Dreams about buildings

I am substantially more likely to remember the shape of buildings than faces, names or events. I don't know why this is- maybe it's because they're often so BIG. This is doubly so for dreams...

I have very detailed memories of buildings in dreams from a really long time ago. Like, even though i have forgotten the context of the actual dream, I recall the great big white marble cube building, the tall and porous building made out of grass, and the home that was one giant room, but that room was made up of a field... that one for some reason reaaallly sticks out in my mind. It had a roof, an unusually shallow roof for a building of this size (it as big or bigger than any warehouse I've been in), but it had a glass roof and it was dreary out. And the field wasn't so much a field as... a grassy depression. There was one tree in the corner. It was as if winter was just coming to this room.

LHC as a celebrity

The Large Hadron Collider has almost become a celebrity.  It is certainly a celebrity within tech news circles.  It's spawned at least two novelty websites: www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com (NO), and some other one of a webcam pointed at it that (quuuite hilariously) depicts a great big purpley black ball rapidly expanding out of it, eventually ending with a 'webcam failure' message.  

I understand that apocalyptic scares are no novelty of this century, but this one has a deliciously futuristic taste.  These are the types of problems that future societies deal with.  I could see it being the end of a bad sci fi movie or the beginning of a good comic book: a society at the peak of its lavishness ultimately destroys itself when it's science reaches too far into the realm of God. Sounds very Kryptonian, minus the God bit, plus superpowers.

The Short Saga of My Beautiful New Old Chair

Last Saturday I tried to go to a guitar class at the community college, LAVC.  

However, my trip was cut short because the teacher is a flake and it's community college and I guess class was canceled or some such bullshit.

WHO KNOWS; I don't.  

Anyway, I decided that I'd stop at a garage sale on the way home to look for a silver lining.  I saw this wooden swivel chair that looked like it was either very old, very expensive or possibly both.  The garage saleswoman was very intent on the fact that EVERYTHING MUST GO at ANY PRICE, so I asked her if the chair was for sale.  

Oof course it was!  But, she said, there was a fatal flaw.  Of course there was!  The chair did not actually swivel, as in some tragic limbo accident, it had gone too low and was never coming back up again.  

Twenty one dollars later (I also bought a number of large wooden consonants at ten cents a piece and rounded up), I jammed this beautiful chair into my car and tossed my consonants onto the driver's seat.

Well, I un-limboed that chair.  While it still showed its age (hard to wheel around) it was most definitely a beautiful chair and did its chair duties largely without complaint.  

Until today, when I came home, and the chair just fell in two.  

It didn't.. break, per se.  It's not like I sat down on it and it cracked snapped or even made a noise.  I pushed on the chair, and it just fell into halves.  As if someone else, earlier in the day (a great fat person, perhaps) had fat down in it, busted it in two, and just sort of rested the new top part onto the new bottom part.  

I guess my chair had two fatal flaws, at least.  One was a fake fatal flaw (a FFF, if you're into acronyms), and a second could be that it only had a finite number of sits left in it before it croaked.  Or its fatal flaw could have been that it doesn't survive being sat in by fat people, or perhaps fat ghosts.  

Snapple

The Snapple advertising states that it is made from the best stuff on earth.

This must not be true.

Firstly, snapple is not that good.

Secondly, if it is made from the best stuff, the best stuff is being badly misappropriated.

The DNC

The Democratic National Convention 2008. Last week, I heard that the 2008 Olympics was the most watched TV event ever. Earlier this week I heard that the DNC is supposed to be the most watched... DNC...ever? I don't remember proper.

For a few days I couldn't place the familiarity of the DNC stage and atmosphere. I still can't, but I feel I've gotten closer: the WWF. Or the WWC or WWE or whatever it's called now, I remember it being called the WWF as a kid and that's what wrestling will stay as in my head. It's the spectacle of it: the stage is so huge and bright and blue. It's so crowded with what can only be described as fanatics, and it is so theatrical. Really what strikes me is how glowing and blue everything is; that electric sheen gives me the feeling that maybe technology has crept into politics, along with who knows what else. I mean, it's not like politics isn't widely held as corrupt, but Obama legitimately feels above all that. But the spectacle of the DNC is off-putting.

I like to imagine the Republicans trying to compete and putting on an identically spectacular show, with neon, glowing red instead of blue. It'd look like Darth Vader's foyer.

Legitimate is the right word for Obama, and that goes a long way for me. Legitimacy, illegitimacy and the perceptions of both are frequently on my mind. Either his handlers are handling the shit out of him or he really is a ray of fucking hope. George Bush and Dick Cheney do not have to work hard to appear alternately incompetent and evil, but when compared to Obama and Biden they appear hyperbolic. And that's why it's really hard for me to watch the DNC, because I know that exit polls indicate the country is 50-50 split. I KNOW that Obama has charisma in ways that John Kerry and Al Gore don't, but they were still running against GEORGE BUSH and DICK CHENEY. I just did a quick run through in my head, and I have never met in person or seen on TV anyone as sinister appearing as Dick Cheney.

Ironically, my favorite Obama fact is that he has trouble quitting smoking. It's incredibly humanizing. I picture him standing behind the White House, lighting one after another.

This whole DNC business makes me very anxious to verify that I am, in fact, registered a democrat, and that I can vote come election day. I feel very strongly that if I do not get my vote in, we will not win the election. That's a good thing, right?

Stephen, Who Lives On A Boat

Tonight, I went to CDR (that's Comedy Death Ray to you, Future Self) with James, Stephen, Jessica and some friend of Stephen's. It was probably one of the funniest shows I've seen there to date. It featured the largest number of black comedians I've ever seen personally in one room (count: two): a vegan named Ian and somebody doing an impression of... Jesse Jackson at a Friar's Roast. Roasting some Jew. Also, alot of Jewish humor tonight. All of this is incidental, the show was really funny because everyone was on point and put together, nobody really wandered out with a piece of paper and excuses as usually happens at least once at CDR. Come to think of it, the first comedian was a bald white guy who seemed a little uncomfortable being lumped in as a white supremacist; where LA is not self conscious about much, I guess it gets uncomfortable on that point. Which is good.

Anyway, so we were standing in line (we're first, because that's the sort of people we are), and this guy asks us if we have extra tickets. Turns out we DO, because Stephens friends flaked. The new guy's name is also Stephen (he didn't give a last name), and evidently he's a comedian by 'trade'. Later we learned he's really unemployed.

He paid up the five bucks for the ticket and said that he does this every week, and that the people waiting in the standby line are chumps. This way he gets in every week AND he gets cutsies.

How do you know that someone will have an extra ticket? I ask. It's LA, he says, it's the flakiest city in the world.

Good point, Stephen.

So we start to talk, and I ask him where he lives. Get this shit: he lives on a boat. What kind of boat, I ask? A house boat? No. A regular boat? Sort of. A yacht? sort of. Stephen tells me that he bought a broken boat for 5,000 (it'd cost 5-7k to fix it), which he just lives on. There's a 400 dollar a month docking fee, but that flat rate includes water, power, and telephone, and internet.

His iPhone rings, and he tells me how proud he is of finding the LA loophole.

He says (to my surprise) that because he lives on a boat, bringing a girl back 'home' inevitably leads to fucking. I was impressed at the time, because i would have expected the opposite. However, it makes a little sense: you tell a woman you live on a yacht and she thinks your a certain kind of man. by the time she's made the call to go home with you, her mind is more or less made up, even if the yacht cost less than a beater car.

A note: his girlfriend broke up with him when he moved onto the boat. That takes a certain kind of man.

Gotta Start Somewhere

I might not have anything to say that's new
But you've gotta start somewhere

--Jon Brion