor Who, and went to bed. and slept.

a deep sleep, no dreams. a sterile vacuum between. the only thing keeping yesterday and today from grinding up against and utterly annihilating one another.

harumph. Monday.

when you're a jet, you're a jet all the way.

while I was in Israel, Bank of America canceled my debit card. AWESOME. according to customer service, they received intelligence suggesting that my sensitive info may have been compromised. as a result, several bills that should have been paid automatically... were not. including my membership here. my account was shut down, and I wasn't able to justify the money to reactivate it. THEN, I got a lovely e-mail from Missy Suicide('s automated e-mail robot) offering me a generous 50% off for a year's membership. tantalizing. so, here I am again. I can't escape the gravity of this place. and maybe I'll be a good boy from now on and blog more often. y'know, really take advantage of the next 365 days. make it COUNT.

maybe.

I can't help breaking radio silence for this one.

last night, zombies attacked my country home. I fled their incursion into my living room and kitchen through the windows by heading up a long, winding staircase and onto a large veranda. I escaped by leaping onto the canvas top of a passing jeep just in time to catch a dinner date with a friend of mine. in the dream, my friend was my older brother and our parents were Don and Joyce Wrigley from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

After the appetizer, Dad decided he'd have a crack at fixing the large radio antenna in our back yard. During the repairs, the antenna was struck by a bolt of bad CGI lightning, sucking him headfirst and screaming into the aerial while I documented the scene by taking digital photos with a BBQ lighter.

It became clear to me (somehow) that wherever Dad had gone, he had been tangled in the swimming pool's vacuum hose, and the hose was slowly disappearing through a gap in our backyard fence. I dove into the pool and swam the length to the end, where I could grab the hose. Drawing myself up and onto the opposite side, I briefly stopped and thought, "Why is it always so difficult to move through the water in our dreams?"

I must have tied the hose to something to secure it, because I was called back to finish dinner. The waiter asked if I would be wanting to order from the menu, and I explained to him that no, I would be fine with my fish filet and bloody mary, and that I wouldn't be able to stay long anyway, because I had to save my father.


It seems that a lifetime of Nickelodeon and science fiction has left me deranged.

Shameless Plug Ahead

not too long ago I discovered that blogging my day to day life was becoming more of an annoyance than a leisure activity. I felt constantly obligated to update, spurred on by how many comments each entry was receiving, and the feeling of obligation was making me lazy. additionally, the posts themselves didn't feel useful in any way. so I abandoned my livejournal, and effectively stopped posting here altogether, and started up a slightly more specialized blogspot account.

the first one failed, but I think it was mostly because I made the scope of it too narrow and got bored. I've loosened it up a bit. I'm more excited about this one.

for those who have an interest, come visit: http://theexplodedview.blogspot.com/

experiment failed. new experiment pending.


also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ55Ir2jCxk

honk if you love television and film writers.

"How's your hair?"
"It's super cute, dude. It's kinda short and stacked in the back."
"You know what else is short and stacked in the back? Your mom."

sometimes these are like thoughtful little gifts that I'm sure I don't deserve.


yes.

I am expected to begin my quarter-life crisis this November. instead, I am having a 6-year-old's renaissance. on days when LA isn't choked with clots of brown cloud cover, I think about bending at the knee and launching myself into the upper atmosphere. the space through which I imagine my own movement expands in all directions; ricochets off the ozone like radio waves; touches down again and spreads slowly and inexorably around to the nighttime places of the earth. I have a recurring mental image of herds of buffalo and of fields of barley and hills and unbroken horizon lines, and know that I can go wherever I like and stay as long as I need and move on again. I feel unlimited potential rushing in torrents underground, carving out its massive subterranean arteries. I dreamed that the aurora borealis appeared over Los Angeles and that a shift in gravity caused the brownstone apartments along the street to break up, hunks of brick and mortar settling into planetary orbits around dumbstruck nuclear families. I drove to the beach and took digital photos of an ethereal fog settling over the water, winding in curlicues around the roots of mangrove trees. partygoers along the shore tapped a keg that exploded like a water plug and knocked me backwards into the pretzel tent. ...I'm not sure about that last part.

I want to be, in no particular order:
- a commercial airline pilot
- a published writer
- a professional photographer
- a travel journalist
- a cartographer
- the owner of a curio shop, book store, or international food mart on the beach, specializing in only exactly what people are looking for. the shop is small, but everyone leaves happy.
- a teacher of British literature, theater, and local history at the FSU study center in London.
- the proprietor of an American biergarten, comparable to the Englischer Garten in Munich.
- a pirate.

I am ready to be those things. the first movement of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony No.4 in A takes an optimistic view of my life. it tells me that these and all other things are possible.

I entrust to this long dead musician the fullness of my ambition.

ohhhh, I knew this was coming.

"you are a paying member of this site!" you will say.

"you support the public, worldwide nudity of strangers!" you will say.

"everybody on this site is someone's daughter or sister! someone's mother! someday a grandmother!" you will say.

and that is all true. but my little sister has asked me what I would think if she were a suicidegirl, and I do not know how to answer her.

how hilarious that I chose today to wear my SG shirt. VERY hilarious. yes.

I meant to do this several days ago, but as it happens, it means more today, anyhow.

I was well and truly faced by this mantis. she didn't give a SHIT.

and nor do I. nyah.

thought: if I had a lady, would a peanut butter sandwich and a fat tire fly for dinner on a wednesday night?

reply: if I had a good lady, it would have been peanut butter and fat tire for two.

because that is how we would roll.


just got finished watching Blood Diamond. banging out a review and preparing my CV and a bio to send to Meaningful Media tomorrow morning. my new verizon phone should be delivered to my office tomorrow afternoon, freeing me at last from the malignant tumor that cingular has had me using for the last two years. I've got an exciting new fiction project that I am going completely stupid over. and to top the sundae, my weekend is fast approaching, during which I will christen my new Venice Beach saturday bike ride/photo expedition tradition and kick it fancy-style at an after-party on friday with my friend's fiance, who just won an emmy for animated character design in the cartoon he's been working on.

I live in Hollywood.

here's a snap of the mantis that lives in our courtyard:



and here is the same mantis, thoroughly disgusted with my persistent interest in her elongated prothorax and chitinous, scythe-like forelegs, giving me the booger-eye and pissing off around the corner: