Bookends Theme
(5-14 August 2001)

14 August 2001
[from the Grand Canyon]
-Seen about a billion shooting stars tonight.  I thought about a lot.
-It's only been a year.
-The Canyon never fails to impress.

13 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Ariela definitely brought the clouds with her.
-I can't believe that in 2 weeks, I'm gonna be back in Waltham.  Wow.

12 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Well, the weather held up for the show, & what a show it was!  Though it was not as great for Ariela (no "What a Good Boy"), they played just about everything else I could've hoped for.  It was a very theme-laden show for me, as the setlist will demonstrate.  Mainly one theme.  & it sure didn't help that PLB's brother was on the lawn blanket NEXT to ours.  Go home & calculate those odds.  He was with Rachel Syme of BTATBF fame & some other AA folk I didn't recognize.  Anyway, it was not well timed, given my recent mental wanderings, but so it goes.  Then BNL was like "Oh, we hear you too!"  Christ.  Anyway, all that amounts to heaps of nothing worthwhile, so I'm just going to leave it where it is & let the list speak for itself.  They're really hysterical & wacky live though (as advertised), so it was a good time & even my Mom really liked the show!
-When is UNet gonna get its act together?!  Now it says my page doesn't exist, along with every other Deis student's!
-Ah, the night drivin'...
-For the love of the baby, WHERE are the people I've sent my novel to?!  Feedback ANYone?!
-"Anyone perfect must be lying, anything easy has its cost, anyone plain can be lovely, anyone loved can be lost.  What if I lost my direction, what if I lost a sense of time, what if I nursed this infection, maybe the worst is behind."

11 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Lousy dreams last night.  One in particular, really.
-This weather does not look promising for tonight's show.  But maybe if it starts out bad, it'll be good by afternoon; the opposite of the afternoon thunderstorm pattern.
-Ariela, guest introspecter, is here.  Not that she's writing this, but she's reading this!  "Ah ha!" she says.  Introspecter?  That's a weird word.  Also, you won't read this till the 13th because blasted unet is down.  Go bomb their site.  Uh, I mean, thanks for the free webspace, Unet!

10 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Schneider & I could not be much more different.
-Gris is in & Ariela begins her week in town later today!
-Are my priorities really THAT uncommon?  I sure hope not.  1 in 6 billion would scare me infinitely more than 1 in 3 billion.
-The date of the roadtrip launch is now set at 20 August.  Subject to change, but most likely that's when we're taking off.  There's already disagreements on where we'll stay along the way, but hey, it's gonna be a good time nonetheless.  & this is the fullest schedule we've got... all on-trip planning will be done on-trip, when it belongs.
-Who knew that my views on global warming weren't known by all my friends?  Jake & Fish, that's who.  Who knew they aren't exactly popular or widely held beliefs?  Me, but also everybody.  The only good way to close this entry is with some Bobby D:  "Half the people can be part right all of the time & some of the people can be all right part of the time, but all the people can't be all right all of the time.  I think Abraham Lincoln said that.  I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.  I said that."
-Whoa!  CC in October in Massachusetts!  What could be better?  Who's with me??

9 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Drew says he reads this page sporadically, but often only searches through the Archives for instances of the word "Drew".  Methinks I will start ending every 12th entry with his name, just to throw him off.  So don't be alarmed if random "Drew"s start popping up.
-I love all this rising discussion of global warming because the east coast is in a heat wave.  It's SUMMER.  It's supPOSed to be hot!  & here's a news flash:  the climate goes in cycles.  It's going to be warmer some years than others.  If you think the planet is so stable as to not have cyclical climate changes over long periods of time, talk to the people under Mt. Etna.  Planets so stable as to not have rising & falling temperatures on possibly centuries-long cycles do not have earthquakes & volcanic eruptions!  But Earth is not that stable.  Again, don't get me wrong, I think the belief in the mythical global warming has a good IMPACT (environmentalism is good), but I do not buy the myth.  It's a good thing that some people do, though, so we don't destroy the planet in other ways.  Call it the noble lie.
-Since it's been requested, & since I've been reading, methinks John Irving is getting lazy as a writer.  I preface all this by saying that my own recent writing process has made me obscenely more conscious of style & details & flow than normal, so maybe this is just an outgrowth of taking 3 months off from reading to write instead.  But he really seems to do a lot of after-the-fact weaving of his story, so that the details look forced rather than natural.  But that could just be my biases, as well as not having finished the book yet.  Also, though, Irving always makes me feel a little shameful.  Part of me thinks he's just a romance novelist hack in literate clothing.  I mean, I'm not a reading prude, but sometimes the graphic nature of his sexual stuff just makes me feel like I'm not getting much redeeming content.  I never can be sure, though.
-Where is everybody?

8 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-LB#4=Dad.  But Lisha has yet to give feedback... (hint, hint).
-Feeling good, feeling good.

7 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-& second across the "Loosely Based" finish line is my mother.
-Where is my Diplo GM?!  This is getting ridiculous... he's consistently 36+ hours behind deadline pace.  Ah well.
-Anybody got spiffy ideas for the APDA site?  It looks mighty dull right now, but Schtenio's still hoarding the files.  I want to work on something, but I don't think there's anything neat I can do till we have the full old site back.
-I should also scan some pics for this site, but the monitor on that computer's been having trouble.  Also, the resolution quality is marginal.  Where can I scan in JPG format?  Maybe at the 'Deis computer labs.  Which reminds me that I still don't know what classes I'm taking next year!  Hmmmm, do I have a coursebook lying around?...
-& now for something truly amusing:  since I'm allowing myself to read again, I've been dabbling into Irving's latest ("The Fourth Hand").  Anyway, he goes on for literally 4 pages or something about how thin this one particular character is, culminating in the shocking fact that he's (gasp!) 5'11", 135.  135?!  I've NEVER been 135!  My best day ever was 132 or something, & I happen to be 5'11".  Right now, I'm probably 125.  Jeez.
-I hate Kinko's!!  Bastards!  They've flipped one set of pages & actually LEFT OUT another!
-As she posted, LB#3 is Alisha Creel.  Not that I want people to hurry through it or anything...

6 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Happy Birthday, Shannon!
-Looking over a year ago's editions of this page, it would seem that I'm a bit different.  Maybe it's just the novel this summer being quite a departure from last year & the GC, but I feel like I may actually have changed a bit since then.  Or maybe I just had different focal points for the same lens.
-Mesco's right.  Lisha & I really do dialogue through our update pages.  Ah well.  To continue the trend, I liked "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" mostly because I found it hysterical.  Also though because Jimmy the Saint is just too ridiculously cool to be a real character, & all his lines are funny.  & who can argue with Christopher Walken as a mob boss?  With Christopher Lloyd as a guy called "Pieces"?  All the characterizations are great, but it has an undercurrent of meaning & depth to it that's also neat.  The old man in the diner helps really make the film.  I guess I just like the atmosphere of it mostly.  It may be a little predictable, but I'm sometimes willing to suspend plot complication for mood in my movie watching.  Did I mention "boat drinks"?
-The closing credits of "Rush Hour 2" are better than the movie.  Not to say that the movie was bad, just that the credits were AWESOME.

5 August 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-It's afternoon thunderstorm season in a big way 'round here.  I find that very fitting for the time being.
-Now only lasts for one second.
-Random House takes THREE MONTHS to get back on unsolicited novel submissions.  Three months?!  I'm prompted to believe that they do all the things I talk about in the Fine Print of yore... i.e. "copied, faxed, re-transmitted, re-done, talked about, flown around the world, saturated, posted to a wall, sat on, thrown away, burned, eaten, indicted, shoplifted, lectured, operated on, sued, translated into Dutch, buried, fried with bacon, worn as a hat, converted to gold, made into one of those Origami cranes, or anything else you can think of".  That must be their book submission review process.
-Why do some people just get lousy parents?
-Ladies & gentlemen, David Kunkel is the first person on the planet to finish reading "Loosely Based".  Other than the author, of course.  (He liked it quite a bit, too.)
-I guess nobody delivers mail on Saturday anymore.
-I haven't seen "Trainspotting", but I highly doubt it's better than "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead", as Lisha argues.  The latter is probably on the top twenty list, though I only have a definitive top ten right now.  BOAT DRINKS!

 

Introspection, My Worst Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)

Tell me this is not the end...*


*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers", by SWClayton.